by Jane Adams
BURY
ME DEEP
An utterly gripping crime thriller with an epic twist
JANE ADAMS
Detective Rozlyn Priest Book 1
Joffe Books, London
www.joffebooks.com
First published in Great Britain in 2021
© Jane Adams
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this. The right of Jane Adams to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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ISBN: 978-1-78931-658-2
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
EPILOGUE
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PROLOGUE
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PRESENT DAY
The kill had been a clean one. A swift shove and then a single strike, powerful and accurate, and it was all over. The dead man lay on his back, a look of profound surprise on his face. The knock on the door that followed shook him far more than the act of killing.
“I heard a crash, sir. Is everything all right?”
“I dropped something, Albert. That’s all. Nothing for you to worry about.”
He sensed the other hesitate. “Earlier today, there was a man hanging round, sir. He wanted to speak to you, but I sent him on his way.”
He could hear the curiosity in Albert’s voice. “Good, good. That will be all, thank you.”
He waited until the footsteps had receded down the hall and sounded on the wooden stairs. Then, turning back to the dead man, he tried to pull the weapon from the body, but succeeded only in pulling the shaft free. The spearhead stuck fast. He glanced out of the window and noted that it was thickly dark. Hefting the body onto his shoulder, he opened the solid oak door and made his way in the opposite direction to Albert, down the narrow back stairs. There would be no one in the kitchen at this time of night, no one to see as he let himself out of the kitchen and crossed the stable yard. The body lay heavy on his shoulder and the socket of the spearhead dug into his back, bruising painfully.
It was only a short distance to where his car was parked but he felt every step of it. He bundled the body into the capacious boot then set off, finally, down the long drive and out into the night.
He had been relieved that there had been so little blood. Less to clean up.
Later, much later, he took the body from the boot. The sky was light now and he had grown cramped and chilled from half the night spent in his car. He carried the body down the roadside verge and in through the open five-bar gate. Portacabins stood on one side of the site, trenches open on the other. It pleased him that he could drop this body into an already open grave. It amused him that the site director, a man he did not like, would find this new death on an ancient site that had already witnessed many.
Dropping the body into the grave he leaned into arrange it neatly, arms by its side. Then he had another go at freeing the weapon from its comfortable wound. Rocking it back and forth he finally pulled it free.
He shoved the weapon almost carelessly into his pocket and then took off, pushing through trees and splashing through a little stream to take a more circuitous route back to his car. In his haste to pull the keys from his pocket, he did not realise that the weapon fell to the ground, coming to rest in a patch of nettles. It was not until he reached his car that he discovered its loss and by then it was too late to go back.
He drove home, cursing his luck. Cursed it further when he reached his house and found Albert waiting anxiously for him.
“That man who came to the house, that man I chased away, he must have found a way inside.”
“What do you mean?” Had there been blood after all? Had Albert seen?
“A piece is missing from a cabinet. The brooch, shaped like a shield, boss. The one in the cabinet beside the window.”
“What?” He went upstairs, satisfied himself that no trace on the carpet betrayed what he had done, but Albert was correct. In a side room, off the main gallery, there was an empty space where the brooch had been. Had he had it in on him, that little man? That little man who thought he could threaten him with blackmail? That little man that no one would miss.
Albert had followed him in. “Should we call the police?”
“No, we will not call the police.”
“He was here, sir, yesterday afternoon. I saw him by the chantry. I chased him away. Cook says she saw him at the rear of the house. He must have found a way inside.”
He must indeed. “You saw him yesterday afternoon, you say?” Meaning the visit close to midnight had been his second one.
“Yes sir, an hour before you came home. I threatened him with the dogs.”
And yet he came back. “Thank you, Albert. That will be all.”
He watched Albert leave, stiff backed and disapproving. So. That insignificant little man had taken the brooch away and then returned. There was no knowing what he’d done with it, though there was another who might know and someone else who would enjoy finding out.
* * *
From the writings of Abbot Kendryk of Storton Abbey, Year of Grace 878:
It is the land that best remembers. The earth that preserves, which holds and records each thought and action that humanity lets loose into the world. They are locked tight until such time, perhaps, when one comes who knows how to interpret the message. One who knows that the rivers of time do not flow only in the one direction.
