Fic, Scrapheap Challenge, Danny, Lyle, 18
Aug. 17th, 2017 08:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fredbassettTitle : Scrapheap Challenge, Part 1 of 2
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 18
Characters : Danny Quinn, Lyle, Ryan, Claudia
Disclaimer : Not mine (except Lyle), no money made, don’t sue.
Word Count : 2,300
Spoilers : None
Summary : A copper’s life suddenly becomes more complicated.
A/N : Set in my Stephen/Ryan series. No prior knowledge needed.
Ever-lengthening shadows lurked in corners and wreathed themselves around the narrow alley like large, overly-affectionate black cats sprawled over the undoubtedly cat-allergic object of their affections. In simpler terms, it was bloody dark in one of the least salubrious areas of London, and quite clearly the mayor had higher priorities at the moment than street lamps. Only one in ten seemed to be working, and even that was probably an over-estimate. But Danny knew these streets like the back of his hand. He’d been a beat copper here for several years before his move to CID and, if he continued to piss his boss off, he’d probably be back pounding the pavements again in fairly short order.
Unlike a lot of his mates in the Job, Danny had actually enjoyed walking the streets, even if it had meant spending rather too much of his life hauling drunks out of the gutter and then hosing their piss and vomit off the floors of the holding cells. Even now, after several years in CID, he still liked being out and about on his own, just getting the feel of the city at night. You could learn a lot about a place in the dark.
So far he’d been propositioned by three hookers, threatened by a couple of low-level yobs, offered some dope he didn’t want, and had helped someone break into their own car. Or at least they’d said it was their own car…
There wasn’t much going on. The pubs hadn’t kicked out yet and the cold, wet weather was keeping most people at home, glued to the usual diet of crappy Saturday night telly, with caterwauling idiots sounding like they were being slowly castrated with barbed wire.
Danny had already started to wonder why he didn’t just crack open a few tinnies and do the same. The watching bit, not the castrating. But his TV had gone on the blink months ago and he hadn’t got around to renewing the licence, and after a while even the endless varieties of internet porn available got boring. Instead, he was wandering around a crappy area, hands shoved deep in his pockets, wondering why the hell he was bothering, especially when he wasn’t even getting any overtime for his pains.
He stopped underneath the only working streetlamp in the entire road, and looked at his watch.
11.10pm. Probably time to call it a night….
The scream echoed sharply between the alley walls.
Danny turned in time to see something scuttle away in the darkness. Too big to be a fox, and anyway, foxes weren’t known for running up the sides of buildings.
“Stop! Police!” Yeah, OK, it was a cliché, but it wasn’t always easy to be original under pressure.
The shadowy figure just kept moving.
“Nice try, mate.”
Danny whirled around, looking for the owner of the voice. “What the fuck was that and who screamed?”
A dark shape on the corner of the alley resolved itself into a vaguely human-like form and the man shrugged. “Dunno. Shall we find out?”
Danny nodded. The man who’d appeared from nowhere was an inch or so under 6’, looked several years younger than Danny and had short, dark hair. He was wearing jeans and a black teeshirt, and looked strong without being heavily built. Instinct told Danny this wasn’t a good night for solo heroics, and the guy looked like he could handle himself in a tight spot. Something about him set Danny’s spidey-sense tingling, but not in a bad way, and in Danny’s job, you quickly leaned to trust your gut feelings.
Together, they belted down the alley. Danny groped in his pocket and pulled out a small torch. It wasn’t much, but it would just have to do.
A bundle of rags heaped against one wall brought him up short. Danny stopped, a cold feeling growing in the pit of his stomach.
He went down on one knee, careful not to disturb anything.
A second torch beam, more powerful by far that the one Danny was carrying, was trained on the mound of clothes; a pale face streaked with blood stared up at him, frozen in an expression of shock, eyes wide and afraid.
“Dead,” the other bloke said quietly.
Danny was certain he was right. The fact that something had opened the man’s throat from ear to ear was a bit of a giveaway, as was the amount of blood pooled on the ground around the body.
“Come on.” His companion’s voice was low and urgent. “We need to follow that thing.” He pointed at the wall then jumped lightly up, his hands grabbing the top of the bricks. The way he heaved himself up reeked of long practice. In a matter of seconds, he was sitting astride the wall, holding one hand down invitingly.
Danny’s ascent was nowhere near as quick or as elegant, but with the bloke’s help he managed to scramble up. He found himself looking down into Harry Taylor’s scrapyard, where every old car in the neighbourhood came to die. It wasn’t exactly the best place in the world to try to run a suspect to earth. He’d tried once before, a couple of years ago and it had been a spectacular failure. All he’d gained from it was a painful tetanus shot and half a dozen stitches in his arse. The whole thing had taken quite a while to live down.
