Walking with Ghosts - A Honey Driver Murder Mystery (Honey Driver Mysteries) by Jean G. Goodhind Page B

the owner around?’
    The man almost choked with derisive laughter. ‘Good God, no. The owner rents the shop out. Nobody lives there and the bloke who rents it isn’t there today. In fact I think he’s out of the country on a buying trip.’
    ‘Hmm. So no one would have been in there last night?’
    ‘Shouldn’t think so.’
    ‘Shame. I was hoping someone might have seen something.’
    ‘’Fraid not.’
    ‘And your name is  …?’
    ‘Coulthard,’ said the man. ‘Reginald Coulthard.’
    Doherty thanked him for his time, took one last glance at the crowd, then headed back to Manvers Street.

Chapter Thirteen
    Steve Doherty was swinging through the corridor leading from the car park at the rear of the station. He got as far as the locker room, meaning to pick up an old pair of trainers he’d left there. He sniffed. His top lip curled upwards. Scruffy he could cope with. Smelly he could not.
    ‘The things I do for the force,’ he said to himself.
    Three nights on the trot he’d been doing this, and thankfully after dark. He didn’t want to be seen slamming the pavements with his size tens, especially by some smart alec from uniform. Not to mention that Warren bloody Price was still hanging around somewhere. Doherty mentally cursed whoever it was who had judged a violent man fit to serve out his time in an open prison. The prisoner had escaped and was somewhere in Bath – and only because Doherty was here. Doherty was his target.
    The locker room saw most activity at shift-changing times. He’d timed himself to be exactly halfway between shift changeovers. He hoped the locker room would be empty. No one would see him take the trainers from his locker and out to the boot of his car. All things being equal he should escape comments about ‘middle-age spread’ or ‘pounding the beat with Kinky Karen’ as the boys in blue called her.
    One foot on a bench, the other on the ground, Sergeant Packer was the only one there. He was clipping on a pair of bicycle clips. What was left of his hair flopped grey and thin over his eyes. He looked up and grinned. ‘Hello, hello, hello. If it isn’t DI Doherty. What’s this I ’ear about you taking up jogging?’
    ‘Who told you that?’
    ‘Guy Fawkes and Beau Bridges.’
    The two men he referred to were actually called Guy Ford and Tony Bridges, but their sort of names had led to them earning suitable nicknames; Guy for the conspirator who’d tried to blow up Parliament, and Tony after the American actor.
    Steve opened his locker door and hid behind it. ‘I need to get fit,’ he said simply.
    Sergeant Packer made no comment about exercise. Instead he said, ‘Your girlfriend’s been in.’
    ‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Steve, unwilling to go through another ribbing about getting free hotel rooms and someone to warm the other half of the bed.
    ‘She brought in a bag that some woman left at the Garrick’s. Sounds like a batty old titled type going a bit absent-minded.’
    It was the titled bit that grabbed Steve Doherty’s attention. He paused in mid effort of lifting the trainers from the locker, mildly aware that they exuded a smell similar to a piece of overripe Stilton. ‘What time was that?’
    ‘This morning,’ said Packer, a lascivious grin splitting his shiny, spotty face. ‘Now there’s an excuse for you.’ Packer winked.
    It irritated. The bloody sod was reading his mind.
    Trainers tucked under his arm, he quickstepped it past his own office and into the area behind the receiving sergeant’s desk.
    It was four thirty in the afternoon, and things hadn’t yet heated up to fever pitch – a level of activity that didn’t occur until between eleven and midnight.
    A woman sergeant was on duty. He peered over her shoulder, his eyes quickly glancing at that morning’s entries.
    His eyes scanned down the page and suddenly jolted to a halt. Lady Templeton-Jones. There she was.
    The desk sergeant turned her head and eyed him with a withering stare. ‘Are