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

Rozlyn dumped her keys in the blue and white dish that sat next to the phone. It was chipped and cracked, mended with an ugly rivet and she probably wasn’t helping its survival by using it as a key depository. It had been her mother’s, one of the few things of hers that Rozlyn retained and, though she hated the look of the thing, she couldn’t quite bear to let it go. When she touched it, it was as if a memory had been triggered in her brain. No, not quite a memory . . . it was as if she were seeing it through her mother’s eyes, feeling her affection for its chipped and battered self.

The feeling was similar to the one she’d had at the dig site; that moment that was almost like remembering and too vivid for imagination. Her grandfather had always suggested it was a kind of expanded intuition. There had been a time when Rozlyn had thought that believing in or following your intuition was a phony kind of thing to do, until she’d realised that to a greater or lesser extent all of her colleagues seemed to do so. Some called it copper’s nose. Others suggested this was all that was going on with so-called profiling. Whatever, it seemed born of some blend of instinct and knowledge and Rozlyn had come to accept her own experiences as simply a rather odd manifestation of this same phenomenon.

Sighing, Rozlyn dragged the red band from her hair and shook it loose. Curls fell about her face, sprang, halo like to frame her head, softening Rozlyn’s habitually stern expression. Softer than her Nigerian father’s hair, more tightly sprung than her mother’s blonde waves, she wore it always as long as it would grow, which was just past her shoulders. Then she ruthlessly confined it. No one, but no one, ever saw it loose.

Aside from the small oak table, the phone and the dish, the hall was empty. Cream walls, bare of pictures, original Victorian tiles covering the floor in a red, black and white mosaic. She went through to the kitchen. Pale, limed wood and a lot of chrome, out of keeping with the rest of the house. It had been like that when Rozlyn moved in three years before. It was functional and she liked the range-style oven, so she left it alone.

Rozlyn filled the kettle, then shrugged out of her jacket. She hung it on the back of a dining chair and extracted Charlie’s address book from the pocket. It smelt of Charlie. Peppermints and the faintest whiff of cigarette smoke. Charlie smoked rollups. Or, at least, he made rollups, carefully and precisely, with one of those little machines that looked like a wide rubber band wrapped round rollers. More often than not, he’d then leave them to go out in the ashtray; hands too busy gesticulating to hold a cigarette.

The only time Charlie’s hands were still or quiet was when he rolled his skinny little smokes.

Rozlyn made a pot of tea. Earl Grey, tonight, because she could drink that black, a swift check of the fridge having informed her she’d run out of milk again. She drank her coffee black too but had long ago adopted her mother’s habit of never drinking coffee after six at night. And she thought about food. Hungry, but not sure she could be bothered to cook; knowing she’d regret it later if she didn’t eat. She never could sleep hungry. Water on to boil for the pasta, she blanched, peeled and chopped tomatoes, crushed garlic and sliced olives, drinking her tea as she cooked, remembering she had half a bottle of wine from the night before to go with her meal. The capers had hidden at the back of the cupboard again. She dragged them out, adding a scant teaspoon, stirred anchovies into the mix and finished with fresh torn basil. Never touch it with a blade, her mother had told her, and she smiled at the memory.

She grew salad leaves, along with herbs in the tiny conservatory — more of a lean-to really, but as it was big enough to hold a chair, she’d decided it deserved the promotion. She dressed the salad in the bowl, drizzling it with olive oil, lemon juice and more fresh herbs. Satisfied with the result, she put the cooking pots in the dishwasher before sitting down to eat. Then, fork poised in hand, she opened Charlie’s little book. Mindful of her grandfather’s prohibition on reading at the table, she mentally apologised to the old man and began to do just that.

An hour later found her still sitting at the table. The crockery had joined the rest of the cooking things in the washer and only the bottle and glass remained. Charlie had been meticulous. Of the two dozen or so numbers listed, most had an explanation beside. J.D, for instance, was his bookmaker and three of the numbers were the pubs he cleaned for — usefully listed as work one, two and three. Thanks to Jenny’s call, Rozlyn could now identify ‘Mrs C, Downstairs’ and there were a half dozen others that she could guess at, being acquaintances Charlie had mentioned. She could follow those up in the morning.

Four numbers puzzled her. One had no name next to it and when Rozlyn tried it, she just got a ring tone, then an automated message telling her that this number was no longer in use but that A1 Taxis could be reached on . . . She hung up and tried the next. That had the initials C.T. next to it and proved to be a Chinese takeaway. C.T. Fair enough, Rozlyn thought, and Mr T. Thompson wasn’t available on his mobile. Then there was the one marked Donovan. Rozlyn tried this too, but again there was no reply. An answerphone clicked in after a half-dozen rings and a man’s voice