Spirit Animals (Ritual Crime Unit Book 3) (15 page)

Maybe they were the ones who’d faked Sebastian’s death. Maybe they just didn’t want her to be able to prove that someone else had.

Either way, the fact that they were on her back meant trouble.

CHAPTER TWELVE

P
IERCE WENT BACK
in and smoothed things over with the security guard, implying without outright lying that the glow she’d seen race out through the reception area was down to the accidental activation of one of the stored artefacts.

“Oh, we’re used to it here,” the woman said, unfazed. “You get all sorts—boxes that talk to themselves, ghosts in the aisles, ice on the shelves in the middle of summer... We just call Doctor Healey down to look at things when the artefacts start misbehaving.”

“I’ve said many times we need a more specialised storage facility than this,” Cliff said apologetically.

Pierce sighed. “Yep, and after that we just need the staff and the training and the equipment...” It was a pipedream—and there was no guarantee it would have kept Maitland’s people out anyway. “The panther pelt’s gone,” she told the others when they were beyond the reach of the guard’s prying ears. “And we’re being watched. Keep an eye out for big dogs and don’t talk about any of this to anyone.” She was beginning to regret having brought them into this at all; she needed help if she was going to sort this mess out, but it was starting to feel like her efforts were doing nothing but painting targets on more people’s backs.

Still, the more of them that there were in the know, the harder it was going to be for any of them to be conveniently disappeared.

She hoped.

All the same, spotting their observers had left her decidedly on edge. She found herself watching every pair of headlights in the rearview mirror as she drove back home, looking for that Range Rover, or other signs of pursuit. Her phone rang just as she was starting up the garden path, and she eyed the unknown number warily. “DCI Pierce, Ritual Crime,” she said brusquely, lifting it to her ear.

“Ah, Claire! I was hoping to be able to catch you. Not interrupting your plans for the evening, I hope.” After a moment’s blankness Pierce placed the voice on the other end as Christopher Tomb. “Good news—I’ve spoken to my contact who gave me the information on the vampire cult, and he’s agreed to share his knowledge with the police.”

“Great. Give me his contact details, and I hope you impressed on him that time is of the essence.” Pierce fumbled through the awkward choreography of trying to unlock the door, switch on the light and retrieve her notebook without losing the phone.

“Unfortunately, I’m afraid he does have some conditions,” Tomb said.

Pierce rolled her eyes to the heavens, trying but not really succeeding to keep the frustration out of her voice. “Mr Tomb, it’s late, and this is a major murder enquiry,” she said. “This cult has killed, and we have every reason to believe they’ll kill again if they aren’t stopped. We don’t have time to play games—if your contact has information that could save lives, he needs to share it.”

Tomb had an almost impressive way of blithely continuing the conversation, ignoring her words entirely. “He’s willing to meet with you personally, but only face to face, and with me there to act as a guarantee of your good intentions.” Pierce wondered rather cynically if that had really been the alleged cultist’s condition, or Tomb’s own effort to elbow his way into proceedings. “He’s requested we meet under cover of darkness, at midnight tonight.”

Well, that was a load of melodramatic bollocks. Pierce huffed irritably. To her mind this seemed more like a publicity stunt than a legitimate lead, and she was buggered if she felt like traipsing around in the middle of the night to meet some supposed informant who might not know anything useful, but professionalism reluctantly won out. There
might
be something to it, however unlikely it seemed, and Lord knew they didn’t have such an abundance of promising leads that they could afford to reject anything out of hand.

“Fine,” she said tightly, massaging the bridge of her nose. “Tell me where he wants to meet.” No sleep for her tonight, it seemed.

T
HE MEETING POINT
that Tomb relayed to her was the relatively unglamorous location of a pub car park on the outskirts of Leeds. Her instincts were pinging for a waste of time a lot harder than they were for an actual threat, but nonetheless she shot off a quick email to Dawson down in Nottinghamshire to keep him apprised of her movements; she couldn’t have arranged more backup even if she’d wanted to, with two of her team on a stakeout at Trick Box and Deepan in no state to join her.

The pub itself was closed by the time Pierce arrived there, but there were a few cars still outside, maybe belonging to the owners, or customers who’d had the sense not to try to drive home. Pierce parked up next to a boxy old Mercedes on the end that she pegged as most likely to be Tomb’s. The slam of her car door echoed loudly in the silence as she got out to look around.

Pierce was no stranger to arriving at crime scenes after dark, but usually she’d be pulling up alongside a row of emergency vehicles with their lights still flashing, the scene crawling with uniforms or people in forensics coveralls. Here, the frigid February chill had chased everyone inside, and everything seemed almost unnaturally still and silent. Even the windows of the houses across the street were largely dark, aside from the odd stray upstairs light behind the curtains.

She could see her own breath in the glow of the pub’s security light as she rounded the Mercedes to peer in through the driver’s door window. No one inside.

“Claire?” The voice came from the shadows of the building beside her, and she jumped before she could stop herself. She breathed out slowly before she turned on her heel, refusing to let him see how much he’d startled her.

“Mr Tomb,” she said, crisply professional, though she suspected a spark of her irritation came through. She was cold and tired and extremely short on patience for whatever amateur dramatics he had planned. At least, she saw as he stepped out of the shadows, he’d forgone his ridiculous daytime getup. He wore a bulky purple all-weather jacket that didn’t much suit his image but did look enviably warm.

