BURY ME DEEP an utterly gripping crime thriller with an epic twist (Detective Rozlyn Priest Book 1)

by Jane Adams

  She felt Albert shift as though suddenly uncomfortable. A small movement, but enough for Rozlyn to be aware of. Rozlyn looked more closely at the exhibits.

  “What else was in here, Albert?”

  “What else? I’m sure I . . .”

  “You really shouldn’t put dark colours near the window. Light fades them, you know.” Rozlyn pointed to where a disk of richer blue showed the pattern of something that had been there for some time, but which was now missing.

  “Oh.” Albert told her. “That’s gone for restoration. Conservation.”

  “Oh, really? What was it before it was sent away?”

  “A brooch,” Albert sounded dismissive. “Just a brooch.”

  Rozlyn left soon after that, Albert’s impatience showing to the extent that Rozlyn wondered if he’d be calling on reinforcements should Rozlyn not shift. She discovered one more interesting thing though. On leaving she asked. “Anyone coming out of there, would they have to go down via the main stairs? I’ve heard there are servants’ stairs in a house this size.”

  “There are two flights, yes. One each end of the house.”

  “Care to show me?”

  Albert sighed elaborately, but Rozlyn got the impression that he was almost pleased. That servants’ stairs were exactly what he felt Rozlyn should be using. He led her along the main corridor and through a small door at the end, then down the back stairs and into the scullery. “You go out through the kitchen,” he told Rozlyn, pointing to a door that stood open and led out onto a green space beyond. “I’m sure you can find your own way. You’ll have to walk back round to your car.”

  “Will do. It’s been nice meeting you, Albert. This is a magnificent place.”

  “Quite,” Albert returned. He stood at the foot of the stairs. Watching. The three members of staff in the kitchen glanced curiously at Rozlyn.

  “Something smells good,” Rozlyn commented as she wandered through, suddenly aware that she’d not eaten since very early that morning. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Albert look at his watch. But she’d be back. Rozlyn knew beyond doubt that she’d be coming back. She left through the kitchen door and ascended three steps into a courtyard. Tall shrubs in massive pots screened the kitchen entrance and it was this that had given her the initial impression of there being a green space outside. A stable block extended on the right-hand side back from the house and a further wing that Rozlyn guessed might be servant’s quarters bounded the other. The fourth was open, leading back into woods. Glancing up, Rozlyn glimpsed Albert watching from a first-floor window. Rozlyn waved and smiled. “See you later, Albert.”

  Ethan Merill, she thought, may well have been on to something when he’d directed Rozlyn here.

  * * *

  She’d driven from the house to the dig site, not quite sure what drew her back there, but feeling the compulsion nonetheless. She approached the site from the field crossing as she had done on that first day. The bullocks were no longer there — she spied them in an adjacent field and the previous dryish days had allowed the worst of the mud to set. She didn’t exactly cross the field unscathed but arrived at the other side without a second trip to the dry cleaners becoming necessary.

  Once she had reached the escarpment, she looked down onto the site laid out below. She had far more of a feel for the layout now and could imagine the hall and the barn and the other buildings that made up the steading. She saw it busy with people, smoke rising from the chimneys and the golden sunlight gleaming on the stream.

  She moved across to the point where she fancied she had seen that elusive watchtower and scrubbed about in the long grass with the toes of her shoes looking for sign of it. Of course, she thought, there would be nothing. The wooden structure long gone. She knew now, from conversation with the diggers, that any wooden structure would possibly leave dark staining in the ground from the post holes and framing, but that wouldn’t be visible on the surface. There would be nothing obvious to see.

  She wished she’d had the foresight to pack a picnic. When was the last time she’d been on a picnic? Probably, she thought, it had been with her grandfather when he had come to live here for a while with Rozlyn. She had grown up not a dozen miles from the dig site and it seemed odd now, that so much history had been going on and Rozlyn unaware of it. Grandad had enjoyed picnics, loved the countryside and the little villages and the fishing . . .

  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, if she could manage to look less scared.

  She left the single chair for Jenny on the grounds that she was wearing a skirt and seated herself on the edge of Clara’s bed. Clara sat down too, moving to the end, as far from her visitors as the cramped space and skinny mattress allowed. She wrapped her arms around her knees and peered at them through a curtain of heavy, wavy hair. Rozlyn resisted the impulse to push it back from her face and to dig in her pocket for a spare hair band.

  “You heard about Charlie Higgins. About him being killed?”

  She nodded, a quick upward jerk of her head. “I saw it in the paper. I cannot believe it. Charlie was a good man.”

  Her accent, Rozlyn noted, was heavy and her English, though essentially sound, was spoken with the hesitation of someone searching for the next word. Rather like Rozlyn herself attempting to converse in her schoolgirl German. “How did you get to know Charlie?”

  Clara shrugged and looked away. “I do not remember.”

  “How long have you known him, then?”

  She shrugged again. “A year. Maybe more.”

  “But you can’t remember.”

  “No,” she shook her head. “I can’t remember.”

  “But Charlie must have felt he knew you well enough to suggest you to Mrs Chinowski.”

  “I don’t know. She is difficult. No one stay. I need the job, she need the cleaning. Charlie arrange for me to go.”

  “Do you get on OK with Mrs Chinowski?”

  Clara pulled a face which made her look very young, like a child anticipating a bad taste. ”It is money,” she said. “I need to earn money.”

  “And how long have you been here?” Jenny asked.

  Rozlyn could have kicked her. At this stage it was the last question she wanted to ask. She noted the fear in Clara’s eyes and changed the subject swiftly. “Do you clean anywhere else or work at any other jobs?”

