BURY ME DEEP an utterly gripping crime thriller with an epic twist (Detective Rozlyn Priest Book 1) by JANE ADAMS (best book reader .txt) 📗

“Maybe. What I don’t get is why take him out there anyway. Charlie wasn’t killed there and he wasn’t killed here, so why not just leave him where he died?”

“Because that would tell us something about the murderer or the motive,” Jenny guessed.

Rozlyn nodded slowly. “So we need to know where. It’s not unreasonable to assume that the dig site is somewhere en route from the crime scene,” she added.

“En route to where?” Jenny asked. “And does that help us?”

“Not a whole lot.” Rozlyn took the more recent address book and sealed it in an evidence bag, then slipped it into her pocket. “Don’t forget to log that one with the others.”

“As if I would.”

“Personal letters?”

“Nothing so far.”

Rozlyn’s phone began to ring. She answered it and listened, then got to her feet. “Won’t be coming with you to check out the other flat,” she told Jenny. “Take Stan or Andy if you want some company and let me know when I get back.”

“Will do. Developments?”

Rozlyn nodded. “They’ve found the murder weapon,” she said.

CHAPTER 7

Rozlyn arrived by road this time, a winding single track that took its route along the ridge of a hill, between cultivated fields before falling sharply into the wooded valley.

The entrance to the site gave Rozlyn a moment’s pause. She’d expected a farm gate, but instead, the entrance way was flanked by stone gateposts and the driveway leading to the dig was lined by a double row of small rowan trees. In the September sun they hung bright with crimson berries. She parked her car beside a half dozen others and checked herself in the rear-view mirror, tucking an errant strand of hair back behind her ear and checking that the rest was still held in place by the bright red band.

Her mother always told her fondly that she had exuberant hair.

She walked the remainder of the way onto the dig. She could see the rising land beyond the stream and the hedge that bounded the bullock field and, from where she now stood, could tell that the path she’d followed down to the plank bridge was well established, dug deep into the side of the steep bank as though through long usage it had eaten its way into the landscape. The day was warm; here in this sheltered valley, it had become more than warm. A heat haze rose from the higher ground and, just for a brief moment, Rozlyn fancied she saw something ranged up there on the hill. A tall, but simple structure. A building, she thought, or the memory of one . . . Of course, with sudden clarity she realised that this little valley would be a perfect place to live, but you’d need to defend it as well.

Perhaps they’d had a watchtower of some kind up there on that ridge. From there, as she now knew, you could see for miles across the escarpment. How heavily wooded would it have been, back then? A sudden image of dense, wild woodland interspersed with avenues of coppiced trees filled her mind. She shook herself abruptly, irritated that she’d given in to fantasy when there was a job to do, but she couldn’t completely chase the memory away, for such it was, Rozlyn was sure. Neither could she dispel the sudden vision of an imperious, strongly built man, overseeing the building of the hill tower and gazing down proudly onto his land. It was there and then gone, but, like a dream that arrives almost on waking, it sat at the edge of her consciousness and would not be swept away.

She frowned irritably. All her life she had seen things that might have been there, or might once have been there, and that no one else seemed to be aware of. Her mother always said she had an exuberant imagination too.

“Inspector. Over here.” A uniformed officer, white shirt sleeves rolled back in the heat, was waving to her from the entrance to one of the porta-cabins. Rozlyn became suddenly aware of the lack of activity on the site. She’d expected to catch glimpses of search teams moving though the undergrowth. To see the diggers, still redundant and increasingly irritated, sitting, drinking tea outside. But the whole place, apart from the waving policeman, looked deserted.

Approaching the portacabin, she realised why. About twenty odd people were all packed inside and the feeling of excitement, coupled with an odd air of bewilderment was palpable.

“What’s going on?”

“We think we’ve got the murder weapon,” the constable informed her. “But it’s not . . . well, it’s not exactly what we expected.”

* * *

The diggers had been helping with the search, PC Patel told her. It had seemed like a good idea, since they were used to looking for stuff and bored stupid with sitting around. They’d been clearing the undergrowth from the west side of the dig, close beside the ford, where the stream turned back into the forest, when they’d seen it in the mud.

“It looked like it’d been thrown there, but, fortunately, it’d landed haft side down with the pointed end clear of the mud.” He grinned at her. “The diggers have been teaching me all the technical terms. Scientific support was still here and we got it photographed in situ.” He paused, pointing to the dozen or so images pinned to the board. “We took these as well. I thought you’d like to see something straight away. The diggers printed them out for us.”

Rozlyn nodded. “Good thinking,” she said. Then frowned. “It’s a bloody spear!”

“Quite.”

Rozlyn turned to look at this new speaker and found herself confronted by the dig director, Emlyn Reece. He’d been introduced briefly on her earlier visit.

“Come and look, Inspector. You won’t see many of these in a lifetime.”

Rozlyn looked. Even to her unpractised eye, it was obvious that this was something special. There was