It also made Pierce think of the Valentine Vampire’s victims and the incongruously sporty clothes that they’d been laid out in, and she held back a shiver. Tomb had been eliminated from their enquiries years ago: he had alibis, and he was too young to have been the original killer—but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be involved somehow. She closed her fist around the comforting bulk of the radio in her coat pocket. Her team were all occupied or off-duty, but police backup was still only a shout away.

Provided she kept track of where they were going. She’d assumed Tomb’s contact would meet them here, but instead the writer gestured her away from the pub and towards the park across the road, where a footpath led off under the shadow of overhanging trees. She let him take the lead, keeping a wary eye on their surroundings as she mentally inventoried the rest of her gear. Silver cuffs. Malodorant spray—not that it would do her much good unless they ran afoul of shapeshifters. The penlight on her keys.

As the pub’s security light clicked off behind them, she was wishing that she’d brought a proper full-strength police torch instead. There were times when she missed her days in uniform, all the gear always ready to hand. In her role as DCI she was supposed to stand back and supervise from a distance, if not from a desk, but the understaffed RCU needed every officer they could get out in the field.

Even if they were inching ever closer to the retirement age and limits of fitness requirements, and keenly aware just how fast a supposedly simple meeting with a source could go straight to shit.

And the circumstances of this one didn’t exactly fill her with confidence. The hairs at the back of her neck prickled as she followed Tomb further away from the road and the lights, feeling hemmed in by the grassy slopes running alongside the path. She didn’t like that they were leaving the cars and whatever CCTV coverage there might have been around the pub; Pierce might be well outside the vampire cult’s victim profile, but that didn’t mean that she was safe if they decided she was a threat.

In her pockets, her hands closed around the radio and the small canister of incapacitant spray. The smell, though it might fend off a shapeshifter or disperse a rioting crowd, wouldn’t do much to drive off a motivated human—but a blast of any aerosol spray in the face would send most people reeling away for a few vital seconds if need be.

Tomb, at least, was currently keeping his distance, forging ahead at a pace that suggested he was either cold or pretty nervous himself.

Or less confident than he’d led her to believe that his supposed contact would even show up. It probably wouldn’t be politic to charge him with wasting police time if this turned out to be a wild goose chase, but it made for a pleasant daydream nonetheless. Pierce was already exhausted, miserably cold, and increasingly pissed off as she followed the author through to a small open patch of ground amid the trees. In the dim light that filtered through from the next road she could just make out the shadowed shapes of children’s play equipment and benches.

This had better be the meeting place with this alleged cultist, because she’d just about lost all patience for walking. “Right. Where is he?” she said.

“He’ll be here,” Tomb said, placatingly. “He wanted to make sure you didn’t bring anyone else.”

“He has a high opinion of himself,” Pierce said. Never mind devoting further police resources—they were lucky that she’d come at all. She’d yet to see any evidence that this rigmarole was worth her time.

Tomb moved on towards the far side of the play area. There was a metal park bench there, just visible in the deeper shadow under the trees; Pierce squinted, trying to see if it was occupied, but her eyes weren’t up to it.

Sod this. Wary of being surprised by a voice from the shadows again, she shook her keys out of her pocket and clicked the penlight on. Its feeble beam was scarcely better than the fading fringes of the streetlights, but it lit up a patch of grass before her feet. She followed Tomb, trying to decide how much time she was prepared to give this if their man didn’t show.

“Jonathan,” Tomb said, in a hoarse, carrying whisper. “Jonathan, are you here? I brought the DCI here, as you asked.”

No answer. Instinct chilled the back of Pierce’s neck, but Tomb kept moving, his footsteps and the rustle of his coat potentially masking any sounds amid the trees around them. “Jonathan?”

As he approached the bench, Pierce had to keep pace with him, wanting to be ahead of a member of the public if there was trouble. It was too still, too quiet for there to be someone waiting for them unless it was with ill-intent. “Wait—” she started to say, but that was when the edge of the weak torchlight finally reached the feet of someone sitting on the bench and Tomb hurried the rest of the way forward before she could stop him.

“Jonathan, we’re—” He strangled his own words with a startled sound, flinching back as the figure on the bench slumped sideways from his touch.

“Get back!” Pierce barked, even before she’d moved close enough for the torchlight to show what she’d already guessed.

The pallid, death-distorted face of a man who wasn’t going to be sharing his secrets any time soon.

No artfully posed and cleaned-up ritual kill this time: a jagged gash had torn out most of the man’s throat, and blood soaked the front of his once-white shirt. The torchlight glinted off the blood-smeared shape of a silver bat pendant, twin to the one worn by the woman Pierce had chased in York. The baseball cap he must have been wearing to obscure his face had fallen askew at Tomb’s touch, perhaps resettled on his head by the killer.

The unhappily familiar stink of death rolled over her as Pierce bent to take the pulse that she knew wouldn’t be there. Her fingers came away tacky with blood that wasn’t yet dry, and she instinctively wiped her hand on the bench before it occurred to her that she shouldn’t compromise the crime scene. She stepped back with a curse.

“Don’t touch anything,” she told Tomb unnecessarily. He’d already backed well away, his eyes wide in the torchlight.

“Is he—Oh, God.” He must have known the question was superfluous, and he reeled away from her to bend over and retch.

It was too late to help Jonathan, if that was really his name, but even as part of her was cursing that she hadn’t insisted on greater precautions for their meeting, another part was cataloguing how he might help
them
. This wasn’t a staged body dump this time—the ex-cultist had been killed here. There might have been a struggle, might be evidence... and for the first time, they had a clear connection between killer and victim, a possible chain of associations to follow.