Dead & Buried Read online

  Dead & Buried

  Adam Croft

  Contents

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  Books in this Series

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

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  Acknowledgements

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  * * *

  Adam Croft

  * * *

  For more information, visit my website: adamcroft.net

  Books in this Series

  Books in the Knight and Culverhouse series so far:

  1. Too Close for Comfort

  2. Guilty as Sin

  3. Jack Be Nimble

  4. Rough Justice

  5. In Too Deep

  6. In the Name of the Father

  7. With A Vengeance

  8. Dead & Buried

  * * *

  To find out more about this series and others, please head to adamcroft.net/list.

  1

  Zoran Petrovic and Milan Nikolic tried to shelter themselves from the cold as they waited for their pick-up.

  Milan had dreamed of living in England ever since he was a boy. He’d spend hours a week back in his home village of Ralja, just south of Belgrade, watching dubbed versions of British dramas. He adored the scenery, loved the customs and traditions. So far, he’d seen none of that.

  The man who’d introduced himself as Alexei promised them shelter, accommodation and the start of a new life in England. It wasn’t every day you got an offer like that, and Zoran and Milan had jumped at the chance.

  Their drivers were delayed, Alexei said. They’d be here as soon as they could, but they had some business to take care of first. Milan had tried to break the interminable silence by asking more about what the work entailed, but Alexei had been vague. All he’d told them was that it was in the hospitality industry.

  Alexei was Russian — Milan was fairly sure of that — and he knew that Russians could sometimes be a little abrupt and would only give vague responses. Milan didn’t mind too much. He was just pleased to have landed on his feet with a job. He wasn’t bothered what job it was. He’d wash pots and pans in a hotel kitchen if he had to. He’d go out in all weathers picking strawberries if it meant he had a chance to make a better life for himself. It was finally starting to come together, and he couldn’t wait.

  ‘Where is the work?’ Milan asked, speaking to Alexei in English. It seemed to be the only common language they had, although Alexei’s English wasn’t great. ‘Is it in a town or city?’

  Alexei took a drag on his cigarette, looked at Milan and blew the smoke out through his nostrils.

  ‘Yes. Town.’

  Milan nodded. ‘What is the town called?’

  ‘Small town,’ Alexei said.

  ‘Yes. What is the name of the town?’

  Alexei curled his nostrils slightly and stubbed his cigarette out on the brick wall behind him before speaking.

  ‘Mildenheath.’

  2

  Jack Culverhouse looked at the clock again. It was barely three minutes later than when he’d last looked, even though he’d told himself he was going to relax and stop worrying.

  Emily was at that awkward age: young enough for him to worry, but old enough that he couldn’t get away with stopping her going anywhere without him.

  Besides which, it would be hypocritical of him to claim he had to watch over her twenty-four-seven. He hadn’t been there while she was growing up, although he firmly believed that was no fault of his own. He couldn’t be blamed for his wife disappearing without warning and taking their daughter with her. His only guilt was in knowing he hadn’t made more of an effort to find them.

  He took a deep breath, picked up his phone and called Emily’s mobile number. It rang twice, then cut off halfway through the third ring and went to voicemail. Jack wasn’t the best with technology, but even he knew that being put through to voicemail that quickly meant Emily had seen and cancelled his incoming call.

  He tried to push back the anger and frustration, instead focusing his thoughts on the TV. He wasn’t paying any attention to what was going on, as much as he tried to listen to every word and ignore the thoughts running around in his mind.

  Emily had form. She’d — understandably — fallen in with the wrong crowd on a couple of occasions, and last year had started seeing a local boy by the name of Ethan Turner. Jack had risked his own job in looking up Ethan on the Police National Computer, but was pleased he had. Ethan had a record, and not one that made Jack think Ethan would be the perfect boy for his daughter to be involved with.

  Ever since then, he’d worried about the sort of people Emily might consider to be friends. He couldn’t blame her — he’d seen it all hundreds of times over in his years as a police officer. Young children, often with broken family backgrounds, tended to try and seek that missing bond and loyalty in a group of friends. Unfortunately, the desperate tended to gravitate towards groups with the lowest standards of entry.

