Disturbed Earth (Ritual Crime Unit Book 2) (8 page)

The Hemsfield Gallery of Ritual Antiques was a grand name for a poky little shop tucked in between a Chinese takeaway and an empty unit. At least the takeaway’s opening hours narrowed the window for the theft; it didn’t close until eleven, which made it unlikely their thieves would have risked striking much before midnight.

The break-in had been discovered when the owner arrived for work that morning, though the local police had been and gone before anyone had thought to put a courtesy call in to Ritual. Technically the local forces kept them apprised of any crime that might potentially have a magical component so the RCU could maintain a database; in practice, the notifications vanished into the endless drift of Post-it notes and print-outs to be dealt with ‘when we get a minute.’ Deepan must have been on the ball to link these seemingly trivial thefts together.

Not that any theft was ever trivial to the victim, of course. Pierce affixed the appropriate polite but not too cheerful smile and let herself into the shop, accompanied by the faint tinkle of the bell above the door. Deepan had his notebook out to interview a woman who must be the owner, twig thin and somewhere in her upper forties with stringy ash blonde hair and a multi-coloured blouse. She was flitting about checking and straightening things in a fit of nervous energy, though as the reports had said, there was little sign of disarray beyond what the forensics team had left behind them. She jumped at the sound of Pierce’s arrival.

“This is my boss, DCI Pierce,” Deepan introduced her before the woman could mistake her for a customer. “Guv, this is the gallery owner, Ms Hemsfield.”

“Oh, Sarah, please,” the woman said by sheer social reflex. She twisted the end of her wrapped scarf in her hands, obviously at a loss for further etiquette. It would be convenient if nervousness facing the police really was an indicator of having something to hide, but in Pierce’s experience, the innocent were apt to be just as twitchy as the guilty: they were less used to being questioned.

“Don’t mind me,” Pierce said, holding up a hand. “I’m just here to observe.” She nodded for Deepan to continue as she stepped back to take a glance around the shop. It veered more towards the ‘antique’ side of its name than the ‘gallery’ part, the small interior made claustrophobically closer by being crammed with all manner of objects. It had the inescapably musty scent of aging tat, not aided by the shelf of mouldering taxidermied animals that peered down at them with sightless glass eyes.

Pierce scanned the contents of the room with the eye of both a copper and someone who’d seen a few ritual artefacts in her time. That glass display case of jewellery was easily smashed: some gold and silver pieces in there that would have been easy to carry away. The bloody great candle holder in the corner looked like it was solid silver too—probably worth having despite the bulk. And that shelf of old leather-bound books in the corner, always an insatiable market for anything that looked like a halfway authentic occult text.

Deepan’s instincts were right on the money. Regardless of whether this theft was linked to the earlier series, this hadn’t just been an opportunistic smash and grab: this burglar had been targeting something specific.

“So you told the officers who were here earlier that the only thing missing was a wooden mask?” Deepan asked the owner.

“Yes... so far as I can see, yes.” Hemsfield looked faintly befuddled. “I don’t quite know why anyone would take it over the other pieces in the shop—it wasn’t the most impressive looking thing, and quite uncertain provenance as well. Possibly seventeenth century, but with no documented history, the value’s really a matter of what anyone’s willing to pay.” She gestured to a wall display of several hanging masks, next to a conspicuously empty hook. “There’d be much more of a market for something like these African masks, for example.”

“Do you have a photo of the mask that was stolen?” Pierce put in.

“Oh! Yes, yes, it’s on the website,” she said abruptly. “I should have thought... I should take that down in case someone tries to make an offer.” She fluttered for a moment. “Um, would you like me to—I can bring it up on the computer now, if you like. In fact, I can print you a copy, if the printer’s got ink in it.”

“That would be very helpful, yes,” Pierce said. And at least it gave the gallery owner something to do that made her feel like she was being somewhat useful. Pierce could sympathise with the frustration of being seemingly unable to do anything beyond waiting for something else to happen; it came up more than often enough in her job.