“I need to call this one in,” he said, pulling his mobile out of his pocket. He dialled the number and held the phone to his ear, only to be greeted by a long moment of silence and then a nasty static buzz. “Fuck! Have you got a phone on you?”
The bloke nodded, but was met with exactly as much success when it came to ringing any number, not just the emergency services. From what Danny could see of the man’s face, he didn’t seem entirely surprised.
“We’re wasting time,” the bloke said. “We’re going to have to do this the hard way.” He swung his leg over the wall and dropped lightly down into the yard,
Danny followed him. They looked at each other for a moment and then Danny stuck out his hand. “Danny Quinn.”
The man took it. “You’re a copper.”
Danny nodded. The man’s grip was firm but without giving the impression that he was trying to prove something.
“Jon Lyle,” the man said.
“You’re military?” It was a guess, but Danny would have put good money on the result.
Lyle grinned. “Social worker.”
Danny grinned back. “Pull the other one, mate.”
A clanging noise followed by the scrape of metal on metal drew their attention. The sound was some distance away. It was hard to get a fix on the direction, but with the aid of Lyle’s small, powerful torch, they scoured what they could see of the scrapyard, which wasn’t much, now that they were down at ground level. Piles of rusting cars tottering on top of each were an accident waiting to happen and from the look of quite a few of them, plenty of accidents had already happened. Danny had never been comfortable in places like this. He always felt like one hard shove would bring the whole lot tumbling down, probably with him underneath.
“Been here before?” Lyle asked.
“Yeah, but it’ll be no sodding help. This lot moves around like sand dunes. Harry’s the only one who knows where anything is, and he’s sunning himself on the Costa del Crime with his dodgy mates for a couple of weeks.”
Something a little way off caught Danny’s eye. Light was glinting off a pile of rusty old bangers in one corner of the yard but there were no street lamps or security lights anywhere. Harry wasn’t too fussed about security, and the local kids knew that if he got wind of them mucking around, there’d be trouble. The sort that left you walking with a stick for the rest of your life.
He nudged Lyle’s arm and pointed. “Light at the end of the tunnel?”
“More like a train coming the other way,” Lyle muttered. “I suppose it’s too much to hope that you’re carrying?”
“This is London, not bloody New York.” Danny’s eyes narrowed as he stared at the other man. “You know something that I don’t.” It was a statement not a question.
“The thing that killed the bloke in the alley… it’s not the sort of thing you want to mess with unarmed.”
“Then we’re both out of luck. What makes you think it’s a thing, not a person?”
“People don’t run up walls like a fucking great big spider, do they?” Lyle’s tone was matter-of-fact, but Danny could tell that the man was uneasy. He’d turned off his torch and shoved it into his pocket in what Danny guessed was an attempt to restore his night vision. He also seemed to be scratching hard with his nails at the thumb on his left hand, and his eyes were darting quickly around them.
Another metallic scrape set Danny’s nerves on edge then, as he watched, an enormous heap of cars started to move, swaying as if they were being buffeted by some sort of unseen force, even though there wasn’t even a breath of wind stirring in the yard.
“Shit!” He grabbed Lyle’s arm and dragged him back against the wall.
The pile of unstable metal shifted alarmingly and then started to subside, making a noise like a million fingernails being dragged down the world’s largest chalkboard.
“Is that going to attract anyone’s attention?” Lyle asked.
“Unlikely. This isn’t exactly the most public spirited of areas. They’ll just think Harry’s sticking something that’s been used in a bank job through the crusher.”
Lyle looked amused. “Common occurrence?”
“More common than I’d like,” Danny admitted. “Harry’s straight out of the Dinsdale Piranha school of villainy.”
“Likes nailing heads to floors?”
“Pretty much.”
The noise of metal moving against metal had stopped. It looked like the whole of one of Harry’s modern art sculptures had toppled over, right on top of where the light had been.
“OK. Let’s see if we can take a closer look,” Lyle said, but before making a move, he quickly scoured the ground and picked up a couple of short lengths of scaffold pole. He handed one to Danny and gripped his own like he knew what to do with it.
“Are you going to tell me what we’re looking for?”
“If it moves, thump it,” Lyle ordered, neatly sidestepping the question.
“You’re not very good at providing answers, are you, mate?”
“So I’ve been told. I’m not great at following orders, either, but that’s another story.”
