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fredbassettTitle : Within These Walls, Chapter 16 of 30
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 18
Characters : Lester, Ryan
Disclaimer : Not mine (except the OCs), no money made, don’t sue.
Word Count : 59,000 words in 30 chapters of approx. 1,500 – 2,500 words each
Spoilers : None
Summary : Ending up in Dartmoor prison for refusing to recant their belief in evolution is only the start of the problems facing Nick, Stephen and Connor. And Sir James Lester soon ends up with other problems on his hands than just an over-crowded prison population.
A/N : For acknowledgments etc see Part 1.
Lester stared out of the car window at the deeply unappealing combination of mist and rain. To put it politely, the weather was bloody awful, had been all month and looked like continuing the same way. It was hardly surprising that Dartmoor Prison had one of the highest turnovers of senior management in the country. No one wanted to stay long and he didn’t blame them.
“Sorry about the time this is going to take, Sir James,” his driver commented, his eyes on the road. “We’re going to be in the mist the whole way, by the look of it.”
“That’s not your fault, George,” Lester said mildly. The car was already streaking along narrow roads and between high hedges at a speed slightly outside Lester’s comfort zone, so he wasn’t going to be concerned by anything that slowed them down.
The meeting with one of the Assistant Chief Constables in Exeter had gone as well as could be expected. Alison Heggarty was a brisk, no-nonsense woman, keen to keep a very firm lid on some of the wilder tales already circulating in the press, despite Jenny Lewis’ best efforts at containment. She’d had a bellyful of claims about the Beast of Bodmin over the years and had no intention of allowing a similar situation to escalate on Dartmoor.
Some farmers, worried for their stock had already demanded police marksmen on the ground, although Lester wasn’t quite sure what that would achieve if they couldn’t see more than a couple of feet ahead of them. Heggarty had made it clear she had no intention of blowing a very sizeable hole in her already over-stretched budget by deploying Armed Response Units. As far as she was concerned, Lester would have to make his own arrangements for the protection of the prisoners under his jurisdiction while they paid their debt to society. As she’d somewhat acerbically pointed out, he had enough men with guns at his disposal, so she certainly wasn’t going to lend him any more. He’d had little choice but to agree. He knew an immovable force when he met one.
Lester was under pressure from the Prison Service to ensure that a sentence with hard labour meant exactly what it said, and so, despite the fact that it was far more efficient to crush road stone by mechanical means, prisoners from Dartmoor still had to labour in the quarries breaking rocks. It suited the belief of the current crop of politicians that suffering was redemptive, a theory that Lester had never subscribed to, although he was careful to keep his views to himself. He was just glad that they hadn’t foisted treadmills onto him as a means of keeping the prisoners occupied, but he had a feeling it would be only a matter of time before some bright spark came up with the idea. Lester had to admit that even he’d been surprised by the alacrity that had greeted his idea of the reintroduction of prison ships.
But the idea of continuing to allow prisoners onto the moor in work parties had already received vigorous opposition from Captain Ryan. The soldier had already expressed his views in no uncertain terms about the inadvisability of sending men onto the moor after the attacks on the road crew and on the workers at the quarry. Lester glanced out of the windows at the grey mist blanketing the moor and did his best to suppress a shudder at the thought of a creature that appeared to have the ability to vanish into thin air. Receiving that piece of news from Ryan when Lester had phoned him to demand an update before his meeting with Alison Heggarty had done little for his peace of mind. There were times when Lester wished his father had been less diligent about ensuring he’d read some of Conan Doyle’s work as a child. The Hound of the bloody Baskervilles had clearly scarred him for life.
The hedges eventually gave way to open moorland and Lester relaxed slightly. He loathed the narrow lanes that passed for classified roads in this part of the country. Fortunately, even on the more open roads on top of the moor, George Baker kept his speed moderate. The driver knew the routes on and off the moor like the back of his hand, but the numerous sheep and ponies that roamed freely on the short grass were an additional hazard and Lester had made his views on paying compensation for damaged stock quite plain.
“This is getting ruddy daft.”