And it might come up here, given the lack of any obvious clues as to the perpetrators. She doubted they’d be so lucky as to have the local police come up with usable fingerprints, let alone a helpful match.

“Did you notice anyone hanging around the shop recently?” Deepan asked as the owner led the way up the narrow S
TAFF
O
NLY
staircase at the rear. “Anyone behaving oddly?”

“No, no, not that I noticed—not that I
would
,” she added, wringing her scarf apologetically as they reached the top. “Lots of people come in just to look, and of course it’s a small shop, it makes people awkward when there’s nobody in there but them and me... People quite often come in and go back out again. I wouldn’t notice.”

The private room at the top of the stairs was, if anything, even more stuffed than the shop below; boxes of bubble-wrapped antiquities were crammed in beside office supplies. Hemsfield leaned under the table to switch the computer on at the plug.

“Sorry, it’s terribly slow, this old thing,” she said, offering an awkward smile as it started up. “I don’t really use it that much—my niece does most of the website stuff for me.” She moved the mouse in a circle and peered at the screen. “Oh, is it installing updates again? Sorry... Always seem to get millions of the things every time I switch it on. I really don’t know what it’s doing half the time.”

Pierce looked around at the cramped environs of the upper room. “Was anything taken from up here?” she asked, though she wasn’t sure how anyone would tell.

“No, no, I don’t think so,” Hemsfield said. “I had a quick rummage around when I first came in—probably shouldn’t have, I know, fingerprints, but you don’t think, do you? I didn’t see anything else missing aside from the mask downstairs.” She turned back to the computer screen. “Ah, here we go. Now, let me just get the internet...”

Pierce shared a small, rueful smile with Deepan, who was perceptibly twitching with the itch to leap in and take over. Poor lad had ended up with more than his fair share of report-writing when he’d first joined the RCU, thanks to his inability to stand around and watch while her former sergeant made a hash of his painstaking two-fingered typing. It had stood him well when he’d taken the sergeant’s role himself—the first one she’d had who’d been promoted from within. The RCU didn’t generally have much luck with retaining people long enough for them to advance through the ranks.

She wondered if Dawson was planning to change that by gunning for her job. Under Superintendent Palmer she would have been sure that her boss had her back, but with Snow in charge now, there was no such reassurance. A big break in this theft case could give her some much-needed leverage, if the investigation had been stalled while she was gone.

She grimaced as the shop owner brought up her photo of the mask, a small low-res snapshot of a wooden leaf mask that looked little different from a ton of other Green Man depictions you could pick up cheap in your average New Age shop.

Of course,
getting
a break in the case might be easier said than done.

The gallery owner seemed to have little more help to offer, so Pierce grabbed lunch with Deepan at a nearby sandwich shop. His disgustingly healthy veggie option inspired her to go for the virtuously low calorie end of the menu herself, which she was already sure she would regret in a few hours’ time. She tried not to eye the rack of chocolate bars by the till.

“I don’t know how you stay awake living on rabbit food,” she said, stirring her tea.

“It
keeps
me awake, Guv,” he insisted. “My energy levels always crash when I’m eating all that heavy sugary crap.”

“Ah, but the solution to that is to eat
more
heavy sugary crap,” she said, filching another sachet of sugar from the tray to add to her tea. Baby steps.

It was a relief to sit down and unwind after being on the go since early morning, but as usual her mind soon steered back to the job. “So how have things been with Dawson while I’ve been away?” she asked. This was the first chance she’d had to talk to Deepan without other ears listening in, and while he wasn’t the type to badmouth a colleague, she trusted him to shoot straight with her. “Any trouble?” She blotted the bottom of the dripping teacup on her serviette.

He shook his head, absently twisting and folding the paper wrapper of his drink straw. “Nothing major. Teething troubles—well, obviously he outranks me, even if I’m the one with the RCU experience, so... bit awkward. You know.” He waved it away with a dismissive shrug.

