Disturbed Earth (Ritual Crime Unit Book 2) Read online

  Pierce nodded and held still as he brought the taper to the candlewick. It took a moment to properly catch, and then the humming noise that she’d been hearing all along took on a new, more piercing quality, like wind blown over the mouth of a milk bottle. Her hair fluttered against her forehead as if caught in a breeze, and the wooden taper in Cliff’s hand puffed out.

  She raised her voice above the sighing howl of the unnatural wind. “Is this—?”

  The candle flame abruptly flared, as if someone had poured petrol on the fire, and she jumped back as tongues of flames spewed forth from the devilish mouths.

  “Oh, dear,” said Cliff, turning to reach for the wall-mounted fire extinguisher with an air of calm resignation. “I think we should probably—”

  The flame leapt again, showering sparks, and thick black smoke began to billow forth, filling the room at an alarming rate. Pierce covered her mouth with her sleeve and grabbed for the door handle behind her, winning a twinge from her still-healing shoulder.

  “Cliff!” She meant to order him out, but her next words were swallowed by a cough. She turned to look at the door she was groping at—where the hell was the bloody handle?—but another flare of the candle flame at the corner of her eye made her turn to look.

  The room was already a shadowy haze, the grinning devil’s mask of the lantern leering at her through the growing smog. “Cliff?” She coughed harder, squinting through streaming eyes. A metallic thunk—the fire extinguisher striking something. Had he fallen?

  They had to get out of here. She slapped again at the door and finally managed to grab the handle, yanking it open and sending dark smoke coiling out into the corridor. She flapped her arm, ineffectually trying to waft more of it away. “Cliff! Get out of there!” She held the door open for him to follow, still coughing.

  “Hang on! Just let me—” His words collapsed into spluttering, but she heard the spurt of the fire extinguisher, and then the metallic clang as he let it drop to roll across the floor. She stepped back into the room and stretched to grab his arm, yanking him with her towards the door.

  “Go!” She shoved him out and then followed, pulling the door shut behind them to close off the smoke. They both collapsed against the wall, panting for breath. “All right?” she asked him, with a sideways glance.

  Cliff nodded, red in the face as he drew in sucking gasps of air.

  “Notice any subtle signs?” she asked him.

  He laughed, then doubled over, coughing. As office doors along the corridor cracked open, the fire alarm above them began to blare.

  Looked like work was going to be business as usual.

  CHAPTER TWO

  MEETING HER NEW boss at the fire assembly point outside the building probably wasn’t the best start their working relationship could have had, not least because it meant there were witnesses when he ordered her to accompany him to his office. The fact the looks were by and large sympathetic rather than smirking was more of a warning sign than a reassurance; apparently Superintendent Snow had made his own dubious first impression in the weeks that he’d been in charge.

  Pierce could well believe that; she’d known the man all of ten minutes, and already she wanted to punch him.

  Robert Snow was a tall man with an aquiline nose and hair that was well on its way to matching the surname. He had an upright, imperious bearing, and a long stride that he didn’t moderate to allow for her shorter legs as he led the way through the building. Pierce refused to scurry to keep up, following along at a comfortable walking pace. She was too old to get dragged into status games.

  If only that stopped other people from playing them at her.

  They reached the office that she still thought of as Superintendent Palmer’s. “Close that door, please,” Snow directed, taking his chair without explicitly offering her a seat herself. He straightened the papers and took out a pair of rectangular-framed glasses to set on his nose. Delaying tactics meant to remind her of her place, but Pierce was glad of the chance to compose a neutral face and take a glance around the office.

  It had been stripped of any trace of its former occupant’s personality—not that Palmer had ever shown much, a petty bureaucrat down to his toes. But she’d known the man more than a decade, and despite his regular griping about the RCU’s budget and its methods, he’d always had her back with his superiors when it counted.

  She’d been told he’d taken early retirement while she was on leave, and she was sure anybody she asked at the station would confirm it. The problem was, she wasn’t sure that the man they’d seen retire was the real Howard Palmer. When he’d visited her in the hospital... well, maybe it had just been paranoia to think that he wasn’t himself, to wonder at the absence of the silver watch he’d worn for years. But when her last case had proven that shapeshifters stealing others’ faces was more than just a myth, it was easy to be paranoid.

  A ringer masquerading as Superintendent Palmer could have done any amount of damage, making sure that unwanted evidence vanished, shutting down important lines of investigation before they could get anywhere. But with him already gone before Pierce could seek proof of her suspicions, she was left with a new and no less pressing question: just who was Robert Snow? A co-conspirator in the imposter’s cover-up, or just an innocent replacement brought in after the dirty deeds were done?

  Pierce studied his face, but it offered nothing except the stern patrician look of a man used to being the main authority in the room. He seemed to be waiting for her to speak, so she obliged him. “Did you have a chance to speak to Superintendent Palmer before he left, sir?” she asked. “I was wondering if you might know where he’d moved on to.”

  Snow’s face tightened just a fraction, nostrils flaring, though she wasn’t sure if it was a sign of tension or just irritation at the fact she was invoking his predecessor. “He retired, as I understand it,” he said coolly. “I believe after the loss of much of the RCU’s detective branch it was felt new leadership might be in order.”

