Disturbed Earth (Ritual Crime Unit Book 2)

by E. E. Richardson

  Jill tapped the side of her nose confidentially. “I was regrettably distracted when you came in,” she said.

  “Very regrettable,” Pierce said. “You should be careful with that. Anybody could sneak up the stairs while you weren’t paying attention.” She proceeded to do just that.

  The rest of her team had beaten her to the office, all looking tired but present and correct. She stuck her head in for long enough to confirm that nothing more of significance had happened at the woods after she’d left, then moved along to Magical Analysis.

  “New skulls. Anything?” she asked Jenny, leaning in through the doorway of her office.

  Jenny shook her head. “Preliminaries suggest they’re the same as the others, and after the last one exploded...”

  “Kid gloves?” she presumed.

  “And a blast shield.” She shrugged. “You might have better luck going through regular forensics, I’m afraid—looks like mixing any magic with the existing enchantments is too chancy, so there’s really not much more that we can do.”

  Pierce pressed her lips together unhappily. “I’m not sure we have that kind of time,” she said. “According to Cliff, the clock is ticking: D-Day in three days.”

  Jenny gave her an apologetic grimace. “I’m studying the bone fragments from yesterday,” she offered. “Carefully. So far nothing’s gone boom, but it hasn’t got us anywhere either.” She shook her head. “If you need results fast, I don’t think they’re going to be coming from us.”

  A check-in with Cliff revealed much the same prognosis. Excavation of the Silsden site had revealed a set of three skulls seemingly identical to those dug up at Bingley, right down to the dimensions of the triangular pattern in which they were arranged.

  “If they’re that carefully arranged, the sites can’t have been chosen at random,” she said. “What links a farmer’s field in Bingley with a patch of trees in Silsden?”

  Cliff shrugged at her. “The Leeds and Liverpool canal?” he offered, somewhat facetiously.

  “I doubt we’re looking for a canal boat operator.” All the same, she found herself turning the idea over in her mind, pondering the idea of water as a boundary, the fact that running water was supposed to contain magic... She discarded the idea still half-formed. Constructing links was easy. Finding one that genuinely meant something was different. The trouble with having only two points to connect was that you could draw a line between them almost any way you pleased and get a pattern that seemed to fit.

  All the same, she had to try. Pierce stuck her head into the Arcane Documents office. “Bingley. Silsden. What connects them? Cliff’s already done the canal joke.”

  Their second document tech, Kevin, stared at her blankly from over the pages of the book she’d roused him out of. “Er... will this be on the test?”

  She flapped a hand, dismissing the longshot question. “Probably not your department, but if you get a minute, see if you can find anything connecting the map references of our two skull locations.”

  He nodded, continuing the polite fiction that any of them ever had a spare minute that wasn’t already accounted for by a dozen active cases. He almost resumed his reading, and then his head jerked back up. “Oh! Fatima had a thing for you,” he remembered. He moved to fetch a book from the table across the office and squinted at the Post-it note stuck to it. “Francis Maundrell...?”

  It took Pierce a moment to switch mental gears. “Oh, yes. Seventeenth-century warlock, artefact thefts. This is one of Deepan’s cases.” She took the proffered book, an elderly hardback with a tattered cover titled Mystical Traditions of the Moorlands. “Cheers, Kev,” she said, flicking through to the marked pages even as she moved away. He gave a vague mumble in response, already preoccupied with his own reading.

  She drifted back along the hallway slowly, skim-reading as she went. Blah, blah, blah, born 1638, reputation as a warlock, chapel on the family estate alleged to have been used for sacrificial rites, burned down by a mob 1672... Traces of the ruins still possible to find. She straightened up, glancing first at the black and white photo showing a few overgrown partial walls, and then at the publication date in the front of the book.

  Ruins of the chapel at Maundrell’s ancestral home had still been possible to find as of around forty years ago. Assuming they hadn’t been bulldozed and turned into a supermarket by now... Pierce raised her head as she reached the RCU office. “Deepan! Might just have a lead for you on your theft case,” she said.

