Fic, Misper, Part 2 of 3, Nick, OCs, 12
Sep. 15th, 2017 07:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fredbassettTitle : Misper, Part 2 of 3
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 12
Characters : Nick, OCs
Disclaimer : Not mine (except the OCs), no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Word Count : 8,200 in 3 parts
Summary : A woman has disappeared. Her husband wants to find her.
A/N : 1) This is a sequel to a fic I wrote earlier this year, You’d Be Off Your Trolley To Go Anywhere Else, looking at the events eight years earlier when a gorgonopsid trashed the car park at Asda in the Forest of Dean. 2) This now forms one of the many prequels to my Stephen/Ryan series 3) Posting now for Forest of Dean Week in 52 Weeks of Primeval at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
primeval_denial
“Sarge, we know where that woman’s car is.” Sally Mitcham, their civilian front desk support, handed over a slip of paper.
“Good going.” Sam looked at the note. The car had been found in a small carpark on the edge of the Scowles. She could be there in a few minutes
“PC White just called, as well. The cleaner he went to see is on shift now.”
“Tell Whitey I’ll pick him up.”
****
Jerome Jude looked up nervously as Sam walked into the manager’s office.
She smiled, trying to put him at ease. Pete had brought her up to speed outside, but she just wanted to take a look at the lad for herself. “Are you sure that was the woman you saw the night of the trouble here, Jerome?”
He nodded earnestly.
“Why did you think she was knocking on the window?”
He shrugged. “Thought mebbe she wanted summat to drink, or some fags.”
“Did you see where she went when the trouble started?”
“Never saw nobody then. Honest!”
They’d never got a line on the vandals. It had crossed Sam’s mind that Jerome Jude might have been too nervous to grass some of the local yobs up, but from what Pete had turned up, the lad lived at home with his mum and thee younger brothers. His dad was in the merchant navy and none of the boys had ever been in trouble. It sounded like his mum was a holy terror. None of the boys even smoked, let alone hung around with the wrong crowd. The chances of him even knowing any of the local troublemakers wasn’t high, and he’d probably be more scared of his mum than them.
Sam looked at the copy of the original statement Pete had handed her. “Are you absolutely certain this was the same woman?” She gestured at the photo on the desk.
He nodded. “Had her hair tied back, though. And no sunglasses. But I think it was her.”
“What was she wearing?” Nick Cutter hadn’t been able to say with much certainty what clothes his wife had taken with her, but it was worth a try, even though most eye-witnesses were worse than fucking useless when it can to giving any sort of description.
Predictably, Jerome just shrugged.
“Is there anything at all you can remember about her?”
The lad’s face brightened as a thought struck him. “Had a rucksack on her back!”
Sam smiled. That was the most useful thing they’d got out of the lad. Now they just had to work out why Helen Cutter had left her car near the Scowles and had gone on foot to Asda. It was about 15 minutes’ walk between the two if she’d stuck to the road, probably slightly longer across the fields.
A woman who’d buggered off after a row with her husband wasn’t too much to get excited about, but it was a bit of a coincidence that she’d been seen just before a load of shit had kicked off in town. After six years in the job, Sam didn’t set too much store by coincidence.
“Good lad.” Pete looked across to Sam, letting her decide whether they’d got all they needed or not.
“Thanks, Jerome. You’ve been a big help.”
He smiled nervously, and Sam was willing to bet he was hoping for a note to take home to his mum.
It only took them five minutes to get down to the Scowles by car. The area was popular with walkers, particularly at weekends. There were six cars in the carpark. The silver Audi Cutter had described was parked tidily on one side. The doors were locked and the windows were up. There was nothing to suggest it had just been abandoned there, other than the fact that there was bird shit all over the windscreen, plus some blown leaves that had piled up over the air intakes at the base of the windscreen. The interior had a few sweet wrappers lying around but was generally pretty tidy, although the floor mats on the driver’s side showed signs of the red mud that came from walking around the area in wet weather.
The Scowles were said to be the remains of ancient iron workings, deep scars in the landscape, overgrown with tangled trees and their roots. It was popular with dog walkers. God knows how they ever got some of their animals clean again. Sam’s neighbour brought her fat Golden retriever here, and spent almost as long hosing the dog down in the garden as she did walking it.
“I want proof of where Nick Cutter was the night all the shit kicked off at Asda.” She’d slipped the envelope containing the photo of his wife into her pocket. That would give her an excuse to go over to the Eddington Hotel.
