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

‘Dare I ask who?’

‘Tell you another time, Guv,’ she said, as they got out of the car in the underground car park beneath the main police station, and Karen dashed off for the lift, for she wanted to get upstairs and finish things off, and get away and not be too late.

Eight 

The first rumble of thunder could be heard across the old city at just gone seven. Heavy clouds had been rolling in from Snowdonia all day, and the forecast was dire, and for once the forecasters were right on the money. The rain began falling at half past seven, heavy bursts that lasted ten or fifteen minutes, and then abated for a similar time, before returning, only heavier.

Belinda Cooper arrived home at just after half past seven. She pushed the old front door open with her foot and dropped two big bags of Bestdas groceries onto the hall floor, shook the umbrella outside, dropped her handbag onto the Welcome mat, glanced up at the dark and angry sky, just as another jab of fork lightning smashed to ground not five hundred yards away.

Belinda jumped.

She’d always been terrified of lightning.

Wasn’t everyone?

She stumbled into the hall and closed the door behind her, happy and grateful to be home, sopping wet, but safe and sound in her old and happy house. The heating was on, but not too high, came on with a timer at 6.30pm, and it was getting colder with each passing day, or so it seemed, and it would stay on until at least 10pm, big gas bill or not.

Bel, as all her friends called her, slipped off her beige Mac, shook it hard and hung it on the hooks above the hall radiator where it would dry before the morning. She kicked off her boots and sprinted, as best she could, up the stairs. Good exercise, and she didn’t get so much of that, but at thirty-six she was in her prime, everyone said so, just such a pity that she was living her prime all alone, though she would tell her friends that she was completely happy with that, and to an extent, she was.

She was off men, she said, whenever any of her friends asked her about it, or even worse, tried to fix her up with someone new. To date she had enjoyed five serious boyfriends, or were they now menfriends? Like so many others she was confused as to when precisely in life boyfriends became menfriends, but in the end, all five had disappointed her.

Two had turned out to be married. (Why did men lie so much?) While another, Marcus, had revealed one night in the Flying Horse after one too many gin and tonics, that he’d enjoyed several gay affairs in the past, something that Bel could never quite live with, while a fourth gentlemen, Iain, with two “i’s” as he was always keen to point out, well, maybe in Iain’s case she was responsible for the break-up there, simply because she’d become besotted with Gareth, a city solicitor who worked across the road from their shop, one of the married ones, and after all that upheaval and trauma she needed a damned good break from men altogether, and affairs of the heart, and everything that went with it. It was just too much hassle and effort.

Five lovers and five failures, not a pretty record, though only Bel was aware of that stat, and anyway, compared to some women she was almost a nun. Nevertheless, she was definitely off men, and for the foreseeable future she would remain so.

DINNER CONSISTED OF a pork chop, tinned peas, instant gravy, and mashed potatoes, something her mother and father would have happily served up twenty years before, but as they were both now residing in the central Chester graveyard, there was rarely a need to cook for more than one. Sometimes she didn’t bother cooking at all, just made a sandwich and gnawed on an apple or a punnet of pears, and that lack of heavy dinners helped to keep her fit and trim.

TV that night was even worse than usual, the more channels there are, the worse it gets, or so it seems, and that boredom was only broken when one of her friends, Lena, rang. Bel knew her from the travel company where they both worked. They were planning another trip abroad, and Lena had read all about the Baltic States. ‘They’re fab,’ she’d said, though Bel remained to be convinced, and they could not yet agree on a destination.

Bel wasn’t happy with the TV being on at all, what with the continuing thunder and lightning, and recalled how her mother always insisted that not only was the TV turned off at the first sight and sound of thunder, but that the mains plug was pulled out of the wall, and the aerial disconnected too.

Often they would do that, and the storm would pass over, and they would reconnect everything, only for the lightning to return ten minutes later, much to everyone’s annoyance.

She smiled to herself and thought of her old mum and dad.  How nice it would have been if they were there with her again, but how awkward too, for they would never have accepted her drinking alcohol, and having affairs, and they wouldn’t have been happy with her sleeping in that king-size bed in the main front bedroom either, their room, that Bel rarely entered as a child and teenager.

So maybe it was just as well they were now gone. After all, they had had their innings, and a pretty good one at that, seeing as they never once lived alone in their whole lives, and never endured loneliness, something that didn’t worry Bel overmuch, though she was always aware that it could creep up on single people with no warning at all. ‘Watch those creeping years, watch that creeping loneliness,’ one of her friends was fond of saying, though Bel couldn’t