Spirit Animals (Ritual Crime Unit Book 3)

by E. E. Richardson

  Gemma came in from the analysis labs waving a folder just as Pierce went to sit down. “Got some results from Ritual Materials, guv,” she said. “Simon identified some herbal residue taken from our burning barn as something called...”—she had to check the file—“cold smoke powder? He says the composition matches the mix sold by a shop called Trick Box in—”

  “Bradford?” Pierce said along with her, reversing back out of the seat that she’d barely sat down in. “I know it well—and I’m pretty sure they’re up to their necks in something, even if it isn’t this. Let’s go and shake the place down and see what falls out.” Cold smoke powder was nothing illegal, but it did have its dodgier uses, and the owners of Trick Box had never impressed her as the sort to be overly conscientious about what their customers might be getting up to.

  “Any joy tracking down the source of the animals?” she asked Gemma as they drove.

  Gemma shook her head in frustrated apology. “None of the corpses retrieved from the fire were microchipped, though it’s possible the chips were just too damaged to scan properly. I was hoping we might be able to track down a source for the more exotic animals, but there’s no zoos or animal sanctuaries missing anything on the list, so it looks like we’re dealing with animals from the black market pet trade. The lynx was the most distinctive thing, but it was at ground zero for the magical blast, so there wasn’t much of it left.” She wrinkled her mouth. “Guess you had a pretty lucky escape there, guv.”

  “Mm.” A timely reminder that, while animal sacrifices might not be high enough profile to get the superintendent’s knickers in as much of a knot as the Valentine Vampire case, the people responsible were still dangerously ruthless in their own right. If the RCU hadn’t been alerted to the possibility of a skin shop at work, it could easily have been a local Community Support Officer or even a curious neighbour who’d got to that altar and blown themselves up.

  There were a lot of nasty ways that those with some knowledge of magic could prey on the unsuspecting public, so the RCU liked to keep a weather eye on any magic-related businesses in the region—never an easy task, since they tended to pop up and disappear as fast as dodgy market stalls, and often for pretty similar reasons.

  Your two basic market openings in the occult field were either selling cheap, dubiously functional tat to the credulous, or dealing in one-of-a-kind artefacts that changed hands for hundreds and thousands of pounds. Dabblers didn’t like to spend and experts knew better than to risk cheaping out, so any shop that managed to stay open targeting the largely non-existent middle ground was, in Pierce’s view, best viewed with cynical suspicion.

  Trick Box had managed to survive for the last eighteen months selling mid-range magical goods at knock-down prices, so someone either had deep pockets and a poor understanding of the sunk cost fallacy, or they were getting away with murder somewhere. Hopefully not literally.

  “What’s our angle, guv?” Gemma asked her as they approached the shop, tucked away between a phone shop and a pawnbroker’s.

  From her previous, admittedly brief, dealings with the staff of Trick Box, Pierce suspected that ‘explain the situation in a civilised manner and expect full cooperation’ was not going to be the answer.

  “Don’t bring up any details of the case,” she said instead. “We’ll go in like it’s a standard inspection—I’ve got a couple of other outstanding cases I can rattle their cages over so they don’t know we’re after anything specific. I’ll do the talking; I’ve dealt with them before. You just keep an eye out for anything dodgy, especially if it looks like they’re trying to distract me from it.”

  “Am I the muscle, then?” Gemma said with a grin.

  “If you like. Do your best to loom.”

  They pushed through the door, accompanied by the harsh blart of a cheap electronic buzzer. The inside was dimly lit, somewhat cramped and musty, as all such shops seemed to be: partly because of the nature of the goods they trafficked in, and partly, Pierce was sure, for the atmosphere. Nobody wanted to buy their magical paraphernalia from a place that looked like a computer showroom.

