Spirit Animals (Ritual Crime Unit Book 3) (25 page)

In spite of his bad leg, Leo moved into the lead, ingrained habit from his days in Firearms. As her night vision adjusted to the limited moonlight, Pierce could make out enough to tell that he was limping quite badly, but she kept her mouth shut.

They picked their way across the damp grass, heading back towards the private access road that they’d passed by. Pierce could see a faint glow in the distance ahead: security lights around the top of a high metal fence. Leo was right; the setup resembled the enhanced offenders institution that they’d visited a few days ago.

In more than one way. As they drew a little closer—Leo moving at a low crouch now despite the fact it clearly pained him to do so, and Pierce doing her best to mimic him—she could see that there were dogs roaming the inside of the fence. Big dogs: the kind that could very easily be shapeshifters.

Big dogs that could probably sniff out wandering strangers if they drew too near. Leo nudged her shoulder, veering sideways across the field towards the road instead of getting any closer to the building. He nodded at a small, discreet sign up by the gates, and she squinted at it, struggling to make out the block letters in the dark.

H
ARDISON
G
ROUP
. No more explanation of the business or its purpose than that, a conveniently meaningless name that could hide all manner of sins.

But a name that confirmed this was the place. They’d found Maitland’s current base of operations.

Problem was, with that fence and the shifters on patrol, they didn’t have a hope in hell of finding a way inside.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

T
HEY MADE IT
back to their car apparently unseen, and drove on before they could push their luck too far.

“If that’s where they’re keeping Sebastian, we’re going to have a job getting inside to prove it,” Pierce said. It would take a full-scale police raid, and even if she could somehow justify it to her superiors, Maitland’s people would surely know about it well before it happened. Hell, for all she knew her superintendent was one of them.

“We’ll find a way in,” Leo said. It felt more like a declaration than a prediction, but she didn’t challenge him. Lord knew one of them should probably keep some optimism.

As for her... she was just tired. She’d made it home, shovelled her way mechanically through a microwave dinner, and was seriously contemplating taking an early night when her phone rang. She was tempted to ignore it, but when she checked the ID it was Phil Havers calling her back. She lifted it to her ear with a sigh.

“Phil!” She did her best to keep her exhaustion from her voice. “Anything on those animal spirit charms?”

“Nothing in my notes, I’m afraid, but I made a few calls to my old contacts up in your neck of the woods, and I’ve found someone who thinks he might have had your sellers sniffing around. Adrian Shore: he’s an artefact dealer in Huddersfield, fairly well-known in the biz—you’ve probably heard of him, though he keeps his nose too clean to get much police attention.”

“Rings a vague bell,” Pierce agreed. Odds were Phil had met the man back when he still worked for her, but she couldn’t dredge up any details this many years later.

“Well, he had some people make him an offer the other day he thought was suspect—he said they seemed pretty eager to offload a set of antique charms, then got shirty and started talking about having other buyers waiting when he wanted additional expert verification. He’s a cautious bugger, our Adrian, though, so he didn’t bite.”

“Sensible of him,” Pierce said. “But we might need him to take a nibble on it after all. We’ve made one arrest, but so far the bloke’s not talking, and we know there are at least two or three other gang members still out there. If we can get them to bring the illegal charms to an agreed meeting point, then we might be able to nab them all in one go.” She wandered through the house in search of a notepad and pen. “Right. Got a contact number for Shore?”

Phil gave her the relevant info, and she updated him on the progress of the case so far. “Sounds like you’re close to sewing it up,” he said. “How goes the vampire hunt? Saw your DI on TV earlier—he sounded pretty confident.”

“Oh, bloody hell, again?” Pierce winced. “The man needs a muzzle. No, it’s going... well, let’s just say it’s going.” She felt like she was chasing one of those lizards that just shed its tail and scampered off when you thought you’d finally caught it. And with the apparent acceleration of the time scale, they had even less time to get their acts together before the cult committed their third kill and went to ground for seven years again.

Or for fourteen. Pierce pressed her lips together. That missing interval still didn’t sit right with her. Oh, Christopher Tomb could talk all the guff he wanted about vampire hibernation phases, but she was certain they were looking for human beings performing a ritual—and rituals generally required slavish adherence to their patterns to build power. She sat back in her armchair, resting her feet on the footstool.

“Hey, Phil, when was it you transferred down to Oxford? About the end of 2007, wasn’t it?”

“Thereabouts,” he said. “Yes, it must have been, because remember they were shortstaffed after that business with the goat demon at Hallowe’en.”

“Yeah.” Pierce cringed a little, guiltily glad that one hadn’t happened on her patch. “God. Poor old Henry.”

“Hell of a way to go,” Phil agreed with a rueful sigh. “Sammy Sykes was never the same, either—he did stay on for a few months to oversee the transition, but you could tell his heart wasn’t in it. Not that I blame him.”

“No.” For a few moments they were both silent, aware of the weight of all the colleagues they’d lost over the years to injury, burnout or worse. The longer you spent in this game, the more the numbers mounted.

Then Phil cleared his throat and audibly pulled himself back together. “Anyway, um, why’d you ask?” he said.

