A Walk With the Dead by Sally Spencer Read Free Book Online

Jeffries?’
    â€˜Certainly, sir,’ Jeffries replied, in a crisp, sergeant-major-like voice.
    â€˜I’ve never – ever – in my entire life, been a
tomboy
,’ Louisa said resentfully, as her mother pulled the MGA away from the curb.
    â€˜I know you haven’t,’ Paniatowski agreed.
    â€˜Then why did you say it?’
    â€˜It made Mrs Harris feel a little better – because if a terrific girl like you had been a tomboy, then there was nothing abnormal about her daughter, Jill, being one, too.’
    But Louisa was not about to be bought off with flattery.
    â€˜You wanted to make her feel better, so you deliberately told her a
lie
!’ she said accusingly.
    â€˜A white lie, perhaps,’ Paniatowski conceded. ‘But you will admit, it was all in a good cause.’
    â€˜The rules have changed, then, have they?’ Louisa asked, unyielding.
    â€˜What rules?’
    â€˜You told me there was never
any
excuse for telling a lie.’
    â€˜I lied about that,’ Paniatowski confessed, laughing awkwardly. Then, to change the subject, she added, ‘So did you learn anything from Jill’s room, Chief Inspector Louisa?’
    â€˜Don’t patronize me, Mum,’ Louisa said sharply.
    â€˜Sorry!’ Paniatowski replied – and meant it. ‘Well,
did
you learn anything from Jill’s room?’
    â€˜I learned she has a very big secret,’ Louisa said.
    â€˜And what is it?’
    Louisa snorted. ‘If I knew that, it wouldn’t be much of a secret at all, now would it, Mum?’
    â€˜All right,’ Paniatowski said. ‘What was it that you
saw
that told you Jill had a big secret?’
    â€˜It wasn’t anything I actually saw,’ Louisa admitted. ‘It was just a feeling I had,’ she rubbed her stomach with her right hand, ‘down here.’
    Paniatowski smiled. A gut feeling! Louisa might not be biologically her child, but she was still a chip off the old block.

FOUR
    T he first thing Baxter noticed when he woke up that Sunday morning was just how stiff he felt.
    â€˜You must be getting old, George,’ he told himself. ‘There was a time when you could have spent the night sleeping on bricks, and still sprung to your feet like a randy young ferret.’
    But he wasn’t feeling like a randy young ferret that morning – or even, if he was honest with himself, like a middle-aged ferret that had reluctantly put its years of sexual conquest behind it – and for some moments Baxter merely lay there, calculating which way of getting out of bed would afford him minimum discomfort.
    He settled on swinging his legs off the bed first, and as he stood up, he tried not to wince as his body sent out shooting pains in protest.
    Once on his feet, he looked down and examined the thing he had been sleeping on. It could not be claimed in all fairness that it
wasn’t
actually a camp bed, he decided – it did, after all, have the necessary parts – but if someone had told him that Alexander the Great had bought it as flood-damaged stock from Noah’s Ark, he would have had no difficulty in believing it.
    It was unlikely that there weren’t better camp beds available in the prison, he thought as he stretched to relieve his aches, which probably meant that giving him this particular one had been a deliberate tactic, designed to change his mind about spending his nights in the prison.
    Well, if that
had
been the tactic, it had backfired, because he was now more determined than ever to stay exactly where he was.
    He crossed his temporary office/bedroom, and opened the door. He was not surprised to see Chief Officer Jeffries standing in the corridor outside. In fact, he would have been surprised if the man
hadn’t
been there.
    â€˜Good morning, Mr Baxter,’ Jeffries said. ‘I hope you had a good night’s sleep.’
    â€˜I slept like a log,’ Baxter lied. ‘Do you just