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

Darren and Hector stepped inside.

Lena and the neighbour made to follow.

‘No,’ said Gibbons. ‘Rather you didn’t. We’ll go and check, and come back and tell you how we get on.’

Lena bit her lip and nodded, half disappointed, half relieved. The neighbour was downright frustrated for he ran the local neighbourhood watch website, and already imagined he was onto the scoop of the decade.

Darren hustled into the kitchen. Took a quick look round, including in the pantry and in the big floor to ceiling cupboards, and yelled back, ‘Kitchen clear.’

Hector went into the other reception room and took a peek. There was nowhere there anyone could hide, alive or dead. ‘Lounge clear!’ he yelled, something they all heard, and in the next moment Darren was leading the way up the stairs, all the while calling out, ‘Belinda Cooper, it’s the police, is everything all right?’

Gibbons pointed Hector into the large rear bedroom. He pushed the door opened and went inside. A nice double bed all made up, no one in the bed, no one in the room. ‘Back bedroom clear,’ he shouted.

Gibbons went into the front bedroom, the main bedroom, the master bedroom; the one that had to be the favourite, if any room was going to shed any light on the mystery.

The front bedroom was not clear.

There was a woman, collapsed in a heap, close to the foot of the bed. On the bed was a vintage baseball bat. Gibbons rushed to the woman and felt for a pulse. He didn’t expect to find one, and he didn’t.

‘Fuck!’ he said. ‘She’s in here, Heck, we’re too late.’

Hector came running.

Took one look.

Grimaced and turned away.

Gibbons was already on the phone.

Jenny answered.

‘We’ve found a body, Jen. Foul play looks likely. Can you rustle up the team? Doc Grayling, SOCO, a couple of uniforms to keep the place secure, and you’d better tell Mrs West PDQ, and no doubt she’ll want the Guv to know.’

‘I’m on it,’ and she cut off.

Gibbons and Hector shared a look.

‘Murder weapon, you think?’ said Gibbons, nodding at the bat.

‘Could be,’ said Heck. ‘Who on earth keeps a baseball bat in the bedroom?’

‘A woman living on her own, maybe, unless the killer brought it with him.’

They both heard Lena shouting up the stairs. ‘Is everything okay up there?’

‘They’re in the house,’ said an alarmed Gibbons. ‘Get them outside. They’re contaminating a crime scene.’

‘What do I tell her?’ asked Hector.

‘Nothing, not yet, tell her Guv will be here soon, and he’ll decide on that.’

Hector nodded, knowing that the woman would give him a hard time, but sometimes that was the job. He went downstairs and ushered the pair of them outside, doing his best to avoid their probing questions.

IN THE OFFICES OF ASNB Miroslav Rekatic unlocked the cupboard located along the corridor outside his office.

‘That’s it?’ said Karen, nodding down at a neatly folded up black piece of kit, a piece of machinery in its folded state resembled some kind of fancy picnic chair.

Miro nodded.

Karen slipped on latex gloves and pulled it out.

‘Expensive, was it?’ asked Walter.

Miro shook his head. ‘No, not really.’

Walter nodded his head, knowingly.

They were looking for blood, though none readily showed itself, but it could have been carefully cleaned, though blood spatters are almost impossible to eradicate completely. If there was blood anywhere on the incapacitator it would be found.

Walter and Karen knew that huge advances had been made in forensic science in recent years, and if they didn’t fully understand the technology, they knew enough to know that it worked, and incredibly well. Walter thought about it.

It’s called luminol chemiluminescence reaction, and is responsible for the glow of lightsticks, the reaction found to detect traces of blood. The luminol solution is sprayed where blood is suspected of being. The iron from the haemoglobin in the blood serves as a catalyst for the chemiluminescence reaction, and that causes luminol to glow blue when the solution is sprayed where there is blood.

It only needs a tiny amount of iron to catalyse the reaction; Walter knew that, he’d read up on the subject, so fascinating was it. The problem is the blue glow only lasts for about 30 seconds before it fades, which is usually enough time to take sufficient photographs in order they can be investigated more thoroughly. The trick is to make sure the cameras are on hand and working and ready to roll.

‘Evidence,’ said Walter.

‘Be my guest,’ said Miro, apparently happy to see the specialist equipment away and out of the premises.

Karen’s phone rang.

She looked at it and nodded and walked away and listened to Jenny, as Jen relayed the news.

‘Have you any plans to leave the country?’ asked Walter.

‘Not in the next three months.’

Walter nodded and said, ‘Good. Come to that, I’d rather you didn’t leave the city, or if you plan to, you tell us first.’

‘I can do that; I’m keen to help in any way I can. I liked Ellie Wright a lot, and I didn’t kill her.’

‘We’ll need to talk again.’

‘You know where I am.’

‘Indeed, we do.’

KAREN CAME BACK AND said, ‘We need to go, Guv.’

She picked up Miro’s machinery and stared at him hard.

Miroslav licked his lips, but didn’t say a word; happy they were on their way. A minute later they were outside, heading back to the car.

‘What’s happening?’

‘Body, Guv, suspicious circumstances, a woman, believed to be thirty-six.’

‘Where?’

Karen relayed the address, as they arrived back at the car, and carefully placed the seized equipment in the boot. They didn’t have an evidence bag big enough. Every car couldn’t carry every piece of necessary equipment, every time. It just wasn’t possible.

‘Who’s there now?’ asked Walter, settling into the front seat.

‘Gibbo and Heck.’

‘Just thinking back to Miro for a moment, what did you make of him?’

‘A creep!’

‘And a murderer?’

‘Could be. He certainly had a temper on him. Did you see the way he spoke to the switchboard operator?’

‘Couldn’t miss it. Can’t we go any quicker?’

Karen grinned and opened the window, took