“Well, I was just thinking, it must have been about the time the last set of Valentine Vampire killings was due, the one that never materialised.” She distinctly remembered arguing with Superintendent Palmer over whether they could really spare personnel to relieve Oxford with more murders on the horizon, and why London branch couldn’t do their bloody bit for once. “Since our killer cult is back in action, I have to wonder if they ever really went to ground at all. Maybe there
were
murders back in 2008, and we just failed to connect them to the pattern.”

If the cult were willing to change up their methods now to keep the heat off, then maybe they’d done it before. Leaving the bodies staged in graveyards was just grandstanding, not a necessary part of the bloodletting ritual: perhaps having been spotted dumping one of the bodies had encouraged them to play safe for a while.

Phil was clearly following her line of thought. “You think they might have crossed the border into Oxford’s jurisdiction?”

“It’s possible,” she said. “Oxford was still in a complete muddle at the time, with the whole goat demon business and the change in personnel—if the cult struck much further south than their usual hunting grounds and changed up their MO for disposing of the bodies, then the RCU might not have linked the deaths to the Valentine Vampire case. They might not even have reached our attention at all.” If the bodies had been burned or allowed to decay undisturbed long enough to hide the signs of ritual cuts, they’d most likely have been pursued as normal homicides.

“I can have a poke about,” Phil said. “See if there are any unsolved murders or missing persons from the time that fit the victim profile.”

“Please,” Pierce said with a sigh. “At this stage, we still need all the help we can get.”

A
T LEAST
D
EEPAN
was back at work again the next day, although she was still dubious about allowing him to do more than man the computers. “I’m fine, guv,” he insisted. “Totally recovered.”

“Yeah, well, you can sit there and be fine at a desk for a while,” Pierce said. “What’s the latest from our scene in Leeds?”

Frustratingly little, as it transpired. The young man from the coffin was still unidentified as yet: Leeds were looking into university students who’d failed to attend lectures, but that was a tough group to narrow, and it probably wouldn’t tell them anything when they did have a name. The house where he’d been found had been rented out as student accommodation on a slightly dodgy cash basis from a landlord who’d apparently seen nothing, making that another dead end.

Forensics had found a few prints, but none of them had come up with matches so far, and Pierce had a feeling they wouldn’t: the people behind ritual killings like this were rarely the sort of repeat offenders who were in and out of the system. These murders weren’t acts of vengeance or aggression or even cold-blooded attacks on enemies—they were just the means to an end, the dispassionate slaughter of human beings to provide fuel for a magical ritual.

And the killers were getting away with it, far too well for her liking. Until they had an actual suspect to compare those prints to, it was looking less and less likely that the house in Leeds would yield anything useful.

Pierce let Dawson keep the job of overseeing the investigation, and turned her attention instead to the lead Phil had given her on the spirit charms case. She called up Adrian Shore, who turned out to have a nasal voice and a rather jittery telephone manner, or else he was just rather nervous about speaking to the police. He was definitely eager to protest his innocence, though she hadn’t called it into question.

“Well, obviously, um, I didn’t recognise the gentleman—that is, I wouldn’t normally deal with anyone offering such flimsy provenance for articles of a potentially, um, restricted nature, and if they knew my reputation for honest dealings I’m sure they would never have approached me...”

Pierce cut through the stream of nervous self-justification. “We appreciate that, Mr Shore. You’re not under any suspicion—these people know their operation has come to the attention of the police, and they’re undoubtedly keen to offload the merchandise any way they can.” God bless criminal greed, the force behind many an idiot decision to hold onto incriminating evidence rather than lose money by destroying it. “The fact they’re desperate enough to start approaching honest dealers like yourself is actually good news for us, because it means that with your assistance we can catch them red-handed.”

Shore didn’t seem enormously thrilled at the opportunity. “Oh, er, well... obviously I support the police completely in, er, in bringing an end to these barbaric magical practices, but I’m not really sure how much assistance I can actually be...” He trailed off with the vagueness of a man hoping someone else would politely supply his excuses for him.

Unfortunately for him, Pierce was quite happy to bulldoze through social niceties. “You really wouldn’t have to do very much at all, sir,” she pressed. “There’ll be plenty of police on hand to deal with everything—all we need is for you to let them know you might be interested in buying and get them to bring the merchandise to your shop so we can arrest them and seize it.”

Odds were Miller and co. would be hoping to sell off their whole stock of charms in one go, and bring the entire gang along to escort them. It would be a chance to arrest the ringleaders and get their goods off the street all in one tidy scoop.

If
Shore played ball. She couldn’t compel a member of the public to assist an operation with anything more than persuasive arguments and a bit of emotional blackmail, and emphasizing the fact that these weren’t just dodgy dealers but dangerous men who ought to be locked up seemed likely to be more counterproductive than anything.

Shore was already squirming as it was. “Well, I, um, I’m afraid I was really rather emphatic in rejecting their offer before”—Pierce found that hard to believe, considering how wishy-washy he was being in dealing with hers—“so I’m not sure that they would believe such a fast turnaround...”

As the shopkeeper
ummed
and
erred
, Pierce was more than half expecting him to wriggle free with belated claims he had no way to reestablish contact, but either he was made of sterner stuff than she’d given him credit for, or the prospect of lying to the police unnerved him even more than assisting them with a sting operation. “Well, er, I suppose I could attempt to set up a meeting...” he eventually said weakly.