Disturbed Earth (Ritual Crime Unit Book 2)

by E. E. Richardson

  She hadn’t given Dawson that order, but fair enough; it was a reasonable assumption, and she supposed she could be magnanimous considering he’d just saved her from getting stabbed and been nutted in the face for his trouble. “Are we waiting for a solicitor?” she asked.

  “Didn’t want one,” Arthur said with a shrug. “And after we went to the trouble of offering all nicely, too.”

  “Cocky.” Or more likely, just not planning on saying a single thing. Oh, well, they already had him bang to rights, so anything else they could squeeze out was bonus information. And assuming he was a fanatic or a nutter as he seemed rather than a professional killer, the odds were good they’d be able to provoke him into saying something.

  To give Dawson his due, he was definitely good at being provocative.

  Pierce saw her DI coming along the hallway from the cells and moved to intercept him before he reached the interview room. He lowered the ice pack he was holding to his nose. “Going to do the interview now, while he’s still full of adrenaline.” he said.

  And more apt to react without thinking. Pierce nodded. “All right. I want to be in there with you,” she said, moving towards the door.

  He frowned at her. “That wise? You’re the one he was after.”

  “We can handle an aggressive prisoner.”

  “Maybe, but there’s no guarantee he’s going to talk as easily with you in there with us.”

  She sucked her lips back over her teeth, reluctantly aware that he was right. “All right,” she said, letting her breath out in a sigh. “You go in, see what you can get out of him—if that gets us nowhere, then I’ll try my luck.” She doubted their prisoner was going to be cooperative either way. “Let me just call Deepan down to sit in with you.” If she couldn’t sit in on the interview herself, she could at least make sure there was a voice of moderation in there as her representative.

  On that, however, she was doomed to disappointment, since it seemed Deepan and Freeman were out dealing with a potential animal sacrifice down in Barnsley. The only one she had left available was DC Taylor, who she doubted would do anything to keep Dawson reined in. She was already second-guessing her agreement to step out and let the DI handle things, but it would probably cause friction to go back on it now. “All right, get down here,” she told Taylor.

  The prisoner was brought through to the interview room; Dawson stepped in front of Pierce protectively as he approached, which she supposed was reasonable under the circumstances but still raised her hackles. But the prisoner showed no visible reaction to her presence: no hint of getting aggressive, nor even any sort of negative emotional response to the fact that she was still standing after he’d failed to stab her earlier.

  As if there hadn’t been any real hate or resentment driving the crime, and he wasn’t particularly bothered to have failed. Her instincts prickled. Something didn’t add up here, but they had too few pieces of the puzzle yet to see what didn’t fit.

  She turned as Taylor arrived to join them. “Right. Prisoner’s gone in,” she said, jerking her head at the interview room door. “Identity and motive unknown—all we know is that he was among the group of druids and decided that he felt like stabbing a copper. You and Dawson see if you can get more out of him.”

  “Yes, Guv.” Taylor nodded sombrely. He moved to follow Dawson through into the interview room, but stopped short as his gaze fell on the prisoner inside. He turned back towards her, his eyes widening. “Guv, that’s the bloke!” he said.

  She frowned in confusion. “What bloke?” she said.

  “The bloke I was chasing at the chapel ruins yesterday! The one who got away in the white van.”

  “That’s one of our artefact thieves?” Pierce peered through the doorway at their prisoner again. Still a nameless, nondescript white bloke—but now one who came with a context to his seemingly meaningless crime. She started to smile. “Right, then. Let’s find out what this gentleman can tell us,” she said.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  GIVEN THAT, IF anything, their artefact thief should have more of a grudge against DC Taylor than her personally, Pierce opted to join his interview after all, though she stood at the back and let Dawson do the talking. She was still convinced that something about this attack didn’t add up: it didn’t fit with what they knew of the artefact thieves and their tactics. Had the knife attack been a fumbled attempt to take her hostage and ask for the artefacts returned? Her attacker had to have known that it couldn’t end well.

