The Inspector Walter Darriteau Murder Mysteries - Books 1-4 by David Carter (microsoft ebook reader TXT) 📗

always having to remember what she’d said to the other, and what she hadn’t. In an off guarded moment she’d actually called Joe “Bill”, and she’d only got away with it because he chose that exact moment to turn up some heavy metal rock band on the television. He’d have gone mad if he’d heard what she’d said.

It hadn’t been an easy choice when she chose Joe. Truth was, the sex was better, not that it wasn’t nice with Bill, it was, but with Joe, well, that was something else, and good sex meant a lot to Lorraine Bickerstaffe. Sorry Bill, but there you are, out you go; thanks for the good time; you’ll soon find someone new. But he didn’t.

He had been a late developer so far as women were concerned, and an early finisher.

It took him ages to get over Lorraine, and that mean-spirited letter she’d sent. Truth was he would never get over it. He didn’t want to get over it. If he was suspicious of women before, now he was positively hostile. He would never ask a woman for a date again, and neither would a woman ask him, unless you counted Marjorie Bates. She was an eccentric lady at the otherwise all male angling club, who made it her business to bed as many of her fish hunting colleagues as she could manage, before time ran out.

Bill wasn’t interested in Marjorie Bates and told her so in no uncertain terms. The second sharp word he uttered was off.

He went prematurely grey before he was fifty, looking like everyone’s favourite granddad. He stopped drinking, no bad thing, but the pubs had offered him something else, companionship, and he missed that dreadfully. He denied himself that pleasure, retreated to his flat and relied on his fishing; accompanied by whatever whippet he was homing at the time. He stopped eating properly, and what little weight he possessed deserted him. He wasn’t looking after himself. His grubby shirt collars would flap around his neck like a scarf. He didn’t clean the flat. What was the point? After a while the dust never got any deeper. He didn’t care about his appearance and lost his job because of it, and worse still, he stepped up the smoking, emptying two packs a day, sometimes more, and it wasn’t long before he had a permanent cough.

William Camber was stuck in a tailspin he wasn’t even aware of, and there was little chance he would pull out of it. He had no friends or relations to tell him otherwise. He had become a bum.

Despite the passing of the years Lorraine Bickerstaffe was never far from his mind, though he had no idea what happened to her. He never saw her again. How is it the ones who hurt you the most are the ones who never leave the head?

It’s crazy.

Lorraine came to regret her decision. She married Joe and presented him with a bawling ginger boy, though even before the birth she had become all too acquainted with Joe’s freckled fists. William had never hit her; he’d never even dreamed of doing such a thing.

There would soon be another screaming baby on the way, while Joe admired other women in the boozer. Perhaps he was doing more than admiring, though she wasn’t sure about that.

Lorraine felt trapped, by the kids, by him, by her choice, by everything in her life, but she was stuck with it. She’d made her own bed and look where it had brought her. She regretted it, of course she did. She didn’t even like the boys that much. They were too much like their father, aggressive and hot tempered.

In her quiet moments she often thought of William.

She’d like another chance, to go back and retrace her steps, but she knew that was impossible. Life wasn’t like that. It wasn’t cricket. You don’t get a second innings. You don’t realise the consequences of decisions made in earlier life.

Sorry William, I made a mistake.

William was now sixty. His only pleasure was fishing, and the whippet.

His favourite beat was quite remote and hard to get to. He liked it for that very reason, because few people went there.

He hated human beings, and more than that, he thought he always had.

Nowadays he only fishes on the New Cut.

Tomorrow, at first light, he would be there.

Chapter Eight

Bird watching is a fine hobby to have, and the New Cut was the perfect place to pursue it. It was a birding crossroads where the town met the country, and the country met the estuary. Seabirds on the exposed mudflats at low tide, wildfowl lower down on the marshes, swans, Barnacle and Canada geese on the canal, starlings roosting on the nearby pylons, songbirds nesting in the scrubby vegetation, and all would attract the birds of prey, the marsh harriers, kestrels and buzzards.

The driver had a longstanding interest in birding, nothing too serious, no special equipment, other than a pocket book of birds, and a tiny pair of binoculars. It was relaxing, it was diverting, enjoyable.

The canal was at its best in the late spring sunshine, wide and deep after the heavy rain that had fallen in the night, boosted by the incoming spring tide. Before the afternoon was through, the banks would be tested to destruction.

It was a wonderful place to walk; quiet and peaceful, even if the paths were muddy, the perfect place to think, and plan. The new season grass glistened in the sunshine as the driver ambled along. There was a lot to think about, plans to formulate, ideas to test, but before that, there was some serious thinking to be done about the casino.

Last night had been hell.

It was expected to be quiet, but the place was packed out. A stag night gang of loudmouthed twenty, thirty somethings, who had been on the drink all night. A bunch of Chinese who couldn’t speak English, but gambling is an international language, no words ever necessary. A ladies’ night out,