Under the Skin (Ritual Crime Unit) (5 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

A
LITTLE SLEUTHING
turned up the most likely match to the partial address, and Pierce left Deepan in charge of the rest of their caseload while she drove over to check it out.

It proved to be an ordinary residential street, narrow semi-detached houses with small gardens out front. Number Twenty-Two was no different to any of its neighbours, no obvious signs of neglect or suspicious activity to draw attention. There was a car on the drive in front of the garage; bog standard silver Ford, neither new enough nor old enough to be distinctive.

The curtains were closed. Either someone inside didn’t want to be seen, or nobody had been home since they’d arrested the shifter.

It was a big house for a single man living alone. Maybe there was an ex? She’d have to ask the neighbours. Considering she was no longer officially on the case, it could be tricky to find an excuse to get inside the house. But there might be someone on the street who’d seen something of use. If the shifter’s car was still here, then he must have got a lift, or else he owned a second vehicle. The white van at the barn? Maybe she could get a registration.

Pierce drove on past the house and parked further up the street. No need to betray her interest in the house too soon. One advantage of coming alone was that no one suspected a middle-aged woman in a suit of being police.

It could quickly turn into a disadvantage if someone was lurking behind those curtains. It was a chill October day during normal working hours, and the street appeared entirely deserted. The odds of someone coming to her aid if she called for help were on the anorexic side of slim.

Best not to get in any trouble, then.

She strolled past the front hedge, taking a casual glance up at the windows. Not enough gap round the edges of the curtains to be able to steal a peek. The narrow windows in the door were smoked glass, revealing no more than a useless blur. Pierce pressed the bell, and listened to it buzz faintly inside. No sign of movement.

A second attempt proved just as fruitless. She peered in through the letterbox. There was nothing to see except the foot of the stairs.

Balls. Time to try the neighbours, then.

No one answered the door at the houses to either side, but the old lady opposite proved to be a goldmine—and not just because she offered tea and biscuits.

“Oh, yes, that’s Joe and Lisa’s house,” she said, as she settled down in her armchair with a creak of bones that made Pierce wince in sympathy. “Well, I say Joe and Lisa’s. I think Lisa might have moved out, but I could be wrong.”

“Oh?” Pierce cocked her head in encouragement as she eyed up a custard cream. There wasn’t much need to employ interrogation skills; the woman was clearly delighted to have a chance to chat.

“That’s her car, you see, out there on the driveway,” she said. “Joe has his own—well, it’s more of a van, really, I suppose.”

“Do you know the make and registration?” She reached for her notebook, not all that hopeful.

“Oh, I’m sorry, love.” The old woman shook her head. “I’ve never been much of a car person. It’s a white van, but that’s all that I can tell you.” The teaspoon clinked in her cup as she stirred it reflectively. “I think he’s a builder or a plumber, something like that—Lisa was always a bit vague. She was the one that I usually spoke to; Joe always kept himself to himself, you know the type.”

“But it’s been a while since you last saw Lisa?” Pierce pressed her.

“Well, now I come to think of it, it must be a couple of months.” The old woman frowned over her cup and saucer. “I asked Joe—I thought she might be ill, you see, or maybe her car was broken down, with it just sitting on the driveway all the time. He told me she’d moved out, but, well, she’s done that before, you know.” She arched her eyebrows meaningfully. “They were always fighting—not that it’s any of my business, of course. I thought she’d be back within the week, but perhaps this time she’s thrown him over for good.” She took a thoughtful sip of tea and frowned again. “Funny that she wouldn’t take her car, though.”

“Funny,” Pierce agreed with a tight smile.

I
T WOULD BE
pushing it to claim she believed that lives were in imminent danger, but Pierce thought she’d learned enough to justify poking about. It wasn’t impossible to think Lisa could be a prisoner, and if so her captor wouldn’t be coming back. She’d be neglecting her duty if she didn’t at least take a closer look.

