Disturbed Earth (Ritual Crime Unit Book 2)

by E. E. Richardson

  Taylor’s pointing finger confirmed it. “That’s Inspector Dawson, ma’am.”

  Which meant now came the joy of playing politics. Stop and introduce herself to Dawson first, with the attendant likelihood of ruffling the feathers of the local police even further as she ignored them, or snub Dawson and run the risk of him being the type to hold a petty grudge for the rest of their working career?

  Fortunately, she was spared having to pick option A or B by a shout.

  “Sir!” one of the PCs called from further off in the trees. “We’ve got another skull!”

  CHAPTER THREE

  IN THE GENERAL scramble to relocate to the second find, Pierce managed to get the chance pull her new DI aside.

  “Dawson?” She offered him a handshake. “DCI Claire Pierce.”

  Seemed he wasn’t the kind of idiot to try making a point by crushing her bones, but he definitely had a hearty grip. The strong scent of cigarettes clung to his coat. “DCI Pierce,” he said with a curt nod. “I was told you had another week or two of leave.”

  “So was I, but I’m not one to sit around,” she said. “What’s the situation here?”

  “Man walking his dog took a shortcut through the field. Dog ran off and started digging, uncovered a human skull.” He indicated the original excavation, where forensics had carefully cleared out the earth from around the skull. “Local bobbies had a look and then called us in. I told them not to move it till we’d had it analysed.”

  Pierce moved in for a closer look at the skull down in the pit. Not hard to see why it had been flagged as the RCU’s business: the skull was daubed with complex geometric patterns in what looked like blood, and a rolled parchment scroll tied up with black ribbon was tucked between its jaws. Around it, the excavation had uncovered a ring of nine small flat stones, each one etched with a different symbol.

  Not one of the common sets of runes, but that didn’t mean much. The world—and these days the web—was awash with alleged occult texts, far too many for the police Arcane Documents Network to try to compile. Only a tiny fraction might be legitimate, but the real bugger was telling that fraction from the rest. The general public mucking about with magic were the infinite monkeys with typewriters who only needed to strike it lucky once; the RCU had a handful of overworked monkeys and a limited budget for typewriter ribbons.

  Pierce straightened up and looked around. No obvious landmarks to suggest this field had any particular magical significance: not even a distinctive hill or suitably ancient tree. The choice of field might indicate some sort of curse targeting the owner, or it could just be a conveniently out-of-the-way location for the ritual burial.

  Dawson had moved on without waiting for her, but DC Taylor was still hovering, probably in a state of existential confusion over who was technically in charge. Pierce motioned for him to walk with her as she followed the others over to the trees. “What do we know about the owner of the field?” she asked.

  He hurried to consult the pages of his notebook. “Er... Jane Hockney. Local, seventy-two... keeps cows. Used to use the fields to... graze them, or something?” He gave a confused shrug. “City boy, me. But apparently she’s been selling off most of her animals since her husband died two years ago, and this field hasn’t been in use for quite a while.”

  Not the most likely avenue of investigation. Still, best to be thorough. “What happened to the husband?” she asked as they moved into the shade of the trees.

  “Throat cancer,” he said, with a sympathetic twist of the mouth. He ducked under a tree branch and held it back for her. “Nothing suspicious. And he was cremated, so, probably not his skull.”

  “Not unless he had two heads, anyway,” she said, as they caught up to the others, clustered around a newly marked off area where one of the forensics team was crouched. As the woman brushed dirt away from the crown of a second skull, Pierce could see a similar set of blood-daubed patterns emerging from the soil.

  “Looks like more of the same,” Dawson said, stepping back. He raised his voice to address the whole assembled group. “There may be others! They’re probably arranged in a pattern. Measure out the distance between the two skulls, and start searching in an equivalent radius around them. If you find a patch of disturbed earth, let forensics dig it out—it may be dangerous to move the skulls.” He clapped his hands. “Go!”

