Disturbed Earth (Ritual Crime Unit Book 2) (2 page)

“All right. If Dawson comes in, tell him to come and see me,” she said to Deepan. “Figure out which cases I need to know about, and get me copies of the files.” The RCU was always snowed under with reports on every squiggle of suspicious graffiti, self-described magician and fancy dress party north of the Watford Gap; if she tried to read up on everything that had come in while she was away, she’d be here till Easter. “I’ll be next door.”

That loose term covered the assorted offices of the Magical Analysis department: what passed for forensics when it came to the occult, though anybody who worked in true forensics would hate the comparison. Even after decades of development, police magical research was still largely at the level of ‘poke it and see what happens.’ They could get results, sometimes even repeat them, but finding something that could be relied upon in court was like winning the lottery.

Hence the fact that the RCU’s research department was made up of a hodgepodge of eccentric specialists, crammed into tiny offices and working on a hundred things at once. Pierce poked her head into one particularly small room, so close to literally overflowing that there were books and files stacked on the floor outside the door. She waved at the woman just about visible behind the wall of file folders.

“Jen! How’s Sympathetic Magic treating you?”

“Claire! You’re back! Not very sympathetically.” Jenny Hayes rolled her chair round the end of the desk, or as far as it would go before the wheels struck yet more boxes, and leaned out to wave back. “Your new constables are wee sweet little lost lambs, but somebody really needs to teach them that they don’t need to send me every hair and fibre from within fifteen miles of the crime scene.”

“I approve of thorough,” said Pierce. Always better than slapdash.

“Yes, I know you do, since you’re not the one who has to process it.” But Jenny grinned. “Good to have you back—place hasn’t been the same without you.”

“Is that in a good or a bad way?” she asked dryly.

“It’s been awful,” Jenny said, composing a piously straight face. “I hope you realise I’ve had to pretend to be a proper grown-up professional every time your new DI drops by. Had to put my shoes on and take my feet off the desk and everything.”

“Terrible,” Pierce agreed. “Dashing, is he?”

“Only in the sense of moving places fast.” She arched her eyebrows over her glasses. “Bit of a bulldozer, that one. Wants things done his way and fast, doesn’t want to hear about the details.”

“I know the type.” And it didn’t bode well for harmonious cooperation; still, plenty of those who pushed the support staff around weren’t quite so eager to bark at the boss. She’d see. “Right, better push on and act like I’m doing something useful around here... I’ll see you later, Jenny.”

“We should go down the pub sometime, celebrate you coming back to work,” Jenny called after her as she left.

“We should.” A nice plan that was never going to happen, given how much Pierce had to catch up on. All the same, it was good to be reminded that even with half the detective branch gone, there were still people here that she knew and trusted. She’d felt isolated and ineffectual, stuck at home recovering, but now she was back on her own turf.

She dropped in on each member of the research team to let them know that she was back and see what kind of workload they were up against. Without exception heavy, but that was nothing new: they’d always had a backlog on their backlog. Pierce was fairly sure there were some evidence lots still waiting to be processed that had been around since she was a DS.

The Enchanted Artefacts department had the biggest backlog of all. The literature on magic was still such a patchwork of guesstimates and myth that it was tough to certify
anything
as definitively free from enchantments: all they could do with mystery items seized from ritual scenes was keep prodding to see if they went boom.

As Pierce approached the lab at the end of the corridor, she became aware of a faint but insistent hum on the cusp of hearing, like a machine running somewhere in the distance. As she pushed the door open to step into the Artefacts lab, the hum grew louder, but no more distinct.

Clifford Healey popped up from behind a lab bench to greet her, wearing a pair of clear plastic goggles and a set of headphones. He was a big man with a broad face like an affable potato, and hair that had migrated into two greying clumps on either side of his head. He raised a finger to beg for a moment’s pause as he struggled to retrieve his mp3 player from a pocket under his V-neck and disentangle himself from the headphones.

He beamed at her. “Claire!” he said heartily. “Back in our neck of the woods? I was beginning to fear we might have seen the last of you.”

“You should be so lucky,” Pierce said. The humming hadn’t stopped with the cessation of whatever music he was listening to, and she found she was talking too loudly to compensate. “What’s that noise?” she asked with a wince. It was hitting the perfect frequency to drill right through her head.

“Ah!” Cliff said, holding up his hand. “Turns out today is quite the day for blasts from the past.” He bounded across the lab to the racks of metal shelving on the far side and began to peer at the labels on various storage boxes.

“You calling me an old fart, Cliff?” she said, leaning against the doorway.

“We can both be farts together, my dear,” he said, smiling at her through the shelves as his box-shuffling created a gap.

Pierce couldn’t help but snort. “You really know how to charm the ladies, you do.”

“And now here I come bearing gifts.” He moved back to the table with a large plastic storage box, removing the lid with a flourish. “Recognise this handsome fellow?” he asked.

She leaned in to get a look at what seemed to be an intricately made, if hideous, cast iron lantern. The eight sides were fashioned into faces, devilish masks with wide gaping mouths, each sharing one eye with each neighbouring face so they blended into one unbroken chain. It had an iron ring on top to hang it up, supported by metal bands that gave the faces the impression of horns.

“Looks like a bloke I went out with in the ’nineties, only he had a bigger mouth,” she said. She was aware of a change in the quality of the hum as Cliff lifted the thing out of the box. “Although it does seem to be blowing a lot of hot air. So where did we get this thing, and should we be worried that it’s humming?”