“Left you in the lurch a bit there, didn’t I, son?” she said, twisting her mouth in an unhappy grimace. Unavoidable—she could hardly have come back to work with a duff arm, and the first couple of weeks after the surgery she’d been no bloody use to anybody—but still, far from ideal. It made her grimly aware of just how easily her entire unit could be put out of action at a stroke.

She supposed she ought to be grateful for Dawson, a second in command to hand the leadership off to in the event she was injured again, but she still had grave doubts about how much he could be trusted.

“Wasn’t exactly your fault, Guv,” Deepan said, shaking his head with a faint snort. “I got off lightly compared to the rest of you.” There was a silence, and she knew they were both thinking about Tim. An inexperienced young constable, murdered on her watch; no matter how hard they worked towards it, sometimes it felt like there was no justice.

And the thought of the disastrous outcome of that case was a stark reminder that there might be forces within the police actively working against it. Pierce leaned forward over the table. “So what’s your opinion of Dawson? Personally.”

Deepan pressed his lips together, contemplating the question rather than brushing it off with polite pleasantries. “Headstrong,” he said ultimately. “He likes things done his way. Bit of a steamroller, too: he’ll take advice from people who know what they’re talking about, but he doesn’t much like listening to caution. Prefers to be taking action, even if it’s risky.” He sat back in his chair and shrugged. “Decent enough at the job though, and he doesn’t seem to be playing favourites or trying too hard to climb the ladder. Could’ve got a lot worse.”

“Mm.” Probably true, even if it was faint praise. “What about the new superintendent?”

He shook his head. “Haven’t really met him, apart from when he first came in and gave his big intro speech. You’re lucky you missed it—all very ‘standards,’ ‘targets,’ ‘media image,’ and all that guff. But then that’s pretty much what they all talk like, at that level.”

“So what exactly happened with Palmer?” she asked. “Did he announce he was going?”

“I’m not really sure, to be honest—I was out of the office a lot at the time,” Deepan said with an apologetic shrug. “This was back when we had the Oxford RCU guys in: we didn’t get the new personnel until Snow arrived. I did have to take a few things to Superintendent Palmer, since I was kind of
de facto
in charge, but he was pretty harassed—he basically just let me go off and do whatever. Didn’t want to hear the details.”

“Not like him,” Pierce noted, keeping a neutral tone of voice. Not like him—because she was pretty sure it hadn’t
been
him, but the imperfect impersonator who had worn his skin. Yet there was no way to prove it; all she had to back her assertion was gut instinct, the disappearance of Palmer’s customary silver watch—the touch of which would have broken the enchantment on any shapeshifting skin—and the later disappearance of Palmer himself. It barely even qualified as circumstantial evidence.

And Deepan certainly hadn’t known the man well enough to be able to corroborate her suspicions. He gave a faint shrug. “Like I said, he was stressed. He was looking pretty ill—I wasn’t surprised when they told us he’d taken time off for ill health.”

She straightened up. “So he didn’t announce his retirement right away?”

“Well, nah, but we could see it was on the cards,” he said. “It was obvious he wasn’t going to be coming back.”

“So who was in charge in the interim?” There clearly hadn’t been any official handover.

Deepan gave a wry smile. “It was a bit of a pig’s ear, to tell you the truth, Guv,” he said. “Nobody knew!” She got the impression, from the way that the words tumbled out, he’d been sitting on the built-up frustration of that era for some time. “I mean, there’s me, technically sort of in charge of the RCU, except obviously I’m only a sergeant, and then there’s Matheson from Oxford RCU, who outranks me but doesn’t know what he’s doing... then you’ve got the rest of the station’s operations, which is
probably
Bob Shannon’s job to run when the super’s not there, except you know what Bob’s like with additional responsibilities.”

“Wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole,” she said. Oh, yes, she knew Bob of old. The turnover in the rest of the station was dramatically less rapid than that of her unit—even where it could probably use a good stir to shake things up.