  Pierce hid a grimace at the supercilious tone. The local officer in charge didn’t bother, scowling openly at the order even as he reluctantly endorsed it. “All right, do what the man says, lads, come on,” he said. “The sooner we get this scene mapped out, the sooner we can leave the RCU to do their thing.” And go back to proper police work was silently implied.

  Dawson definitely wasn’t winning friends and influencing people here, and that would be a real pain in the buttocks if they needed more assistance from the locals later on. Maybe he was used to having enough clout to run things his way, but the RCU didn’t have the resources to operate like that. They’d have been here till February if they had to process a scene this size with no outside help.

  But stepping in herself wasn’t likely to smooth any feathers, only ruffle Dawson’s, so she let him go off and direct the operation as he would. The attitude problem might not be wholly on his side this time, she supposed; if it turned out to be a pattern of behaviour, she could address it later.

  Instead, she turned her attention to her other, newer and more malleable young recruit as he joined her in watching the painstaking excavation of the second skull. “All right, Taylor, what’s your opinion on this?” she asked. He blanched, but Pierce only had a limited amount of pity to waste on nervous newbies. RCU was a specialisation where you had to think on your feet.

  At least he rallied fairly quickly, even if he retained the deer-in-the-headlights look. “Er, well, the... presence of multiple prepared skulls suggests... it’s not just a ritual burial. It’s more likely that the skulls themselves are an... ingredient, if that’s the word? It’s skulls because the ritual requires skulls, not just because the perpetrator had bodies to dispose of.”

  She gave a noncommittal hmm and a single nod, encouraging him to go on.

  His eyes darted down to the half-buried skull for inspiration. “Erm... the elaborate setup and use of sigils suggests this is something copied from an occult text rather than the caster’s own invention, which means it’s worth researching from that angle.”

  ‘Worth it’ more in a hypothetical sense than in terms of the needle-in-haystack odds of finding the right text, but she’d allow the optimism.

  Taylor was sweating now as he struggled to come up with anything else. “Um... the tied scroll in the skull’s mouth most likely has a written enchantment. Untying it might break the ritual, or it might set it off. Skulls... suggest some kind of death-related symbolism, so...”

  And now they’d reached the point where he was just desperately parroting any old bollocks from the textbooks, so she raised a hand to stop him. “Lots of symbols in magic, true, but don’t assume it’s that straightforward,” she said. “Blood and death equate to power, and just because a ritual uses them for juice doesn’t mean it’s intended to kill.” Though it was probably a safe bet that it wasn’t meant to bring great joy and happy bunnies.

  Still, decent effort on Taylor’s part. Pierce gave him a nod. “Not a bad analysis, just don’t take it too far,” she cautioned. “The most important thing to know in this job is that most of the time we actually know bugger all. Always better to admit you haven’t got a clue than assume you know what you’re dealing with when you don’t.”

  She straightened up, beginning to get a crick in the neck from watching the excavation. “All right,” she said. “Let’s see what’s going on with this search.”

  FULL EXPLORATION OF the site, or at least as wide a region as it was feasible to search, uncovered a total of three skulls, arranged in a triangle. The locations were interesting, one tucked away under the trees, the third one close to the base of the dry ston
e wall. Awkward places to dig, not the nice convenient patch of open ground that you’d pick if you were free to site your ritual anywhere you chose. It suggested that the arrangement had some significance, but that didn’t necessarily mean it was tied to the field itself or the people who owned it or lived nearby.

  Magic. Always more questions than answers.

  Pierce watched enough of the excavation of the final skull to confirm it matched the others, and then went to join Dawson. He’d moved away from the rest of the group to make a phone call, but as she approached, he lowered the phone from his mouth and pocketed it. She tried not to give in to the momentary flash of paranoia. No reason to think he’d been talking about her, and even less to assume it was more than bitching about the boss being back if he had.

  “So what’s your plan from here?” she asked, careful to take less of an assessing tone than she had with Taylor. She didn’t need to be at war with her DI, especially since he’d had weeks to establish his claim on the loyalties of the two new constables she’d barely met.