  Was that dig aimed at her or Palmer? Probably both. Pierce gave the blandly neutral smile she’d perfected for senior officers. “Did he leave the area?” she asked. “Only I’ve been trying to get in touch with him, and he doesn’t seem to be at his old house.” Repeated phone calls and eventually a visit had brought her to an empty property. He’d been a single man: she hadn’t known him well enough to be aware of any friends or family, or if he had an ex-wife stashed somewhere, who might have been informed of any move.

  Her new boss’s blank indifference gave her nothing to latch on to. “I was told he stated his intention to move to the south of France,” he said, sitting back. “Now—”

  Pierce narrowed her eyes. “Really? I would have thought they’d want him to stick around for the investigation.” Police internal inquiries never moved that fast: not unless there was a cover-up. “Did he leave a forwarding address?”

  “Not with me,” Snow said, a curt, impatient close to the discussion. “Fortunately, his notes were very thorough. It seems he kept a tight rein over the officers under his command—although your department seems to have been a frequent exception.”

  “Well, we do handle exceptional situations, sir,” she said, focusing on the wall past his head rather than meeting his gaze. Snow had already managed to put up some framed photographs of himself with various local dignitaries.

  “I’m sure you do.” The faint curve of the superintendent’s thin lips made the neutral tone sceptical. “Nonetheless, however, you are a police unit, and there are regulations to be followed. The test this morning should never have been conducted without authorisation. We had to evacuate the building!”

  Pierce tried not to grimace. “Sir, the behaviour of magical artefacts is always going to be unpredictable,” she said.

  His bushy eyebrows crunched down low over his glasses. “Then perhaps tests with unpredictable outcomes should not be conducted within the environs of a working police station,” he said acidly.

  Aha, familiar gr
ound. “Well, sir, we’ve asked repeatedly for the research division to be given their own dedicated building with an on-site storage facility.” Not to mention a million other things that also weren’t going to happen. “Perhaps if you could put in a word with your superiors about the necessity—”

  As she expected, he cut her off with a harrumph. “Yes, well, that’s simply not practical. I’m afraid with the scale of the operation you mounted to catch this, er, shapeshifting pelt-maker last October—”

  “Skinbinder,” she supplied. He gave her a cold look over his glasses, as if more irritated than appreciative of being corrected on the proper term.

  “Quite. Well, with the expense and disastrous consequences of that operation and the addition of a new DI to the department, the RCU is not in any position to be requesting any further budget increases for quite some time.”

  Great. A budget injection just when she’d been in no position to advise on its distribution, and now she was stuck with an unnecessary DI clogging up the chain of command when she could have had two constables for the money.

  Was he expecting a response? Probably: Snow seemed like the type who liked to make his subordinates acknowledge him. “Yes, sir,” she said.

  He nodded wisely. “Now, as to the matter of the research department’s unpredictability, perhaps a greater degree of oversight is the answer. I understand the artefact being tested was not even part of an ongoing investigation?”

  “No, sir, but given the volatility of some enchanted materials we handle—”

  “Prioritise,” he said curtly. “I expect you to cut down on unnecessary experimentation: only research pertaining to open cases should be performed.”

  Which meant they’d never bloody learn anything new or useful that they could use to solve those open cases, but she could already tell that argument would get her exactly nowhere.

  “Yes, sir,” she said, instead.

  NOT THE MOST enlightening of interviews. Pierce couldn’t tell if Snow was stonewalling her for a purpose, or he was just your common-or-garden pain in the backside administrator. Lord knew she’d worked for more than a few, Palmer himself no exception. She’d respected the man more than she’d liked him—but nobody deserved the kind of fate that she darkly suspected he’d come to.

  Skinned so a shapeshifter could wear his face like a mask. It had happened to one of her officers, a lad no older than their latest squeaky clean rookie. At least she’d had the thin consolation of putting the skinbinder responsible behind bars.

  If only the same could be said about those who’d aided and abetted his crimes.

  Pierce was glad to step back into the RCU office, never short of teetering piles of work to keep her from dwelling on her thoughts.

  “Fire out now, Guv?” Deepan called with a cheeky grin as she arrived.

  “Metaphorically or literally?” she said, pulling out a chair. She’d never really had a formally assigned desk to be returning to; the office was always such a mess it was usually just a case of grabbing whichever position could be dug out with minimum excavation. “In both cases, mostly just a lot of smoke.”

  Probably best not to venture any more direct opinion of their new superintendent with Constable Freeman in the room. “So when did old Palmer retire?” she asked instead, keeping the inquiry deliberately casual. “Always thought he was Sellotaped to that chair.”

  She trusted Deepan, but she hadn’t told him of her suspicions. Even to her, it sounded like the vivid imaginings of someone who’d had a crappy week and too many hospital painkillers the last time she’d seen the man, and as time passed, her original certainty grew thinner. She needed proof before she went off spouting wild conspiracy theories that would make even her true friends think she’d lost it.

  Especially since there was always a chance that she had.

