Walking with Ghosts - A Honey Driver Murder Mystery (Honey Driver Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF Page A

circled the island at the top and headed back down the A46 into Bath.
    Familiar streets and buildings were suddenly being passed again, in double-quick time. Honey sighed with relief as with a squeal of brakes he came to a halt outside the Green River Hotel.
    Home!
    She tried not to think about the forty quid her little sightseeing tour had cost her. It was lucky she’d had her purse with her. At least she’d avoided Doherty – and got away from the motorcycle menace. Money well spent. Her bed called. The taxi ride had done some good. As for Doherty  …
    It had been an odd night.
    ‘I’m ready for bed,’ she said as she let herself back into the coach house. The interior was silvery still, moonlight pouring through the round window high up in the apex above the beams.
    She shivered. She sneezed. Damn the rain. Damn getting a cold or flu. The recipe required was well tried and tested. After fetching a Lemsip from the bathroom, she armed herself with the ingredients for a brandy balloon: a bottle of brandy and a can of coke.
    The contents of the brandy balloon tasted good and went down fast. The glass nudged aside the unopened packet of anti-flu powder. Drat, she thought, picking it up and tearing it open. I’ll just have to drink another one.
    The guy on the motorbike had unnerved her. Who was he and why was he stalking her?

Chapter Six
    Some minutes after Honey got home, a young man named Simon Taylor pulled up outside the Regency terrace where he lived. The house had long ago been divided into flats; five floors, two flats on each. He parked his motorcycle in one of the allotted spaces next to a dark red scooter. The light in the living-room window of the flat he shared with his mother was still on. He hoped she’d forgotten to turn it off and had gone to bed. Unlikely. His mother always waited up for him, even though he was twenty-two now. She always had done.
    The doorway was wide and swollen in its frame, scuffing the black and white floor tiles of the threshold as he pushed it open. The hallway was far from welcoming. The walls and internal doors were a faded burgundy colour, by virtue of a job lot of paint the landlord had acquired some years before. A ground-floor tenant had attempted to brighten the decor by adding a series of pink and gold lines around the architrave of the door to his one-roomed apartment. It was hardly art, nor did it do anything to lift the atmosphere of neglect. Likewise the plug-in air freshener was fighting a losing battle against the smell of damp caused by ferns growing from third floor parapets and mould climbing up from the cellar.
    Not wanting to answer any questions about why he was out so late, he shut the front door quietly behind him. The hallway on the ground floor of the house in Green Park was still and silent. Not a stick of furniture invaded its austere emptiness. The floor was covered with a cracked brown covering that might shine if anyone ever got up the energy to attack it with a can of polish and a duster. No one ever had; a brief sweep and mop over was all it ever got. This was why he took his shoes off before going up the stairs to their flat. His soles would stick to the glutinous underside of the threadbare carpet covering the stairs and make a sucking sound. The woollen pile of his socks would snag and tear softly away.
    By the time he got to the door of the apartment he shared with his mother, he knew for sure she hadn’t yet retired. The sound of car sirens on a late-night cop show told him she was still watching television. On gently turning the key and opening the front door, his suspicions were realised.
    ‘That you, Simon?’
    As if it was likely to be anyone else at this time in the morning.
    Her son grimaced as he shook the rain from his coat. Why was she so deaf if anyone rang the doorbell, but so alert when it was him coming in from a night out?
    ‘Yes,’ he replied in a cheery voice. His mother would hear it and think he was smiling.
    He