Free Disturbed Earth (Ritual Crime Unit Book 2) by E. E. Richardson

the regular police have got Bob who doesn’t want to, nobody’s quite sure what the super’s instructions are because he’s buggered off without telling anybody, and meanwhile we’ve got all these internal investigations bigwigs in ordering everybody about.”
    “Oh, yes?” Pierce tipped her eyebrows at him over her tea cup as she raised it for another sip, trying to act casual though she was down to the sugary dregs. “So what happened with that, anyway? Were they investigating Palmer?”
    “I’m not sure,” he said, glancing over his shoulder, as if someone might be listening in who gave a damn about police internal politics. But the sandwich shop was deserted except for the two of them, even the girl serving behind the counter disappeared into the back with only the slosh and clatter of half-hearted washing up to betray her presence. “No one really knew who they were , to tell you the truth,” he admitted. “Palmer just told us they were investigating this whole business with the shapeshifter case and we should give them our full cooperation.”
    Now it was her turn to take a wholly unnecessary glance around, paranoia making her spine prickle. “You think it was that Counter Terror Action Team?” she asked. Not a real organisation, she was almost sure, but the name given by the group that had interfered with her investigation every step of the way. She’d been trying to put the skinbinder murdering people for shapeshifting skins behind bars; they’d been trying to secure his services for their own ends, and never mind the trail of bodies that he left behind him.
    “I don’t know, Guv,” Deepan said, shaking his head apologetically. “It wasn’t any of the ones who tried to take those case notes off us before, but... we never saw any ID. Not that anyone asked—I mean, you keep your head down in that kind of witch hunt.” He frowned minutely. “Superintendent Palmer wouldn’t have let them just waltz in, though, surely? Not if they were the ones who cocked everything up in the first place.”
    “He might not have had a choice.” For more reason than Deepan could guess. Pierce sighed heavily and set her tea down. “So, whoever it was, it’s all been swept under the rug, and we’re never going to find out who it was in the police or the government fucking us about. Sally injured, Tim killed, one of the officers from the Firearms Unit killed—”
    “And you injured, Guv,” Deepan reminded her.
    “That, too.” Though her shoulder wound was almost trivial at the end of that list. “And yet no one’s going to be brought to justice for any of it.” Pierce grimaced as she pushed her cup away. “Still, at least we caught the bloody skinbinder.” One small victory wrested from the jaws of total shambles. “Don’t suppose there’s been any word about a trial?” she said, without much expectation.
    Deepan’s face twisted awkwardly as she began to stand. “Did you not get notified?” he said. “There’s not going to be a trial—the bloke’s dead.”
    She dropped back down into her seat. “What? Suicide?” Arrogant little sod hadn’t seemed the type—too sure his unique gift for skinbinding would win him a reprieve, and too uncomfortably close to being right about it. And he ought to have been in high enough security accommodations to make any major self-harm impossible.
    But Deepan was shaking his head in any case. “Transportation accident,” he said. “Lorry driver went through a set of red lights and smashed into the side of the police vehicle while he was being transferred. Both the lorry driver and the prisoner were dead on arrival.”
    Pierce let out a small, bitter snort. “Oh, yeah? Pretty convenient.” She didn’t need to be a DCI to recognise a coincidence that neat wasn’t likely to be much of one at all.
    Someone high enough placed in the police to know transfer times, even arrange them, removing a liability from the playing field?
    Or merely making them think