  Or maybe just he’d been too obsessed to see that much. Something about this ‘John Brown’ was triggering her alarm bells: he was too calm—not just overconfident, but serenely self-assured in a way that she associated with fanatics and cultists.

  And people who were sure that they knew something that she didn’t.

  “We know you were at the ruins of Francis Maundrell’s family estate yesterday,” Dawson said. “We know that you were in possession of stolen artefacts from multiple different thefts, and driving a vehicle matching the description of one spotted at the latest scene.” A bit tenuous considering that description was ‘white van,’ but when it came to convincing a suspect that the case against them was airtight, every little helped. “We also know you just attempted to stab a senior police officer in broad daylight, on CCTV, in front of a whole crowd of witnesses.” He sat forward in his chair, staring the man down. “Maybe it’s time to start thinking about how you can earn yourself a little bit of goodwill.”

  Brown met his eyes with an affable smile. “Maundrell was a genius, a philosopher of magic,” he said. “It’s wrong for his works to be chained, locked away in storerooms instead of being used for the grand purpose they were made for.”

  “But it’s fine to stab a police officer. Okay,” Dawson said flatly.

  Brown gave a casual shrug. “No one was stabbed,” he said pleasantly.

  “So you’re only looking at attempted murder,” he said. “That’s not going to help you much. You know what will? If you can tell us about your accomplices. We know you weren’t working alone on those thefts. How many others? Give me names.”

  Brown only smiled.

  “No?” Dawson said, cocking his head. “All right. Then how about you tell me what you were planning to do with all those artefacts you stole. Having yourselves a little ritual recreation? Playing at being mighty wizards?”

  That brought the first flicker of an annoyed frown. “We stole nothing. Maundrell’s works were liberated from the hands of heretics.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?” Dawson pounced, but if it had been an unintentional slip, it didn’t seem to bother Brown that he’d confirmed it.

  He just smiled enigmatically. “We who recognise the value in his work.”

  “And what value is that?” Dawson sat back, folding his arms. Pierce could tell he was getting steadily more short-tempered; he could do with a cooler head to join him in his questioning, and she wished again that Deepan had been around. Taylor was just sitting there, obediently watching the prisoner but deferring entirely to Dawson’s line of questioning. Still, she held back for now, reluctant to butt in just yet. Let Dawson play this interview his way, at least at first.

  Brown leaned forward in his seat, but he seemed simply earnest, not about to attack. “Maundrell’s work holds the key to all higher understanding,” he said. “He touched other worlds. Spoke with gods. And yet the ignorants murdered him before he could complete his life’s work. Before he could bestow the gift of eternal life on his followers, as he promised.”

  Dawson raised an eyebrow. “Ah, the old immortality chestnut,” he said. “Just on the verge of discovering eternal life, was he? Aren’t they all.”

  Brown’s eyebrows lowered petulantly. “Francis Maundrell was a true visionary. He left the instructions for the final ritual, entrusted to those he knew would stay most faithful to his way.”

  “So that’s what you were trying to achieve,” Dawson said, folding his arms. “Collect all the pieces and then win a pr
ize? Must’ve been a real blow to your plans to have the police come and seize them from your hidey hole. That why you decided to come to the station today? Thought you’d have yourself a pop at a police officer in revenge?”

  There was a continued tone of adversarial mocking to the words that Pierce wasn’t sure was the best approach, but it was his interrogation. Probably wasn’t much in it either way, with Brown so unlikely to cooperate. He simply smiled again, poise returned now that Dawson was attacking his plans rather than his messianic figure.

  “Or did you think you were going to get them back?” Dawson said, leaning forward again and planting his crossed elbows on the table. “Had some grand vision of busting into the police station, taking us all down with your little pig-sticker and getting your property back, did you?”

  Brown only grinned wider, turning his face away as if holding Dawson’s gaze too long would only cause him to break into giggles.

  Wrong reaction.

  Instincts tingling, Pierce stood away from the wall. “Carry on here,” she told her two officers as they turned to look back at her. “DCI Pierce, leaving the interview room,” she added for the benefit of the tape.

