About the Author

  Award-winning author Heather Peck has enjoyed a varied life. She has been both farmer and agricultural policy adviser, volunteer covid vaccinator and NHS Trust Chair. She bred sheep and alpacas, reared calves, broke ploughs, represented the UK in international negotiations, specialised in emergency response from Chernobyl to bird flu, managed controls over pesticides and GM crops, saw legislation through Parliament and got paid to eat Kit Kats while on secondment to Nestle Rowntree.

  She lives in Norfolk with her partner Gary, two dogs, two cats, two hens and a female rabbit named Hero.

  Also by Heather Peck

  THE DCI GELDARD NORFOLK MYSTERIES

  Secret Places

  Glass Arrows *

  Fires of Hate **

  The Temenos Remains **

  Dig Two Graves **

  Beyond Closed Doors

  Death on the Rhine (novella)

  Death on the Norwich Express (novella)

  Milestones (thriller)***

  BOOKS FOR CHILDREN

  Tails of Two Spaniels **

  The Pixie and the Bear

  The Animals of White Cows Farm

  *shortlisted for the East Anglian Book Award prize for fiction 2021

  **Firebird Book Award Winner

  ***Page Turner Book Awards 2024 best crime novel

  Buried in the Past

  DCI GREG GELDARD BOOK 7

  Heather Peck

  Published in 2025 by Ormesby Publishing

  Ormesby St Margaret

  Norfolk

  www.ormesbypublishing.co.uk

  Text copyright © Heather Peck 2025

  Author photograph by John Thompson 2021

  The right of Heather Peck to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 Sections 77 and 78.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the copyright holder.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination. Or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Page design and typesetting by Ormesby Publishing

  Dedication

  Most of this book is set in 2020.

  At that time the UK, like the rest of the world, was dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic.

  This had a profound impact on how everyone lived: the old and the young, the good and the bad.

  I have tried to reflect those difficult times in this book, which is dedicated to the memory of all who lost their lives and all who worked so hard to make things better.

  Acknowledgments

  My thanks to Gary for everything

  and many thanks yet again to my beta readers Geoff Dodgson, Alison Tayler and Gary Westlake for their constructive criticism and comments.

  This book is all the better for your help.

  Thanks also to Sharon Gray at CluedUpEditing for her meticulous and knowledgeable proof editing.

  And to Lizaa for the cover design.

  Contents

  Key Characters

  Glossary

  1. June 2020: a field near Downham Market, Norfolk

  2. July 2020: Norfolk Police HQ, Wymondham

  3. That evening: by the Bure.

  4. July 2020: a field near Downham Market

  5. July 2020: Greater Ormesby

  6. March 2018: Clapton, London

  7. July 2020: Welsh Farm, near Downham Market

  8. July 2020 – continuing underground

  9. July 2020 – frustrations and plans

  10. 2020 – profit from fire?

  11. April 2018 Clapton, London

  12. Late July 2020 – central Ormesby

  13. No comment

  14. April 2018 – Ormesby

  15. 29–31 July 2020

  16. April 2018 – Ormesby, a few days later

  17. 1 August 2020 – early hours

  18. May 2018 – Ormesby

  19. 31 July 2020

  20. May 2018 – Ormesby

  21. 30 July 2020 – Norfolk police HQ

  22. June 2018 – Ormesby

  23. 31 July–1 August 2020 – still underground

  24. 1 August 2020 – by the Bure

  25. June 2018 – Ormesby

  26. 1 August 2020 – evening

  27. 2 August 2020

  28. 2 August 2020 – outskirts of Norwich

  29. December 2018 – Ormesby

  30. 3 August 2020 – Norfolk police HQ

  31. 4 August 2020

  32. 4 August 2020 – evening

  33. Later that same evening

  34. 5 August 2020 – the early hours

  35. 5 August 2020 – morning

  36. 5 August 2020 – afternoon

  37. 6 August 2020 – confidential location near Norwich

  38. 6 August 2020 – afternoon

  39. 6 August 2020 – evening, near Elveden War Memorial

  40. 6 August 2020 – late evening near the Bure

  41. 7 August 2020 – early morning

  42. 7 August - Midday

  43. 7 August 2020 – afternoon

  44. Saturday 8 August 2020

  45. Saturday 8 August 2020 – late afternoon

  46. Saturday 8 August 2020 - in Attleborough

  47. Sunday 9 August 2020

  48. Sunday 9 August 2020 – disaster looms

  49. Monday 10 August 2020

  50. 10 August 2020 – leads and dead ends

  51. Tuesday 11 August 2020 – new directions

  Key Characters

  Norfolk police

  Chief Superintendent Margaret Tayler

  Main investigative team:

  DCI Greg Geldard

  DI Jim Henning

  DS Jill Hayes

  DCs Bill Street, Jenny Warren and Steve Hall

  Ned George – crime scene manager

  Yvonne Berry – deputy crime scene investigator

  Al Thorpe – recruit to forensic science

  PD Turbo – springer spaniel

  Police in Great Yarmouth:

