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

equally enjoyed by Bel and Gareth alike, if the emails were to be believed, and then of course the electronic letters took a serious downward turn, when he finally admitted that he had been married all along, though in his words: It shouldn’t make any difference to us, we’re strong, for what we have is so very special. Yeah, right. Yuck!

Karen tut-tutted aloud, and thought about bouffant man. He’s a solicitor for God’s sake, and yet clearly he didn’t understand a thing about Belinda Cooper, and how she ticked, and how she felt, and what she really wanted and needed and desired.

Karen felt truly sorry for Belinda. Who wouldn’t? It wasn’t just Iain Donaldson who was a loser here, or Ronny Speight, they all were. The whole damned lot of them. But someone had murdered her, poor Bel, that was certain, but who had committed the filthy crime? And was the evidence, the pointer to the culprit, hidden amongst all these hundreds of pages, and thousands of words, that displayed themselves before Karen’s sharp blue eyes.

There was something vaguely wicked about reading other people’s emails, even if that person was dead, even if you had the full authority of the British government, and hence the British people, to do so. It was a little like taking a quick sneak at someone else’s diary. Karen did that once, way back when, back at school, when she and her best friend, Kayleigh Mortimer, as thirteen-year-olds, had first discovered boys.

Karen knew that Kayleigh and herself had both taken a liking to the clean cut and white shirted Colin Hart, and she knew that Kayleigh kept a vivid diary, recounting all her hopes and dreams and fears, and no doubt juicy titbits about Colin too, and Karen so wanted to see it and read it, and when Kayleigh was away for a matter of minutes, she had weakened and taken a quick peek.

Kayleigh came back and saw Karen’s eye’s rushing over the pages in that old red diary and she ran up and snatched it back and yelled, calling her an “Utter Shit!” And that was undeniably fair comment in the circumstances. Karen apologised countless times after that, but the damage had been done, and Kayleigh never spoke a civil word to Karen ever again. Karen never told a soul about that sorry episode, and banished the event from her mind.

She turned her thoughts back to Belinda and whispered an apology for going through Bel’s most private communications, emails and texts and messages that were never meant for anyone else but Bel and the receiver, or Bel and the sender, including a huge amount of detail of Belinda Cooper’s intimate life, and Karen hoped and prayed that Belinda wouldn’t appear at that very moment and snatch back her laptop and scream: “You Utter Shit!” That wasn’t going to happen of course, or at least if it ever did, it could only be in Karen’s darkest dreams.

There were hundreds of pages in the directory of emails, as she yawned and turned over the page on the screen. Another huge list of messages and letters, another full day’s work, but a fresh email address immediately hit her in the eye. It was not one she had seen there before. She shivered, and a cold tingle crept up her spine and across her shoulders. Her heart raced, and she felt sudden sweat in her armpits. She blinked and looked at it hard, her racing brain ordering her eyes to zoom in on the handle. No, she wasn’t mistaken; she’d read it correctly.

There it was, black letters on a beige background.

Dozens and dozens, nay hundreds of times.

Shushshish@Comptech.co.uk.

Shushshish@Comptech.co.uk just happened to be David Baker’s unforgettable, if faintly ridiculous, email address.

‘Fuck,’ she said, breathing out hard, while rushing to open the first communiqué.

‘Did you say something, sarge?’ asked Nicky, glancing across the office, never one to waste an opportunity to check out his sexy sergeant.

‘Nothing, Nicky, get on with your work.’

AFTER KNOCKING, WALTER had been invited into Mrs West’s office. She was correcting some kind of long report, pen poised, plenty of crossings out and suggestions in red ink, testament to her zealousness in all things administrative.

‘Sit down, my man. What is it?’

Walter collapsed in the visitor’s chair and blew out hard.

She took off her pink specs and adopted a strangely sympathetic face and said, ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were getting stuck.’

‘Not stuck exactly, ma’am.’

‘What then?’

Walter sighed. ‘We have yet another suspect ma’am, and just to complicate matters, this time it’s a woman.’

‘Well that is different. Is she capable of breaking Belinda Cooper’s neck?’

‘She is, ma’am. Karen knows her. She shares the same gym. She goes every day. Weights apparently, is her forte. Very strong, so Karen says.’

‘And she’s known to us?’

Walter nodded.

‘When I was on holiday she was done for GBH and affray. Got off lightly too.’

‘I remember. Andrea somebody, Donohue, or something.’

‘Dennehey.’

‘That’s the one. Where does she fit into this?’

‘She’s Iain Donaldson’s fiancé, can you believe?’

‘So she’d have some kind of twisted motive, coming to the moral aid and defence of her spurned partner, et cetera.’

‘Something like that, though I am not sure it stacks up.’

‘Have you spoken to her?’

‘Not yet, but she’s got an alibi.’

‘Don’t tell me, she was with Iain, and he was with her, so they think they are both off the hook.’

‘That’s about the size of it, ma’am, in fact that’s what bugs me most about this whole case. If you take out mother’s and lover’s alibis I don’t think any of them are really in the clear.’

‘So what’s the roll call now?’

‘Nine, maybe ten.’

‘Namely?’

‘Speight, Gareth Williams, the gay Marcus, the Mirror man Rekatic, Iain, and now Andrea, Flanagan, Nesbitt, and Crocker. And the tenth possible is a sighting of a drug dealing guy who also fits the profile of the kind of man Belinda was attracted to.’

‘You can forget Flanagan, I trust in tags.’

‘Hector and Darren think....’

‘I don’t care what they think. Tags work.’

Walter nodded and said,