  She jogged back to Arthur’s station, urged on by faint alarm bells sounding at the back of her mind. Something was afoot here, she just didn’t know what yet. “Anything happening on your CCTV?” she asked him.

  “Well, the drunk bloke in the end cell seems to be trying out some disco moves,” he said. “Otherwise all quiet.” He regarded her over his glasses. “Something wrong?”

  “Maybe...” She just didn’t like Brown’s attitude; the aura of a man who knew a secret. “But probably not down here,” she concluded. “Keep an eye on our interviewee, in case he gets aggressive.” Or Dawson did, she thought, but didn’t say. He surely couldn’t be that much of a cowboy in this day and age, but still, better safe than sorry considering Brown had cracked him in the face earlier. She wasn’t sure Taylor had the backbone to stand up to his tank of a superior if he got out of line.

  And she also wasn’t sure that Dawson was her biggest concern right now.

  She headed for the stairs, her mind whirring furiously. All right. Brown was a prisoner. Already searched. Didn’t have anything on him that could be a risk. Could he have planted something: a bomb, literal or magical? Maybe on one of the cultists, whether with or without their knowledge, if he was running with the assumption that they’d be brought into the station with him.

  But no: Brown’s goal was to retrieve the stolen artefacts. He wouldn’t want to risk them being damaged by some kind of explosion, magical or otherwise. Getting arrested didn’t help his goal; stabbing her wouldn’t have helped it—so maybe he’d been the distraction all along. He had at least one accomplice; clever thieves, good at getting into places unseen...

  Pierce reached the top of the stairs and kept on going up the next flight, onto the first floor that was the RCU’s home territory. Past the main office, still empty—Deepan and Freeman not yet back from their case. Past the first few offices in Magical Analysis, where the researchers had their heads down, oblivious to much that went on outside of their doors. On towards the end lab: Enchanted Artefacts.

  She pushed the door open, and it bumped something on the floor. Someone. Shit. The unconscious—she hoped just unconscious—form of Nancy Willis, one of Cliff’s lab assistants. Pierce half bent down to check her pulse before her instincts yelped at her to check the room for danger first.

  Not fast enough. As she started to look up, she caught a blur of movement surging through the lab towards her, and barely had the chance to duck away. An elbow, maybe a fist, collided with her arm as she threw it up to shield herself. She couldn’t see the attack coming at her: there was only a vaguely human-sized distortion in the air, like a shadow glimpsed through murky, rippling water.

  “Hey!” she shouted, lunging at the moving blur. Her hand closed on something like a fistful of slippery silk, and beneath that the solid warmth of human flesh. A person, dressed in some kind of a magical stealth suit—not quite invisible, but close to it. Even as Pierce grabbed for a better grip the thief twisted away, the material slipping through her fingers.

  She saw the blur dart for the door, and threw herself in front of it. The intruder might be near-invisible, but this was no ghost: there was a solid human body underneath the suit, and if they wanted out, they’d have to go through her.

  “This is a restricted area!” she barked. “Remove your concealment and come quietly.” Words for the sake of getting them down on the record; no surprise when in place of a response the rippling blur dashed off towards the shelves at the far side of the room. Pierce didn’t let herself be lured into chasing: there was only one way out of the lab, and she was blocking it right now.

  It only took one blink for her to lose all certainty: had the intruder moved behind the row of shelves, or just disappeared by going still? Was that patch of darkness a distortion in the air, or just the odd-shaped shadows cast by objects on the shelves?

  Wary eyes still on the rows of shelving, Pierce crouched down to take the fallen Nancy’s pulse. A strong beat beneath her fingers; her heart unclenched a fraction. Unconsciousness was bad news regardless of the cause, but it still beat the hell out of a corpse.

  Straightening up again, Pierce reached for her phone, wishing she’d brought her radio in with her from the car. She couldn’t risk waiting around for someone to pick up; instead, eyes flicking between the screen and the shelves, she found Dawson’s number and sent him a terse text. INTRUDER IN RCU.

