The Inspector Walter Darriteau Murder Mysteries - Books 1-4 David Carter (autobiographies to read txt) 📖

fell for his mature charm, hook line and sinker, stupid girl.’

‘What’s her surname?’

‘Knight.’

‘Where does she live?’ asked Karen.

‘Is that relevant?’

‘Maybe.’

‘She has a flat in town. Gerry pays her visits in the afternoon. Thinks I don’t know about it, but I do. He stinks of her when he comes home, understated French perfume, and he’s always in a particularly good mood.’

‘And what was she doing here yesterday?’ asked Walter.

‘Had some papers to sign.’

‘What kind of papers?’

‘Something to do with her life insurance and Will, Gerry’s organising it all for her, they have to have a lot of life insurance in that line of work, apparently. Now I’m sorry, Inspector, but I really will have to take my afternoon nap,’ and she called for Hilario to show them out.

‘Thank you so much for seeing us again,’ said Walter, standing.

‘If it helps you find the maniac hunting my son it will have been worth while.’

‘Yes of course, I am sure it will.’

A COUPLE OF MINUTES later they were outside in the car and Karen said, ‘Well that was revealing.’

‘Yes,’ said Walter, seemingly miles away.

‘Guv?’

‘What?’

‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Sure.’

‘Are you on the square?’

Walter guffawed, didn’t say anything.

‘Well?’ she said, in that persistent way of hers. ‘Are you?’

He still didn’t reply, just pinched the flesh of his right cheek between his finger and thumb and shook it and said, ‘What is this?’

‘Your jowls.’

‘Do you mind! I don’t have jowls! What else?’

‘Your cheek.’

‘What else is it?’

‘It’s the side of your face.’

‘What else!’

‘It’s your black skin.’

‘Aha! At last! Correct!’

‘And they don’t accept black people?’

‘They didn’t back then.’

‘And now?’

‘Who knows? Don’t care.’

‘Would you have joined as a younger man, back then, if you’d had the opportunity?’

‘That’s a hypothetical question.’

‘So what’s the answer?’

‘I don’t do hypothetical questions. I want to talk about the here and now.’

‘If you must.’

‘When we get back to the station find out where Munro Ford lives. I think we need to pay him a visit.’

‘Sure, Guv,’ but she was still thinking of the Lodge when she said, ‘How come the Masons managed to provide Gerry Swaythling with so much cash, when the banks wouldn’t touch him?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Don’t you think we should look into that?’

‘Where do you suggest we start? They are not going to talk to me, are they? I’m black, and I’m not a member, and they are not going to talk to you. You’re female, and you’re not a member either.’

Karen grinned knowingly and then she said, ‘No, but Gibbo is.’

‘Is he? I didn’t know that.’

‘I think so.’

‘Well even if he is, he’s not going to help us out on this, is he? They are sworn to secrecy, threatened with having their tongue ripped out at dawn if they spill the beans. You know the score.’

‘Oh Gibbo won’t mind about that.’

‘I think you will find that he does.’

‘Leave Gibbo to me,’ and she grinned wickedly, and then said, ‘I still think we should put the frighteners on them.’

‘I think you will find they are not so easily frightened. Let’s talk about something else.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like Suzanne Knight.’

‘I am not surprised at all about that.’

‘About her shacking up with Gerry?’

‘Yeah, I knew he was that kind of man the moment I set eyes on him. He couldn’t let a woman pass in the street without checking her out... and wondering.’

‘He’s fifty odd, for God’s sake.’

‘Doesn’t matter, Guv, not with men like him. He’ll never change.’

‘Come on, take me back to work, we seem to be getting sidetracked, let’s have an update meeting, everyone there, talk it through, see what ideas everyone has.’

‘Sure, Guv,’ she said, smiling to herself, for she still had clear ideas of pumping Darren Gibbons for information. She just might be able to extract things where Walter couldn’t, and that always appealed to her.

Twelve

Langley Wells often thought about the old days. He liked to remember those tough but happy times, he liked to remember Rose too, as she was back then, Willie Masefield’s kid sister, the same girl cum woman he had been married to for longer than he cared to remember. He had just celebrated his fifty-fifth birthday and was still running the same game, and business was still good. When had it not been? People always needed cash.

Incredibly, he still lived on the estate, and in the same house too, though they had long since bought the property under the right to buy scheme. It would have been foolish not to. He’d had an extension built on the side, another one jammed on the back, and another one jemmied into the roof space, and they needed it too, with their three twenty-something sons, Lawrie, Lenny and Lewis, all still living at home, all enjoying on-off live-in girlfriends, and on-off grandkids that Langley liked to play with and spoil. The three boys, the L’s, as they were known, all worked in the family businesses. Fact was, that none of them had ever considered doing anything else.

There was a rumour going round the estate that Langley was a multimillionaire and that he possessed a sprawling villa on one of the Spanish Costas that overlooked the Mediterranean.

That was a ridiculous idea.

It was in Tuscany.

Or Tuscanshire, as the ever-growing band of expat Brits preferred to call it, as they roamed around the countryside as if they owned the place, inspecting their vineyards in their dusty right hand drive Range Rovers and Norton motorcycles.

It was a rambling building, the Wells Italian home, one that he’d added to over the years, and now it was something of a fortress, set on top of the perfect hill that looked out over the rolling Italian countryside, where heat-haze gently bobbled into the air like scent from a rose. Langley had acquired the run down property years ago for a song, during one of the regular property slumps, and now he had turned it into a wonder home.

He would disappear there twice every year to recharge his batteries, and usually returned with a deep tan, though he would never discuss it, and