  Sergeant Briscoe

  Constable Drake

  Suffolk police

  CI Pritty

  DI Chris Mathews

  DI Richards

  Legal services

  Frank Parker – Crown Prosecution Service

  Joseph Streeter and Kenneth Wood – solicitors

  Terence Batley-Shaw – magistrate

  Medical experts

  Dr Paisley – police pathologist

  Norfolk Children’s Services

  Lily North – case coordinator

  Helga Ratcliffe – foster mum

  Baddies

  Joanne Hamilton / Chalmers

  Nick Waters

  Ade Waters (Nick’s brother)

  Jacko Green

  Mick O’Hanlon

  Other participants

  Commander Fisher – Norfolk Fire Service silver command

  Mr Geldard senior – Greg’s father

  Bobby – Greg’s cat

  Tally – Chris’s foul-mouthed parrot

  Karen and Jake Mirren – children

  Tim Simmons – friend of Karen and Jake’s mother

  Diana Grain – teacher friend of DS Jill Hayes.

  Hamish Grey – Leyton Farm’s estate manager

  Jeff and Jane Wyatt – proprietors of Welsh Farm

  Bob Chalmers – ex-partner of Joanne Hamilton

  Glossary

  ANPR automatic number plate recognition

  ATV all-terrain vehicle

  CCTV closed circuit television

  Chaser bin grain cart with built-in auger, used to collect grain from a combine and transfer it to bulk transport

  GPR ground-penetrating radar

  ITU intensive therapy unit

  ‘leccy bill’ slang for electricity bill

  Nightingale courts temporary courts set up in response to the Covid-19 pandemic

  TWOC taking without consent (also ‘twocking’)

  1

  June 2020: a field near Downham Market, Norfolk

  It was that point in the evening which the poetic might call crepuscular. To the four men, unloading dogs and other equipment from two battered pickups, it was the perfect moment between dark and light. Dark enough to obscure their presence, light enough to set up the course. One of the pickups, the black Ford Ranger, drove off across the wide, gently rolling field, the driver careless of the extraordinary damage the tyres were doing to what had been intended for a future as garden turf. Over by the hedge, the dark grey Toyota had been joined by two more 4×4s and more men got out. Cans of beer were passed around, and voices raised as the men relaxed. Two brindle greyhounds and a large grey lurcher were released from crates in the back of the Toyota and inspected. Bets were placed.

  The three dogs were pulling on their leashes, eager to get going on their evening’s ‘sport’, when the scene was suddenly floodlit by a large spotlight mounted on a tractor approaching at speed along the lane by the field’s edge. Some of the men got back into their cars in a hurry and prepared for a rapid departure. The two by the Toyota pulled what could only be
described as cudgels from the back of their vehicle and approached the tractor, swinging the thick, wooden clubs gently to and fro. The three dogs, kept in the background by a thickset man in a torn camouflage jacket, were still pulling on the leads and the lurcher uttered a sharp bark.

  The two men with the cudgels stood boldly in the bright spotlight, side by side. Both wore dark jackets and trousers and had pulled balaclavas over their faces. The man, or men, in the tractor were invisible behind their bright light. A voice spoke from behind the light.

  ‘I’m filming this, and I’ve called the police. Get your dogs and get off my land. And don’t come back.’

  One of the men outlined by the brilliant light suddenly swung his cudgel harder, then round in a loop and let go. It flew through the air, hit the tractor-mounted light with a crash, and plunged the scene into a relative darkness, now lit only by headlights. The small crowd observing in the background cheered and laughed, emboldened by alcohol and anonymity. In the new dim light, the two men walked forward. Across the wide field, the black Ford pickup turned and began to move toward them, lights out but engine roaring menacingly.

  ‘That’s two mistakes you’ve made,’ shouted the older of the two men in balaclavas. ‘One,’ – and he held up a finger – ‘coming here at all; and two,’ – he held up a second – ‘ringing the police, if you have.’ He swung his club again, passing it from hand to hand. ‘Now, I suggest you back up this lane and fuck off, unless you want both your legs broken and your barn burned.’

  A silence fell, broken only by the approach of the Ford. When it drew up alongside in a spatter of mud and grass, the tractor was still sitting silent and dark in the lane. With the spotlight out, it was now possible to see the shapes of two figures in the cab.

  ‘I don’t see any blue lights!’ shouted the man with the cudgel. ‘Time to bugger off.’

  Two more men got out of the second pickup and ranged themselves alongside the first two. There was a muttered conversation, then the four of them spread out and moved forward, as though to enfold the tractor in a bracket of menace. As they got closer, the tractor jerked into motion and reversed slowly down the lane.

  The men continued to walk forward and were about to scramble through the thin hedge when a shout from the group behind them drew their attention. Now they could all see the flicker of blue lights reflecting on the cloudy sky. With loud curses, three of them turned and piled into the Ford’s cab. The fourth, the man with the cudgel, ignored the shouts to him to follow and hurry up about it. He had a last word for the farmer in the tractor.

  ‘Your legs and your bloody barn, don’t forget,’ he shouted. ‘I won’t.’