  She just hoped he bloody checked it—and still in interview, he might well not. Shit. Who else could she try? She wasn’t sure if Jenny had been in her office; Pierce hadn’t paid attention, hadn’t checked who else was on the floor. Had anybody out there heard her shout?

  A sound in the far corner, something clanging off the metal supports of the shelf units. Pierce whipped towards it. Was that a shadow behind the shelves? Or—She turned back at a flash of movement at the corner of her eye, but by the time she focused there was nothing there. She blinked her eyes, feeling them start to blur and water from staring too intently at what might be empty air.

  A door slammed somewhere else inside the building. Nerves on edge, she instinctively turned to look out through the pane of glass in the lab door. As she did, she caught the reflection of a blurry shape behind her that hadn’t been there the last time she looked.

  Pierce whirled back round, and couldn’t see a thing. She held her breath for long moments. No sound. No movement. She turned her head in tiny fractions, until she could see into the small window pane again.

  And saw the reflected shape that was looming right behind her. She swung around and struck out blindly, feeling like a child practising made-up karate—until her hand clipped someone’s shoulder in what looked like open space.

  The empty air before her exploded with ripples, the intruder’s shape revealed by distortion where the enchanted silk was too slow to restore the camouflage after its wearer moved. Pierce grabbed for where the head should be, trying to unmask the thief, but she missed her aim and the silk cloth poured away through her fingers.

  “Give it up!” she shouted, intimidation tactic more than any sense of having the advantage. She might be blocking the door, but if the thief had some drug or magic that could drop her like Nancy, she could be downed without seeing it coming.

  Then she heard moving feet and voices out in the hallway. “In here!” she shouted. “We’ve got an intruder!” Her attacker danced away, running back towards the shelves.

  Pierce heard the door open behind her, barely sparing the time to register whoever came through as more than a black and white blur. “Help her, but stay by the door,” she snapped. “There’s someone in here using magic to stay concealed.” Where were infrared sights when you needed them?

  She’d lost the intruder already, in the brief moment that she’d looked away. Drawing the handcuffs from her belt, Pierce moved warily
into the room, scanning the corners of the lab for any sign of ripples. All too aware the first warning she got might be the blow that took her down.

  Her eyes fell on a wheeled trolley at the side, loaded with Cliff’s ritual kit. Odds and sods of candles, chalk, mirrors, markers, string... and a big canister of sea salt. She ran forward around the lab tables to grab for it—

  And smashed into an invisible body in her path.

  The thief squirmed away from her as she fought to get a better grip. She struck out blindly and missed, cracking her hand against the trolley. A shove sent her stumbling into it, jarring her hip in a rattle of wheels and falling objects.

  She moved to snatch the canister of salt from the debris, the attacker’s next strike just clipping her chin as she turned away. She grabbed the cloaked arm while she still knew where it was and yanked the lid off of the salt, tossing the contents over the cloaked figure.

  Flour might have clung better—but salt had its own power. Where the salt flakes struck the silk cloth of the thief’s disguise, some small number clung, but most immediately poured away towards the ground. As they tumbled down the slick cloth they left bleached streaks behind, revealing the thief’s shape like a transparent sculpture that had been splashed with white paint.

  A much easier target. As the intruder turned to run towards the door, Pierce pulled the trolley out from the wall and shoved it at the running figure, prompting a very human oof of pain as the thief collided with it and tripped, sprawling across the tiled floor. Pierce lunged after the fallen form and this time got a solid enough grip to grab the hood of the costume and yank it back. The very pissed off face of a bearded man in his early thirties was revealed.

  “Nice try, son,” she said, holding him down with a knee and reaching for his arm to snap her cuffs around his wrist. “But you’re not going anywhere.”

  She recited the words of the caution on automatic, and then looked up, out of breath, to see a group of uniformed officers had crowded through the door. A pair of them were tending to the fallen Nancy, while the others looked a bit lost.