“Makes two of us,” Danny said, as he moved cautiously forwards, adrenaline thrumming through his system, making him preternaturally alert to any noise in the vicinity, but despite that, Lyle moved faster than Danny would have believed possible when a dark shadow leaped at them from the top of another pile of cars. Even before anything had moved, Lyle had been turning in that direction swinging the scaffold pole like a baseball bat. The metal hit the creature with a solid thud, but it kept moving, bouncing away from them like Tigger on speed.
Lyle swore under his breath. He had a turn of phrase that would have met with approval from Danny’s first custody sergeant – a man with the most filthily inventive invective that he’d ever encountered. Danny grinned. He’d bet his mother’s wedding ring that Lyle was army, and not your average squaddie, either.
“What’s the plan?” Danny asked. “Or are we just making it up as we go along?”
“See that light under there?” Lyle said, pointing at the unstable mound of cars that had only recently toppled over. “We need to shift them and chuck the critters into the light.”
“Dead or alive?” Danny asked.
“Dead suits me just fine,” Lyle said. “But they’re as hard to kill as an armoured cockroach, so watch yourself.”
“So how are we going to shift the cars?”
Lyle rolled his eyes. “How the fuck should I know, Danny boy? I’m just the hired muscle. Use your imagination.”
Danny’s grin broadened. It wasn’t often he got the chance to be creative. Trusting to Lyle to watch his back, he legged it over to something in the corner of the yard that looked like an ancient, rusting crane. He’d once pissed off his boss enough to have been seconded for a month to the station in Bury St Edmunds to lend a hand on a drugs awareness programme, but instead had ended up on the trail of a gang of farm machinery thieves. The whole caper had culminated in a rather entertaining take-down at midnight in a village with the improbable name of Belchamp Otten.
His sojourn in the wilds had taught him four things: a) to learn when not to piss off his guv’nor b) that he really, really hated the countryside c) you could start a tractor with a screwdriver and d) you could pull the same stunt with JCBs, hymacs and cranes. The only problem was that he didn’t happen to have a screwdriver.
He swung himself up into the cab and took a look around with his torch in hand. He needn’t have worried. The key was still in the ignition. If you were Harry Taylor you didn’t have to worry about stuff getting nicked. Danny turned the key. The engine responded sluggishly, growling like a grumpy old Rottweiler. He turned the key again and pumped one of the pedals, hoping he’d hit the right one. He was rewarded with a juddering lurch and the machine spluttered into a semblance of life.
Now all he had to do was work out which levers to pull….
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 18
Characters : Danny Quinn, Lyle, Ryan, Claudia
Disclaimer : Not mine (except Lyle), no money made, don’t sue.
Word Count : 2,300
Spoilers : None
Summary : A copper’s life suddenly becomes more complicated.
A/N : Set in my Stephen/Ryan series. No prior knowledge needed.
Ever-lengthening shadows lurked in corners and wreathed themselves around the narrow alley like large, overly-affectionate black cats sprawled over the undoubtedly cat-allergic object of their affections. In simpler terms, it was bloody dark in one of the least salubrious areas of London, and quite clearly the mayor had higher priorities at the moment than street lamps. Only one in ten seemed to be working, and even that was probably an over-estimate. But Danny knew these streets like the back of his hand. He’d been a beat copper here for several years before his move to CID and, if he continued to piss his boss off, he’d probably be back pounding the pavements again in fairly short order.
Unlike a lot of his mates in the Job, Danny had actually enjoyed walking the streets, even if it had meant spending rather too much of his life hauling drunks out of the gutter and then hosing their piss and vomit off the floors of the holding cells. Even now, after several years in CID, he still liked being out and about on his own, just getting the feel of the city at night. You could learn a lot about a place in the dark.
So far he’d been propositioned by three hookers, threatened by a couple of low-level yobs, offered some dope he didn’t want, and had helped someone break into their own car. Or at least they’d said it was their own car…
There wasn’t much going on. The pubs hadn’t kicked out yet and the cold, wet weather was keeping most people at home, glued to the usual diet of crappy Saturday night telly, with caterwauling idiots sounding like they were being slowly castrated with barbed wire.
Danny had already started to wonder why he didn’t just crack open a few tinnies and do the same. The watching bit, not the castrating. But his TV had gone on the blink months ago and he hadn’t got around to renewing the licence, and after a while even the endless varieties of internet porn available got boring. Instead, he was wandering around a crappy area, hands shoved deep in his pockets, wondering why the hell he was bothering, especially when he wasn’t even getting any overtime for his pains.
He stopped underneath the only working streetlamp in the entire road, and looked at his watch.
11.10pm. Probably time to call it a night….
The scream echoed sharply between the alley walls.