  SHE AND DEEPAN headed out to the site of the former Maundrell family estate with DC Taylor in tow. “There may not be much left for us to find,” Pierce cautioned as they drove, having read through the pages more thoroughly. “The ruins were in a poor state when the author of this book visited them in the early ’seventies, and they don’t seem to have been considered particularly important outside of the beardy weirdy sect.”

  “‘Beardy weirdy,’ Guv?” Taylor echoed with careful pronunciation, as if it was a technical term he might be expected to define later.

  “The likes of our druid friends we left back in the station car park,” she clarified. At least she’d been forewarned of the press presence this time, and sent Deepan to fetch the car and bring it round. She wasn’t convinced that young Constable Taylor would manage to make his way through a media gauntlet without freezing up like a rabbit in the headlights.

  Deepan gave her a small, wry smile in the rear-view mirror. “I think we call them ‘alternative worshippers’ these days, Guv,” he said.

  “We call them a number of things, depending on how much of a pain in the backside they’re being,” she said. “But in fairness to them, they’re generally harmless. Like to wander around sites of alleged ritual significance and prance around soaking up the vibes in the hope they’ll become magical without having to do anything.” She’d rarely known a group like that with enough discipline to actually work any large scale rituals. “They’re the only ones likely to have ever heard of the Maundrell name, let alone come looking for the ruins.”

  “Aside from our thieves,” Deepan said.

  “Hopefully.” The thieves seemed to know more about Francis Maundrell’s life than this book did—no mention in here of any of the artefacts that had been stolen—so it was likely they were at least aware that the chapel had existed. Her experience said that they would probably want to see it, touch it, stand where Maundrell had stood, even if there was nothing to be found.

  So, not so different from the beardy weirdies, after all, really. Everything a matter of degree.

  The satnav program on Taylor’s phone chimed in with the instruction to take a right. “I hope that thing knows where it’s going, because we’re out in the back of beyond here,” she said, peering out of the car’s side window. “What was the name of the people that owned the land?”

  She heard Taylor riffle papers in the passenger seat. “Er... Rural Treat Cottages, Guv. There’s a farm and two separate sets of holiday cottages. We couldn’t get anybody on the phone.”

  “Might not be anyone in residence at this time of year.” There would probably be caretakers, but they’d be concerned with potential squatters in the properties, not visitors to burned-out ruins elsewhere on the land. “We’ll see if we can find anybody at the farmhouse.”

  Their knocking received no response, but the woman in the village shop was happy to chat. “Oh, they’ll be in Florida, this time of year, most likely. Barbara’s sister lives out there, and they’ve got a place. All right for some. Not that I’d like it out there—can’t stand the heat.” She tucked her shawl tighter about herself. “Of course, I can’t take the cold these days, either. It’s a bugger getting old. Is there a problem?”

  “Nothing serious,” Deepan said with a reassuring smile. “We just received information that there might be trespassers. Would you know anything about ruins on the property?”

  “Oh, the old chapel?” she said. “Well, that’s what we used to call it when I was a girl—not much of it left,
of course, even then. The ruins are down past that wooded bit on the other side of the hill, though you’d probably have to poke about a bit to find them. It’s all overgrown these days. Used to be the thing for teenagers to spend the night there as a dare, but I suppose they’ve got better ways to amuse themselves these days. Is it ghost hunters you’re after?”

  “We’re not sure at this point,” Deepan said, somehow keeping his place in the rapid flood of words. “It may be nothing.”

  “Ah, well, you’d best go on over and have a look, then,” she said. “Barb and Jimmy don’t mind people wandering the place, but they don’t want anybody setting up residence. Had some campers set up in their field once—left the place littered with beer cans and all kinds of rubbish, can you believe it? You’d be amazed how many people just don’t seem to grasp that a country field still belongs to someone.”

  They managed to extricate themselves from her over-friendly grip and followed the vague directions to the ruins.

