fredbassett | Fic, Crow on the Cradle, Part 4 of 15, Stephen/Ryan, Lester/Lyle, 18

Title : Crow on the Cradle, Part 4 of 15
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 18
Characters : Stephen/Ryan, Lester/Lyle, Cutter, Claudia, Abby, Connor, 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.

“Welcome to Farnley Hall, Mrs Thackeray.” The receptionist smiled widely. “If you let me have your car keys, I’ll have your bags taken up and George will park your car for you.

The woman addressed as Mrs Thackeray returned the smile and dropped a set of keys onto the polished wooden desk in the imposing hallway.

A younger woman, dressed neatly in a dark skirt and white blouse, and wearing flat, sensible shoes, appeared from a doorway behind the receptionist and bobbed what looked remarkably like a curtsey.

“Sandra will show you to your room. Smoking, as you requested. Would you like me to have some tea or coffee sent up?”

“Coffee. It was vile journey. Every idiot in the world seemed to be out for a drive in the country. Call me Claire. Mrs Thackeray makes me think of my mother-in-law and I can’t abide the old biddy.”

Claire Thackeray’s voice spoke of a 40-a-day habit and she had clearly spent plenty of time in the sun without the benefit of sunscreen. Her clothes were practical rather than fashionable, but she wore them with that indefinable style that hinted at a large amount of money in the bank.

“Follow me, ma’am,” the uniformed girl said, with another slight bob. Her accent wasn’t English. She didn’t offer her name, but her badge proclaimed it to be Sandra.

A wide wooden staircase wound up from the hall alongside walls adorned with the stuffed heads of numerous animals, both native species and more exotic ones, including the head of an Arabian Oryx. Claire Thackeray barely gave the animals a second glance as she followed the girl up the stairs and along a corridor to a room at the back of the hall with excellent views over rolling parkland.

The girl called Sandra gave another slight bob. “If there’s anything you need, ma’am, reception is staffed 24 hours a day. Your coffee and cases will be here in a few minutes.”

Claire Thackeray smiled and handed the girl a £5 note. Sandra smiled her thanks, gave another of her trademark bobs and left, closing the door quietly behind her.

Within a matter of moments, a lighted cigarette between her fingers, Claire Thackeray had kicked off her shoes and taken a tour of her surroundings. A four-poster bed hung with lavish brocade drapes dominated the wood-panelled room. An ensuite bathroom, white-tiled on both walls and floor played host to a large claw-footed ball with gold taps, a shower stall took up one corner, and an array of toiletries and large, fluffy white towels were set out on a marble washstand, on which rested a large glass basin, adorned with more gold taps.

In the bedroom, two comfortable armchairs faced the window that led to a small balcony but of more immediate interest was the mini-bar discreetly hidden inside a mahogany cabinet. The television was a large flat screen mounted on one wall.

A knock on the door signified the arrival of another member of staff, carrying two large suitcases, and while they were being brought in, a tray of coffee and biscuits arrived and was left on the low table beside a selection of daily newspapers. More discreet tipping followed. When the members of staff had left, Claire Thackeray ground out her cigarette butt in the ashtray, opened the mini-bar, tipped a miniature of single malt whisky into her coffee, lit another cigarette and settled down in one of the armchairs to enjoy the view, a thoughtful expression on her suntanned face.

* * * * *

Lyle stabbed his thumb against his mobile phone to end the call and then slammed the phone down on the coffee table in Lester’s flat with mounting frustration. “Harry hasn’t seen her for a week.”

“Does he know where she’s gone?” Lester asked, depositing a can of beer next to his lover. The conversation between Lyle and his mother’s fourth husband had been a long one, but it had seemed to yield little in the way of concrete information.

“If he does he’s not telling me.” Lyle sighed and took a long swig of beer. “To be honest, I think he’s as much in the dark as we are. All I got out of him was that she’d been using her mobile a lot in the study. He’s going to check the browser history on her laptop on the off chance, but I bet she’ll have cleared it, she’s too fly for a fuck-up like that. She told him she’d be back in three weeks. That was a week ago.” He scratched absently at his thumbs again. “She’s messing with Ed bloody Mason, isn’t she?”

Lester nodded. “Looks that way.”

