Title: BURIED IN THE PAST
Author: HEATHER PECK
Genre: CRIME FICTION / THRILLER / MYSTERY
Book Blurb:
It’s Autumn 2020, and the nation is tentatively emerging from its first lockdown. Streets remain abnormally quiet even as businesses start to reopen. But anxiety still dominates this strange world and evil haunts the shadows.
Still desperately seeking two lost children, Greg is distracted by hare-coursers, vehicle thefts and a particularly reckless arsonist targeting farms. Then his investigation uncovers long buried crimes, and he’s hit by a personal disaster which will test his resilience to the limit.
Excerpt:
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.
Buy Links (including Goodreads and BookBub):
Why is your featured book a must-read in 2025?
Set in the unique landscape of Norfolk, from the Broads and beaches to the Brecklands and forests, this thriller evolves against the background of Covid 19. Recalling the restrictions and frustrations of that time, the tragedy but also the black humour, Greg Geldard and his team seek missing children and chase down a particularly reckless arsonist.
Book 7 in the award-winning DCI Greg Geldard Norfolk Mystery series
AVAILABLE AS PAPERBACK AND ON KINDLE FROM 16 JANUARY 2025
AND ARRIVING ON AUDIBLE SOON.
Giveaway –
One lucky reader will win a $100 Amazon gift card.
Open internationally.
Runs January 1 – 31, 2025
Drawing will be held on February 3, 2025.
Author Biography:
Heather Peck is the multi-award-winning author of the DCI Geldard Norfolk Mysteries and winner of the 2024 Page Turner Award for best crime novel, ‘Milestones’.
She has been both agricultural policy adviser and farmer, NHS Trust Chair and volunteer vaccinator. She lives in Norfolk with her partner and a menagerie of dogs, cats, hens and a rabbit.
Social Media Links: