Under the Skin (Ritual Crime Unit) (8 page)

Easter: six or seven months ago, roughly the same timeframe in which their skinbinder had become super-active, churning out pelts as if he had a whole menagerie at his disposal. Their efforts to track the source of the animals had got them nowhere; no zoos or wildlife sanctuaries missing anything major, no evidence of an increase in smuggling. Backers with money and connections explained a lot.

That might be why Maitland’s team had been holding off before they brought in the skinbinder... but if so, why not keep her department informed and have them call off the raid? It was hard to escape the suspicion there was something shady going on.

Behind them the scaffolding creaked, and Julie whirled to look at it, jittery as a cat. “Look, that’s all I know, all right?” she said, tucking her hands up inside the long sleeves of her hoodie. “I don’t know who those blokes were, I don’t know where they went, and I definitely don’t know anything about dead coppers. Can I go now, please?” She tensed, clearly ready to bolt regardless of the answer.

“Who else might know something about Sebastian?” Pierce asked. “You mentioned a Craig...?”

Julie stepped back, shaking her head. “I—”

Another groaning creak sounded from the building behind them. The scaffolding gave an ominous rattle, and Pierce looked up in time to see a dark shadow detach from the edge of the roof. For a moment she thought a chunk of masonry had torn loose—and then her eyes made sense of the falling shape.

Not falling—leaping. “Shit!” She scrambled back towards the fence.

Julie barely had the time to look bewildered before the shapeshifter crashed down beside her in a cloud of brick dust. It was a huge black dog, a mastiff—but no normal dog would have made such a suicidal jump, or bounced up from it unharmed.

It lunged for Julie, and she shrieked, smashing at it with her bag. The dog tore it out of her hands with a toss of its blunt head, scattering the contents across the ground. “Get back, get back!” Pierce yelled at her, but instead she snatched a chunk of broken brick up from the ground to hurl at the shifter. It bounced off like a pebble.

Pierce grabbed for her malodorant spray, but before she could get close, the dog shifter gave an echoing bark and snapped its teeth at Julie. Her shrieks of fear became a howl of agony as the massive jaws clamped down around her arm.

“Christ!” Pierce fired off the spray, a sulphuric stench that made her gag and her eyes start to stream.

The big dog reeled back, swinging Julie with it, like a toy held in its mouth. She hit the scaffolding with such force that the metal bars jarred loose, and the framework collapsed in on itself in a jangling cascade. The creature dropped Julie’s limp body and bounded away, snarling and shaking its head as if to try to dislodge the smell. Chunks of brick and slate roof tiles rained down from the building behind.

Pierce’s nausea rose higher as her ears rang from the avalanche, but she swallowed it and ran forward to grab Julie’s dropped bag. If she was a skinbinder, she should have the tools of her trade in there.

She cursed as she dug through it, finding only make-up, books and junk. A glance up showed the big dog was turning around to come back, its human mind wresting control back from animal instincts. More discipline than most humans would have shown in a fight—but then, these shifters weren’t the usual bored thrill-seekers. She was dealing with people who had killed, and would do it again.

Inside the satchel, her hand closed around a sheathed knife.

The ritual blade that she pulled out was smaller than Sebastian’s, lacking the wicked curve and not half as ornately made. But in one important aspect, the two skinning blades were twins—both made of solid silver.

Pierce fumbled to unfasten the leather sheath and release it as the big dog came thundering back towards her. She hadn’t trained to fight with knives, only against those wielding them, but all she needed was to do some damage to the pelt.

And not get killed. That would be the real trick.

As the shifter lunged towards her, she kicked the bag its way, but it just flopped over, the undone flap flying up in the dog’s face. The moment of obscured vision gave her time to dive away, escaping the snap of its slobbering jaws as she stumbled on a loose brick. Rubble shifted under her feet and she skidded down the slope, swinging the knife in a wide arc as she turned back.

The dog leapt at her, its true size apparent for the first time; the huge frame stretched out longer than she was tall. Pierce lunged forward to meet it, stabbing upward with the blade.

The shifter’s own momentum drove it onto the knife, and she felt the shift in pressure as her thrust into solid flesh became a slice through layers of fur and cloth. The body that slammed into hers was a man’s wrapped in fur, still heavy enough to knock her off her feet, but with teeth that clicked together harmlessly beside her ear, no longer the dog’s mighty crushing jaws. Before he could recover from the jarring shock, Pierce clouted him across the head and shoved him off of her, snatching for the handcuffs from her belt.

“Police!” she shouted. “You’re under arrest! Stay down on the ground!”

He ignored her words, or didn’t understand them, mind still not caught up to the shift in shape. Instead he staggered backwards, unbalanced on two legs, and tried to bark at her with vocal cords that wouldn’t make the sound. The face beneath the mastiff pelt was at odds with the snarl, clean shaven and well groomed like any bland young office worker.

“Stay where you are!” she said again, but it only seemed to snap him out of the haze, his eyes growing more focused as the situation sank in. He turned and ran towards the fence.

“Shit!” Pierce chased after him, but she was too winded to catch up, and he leapt to grab the top of the hoardings and haul himself up. As he swung over, the mastiff pelt flapped away from his back, and she glimpsed the maker’s rune tattooed beneath. Just a glimpse—but enough for her to see that it wasn’t Sebastian’s mark. The pelt had been made by another skinbinder.

What the hell?

For a brief instant she almost contemplated climbing after, but she knew she was too worn out from the previous chase—and that reminded her to think of Julie. She turned to look around for the young skinbinder, and saw her still lying slumped underneath the fallen scaffold.

