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) 📖

Did he remember any of that now? Were the memories still in there, somewhere? Or had they been wiped completely as the old man’s mind decayed?

Rozlyn preferred to remember him in younger, stronger, wiser times.

She settled down on the long grass and stared down into the valley. The afternoon sun was warm on her back. She felt too hot, but at the same time, too lazy to shrug out of her blue cord jacket. Her mind nagging at the twin problems of Charlie Higgins and Mark Richards, Rozlyn slid into that state between reverie and dream where the mind is free to wander. In this state, it seemed that the day became warmer, though, when the wind blew across her cheek, it carried with it the promise of chill days to come. Looking towards the trees, she saw, or half dreamed she saw, Ethan Merrill standing there. He was dressed in grey and almost-black as he had been in the shop, and his thick white hair lay upon his shoulders and lifted in the breeze. Rozlyn shivered, despite the fact that she felt unusually warm. Ethan Merrill pointed. Following the direction of the gesture to that place just in front of the Great Hall, where a fire burned and a man lay dozing on the ground while another, resting on his side, but with his head propped on his hand talked to or at him.

Rozlyn caught the aroma of roasting meat and the distinctive scent of wood smoke drifting from the valley. This man, lying on his back, one arm thrown carelessly behind his head, the other hand resting lightly on the hilt of his sword, was the tall, thick-set man that Rozlyn had noticed that last time, standing on the hill. She felt a sudden thrill of excitement at the realisation and looked back towards where Ethan stood, the urge to share this with him overwhelming.

Ethan wasn’t there. Rozlyn jerked into wakefulness and looked guiltily about, suddenly concerned that someone would have noticed this moment of weakness and be about to censure her for it.

She shook herself, laughing uneasily, the taste of the dream, the essence of it, still clinging in her mouth and nostrils and, like wood smoke, to her clothes.

“Christ,” she muttered. “You’ve got to get a life.”

* * *

THEADINGFORD. YEAR OF GRACE 878

Treven woke, jerking out of a dream that had come unbidden almost before sleep. Through it all, he could hear Hugh’s voice, his friend telling him something inconsequential that Treven could not quite recall. But the dream, if that’s all it was, had shaken him enough to pull him from the fringes of sleep and leave him trembling.

“What is it?” Hugh’s voice was light and unconcerned. “Did you remember something else you need to do today? You should take your rest while the fine days last.”

Treven muttered something vague, enough to satisfy Hugh, and made his way from the fire to the rear of the house. Then, away from Hugh’s sight, he turned back to face the wood. He had seen him there, that old man dressed in the colours of twilight, with the mane of white hair and the one missing eye. Christian he might be, but Treven knew the Old Ones when he saw them and that figure was a familiar one. He could name him Odin, as Guthrum did, or in his father’s tongue . . .

”Wotan,” Treven whispered, then looked round in case the servants should overhear. But it was the one who had stood beside him that gave Treven more pause. Skin that was richly brown and strange clothes and a bearing that spoke of nobility and power.

What the vision meant, Treven could not fully guess, but that Wotan and this stranger should appear in land so newly claimed for the king’s peace could not be good.

CHAPTER 14

Late afternoon Rozlyn and DC Jenny Harper visited Clara Buranou. Clara’s bedsit was right at the top of a converted house. The attic might once have been a good place for storage, but Rozlyn could not believe it had ever been intended as a living space. It was cramped and damp and, despite the late afternoon sun streaming in through the roof lights, dark and cold. A single mattress had been placed in the space beneath the eaves and her clothes packed into cardboard boxes beside it. One chair occupied a corner space opposite a battered television, which had been placed precariously on a plastic stool. The room was L-shaped and the short end of the L, separated off by a plastic curtain, housed the two-ring cooker and the single cupboard. There was no comfort here. It called to mind the student digs she’d shared with a friend in their second year at university. It had been their first taste of independent living — moving out of the halls of residence and the semi-protection that they offered. Cold, damp and dingy as this, their attic flat had been the scene for some major parties — friends spilling out onto the fire escape and taking over all available space on the stairs — but even they had tired of the sordid little flat in a couple of terms and by the end of the year they had settled into a shared house. A move that at least allowed Rozlyn to stand upright anywhere without risk of concussion.

Clara Buranou had little problem with the ceiling height. She was small and slight with a sallow complexion not helped by the mass of dark hair that tumbled across her forehead and threatened to drown her rather delicate features. She would have been pretty, Rozlyn thought, if she’d smiled occasionally, tied back her hair and let the sun get to her skin. She wondered how on earth Clara and Mrs Chinowski coped. She could just imagine the old lady criticising out loud what Rozlyn silently observed.

She’d have been prettier anyway, Rozlyn thought,