BURIED CRIMES: a gripping detective thriller full of twists and turns Read Online Free Page B

garden. He’d brought in the dog unit that had proved so useful the previous year in the search of Charlie Duff’s land in Poole, but this too had revealed nothing. The bodies of the two young children were the only ones there. Thank God for that, he thought. Saturday’s discoveries had been grim enough, without more being found. He watched the technical team pack their kit away, then walked across to join Dave Nash in the forensic tent. A few bags of soil from the rudimentary graves were still stacked neatly to one side, awaiting transport to the labs. Barry had watched the large bulk of materials being dispatched earlier. It would take the forensic team some time to work their way through the soil removed from the immediate area of the double grave. He wondered if the process could be automated in some way. Probably there was no substitute, in the early stages anyway, to manually sifting the soil, with observant people looking for anything out of place.
    Marsh returned to the incident room at Dorchester police station. The computer systems should have been readied by now, prepared to start receiving the mass of data that would inevitably accumulate. In the boss’s absence, he would need to check that the administrative staff had structured the systems properly. DCI Allen had gone to London mid-morning, but had said nothing about the reason for her visit. His was not to reason why.

Chapter 3: The Worst Thing
    Monday lunchtime
     
    Harry Turner sat in a small alcove sipping his pint and wondering why he’d agreed to come. He’d cancelled a lunch date with a couple of cronies from the local chess club in order to be here. Maybe lunch date was the wrong term to use. In reality it had been more like an informal agreement to meet over a drink. He looked out of the window at the busy London traffic queuing up outside on its way past the bulk of Waterloo Station, taxis stuck behind a bus, forced to stop mid-road to unload passengers because a bakery van was parked in the bus pull-in. As he finally passed the van, the bus driver gave it a cheery wave. Surprising, thought Harry, wishing that some cheer could be directed his way.
    He took another sip of his beer and fought his way back through a forest of memories, to the final weeks before she’d left. The increasing sense of desperation that had engulfed him in those last days had taken him unawares. It had been obvious that she’d eventually move on, that her time with him would be limited, so he should have been prepared. But the human brain is a funny old thing, he thought. You can rationalise and reason things through until you’ve kidded yourself that you’ll cope, but when absence has become a reality, it knocks you for six.
    He missed everything about her. Her smile, her sense of style, her ability to say just the right thing and reflect back at him the very ideas that were formulating in his own brain. Her willingness to take risks, her determination and drive. No one had ever replaced her. No one could, not in his view. And in those bleak months after she’d left, he’d dragged himself home every day and wondered how he would cope. But, of course, he had. Just like she’d told him he would.
    ‘Harry,’ she’d said, ‘don’t be stupid. There’ll be others. You attract talent, really you do.’
    And she’d flung her arms around him and given him a long, farewell kiss on the cheek. If only she’d known. If only she’d realised what he’d really meant when he said he would miss her terribly. That he was referring to things that went deeper than the superficial words could convey.
    He could still remember the perfume she favoured. The heavy, dark, musky scent seemed to coil around her, particularly on that last day. He could almost taste it, all these years later.
    He felt a hand on his shoulder. So it wasn’t his brain playing tricks, she still wore the same perfume.
    ‘Hello, Harry.’
    He glanced up as she slid into the seat opposite. Would he be able