From his seat in the back of the black Mercedes, Lester heard his driver’s muttered words and was inclined to agree. The rain was teeming down the windscreen as though unseen hands were hurling bucket after bucket of water straight at the glass.
“Pull over, George,” Lester told him. “It can’t stay like this for much longer.” He looked at his watch. All he was in danger of missing was a meeting with Oliver Leek and Jenny Lewis, and that could easily be rescheduled. It certainly wasn’t worth risking life and limb for.
George Baker, normally a stubborn man where driving was concerned, just grunted something unintelligible under his breath and, as soon as he could, pulled over into one of the small parking areas that abounded on the moor. The gravel chippings that covered the dark ground had no doubt been quarried and crushed by some of his own prisoners. George left the engine running while the windscreen wipers continued to fight a losing battle with the rain. Lester leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment, but the nagging sense of unease that had descended on him as the mist had covered the moor contrived to prevent him snatching a moment or two of well-earned rest.
“What the buggerin’ ‘ell’s that?” George muttered, peering out of the driver’s side window.
Lester followed his gaze and caught a glimpse of a flash of light in the mist. It looked like the beam of a torch shining through the rain and the grey mist. His first thought was that a walker had got lost on the moor but was now finding their way to the safety of the road. They hadn’t passed any parked cars for some distance, and the weather seemed to have put off even the most ardent of ‘beast spotters’. Dartmoor in this weather wasn’t somewhere he’d choose for recreation, but there was no accounting for taste.
A few minutes later, they were still catching glimpses of light from amidst the mist, but the walker didn’t seem to have come any closer to them.
“Walkin’ in bleedin’ circles,” George pronounced.
“Perhaps a blast on the horn would alert them to how close they are to the road?” Lester suggested. He had no particular desire to involve himself in someone else’s predicament, especially if it would involve soaking wet clothing and muddy boots inside his Mercedes, but common decency dictated that they needed to at least make some attempt to make contact.
The sound of the horn was loud inside the car, and outside, even muffled by the mist, a lost walker couldn’t have failed to hear the noise. George blasted the horn four more times as they both watched for any change in the direction of the lights. As the mist swirled around them, Lester came to the conclusion that the position of the light didn’t appear to have moved at all, although at one point, through a slight break in the low cloud, he thought he had seen a larger spread of silver than was likely to be coming from a torch beam. A shiver ran between his shoulder blades. There was something unnatural about the light and Lester didn’t like anything he didn’t understand.
“Drive on, George,” he said calmly.
His driver cast him a sidelong look, but didn’t argue. He slipped the car into first gear and started to pull back out onto the road. Lester continued to stare into the mist, watching as it moved in lazy swirls as the rain continued to hammer noisily down onto the car. He caught sight of a heavy shape some distance way… probably one of the thick-set Dartmoor ponies that roamed the moor in large numbers. As he watched, it became clear that the same was now moving towards them at a run.
“George, there’s something coming towards us!” Lester knew his voice was sharp with concern and didn’t even attempt to conceal his feelings.
His driver glanced over his shoulder, swore violently and stamped his foot on the accelerator. As the car surged forward, a large shape burst out of the mist and slammed into the back of the Mercedes, rocking it on its suspension and causing the car to slew across the road and clip one of the marker stones on the verge. George wrestled with the wheel and skidded back onto the road, the rear wheels sliding in the soft back earth. A second thump accompanied by the sound of scraping metal made it known that they weren’t out of trouble yet.
Lester twisted around in his seat, doing his best to see what the hell was attacking them, as it certainly wasn’t a pony or a sheep, despite the various claims from one of Ryan’s men to the existence of mutant killer sheep. The rain was still teeming down, and their attacker seemed to have ripped off the rear windscreen wiper, so that made getting a good look at their pursuer difficult. But from what Lester could see, the beast fitted the description that Ryan and Cutter had put together between them. The creature was large, even more so than the lions in London Zoo, and with a more massive head, but that was really all he could make out as George Baker did his best to keep the car on the road while accelerating as fast as he could in appalling visibility.
