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) 📖

“Perhaps. I don’t know. Where is ‘back’?”

“Kosovo. A little village.”

“And what made you leave?”

“There was no one to make me stay. No one left.”

Rozlyn hesitated. There was so much here she’d like to know, but if it did not directly concern Charlie’s murder, then this wasn’t the time to be asking.

Brook came into the room followed by an officer carrying coffee and sandwiches. Brook took them from him and then placed them on the table in front of Clara. “DCI Brook has entered the room,” he announced for the tape. “The time is two fifty-eight p.m. on the afternoon of October fourth.” Brook grabbed the spare chair and turned it around, sitting astride. “If you want to take a break now, you can, or you can eat and talk, that’s up to you.”

“I can talk,” she told him. She studied him as closely as she had Rozlyn and then turned her attention back to the coffee and food.

“What have you been doing since you left your flat?” Rozlyn asked.

“I walked. I think about what to do. I walk some more. Last night, I sleep outside.”

“It was very cold last night.”

She nodded. “So today, I decide to catch a bus.”

“When you met Charlie, was it at one of the houses?”

She took a bite of sandwich and nodded, chewing fast so she could answer. “I arrived with others, they all went away. I did not know where to go. I came back to the house, they had told me not to, but I had nowhere else to go. I come back to the house to ask where should I go; what should I do? No one is there but Charlie. I sit on the steps and I tell him. He takes me to his home but I cannot stay there. People will see. Charlie finds me a place to live and work. I see him sometimes, but not often. People will see and Charlie will be in trouble. Charlie Higgins is a good man.”

“These others that came into the country with you, where did they go to?”

She shook her head violently. “I do not know. Some left in another car before we reach here. Others, two women, they leave with a man. I do not go with them. He promise work in a restaurant, but . . .” She shook her head. “I have seen this kind of man. He say, if I do not go, then I will find my own work and place to stay and I must go away from that place. So, I go, but two days later, I go back. No one is there except Charlie.”

“And when was this. When did you arrive?”

“It is May the fourth when I get here. May of last year.”

“Do you think anyone saw you with Charlie?” Brook asked her.

She shook her head but then nodded. “I did not think so, but Charlie did. He is frightened.”

“And when was this?”

“Two weeks ago. Charlie say I should be ready to leave. Soon he will have big money and we can go to Scotland.”

“Why Scotland?”

“I do not know. Charlie wanted to go there. He had never been.”

“And this money. Where was it going to come from?”

She shrugged helplessly. “He say he has something to sell. Something of value that is very old. He does not tell me more.”

“Did you have a relationship with Charlie Higgins?” Brook asked her.

She looked away and took another large bite of sandwich, and then finally she shook her head. “Charlie was my friend, but if he asked me to, I would have had relationship with him,” she said simply. “He is a good man. I like him. I am sorry he is dead.”

Brook rose and beckoned Rozlyn to the door. Jenny announced their departure for the tape and the entry of the watch officer.

“Well. That’s that then,” Brook announced as he stood with Rozlyn in the corridor.

“That’s what?”

“Oh, don’t be so bloody obtuse. Someone saw Charlie with Clara and realised he’d got curious, so they shut him up before he decided to do anything about it. End of story.”

“No. Not quite. What about the spear and the place his body was dumped, to say nothing of not knowing where he was killed. And what about this valuable something that Clara Buranou talked about?”

“What about it? Look, once we get our mystery landlord, you’ll have all that sorted too. Let immigration do the legwork for us. Could be someone’s idea of a joke, for all I know. Most likely someone fed Charlie a line and he swallowed it. It’s nothing. Forget it. We know why Charlie Higgins died and the rest is someone else’s pigeon. He stuck his nose in where it wasn’t wanted, and he paid for it. Simple as that.”

“Not so simple. Look, you may have the result you want, but that’s not the end of things. For one thing, we’re no closer to Thomas Thompson.”

Brook waved her objections aside. “If I can spare the manpower, I’ll keep obs on the houses and on the office we turned up from that number you found in Charlie’s book. Frankly, I’m more than prepared to leave that one to immigration too. They’ve got the bodies, let them handle it.”

“And you’re satisfied with that?”

Brook shrugged. “He’s off our patch; someone else’s problem. Drop it, be satisfied.”

“Time was, you’d never have said that. You’d have worried at it like a dog with a rag until every last drop had been wrung out.”

“Aye, well, maybe I’ve learned. You don’t get any more applause for chasing what no one’s interested in. Charlie Higgins is dead. We found the cause, and we’ve got ourselves a nice line in people smuggling into the bargain. It’s up to someone else to find who stabbed him