  Jack had never considered that he might form part of a ‘broken family’. It had so often been touted as the downfall of British society, yet now he saw how easily it could happen. All it took was one last argument, one seed of doubt to be sown in an otherwise happy marriage.

  He’d never been there to protect Emily when he should have been. Those formative years in which the father plays a crucial role were now gone. He felt extremely fortunate that she hadn’t rejected him completely, and since Emily had returned to Mildenheath they’d enjoyed a positive — if tense — relationship.

  It often felt as though one false step or misunderstood comment could p
ut everything back to square one. But he couldn’t afford to look at things negatively. So far, so good.

  His biggest concern had come a few months earlier when he’d noticed what looked like scars from cut marks on the inside of Emily’s arms. He’d managed to refrain from bringing it up — they looked like old scars, and he’d resolved to keep an eye on her and look out for any signs that she might be doing it again. He’d seen nothing, and saw no positive reason to draw attention to something which had hopefully been consigned to the past.

  He managed to hold his attention on the documentary for a minute or so before his thoughts started to wander again. What if it wasn’t her who cancelled the call? What if the reason his texts had gone unanswered was because she didn’t have her phone, but it had been stolen by someone else. Perhaps she was with someone and didn’t want to be disturbed. Every conceivable possibility flashed through his mind — all of them except the perfectly innocent explanations, that is.

  Home was supposed to be a safe sanctuary for both of them. He’d barely been home from work an hour, and already he was feeling more stressed and highly-strung than he had all day at the office.

  Work was a constant battle, in more ways than one. Crime was rising in Mildenheath and the surrounding area at approximately the same rate as policing budgets were being cut. Whether the cuts had caused the rise in crime was purely academic — the more pertinent concern was that slashed budgets meant fewer resources with which to fight the soaring crime levels.

  What was more worrying was that Jack’s team dealt almost exclusively with murders, rapes and serious assaults. It wasn’t just burglary and so-called petty crime that was on the rise.

  He looked down at his phone. He wanted to call Emily again, but knew there was very little point. If she didn’t answer two minutes ago, she wasn’t going to answer now. He didn’t know what went through teenagers’ minds at times, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t the same when he was her age. His old mum would’ve locked him in his room for a week. That wasn’t an option with Emily. With Emily, he had to tread much more carefully.

  He heard the sound of a key in the front door and slid his phone down the side of the sofa before putting his feet up on the footstool in front of him.

  ‘Alright?’ he said as Emily walked through the living room to the kitchen.

  ‘Yeah, you?’

  ‘Not bad. Have a good day?’

  ‘Same, really. Nothing special.’

  Jack nodded, not taking his eyes off the TV. ‘Been anywhere nice? I tried to call you — I was going to do you some dinner.’

  ‘It’s alright. I’ve already eaten.’

  He clenched his teeth and swallowed.

  ‘Might’ve been nice if you’d answered and told me that. Then I would’ve known.’

  ‘Didn’t seem much point,’ Emily called from the kitchen. ‘I was only at the end of the road. No point wasting my battery.’

  He wanted to ask her where she’d been, who she’d been with, what she’d done, where she’d eaten. But he knew it was pointless. She’d either not tell him, lie to him or get upset that he was interfering in her life. He knew she had a right to her own privacy, but right now he was the only person looking out for her and he felt a sense of deep responsibility.

  ‘What was it, anyway?’ she said as she walked back into the living room and stood with her weight shifted on one hip, drinking a glass of orange juice.

  ‘Hmmm?’

  ‘Dinner.’

  ‘Spag bol. Thought I’d really push the boat out,’ he said, watching as she raised the glass to take another mouthful of juice, noticing the fresh cut marks on the inside of her forearm as she tugged her sleeve back down.

  3

  Wendy rolled over and looked at Xav. He always looked so peaceful when he slept. She’d have to wake him up for work soon, but she figured she could let him sleep a little longer.

  They’d tried to keep their relationship fairly casual, mainly for his sake. He’d been hurt in his last long-term relationship and neither of them had any major desire to rush into anything.

