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) 📖

“Give the lady a stool,” Frank commanded, and a stool arrived and was squeezed into a narrow space between two of Frank’s “boys”. Rozlyn sat down and handed Frank his beer. No one spoke while Frank set about refilling his now drained glass, tilting it just so, allowing the gasses to escape and a level, half-inch head to form. Rozlyn admired his expertise.

“Charlie Higgins,” she said. Frank’s gaze flicked her way for the merest instant, then drifted back to his beer.

“Cheers,” he said and lifted it to his lips, drinking deep before setting the once more half-empty vessel down on the cluttered table. The glass collectors weren’t exactly respecting their calling in this corner, Rozlyn observed.

“He was murdered.” Rozlyn said. “Early this morning as far as we can make out. We’ll know more after the autopsy, of course, but it looks like a single stab wound straight into the heart.”

Frank’s gaze lifted again and this time he held Rozlyn’s. Frank was as big as his nickname implied. Tall and stout and powerful, with cold grey eyes and a delicate little cupid’s bow of a mouth that rightfully belonged on an advert for lipstick.

Holding his gaze was akin to trying to outstare a shark. Rozlyn didn’t even try, she reached for her drink and took a sip of beer, a prissy little sip compared to Franks great thirsty gulps.

“I’ll send flowers to his funeral.”

“Kind of you. Who’d want to kill him, Frank? He was such a shrimp of a man, it hardly seems worth anybody’s time to stab him then dump his body miles away from anywhere.”

“I hear you had a use for him.”

“A use for him! Frank, the man was a garbage pail of bits and scraps of useless information.”

“For which you paid him,” Frank observed.

“For which I paid him when it warranted and the only times it warranted were those times when you let slip a tasty bit of something, knowing he’d pass it on to me. Something that made you look good and made a few difficulties for your business rivals, shall we say.”

“You think I had him killed?”

“No. No, actually, I don’t. Charlie was occasionally useful to you, same way he was to me, but otherwise he wasn’t big enough for you to notice. Charlie was a tick on a sheep’s backside. A loser. Week on week I expected him to turn up dead in an alley somewhere because he’d hit on the wrong guy or been mugged for something he didn’t have.”

“If he was such a tick, why the interest?”

“It’s still a murder.” Rozlyn took another sip of beer. “Anyway, he may have been a tick, but he was my tick and I would hate to think that something he tried to find out on my behalf might have got him killed.”

Frank smiled. It was not the most beautiful of sights. “The girl’s got a conscience,” he said, and his boys laughed at his joke.

Frank leaned forward and placed a great, meaty hand on Rozlyn’s, his pasty white skin contrasting against the deep brown of hers. He patted her fingers with an almost avuncular air but then the hand was removed, the smile gone and the glass lifted again, this time drained to the bottom in a single gulp. He set it down again with a purposeful thud on the wooden table and Rozlyn knew that her audience was effectively at an end.

“I’ll be in touch,” Frank said. “If I hear anything about a murdered tick.”

A ripple of appreciative laughter drifted around the table and Rozlyn reluctantly got to her feet. She would learn nothing more from Frank tonight, that much was clear, but she had the odd feeling that Frank would be true to his word.

* * *

Rozlyn stepped out into the rain, relieved to be out of the Queen’s. Behind her the volume had picked up again.

The day had been warm and bright but the wind had risen in the early evening and the rain began while Rozlyn was bar hopping in town. It brought with it an almost winter chill and she was glad she’d had the foresight to wear a coat.

Pulling up her collar and tucking her hair inside, Rozlyn turned left into Mortimer Street and headed back towards the town centre. The streets were deserted and it wasn’t just the rain keeping people inside. The area was not one for walking in at night. Streets of terraced houses were interspersed with waste ground where demolition had begun but the promised redevelopment had stalled. The little streets around the Queen’s were not quite close enough to the newly fashionable canal basin to have benefited from the move towards Urban Living that the local council was doing its damnedest to promote. It was working after a fashion, Rozlyn had to admit. The area around the canal, between that and the university campus, had been planted with avenues of trees, had its old factories converted into ultra-expensive loft-style apartments with secure underground parking and was attracting the single professional types who made the most of the motorway links to work in London and could still commute to the less expensive hinterland.

The locals didn’t stand a chance of affording these so-called New York-style des reses. It was a description that Rozlyn took issue with, doubting that the designers had ever been anywhere near her beloved Manhattan, but it was better, she supposed, than the often-beautiful old buildings falling into the canal from pure neglect.

She wondered if the drive towards improvement would ever spread to Mortimer Street and if it did how many local councillors and builders Big Frank would buy off just to keep the Queen’s intact.

She turned to cross Mortimer Street, planning on cutting down Hazel Street and then back across behind the University.