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

The steamship the City of Cairo, a City Lines boat from Liverpool, was busy unloading tractors, cars, and machinery from Britain. It would take back cotton, cottonseed, and a small quantity of jute. It would sail in three days. Just enough time for Wazir to obtain the necessary documentation from the back street forgers who could produce anything, for a price.

The British had concocted the mess that was partition, reasoned Wazir, then surely they should be held accountable. The family would travel to Liverpool, England, on the big ship, where the Khan family would live in peace and harmony, amongst the English. That was the plan.

When she first heard the idea drip from Wazir’s lips, Nadirah thought her husband crazy, imagined the sun and the loss of his parents had turned his mind, but she was a good Muslim wife, and good Muslim wives do their husband’s bidding, no matter how ridiculous the idea might seem, and anyway, Wazir was set on the plan. He had already spent money on the necessary papers and she would do as he commanded. The boy Ahmed thought the prospect of a long trip on the big ship incredibly exciting. His foot was finally on the mend, and he couldn’t wait to board and set sail.

THEY ALL SUFFERED TERRIBLE seasickness as the steamship lurched across the Arabian Sea, heading for the Red Sea, and the Suez Canal beyond. Onward through the Med, a cursory nod at Gibraltar, and then into the fearsome Atlantic Ocean beyond. The Khan family had never experienced cold like it, and were eternally grateful when on one bright spring morning in 1948, the steamship the City of Cairo slipped toward the mouth of the placid Mersey river, where one hour later, she was lovingly nudged home by Rea tugs, as she edged into the King’s Dock.

The Khan family collected their meagre belongings and staggered uneasily down the gangplank and stood confused on the quayside, pausing to glance up at the grey and rusting hulk of the steamship that had delivered them to this strange, cold, and windy land.

Wazir, incongruously wielding the cricket bat, took out the wallet his wife had bought him for his birthday, and carefully removed the small scrawled note from within, taking care to hold it tight, lest the biting wind rip it from his fingers. He glanced down at the untidy writing his great uncle had once written for him. Four words that would determine the destiny of the Khan family: 99a Upper Parliament Street.

Twenty-Two

The sound of the front door bell at Walter’s house burst through the hallway. Walter was in the kitchen glancing at the weekly freebie newspaper, while running an electric shaver over his face. He switched it off and ambled to the front door, pulled it open. Galina Unpronounceable smiled in. He’d forgotten it was her day.

‘I come in?’ she said, her big blue eyes sparkling in the summer sunshine.

‘Sure, course,’ said Walter, standing to one side, as she swept in and down the hall toward the kitchen.

She didn’t wait a moment. Filled the kettle, switched it on. She would always need a good supply of boiling water to clean, didn’t seem to understand it came out of the tap that way.

Walter followed her into the kitchen.

‘Want a coffee?’ he asked.

‘No, not now, maybe later,’ she said, as she unwrapped a fresh pair of yellow rubber gloves, and slipped them on her long, dainty hands.

‘How have you been keeping?’ asked Walter, making small talk, taking advantage of having another human being in the house, in his house, and a mighty attractive human being at that.

‘I good, I busy, I must get on, and you, Mister Darto, how you keeping?’

She always called him Mister Darto, couldn’t seem to cope with Darriteau, though Walter hadn’t given up on that yet.

‘Yeah, I’m good, very busy at the moment.’

‘You have important case?’

‘Yes, I have an important case.’

‘Chasing naughty men?’

‘Yes, you could say that, though girls and women can be naughty too.’

The kettle had boiled and she was tipping the contents into the sink, a cloud of steam rising in her face that she gloved away.

‘Women not naughty like men, never,’ and she half turned and smiled at him, standing there leaning against the worktops.

‘Maybe you’re right.’

‘What these naughty men do?’

‘Murder.’

‘Killed someone?’

‘Yes.’

‘How?’

‘Gunshot.’

‘Terrible. What happen when you catch them?’

‘They will be tried and if found guilty they will be sent to prison for a very long time.’

Galina scoffed. ‘Not enough! They take someone, they should go,’ and she turned again and swept her index finger across her porcelain-like throat.

‘Mmm,’ said Walter, noncommittally, fact was, he didn’t have a view on that, just so long as they were off the street, away from society, unable to repeat their crimes; that was all that concerned him.

‘You good policeman?’ she asked.

‘I have my moments.’

‘Your moments?’ she said, clearly not understanding what he meant.

‘Sometimes good, sometimes bad.’

‘We all like that,’ she said, ‘sometimes good, sometimes bad.’

He found it hard to believe that she could ever be bad, but he knew well enough that anyone could, in the right circumstances, become as bad as it was possible to be.

‘Why you not married?’ she asked.

That took him aback. Said the usual thing.

‘No one would have me.’

‘Bull-shit!’ she said, two distinctly separate words, surprising Walter with such language.

‘Are you married, Galina?’

‘Oh yes, husband back in Ukraine, he work on railway, two children, two boys, Dimitri and Alexander.’

‘You must miss them.’

‘Yes, sometimes, but they enjoy the money I send.’

‘I’m sure they do.’

She was busy washing the breakfast things that Walter had left in the sink. She did everything in a hurry, and she did everything with great purpose. Walter found himself wondering what her husband was like; and why he had let his pretty wife travel to Britain and skivvy around people like him for a few pennies above the minimum wage. If she were his wife, but that was a pointless line of thinking, because