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

by nine o’clock Thursday for final briefing, remind everyone there are big prizes to be won for the best turned out people.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Walter, standing and ambling outside.

They shouldn’t be thinking of winning bloody prizes.

He might forget to mention that incentive.

They should be thinking of arresting a serial killer, someone who had murdered six people to date, and was still running amok; someone who had the impudence to suggest that he update his life insurance.

There was no point in doing that. He didn’t have any.

What was the need?

After he’d gone Cresta asked: ‘So what do you think the he-she thing is going to do now?’

‘I have no idea,’ said Mrs West. ‘You?’

Cresta pursed her lips, pulled a face, shook her head and regretted asking the question.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Armitage celebrated his eighteenth birthday sitting alone in the Dublin Packet public house, set on the square opposite the picture house in Chester city centre. He was staring at a barely touched pint of lager, a folded newspaper, the Liverpool Echo, on the table, a brown paper parcel at his side. He was looking for a new job, but there was nothing suitable in the paper.

Saint Edmond’s fixed him up with a job selling shoes in a branch of a multiple in Frodsham Street. To say he detested it was an understatement. He was amazed at the number of people who arrived with stinking, sweaty feet and ragged socks. Armitage paid attention to his appearance, both what you could see, and what you couldn’t, and was surprised so many people did not.

Many of the lads from Saint Edmond’s had found jobs as waiters or barmen where the punters regularly tipped. Some of the young guys made more money on tips than they did on wages, and Armitage liked the sound of that. When did you last hear of anyone tipping a shoe salesman, he would mutter to Dennis.

Answer, no one, and never!

He was waiting for Dennis, who had left the halfway house, Bellingfield, where Armitage now lived. Bellingfield was the Ritz Hotel compared to Saint Edmond’s. A maximum of two boys per room, unlimited showers, and usually they were hot, plus decent food and no lack of it. It was the closest thing Armitage had experienced to a proper home for longer than he cared to remember.

Dennis had done well at the soup factory. He was coming up twenty and had already been promoted twice. Seven trainees worked for him, at his beck and call, and at least three of them had arrived from Saint Edmond’s, so he knew what they would be like.

He worked hard, saved a little money, and put down a deposit on a small third-floor flat in Hoole. The flat had been cobbled together in the eaves, but he didn’t care about that. Too busy was he in revelling in having his own home. A place where on his days off he could get up whenever he chose, where he could bathe in hot water any time of the day or night, where he could eat what he wanted, and when he wanted, drink whatever he liked, though that freedom had turned him away from binge drinking. A safe place where he could watch television when he chose, and the channel he preferred, every time, and there was never anyone to tell him different. Dennis was like a pig in muck. He had never been happier.

His happiness was complete when in a greasy spoon café he met the mousy Jillian. She followed him everywhere and linked his arm at every opportunity, as if frightened someone might steal him from her. Dennis came into the Packet with Jillian, bought two halves of lager, and joined Army at the table.

‘How are you doing?’ asked Dennis.

‘Fine. You?’

‘Yeah, great,’ he said, ‘never been better,’ smiling at Jillian, who blushed.

Armitage glanced across at her. They were the perfect match. Dennis looked more like a rodent with each passing month, his long pointed nose and narrow face, truly rat-like, while Jillian boasted mousy hair, and a mouse like appearance bordering on the cute animals you could see in any American cartoon in the local picture house.

Sitting together on that bench seat, she linked Dennis’s arm, pulled herself closer, and squeaked, ‘Are we going to the pics, or what?’

‘Yeah, when I’ve finished my drink. Bought you this,’ Dennis said, sliding a wrapped present across the table.

‘Ta,’ said an embarrassed Armitage.

It would be the only birthday present he would receive.

‘It’s not much,’ said Dennis, ‘Jillian chose it.’

Jillian smiled awkwardly.

‘Ta,’ said Army again, ‘I’ll open it later.’

Jillian didn’t like Armitage. Perhaps she saw him as a threat to her future happiness, but she put up with him because she didn’t have any choice. Dennis had been on at her to find a girlfriend for Army for weeks, and she had fixed him up with three dates. Two of the girls didn’t repeat the performance, while the third lasted a month before binning Army.

‘They don’t like his attitude,’ explained Jillian, as she and Dennis were alone in bed at the top of the oddly named Charwell Mansions. ‘He’s too sarcastic.’

‘That’s only his way,’ Dennis explained.

‘That’s as may be, but girls don’t like being compared to animals. He told Shania she looked like a wild boar, and Lesley said he began calling her my favourite giraffe.’

Dennis laughed. He could see the logic in Army’s thinking. Lesley was giraffe-like.

‘And when he said to Sharon, she reminded him of a meerkat, and did that silly nat-nat-nat impression, I could have died. She was furious. No wonder she didn’t want to see him again.’

‘He’ll grow out of it,’ said Dennis, trying to excuse his friend’s awkwardness with women.

‘That’s as may be, but my friends won’t wait until he does.’

Dennis and Jillian finished their drinks and stood up to go. Dennis, at the last moment, turned and asked Army if he’d like to go with them to the pics. Armitage saw the horrified look that Jillian flashed Dennis.

‘No,’ he said, ‘you