The Inspector Walter Darriteau Murder Mysteries - Books 1-4, David Carter [diy ebook reader .txt] 📗

luck none of those things would exist in another ten minutes, but just to be sure he wiped the old metal door catch, inside and out.

He went to the doorway and took one last look, and pursed his lips as if in deep thought.

She was a strange girl.

It was almost as if she had wanted him to do what he had done, and he hadn’t expected that at all. But that didn’t matter, for if anything, she had made it easier for him, but there was no denying that a little more fight, some genuine resistance, might have made things slightly more interesting, more exciting even, but hey, there are 3.75 billion females on this planet, give or take, and that number is growing every day, despite the activities of birth control methods and wars and disease, and people like him.

Murderers like him. He thought about the title. It brought another smirk to his clean-cut face. He was a murderer, and that was something; an achievement he never expected to make. Fact was, if he wanted another victim to fight harder, there were plenty of potential candidates to choose from.

He opened the door and stepped outside and was happy to see the rain dwindling away to nothing. He turned back and looked inside. Took out a box of matches. Held his hands just inside the door to shelter from the wind, and struck one. Lit first time. Tossed it across the room.

BOOF!

Instant blaze.

The purple dress immediately engulfed.

He didn’t dare glance at the liquid loaded face.

Pulled the door to and turned about and set off towards that twisty lane.

He was a quick walker, and needed to be.

He could feel the heat on his neck and the back of his head.

Stuffed his hands deep in his jacket pockets, hunched his back, and watched his feet working hard to get away. He was leaving footsteps in the mud, that was clear enough, but that couldn’t be helped. Maybe the rain would return and blur his retreat.

BANG!

The first of the gas bottles blew up. He glanced back over his shoulder. The caravan was fully ablaze. Part of the roof was collapsing into the main inferno. Just the metal frame remained, melting and bending and twisting as if in agony, before falling in on itself. Red and yellow and blue flames leapt into the air like a funeral pyre for a Goddess.

‘The Goddess of pleasure,’ he muttered to himself, and smirked again, and already he was half way up that twisty lane on the way back to the main road and his car, and safety and freedom, and then en route back to his demanding day job.

He didn’t see or hear a soul all the way back to the car and he wasn’t surprised at that, not even a late night dog walker, for he knew well enough that not many people used that lane.

As he turned the corner onto the main road he saw his new silver and black Cayton Cerisa Sports parked up ahead, maybe three hundred yards to the lay-by. By the time he reached the car one vehicle had passed him coming head on, a large dark SUV. He casually looked away as it passed, while one vehicle had passed him from behind, a small scruffy box wagon, carrying God knows what to God knows where.

Twenty yards from the car he took out his key fob and bleeped the car open. Orange lights flashed. A tiny bleep filled the heavy November air. He opened the nearside passenger door and reached inside and grabbed the old supermarket plastic bag he’d placed on the seat. He sat on the seat with his feet out on the grass verge, and reached down and slipped off the black slip-on shoes. Glad to get them off for they were a size too big.

He slipped them in the bag and added several large pebbles he’d set carefully in the footwell, and tied the bag tightly closed. He reached across to the driver’s seat where he’d left ready his favourite pair of grey and white trainers. Put them on and tied them up, and they sure felt good, like best quality gloves. Stood out of the car, closed the door, hurried round to the driver’s side, opened up, and jumped inside.

Turned on the engine. The clock said 12.42am. November 18th, and a new Saturday was just beginning, and that was cool, for he always had plans aplenty on a Saturday.

It took him less than twenty minutes to drive back to Chester city centre. The traffic was light and the car was fast and the rain was back, heavy and sustained, and that was cool too. As he approached the Grosvenor Bridge across the cold dark and deep river, he glanced in the rear mirror. Nothing behind. Nothing at all. Couldn’t be better.

He buzzed down the passenger window. Some rain blew in, as he took hold of the heavy plastic bag, and with one confident swing he flung it out of the window like a discus thrower. Over the grey stone parapet it went, as he watched it out of sight, falling down fast, splashing and crashing into the swirling and rain-refreshed water, entering the darkness like an arrow-beaked seabird out hunting, where it sank to the bottom in seconds. Only a few dozing mallard ducks witnessed the missile from above. The wrong sized shoes would never see the light of day again.

Three

Fred Ross had opened his business in Chester ten years before and had called it the Cuppa Cha Café, a name his first wife suggested, and as he couldn’t think of anything better, he went along with it, though he’d often thought of changing it after that.

He was tall and slim with neat black greasy hair that gave him something of an Italianate appearance, something that he would encourage when referring to himself as the Italian stallion. It would occasionally make his predominantly female clientele laugh, and that was good, though fact was, there wasn’t