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

The guy was away with the mixer. A parody of any regular drug user. She wondered if he had only recently begun to experiment, and pondered if his tabs were real. Maybe the klutz had paid through the nose for a hangover cure. She was having doubts.

‘How many?’ he said in a rush.

‘I take four, with the E.’

‘Yeah?’ he said, unsure of the number.

He watched Lena bend forward and empty them all from their silver covered bays. They bounced on to the table.

‘I like to crunch one first,’ she said, and she slipped one in her mouth and made a point of crunching the tiny thing like a horse with a mint.

Jago’s mouth fell open. This bird was crazy. Up for anything. He grabbed a tab and threw it in. Crunched it and grimaced.

‘Awful!’ he said, swigging his mouth clean.

‘It’s not the taste, it’s the feeling,’ she said. ‘Give us an E.’

He couldn’t pass her one quick enough. All the success he’d ever had with women came through E.

She took it, picked up the glass, made a big show of presenting it to her mouth, took a gulp of wine, in reality a sip, threw the tab in her mouth and drank and swallowed.

‘Yeah, baby!’ he screamed, grabbing an E and flushing it down.

‘Chase her with Te-maz-e-pam!’ Lena screamed.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ and he swept a handful of the remaining pills from the table and in they went.

His glass was almost empty.

‘Have you got any more drink?’ she asked.

‘Yeah, but not as good as the others.’

‘Don’t care! If it’s alcoholic, I like it,’ she said.

He made to stand up.

‘No, you’re all right. I’ll get it.’

‘It’s in the fridge,’ he yelled as she hit the kitchen.

She reached up the back of her jacket and pulled up her blouse. The tab fell into her hand. She’d been practicing that sleight of hand, drink before the face, throw in the tab, seemingly into the mouth, in reality down the neck of her blouse. It had worked better than she’d ever dreamed. He never had a clue. Flushed it down the sink.

‘Find it?’ he shouted.

‘Yeah, just coming,’ and then she was back, setting the screw top bottle on the table.

He was yawning.

She sat beside him, more sure than ever that he was a drugs novice. All talk and no experience. He was game though, she’d give him that. But he didn’t even know that E and alcohol should not be mixed. He was looking nervous, more nervous than usual, and that was something. The E was kicking in. He flexed his jaws, there was tightening there, his heart was speeding, he began to sweat, nothing new in that either with Jago, but it was more pronounced. He felt sick and thought it was the wine. It wasn’t. It was the E taking over. He was coming up. The E was making him hyperactive, fighting the Temazepam that was trying to put him to sleep.

‘There’s something bugging me,’ he slurred.

‘Yeah, babe? What’s that?’

‘The glovely lady hasn’t once removed her gloves.’

He watched Lena smile at him. ‘I do sometimes,’ she said coyly, leaving the thought in the air.

‘Yeah? Like when?’

‘Like... in the bedroom.’

‘Yeah? Do you wanna go the bedroom?’

He watched her slowly nod.

‘More temaz first, though,’ she said.

He threw out his tongue and waggled it like a snake in anticipation of a kill. She grabbed more pills and fed him, gave him another big drink, pretended to take more tabs herself, threw them behind the sofa.

Jago yawned, but said, ‘Come on, baby!’

She sat there, playing for time. He stood up, unsteady on his feet. ‘Come on!’ he repeated.

Lena stood up as Jago put his arm around her and led her toward his room, steadying himself as he went. He fell on the bed, on to his back, and laughed.

‘Come and join me,’ he said, yawning again, and patting the mattress.

She lay down beside him. Let him slip his arm around her.

‘Take those bloody gloves off!’

‘Take your shirt off first!’ she said, propping herself up on her elbow, her green eyes wide and ablaze. He had never seen eyes like them, not on a human being. They were like the eyes of a black mountain lion he had once seen in a California Zoo, an amazing holiday he had taken with his cousin Jeff, the first extravagance that had started all the trouble with the damned credit card. He’d been unable to stop himself using it ever since.

‘Yeah?’ he said to her invitation to remove his shirt.

Lena was gazing down at him, like a nurse in some alco-druggy clinic, persuading him to take medication, nodding encouragingly. He began removing his shirt. It was a big effort but he was free. He lay back. She stared down at him. His skin was white and spotty. In the centre of his chest were five straggly hairs. His nipples were pink and childlike, his arms thin and weak. He yawned again, deeper than before.

The Temazepam was winning the war.

‘Take those bloody gloves off,’ he slurred.

She sat up straight, high above him, as if she were on the top of a mountain, he thought, and he, so far below, on the shores of the Dead Sea. She took hold of her left glove with her right hand and pretended to tug.

Jago’s eyelids fluttered and closed.

Victory to the Temaz.

She eased herself from the bed. Jago didn’t stir.

She retreated to the living room. Took her glass to the kitchen, washed it thoroughly, taking great care to remove every hint of lipstick, dried it and put it away. Picked up the spliff butt from the ashtray, took it to the bathroom, closed the door to keep the noise inside, flushed it down the loo, standing and waiting and making sure it had gone.

Took a look round the kitchen and living room. No fingerprints, of course. Was there any other evidence she had ever been there, other than the microscopic fibres from her jacket and skirt, and she’d deal with that little connection later. No footmarks on