  She looked uncomfortable, but she answered these questions. “I work for old people, at the Larks. In the kitchen. I go to college to get my better English, then they will send me on a hygiene course for the kitchen.”

  “That’s good, Clara,” Rozlyn approved. “Can you think of anyone who’d want to hurt Charlie?”

  This time the headshake was emphatic. “Charlie is a good man,” she insisted, as though Rozlyn might dare to disagree. “He would hurt no one.”

  Rozlyn hesitated about the next question. Finally, she asked, “Clara, Charlie cleaned houses for a man called Thomas Thompson. Did you know him, or did you ever help Charlie clean for him?”

  Her blank look was, Rozlyn decided, genuine. The name meant nothing to her, but then, it was unlikely she knew who had owned the safe house she must first have been taken to. She knew that most of the illegal immigrants coming into the country were let loose to fend for themselves pretty soon after their arrival. The lucky ones might be given some form of new identity; some degree of support or, if they were truly fortunate, have friends and family in the community to take them in.

  “Do you have family in the UK, Clara?”

  She hesitated and then shook her head. “I work,” she said. “Then I come back here. One day I will go back home.” Her lips tightened on the word as though it was not something she generally allowed herself to say.

  “And where is home, Clara? Croatia?”

  It was a guess, but she nodded. Rozlyn wondered if she was telling the truth or if it had just been easier to agree.

  She could feel Jenny’s impatience and, glancing up, saw her about to pursue this line. Rozlyn warned her off with a look and took a business card from the pocket of her coat. “I know you want us to get the person that killed Charlie,” she told Clara. “If you think of anything, this is how you can contact me. Understand?”

  Clara’s hand closed over it. Tightly. Rozlyn saw the card fold in her palm, crease unevenly in her grip. She’s really scared, she thought. “Clara, did Charlie ever mention someone called Donovan?”

  She shook her head, that rapid jerk. Her eyes said no, she had never heard of Donovan. Charlie had not spoken of such a man.

  Rozlyn got to her feet, carefully avoiding the sloping ceiling and gestured to Jenny to follow. “Remember. Call me,” she said.

  * * *

  Outside, Jenny was bristling with annoyance. “You know she’s an illegal. We should be taking her in.”

  Rozlyn nodded. “I don’t doubt it,” she said. “I’ll try and organise some surveillance, see if she contacts anyone else and we’ll get someone over to the Larks — check their records or lack of.” She frowned. “That’s where that old man lives. The one Charlie befriended?”

  Jenny nodded. “God,” she said. “Living like that. I’d pack my bags and be off home to Croatia or wherever she came from.”

  “To do that you need money and a passport. I doubt she’s got either.” Rozlyn shrugged. “We’d probably be doing her a favour getting her deported.”

  Jenny glanced up at the house. “What a dump,” she said. “It’s a fire trap too. No escape from Clara’s room. Did you notice?”

  Rozlyn hadn’t. She figured that the landlord failed to declare rental on the attic space.

  “And you’ll be lucky to get surveillance,” Jenny went on.

  “Oh?”

  “Brook’s got every available body watching those addresses you gave him. He’s out to make good on that before we have to hand it on to immigration.”

  “I’d figured that one,” Rozlyn said wryly. She frowned, wondering. If they were so short of officers, she should bring Clara in for questioning now. She decided to talk to Brook first.

  She opened the car door and slid into her seat then closed her eyes, feeling the slight rock of the vehicle as Jenny got in the other side. “You ever have those dreams where everything is just too real?” she asked. Then. “Forget it.” Rozlyn opened her eyes and turned the key, aware that Jenny was regarding her quizzically.

  “Long day?” she asked.

  “Not over yet.”

  “Did you get lunch or did you forget again?”

  “Guilty.” Rozlyn admitted.

  Jenny shook her head. “I’m not your mother so I’m not going to lecture you, but you know what I’d have to say if I did?”

  “Yes ma’am,” Rozlyn drawled. She smiled back then allowed her thoughts to drift back
to Clara Buranou and her tawdry little bedsit. “You think she had any idea she’d end up in a place like that?”

  “No. How could she? What are you going to do about her?”

  Rozlyn sighed, knowing Jenny was right. She couldn’t just leave this. “Talk to Brook when we get back. Uniform can have her. But if Brook thinks he’s got bigger fish to fry, he’ll probably want us to hold off anyway. Taking Clara might alert others.”

  “I suppose so. Any joy with the spear expert?”

  “Couple of leads. Two collectors of antiquities, both of whom deny having anything stolen.”

  “You don’t believe them?”

  “I don’t believe one of them. There’s . . . something. I can’t get a handle on it yet.”

  She thought about Ethan Merrill. Try as she might, she still could not shake the emotional impact of that dream or the feeling that it had some obscure significance.

  * * *

  Brook was getting ready to leave when Rozlyn arrived. Rozlyn briefed him quickly as to the progress of the day and their visit to Clara Buranou. Brook re-emphasised what Jenny had told her. They were shorthanded; Rozlyn would have to make her own arrangements. It was clear that Brook had his eye on the bigger prize and one insignificant little girl that could easily be picked up later was of little interest to him. After all, even if she decided to run away, just how far could she get with no friends and little money?

  It was not a satisfactory argument, but Rozlyn was oddly relieved to have had that decision taken away, at least for now. Brooks’ suggestion that she organise something was an ill-disguised hint that if she wanted watch kept, she’d have to do it herself. Rozlyn knew from experience that trying to find unassigned officers at this time of the evening, for what was likely to be a really small return, was not on the cards.