Lyle grimaced. “I don’t like what I’ve heard about the fucker. Employing Manchester muscle with knocked off Eastern bloc handguns isn’t my idea of respectable, so why are your political paymasters so bloody keen on keeping you away from him?”

“I imagine a large donation to party funds is involved somewhere along the line.”

Lester was under no illusion about such things, but the scale of corruption in the upper echelons of Government never failed to amaze – and disappoint – him. The current lot were no better than any of their predecessors, no matter how much they cared to make an attempt to seize the moral high ground and defend it against all-comers.

“Bastards,” Lyle muttered as he reached for his phone and dialled a number from memory. “Madge? It’s Jon. You told me to bring James for lunch sometime. I’m owed a bit of down-time so how does Saturday sound?” He listened a moment and then grinned at Lester. “12.30? No problem. We’ll be there.” He ended the call and took another swig of beer. “No pointing in asking Madge if she’s heard from her. If she knows anything, Mother will have put her under orders to keep schtum.”

“Julia couldn’t just have done the simple thing and told us what she knows, could she?” Lester sighed. He knew it was a vain hope. Julia Denton was an old-school journalist who would do things her own way.

Lyle laughed humourlessly. “Not when she’s after a bloody story. You do realise you’ll have to incarcerate her in the Tower of London to shut her up if she gets a scoop?”

“That can be arranged. I don’t suppose a DA notice would do any good?”

“She wallpapers the bogs with the bloody things, sweetie. Nope, it’ll have to be a dungeon to keep her quiet. And I want the pleasure of throwing away the key.” He knocked back the rest of the beer and declared with clearly mounting frustration, “I am too bloody old to be worrying about my mother taking off on some daft caper! The old harridan should be knitting bonnets for babies, not getting involved in the sort of thing I do for a bloody living.”

Lester placed a sympathetic hand on Lyle’s shoulder. “Don’t let it get to you, Jon. I’m sure she’ll be fine.” He wasn’t, but it didn’t seem like the right moment to fuel his lover’s mounting paranoia on the subject of his only parent’s activities.

The sharp trill of his mobile phone broke the silence. Lester glanced at the screen display and raised his eyebrows. The caller was Joel Stringer. “Captain,” he said, not even trying to keep the surprise out of his voice. “Yes,” he said in answer to the man’s question as to whether he was at home to visitors. “Tell the doorman I’m expecting you and take the lift to the fourth floor. I’ll meet you there.” He stared thoughtfully at Lyle. “Stringer wants to talk.”

* * * * *

Dinner at Farnley Hall was served at 8pm, preceded by drinks in the library at 7pm. It was a warm evening and large French doors had been thrown open to reveal chairs and tables on a spacious paved area overlooking a formal rose garden. The scent of flowers was heavy on the air. An impeccably-dressed waiter offered chilled champagne in a tall fluted glass as Claire Thackeray entered a room filled from floor to ceiling on two walls with glass-fronted bookcases containing books both ancient and modern.

A large stone fireplace set in one wall contained a pile of logs laid on top of enormous cast-iron firedogs, smouldering gently. In front of it, a tall, well-built man was chatting to two men and a woman, while out on the terrace, several other people were drinking and talking.

The man broke off his conversation with an apology and stepped towards the latest arrival, his hand outstretched. “Claire! Wonderful to see you again.” He slipped his arm around her waist and the ritual of air-kissing followed. “Let me introduce George and Lizzie Henderson, and Peter Churchill. His wife, Anne, is outside.”

Claire Thackeray smiled and nodded. Air kisses were exchanged and one of the men offered her a cigarette. The group drifted away from the fire and onto the terrace. More introductions followed and the waiter moved silently from person to person, topping up their glasses.

From somewhere in the distance, a howl echoed on the wind, greeted by other animal noises.

“Someone wants their dinner,” commented one of the guests. “So, Ed, when do we get to see your latest exhibits?”

Mason smiled. “Patience, Charlie. I’ll give you the guided tour tomorrow.”

“More to the point, when do we get to the interesting stuff?” The speaker was a short, rotund man, wearing a crumpled linen jacket over a beige shirt and pair of dark brown slacks.

“You just want to try out your new toy,” laughed one of his companions. “Henry’s just been bragging about his latest acquisition.”

