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

you’re just so frigging unreliable!’ Another break and she said, ‘Of course your daughter needs you!’ and she turned round and glanced back at the slumbering infant, and then at Jun who was looking pleadingly that she really really needed the phone, but that didn’t work, and Jun thought of Fenfang, and what she might be going through, and decided she could not wait a moment longer. She took hold of the open door and said, ‘I MUST make a phone call, it’s an emergency, VERY urgent!’

‘FUCK OFF!’ screamed the young woman, waking the infant, who began bawling. The young woman yelled, ‘Fucking foreigners!’ and the guy on the other end must have said something for the young woman was yelling, ‘There’s some Chinese bitch here trying to use the phone, no the kid’s fine, just woken up, that’s all, have to go, Billy, but you better buck your frigging ideas up or you’re out, and out for good! I’m telling ya!’ and she slammed the phone down so hard Jun Woo worried she might have broken it.

Jun stood to one side and the woman came out and said, ‘Sorry ’bout that, little domestic,’ and she bent down and grabbed a bottle of purple juice with a teat on the end, and rammed it in the bawling baby’s mouth, and pushed the pram away at a pace, as if she had important business to attend to.

Jun Woo stepped inside and picked up the phone. Clear dialling tone. Thank God. Recalled the long secret number, it was still there in her head, imprinted, life or death they had told her, dabbed in the digits, carefully as possible, no point in rushing and mucking things up. A couple of seconds passed; seemed like minutes, and then she heard the phone ringing on the other side of the planet.

Uncle picked it up. He’d been expecting the call.

‘I’m in England,’ said Jun Woo.

‘I know that.’

‘I’ve drawn money.’

‘I know that too.’

‘Most of the girls are at a company called Minstrel Electronics.’

Uncle made notes, but had no need to do so, as all calls were automatically recorded.

‘Where is that?’

‘It’s a place called Ellesmere Port, near the River Mersey, not far from Liverpool.’

‘Hold the line,’ and Uncle brought up-to-date maps of England on to his big screen. Typed in Ellesmere Port, and the programme zeroed in on the place, and he could zoom in and out as he required.

‘It’s near a place called Chester,’ he said.

‘Okay.’

‘Listen carefully, Jun.’

‘I am.’

‘Find yourself a taxi.’

‘I will.’

‘Go to the Chester central police station, the main place, we will contact British police; hopefully they will be expecting you. Tell them everything you know, and keep me informed.’

‘I’ll do that, go to Chester.’

‘Are you all right, Jun?’

‘I’m fine, I’m going to find a taxi.’

‘Speak soon.’

‘For sure.’

Jun set the phone carefully down, and left the box to someone else who went in straight away. She crossed the road again back towards the shops, and hustled through the square. Two young women in uniforms were coming towards her. Not police, not sure what they were.

‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘But I need a taxi, urgent.’

They were traffic wardens, and one turned and pointed back toward the red and white supermarket sign.

‘There’s one outside Bestdas,’ she said. ‘You can always get a cab there.’

Jun thanked her and hurried away, and probably didn’t hear the warden say, ‘You’re all right, girl,’ and the traffic wardens headed off down toward the greasy spoon café, where they’d eat something delicious, and truly unhealthy, and a little too much of it at that.

Seventy-Four

12.14. Walter sat back in his chair and grabbed the morning paper he’d bought from Reg the rag. The front page headlines screamed: CRIME AT LOWEST LEVEL FOR 35 YEARS, and a little further down the page detailed analysis revealed that murder rates in western Europe, and even the United States, had halved in the last ten years. Didn’t seem like that to him.

Further down the page was speculation about the causes of the drop, one of which was the imaginary idea that the banning of leaded petrol was responsible. Could that really be, he pondered, no leaded petrol so people no longer wanted to kill people? Seemed far-fetched to him, and anyway, why had the lack of leaded petrol not saved Yet Kwai Dang and Stevie Cliffe? Seemed a load of nonsense to him, and he suspected the truth was in the way the figures were being computed, though no doubt the bigwigs would take a lot of credit for it, the politicians and hierarchy in the force, for the drop in crime, for he knew they had to take their comfort wherever they could find it.

Karen came in after freshening up and said, ‘I really had good vibes about that, about the electronics company, thought we’d cracked it.’

Walter ripped open a pack of Coronation chicken sandwiches, and began munching.

‘I’m more than ever convinced that we are on the right lines. Trouble is, we’re running out of companies to check.’

‘Maybe it’s further afield, perhaps Manchester or Liverpool?’

‘Could be. Imagine the work involved there.’

Karen bit heartily into a green apple, as Walter was already back for the second sandwich.

The door to Mrs West’s office opened fast, and she stood in the doorway and shouted across, ‘Walter! Come here!’

It wasn’t unusual to be summoned by Mrs West, but it was unusual to be summoned in quite that way, as if he had been incredibly naughty, and was overdue a serious dressing down. He and Karen shared smirked looks, as if to say: What have you been up to now? He force-fed the last piece of butty into his mouth and stood up, and still eating, limped across the office and tapped on the door out of habit.

‘Come in, shut the door, sit down,’ she said, not in a dressing down kind of way at all, more of an excited way.

Karen watched him go in and close the door. Wondered what was going down, and would loved to