The sudden blare of another horn made Lester’s stomach lurch uncomfortably, as a car, being driven far too fast for the conditions came the other way, swerving past them. For a moment, Lester thought George had lost control, but somehow the man managed to skilfully slip the car into a lower gear, gain more traction and accelerate out of trouble.
From what Lester could see, the other vehicle – white and being driven far too fast for the conditions – had already sped off across the open expanse of moor, swallowed up in the mist, probably unaware of what had happened in its wake.
In the middle of the road, the creature opened its jaws wide and roared after them in a mixture of rage and frustration, before it turned and loped away uphill. Lester caught a final glimpse of flickering light before the mist drew in around them like a shroud.
Fifteen minutes later, the damaged Mercedes swept in through the outer gateway of the prison and on past the main gates, already drawn back to allow them into the inner courtyard. It was only when the huge wooden gates had swung closed behind them that Lester felt able to breathe easily. The imposing figure of Captain Ryan walking briskly over to the car, armed to the teeth as usual, allowed him to relax slightly further. He’d managed to get a brief call through to the captain before the mobile signal had been lost. He had countermanded any attempt to send men onto the moor until the weather conditions improved, which, from the look of the granite grey clouds hanging low about the prison, wouldn’t be for some while.
He opened the door of the car and stared ruefully at the damage. Fortunately it wasn’t his own vehicle. The rocks at the side of the road, positioned to prevent tourists parking willy-nilly on the verges had left deep gouges in the metal and something had badly crumpled the passenger side rear wing. Whatever the beast had been, it had been strong enough and heavy enough to do considerable damage to the rear of the car. A shudder ran through Lester as he thought about what might have been if George hadn’t managed to keep the Mercedes on the road.
His driver stared mordantly at the damage.
“Don’t worry, George, it won’t be coming out of your wages,” Lester said as lightly as he could manage.
Ryan walked around the car, inspecting the damage. He went down on one knee at the rear of the car and plucked something from the buckled bumper before stowing it in a small plastic bag and slipping that into his pocket. In response to Lester’s raised eyebrows, he said, “Russet hair. Looks like what we picked up at the quarry.”
Lester kept his expression neutral. He wasn’t surprised. Their attacker had fitted the description Cutter had given. “I’ll see you in one hour, Captain. Please get this to our zoo expert and ask her to run a comparison on the hair.”
Ryan nodded. The soldier was a man of few words.
Even the walk across the courtyard was enough to soak Lester to the skin. Once in the privacy of his own rooms, he pulled off his damp clothes and wrapped himself in a thick dressing-gown. 4pm was somewhat early to take refuge in alcohol, but on this occasion, he was prepared to make an exception. It wasn’t every day that he nearly fell victim to something that should have been long, long dead.
And if his masters in government were privy to the thoughts that were going through his head as he downed a large, neat Scotch in three mouthfuls, Cutter and his assistants wouldn’t be the only ones serving five years hard labour for the crime of heresy.
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 18
Characters : Lester, Ryan
Disclaimer : Not mine (except the OCs), no money made, don’t sue.
Word Count : 59,000 words in 30 chapters of approx. 1,500 – 2,500 words each
Spoilers : None
Summary : Ending up in Dartmoor prison for refusing to recant their belief in evolution is only the start of the problems facing Nick, Stephen and Connor. And Sir James Lester soon ends up with other problems on his hands than just an over-crowded prison population.
A/N : For acknowledgments etc see Part 1.
Lester stared out of the car window at the deeply unappealing combination of mist and rain. To put it politely, the weather was bloody awful, had been all month and looked like continuing the same way. It was hardly surprising that Dartmoor Prison had one of the highest turnovers of senior management in the country. No one wanted to stay long and he didn’t blame them.
“Sorry about the time this is going to take, Sir James,” his driver commented, his eyes on the road. “We’re going to be in the mist the whole way, by the look of it.”
“That’s not your fault, George,” Lester said mildly. The car was already streaking along narrow roads and between high hedges at a speed slightly outside Lester’s comfort zone, so he wasn’t going to be concerned by anything that slowed them down.
