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) 📖

me a bag and asked me if I wanted holes cut for my head and arms. I told them no, then I put the bag over the other one and took it away.”

Rozlyn was impressed. “You did well, Mouse, but I’d still rather you hadn’t been there at all. I’m scared to think what he’d have done to you.”

Mouse shrugged, trying to look nonchalant, but it was clear Rozlyn’s praise and concern had gone right to his heart. “I’m safe now,” he said. “Big Frank tells me I can stay here until my house is all right and they make good tea. He says it’s the best place for me.”

He was probably right, Rozlyn thought. She couldn’t offhand think of a more secure place to stash Mouse than the Queen’s.

She was about to ask another question but Mouse Man seemed distracted. He was peering beneath the table and then glancing anxiously across at the barman.

“Mouse?”

“Shh, you’ll frighten her.”

Mouse dropped to his knees and scrabbled about beneath the table. Looking down, Rozlyn saw a mouse hiding in a crack in the skirting. “Jesus, Mouse, what the hell?”

Mouse Man was on his knees. Softly, almost under his breath, he made a series of soft clicking, crooning noises, interspersed with almost inaudible squeaks. Rozlyn watched in fascination as the tiny creature poked first its twitching, bewhiskered nose out of the crack and then the rest of its head. Mouse Man lowered his hand slowly to the floor. In his palm were a few crumbs from his sandwich. He made that squeaking, crooning noise again. The mouse detached itself from its place of safety and scrabbled over to the waiting hand.

“Mouse! You can’t!” Rozlyn glanced across to where the men sat still playing cards. They seemed oblivious to the rodent charming taking place across the room. Mouse hauled himself back onto his seat and tucked his new friend into the pocket of his pyjama jacket.

“She’ll be all right now,” he said.

“How do you know it’s a she?”

Mouse awarded her a withering look.

“OK, OK, I’ll take your word for it. Mouse, did Charlie ever mention cleaning or working for anyone else? Or did he say he’d ever met the Mr Thompson that owned the houses?”

Mouse thought about it for a while then nodded slowly. “He must have seen him or met him,” he said, “because he knows what he looks like. He saw his picture in the newspaper and he cut it out and put it in his drawer. He said he had a different name in the picture and a big house.”

“In his drawer?” In the sideboard. Rozlyn remembered that she’d left before the search had been completed. She didn’t recall seeing any news clippings, but Jenny would know.

“OK, I’d better go.” She got to her feet. “You get a good night’s sleep and I’ll drop back to see you. And please, don’t go wandering off on your own again.”

“I won’t,” Mouse told her. “I already promised Big Frank that.” He looked troubled all of a sudden and Rozlyn wondered why. Mouse enlightened her. “He says I should go to court and tell that it was Donovan that took my eye away,” he said.

Rozlyn sat down again. “And how do you feel about that?”

Mouse nodded. “I know I got to,” he said. “I feel scared, but I’ll do it, Inspector Priest. If he’s the one killed Charlie, then he ought to go to prison for ever.”

“He should go to prison anyway for what he did to you,” Rozlyn told him quietly. “Mouse, it’s very brave of you. I promise we’ll keep you safe.”

Mouse nodded across in the direction of the card players. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “Big Frank says he’ll take care of me. Don’t you worry. You just go and catch that Donovan man.”

* * *

Jenny was not best pleased to get a call just after she’d fallen asleep.

“Anyone but you and I’d have ignored the phone,” she told Rozlyn.

“OK, what can I do you for?”

Rozlyn grinned. “You know when you searched Charlie’s flat? Did you find any newspaper clippings?”

“God, yes. Piles of them all neatly filed in plastic pockets. I put them back in the drawer. You onto something?”

She told Jenny what Mouse had said.

“You want me to come over? I mean, being you, you’re not going to wait until morning, are you?”

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

“Well, you’re going to have to contact the key holder. The place has been secured on behalf of the council. You’ll have to get the shutter people to come out and unlock and I think they’re in Bedford or somewhere.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.” Rozlyn rang off and took two more of her tablets, remembering belatedly that she had no water to swallow them with. One stuck in her throat. She swallowed urgently, trying to get it down but it seemed as though it had wedged there. She had begun to feel rough again for, while the sleep had helped, its benefit was fast wearing off. Rozlyn stopped off at the police station, leaving the dustbin bag with the duty sergeant together with a note explaining what it was and that it should be sent to forensics. Then, armed with the number for the key holder, she drove to Charlie’s flat, to wait in her car for the man to arrive. It was just after one in the morning. Charlie had been dead for fourteen days.

By the light from the glove compartment she glanced at the booklet she’d bought on local history, reading about the chantry she had seen on Mark Richards’ land.

It was haunted, apparently — Rozlyn would have been disappointed to find otherwise — and had been excavated twice, once in the 1920s and again only three years ago by Dr Donovan Baker. From the sound of it, the 1920s