Mason raised his eyebrows politely and the man referred to as Henry joined in the laughter. “You’re just jealous, Grigson.” To Mason he added, “I picked up a Marlin 336 last time I was in Jo’burg.”

Ed Mason smiled. “Probably one of the most successful lever-action rifles in history. Don’t let Dewar get his hands on it or you’ll never get it back. I swear that man sleeps with his guns.”

“You were lucky to get him,” Grigson commented. “I heard on the grapevine that someone in the US was bidding for his services.”

Mason’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Carl and I go way back. I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.”

“I hope you’ve got something suitable lined up for me to use,” Claire Thackeray remarked. “I haven’t been back in the country long enough to make my own arrangements.”

“Of course,” Mason said smoothly. “You can have your pick from my gun room, my dear. I’m sure you’ll find something that takes your fancy.”

As he spoke, the woman’s eyes slid to the smooth-skinned young waiter, his dark almond shaped eyes betraying a hint of East Asian ancestry. “I’m sure I will,” she purred, lifting her cigarette to her artificially reddened lips.

The others laughed as the young man refreshed their glasses. A grandfather clock in library announced the time and Ed Mason led his guests through to the dining room.

* * * * *

“Have you eaten?” Lester asked, ushering both Stringer and Abby Maitland into his living room.

Abby nodded and sat down next to Lyle on the sofa. “We had something at the Black Swan before leaving.”

“So what did you find out?” Lyle demanded, consigning social niceties to the dustbin of history.

“Mason’s our man,” Stringer said. “Dan Ratcliffe’s daughter and one of her friends broke into his zoo.”

“Did they obtain anything we can use as evidence?” Lester asked. If he was going to get past the various roadblocks the Home Secretary seemed determined to erect in the way of his investigations into Mason’s activities, he would need more than just rumours backed by a confession extracted from a hired thug by means he didn’t care to enquire too closely into.

Abby shook her head. “She lost her camera when they were chased by something that sounded very much like Terror Birds. I spoke to Connor on the way here and he thinks the creatures were phorusrhacos. They lived about five million years ago in South America and southern USA.”

“Well, they didn’t get those on a breeding exchange programme,” Lester commented. “Without concrete evidence, the minister won’t sanction anything. Are they reliable witnesses?”

“They won’t go anywhere near the police,” Stringer said. “Not with their background.” In response to Lester’s politely quizzical expression, he added, “They’re both members of the Animal Liberation Front.” He turned to Lyle and asked, “Jon, what do you know about a guy called Carl Dewar? The name rings a bell, but I can’t place him.”

Lyle’s eyebrows shot up. “Dewar? Last time I came across him he was riding shotgun for a diamond mine in Sierra Leone. He’s fought in Zimbabwe, Rwanda and just about every African hotspot you can think of. But I heard on the grapevine he’d also been hawking his services to big game hunters.”

“That explains his connection with Mason,” Lester commented. “So our Mr Mason is hiring mercenaries.”

“And good ones,” Lyle added. “Dewar’s a hard fucker, and he doesn’t come cheap.”

“Mason can afford him, from what I’ve heard,” said Stringer. “We caught a glimpse of his country pile on the way to meet Dan. It’s not quite the size of Longleat, but it’s not bloody far off. The estate is surrounded by a wall that must have cost almost as much to build as the house.”

“What does Ratcliffe and his daughter suspect Mason of doing?” Lester queried. “I presume the D word wasn’t used?”

Stringer grinned. “Nope, no one mentioned dinosaurs. They originally thought he was running hunting parties of some sort on the estate, maybe with a bit of dog-fighting or something equally unsavoury thrown in for good measure. Now they think he’s either conducting genetic experiments or carrying out some sort of weird breeding programme. We didn’t disabuse them of either notion.”

“Why did Ratcliffe call you, mate?” Lyle asked. The lieutenant was still scratching at his thumbs and Lester could see that Stringer’s mention of the man called Dewar had done nothing to assuage his concerns.

“He wondered if I’d be up for a bit of moonlighting to help them get to the bottom of what’s going on.”

“And what did you say?” Lester asked.