  The owners of Trick Box had taken that philosophy to heart, and the shop had managed to look faintly grimy since the day it opened. Glass cases full of shabby-looking artefacts and books divided the space into tight aisles you’d be hard-pressed to squeeze a wheelchair down, and a sign above the counter read: WE BUY: occult texts, magic items & ritual equipment (subject to verification). On the left side of the shop were racks of generic ritual equipment; on the right there were many tiny drawers filled with powders and herbs, like some kind of dubious magical Pick ’n’ Mix. A stand in the corner by the door held hanging packs of candles, chalk and other ESSENTIAL SUPPLIES!!

  There was no one in the shop this early in the morning aside from the woman behind the counter. Pierce recognised her as the owner, Helen Wilkes, a squat middle-aged woman whose solidly powerful build and stone stare would probably make most customers think twice about quibbling over the quality of service. She had a jowly face that seemed to be set into a perpetually sour expression, although that might just be the one she wore when the police showed up at her door.

  “DCI Pierce,” she said, imbuing the title with all the welcoming warmth of the February frost outside. “What can I do for you?” She managed to heavily imply that the preferred answer would be ‘nothing.’

  “Just come for a bit of a look-see,” Pierce said, leaning on the edge of the counter and doing her best to keep Wilkes’s attention as Gemma drifted off to inspect the merchandise. “You know we like to keep ourselves updated on what’s going on in the world of ritual retail.”

  Wilkes sniffed. “Seems to me you ought to spend less time doing that and more on catching criminals.” She looked past Pierce to give Gemma a dismissive once-over. “Another new constable, is it?” she said with a faint curl of her lip. “You do go through them.”

  Pierce bridled, but forced it down. She wasn’t the one supposed to be getting her cage rattled here—and Wilkes couldn’t know about Deepan or Leo.

  Still, no point in beating about the bush. “Anybody come in recently asking for necromantic texts?” she asked, without further pretence of niceties.

  “We don’t sell those,” Wilkes said flatly.

  “Good for you. Anyone come in asking for them?” Pierce pressed.

  “Not that I recall.”

  Somehow Pierce doubted she’d have been able to recall it even if the customer asking had left five minutes ago. But this was just the preamble, routine follow-up on open cases that were probably too cold to have a chance of turning anything up. She switched streams. “What about ritual bowls?” she asked. “Anybody been in trying to fence one with a silver rim and a rose-and-thorns motif?”

  “You’re welcome to go through all our receipts for pawned items,” Wilkes said, her tone saying she was anything but. “We keep scrupulous records, and we always check against the lists the police release of stolen items.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Pierce said. A poke about in the back rooms might turn up a few items that they ‘hadn’t got around’ to adding to said records yet, but that wasn’t the game she was after today. “What about cold smoke powder?” she said. “I know you sell that.”

  “What if we do? It’s not illegal,” Wilkes said.

  “Sold any recently?” Pierce asked.

  “Sell a lot of it,” she said with an indifferent shrug. “No reason to keep track.”

  “You ask people what they use it for?”

  “Special effects, isn’t it?” she said, shrugging again. “Smoke with no fire. Amateur stuff. Adds a bit of pizzazz to your conjuring tricks.”

  “Unless they add it to an actual fire, and then you get great billows of smoke from a source as small as a candle flame.” Which was a particularly handy trick for anyone involved in say, illicit spirit-raising rituals, where smoke was one of the more convenient ways to give form to the formless, but building a big enough outdoor fire to
produce it in quantity tended to be indiscreet.

  “Shop’s not responsible for off-label uses,” Wilkes said, unmoved. “You can smack someone over the head with a coffee table. Doesn’t make it illegal to sell coffee tables.”

  Pierce smiled without humour. That was probably about as much cooperation as she was going to get, but then, she’d expected as much. “Mind if I take a look around your stock?” she asked.

  Wilkes self-evidently did, but she was smart enough not to object. “Long as you don’t stay too long,” she said. “Having you lot in here puts the customers off.”

