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

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 early 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