“You can ask him now,” Pete said, nodding at the entrance to the carpark where a silver Hilux had just pulled off the road.
The vehicle pulled up behind them and Cutter jumped out, his face animated. “That’s Helen’s car!”
Sam nodded. “How did you get here so quickly?”
“The owners of the hotel told me that one of the animal sightings had been around here. I was going to see if I could speak to the farmer.”
“Let us carry out the interviews, Dr Cutter.” The fact that Helen Cutter’s car was still here and looked like it hadn’t moved for quite a while worried Sam. She didn’t think it was likely that Nick Cutter was behind his wife’s disappearance, but she wasn’t going to take any chances. “I’m sorry to have to ask you this, but can you give me the details of the conference you were at, and who saw you over there?”
Cutter’s blue eyes widened in shock and she saw his jaw clench, then he ran a hand through his hair in a gesture she was starting to recognise and she watched the sudden tension ebb. “I flew from Heathrow to Rapid City, South Dakota via Denver. I gave a paper at a conference at the South Dakota School of Mines. About 150 people saw me.” He gave a rueful grin. “I can’t guarantee they all stayed awake during the paper, though. A phylogenetic analysis of a new early Permian reptile and its significance in early diapsid evolution.”
“Come again?” Pete commented.
Sam dug him in the ribs before he could start scratching his balls in puzzlement. She hadn’t understood a word of what Cutter had just said, either, but she’d bet the house that he was telling the truth. She scribbled what he’d said about the flights and the conference in her notebook.
“Can you give me the names of the students who went with you?”
“Aye. Annabel Robinson, Stephen Hart and Luke Akeman.”
“And did they all go with you on the dig?”
He nodded and his hand went automatically to his hair again. “Do you think I had something to do with Helen’s disappearance?”
“Hard to see how when you left the country the same day she left the house.” Sam smiled her reassuring smile. “Go back to the Eddington Hotel, Dr Cutter. I’ll come and see you later when I’ve asked around for anyone who might have seen Helen.”
Nick Cutter looked like he wanted to argue with her, so she shot him the look she normally reserved for Gav Dacre and the bunch of thieving scrotes he normally knocked about with. The only thing that surprised her was that Helen Cutter’s car wasn’t already up on bricks, stripped of its wheels and anything else the little sods could sell for a few quid.
She handed him the envelope containing the photograph of Helen and he clutched it like a lifeline before turning on his heel and walking back to the Hilux without a word. Before he swung himself up into the driver’s seat, he rummaged in a pocket and chucked something in Sam’s direction.
She caught whatever it was without thinking, and felt something metallic dig into her palm. She opened her hand and looked down at a car key on a worn leather hoop.
Cutter had just thrown her the spare keys to his wife’s car.
****
“Do you believe him, guv?” Pete stuck his feet up on the desk and took a bite out of an iced donut.
Sam slapped his feet off the desk. “Get some digging done.”
“What, like the doc does?”
“No, like a fucking copper does. Find out who apart from young Mr Jude saw Helen Cutter in the area and see if we can get any sightings of her after the night the car park got trashed. Talk to the farmers, see if anyone saw her wandering around their land. They’re more likely to talk to you than they are to me.”
“Look on the bright side, guv, you might lose the Brummie accent in about 40 years.”
“Will I end up with a slopey forehead and no chin as well?”
Whitey flipped her the bird and took a bit out of the last donut before she had chance to make a grab for it.
“And while you’re out there, you can combine it with some more enquiries about the farm thefts. And find out why, if tractors are so fucking easy to nick, the silly sods don’t take better precautions, or don’t they make crook locks big enough?” The same went for all the fucking quadbikes that were still going walkabout. Sam was fed up of getting it in the neck every time something when missing in the Forest. “I’ll be in my office. I’m going to make sure this lot checks out properly.” She waved her notebook under his nose. She’d taken down the travel details Cutter had given them in the car park. It was time to find out if what he’d said checked out.
Three hours later, she’d confirmed that Cutter and his three students had indeed flown from Heathrow to Denver, then caught an internal flight from there to Rapid City in South Dakota. They’d hired a car from Avis in Cutter’s name and he’d shown evidence of identity. The woman on the Avis desk remembered him and the students quite clearly. From the sound of it, Cutter could turn on the charm when he wanted, getting them an upgrade to a larger vehicle for the same price. The fact that one of the students had been – in the woman’s words – drop dead gorgeous, hadn’t gone amiss, either.