The meeting with one of the Assistant Chief Constables in Exeter had gone as well as could be expected. Alison Heggarty was a brisk, no-nonsense woman, keen to keep a very firm lid on some of the wilder tales already circulating in the press, despite Jenny Lewis’ best efforts at containment. She’d had a bellyful of claims about the Beast of Bodmin over the years and had no intention of allowing a similar situation to escalate on Dartmoor.
Some farmers, worried for their stock had already demanded police marksmen on the ground, although Lester wasn’t quite sure what that would achieve if they couldn’t see more than a couple of feet ahead of them. Heggarty had made it clear she had no intention of blowing a very sizeable hole in her already over-stretched budget by deploying Armed Response Units. As far as she was concerned, Lester would have to make his own arrangements for the protection of the prisoners under his jurisdiction while they paid their debt to society. As she’d somewhat acerbically pointed out, he had enough men with guns at his disposal, so she certainly wasn’t going to lend him any more. He’d had little choice but to agree. He knew an immovable force when he met one.
Lester was under pressure from the Prison Service to ensure that a sentence with hard labour meant exactly what it said, and so, despite the fact that it was far more efficient to crush road stone by mechanical means, prisoners from Dartmoor still had to labour in the quarries breaking rocks. It suited the belief of the current crop of politicians that suffering was redemptive, a theory that Lester had never subscribed to, although he was careful to keep his views to himself. He was just glad that they hadn’t foisted treadmills onto him as a means of keeping the prisoners occupied, but he had a feeling it would be only a matter of time before some bright spark came up with the idea. Lester had to admit that even he’d been surprised by the alacrity that had greeted his idea of the reintroduction of prison ships.
But the idea of continuing to allow prisoners onto the moor in work parties had already received vigorous opposition from Captain Ryan. The soldier had already expressed his views in no uncertain terms about the inadvisability of sending men onto the moor after the attacks on the road crew and on the workers at the quarry. Lester glanced out of the windows at the grey mist blanketing the moor and did his best to suppress a shudder at the thought of a creature that appeared to have the ability to vanish into thin air. Receiving that piece of news from Ryan when Lester had phoned him to demand an update before his meeting with Alison Heggarty had done little for his peace of mind. There were times when Lester wished his father had been less diligent about ensuring he’d read some of Conan Doyle’s work as a child. The Hound of the bloody Baskervilles had clearly scarred him for life.
The hedges eventually gave way to open moorland and Lester relaxed slightly. He loathed the narrow lanes that passed for classified roads in this part of the country. Fortunately, even on the more open roads on top of the moor, George Baker kept his speed moderate. The driver knew the routes on and off the moor like the back of his hand, but the numerous sheep and ponies that roamed freely on the short grass were an additional hazard and Lester had made his views on paying compensation for damaged stock quite plain.
“This is getting ruddy daft.”
From his seat in the back of the black Mercedes, Lester heard his driver’s muttered words and was inclined to agree. The rain was teeming down the windscreen as though unseen hands were hurling bucket after bucket of water straight at the glass.
“Pull over, George,” Lester told him. “It can’t stay like this for much longer.” He looked at his watch. All he was in danger of missing was a meeting with Oliver Leek and Jenny Lewis, and that could easily be rescheduled. It certainly wasn’t worth risking life and limb for.
George Baker, normally a stubborn man where driving was concerned, just grunted something unintelligible under his breath and, as soon as he could, pulled over into one of the small parking areas that abounded on the moor. The gravel chippings that covered the dark ground had no doubt been quarried and crushed by some of his own prisoners. George left the engine running while the windscreen wipers continued to fight a losing battle with the rain. Lester leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment, but the nagging sense of unease that had descended on him as the mist had covered the moor contrived to prevent him snatching a moment or two of well-earned rest.
“What the buggerin’ ‘ell’s that?” George muttered, peering out of the driver’s side window.
Lester followed his gaze and caught a glimpse of a flash of light in the mist. It looked like the beam of a torch shining through the rain and the grey mist. His first thought was that a walker had got lost on the moor but was now finding their way to the safety of the road. They hadn’t passed any parked cars for some distance, and the weather seemed to have put off even the most ardent of ‘beast spotters’. Dartmoor in this weather wasn’t somewhere he’d choose for recreation, but there was no accounting for taste.
A few minutes later, they were still catching glimpses of light from amidst the mist, but the walker didn’t seem to have come any closer to them.
“Walkin’ in bleedin’ circles,” George pronounced.
“Perhaps a blast on the horn would alert them to how close they are to the road?” Lester suggested. He had no particular desire to involve himself in someone else’s predicament, especially if it would involve soaking wet clothing and muddy boots inside his Mercedes, but common decency dictated that they needed to at least make some attempt to make contact.
The sound of the horn was loud inside the car, and outside, even muffled by the mist, a lost walker couldn’t have failed to hear the noise. George blasted the horn four more times as they both watched for any change in the direction of the lights. As the mist swirled around them, Lester came to the conclusion that the position of the light didn’t appear to have moved at all, although at one point, through a slight break in the low cloud, he thought he had seen a larger spread of silver than was likely to be coming from a torch beam. A shiver ran between his shoulder blades. There was something unnatural about the light and Lester didn’t like anything he didn’t understand.
“Drive on, George,” he said calmly.
His driver cast him a sidelong look, but didn’t argue. He slipped the car into first gear and started to pull back out onto the road. Lester continued to stare into the mist, watching as it moved in lazy swirls as the rain continued to hammer noisily down onto the car. He caught sight of a heavy shape some distance way… probably one of the thick-set Dartmoor ponies that roamed the moor in large numbers. As he watched, it became clear that the same was now moving towards them at a run.
“George, there’s something coming towards us!” Lester knew his voice was sharp with concern and didn’t even attempt to conceal his feelings.
His driver glanced over his shoulder, swore violently and stamped his foot on the accelerator. As the car surged forward, a large shape burst out of the mist and slammed into the back of the Mercedes, rocking it on its suspension and causing the car to slew across the road and clip one of the marker stones on the verge. George wrestled with the wheel and skidded back onto the road, the rear wheels sliding in the soft back earth. A second thump accompanied by the sound of scraping metal made it known that they weren’t out of trouble yet.
Lester twisted around in his seat, doing his best to see what the hell was attacking them, as it certainly wasn’t a pony or a sheep, despite the various claims from one of Ryan’s men to the existence of mutant killer sheep. The rain was still teeming down, and their attacker seemed to have ripped off the rear windscreen wiper, so that made getting a good look at their pursuer difficult. But from what Lester could see, the beast fitted the description that Ryan and Cutter had put together between them. The creature was large, even more so than the lions in London Zoo, and with a more massive head, but that was really all he could make out as George Baker did his best to keep the car on the road while accelerating as fast as he could in appalling visibility.
The sudden blare of another horn made Lester’s stomach lurch uncomfortably, as a car, being driven far too fast for the conditions came the other way, swerving past them. For a moment, Lester thought George had lost control, but somehow the man managed to skilfully slip the car into a lower gear, gain more traction and accelerate out of trouble.
From what Lester could see, the other vehicle – white and being driven far too fast for the conditions – had already sped off across the open expanse of moor, swallowed up in the mist, probably unaware of what had happened in its wake.
In the middle of the road, the creature opened its jaws wide and roared after them in a mixture of rage and frustration, before it turned and loped away uphill. Lester caught a final glimpse of flickering light before the mist drew in around them like a shroud.
Fifteen minutes later, the damaged Mercedes swept in through the outer gateway of the prison and on past the main gates, already drawn back to allow them into the inner courtyard. It was only when the huge wooden gates had swung closed behind them that Lester felt able to breathe easily. The imposing figure of Captain Ryan walking briskly over to the car, armed to the teeth as usual, allowed him to relax slightly further. He’d managed to get a brief call through to the captain before the mobile signal had been lost. He had countermanded any attempt to send men onto the moor until the weather conditions improved, which, from the look of the granite grey clouds hanging low about the prison, wouldn’t be for some while.
