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

Walter pulled a sympathetic face.

‘That’s when I asked her to marry me.’

‘Marry you?’

‘Yeah, right there at half-past three in the morning. The bed sheets soaked with her terrified sweat. I held her in my arms and asked her to marry me.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She said she couldn’t possibly marry me; she couldn’t marry any man because she never wanted to lose her name. She wanted to be famous, she was determined to be famous, and she wanted to be known as Desiree Mitford Holloway, and nothing else. I always knew she would achieve that too. She was so special in every way. Once she’d decided on something, hell itself wouldn’t get in her way.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘I told her I wasn’t an ordinary man. I think she knew that by then, and I told her we could still get married, and if need be, I would change my name to hers. I think that impressed her. I think it made a difference. You can do that, you know, if you really want to, if you go through the right legal procedures. It doesn’t have to be the woman taking the man’s surname, you can do it the other way round, so she agreed, and that’s what we did. Got married in Chester Registry office as soon as we could, just a couple of friends there, and afterwards we flew to Barcelona for our honeymoon, and the moment we arrived we slipped on two identical little black dresses and hit the town. Wicked, it was, wicked. The club scene there is second to none. The best honeymoon ever, the best. It’s all down in my diary. Did I tell you I keep a diary, Walter, have done for years, it’s very therapeutic, Sammy Pepys had nothing on me. You should try it, but then again, it’s too late for you, pal, isn’t it?’

Walter ignored the question and said, ‘So you were deliriously happy, and it stayed that way?’

‘Damned right it did! We’d have our little quarrels like any couple, but when we made up, we really made up! I’d have spent my entire life with her. I never wanted to be with anyone else. I’d still be with her now... except you bastards murdered her.’

The spiteful look crashed back onto his face.

He stared across at Walter as if he were personally responsible.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know damn well what I mean!’

‘I don’t, Sam, I don’t, you tell me.’

Sam frowned. The black guy was playing for time. Sam knew that, and he was running out of patience. Stared at the blood. Stared at the syringe. Stared at the copper.

Walter saw him looking, pondering.

‘Tell me about Desiree’s death, Sam? Please.’

Chapter Forty-Eight

Karen glanced at the digital clock. It was ten to midnight. She’d enjoyed her chat with Gibbons, but she was tired and weak and began yawning. Gibbons yawned too. ‘I’m going to have to go to bed,’ she said, ‘I’ll show you the spare room.’

‘Great,’ he said, ‘I’ll just slip to the bathroom.’

Five minutes later he was in the spare room, in bed. He was knackered; it had been a long shift; it had been a long month.

In her room, Karen lay on her back staring out at the blackness, revisiting the horror of being yanked from the lavatory, being hung out to die. She knew she would never forget it. She wondered what kind of person could do that. To cold bloodedly attempt to murder someone they had never met, in a busy public place, without any fear of being discovered, and having no qualms about what they were doing. She wondered where he was now, the killer, and what he was doing, and who he was terrifying. Samuel Holloway, she contemptuously spoke his name, and she knew she wouldn’t rest until he was stopped.

WALTER PEERED ACROSS at the clock. Both the hands were super erect. Outside he could hear the old church bell announcing the new day, chiming across the city, somehow comforting, floating on the night air, and he wondered if the new day might be his last. Think positively! Always engage hostage takers in conversation.

‘Tell me why you think we killed Desiree?’

‘I don’t think, I know!’

‘But why?’

‘You know why!’

‘I don’t, Sam, I don’t. Please explain.’

Sam scowled and shifted in his chair. Thought the black guy was taking the piss, but he could wait a little while longer before he put him to sleep. Maybe he should recall and replay what happened to Desiree one last time, for her sake, to remind the copper of exactly what they had done. Not that he didn’t know already. Yeah, that’s what he’d do. He’d go over it one final time for Desi’s sake, and then he’d kill him. For certain. He’d murder him, sitting in that chair, in his own front room, and he was looking forward to it.

‘Desi began bringing stuff home.’

‘What kind of stuff?’

‘Information, theories, samples, experimental stuff, top secret stuff, weird stuff, stuff most people wouldn’t want in the house.’

Walter glanced at the table. Saw the bottles. Red, Green, Blue. Rat, great ape, basset hound. ‘Like the stuff on the table?’

Sam nodded.

‘Why did she do that?’

‘She worried her work might be taken from her, appropriated by someone else. Eden Leys had a history of it. You know how it works, some brilliant scientist in her twenties or thirties makes a ground-breaking discovery, some supervising scientist in his sixties, looking for one last hurrah, jumps in and grabs the credit. She said it happened all the time, been going on for years. She said the senior ones said that was how things worked. They always looked after the older guys, the younger ones had plenty of time to break new ground, to make their name, and that they, when they were old, would be looked after by the younger ones in turn.’

‘The world doesn’t work like that,’ said Walter.

‘Damned right it doesn’t!’

‘So what happened?’

Sam pointed at the