  “All right, they’ve got to be somewhere around here,” Pierce said as they passed what she presumed to be ‘that wooded bit.’ “Let’s spread out and search.” She swallowed her first instinct to tell the others to stay in sight: couldn’t let yesterday’s events make her too jittery.

  The wooded bit in question didn’t so much come to a defined end as gradually peter away into more widely dispersed trees and bushes. The rise and fall of the land made it hard to survey the area without actually walking it, especially when they weren’t sure how much of a ruin they were looking for. After the first few minutes, Pierce was wishing that she hadn’t left the book back in the car: even an outdated photograph would have given them some aid in getting their bearings.

  It was Taylor who spotted the ruins first, calling out from somewhere behind the rise off to her left. “Guv, Sarge, I think I see—oh, shit,” he said abruptly. “We’ve got a runner!”

  A figure in jeans and a combat jacket burst out from the trees ahead of them, taking off across the hills at a fast sprint.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  PIERCE BROKE INTO a run at Taylor’s shout, but she was still feeling the effects of the past few days’ battering, and Deepan was further away across the hillside. By the time she’d puffed up to the top of the steep slope, DC Taylor was well ahead of both of them, in pursuit of a suspect who was fast outdistancing him.

  “Deepan! He’s coming round the hill!” she shouted down to him as he raced up behind her, but even as he altered course, the running man did the same, turning towards another clump of trees a short distance ahead. She glimpsed the white paint of a vehicle through the sparse branches.

  “Fuck, that’s the van—don’t let him get to it!” she shouted to Taylor. The DC found a burst of speed from somewhere, lanky limbs windmilling, but the suspect was already well ahead, shoving through the trees to reach the van.

  Taylor closed the distance as the man scrambled in and started up the vehicle, but it coughed to life and drove off before he could catch up, bumping away across the hilly ground. Pierce tried to get a look at the number plate, but the trees and the vehicle’s erratic bouncing made it impossible.

  Taylor chased another dozen paces before it sank in that he was just wasting his time. He stumbled to a halt. “Sorry, Guv, not going to catch him now,” he panted, shaking his head as she jogged up to him. “Couldn’t get the registration either—it’s covered up by mud.”

  “Bollocks,” Pierce said wearily, as the van hurtled away down the hill to rejoin the road. Probably just more fake plates in any case. They couldn’t get back to the car in time to make a chase of it, and there was little point in calling for support from local units: they’d take a while to get out to anywhere this rural, and by then the van could have been ditched or lost among any number like it. She doubted they’d have much luck finding cameras along the route, either.

  “All right,” she said, gathering her own breath. “Let him go. Let’s just hope he left something behind.” Their suspect might have got away, but he hadn’t had the chance to do his housekeeping before he left.

  She descended the slope towards the ruins of the old chapel. It required foreknowledge to recognise what she was looking at: there really wasn’t much more left than the crumbled corner of a wall and some fallen rubble, half swallowed up by ivy and brambles.

  But then she spotted the camo fabric behind the last standing wall, and realised they’d hit paydirt after all. “There’s a tent!” She reached for her crime scene gloves.

  The tent was small, but could still have taken two, and might have done so: one rumpled sleeping bag lay stretched out, apparently used, while another had been chucked in a corner, still rolled up inside the drawstring cover. She inventoried the rest of the tent’s contents. A basic camping stove and several days’ worth of food and drinks cans—all energy drinks, no sign of alcohol. A discarded T-shirt and some balled up socks.

  And a suitcase, laid flat on the ground. Pierce lifted the lid, and saw that the inside was packed with white fabric: not just clothing, but something bigger, like a sheet.

  Who brought bedding along on a camping trip? She carefully drew the topmost layer of cloth away. Nestled beneath she saw a wooden cup; as she tugged more of the fabric aside, a dagger in a leather sheath was revealed, and then the wooden mask from the Hemsfield Gallery. Pierce started to smile.

