fredbassett | Fic, Crow on the Cradle, Part 2, Stephen/Ryan, Lester/Lyle, 18

Title : Crow on the Cradle, Part 2 of 15
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 18
Characters : Stephen/Ryan, Lester/Lyle, Cutter, Claudia, Abby, Conn0r, OCs.
Disclaimer : Not mine (except all OCs), no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Summary : Lyle’s mother is on the scent of a story and it looks increasingly like the ARC team aren’t the only ones with knowledge of the anomalies.
A/N : this is my first official Primeval Big Bang! With many thanks to

lukadreaming for incomparable beta work and for holding my paw throughout a very long writing process. The total word count is 51,277 and I will be posting in 15 parts.

Lester stared around at the crowded conference room and nodded in greeting to Ryan and Stephen.

He was pleased to see both men back. Ryan hadn’t yet been cleared for active duty, but at least he was on hand to provide help and advice. As a bonus, the captain had already managed to make a start on the mountain of paperwork that Lyle and Stringer had managed to accumulate between them in his absence. It was good to have Stephen back as well. Ryan’s lover could usually be relied on to at least make a passable attempt at keeping Cutter under control, although Claudia was also become more adept at that, and Lester had begun to have his suspicions that his assistant’s relationship with the irascible academic was now something more than strictly professional.

Lorraine Wickes, Lester’s ever-efficient secretary, had provided tea, coffee and biscuits and Lyle slid a mug across the table to him. Connor was hunched over his laptop, tapping busily away on the keyboard, Cutter was staring around with barely concealed impatience, Ryan was chatting to Claudia with more than his usual degree of animation, and Stephen was lounging in his chair looking like he’d rolled straight out of bed after an extremely energetic bout of sex and hadn’t bothered to tame his hair.

The door opened to admit Abby Maitland. “Sorry I’m late. Joel’s on his way. He’s just had to take a phone call.”

“Thank you for your time, ladies and gentleman,” Lester said, raising his voice just enough to get everyone’s attention. “As I’m sure you’ll all be aware, Captain Ryan has been cleared to return to light duties and, for your information, Lieutenant Owen was quite adamant that the definition of light duties does not extend to chasing refugees from the past. Also, having expended his holiday allocation for at least the next decade, Dr Hart has kindly honoured us with his presence.”

Stephen gave him a lazy grin and leaned even further back in his chair.

Before Lester had chance to go any further, the door opened again and Joel Stringer wandered in, dressed casually in faded jeans, his non-regulation length dark hair brushing the collar of an open-necked blue shirt. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in several days, although a quick glance around the room told Lester that Captain Stringer wasn’t the only officer who appeared to have mislaid his razor.

“Sorry, sir,” Stringer remarked in a cut-glass accent that belied his formative years in one of Liverpool’s more notorious slum districts. Stringer’s file – what Lester had seen of it – made interesting reading, but the same could be said of all the soldiers who made up the ARC’s military contingent. The Special Forces captain settled into a chair next to Abby and took the coffee she’d poured for him.

“Edward Mason,” Lester announced, tapping the file on the table in front of him.

Stringer’s eyes narrowed and he sat up straighter in his chair. A flash of recognition crossed Abby’s gamine face as well. The name was clearly known to both of them.

Lester raised his eyebrows. “Would the pair of you care to share your knowledge of the gentleman with us?”

“He runs a private zoo in Kent,” Abby supplied, glancing sideways at Stringer, apparently surprised that the name had elicited a reaction from the soldier. “He’s very keen on breeding programmes for endangered species. He had a lot of involvement with the report the Zoos Forum produced last year on the snow leopard breeding programmes.”

“Captain Stringer?”

“Poacher turned gamekeeper,” Stringer remarked. “Or so he’d like to have people believe. He used to spend a lot of time chasing foxes around the countryside and shooting big game in Africa.”

Abby nodded. “He used to hunt with the Beaufort then gave it up in favour of animal welfare and conservation.”

“I once had the pleasure of tipping him off a horse in the middle of a very muddy field,” Stringer grinned, alluding, Lester knew, to his early days as a hunt saboteur. “He was a right bastard. Rode his horse into a group of protesters once and put a friend of mine in hospital with a broken leg. There were kids there as well. Mason didn’t give a sod who got hurt.”

“You seem less than convinced by his newly-acquired conservation ethics, Captain,” Lester commented. “Do you have any recent evidence to back up your natural tendency towards cynicism?”

“Leopards don’t change their spots, sir,” Stringer replied. “No matter how many bloody breeding programmes you care to put them through. I lost track of him a few years ago, but someone I trusted told me that Mason had been seen bagging game in Rwanda several years after his so-called road to Damascus moment.”

Lester raised an enquiring eyebrow at Abby.

“There were rumours,” she agreed. “Quite strong ones. Mason’s made a couple of attempts at getting onto the Zoos Forum, but the appointments committee has always turned him down on the basis of a possible conflict of interest as he runs his own zoo. The Zoo Forum’s an independent advisory body that deals with zoo licensing,” she clarified. “I came across Mason a few times when I was working at Wellington. I can’t say I liked him.”

At Lester’s side, Lyle shifted slightly in his chair, listening intently. Ever since Lyle’s mother had casually dropped Mason’s name into after-dinner conversation several weeks ago in London, Lester had been making discreet enquiries about the man and had gradually discovered that he was being blocked – politely but effectively – at every turn. Mason clearly had friends in high places.