  “I just bet it does.” She took her time drifting around the shop and examining miscellaneous merchandise before joining Gemma beside one of the glass cases in the centre, where she’d been hovering for some time. Pierce raised her eyebrows at her in silent question, and Gemma cocked her head subtly towards the upper shelf. It housed a number of medallions hung on velvet necklace stands, wooden discs about two inches across. Each was delicately etched with a stylised design of a different animal—a running hare, a hunting dog, a stalking cat—surrounded by an intricate double ring of runes. A handwritten sign in front of the stands read Animal Spirit Charms: view the world through animal senses!

  Smoke powder used in rituals to make spirits visible. A barn full of dead animals in cages. And a collection of animal spirit charms.

  Very interesting.

  She turned to look back at Wilkes. “These animal spirit charms in the case here,” she said. “Are they licensed?”

  Unlike artefacts purporting to house trapped human spirits, it wasn’t necessarily illegal to own or sell animal spirit artefacts, provided they predated the current animal sacrifice laws or had been brought in from other countries prior to the import ban.

  “Licensed antiques,” Wilkes said. “Got the paperwork right here if you want to see it.”

  “Yes, I think I would,” she said. As Wilkes headed off into the back room with a long-suffering air, Pierce glanced at Gemma. “Anything else?” she asked in a low voice.

  “Just these, guv,” Gemma said, faintly shaking her head. “Look at all the empty stands, though,” she added. There were five medallions in the glass case, but there were three other unoccupied necklace stands alongside them. “These cases are dead crowded—that’s a waste of display space. So either they sold the others very recently...”

  “Or they were expecting to get more in,” Pierce said with a nod. Nice one. She turned back towards the counter as Wilkes came stomping out from the back room.

  “Here’s all your papers,” she said, dumping them on the countertop with profound indifference. “Now, if that’s all, I’ve got a shop to run.”

  “I’ll try to keep from getting in the way of your hordes of customers,” Pierce said. True, magic shops tended to do most of their trade in the evenings, but if the complete lack of customer interest the whole time they’d been in here was any indication, then it really was questionable how Trick Box could stay afloat.

  But no doubt the shop accounts would be as unenlightening as this paperwork. Pierce studied a set of what looked like completely authentic licences for possession of Category C exempt spirit-bound artefacts, and probably were: she took a quick phone photo to track the licence numbers back, but wouldn’t be surprised if the trail terminated at one of several dodgy issuers they’d been trying to catch out for years. Still, always best to be thorough—even experienced criminals could have a moment’s carelessness, and it helped if the coppers on their trail didn’t do the same.

  “Antiques, hmm?” she said, flicking through more forms that certified the charms’ alleged age—the evaluator had been vague, yet still somehow managed to be certain they predated any inconvenient laws. “They look pretty new to me.”

  “Well-kept,” Wilkes said, perfunctorily; but then, Pierce didn’t suppose Wilkes gave a damn what she believed. “Bought them off a collector as a set.”

  And there was the auction receipt; likely also a dead end, but Pierce conscientiously photographed it all the same. She’d like to seize the charms and all attendant paperwork to study in forensic detail, but the tenuous link of a legitimately sold batch of cold smoke powder and Wilkes’s obstructiveness weren’t enough to build a case on. The best they could do was follow up on serial numbers and signatures, and hope that this time Wilkes had been stupider than usual.

  “If that’s all, inspector?” Wilkes said pointedly. Pierce doubted she’d got her rank wrong by accident.

  “For the moment,” she said, keeping her frustration in check. “If there’s anything else that needs clearing up, we’ll come back.”

  All her instincts said that Wilkes was up to something. The difficulty was going to be proving it.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “IF WE’RE LUCKY, they’ll panic and try to move those charms out quickly, or get in contact with whoever’s been supplying them,” Pierce told Gemma as they headed back to the car. “I want you to keep the place under surveillance—keep track of who goes in and what they come out with, both during and after business hours. I’ll call Eddie out here to join you.”

  Ideally she would have used wholly fresh personnel whose faces Wilkes hadn’t seen, but she didn’t have them to spare with Deepan out on medical leave and Dawson off on a murder case. She’d win no friends by deputising assistance from the thin-stretched local forces on such an insubstantial lead; there was going to be trouble enough from Snow about the overtime if it didn’t turn up case-cracking evidence. But it was the best lead they had.