Danny turned in time to see something scuttle away in the darkness. Too big to be a fox, and anyway, foxes weren’t known for running up the sides of buildings.
“Stop! Police!” Yeah, OK, it was a cliché, but it wasn’t always easy to be original under pressure.
The shadowy figure just kept moving.
“Nice try, mate.”
Danny whirled around, looking for the owner of the voice. “What the fuck was that and who screamed?”
A dark shape on the corner of the alley resolved itself into a vaguely human-like form and the man shrugged. “Dunno. Shall we find out?”
Danny nodded. The man who’d appeared from nowhere was an inch or so under 6’, looked several years younger than Danny and had short, dark hair. He was wearing jeans and a black teeshirt, and looked strong without being heavily built. Instinct told Danny this wasn’t a good night for solo heroics, and the guy looked like he could handle himself in a tight spot. Something about him set Danny’s spidey-sense tingling, but not in a bad way, and in Danny’s job, you quickly leaned to trust your gut feelings.
Together, they belted down the alley. Danny groped in his pocket and pulled out a small torch. It wasn’t much, but it would just have to do.
A bundle of rags heaped against one wall brought him up short. Danny stopped, a cold feeling growing in the pit of his stomach.
He went down on one knee, careful not to disturb anything.
A second torch beam, more powerful by far that the one Danny was carrying, was trained on the mound of clothes; a pale face streaked with blood stared up at him, frozen in an expression of shock, eyes wide and afraid.
“Dead,” the other bloke said quietly.
Danny was certain he was right. The fact that something had opened the man’s throat from ear to ear was a bit of a giveaway, as was the amount of blood pooled on the ground around the body.
“Come on.” His companion’s voice was low and urgent. “We need to follow that thing.” He pointed at the wall then jumped lightly up, his hands grabbing the top of the bricks. The way he heaved himself up reeked of long practice. In a matter of seconds, he was sitting astride the wall, holding one hand down invitingly.
Danny’s ascent was nowhere near as quick or as elegant, but with the bloke’s help he managed to scramble up. He found himself looking down into Harry Taylor’s scrapyard, where every old car in the neighbourhood came to die. It wasn’t exactly the best place in the world to try to run a suspect to earth. He’d tried once before, a couple of years ago and it had been a spectacular failure. All he’d gained from it was a painful tetanus shot and half a dozen stitches in his arse. The whole thing had taken quite a while to live down.
“I need to call this one in,” he said, pulling his mobile out of his pocket. He dialled the number and held the phone to his ear, only to be greeted by a long moment of silence and then a nasty static buzz. “Fuck! Have you got a phone on you?”
The bloke nodded, but was met with exactly as much success when it came to ringing any number, not just the emergency services. From what Danny could see of the man’s face, he didn’t seem entirely surprised.
“We’re wasting time,” the bloke said. “We’re going to have to do this the hard way.” He swung his leg over the wall and dropped lightly down into the yard,
Danny followed him. They looked at each other for a moment and then Danny stuck out his hand. “Danny Quinn.”
The man took it. “You’re a copper.”
Danny nodded. The man’s grip was firm but without giving the impression that he was trying to prove something.
“Jon Lyle,” the man said.
“You’re military?” It was a guess, but Danny would have put good money on the result.
Lyle grinned. “Social worker.”
Danny grinned back. “Pull the other one, mate.”
A clanging noise followed by the scrape of metal on metal drew their attention. The sound was some distance away. It was hard to get a fix on the direction, but with the aid of Lyle’s small, powerful torch, they scoured what they could see of the scrapyard, which wasn’t much, now that they were down at ground level. Piles of rusting cars tottering on top of each were an accident waiting to happen and from the look of quite a few of them, plenty of accidents had already happened. Danny had never been comfortable in places like this. He always felt like one hard shove would bring the whole lot tumbling down, probably with him underneath.
“Been here before?” Lyle asked.
“Yeah, but it’ll be no sodding help. This lot moves around like sand dunes. Harry’s the only one who knows where anything is, and he’s sunning himself on the Costa del Crime with his dodgy mates for a couple of weeks.”
Something a little way off caught Danny’s eye. Light was glinting off a pile of rusty old bangers in one corner of the yard but there were no street lamps or security lights anywhere. Harry wasn’t too fussed about security, and the local kids knew that if he got wind of them mucking around, there’d be trouble. The sort that left you walking with a stick for the rest of your life.
He nudged Lyle’s arm and pointed. “Light at the end of the tunnel?”
“More like a train coming the other way,” Lyle muttered. “I suppose it’s too much to hope that you’re carrying?”
