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

cargo too, as Jun glanced across at the illuminated big ships, and cranes and trucks and containers, and massive container shifters that picked up the boxes as if they were piffling shoeboxes, and she pondered on how many other women were incarcerated, somewhere deep within those huge metal structures that human beings had assembled to move booty over the surface of the oceans, and across the planet, and how would any poor souls hidden there, imprisoned against their will, ever be found?

And on and on they drove in the warm and purring Volvo, as if they were inside some contented migrating creature, past Waterloo and Crosby and Blundellsands, and that place name gave a big clue to the basic terrain of the land in which they travelled, sands, and sand dunes, and they were already on the A565, a designated primary route, marked in green on all the street maps and satnavs, and they found themselves at the beginning of the dual carriageway, and what was it Karen had said?

A place where speed-bobbies snag speedsters and drunken drivers, a place where kids just out of school, maybe with a driving licence and maybe not, liked to show off to their mates and girlfriends how good a driver they were, or not, as the case may be. Yeah, that was about right, as they closed in on Formby itself, where their mission was to put a stop to any illegal interment of bodies going on amongst the dunes, and arrest two violent men for so many crimes the charge sheets might have to be extended.

Like so many other places in twenty-first century Britain, Formby was a growing town, probably against the wishes of the inhabitants, with more commuters and more new property, and more retired folks, and more people living longer, and more disposable income, and more incomers, and more workers being employed, as the economy slowly grew, and it was a pleasant place to spend one’s life, and if Man One and Man Two had their way, it would be the final resting place for Ricky Barton, London hoodlum, and Mr Pryce too, twenty-first century slave-dealer and driver.

The military base and aerodrome at RAF Woodvale was sliding by on the left side, all still lit up, but a minor airfield, no jets out of there, but it was the home base for the Merseyside Air Support Group, from where they flew their Eurocopter EC135 machine, more often than not chasing those road speedsters and stolen cars, but not big enough, or chunky enough, to lift five adults off a Chinese merchantman on the high seas, and anyway, they couldn’t have used it even if they had wanted to, because it was out of action, undergoing essential annual maintenance.

23.05. MRS WEST CAME on the radio. Reminded the spotter guys heading for lookout duty they should pull off and park up in Dunlop Avenue, as the road was coming up fast on the left-hand side, just after the aerodrome. A couple of minutes later they turned in there, turned round, out of sight, doused the lights, and waited, ready and watching for late night people carriers with two IC1’s up, and bloody tarpaulins in the cabin.

The first two police cars continued on to the next junction, took a left turn, westbound, onto the coastal road that would take them down toward the railway and the dunes beyond. They’d park up and hide before that, just as they intended, to stop the target.

It was a narrow road, one lane either way, not much in the way of street-lighting, not much in the way of traffic, headlights on full beam, scrubby trees on either side, picking out hideous images in the dark, and the trees on the left side fell away, and what appeared to be wire agricultural fencing took their place, with fields beyond that, or so it looked in the darkness, and sure enough, there were a few beasts grazing there, by the wire, as the officers came to Pinfold avenue, left and right, running across the coast road at a jagged sharp angle, and Mrs West and her crew slowed and took the left-hand side, turned in and turned round amongst tidy and desirable seventies bungalows, easier to jump out and deploy the stinger from there, and Walter and his team took the right side, where they turned in and turned round amongst sixties red brick semi detached houses, and from there they’d have to re-cross the lane of oncoming traffic, if there was any, to get back to the people carrier, when it arrived, assuming the stinger hadn’t sent it slewing across in their direction.

23.17. EVERYONE IN POSITION. Everyone watching. Everyone breathing hard. Everyone ready, settling down for a wait, not knowing if it would be four minutes... or four hours.

‘I know a joke about the Formby by-pass,’ said Gibbons, grinning to himself on the back seat, glancing across at Jun and rippling his eyebrows, and she couldn’t help but smile, and a good supply of jokes had served him well in the past on long stake-out jobs like this one might become.

‘Is there anything you don’t know a joke about?’ asked Walter.

‘Don’t say that, Guv.’

‘Is it filthy?’ asked Karen.

‘Course not!’ said Gibbons. ‘I’m hardly likely to tell a filthy joke when we have overseas guests onboard, am I?’

‘Never put you off in the past,’ said Karen, sipping her bottled water that she seemed to take everywhere.

‘Go on,’ muttered Walter. ‘Let’s hear it, and get it out of the way.’

Gibbons sniffed his readiness and said, ‘There’s this modern Ford saloon, see, pelting down the Formby by-pass, and it skids on some oil in the road, and crosses the central reservation and smacks into a wall and bursts into flames.’

‘Nice joke,’ said Walter.

‘Hold on, Guv, haven’t finished yet.’

‘Well you’d better finish, now you’ve started.’

Gibbons nodded and began again. ‘Four guys on board, all jockeys coming back from the Grand National, and they’re all badly burned, dead as