“Shit,” she said again, more heavily, and hurried over. She brushed brick dust off unmoving flesh, and felt for a pulse.

No miracles today. The girl was dead.

CHAPTER SEVEN

P
IERCE LEFT THE
waste ground over the back fence, with a last apologetic look at Julie where she lay beneath her scaffolding cairn. It stung to flee the crime scene without waiting for the police, but she couldn’t afford to get bogged down in the red tape right now—or worse, let Maitland find out she was still on the case. She’d stumbled on something bigger here than one rogue murderous skinbinder, and she wasn’t about to let the trail go cold over a jurisdictional pissing contest.

If that was all this was. Counter Terrorism had their own motives for seeking Sebastian, and she couldn’t trust their interests were in line with hers. Sebastian clearly had powerful backers, and it was all too easy to believe Maitland would be willing to cut them a deal.

And now it seemed there was a second skinbinder in the mix. The maker’s mark she’d glimpsed on the mastiff pelt wasn’t used by any of the country’s licensed skin shops, and she didn’t recognise it as an antique. Of course, that was Sally’s field of expertise, not hers. Pierce grimaced. She couldn’t drag a woman who was still recovering in hospital into this morass.

In fact, it was better if she kept the whole of her team out of it. Maitland might have been content to just warn her off so far, but he could easily cause trouble if she kept investigating. Pierce was willing to take that risk, but she wasn’t about to drag the rest of the RCU down with her.

When she got back to the car, she grabbed her notebook, and sketched the maker’s rune as best she could recall it. Part of the design had been obscured, but if she assumed basic symmetry...

As police sirens wailed in the distance, she capped her pen and frowned over the inked scribble she’d produced. A little like an ankh with wings surrounded by a halo; not high art, but at least it was a lead.

Now she just needed someone to decipher it—and luckily, she had someone in mind.

G
ARY
H
OLLAND WAS
strictly a small time crook, and even that was pushing it. In truth he was mostly just an enthusiastic collector, with a bad habit of getting carried away when it came to purchases that didn’t quite square with the law.

He looked distinctly wary as he opened up the door of his small terraced house to let her step inside. “Chief Inspector,” he said, with a strained smile. He was an awkward little man, somewhere in his early thirties, with a bald spot and a taste for knitted jumpers that prophesied the old man he’d become. “Now, I don’t know what you’re looking for this time, but I can assure you, my collection is completely clean. No more Libyan scorpion sting charms for me!”

It was hard not to feel a bit sorry for him. His twitchy mannerisms always made him appear guilty even when he was telling the truth—which he genuinely might be, this time round.

Or maybe not. As she stepped into the house, Pierce was immediately reintroduced to the collection that cluttered every inch of space. If anything, it seemed Gary’s hoarding tendencies had grown since last she was here.

Even the narrow hallway was lined with rows of shelves; she had to squeeze her way along. The contents made for a disturbing display: a mangy looking badger paw holding a candle stub; the skeleton of an eel with its eyes replaced by black stones; a taxidermied owl that had seen much better days. If there was a ritual artefact that had once been a live animal, Gary had it, or a framed, authenticated photo of it, or at the very least a set of books and articles about it.

Shapeshifting pelts he didn’t have a licence to keep, but that didn’t stop him tracking down all there was to know about them.

“You’re in luck, Gaz,” Pierce told him. “I’m not here to inventory your collection this time.” Though no doubt if she did, she would find more than a few things that shouldn’t strictly be there. “I’m here for your expertise.”

She almost regretted the words when she saw how he puffed up. She suddenly imagined decades of fielding calls from him offering the RCU his expert guidance.

Of course, the way things were going, Pierce might not be part of the Unit long enough for that to be her problem. And besides, right now she needed information, and she couldn’t go to anyone that Maitland might be watching.

Gary ushered her through to the living room, as musty and cramped as the rest of the house. There was only one actual armchair, the rest of the space taken up by glass display cases and shelves. He scurried off to fetch a chair from the dining table. “Can I get you something to drink, Chief Inspector?” he asked from the doorway. “Erm, I’ve only got Diet Coke or soya milk, but...”

Pierce demurred, not least because she didn’t want to contemplate what he might serve it up in. As she sat in the armchair, she found herself facing a goat’s head with both of its eyes stitched closed. It managed an accusing stare despite the lack of eyeballs. She was pretty sure that if she started asking about import certificates and licences for some of the more dodgy-looking items on display here, their owner would be in a world of trouble.

Best to steer clear of that can of worms right now.

Gary returned to the room with a straight-backed chair, setting it down close enough to hers to make eye contact uncomfortable. “So what can I do for you expertise-wise, Chief Inspector?” he asked with a nervous giggle.

She decided to treat him like the professional he wanted to be. “I need to know more about shapeshifting pelts. I understand you’re an expert on maker’s marks.”

He lit up at the words. “Oh, yes. I’ve read all the books—
Foston’s Guide, European Skinbinders of the Middle Ages, Lost Artefact Pelts of the Ancient Masters
...”

“It’s a modern mark I’m looking for,” she interrupted. “Could be someone new on the scene. Would you know about that?”

She wasn’t sure Gary would have known ‘the scene’ if it bit him—something it was quite likely to do—but he nodded enthusiastically all the same. “I’m on all the forums”—he remembered who he was talking to—“well, all the
legal
forums, obviously, heh, nothing dodgy.” His forehead crinkled and his eyes took on a hunted look.