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) 📖

webs or ghosts or other disturbance. But even so, she had to get out of bed and hurry to the bathroom where, gazing into the mirror, she was finally able to shake off the feeling of chill, sticky web, spun out across her face.

* * *

Monday morning briefing. Rozlyn had arrived early, typing up her report ready for when the shift arrived.

It had been a sad, oddly disturbing dream and Rozlyn could not fully shake the effects of it. The irritating part was, she’d been involved in many murder investigations, seen bodies battered and burned and mutilated beyond belief but she’d rarely dreamed about them, always managing to file her work away when she got home. To shut out the horror and let go of the anger, at least for a little time. She knew that this ability had earned her a reputation for coldness, for inhumanity. That and the fact that she never seemed to share her life outside of work with anyone when the norm was to gather with your peers at least a couple of times a week and chew the fat over a pint or three.

So why was Charlie’s death so difficult to shake?

She copied the report, setting the machine to collate and staple then made her way down to the briefing. The team had started to arrive, helping themselves to coffee, complaining about the football match the night before — the locals had lost, again. At home. The photos from the crime scene had already been pinned to the wall and Rozlyn added the images of the spear and some contextual shots of where it had been found. She also added the names of Thomas Thompson and Donovan and the two addresses Mouse Man had provided.

“What’s all this, then?” DCI Brook peered at the names and addresses. He was slurping thick black coffee from a plastic cup. Coffee so strong that the fumes invaded Rozlyn’s eyes and nose as she moved close.

Briefly, Rozlyn filled him in, drawing his attention to the houses where Charlie cleaned and the transient nature of those staying there. Could this indicate people trafficking, she suggested. Brook raised an eyebrow but made no comment about the information. Instead he said, “Jenny tells me you’ve been visiting old ladies?”

“Mrs Chinowski from the third floor. Charlie paid her phone bill, helped her out in other ways. There’s an old guy called Mr Bishopson, too, lives in a residential home. I want someone to go and talk to him today. Mrs C reckoned Charlie helped him out too and that fits with what Mouse Man told me. He said Charlie had dependants. I’m guessing there could be more.”

“Proper little public servant, our Charlie,” Brook commented. “Snitching to you and helping old ladies with their little problems.” He shrugged. “His cleaning jobs are interesting, though I’d like to check it out before we get immigration involved. You might be right and this might well involve people trafficking . . . but we don’t want egg on our faces, do we?”

We want to get the arrests on our tally and not theirs, more like, Rozlyn thought. “If it checks out, it could be that Charlie saw something he shouldn’t have,” she said. “Then there’s what Mouse said about antiquities. That would fit with where he was found and with the murder weapon.”

Brook didn’t look impressed. “What would the likes of Charlie Higgins know about antiquities?”

“About as much as he’d know about illegal immigrants but Charlie was no idiot and he kept his eyes and ears open.”

“And came up with naff all. When was the last time anything Higgins told you led to an arrest?”

Rozlyn didn’t reply. She didn’t want to admit out loud that Brook had a point.

“But you still kept paying the stupid old bugger.”

“Charlie wasn’t old. For that matter, he wasn’t stupid. Look, I reckon he was on to something and that something got him killed. Now, whether it was bodies coming into the country or antiques going out, he still got killed for it. I say we have to follow both leads.”

Brook shrugged and turned back to the room, now full and buzzing with conversation. He set his coffee on the edge of a desk and clapped his hands together. “Morning, children.”

“Morning, sir.” The usual giggles from the probationers.

Rozlyn watched. Brook commanded attention. Effortlessly. He’d commanded Rozlyn’s even when she hated the man, instead of, as now, merely disliking him. Swiftly and concisely, he briefed the team, bringing them up to speed on the events since Friday and surprising Rozlyn by showing he’d already read the report she’d prepared that morning. Despite his sneering attitude in their private conversation, he seemed to give equal weight now to the two leads on Charlie’s death. Rozlyn took over, fielding the more detailed questions and assigning tasks. The two addresses were to be kept under surveillance. Jenny Harper was to talk to Mr Bishopson and track down the cleaning lady — the address was vague; they had the street name but no number and Clara Buranou, the woman Charlie had found to clean for Mrs Chinowski, didn’t show up on the electoral register. “See if social services can get you an address,” Rozlyn told her, “but something Mrs C said makes me think she wasn’t on their books. I reckon Charlie fixed things up, so you may just have to knock on doors.”

“And what’s DI Priest going to be doing?” Brook asked as the meeting broke up.

“DI Priest,” Rozlyn told him, unpinning two of the photos from the board so that she could copy them, “is going to see a man about a spear.”

* * *

The address she had for Ethan Merrill was in Stamford, about an hour’s drive away and on the other side of the dig site. Sir Walter Scott had apparently declared the place to be “the finest stone town