  Wendy knew only too well what it was like being with a police officer — she’d seen enough of her colleagues’ marriages fall apart to know that she didn’t want Xav to have the same resentment of her job. Besides which, Xav was a member of civilian staff based at county police headquarters and was actively looking to qualify as a specialist officer himself, so would soon enough realise what pressures police officers came under, both at work and in their private lives.

  Enough of Wendy’s colleagues and senior officers had told her she should put her career first. Maybe that was self-preservation on their part, but there was no arguing against the fact that she was a good police officer. Her dad had been a detective, too, reaching the rank of Detective Inspector before dying well before his time was up.

  If Wendy was honest with herself, it felt wrong for her to even consider outranking her father. Bill Knight had, she was told, been the best-loved officer at Mildenheath CID. His humour, charm and wit had only served to accentuate the fact that he was one of the area’s most successful police officers. There was no doubt he would have soared much further up the career ladder if not for his untimely death.

  From what Wendy had been told, her father always put his family first, and that was one of the reasons why he hadn’t surpassed the rank of Inspector. Friends and family spoke of his wasted talent, and their opinions that he could easily have made Detective Superintendent or higher. Wendy didn’t want people to speak that way about her after she was gone.

  An incident a few months earlier had put that all into perspective, though. Facing her own almost imminent death at the hands of a local ex-con, she had since wondered whether she should pursue her career progression.

  She’d already had to abandon her plans to take the exams once, which had given her mixed feelings. She couldn’t deny it had felt somewhat like a blessing in disguise and had backed up her theory that it was wrong for her to outrank her father. But her views on things were changing, and she was starting to wonder whether she should take the exams when the next openings occurred.

  She’d spent countless nights trying to analyse it all and figure out what might be driving these feelings, but she couldn’t. She wondered if perhaps her body was telling her she wasn’t far off being too old for marriage and children, and that she should focus on another goal instead. Not that a husband and kids had ever been a specific target she’d had — it was just something she expected, something she saw as a normal progression, but which had never happened.

  There’d been men, of course, but it had almost always ended in disaster. The last few years had been pretty barren on that front, apart from a brief relationship with a local accountant who’d ultimately become the final victim on the first serial murder case she’d investigated — a case which had landed far too close to home for her liking, in more ways than one.

  The closest she’d come to feeling anything approaching long-term comfort with a man was here and now with Xavier Moreno. It was still far too early to talk of any sort of commitment, although she was acutely aware that she wasn’t getting any younger.

  She’d never looked twice at a young mum walking down the high street with a pushchair. She didn’t get broody and wasn’t worried about her ticking body clock, but she knew that she didn’t have years to waste. It was an unfortunate fact that if she was going to have a family, it needed to happen within the next couple of years.

  That was the big word, though. If. Right now, Wendy didn’t know what she wanted. She was being pulled in different directions by different people, and each day brought with it a different perspective. Just as she thought she was ready to make a decision, something would happen to change her mind. That led her to think it was probably best she didn’t make any rash decisions just yet. She needed to be totally sure of what she wanted first.

  She rolled her head to look at the ceiling, wincing as the pain in her neck reminded her that her inju
ries hadn’t quite healed yet. She hadn’t told work that, though. She’d managed to get through her back-to-work medical through sheer bloody good acting. Certain movements still gave her pain, but that was to be expected. An ex-con plunging a kitchen knife into your neck tended to cause a bit of ongoing pain, she was sure. But she couldn’t bear it any longer. Sitting around the house on her own was sending her stir crazy, and she had to get back to work. Had to get back to the life she knew.

  She’d never been good at doing nothing, and there were only so many trashy novels she could bear to read. She wasn’t the sort of person who benefited from rest — she liked to get up and do things. The doctors had told her otherwise, and for a while she’d taken their advice, but she couldn’t stand it any longer. Besides which, she still had a decent stash of cocodamol in her wardrobe from a couple of years back, not to mention the supply they’d given her when she left hospital after the stabbing, so she was pretty sure that would take the edge off until she was fully healed.