Some memories have strength beyond others. Some last and breathe and haunt the living; perhaps, even, they torment the dead, naggin
g and tugging at them to put right the wrongs they committed or to preserve those loves they left behind. For the strongest of these memories proceed from love and from death and so often such emotions, such memories are bound as one, guiding and directing the works of those who were not even conceived of when those actions were laid down in the strata of earth.
* * *
THEADING. YEAR OF GRACE 878
He was relieved that there had been so little blood. He was not a fighting man, not even a farmer who needed to butcher his own cattle. Others did that for him, men working with knives and skill and calm focus. But their task was natural and necessary in such a community as theirs. However he looked upon it, what he had done this night could not be seen as natural, or lawful, either in the eyes of God or of his fellow man.
He had followed her when she slipped from the house, letting the latch down softly so that even the dogs barely stirred. Knowing her scent and her step they had merely whined in their sleep. The moon was full, sitting on the horizon, but still bright enough to make her easy to see as she slipped from one low, elongated shadow to the next. The trees seemed to bend to give her shelter, so dense and long did their darkness lie upon the grass as she circled the great pond marking the eastern bounds of their land.
Twice she had looked back and he fancied that she sensed him behind her. The first time, she merely glanced over her shoulder, but the second, pausing at the field’s edge where it gave way to dense hedge and even denser woodland, she gazed long and hard at the steading and he breathed in relief, thinking that in that almost too-late instant she had changed her mind. That divining her impulse and the evil that would come from it, perhaps even sensing that he had followed her, she would turn about and creep home as silently as she had left, and this terrible thing would all be over. Unseen, and so, easily forgiven.
His heart almost stopped when she turned again, pushing her way through a narrow gap in the field hedge and slipping like a shade into the woods beyond. No doubt keeping her tryst with him, that stranger, that waelas, whose arrival all those months before had led to this disaster.
He knew then that he had no choice. He had known before, he supposed, when their whispering in corners and their sneaking and deceit had first alerted him. Weeks ago he had made this weapon, a strong stave of ash whittled to a club, sensing that this night would come and he would have to act.
And so he followed her, time passing and the moon setting beyond the trees so that he lost her track in the dark woods, guessing more than knowing which way she would go. Then, when he had been certain he had lost them — certain and, almost, relieved — he caught the faint whisper of her voice some way ahead.
“What was that? I heard something.”
“Night creatures, nothing more. Allis, you are certain? You know that we can never come back.”
“I am certain. Never more so. I’m leaving nothing to regret. Owain, I would walk through the gates of Hell to be with you even should the angels try to hold me back.” She paused, startled again by some half-heard sound. “But what was that? Owain, do you think . . . ?”
But Owain did not reply, the cudgel brought down upon his head made sure of that. The first blow fetching the waelas man to his knees, the second felling him like a butchered ox.
She screamed once, Allis. Backed away and tried to run, but the ash club caught her as she turned, smashing hard across her temple and crushing the fine bones of her cheek and when she fell, he brought the cudgel down again and again upon her head and neck, obliterating her smile, her soft grey eyes, the curl of hair that fell loose from her coif, trailing down onto that slender neck.
And then he ran, not thinking until he reached the steading to cast his weapon aside. He hurled it as far into the pond as the fast-failing strength of his arms would allow. Then he sank down and wept, tears of shock and anger, though not regret. What needed to be done had been achieved and when he had finished weeping, he told himself that he would think of it no more.
CHAPTER 1
THEADINGFORD. PRESENT DAY
Despite being partly raised in the heart of rural England, Rozlyn Priest was not and never had been a country girl. Her view of cows echoed that of her New York grandfather; that they should arrive medium rare on a large plate, preferably with fries or tiny new potatoes and a little salad on the side. These fully grown four-footed steaks, snuffling at her with moistly discharging noses and pressing their greasy hides against her freshly cleaned suit, were doing nothing to change her opinion. Their insistent, over-inquisitive crowding made her wonder vaguely about their propensity for revenge.
Constable Riba Mills, the uniformed officer who had met her at the gate, seemed to have no such worries.
“Git!” she said and accompanied the staccato word with a quick shove against the flank of the nearest beast. It moved, just enough for her to push through the herd and for Rozlyn, reluctantly, to follow through the gap before it closed behind.
Riba was, Rozlyn noticed, wearing Wellingtons. They were mired in filth; mud and shit from the curious, smelly, fly ridden cows.