He opened the door of the car and stared ruefully at the damage. Fortunately it wasn’t his own vehicle. The rocks at the side of the road, positioned to prevent tourists parking willy-nilly on the verges had left deep gouges in the metal and something had badly crumpled the passenger side rear wing. Whatever the beast had been, it had been strong enough and heavy enough to do considerable damage to the rear of the car. A shudder ran through Lester as he thought about what might have been if George hadn’t managed to keep the Mercedes on the road.
His driver stared mordantly at the damage.
“Don’t worry, George, it won’t be coming out of your wages,” Lester said as lightly as he could manage.
Ryan walked around the car, inspecting the damage. He went down on one knee at the rear of the car and plucked something from the buckled bumper before stowing it in a small plastic bag and slipping that into his pocket. In response to Lester’s raised eyebrows, he said, “Russet hair. Looks like what we picked up at the quarry.”
Lester kept his expression neutral. He wasn’t surprised. Their attacker had fitted the description Cutter had given. “I’ll see you in one hour, Captain. Please get this to our zoo expert and ask her to run a comparison on the hair.”
Ryan nodded. The soldier was a man of few words.
Even the walk across the courtyard was enough to soak Lester to the skin. Once in the privacy of his own rooms, he pulled off his damp clothes and wrapped himself in a thick dressing-gown. 4pm was somewhat early to take refuge in alcohol, but on this occasion, he was prepared to make an exception. It wasn’t every day that he nearly fell victim to something that should have been long, long dead.
And if his masters in government were privy to the thoughts that were going through his head as he downed a large, neat Scotch in three mouthfuls, Cutter and his assistants wouldn’t be the only ones serving five years hard labour for the crime of heresy.
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no subject
Date: 2014-05-06 06:57 pm (UTC)I've run out of superlatives. The pacing, phrasing and characterisations are. just. wow. Even something as little as the snippets of George the driver give lovely insight into a minor character.
At the risk of repeating myself, that was amazing.
I read it with my heart in my mouth from the moment Lester saw the flickering light.
It suited the belief of the current crop of politicians that suffering was redemptive, a theory that Lester had never subscribed to, although he was careful to keep his views to himself. He was just glad that they hadn’t foisted treadmills onto him as a means of keeping the prisoners occupied, but he had a feeling it would be only a matter of time before some bright spark came up with the idea. Lester had to admit that even he’d been surprised by the alacrity that had greeted his idea of the reintroduction of prison ships.
*snorfle*
The Hound of the bloody Baskervilles had clearly scarred him for life.
He's not the only one!
His driver stared mordantly at the damage.
“Don’t worry, George, it won’t be coming out of your wages,” Lester said as lightly as he could manage.
*giggle*
And if his masters in government were privy to the thoughts that were going through his head as he downed a large, neat Scotch in three mouthfuls, Cutter and his assistants wouldn’t be the only ones serving five years hard labour for the crime of heresy.
Um, yep. Lester has more sense than to disbelieve evolution, and more sense than to admit it.
*huggles fic*
no subject
Date: 2014-05-07 12:19 pm (UTC)Thank you so much :) *blushes*
no subject
Date: 2014-05-06 07:00 pm (UTC)The plot is thickening nicely!
no subject
Date: 2014-05-07 12:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-06 10:03 pm (UTC)Great action and eek for the near miss. Ooh, Lester's seen an anomaly and of course he got far too much common sense to admit he believes in evolution.
*purrs*
no subject
Date: 2014-05-07 12:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-07 10:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-07 12:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-07 12:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-07 12:18 pm (UTC)It's all written and in the bag, so no fears of a WIP being left hanging.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-07 05:02 pm (UTC)Loved the touch of humor in this, it gives us a break from the unrelenting action. Well done, m'Dear.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-08 02:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-07 05:22 pm (UTC)Tricky situation for Lester - he'll need all his political skills to deal with this. And meantime there's a beast on the loose and some prisoners getting more and more unsettled. *g* We all knew Lester didn't give a stuff for fundamentalist religion. I like the dry humour of the suggestion of prison ships.
This seems a good time to mention that your original characters all come across as fully rounded no matter how brief their appearances.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-08 02:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-07 07:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-08 02:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-10 02:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-10 04:50 pm (UTC)