A little investigating proved that the gate at the side of the house was only held closed by a bolt, easily jiggled loose. Pierce rounded the building, warily alert. It
felt
like an empty house, but even in more mundane police work it was a bad idea to trust appearances. Jumping at shadows was a small price to pay to avoid shadows jumping at
you
.

The house’s small back garden was more overgrown than the front, but offered nowhere for a criminal to hide. A magpie watched her passing with a suspicious eye, but she was pretty sure shapeshifters couldn’t shrink that small. The skinbinder’s eagle wings made him a man-sized bird: not exactly inconspicuous in daylight. He’d need somewhere to hole up for the day in human form.

Was this the place?

The house had patio doors, unsurprisingly locked. Pierce looked in on the empty living room. Nothing of note to be seen, except for the fact that the three piece suite had been pushed to the wall as if to clear more floor space. The carpet looked rucked up, and she itched to be inside where she could lift it up to check for evidence, whether criminal or ritual.

No warrant: no such luck. She moved on towards the rear of the attached garage instead. There was a back door, and she halted as she saw that it wasn’t completely shut; it had been pushed to, but wasn’t quite flush with the edge of the frame.

Just a door swollen by damp that wouldn’t close—or was someone still inside?

Her hand went to the malodorant spray fixed to her belt. Wouldn’t work so well on humans as on more sensitive noses, but it was still a vile stink that ought to shock anybody enough to give her time to run and call for backup.

She should call for it right now, but she was hesitant to do it, unwilling to blow her cover before she knew that somebody was there.

Exactly the kind of reasoning that got officers killed. Pierce guessed it was good she was old and wise enough to recognise the stupidity of the move—right before she went ahead and did it anyway. She unclipped the spray from her belt, holding it in her pocket ready to whip out. Then she took hold of the doorknob. The door was stiff in the frame, scraping along the ground with a rasp that ruined her efforts at stealth.

Inside, the garage was musty, and dark aside from the light that followed her in through the door. She fished for the penlight that she had attached to her keys, wishing she’d stopped to grab her full-sized police torch from the car. If she hadn’t been kicked off the case, she wouldn’t need to be sneaking around without proper backup or equipment.

The penlight’s narrow beam did little to illuminate the space, only highlighting isolated spots as she flicked it around. Workbenches, tools hanging up on the walls; this garage was clearly never used to store a car. It was crammed with old pieces of furniture and garden tools that filled the space with odd-shaped shadows.

Pierce edged her way in past a rusty, grass-stained lawnmower, moving a folding chair out of her way. The garage smelled faintly of petrol, and under that another, subtler scent that raised her hackles. A rolled tarpaulin lay to one side, and she unfurled the plastic sheet as well as she could in the tight space. Dark streaks and drip stains marred the wrinkled fabric. Oil? She knelt down on the concrete to shine the torch beam closer.

Not oil. Even by the penlight’s feeble glow she could see the faint reddish tint to the stains. Blood—but was it human or animal?

A clunk and creak from the front of the garage made her whirl, and she saw the door starting to rise. The sunlight that poured in beneath was blinding, and she squinted to make out the figure silhouetted outside as she fumbled to pull the spray out from her pocket.

Before she could bark out a warning, the man in the doorway spoke. “DCI Pierce.” She recognised the cool, calm voice at once. “Perhaps you didn’t fully understand my meaning when I told you that your team was off the case.”

M
AITLAND MIGHT HAVE
caught her red-handed, but Pierce was pretty sure he was in no hurry to start disciplinary proceedings. Whatever his mysterious little group were up to, she doubted they could spare the time or stand the added scrutiny.

So she stonewalled to the best of her ability. “I received a tip linking a shapeshifter to this address,” she said. Perfectly true, as was the fact she’d promised to protect her source; no need to delve into the details further. “Unauthorised shapeshifting falls under our jurisdiction.”