  “He was pretty stressed after you went on medical leave, Guv,” Deepan said. “Two large-scale busts within a week, officers killed and injured... There was a whole big inquiry. I swear we had new sets of people in asking us questions every week.” He shook his head. “I don’t know if they pushed him out or what—nobody really had much clue what was going on. We had some people in from Oxford RCU to hold the fort for the first month or so, except of course they didn’t know anything about our systems, and Oxford were pushing the whole time to get them back because they were understaffed... I don’t blame him for doing a runner. I’d probably have quit as well if I didn’t have two kids and a mortgage.”

  Pierce swivelled her chair around to face him. “Well, you don’t look like you’ve done too badly for yourself,” she said, with a nod that also encompassed Freeman. The young constable was sitting at her computer and doing a good job of looking like she was diligently working, but no doubt was earwigging as any smart detective should. “I know you got dropped in at the deep end, but it looks like you managed to keep the place from burning down around your ears.”

  “Unlike you, Guv,” Deepan said with a grin.

  “Unlike me.” She clapped her hands together. “All right. Give me a rundown of what we’ve got going on right now.”

  “Mostly, it’s been pretty small change, luckily,” he said. “Ritual graffiti, curse threats, small-scale dealing in restricted artefacts... we’ve acquired a bunch of druids who keep ringing up because some company bought up the land they use for their traditional solstice rites. Obviously a government conspiracy.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t be RCU without the cranks,” she said. Better watch she didn’t get a rep for being one of them.

  “We do have a couple of ongoing investigations, though,” he said, picking up a small stack of file folders and opening the topmost before handing them to her. “The main one is a string of artefact thefts, fairly professional jobs—they’ve hit a couple of museums and some well-guarded private collections. Definitely after reputedly magical items rather than in it for the money—they’ve left some more valuable pieces untouched, and none of the ones they’ve stolen have resurfaced on the market. Leads have gone cold, but we’re expecting them to strike again sooner rather than later.”

  “Interesting...” she mumbled, taking a glance through the contents of the first folder. Could just be a fanatical collector after pieces not on general sale, but in her experience, when you had some nutter collecting ritual artefacts, they were usually planning to do something with them.

  “This case DI Dawson’s just gone out on might be something, too,” Deepan added. “Possible ritual murder.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Pierce looked up from the folder she was reading.

  “Dog walker found a buried skull early this morning,” he explained. “Local police took a look, saw some signs that they thought might indicate ritualised burial, and called us in.”

  “Did they, now?” She set the folder down and stood up. “Well, I need to talk to Dawson anyway, and I’m sure you don’t need me getting in the way here while I catch up. Where’s the scene?”

  THE SKULL HAD been found in a field north of Bingley. Pierce could have identified the place by the sheer number of cars parked alongside even if some hadn’t had police markings. Small chance of finding witnesses to a spot of literal skulduggery out here amid the fields, at least not in December; come the summer, and you never knew your luck when it came to packs of ramblers stumbling over criminals.

  Too bloody grey and windy for anyone to be out walking today, if they had any choice in the matter. Pierce flashed her warrant card at the miserable looking PC by the dry stone wall and let herself in through the field gate.

  It was a struggle to drag it past the tall weeds that had grown up on both sides. Not used often, then. Certainly, there was bugger all of note about the field aside from the police presence near the trees at the far end. As she started up the uneven slope to join them, a youngish ginger-haired bloke in a cheap suit broke away from the pack to intercept her.

  “Um, excuse me, madam, but this is a crime scene,” he said, revealing an unmistakably Brummie accent.r />
  Was it uncharitable to bet that a male officer in plainclothes wouldn’t have been stopped and questioned? Though he bloody well ought to have been, so no point biting heads off. She’d kept the warrant card handy for this eventuality. “DCI Pierce. RCU,” she said.

  The young copper paled a bit. “Oh! Sorry, um, we thought you were going to be off until after Christmas,” he said.

  For a moment Pierce wondered if she’d become so notorious across the local forces they were keeping tabs on her medical leave, but then she caught on. “You’re one of the new RCU officers?” she said.

  He nodded hastily, obviously worried he’d made a bad first impression. “Constable Ed Taylor.”

  Oh, well, earnest and overzealous beat sloppy and cocky. She waved him on ahead of her with a nod. “I’m just here to check in,” she said. “Is DI Dawson around?”

  “Er, yes, ma’am, he’s overseeing the search for more remains.”

  Overseeing. Blimey. Maybe Taylor wasn’t the only one who was being a tad overzealous. Unless they’d turned up greater evidence of an imminent threat than a skull with a few ritual markings, the RCU’s role in the case should be purely advisory. Local police forces tended to get more than a bit shirty when you stomped in and started ordering their officers about, and the RCU was far too dependent on outside manpower to try playing ten ton gorilla.

  She followed Taylor up the hill towards the trees, where a group of police and forensics bods stood clustered around a marked-off excavation. Which one was Dawson? Her money was on the ruddy faced bloke with the receding crewcut who looked like he had an equal amount of fat and muscle stuffed under the tight-collared suit. The man next to him had a face like he’d just found a wasp in his chewing gum, so she pegged him as having been the officer in charge prior to RCU involvement.