  “Gentlemen!” she said expansively. “It seems that this has not entirely been a cock-up.”

  IT WAS A result at last, but not quite the decisive one Pierce might have hoped. They’d recovered what looked the full set of stolen artefacts, but the fact was that the value of the pieces in question was relatively negligible: their main concern was preventing the thieves from striking anywhere else. They could only hope the hastily abandoned site would yield some further clue that would help them trace whoever had been camped there.

  She left Deepan and Taylor to await the arrival of forensics and headed back to the station on her own. She could report this to the superintendent as a win, but she doubted it would be enough of one for him. Snow struck her as a man who didn’t much like being left with inconvenient loose ends.

  Like, for instance, those bloody druids. Their tents were still taking up one end of the station car park, and she could swear the group had even gained in number, probably bolstered by the excitement of getting some media attention for their cause. At least the journalists had given up and gone by now, though it was too much to hope the lack of police statement would stop them from running with what they already had.

  And what they had was far more than they should. She’d like to know who’d spilled the beans, but the last thing they needed was to worsen their relations with the local police still further by throwing accusations around. Maybe someone was trying to drop the RCU in it for getting their officers hurt and killed—unprofessional as hell, but she couldn’t exactly blame them for being angry. She and her team had fucked up at both of the skull scenes, and the fact she couldn’t really see how it could have been avoided at Silsden didn’t make for that much consolation.

  Done was done. Couldn’t plug a leak that had already done its leaking—best to just let it go, and hope like hell it didn’t prove to be ongoing. This case was enough of a disaster already without having every detail splashed across the newspapers.

  Deciding reporting their partial success to Snow could wait until he called her in to speak to him, she headed back up to the RCU office. Freeman looked up from her computer as she came in. “Find anything at the chapel site, Guv?” she asked.

  “We recovered the artefacts, but the thieves got away,” Pierce said.

  “Oh, well, that’s... sort of good?” Freeman offered uncertainly.

  “‘Sort of good’ about sums it up,” she said, dropping into her seat with a sigh. She logged back in and squinted warily at the horror that was her inbox. Only a few things flagged ‘urgent,’ at least, none of which looked like they really were. “Any trouble with the media?” she asked. They mi
ght have disappeared from the doorstep, but that probably only meant they’d moved on to trying their luck with the phones.

  “We had a bunch of calls this morning, but Inspector Dawson talked to them in the end,” Freeman said.

  Oh, God, that didn’t bode well. Pierce could feel the headache settling over her temples. “Dawson talked to them? What did he say?”

  Freeman’s forehead wrinkled with concern, as if she thought it should have been her job to corral her idiot superior. “Er... just reassurances, mostly,” she said. “The RCU is on the case, we expect to have results very soon.”

  Yes, definitely a tension headache. “Oh, well, that’s just bloody wonderful,” she said, rubbing the back of her neck. “You tell the media ‘soon,’ they take it as licence to ring you up every fifteen minutes and demand to know why you haven’t solved the case yet.” She glanced around. “Where’s Dawson now?”

  Freeman still had that slightly cringing look, as if she thought any unwanted news she had to report might reflect back on her. “He went to meet an informant. Someone called saying they wanted to speak to us about the skull case, but it had to be in person.”

  “And he went, without speaking to me?” She might have to downgrade her opinion of the man to something stronger than ‘bull-headed idiot.’

  Freeman grimaced apologetically. “I asked if I should inform you, but he said it wasn’t necessary.”

  Then perhaps she should have disregarded that... but Pierce bit back any urge to say as much. Giving that kind of order could lead nowhere good, no matter how much she might personally dislike Dawson’s presence in her chain of command. Let Freeman learn to judge for herself when she should or shouldn’t listen to a superior being a prat.

  “Let me guess, he didn’t take any backup with him either.” She didn’t wait for the predictable answer to that. “How long ago did he leave?”

  “The meet was set up for one o’clock, but he left early so he could keep a lookout for the bloke arriving.”