Ryan’s phone call from Cumbria with the information that Mason had apparently sent a gang of armed thugs to steal some prehistoric animals being kept as pets in an anomaly-infested area of Cumbria had provided the final motivation that Lester had needed to get involved. Mason had now come to Lester’s attention twice in relatively quick succession and whether his political paymasters liked it or not, that wasn’t something he was prepared to ignore.

“Why are you interested in Mason, sir?” Stringer asked, clearly voicing the question that everyone else was thinking.

“His name has cropped up twice recently,” Lester replied. “And I don’t believe in coincidence.”

“Three times,” said Stringer softly. “Mason was the reason I was late for this meeting.”

Lester raised both eyebrows this time. Three times was definitely beyond the realm of coincidence. He nodded at Stringer to continue.

“An old friend of mine wants to see me,” Stringer supplied. “He didn’t want to say too much on the phone, but it was about something his daughter had been up to on Mason’s land. I served with Dan Ratcliffe in Iraq. He was a sergeant in the bomb disposal squad. Lost a leg and a hand to an IED. Good bloke. I owe him one.”

“Then I suggest you find out what he wants to talk to you about,” Lester said smoothly. “Take the rest of the day off. Would your friend be willing to talk freely in the presence of Miss Maitland?”

“He will, if I vouch for her,” Stringer said.

Lester hesitated for a moment and then continued, “Mason is well-connected. I’m sure this goes without saying, but be careful, Stringer. I’ve been warned off him in no uncertain terms.”

Stringer’s answering smile was wolfish but Lester knew perfectly well that the soldier was used to flying under the radar. All the Special Forces contingent were.

“So are you going to tell us what you know, Lester?” Cutter demanded impatiently.

“Patience is a virtue, Professor,” Lester sighed theatrically. “However, in a nutshell, Mr Mason appears to have recently developed a taste for some rather esoteric pets.” Lester quickly summarised Ryan’s report on the incident that had resulted in his early return from sick leave.

“How the hell did he know that the creatures were there?” Cutter commented when he’d finished.

“There’s nothing about any weird animals around there on any of the cryptozoology sites,” commented Connor, still tapping at his laptop keyboard. “Or anywhere else, as far as I can see.”

Lester had asked Connor to do some background checks an hour ago, and if anything had been in the public domain, he had no doubt that Cutter’s young protégé would have been able to find it.

“I have absolutely no idea, Cutter,” Lester admitted. “But I intend to make it my business to find out.”

* * * * *

Lester closed the door of his office and frowned at his lover. “Jon, what are the chances of your mother coming clean and telling us what she knows?”

“About as good as the chances of Cutter remembering anyone’s birthday without a memo in triplicate. She’s a tabloid hack. She makes my mad godmother’s beagles look tractable when she’s on the scent of a story.”

“I didn’t know you had a mad godmother,” Lester commented. “Is anyone in your family sane, Jon?”

“Probably not,” Lyle admitted. “I’ve been working up to telling you that she’s summoned the pair of us to lunch at some point. Auntie Madge worked with my mother on the Daily Vile years ago. She was the fashion editor when mother was doing a column for them before they kicked her off for being too liberal. Mother, that is, not Auntie Madge. Her politics are somewhat to the right of Attila the Hun. Madge stuck it for another couple of years then retired to the country to breed fancy rats.”

“You’re making this up.”

Lyle spread his hands in a mock-innocent gesture. “No word of a lie, sweetie. She took a rat to a fashion show once and the little bleeder ended up going for a ride on one of Stella McCartney’s hats. Auntie Madge swears to this day that’s where some guy got the idea from for roadkill hats.”

Lester resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Will Auntie Madge know what your mother is up to? If we don’t make some headway on this one soon, you’re going to have scratched your bloody thumbs to the bone.”

“Not a cat in hell’s chance,” Lyle said ruefully. “She’s as bad as my sodding mother.”

“Tell her we’re free for lunch any time,” Lester instructed.

He knew perfectly well that he was clutching at straws, but Lyle wasn’t the only one who was uneasy.

As it turned out, Auntie Madge wasn’t answering her phone so that idea had to be put on ice until she was. And five minutes on the internet after Lyle had gone off to oil his guns, or whatever the Special Forces soldiers did when they were waiting for an anomaly to enliven their day, had proved conclusively that Auntie Madge – or celebrated fashion writer Margaret Boulter, as she was otherwise known – did indeed exist and now maintained one of the country’s largest websites dedicated to fancy rats. Until Lyle had mentioned them, he hadn’t even known that there were such things, but Ed Mason clearly wasn’t the only person interested in exotic pets. The internet was nothing if not educational.

Lester had a feeling that lunch might well prove to be an interesting experience, even if he didn’t end up any the wiser about the activities of Lyle’s mother. He’d just have to hope that Stringer’s contacts would be more inclined to share whatever intelligence they’d gathered on Mason’s activities.

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From:

lsellersfic.livejournal.com

Stephen was lounging in his chair looking like he’d rolled straight out of bed after an extremely energetic bout of sex and hadn’t bothered to tame his hair.

When does he ever look different?

I have my suspicions about Abby and Stringer too, just so you know.

OMG and Lyle's Aunt!

From:

Fic, Crow on the Cradle, Part 2, Stephen/Ryan, Lester/Lyle, 18

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