“Bullocks,” she said, as though hearing Rozlyn’s thoughts and feeling the need to correct. “It’s all bullocks in this field — not dairy cows like you’d think to look at them. But they’re just youngsters, ma’am. They won’t hurt you.” She grinned. “I’ll have a go at getting you a pair of wellies. There’s spares down at the dig. What’s your size?”
She was about to tell Riba that she didn’t do Wellingtons. Particularly not dull green wellies with the kind of heavy tread on the soles that seemed designed for muck collection, but the sight of her polished leather shoes, now caked in the stuff and the spatter of mud — she hoped it was only mud — decorating her newly pressed trousers made her think again.
“Six,” she told the officer. “Is it as filthy down there?”
PC Riba Mills grinned again. “Not so bad. It’s the cows, they churn up the ground, especially near the gate.”
Rozlyn sighed. “Bullocks,” she corrected her.
* * *
She had never been to a dig before. The closest brush Rozlyn had with actual archaeology was reruns of Time Team on a friend’s television. Her own set she regarded mainly as a conduit for her collection of vintage films, rarely watching anything that was actually broadcast. Lately, she had even taken to avoiding the news.
“What are they digging for?”
“It’s an Anglo-Saxon site,” the PC said. “Apparently that’s before 1066 and all that.”
“Oh.” On the episode she had seen they had found a Roman villa. She recalled from school history and museum visits with her mother that the Anglo Saxons had invaded sometime after the Romans and before the Battle of Hastings, and she had a vague feeling it all had something to do with King Arthur.
“What have they found?” She asked, more to keep the conversation alive than that she really wished to know.
“Oh, right. Well, this was a farm, they reckon, but it must have been a rich bloke that owned it. The house — hall — is big for the time period and there are what they think are barns and outbuildings. There’s another dig a couple of miles across those fields.” She pointed back to where she could see the smog haze of the city on the horizon. “A village, probably.”
“And where the body was found?”
“Well, that’s what’s upset them most, I think. Whoever dumped it there left it in a half-dug trench. One of the graves they’d just started to open.”
“Graves?”
“Yeah, this place had its own little cemetery. They reckon on there being half a dozen graves but they don’t think there’ll be anything in them but skeletons. No jewellery or anything. I saw this documentary once about a grave with gold plates and swords and jewellery. The guy presenting it reckoned they used to bury the dead with all their stuff ready for the next life.”
“Like they did in Egypt.” That idea at least felt familiar. Rozlyn had always been more taken with the ancient Egyptians than the ear
ly British.
The PC laughed. “We’d need bloody big graves these days. Play stations, TV’s, mobile phones, make-up bag . . .”
Rozlyn laughed with her. “Shower gel,” she added. “I’d have to have my shower gel. I once heard of some woman being buried in her Cadillac. It seemed like such a waste. I’d’ve been more than willing to take care of it for her.”
PC Mills nodded. “Oh, lord. Me too! You know when my nan died she had it put in her will that she should be buried wearing her best suit and favourite brooch. I remember her telling my mum, she didn’t want to meet God unless she was looking her best. Nowt as funny as folk.”
They had reached the edge of the bullock field and crossed the stile set between hawthorn bushes, their scarlet weight of autumn berries glowing in the afternoon sun. Rozlyn stepped carefully, keeping her suit sleeves clear of the thorns and scraping the worst of the mud from her shoes on the drier grass on the other side. She’d been in court when the call came. She’d just finished her stint of giving evidence and, as the court had risen early in preparation for the weekend, she’d been looking forward to sneaking back to the office to catch up on paperwork before mooching home. Then the usher came running out with the message.
The urgency of it left her no chance to change into anything more suitable and now her one really decent suit was getting crapped up like this and she wished that she’d just snatched the time anyway. After all, the dead man wasn’t going anywhere. Finishing with her shoes she glanced around, wondering what the countryside might next have in store. She and PC Mills were standing on a grassy ledge, the ground dropping off quite steeply in front of them. A narrow but mercifully dry path followed the contours of the land and promised a fairly easy way down. Below them lay an open area, enclosed on three sides by dense hawthorn hedges and tall trees, while the fourth side, directly below them, was protected by a shallow but lively stream that disappeared from view here and there between high banks. A wooden bridge, little more than a plank with a broken handrail, crossed at a point where the banks fell away and the stream spread wider as though taking advantage of its sudden freedom. A ford, once upon a time, Rozlyn guessed.