“We’ve had it for years, and... who knows?” he said, with the airy shrug of one who spent his days playing with volatile enchanted objects to see what he could make them do. Sometimes Pierce suspected their research department had even less sense of self-preservation than the detective branch.

He moved the box onto the floor and stood the iron lantern on the lab bench. “This was seized evidence from the Collingate murders,” he said. “I don’t know if you remember?”

It rang a vague bell, though she thought it had been somebody else’s case back in the day. “Big posh house, son tried to summon something nasty to murder the father, ended up getting more nasty for his money than he was expecting?” she said.

“Something along those lines,” Cliff said with a nod. “The father was a collector—had a lot of unclassified artefacts that weren’t directly involved in the murder itself, but were judged potential class three and four violations. We seized the lot, and haven’t done much with them since. However, Nancy was down at the long-term storage facility the other day and noticed that our devilish friend here had started making a noise—gave her quite a start, I should imagine. And so... here we are.” He spread his hands.

Pierce bent down to peer closer at the lantern, holding her palm in front of each of the mouths to see if she could feel any motion of air. Nothing obvious. “And do we know
why
it’s making a noise?” she asked, looking up at Cliff.

“Well, we have theories,” he said. “I’ve been doing some research, and I believe our friend here is probably a watch lantern. It’s his job to let his owner know when something nasty approaches—nasty, in this case, most likely meaning some form of supernatural beastie with ill-intent. Quite the thing among feuding spirit-raisers a few centuries back.”

Pierce stepped back, reflexively looking around even though she didn’t know what she expected to see coming at them in the middle of a police station. “So what is it warning us about?” she asked.

Cliff pursed his lips, as close as he ever seemed to get to an actual frown. “Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?” he said. “Now, it may be something as simple as proximity to another artefact that’s set it off, or it may be something in the greater area. In theory, if his light was lit, he might be able to give us more of an indication of where it was coming from. Here’s where the science gets a bit fuzzy, though, I’m afraid: the signals were not really standardised, and I haven’t been able to dig up any specific information on the provenance of this particular model.”

“Any risk to lighting it up?” she asked.

“Well, there shouldn’t be. I was planning to get around to trying it sometime later today, but there’s no reason we can’t do it now, if you’d like to watch. It never hurts to have a second set of eyes to check my observations.”

Pierce stood back. “Go on, then. Dazzle me.”

Cliff smiled, and patted several pockets before coming up with a cigarette lighter.

“Thought you quit,” she said, as he bent with a slight groan to pick up a big box of candles from the floor.

“Well, I
did
,” he confessed, “but it’s so convenient to have the lighter for work, and when you’ve got it right there with you in your pocket...”

“You should get a job that doesn’t require setting things on fire,” she said.

He grinned as he opened up one latched side of the lantern to place a candle inside, causing a shift in the atonal hum. “Now, where’s the fun in that?” he said. He closed the lantern hatch again and retrieved a pack of wooden tapers, shaking one out and setting the end of it ablaze with his lighter. “All right,” he said. “Best not to get too close, but do watch carefully. Any subtle action of the flame could well have some meaning.”

Pierce nodded and held still as he brought the taper to the candlewick. It took a moment to properly catch, and then the humming noise that she’d been hearing all along took on a new, more piercing quality, like wind blown over the mouth of a milk bottle. Her hair fluttered against her forehead as if caught in a breeze, and the wooden taper in Cliff’s hand puffed out.

She raised her voice above the sighing howl of the unnatural wind. “Is this—?”

The candle flame abruptly flared, as if someone had poured petrol on the fire, and she jumped back as tongues of flames spewed forth from the devilish mouths.

“Oh, dear,” said Cliff, turning to reach for the wall-mounted fire extinguisher with an air of calm resignation. “I think we should probably—”

The flame leapt again, showering sparks, and thick black smoke began to billow forth, filling the room at an alarming rate. Pierce covered her mouth with her sleeve and grabbed for the door handle behind her, winning a twinge from her still-healing shoulder.

“Cliff!” She meant to order him out, but her next words were swallowed by a cough. She turned to look at the door she was groping at—where the
hell
was the bloody handle?—but another flare of the candle flame at the corner of her eye made her turn to look.

The room was already a shadowy haze, the grinning devil’s mask of the lantern leering at her through the growing smog. “Cliff?” She coughed harder, squinting through streaming eyes. A metallic
thunk
—the fire extinguisher striking something. Had he fallen?

They had to get out of here. She slapped again at the door and finally managed to grab the handle, yanking it open and sending dark smoke coiling out into the corridor. She flapped her arm, ineffectually trying to waft more of it away. “Cliff! Get out of there!” She held the door open for him to follow, still coughing.

“Hang on! Just let me—” His words collapsed into spluttering, but she heard the spurt of the fire extinguisher, and then the metallic clang as he let it drop to roll across the floor. She stepped back into the room and stretched to grab his arm, yanking him with her towards the door.

“Go!” She shoved him out and then followed, pulling the door shut behind them to close off the smoke. They both collapsed against the wall, panting for breath. “All right?” she asked him, with a sideways glance.

Cliff nodded, red in the face as he drew in sucking gasps of air.

“Notice any subtle signs?” she asked him.

He laughed, then doubled over, coughing. As office doors along the corridor cracked open, the fire alarm above them began to blare.

Looked like work was going to be business as usual.