  “I’m treating this as a potentially serious ritual curse,” he said. “We need to learn more about these skulls before we try to move them. I’ve called in a necromancer—”

  “A necromancer? Who?” In Pierce’s experience, those who claimed they had an affinity for raising the dead were either fakes, or worse, the kind of dangerous dabblers who knew just enough to get a result but not what to do next.

  Dawson’s eyes narrowed fractionally at the challenge. “Man called Martin Vyner. He’s a local.”

  “Never heard of him.” She frowned.

  “No? Well, you’ve been out of the game for a while,” he said. The dismissive tone set her on edge.

  “Maybe—but I’ve been in it for long enough to know that trying to raise the dead rarely makes a situation better,” she said sharply. “We’ve got the site contained and there’s no immediate danger. No need to escalate things by bringing more magic into the mix.”

  “Not so sure about the lack of immediate danger,” he said. “This is no amateur effort. We need to know what we’re dealing with.”

  “And there are ways to find out without leaping straight to the nuclear option.”

  “Not quickly.” He held her gaze with a challenging stare.

  Pierce would have had plenty more to say, but the DI in charge of the local team, Bowers, was heading towards them. She made a conscious effort to relax and step back, aware that even if he wasn’t close enough to overhear, he could more than likely recognise the body language of two officers having a barney.

  As it was, Bowers seemed to have built up a head of steam of his own. “Some bloke with no police credentials just showed up at the gate saying that you called him in,” he said with a glower. “Who is he? Is he one of your lot? If you want us playing rent-a-guard while your people ponce about, the least you could do is keep us bloody informed.”

  “Outside consultant,” Dawson said. “I called him in to perform a ritual for us.”

  “He’s cleared for RCU work,” Pierce put in, and hoped Dawson wasn’t making her a liar. He must have had this bloke vetted before using him at scenes, surely.

  “Oh, is he, now?” Bowers was not appeased. “Well, maybe your work involves farting about doing rituals, but we have actual police work to get done. Forensics have done their job, or as much of it as you’ll actually let them do, so how long before we can remove the skulls? We can’t keep this place cordoned off for you all day.”

  “That depends on the outcome,” Dawson said, looking past Bowers to where DC Taylor was approaching, accompanied by a tall, cadaverously thin gent with a dark Van Dyke who was carrying a duffle bag. He wore a suit jacket over a black T-shirt with a pentagram design, and small round glasses with yellow lenses.

  Pierce could have picked him out as the necromancer in a crowd without even being told she was looking for one. She doubted he could do anything except make matters worse, but she couldn’t send him away now without making the RCU look like they didn’t know their arses from their elbows.

  Not that they had much credit to lose with Bowers on that front. He looked as if he was about to burst a blood vessel as Dawson strode off without a backwards glance to hail the new arrival.

  “Mr Vyner! Thanks for getting here so quickly.” So her DI did have manners, he just didn’t think the local police they had to work with day-in, day-out merited them. Bloody wonderful.

  She could sympathise with Bowers’ visible headache, but she doubted he’d appreciate the commiseration. “’Scuse me,” she said politely, more to stick it to Dawson than out of any hope of papering over the damage he’d already done, and went to join her subordinates with Vyner. She just hoped that this alleged necromancer could manage some sort of performance that wouldn’t leave all them looking like idiots.

  The necromancer had a soft, dry voice that was made for snooker commentary, and a penchant for stroking his beard as he listened. “Hmm, yes, I see, I see,” he was saying as Dawson outlined the situation. “And these skulls haven’t been moved from their resting place?”

  “Excavated by police forensic specialists,” Dawson assured him. “They’re very careful not to disturb anything from its original position.”

  “Excellent, excellent.” Vyner nodded. “An unquiet spirit builds a connection to the soil in which it’s interred; the raising will be easier if the bones are still in place.”

