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

yellow flowers. Flowers weren’t her thing, and the weird thing was, she had no way of recognising him. He’d insisted it be that way, and that made her nervous, and she’d almost called the whole idea off, but then again, she was up for adventure, always had been.

Sally came from a good family and had trained as an accountant, but the pay had been lousy and her progress slow, and one day when a client had been in town, he’d asked her to go for a drink after work. He was pretty old, at least forty-five, but as her mother would have said, well preserved, and his greying hair suited him, and she had nothing better to do, so she agreed.

He took her for a wonderful meal and with the coffee afterwards he said he was going to make her a proposition. Yeah? She’d said, expecting some kind of pass to be made, and in a way it was, though not as she had imagined. I’ll give you £500 cash now to spend the night with me, here at the hotel. He’d said it just like that, bold as brass, not even bothering to lower his voice.

Sally had taken a fair bit to drink, and the guy was quite handsome, more so through booze, and £500 was £500. She’d smiled and said, ‘OK,’ and that was that.

It was a good night; and a very profitable one too. Michael had been a man of his word, and in the morning they parted, smiling at one another, a few aching bones on either side, the roll of used tenners sleeping in her handbag.

It was her ticket into prostitution.

She’d never planned it, she told herself; she had never even considered the idea, the career move, as she later came to refer to it. It had just happened as if by accident, and she had never regretted it.

That had been ten years before, and now in her mid-thirties she was a woman of means and was looking to settle down. She was hoping to retire. She was on the lookout for a husband, maybe even start a family, it was not too late, and something about this guy intrigued her.

Tristram, his name was, and she had never known a Tristram before. It sounded kind of cute, sexy even, Trist...ram, and his brief biog said: Writer and Broadcaster seeks an attractive lady with a view to marriage and hopefully, children. Interests include foreign travel, lino cuttings, and fashion.

How could any woman not be intrigued by a man who listed his interests as lino cutting and fashion? Not to mention the Writer and Broadcaster bit that carried hints of glamour.

She’d donned the good navy blue suit; she could still squeeze into it despite the few extra pounds that had crept up on her almost unnoticed over the previous two years. Sally left her city centre loft apartment, buzzed open the garage door, jumped into her Audi sports, and drove the short distance into town. She had fallen into the habit of driving everywhere. She knew it was lazy, but what the hell. There were other, more important things to spend her precious energy on.

She hoped Tristram’s lack of a picture wasn’t because he was so dog god awful, and an image of a short fat bald man who had trimmed his age by ten years filtered into her mind. You could never tell with men. So many of the bastards were out-and-out liars, and through her career she felt as if she’d met every one of them. Just so long as she had never met Tristram before. Sally shivered at the thought.

Samuel had chosen her because she was short. He could look down on her, and he liked that, and more so, imagined that women did too, being looked down on by their partner, and also because she looked tarty. It was difficult to say why. Her clothes appeared expensive, and the locket around her neck had cost a pretty penny. Her straight auburn hair curled under her chin and had been expensively coiffured, and though she may have been a few pounds overweight, no one was perfect.

She said she was thirty, but he thought you could add five years to that. Human beings were born liars. In Samuel’s world everyone lied; everyone except Desi, of course. Sally had written a biog that came over as if she were a founder member of the Women’s Institute, listing cake and jam making as some of her hobbies. Samuel doubted that. She looked far more of a good-time girl to him. He could see it in her eyes, and he doubted if she had ever baked a cake in her life.

He saw her standing there, looking nervous, smoking a cigarette, a bunch of damp daffs in her hand, and he walked away. He would make her wait. Come back in ten minutes, no, fifteen, see if she was still there.

She was still there, in her businesswoman’s dark suit, a little like the women in the Building Society opposite. She didn’t have an ID badge pinned to her lapel, but he wouldn’t have been surprised if she had. Come to think of it, he didn’t know what she did for a living. Maybe she had come straight from work, maybe she did work in a building society or bank. He didn’t care. He ambled along the busy corridor, passed her by; she barely offered him a second glance. Why not? Women often did. Did she think he was too good to be true? Or did she think he wasn’t coming?

He turned round and wandered back. She was still standing there, facing away from him and staring down at the daffodils, as if they had somehow failed her.

‘Sally?’ he said, in his smoothest sexy voice.

The girl started and swivelled round. Almost fell over. Her face lit up at the sight of the neat blond gentleman before her. He was a little on the short side, but that didn’t matter, still