BURY ME DEEP an utterly gripping crime thriller with an epic twist (Detective Rozlyn Priest Book 1) JANE ADAMS (fox in socks read aloud TXT) 📖

BURY

ME DEEP

An utterly gripping crime thriller with an epic twist

JANE ADAMS

Detective Rozlyn Priest Book 1

Joffe Books, London

www.joffebooks.com

First published in Great Britain in 2021

© Jane Adams

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this. The right of Jane Adams to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Cover art by Dee Dee Book Covers

ISBN: 978-1-78931-658-2

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

EPILOGUE

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PROLOGUE

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PRESENT DAY

The kill had been a clean one. A swift shove and then a single strike, powerful and accurate, and it was all over. The dead man lay on his back, a look of profound surprise on his face. The knock on the door that followed shook him far more than the act of killing.

“I heard a crash, sir. Is everything all right?”

“I dropped something, Albert. That’s all. Nothing for you to worry about.”

He sensed the other hesitate. “Earlier today, there was a man hanging round, sir. He wanted to speak to you, but I sent him on his way.”

He could hear the curiosity in Albert’s voice. “Good, good. That will be all, thank you.”

He waited until the footsteps had receded down the hall and sounded on the wooden stairs. Then, turning back to the dead man, he tried to pull the weapon from the body, but succeeded only in pulling the shaft free. The spearhead stuck fast. He glanced out of the window and noted that it was thickly dark. Hefting the body onto his shoulder, he opened the solid oak door and made his way in the opposite direction to Albert, down the narrow back stairs. There would be no one in the kitchen at this time of night, no one to see as he let himself out of the kitchen and crossed the stable yard. The body lay heavy on his shoulder and the socket of the spearhead dug into his back, bruising painfully.

It was only a short distance to where his car was parked but he felt every step of it. He bundled the body into the capacious boot then set off, finally, down the long drive and out into the night.

He had been relieved that there had been so little blood. Less to clean up.

Later, much later, he took the body from the boot. The sky was light now and he had grown cramped and chilled from half the night spent in his car. He carried the body down the roadside verge and in through the open five-bar gate. Portacabins stood on one side of the site, trenches open on the other. It pleased him that he could drop this body into an already open grave. It amused him that the site director, a man he did not like, would find this new death on an ancient site that had already witnessed many.

Dropping the body into the grave he leaned into arrange it neatly, arms by its side. Then he had another go at freeing the weapon from its comfortable wound. Rocking it back and forth he finally pulled it free.

He shoved the weapon almost carelessly into his pocket and then took off, pushing through trees and splashing through a little stream to take a more circuitous route back to his car. In his haste to pull the keys from his pocket, he did not realise that the weapon fell to the ground, coming to rest in a patch of nettles. It was not until he reached his car that he discovered its loss and by then it was too late to go back.

He drove home, cursing his luck. Cursed it further when he reached his house and found Albert waiting anxiously for him.

“That man who came to the house, that man I chased away, he must have found a way inside.”

“What do you mean?” Had there been blood after all? Had Albert seen?

“A piece is missing from a cabinet. The brooch, shaped like a shield, boss. The one in the cabinet beside the window.”

“What?” He went upstairs, satisfied himself that no trace on the carpet betrayed what he had done, but Albert was correct. In a side room, off the main gallery, there was an empty space where the brooch had been. Had he had it in on him, that little man? That little man who thought he could threaten him with blackmail? That little man that no one would miss.

Albert had followed him in. “Should we call the police?”

“No, we will not call the police.”

“He was here, sir, yesterday afternoon. I