  The Ford’s wheels spun on the battered turf then, with a flourish of soil, the tread gripped and it bucketed away over the field. The last man ran for the break in the hedge where the Toyota sat waiting. The figure in camouflage gear was still holding three dogs, now baying like the hound of the Baskervilles.

  ‘Shove ’em in the crates, quick,’ said the burly man as he headed for his truck, keys in hand. ‘Come on. Hurry it up.’

  The dog man rushed his task, then ran for the passenger door, but too late. With the tractor blocking one end of the lane and the police approaching from the other, the burly man made a snap decision and drove the Toyota across the field as fast as the terrain would allow, to make an escape over the hedge at the far side. As it jolted over the ruts made earlier by the Ford, the incompletely fastened crate door in the back flew open and the lurcher jumped out. The dog handler, abandoned by his mates, stood irresolute for a crucial moment, and realised that the opportunity to leg it across the field had passed. When the police cars pulled up in the lane, they were joined by one tractor and one friendly grey lurcher. Blinded by their own lights, they didn’t see the remaining man slide slowly, with all the guile of the practised poacher, into the nettle-bounded ditch.

  2

  July 2020: Norfolk Police HQ, Wymondham

  There were three faces round the table in the Chief Superintendent’s office. All were equally gloomy. DCI Greg Geldard, head of Norfolk Serious Crimes, opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again and heaved a huge sigh. He flipped over the list of cases-pending on the table in front of him. At the far end of the conference table, his boss Chief Superintendent Margaret Tayler waited with bated breath. She didn’t bate it for long.

  ‘You were going to say something, Greg…’ she prompted.

  Greg took a breath to sigh again, caught Margaret’s eye just in time and converted the sigh into words.

  ‘I think we’ve said it all before,’ he said. ‘The situation was bad before Covid. It’s now a hundred times worse, and opening a few courts, with serious limitations on what they can do, isn’t going to make it much better.’

  ‘At least Norwich Crown Court reopens this month,’ said Frank Parker from the other end of the long table, trying to look on the bright side.

  ‘Using two courts for each case, if what I hear is correct,’ replied Greg. ‘That’s not going to make much difference to our backlog. Is there no chance we might get one of these new Nightingale courts in the east?’

  ‘Not as far as I’ve heard.’ Frank sighed too. ‘And even if we did, it wouldn’t help these cases.’ He tapped the files in front of him. ‘The advice is that they can’t be used for cases where the defendants are in gaol or likely to be sent there, because of the lack of secure cells. So that excludes all these.’

  ‘Not our problem.’ Margaret summed up her point of view briskly. ‘I appreciate that you in the Crown Prosecution Service are having a bad time, Frank, but from the police point of view, we’ve done our bit. In every one of these cases, we’ve got the evidence to convict, and we’ve taken dangerous felons off the street. I agree, these delays in delivering justice are unfortunate but there’s no point stressing over what we can’t help. We didn’t create the pandemic, and it wasn’t our fault there were already a lot of delays in the system before Covid made things worse.’

  ‘To be fair,’ interrupted Frank defensively, ‘there have been a lot of cases, particularly at magistrates’ court level, where things didn’t go as smoothly as we’d all like because of mix-ups over paperwork or prisoners.’ He was careful not to catch Margaret’s eye and hunched his, already round, shoulders as though anticipating an aggressive response.

  Margaret glared. ‘Be that as it may,’ she said, ‘that’s not the case here. And you can take my word for it, Greg will make sure that all his ducks are in a row when the Red Pentney murder cases do eventually make it into court.’

  Greg noted that she made that sound more like a threat than a prediction. Investigating the murder and attempted murder committed by ‘Red’ Pentney had not been straightforward; not least because of his involvement with a civilian member of Norfolk police staff. He was now languishing in gaol, but Greg could understand Margaret’s worry about the potential embarrassment of procedural cock-ups!

  ‘In the meantime, we hear what you say, but we have a lot of work on, and if there’s nothing we can help you with immediately…’

  Frank took his dismissal with good grace and not a small helping of relief.

  Once they had the room to themselves, Margaret turned to Greg. ‘As you’re here and we don’t meet face to face very often these days, bring me up to date on your current workload,’ she requested.

  Greg had been anticipating the request. At his location, halfway down the long side of the conference table, he had the advantage of acres of shiny wooden space. He used it now to spread out the piles of files he’d brought with him.

  ‘I’ve grouped them into four categories,’ he responded. ‘We’ve touched on the first already: the cases where we’ve prepared the evidence for court and are just waiting for a slot. These include the two Pentney murders, the associated charges for the unauthorised disclosure of information and aiding and abetting blackmail, and the drug and blackmail cases against Helen Gabrys. The two women are out on bail, Pentney himself is safely tucked away in the Bure prison.

  ‘The second pile is the priority cases, top of these being the hunt for the missing Mirren children. As you know, they both disappeared the day their father set fire to the family home in an attempt to hide the death of their mother. Were the father still with us he would be facing a charge of manslaughter at best, and murder at worst, as well as arson and aggravated assault. As it is, I’m very worried about those two children. They fled the family home in the early hours of 27th March, got on a bus to Greater Ormesby, and haven’t been seen since.’