Maitland gave a pleasant smile that didn’t touch his eyes. “Of course. Nonetheless, given that you knew my team was working on a similar case in the local area, it might have been wiser to keep us informed.”

“It was an unreliable tip,” she said. “Might easily have been nothing.” She hadn’t risen through the ranks to DCI without mastering the art of obfuscating without lies.

“Nonetheless,” he repeated, still smiling.

The whole exchange was utter bollocks and both of them knew it, dancing round the subject to avoid complications.

Christ, she hated politics.

She left Hornbeam Way no more enlightened, and considerably more pissed off. Whatever evidence might be found in the dead shifter’s home, Maitland and his team wouldn’t be sharing.

So what was it about this case that had drawn the attention of Counter Terrorism? She’d yet to see any evidence there was more to it than illegal skinbinding and maybe murder. It rankled to think that she might have to let the case go without even knowing what it had been about.

Pierce stopped at a café to beat her mood into submission with chips. While she was waiting for her food to arrive, she called Deepan on her mobile.

“Nothing new, Guv,” he reported. “Just paperwork and cold cases. I let Tim go off to the hospital to visit Sally—he wasn’t getting a thing done.”

“Sally’s doing all right, then?” she asked. At least that was one glimmer of good news.

“Husband said she’s doing well.” Deepan hesitated. “Sergeant Henderson didn’t make it through the night, though. Sorry, Guv.”

“Damn.” Pierce closed her eyes. She hadn’t even had the chance to learn the man’s first name.

She felt another sharp stab of resentment towards Maitland. It was her request for Firearms Support that had put the team in harm’s way, and now she couldn’t even tell them for sure that the sacrifice had been for a good reason.

She took a slow, deep breath. “Okay, thanks, Deepan,” she said. “I’ll probably drop in to see Sally on my way back, if you’re all right holding the fort. No trouble from Palmer about the incident in the cells, I hope?”

“Haven’t heard a peep, Guv,” he said. “Don’t even know if there’s going to be an investigation our end—looks like Counter Terrorism are going to handle it internally.”

“Brush it under the carpet, more likely,” Pierce said with a grimace. “All right,” she said, after a moment. “Call me if anything comes up.”

The meal could have been five star dining, and it still would have sat poorly in her stomach. She arrived at the hospital to catch Sally’s husband picking at a sandwich in the lobby café with the same lack of enthusiasm. He looked exhausted, face papery grey, though he summoned up a wan smile as she crossed the room to greet him. She’d met him before at various work dos, but she still had to dredge for the name.

“Hi, Mike. How’s she doing?”

Mike let out a breath as he rose and collected up the debris of his meal, seeming glad to have an excuse to abandon it. “She’s doing well, they said. Came out of surgery all right. She was awake for a little bit earlier. Still a bit out of it, though.”

“Not surprising.”

“She can’t talk at the moment, but they’ve given her a whiteboard,” he said, leading the way over to the lifts at the far side. “She wasn’t really up to writing anything this morning, but I think she appreciated my artwork.”

She smiled and nodded. Oppressive silence fell as they waited for the lift to arrive. As they stepped inside, the doors swished closed behind them, Mike spoke again, abruptly. “Did you catch the bloke?”

It took a moment for her to switch mental gears. “The attacker? Yes. Yes, we did.” She wasn’t about to mention that he’d died in police custody, or that a second suspect had escaped.

Mike seemed to draw some comfort from it anyway. “That’s good to hear.” The lift doors opened with a ding and he straightened. “This is it.”

He led the way along the antiseptic-smelling corridor, shoes squeaking on the tiles. As they passed through the double doors into the ward, Pierce spotted Sally in the second bed.

She’d looked better. The tracheostomy tube sticking out of her neck was a stark reminder of the severity of her injuries. Wound dressings disappeared below the scoop neck of her hospital gown, and her head lolled back against the pillow. At first Pierce wasn’t sure if she was actually awake, but then she turned her head to face them as they approached, managing a fraction of a smile.