“This is London, not bloody New York.” Danny’s eyes narrowed as he stared at the other man. “You know something that I don’t.” It was a statement not a question.
“The thing that killed the bloke in the alley… it’s not the sort of thing you want to mess with unarmed.”
“Then we’re both out of luck. What makes you think it’s a thing, not a person?”
“People don’t run up walls like a fucking great big spider, do they?” Lyle’s tone was matter-of-fact, but Danny could tell that the man was uneasy. He’d turned off his torch and shoved it into his pocket in what Danny guessed was an attempt to restore his night vision. He also seemed to be scratching hard with his nails at the thumb on his left hand, and his eyes were darting quickly around them.
Another metallic scrape set Danny’s nerves on edge then, as he watched, an enormous heap of cars started to move, swaying as if they were being buffeted by some sort of unseen force, even though there wasn’t even a breath of wind stirring in the yard.
“Shit!” He grabbed Lyle’s arm and dragged him back against the wall.
The pile of unstable metal shifted alarmingly and then started to subside, making a noise like a million fingernails being dragged down the world’s largest chalkboard.
“Is that going to attract anyone’s attention?” Lyle asked.
“Unlikely. This isn’t exactly the most public spirited of areas. They’ll just think Harry’s sticking something that’s been used in a bank job through the crusher.”
Lyle looked amused. “Common occurrence?”
“More common than I’d like,” Danny admitted. “Harry’s straight out of the Dinsdale Piranha school of villainy.”
“Likes nailing heads to floors?”
“Pretty much.”
The noise of metal moving against metal had stopped. It looked like the whole of one of Harry’s modern art sculptures had toppled over, right on top of where the light had been.
“OK. Let’s see if we can take a closer look,” Lyle said, but before making a move, he quickly scoured the ground and picked up a couple of short lengths of scaffold pole. He handed one to Danny and gripped his own like he knew what to do with it.
“Are you going to tell me what we’re looking for?”
“If it moves, thump it,” Lyle ordered, neatly sidestepping the question.
“You’re not very good at providing answers, are you, mate?”
“So I’ve been told. I’m not great at following orders, either, but that’s another story.”
“Makes two of us,” Danny said, as he moved cautiously forwards, adrenaline thrumming through his system, making him preternaturally alert to any noise in the vicinity, but despite that, Lyle moved faster than Danny would have believed possible when a dark shadow leaped at them from the top of another pile of cars. Even before anything had moved, Lyle had been turning in that direction swinging the scaffold pole like a baseball bat. The metal hit the creature with a solid thud, but it kept moving, bouncing away from them like Tigger on speed.
Lyle swore under his breath. He had a turn of phrase that would have met with approval from Danny’s first custody sergeant – a man with the most filthily inventive invective that he’d ever encountered. Danny grinned. He’d bet his mother’s wedding ring that Lyle was army, and not your average squaddie, either.
“What’s the plan?” Danny asked. “Or are we just making it up as we go along?”
“See that light under there?” Lyle said, pointing at the unstable mound of cars that had only recently toppled over. “We need to shift them and chuck the critters into the light.”
“Dead or alive?” Danny asked.
“Dead suits me just fine,” Lyle said. “But they’re as hard to kill as an armoured cockroach, so watch yourself.”
“So how are we going to shift the cars?”
Lyle rolled his eyes. “How the fuck should I know, Danny boy? I’m just the hired muscle. Use your imagination.”
Danny’s grin broadened. It wasn’t often he got the chance to be creative. Trusting to Lyle to watch his back, he legged it over to something in the corner of the yard that looked like an ancient, rusting crane. He’d once pissed off his boss enough to have been seconded for a month to the station in Bury St Edmunds to lend a hand on a drugs awareness programme, but instead had ended up on the trail of a gang of farm machinery thieves. The whole caper had culminated in a rather entertaining take-down at midnight in a village with the improbable name of Belchamp Otten.
His sojourn in the wilds had taught him four things: a) to learn when not to piss off his guv’nor b) that he really, really hated the countryside c) you could start a tractor with a screwdriver and d) you could pull the same stunt with JCBs, hymacs and cranes. The only problem was that he didn’t happen to have a screwdriver.
He swung himself up into the cab and took a look around with his torch in hand. He needn’t have worried. The key was still in the ignition. If you were Harry Taylor you didn’t have to worry about stuff getting nicked. Danny turned the key. The engine responded sluggishly, growling like a grumpy old Rottweiler. He turned the key again and pumped one of the pedals, hoping he’d hit the right one. He was rewarded with a juddering lurch and the machine spluttered into a semblance of life.
Now all he had to do was work out which levers to pull….