Their destination, as Cutter had said, had been the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. They’d spent the weekend at the conference, again exactly as Cutter had said, staying in university accommodation on campus. From there, the four of them had joined an American colleague on a long-running dig on a farmer’s land in the middle of what looked like the back of beyond. They’d spent a fortnight chipping things that Sam couldn’t begin to pronounce out of the rock, and had then reversed their route back to the UK.
In short, Dr Nick Cutter had been exactly where he said he’d been for the entire time. And Helen Cutter had last been seen alive the day after her husband had left for the States. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t seen her at some point in the last ten days.
She ended up making a few calls to the Central Metropolitan University, as well. A helpful administrator arranged for the Faculty Dean to ring her back. The man sounded rather cagey, but Sam put that down to a desire to avoid any bad publicity for the university. It wasn’t easy to look behind his replies, but it sounded like he had more time for Nick Cutter than he had for the absent Mrs – Dr – Cutter. The man hadn’t been keen to be drawn into speculation about the state of the Cutters’ marriage, especially on the phone, but Sam didn’t rule out paying the Dean a visit, although whether her inspector would sanction a trip that far out of town was by no means a certainty. He would probably be worried about her slipping her collar and romping around the fields if she went that far away from her own patch.
After three hours on the phone, Sam was sick of the sight of the glorified broom cupboard that passed for her office. Her back hurt when she finally stood up and she had the beginnings of a headache.
A glance out of the window told her it was lashing down with rain. Whitey wouldn’t be pleased having to tramp around the Forest in that weather.
On impulse, she rang the Eddington Hotel. The owner, a woman in her 60s who’d been desperate to sell the place for as long as Sam had known her, told her that Nick Cutter was propping up the bar, having spent the afternoon quizzing anybody who’d come in for a drink about his missing wife.
Sam rolled her eyes. He hadn’t taken much notice of her instruction to leave the interviews to them. On the off-chance that Whitey was somewhere with a mobile signal, she rang him, but the call went straight to voicemail. She left a message for him to call her.
After flipping quickly through the day’s reports, Sam decided to find out a bit more about Helen Cutter and why she’d stomped out in a huff. She got soaked on her way to the car, but her flat was en route to the hotel, so she grabbed a quick shower and an even quicker cheese sandwich, pulled on a sweater over a pair of jeans, put on a pair of ankle boots and a waterproof parka and then went in search of Nick Cutter.
The Eddington Hotel was an impressive pile just on the edge of the Forest, set in its own grounds, surrounded by an odd mix of regimented Forest Commission planting combined with some natural broadleaved woodland. Trees hadn’t figured much on Sam’s last patch, but since coming to Coleford, she’d made a conscious effort to become less of a townie and had even bought a tree identification guide. So far, she could just about tell an oak tree from a yew. Her only claim to erudition was knowing when to bandy around the word broadleaved. So far she’s only used it once in a conversation with a cute guy from the Forestry, but he’d turned out to be gay as a badger.
She pulled up as close to the main door as she could get and made a quick dash for shelter.
The receptionist looked up as Sam burst in and gave her a friendly smile. “Hello, Sergeant.”
Sam had never set eyes on the girl before, but the locals had information systems that would make GCHQ go green with envy. She smiled back. “Is Dr Cutter still in the bar, Chloe?” Sam was a copper, she could read a name badge at ten paces.
The girl smiled again and nodded.
Sam walked through to the bar. It was all soft lights and wood panelling and, on a wet Monday, it was clear that quite a lot of the guests had already decided that the sun was over the yardarm somewhere in the word.
Nick Cutter was perched on a bar stool, with his back to her. The fire blazing at one side of the room had clearly been enough for him to leave his old army jacket in his room and come downstairs in a pale blue and white striped shirt. His hair was sticking up in damp spikes, telling Sam that Cutter had either done what she’d done and grabbed a quick shower, or alternatively, he’d just come in from tramping the woods and fields. She’d put her money on the latter.
Sam slid onto the stool next to him. That finally attracted Cutter’s attention. He turned to face her, a sudden wild hope lighting up his vivid blue eyes.
“There’s no definite news as yet,” Sam said quickly, hating having to dampen the rush of hope she’d seen in his eyes. She wanted to hold onto Jerome Jude’s possible identification until after Whitey had done his trawl for information, but from the look in his eyes, if Nick Cutter was guilty of doing any harm to his wife, she’d eat her much-hated uniform hat. Without ketchup.
“Nice of you to tell me in person.”
