Burying the Past Read Online Free PDF Page A

or not for the ACC and me,’ Fran told her, doing the work a more junior officer should have been doing. Since there’d been a nasty murder on someone’s doorstep only a few hours ago, the already depleted DCI team had more pressing matters than Fran’s to worry about. And – to be honest – she simply enjoyed being out at the rectory, after the horrors on the pensioner’s doorstep. These days she found herself getting less, not more, inured to the sight of blood and brain tissue. And the smell . . . ‘Think budgets. If you strip the house down to bricks again, it’s going to cost the service an arm and a leg. The grounds – well, you can see there’s nothing to worry about there. Uproot every last weed with my blessing, but watch the trees – some of them have preservation orders on them. Start small, and then move the enquiry outwards.’
    Kim’s face remained stubborn, and it was hard for Fran to believe that this was simply the result of the anaesthetic. She’d hoped that, in the absence of DCIs, there’d be some experienced sergeant around to support the young woman, helping her develop skills and confidence, just as she always had mentored all the officers in her various teams. Caffy had referred to the late Simon as her protégé; she sometimes felt she’d peopled the senior ranks across the country with youngsters she’d nurtured – she didn’t need a shrink to know that they’d become her surrogate children. To pursue the analogy, perhaps Kim was going through the belated terrible twos, or whenever it was children started to argue with everything their parents wanted. Of course, Fran could simply remind her who was boss by giving a direct order, but that would soil their relationship from the start.
    â€˜Then, if you really think the case merits it, of course you can order work on the house,’ she continued, feeling as spineless as Mark in the face of his daughter. She regrouped immediately. ‘But remember that the chief was emphatic this morning that we had to count every penny. Paula’s already told you that the house has been gutted once. Believe me, had there been anything slightly amiss, those women would have summoned us. Don’t forget it was one of them who pointed out the present problem.’
    â€˜Even so, ma’am—’
    â€˜Quite. By the way, did Paula tell you we should be moving in on Thursday?’ she lied.
    Fran’s possibly innocent smile must have reminded Kim of a crocodile’s: paling visibly, the young woman said swiftly, ‘Paula said something about the place having been unnaturally clean of evidence. Do you think the owner knew what was in the garden and made sure they left nothing that would be any help to anyone coming across it?’
    This time Fran’s smile was genuine. ‘If I were you, that’s exactly the line of enquiry I would be pursuing. I can start you off. We bought it from a charity I’d never heard of, which was left it in the last owner’s will, though for the life of me I can’t recall her name offhand.’ Hell, was this what they called a senior moment? ‘They could do what they liked with quite a lot of land that lay with it, but they couldn’t sell the house for ten years.’
    â€˜Weird or what?’
    â€˜I’m afraid we wanted the place so much we hardly registered that anything might be dodgy. In the ensuing years, the place became pretty well derelict: it’s looking good, now, in comparison. We wanted to awaken Sleeping Beauty, as it were – but we might have poked a stick into a hornet’s nest, mightn’t we?’
    Kim nodded. ‘But it’s odd you weren’t curious. What was the charity?’
    â€˜Something to do with preventing the culling of badgers: I’ve got all the details back at the office, so it should be easy enough to find who left it to them – who is