  Constable Taylor looked like he was drinking this all in, but Pierce preferred to talk practicalities. “So what’s the plan?” she asked bluntly. “What can you do, and what do you need to do it?”

  Vyner turned to face her, eyes rendered uncomfortably unreadable behind the tinted lenses of his glasses. He had the kind of calm composure that could indicate confidence—or just a plain old con.

  “If the soul died in pain or spiritual distress, then I should be able to call it forth and command it to speak,” he said. “But I can’t guarantee it will have any story to tell. Spirits are no more than lingering impressions, the psychic stain left behind by the victim’s final memories. They fixate, and rarely retain enough self to offer more than one or two repetitive thoughts.”

  Genuine and smart enough not to promise too much, or covering for the fact his so-called ritual wouldn’t do a damn thing?

  “We’ll start with this one,” Dawson said, leading the way to the first skull they’d uncovered, out in the open.

  They stood and watched with varying degrees of scepticism as Vyner made his preparations. He laid out a carefully measured ritual circle around the excavation using poured salt and powders, then drove metal stakes into the ground at points around the circle, joining them together with taut strings. He set out various items on a cloth beside him—a knife, a set of brass scales, a mirror—and planted seven blood red candles around the circle. All the way through, he kept up a low chanting under his breath, the rhythmic words indistinguishable.

  At last, when he was satisfied, he sat back on his heels. “If I could have silence, please?” he said. “Everyone, be careful not to come too close to the circle—it’s vital that the line remain unbroken.”

  Vyner struck a match and raised it to light the first of the candles. “Spirit, I call to thee,” he said, the low words loud in the thick silence. The flame leapt high, burning a deep indigo blue, and the stench of sulphur filled the air. “Spirit, I call.” He lit the second candle, bathing his face in blue light. The atmosphere seemed to chill and the field become darker; Pierce looked up at the sky, but the sun still squinted out between the hazy clouds just as brightly as before. Somehow it seemed to be further away.

  “I call to thee,” Vyner repeated as he lit the third candle. The dark smoke rising from the candles filled the air above the excavation with a haze, and his voice now sounded hoarse. “I call to thee.” The fourth candle. The world beyond their little knot of observers around the circle had receded, sounds hushed, the wind calming into stillness, though she could see tree branches moving on
the other side of the field.

  He lit the fifth candle. “I call to thee.” The sixth. “I call.” At the lighting of the seventh, his voice rose abruptly into a booming roar. “Answer the call!”

  The atmosphere sizzled and cracked, like a lightning strike without the flash and bang. Pierce felt her ears pop, and the short hairs at the back of her neck rose, as much from static as the rippling chill. They all held their breath as the candle flames died back down, and the smoke over the excavation slowly drifted away to reveal...

  Nothing.

  The long moment of waiting began to tip over from tense into awkward.

  Bowers was the first to break the silence. “That it, then?” he said, folding his arms. “Well, if you’ve quite finished arsing about, I’m going to—”

  Vyner snatched up a bone-handled knife from his kit and threw himself forward, face contorted in an animal snarl as he lunged towards Bowers.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE NECROMANCER MOVED too fast for anybody to react, slamming into Bowers and sending the DI staggering backwards. Vyner’s spindly limbs were flailing in a frenzy, the knife he clutched in one hand already half forgotten as he tried to attack with his whole body at once. He was snapping his teeth, kicking, clawing, trying to headbutt... It was as if he was too crazed to try to think.

  As if he wasn’t the one doing the thinking.

  “He’s a fucking psycho!” Bowers choked out, trying to ward off the flurry of attacks. He didn’t have a stab vest; he was a detective visiting a potential body dump, not a uniformed officer expecting trouble on the beat.

  Dawson was equally defenceless as he grabbed at Vyner around the middle, trying to haul him off the other man and getting the back of Vyner’s head to his jaw for his trouble. One lucky swipe of that wildly swinging blade, and there’d be arterial blood flying. Pierce could see uniform officers running to join them, but they were too far off, and they didn’t know what they were dealing with.