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

COLIN SPEIGHT, Walter muttered his name aloud, and pictured him in his mind. What the heck did a lovely lady like Bel Cooper see in the man? He came across as something of a bully, occasionally uncouth, intolerant, impatient, and unbearable too, though it wasn’t unusual for Walter to be found wanting when trying to figure out a man’s attraction to women.

Before he’d left the office Karen had showed him the stark photos that Speight had emailed to Bel. What was the point? What was the thinking behind such a move? Did he imagine that such pictures would turn her on? Excite her, make him more desirable, maybe, and cement their relationship? It seemed unlikely to Walter, and that judgement stood up, for not long after that, Bel brought the final curtain down on not so big Ron.

I could strangle you. Walter wondered what brought on the thought in the first place. I could strangle you. That infamous phrase that was not only inside Speight’s head and brain, but he had seen fit to write it down and email it to his partner, his lover, his lady, knowing that it would be there in her computer forever. I could strangle you. Okay, it was issued in the wee small hours when alcohol was almost certainly in there too, but that was no excuse. The thought was there, even if it were meant in a jokey fashion.

The fact that Belinda was not strangled but murdered with a baseball bat meant nothing. Who would ever say: I’m going to break your neck with a baseball bat? It didn’t slip off the tongue in the same manner as: I could strangle you, or, I could kill you. And he had motive too, and some might say the most powerful motive of all. Jealousy, and Walter had seen first hand that Ronny Speight could be a jealous man.

The man was in a jam. One week he had a beautiful woman on tap, presumably providing him with all his bedroom needs, and in the next, he’s reduced to visiting a downmarket call girl in a scruffy and smelly caravan to get his fix at the sexual well. What a come down that must have been.

That was the picture in a nutshell; throw in threats of attack, even to the extent of murder, a serious motive present in jealousy and revenge, and lo and behold the man had no alibi, and through his arrogance he even thought that was something of a joke.

Walter snorted. It was time to bring Ronald Speight in for a serious quest-sess, in fact it was overdue, and that would be done sooner rather than later, and yet.... and yet, the bottom line was that Walter did not believe Ronald Speight to be the murderer. True, he was the only name in the frame to have had a relationship with both dead women, so far, if visiting a call girl could ever be described as a relationship.

The more one juggled the facts, the more likely it looked that Ronald Colin Speight was the killer, yet Walter didn’t concur. He’d been wrong before, and he was well aware of that, and many times too over his long career, and no doubt he would be wrong again, before the final curtain came down on his working life, but he did not feel he was wrong this time.

What was it that ma’am had said? Keep asking them questions until they trip themselves up. The stock tactic of detectives going back millennia, and Walter would indeed do just that, but the annoying thing was that right there he thought they could go on asking Speight questions until the sun went out, with no discernable results. In other words, it was a complete waste of precious time, his, and the team’s.

No matter, he made a mental note to send the boys, and maybe boys and girls, round in the morning, to bring Speight in to discover if an intensive questioning session might just reveal something. Anything would be nice. Unlike the others, Speight was not excused. Not yet.

DAVID BAKER SIPPED his drink and tried to avoid Karen’s question.

‘Come on,’ she said, smirking. ‘Where did you meet her? Is she another online dater?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Not a computer babe, in fact you are the first woman I have ever met online.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Karen. ‘And see that flying pig?’

‘That isn’t a flying pig, it’s best Scottish pork loin, Ali’s well known for it.’

They laughed together.

‘So where did you meet her?’

‘Is it important?’

‘Don’t know. Is it?’

‘I met her at her place of work, if you must know.’

‘Whereabouts?’

‘Forgive me for saying, but this conversation seems to have morphed from friendly banter, to a police interview. Would that be fair to say?’

Karen giggled and said, ‘Course not, sorry if I sound a little officious, it’s just asking people questions all day in a certain manner, inevitably, I guess sometimes I relapse into enquiro-speak out of hours. I’ve been told off about that before.’

‘I’ll bet you have.’

‘Why did you stop seeing her, or is that a secret too?’

‘She stopped seeing me, she said I was too young.’

‘She was older than you?’ asked Karen, though she thought she already knew the answer to that.

‘A little, but not by much.’

‘Do you miss her?’

‘No, not now, not when I am with you,’ he said, his dark eyes piercing into her blue, holding her gaze, hoping that she believed him.

She thought that might be so much flannel. She’d always seen through disingenuous male compliments, always been wary of them, but she wanted him to talk some more, and maybe even wanted to believe him. Truth was, she wanted to believe everything about the guy, but he still fitted the profile of the man wanted for murdering Belinda Cooper, and she now knew he had a motive too. Rejection. Simple as that. Plenty of people have been murdered for far less.

WALTER FINISHED THE can of stout and pondered on whether to go to