Stringer grinned. “Told him I’d think about it, but I didn’t say no. Said I’d do a bit of digging and get back to him.” He glanced at Lyle. “Jon, if we’re taking on Mason, we need to know exactly what we’re going up against so far as his muscle is concerned. You’ve worked in Africa more recently than me. Get onto some of your contacts.”

Lyle nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll get Blade onto it as well. He’s got mates in both Sandline and Saracen. Dewar’s done work for both outfits. If he’s backing Mason up, the chances are he’ll have brought some lads in that he knows.”

“The Home Secretary will have our guts for garters if she gets wind of this,” Lester remarked.

“The Home Secretary is a bitch from hell,” Lyle said. “Don’t worry, sweetie, we’ll make sure all this stays strictly off the radar.”

“Abby, find out if there’s any legitimate way we can get a team inside that zoo,” said Lester. “Preferably quickly.”

“I’ll get straight onto it,” she said. “I’ll also see if anyone in the trade has suspicions about him.”

Fifteen minutes later, Lester bade goodnight to Stringer and Abby at the lift and returned to his flat to find Lyle staring out of the large picture window at the slowly-moving London Eye, a mass of lights twinkling off the dark waters of the Thames. He slipped his arms around Lyle’s waist, conscious of the tension in his lover’s body.

“Come to bed, Jon. There’s nothing more that can be done tonight.”

Lyle nodded without speaking and followed Lester into the bedroom. The soldier shed his clothes into the usual untidy heap and disappeared to the bathroom whilst Lester carefully hung his suit up and consigned his shirt, underwear and socks to the laundry basket. He took his turn in the bathroom then slid into bed beside Lyle and turned out the bedside light, sensing that neither of them felt like reading. Lyle was clearly still strung up as tight as a high wire. Stringer’s revelations had done nothing to ease his concerns about his mother’s activities. And for all Lyle’s joking references to his mother and the fact that they rarely spoke from one month to the next, Lester knew he cared deeply about her, as she did about him.

He stretched out an arm and said quietly, “Jon, don’t shut me out, please.”

Lyle sighed and rolled over to pillow his head on Lester’s shoulder. “Sorry.” He was silent for a moment, then, the hesitation in his voice more marked than Lester remembered hearing it for a long time, he said, “James, do you think this is what it’s always felt like for her?”

Lester opened his mouth with the initial intention of making light of his lover’s concerns then stopped. Lyle knew him too well to be fooled by platitudes. “Probably,” he admitted. “Until she nearly chewed my head off that time you went down with that bloody bug when we were caving, I hadn’t realised the thumbs ran in the family.”

He smiled in the darkness, remembering the chaos Julia Denton had caused by ringing up the ARC – which she wasn’t even meant to know existed – demanding to know where her little boy was, and not taking ‘we have no idea what you’re talking about’ for an adequate answer.

“They sometimes skip a generation, so I’m told,” Lyle said. “But not in my case. Christ, James, if this is what she has to put up with every time I’m on an op, it’s a miracle she didn’t start dying her hair fucking years ago.”

“Maybe it doesn’t always work like that,” Lester hazarded.

“I never even bloody thought to ask her,” Lyle admitted.

In an attempt to turn his lover’s thoughts in a less gloomy direction, Lester ran a hand down Lyle’s chest and over the flat planes of his stomach to gently stroke his cock. Lyle obligingly shifted position slightly to give him better access, but even after a few minutes, Lyle’s cock was still failing to take an interest in the proceedings.

“Cock-blocked by my sodding mother,” Lyle muttered. “I’ll never live it down.”

Lester laughed and kissed his lover’s lips lightly. “I won’t tell her if you don’t, Jon. Now go to sleep.”

Somewhat to his surprise, Lyle did exactly that, while Lester lay awake in the darkness, still trying to work out how Ed Mason had obtained the information about the prehistoric creatures masquerading as pets in the wilds of Cumbria. Connor’s best efforts on the internet had failed to turn up any relevant information, but Lester remained certain that somewhere along the line, they were missing a key piece of intelligence.

It was several hours before he finally followed his lover into sleep.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

bigtitch.livejournal.com

Ooh - big game hunting with something that can *definitely* hunt you back. Nice!

Awww - bless Lyle for his Mum-sensitive thumbs!

From:

Fic, Crow on the Cradle, Part 4 of 15, Stephen/Ryan, Lester/Lyle, 18

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