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

Ate it in a hurry. Pretty good. He returned to the back door. Opened up, went outside. Glanced up at the Victorian façade. No lights on. The building fast asleep. Went inside, through to the front door, crept outside, on to the small spongy lawn. Glanced up again. No lights, no sleepless nights, everyone asleep. He heard a single car chugging along the road, diesel engine, old model, rattly exhaust. Ducked into the porch. It was a taxi, maybe the last fare of the night, the driver hurrying home to a cold bed. Then it was gone and silence returned.

Sam went back inside and locked the front door. Through the house to the back. Went outside again. Opened up the hatchback that he’d earlier reversed as close as he could to the door.

Manoeuvred the case over the threshold, it bounced down on to the gravel path. Shush! Damnation, it was heavy. Presented it to the car’s backside. He knew it would go in; he’d brought it home that way. It must go in. Tried to lift it. Couldn’t get the leverage. It wouldn’t budge. Changed his position. Tried again, all his strength, up it came and over the rim, and clunked into the back. Wouldn’t like to do that again. Never will, that’s the main thing.

Closed the hatch, almost silently. It was one reason he liked the Cayton Cerisa. All the doors closed with the softest of clunks.

Went back inside. The fire was still burning. He glimpsed curling twenty-pound notes, blackening, catching fire, turning to ash, worthless things, worthless trash.

Glanced round the sitting room.

She had never been there. No trace.

Maybe the odd fingerprint, but he would go to work on that in the morning. He’d have to make an early start because he was back at work tomorrow evening.

One last look round.

For now, it would do.

Turned off the lights. Went out the back. Locked the door and crept into the car. Started the engine. It was real quiet, yet sounded like thunder. Pulled the car round the side of the house and out on to the road, headed for Queensferry.

There was almost no traffic about, the occasional police car, he noticed that. He stayed inside the speed limits, not too slow to attract attention, not too fast to warrant a speeding ticket. He was the model citizen. Always had been. Always will be. It wasn’t his fault everything had gone so terrifyingly wrong. It could have happened to anyone.

He crossed the River Dee, slinking into Wales.

Away to the left he glimpsed the New Cut shining under the sodium light, the black water far below, drifts of mist forming, the same stretch where William Camber, the fisherman, had met his tragic accident.

Sam eased off the dual carriageway at the first exit and headed left up the hill toward Hawarden village. Then left and straight right, before turning on to the A5104, and the quiet rural road signposted for Llandegla and Corwen.

The road was rising, the cottages thinning out, and soon he was travelling through unfenced moorland. It was misty, and the wipers were working overtime.

He’d been this way many times before, mostly long ago, though once recently, to check out it was still as he remembered. He passed the old pub, the last watering hole before Corwen. It was blacked out, the owners and guests hunkering down after a busy night.

The mist worsened.

The headlights on full beam.

The Cayton Cerisa motored happily on.

No traffic at all, nothing coming, nothing behind.

He passed an abandoned white delivery van, dumped at the roadside, tyres missing, burned out at the front. It hadn’t been there last week.

Up ahead there was something else on the road.

Sam slowed, and the big case in the boot slithered toward him.

It was a ewe, standing in the centre of the road, quite unperturbed, a nervous lamb to either side. Sam edged forward. The ewe didn’t move a muscle. Sam cursed aloud. There was no way past. Edged forward again. The ewe dug in its heels, imagining it was protecting its young.

‘Ba-aaa,’ it cried, as if she could stare him down.

He jumped from the car and crept to one side of the stubborn animal and slapped its rump.

‘Ba-aaa, ba-aaa,’ it complained, and ambled away into the heather, the lambs giving him one final worried look, before disappearing after their mother into the darkness.

Back in the car, not far to go.

He was almost at the turning.

Then he saw it, the short gravel track to the right. He turned off the road and bounced along the track, the full beams dancing from jagged grey rocks and heather and scrub, making weird shapes and patterns on the mottled stone, and then he saw the signs.

Llandegla Quarry. Disused. Dangerous, Keep Out. Keep Away. Steep Drop.

He pulled the car to a stop and got out. Looked around. Silence, but for the wind. No birdcall, no traffic, no aeroplanes in the sky, nothing. He had the world to himself. He grabbed the torch and went to the back and opened up. Set the torch on the roof and heaved out the case.

It hadn’t got any lighter.

Collected the torch and pulled the trunk toward the quarry. The plastic wheels were amazing. Worked incredibly well, even on rough ground. Then he was standing by the last of the Danger signs. Peering over the edge. Shining the torch down. Maybe a hundred feet. The beam bounced back from the black water below. The winter and spring rains had gathered there. In high summer it was bone dry. You could walk on the bed. He had done that many times when he used to visit with the unofficial camera club, taking more meaningful black and white arty-farty shots. They thought they were so clever. He still had some on his bedroom wall, striking they were too, and that reminded him, he must get rid of those, into the fires. A pity, but there we are.

He glanced back at the case. Thought of Brownhead inside. Brownhead would not be missed, not by him.

Wheeled