  Back at the office, Pierce still had time before her meeting with Christopher Tomb, so she checked out the serial numbers on the paperwork. She wasn’t greatly surprised when it all came out legitimate, at least on the surface—Wilkes wouldn’t have handed it over so easily if it couldn’t stand up to inspection. They could chase up the issuers of the dodgy certificates, but without the spirit charms to hand, they couldn’t do tests of their own to prove that the details in the paperwork were false.

  She did, however, have a snapshot she’d taken of the charms with her phone—nothing that could be used as evidence, but perhaps enough to fish for some opinions. She headed next door to the research department, poking her head into the Sympathetic Magic office in passing.

  “Jenny—fancy a walk down to Cliff’s?” she said. “Easier to pick both your brains at once.”

  “Ah, exercise,” Jenny said, stretching. “Almost as good as fresh air, or so I’m told by people who get out more. All right, hold on a mo.” She frowned at the file before her and, after a brief flurry of typing, pushed her chair back and stepped into the shoes she’d kicked off under the desk. The low heels weren’t enough to bring her up to Pierce’s height as they fell into step side by side. “How goes the vampire hunt?” she asked.

  “Less well than it would if we could convince people we weren’t looking for vampires.” They’d already had numerous alleged sightings of giant bats and people reporting their neighbours for being pale and working the night shift. She sighed. “Too little bloody evidence, just like all the other times.” A serial killer case was big enough to get them rush work from regular forensics for once, but even with the advances in fingerprint-lifting techniques and DNA testing over the years, Nottinghamshire Police had yet to turn up anything of use from the scene. “I’m beginning to suspect our killers are less into gothic eveningwear and more into forensic overalls.”

  “Well, if there’s no news on the vampire front, what did you want to pick our brains about?” Jenny asked as they arrived at Cliff’s lab. He looked up as soon as the door opened for once, no sign of the usual headphones in his ears.

  Of course, the horse had already bolted out of that barn door, and she doubted more alertness on Cliff’s part would have stopped their evidence going walkabouts. The people they were up against were too brazen and too powerful to catch out with standard security measures.

  Hence her ulterior motive in bringing Jenny in to speak with them, though she did
have some police business to raise first. “Animal spirit charms,” she said, bringing her hands together. “What can you two tell me about them?”

  Cliff gave a thoughtful frown. “Well, that rather depends,” he said. “What kind of charms?”

  “This kind.” Pierce brought up the photo on her phone, and the others craned over to peer at it; reflections in the glass had obscured the details of the runes, but the shot at least gave an impression of the basic look of the things.

  “Hmm.” Cliff rubbed his upper lip thoughtfully. “Well. Hard to be sure without getting my hands on them to examine them properly, but at a glance, they look like they’re single-use charms, probably activated by a specific touch or incantation. The circular pattern of runes is the giveaway: it’s effectively a containment circle, holding an inherent enchantment in check until the circle is broken.”

  “And how would someone have gone about enchanting the medallions?” Pierce asked. “By, perhaps, performing some kind of blood sacrifice?”

  “It would certainly be a viable source for the kind of magical energy required,” Cliff agreed. He shot her a look. “But that would, of course, be very much illegal.”

  She matched the expression. “Our seller says these are licensed antiques, naturally.”

  “Oh, I doubt that very much,” Cliff said, peering at the phone again. “The wood’s all wrong. And frankly, you’d be unlikely to see these made of wood at all, not if the enchantment was meant to be kept contained for any length of time—metal or carved stone would be more likely, perhaps bone.”

  Pierce nodded, pressing her lips together. “That’s about what I thought, but you can’t hang a conviction on it,” she said with a sigh. Or prove that Wilkes had been aware that her so-called antiques weren’t the real deal. “And we can’t seize them to prove that they’re dodgy without evidence that they’re dodgy.” It would certainly be outside of the RCU’s budget to buy one of the things outright, in the unlikely event Wilkes would be willing to sell to them.