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

you. You’re trying to fit me up for that baseball bat murder thing because you can’t find the real culprit.’

‘No,’ said Hector. ‘We are trying to ascertain if you are slipping out undetected, because I for one, think that is precisely what you are doing.’

‘You’re heading up a blind alley.’

‘No, we’re not,’ said Hector. ‘You are.’

‘How do you do it?’ asked Gibbons. ‘You can tell me, I’m impressed.’

‘Do what?’

‘Fool the system.’

‘I’m not fooling the system.’

‘If we were to examine your computer,’ said Hector. ‘And took a look at the browsing history, I reckon that would tell us a lot.’

‘Can we see your computer?’ asked Gibbons.

‘Not without a warrant.’

‘You’re out on licence, aren’t you?’ said Hector.

‘You know I am.’

‘It only takes a word,’ said Gibbons, ‘from the boss, and you’d be back inside before your feet could touch.’

Flanagan stared at the police officers and said coldly, ‘You are not looking at my computer.’

Hector and Gibbons shared a look.

Hector pulled a face. Gibbons shrugged his shoulders.

‘Your choice, Mr Flanagan,’ said Hector, and the detectives made their way to the front door, Flanagan following.

Hector leant over and whispered, ‘Crash coding, is it?’

‘What?’

‘We’re on to you.’

‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’

Hector nodded and the officers ambled outside and jumped in the car.

‘What the hell’s crash coding?’

‘I have no idea,’ said Hector laughing. ‘But it sure sounded good.’

Gibbons laughed too.

‘You’re mad. Still think he’d fiddling with the tag?’

‘Course he is.’

‘Why are you so sure?’

‘One thing I have learnt to do in this job is to spot liars, and he’s lying about something.’

‘Well if he is, he could be our man.’

‘That’s what I reckon. Where to now?’ said Hector, firing up the engine.

‘The pubs. Guv wants us to ID the drug dealer.’

‘Oh yeah, forgot all about that.’

WALTER SAT BACK HARD in the car seat and said, ‘Tell me all about Andrea Dennehey.’

‘Hard woman, in more ways than one,’ said Karen.

‘Tell me more.’

‘Mutton dressed as pilchard.’

Walter guffawed.

‘She goes to the same gym as I do. She’s there every day. Does the running machine, and weights. She’s slim, toned, and strong.’

‘Go on.’

‘She’s been on the lookout for a husband for ages. Everyone knows that. She’ll eat Iain Donaldson alive; he won’t know what hits him. Don’t get me wrong, Guv, she’s attractive enough, pretty face, shoulder length auburn hair, but her soul is as cold as hell.’

‘I gather from that, you don’t like her.’

‘I can see right through her. Her whole life is an act. She’s a fraud.’

‘What was she done for?’

‘Affray and GBH.’

‘I know that! So you said. Details of the case?’

‘Oh right, I’m with you. She beat up two women in a nightclub lav. Broke one girl’s nose, cut the other one’s eye.’

‘What did she get?’

‘Big fine, and fifty hours community service.’

‘She was lucky to get that.’

‘She damn well was. The magistrate said she was lucky the case didn’t go up to the Crown Court, which on another day it would have done. He gave her some benefit of the doubt, said something about it being two onto one, and that Andrea pleaded self defence, saying the other two kicked it off, and there was some doubt as to who was telling the truth.’

‘Do we know what the row was all about?’

‘The usual, Guv, over a man she’d taken a fancy to, and they were making eyes at, another potential husband, I reckon.’

‘Do you think she’s capable of murdering Belinda Cooper?’

‘Certain of it, Guv. She’s tall and very strong, you should see her on the weights, obsessed by it, she is. She could snap a neck like a chocolate bar, I kid you not.’

‘And she’ll give Iain an alibi, and he will do the same for her.’

‘For sure.’

‘So we have another one to add to the list.’

‘The list?’

‘Of suspects.’

‘Yep, we do.’

‘I think we need to find out a whole lot more about Andrea Dennehey.’

‘That we do, Guv, that we do.’

‘Come on, let’s get back to the station, I want to get something to eat.’

‘Good idea, and I want to find out how we are progressing with analysing the Mirror man’s phone.’

‘And Belinda’s technology too, we should be inside that by now.’

‘Yeah, that too, there could be all sorts of intel in there.’

Karen booted up the car and pointed it at the city centre, and back to base, and a busy afternoon in the land of secrets and lies that always sleeps and hides in all modern tech.

JENNY AND NICKY WERE already back at their desks, frustrated at making little progress, unable to break Jimmy Crocker’s alibi, unable to contact Derek Nesbitt, who’d gone away for a few day’s fishing.

Twenty-Seven 

Walter popped out for ten minutes to visit his favourite purveyor of sandwiches where he picked up two hot beef rolls and a chocolate muffin. Sometimes comfort food truly had its place, he reassured himself, though could he restrict his visits in future? Karen remained at her desk and gnawed on a hard green apple and a packet of almost as hard low fat crisps.

She was scrolling through Miro’s many phone calls. Like so many others he sure as hell used his tech to the max. Hundreds of logged calls, text messages, and voicemails, but nothing that looked out of place, nothing that caught her eye, nothing that incriminated the man, no matter how hard she looked.

The cute young guy from the Tech department came in and hustled up to her desk and grinned and said, ‘Belinda Cooper’s computer and phone?’

‘Yeah?’ said Karen. ‘What about it?’

‘All open and readable.’

‘About time too.’

‘Don’t you start.’

‘What took you so long?’

‘Got hung up on a big regional job from Manchester. Three local Uni’s in big trouble.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yeah.... you know, that ransom scam.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Big time cyber crime. They hack into the Uni’s mainframes and lock everyone else out, then demand a big ransom to free up and allow access to the data again. It’s becoming quite common, and bloody difficult to break. Looks like it’s based in Romania, or Bulgaria, one of them places, but