Sam wasn’t sure whether he was being sarcastic or sincere, but she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. “We’ve got people out talking to the local farmers.” Well, for people read PC Pete White, but there wasn’t much point in laying Gloucestershire Constabulary’s manpower woes at his door. “I’m hoping to hear back shortly.” Provided the idle bugger picked up his voicemail messages before clocking off and heading home for the shepherd’s pie his long-suffering mother had no doubt cooked for him. According to Peter, Monday was always shepherd’s pie day. There were times when Sam envied that degree of certainty in life. The only certainty in hers at the moment was that the pizza in her fridge was probably past its sell-by date. But as long as it hadn’t gone furry, she’d take a chance on it.
“Can I get you a drink?” Cutter offered. “You look like a hot toddy wouldn’t go amiss.”
“I’m driving, but a lemonade would be good.” She smiled at the lad behind the bar. “Lemon, no ice.”
Cutter pushed his empty glass across the bar. After pouring Sam’s lemonade, the barman held Cutter’s glass up to the optic for a double measure of Famous Grouse.
Sam gestured to a sofa in a quiet corner. “Shall we?”
Cutter looked a little surprised, but Sam was beginning to think that was his default setting. “Aye, why not?”
The sofa was comfortable, and from it Sam could see most of the bar and two different exits. You could take the girl out of Birmingham, but you couldn’t take Birmingham out of the girl.
“Tell me a bit more about the argument you had before Helen left,” Sam said, doing her best to keep her body language friendly. “You said it was something to do with anomalies in the fossil record. What sort of anomalies?”
This time, the silence really did stretch to breaking point.
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 12
Characters : Nick, OCs
Disclaimer : Not mine (except the OCs), no money made, don’t sue.
Spoilers : None
Word Count : 8,200 in 3 parts
Summary : A woman has disappeared. Her husband wants to find her.
A/N : 1) This is a sequel to a fic I wrote earlier this year, You’d Be Off Your Trolley To Go Anywhere Else, looking at the events eight years earlier when a gorgonopsid trashed the car park at Asda in the Forest of Dean. 2) This now forms one of the many prequels to my Stephen/Ryan series 3) Posting now for Forest of Dean Week in 52 Weeks of Primeval at
primeval_denial“Sarge, we know where that woman’s car is.” Sally Mitcham, their civilian front desk support, handed over a slip of paper.
“Good going.” Sam looked at the note. The car had been found in a small carpark on the edge of the Scowles. She could be there in a few minutes
“PC White just called, as well. The cleaner he went to see is on shift now.”
“Tell Whitey I’ll pick him up.”
****
Jerome Jude looked up nervously as Sam walked into the manager’s office.
She smiled, trying to put him at ease. Pete had brought her up to speed outside, but she just wanted to take a look at the lad for herself. “Are you sure that was the woman you saw the night of the trouble here, Jerome?”
He nodded earnestly.
“Why did you think she was knocking on the window?”
He shrugged. “Thought mebbe she wanted summat to drink, or some fags.”
“Did you see where she went when the trouble started?”
“Never saw nobody then. Honest!”
They’d never got a line on the vandals. It had crossed Sam’s mind that Jerome Jude might have been too nervous to grass some of the local yobs up, but from what Pete had turned up, the lad lived at home with his mum and thee younger brothers. His dad was in the merchant navy and none of the boys had ever been in trouble. It sounded like his mum was a holy terror. None of the boys even smoked, let alone hung around with the wrong crowd. The chances of him even knowing any of the local troublemakers wasn’t high, and he’d probably be more scared of his mum than them.
Sam looked at the copy of the original statement Pete had handed her. “Are you absolutely certain this was the same woman?” She gestured at the photo on the desk.
He nodded. “Had her hair tied back, though. And no sunglasses. But I think it was her.”
“What was she wearing?” Nick Cutter hadn’t been able to say with much certainty what clothes his wife had taken with her, but it was worth a try, even though most eye-witnesses were worse than fucking useless when it can to giving any sort of description.
Predictably, Jerome just shrugged.
“Is there anything at all you can remember about her?”
The lad’s face brightened as a thought struck him. “Had a rucksack on her back!”
Sam smiled. That was the most useful thing they’d got out of the lad. Now they just had to work out why Helen Cutter had left her car near the Scowles and had gone on foot to Asda. It was about 15 minutes’ walk between the two if she’d stuck to the road, probably slightly longer across the fields.
A woman who’d buggered off after a row with her husband wasn’t too much to get excited about, but it was a bit of a coincidence that she’d been seen just before a load of shit had kicked off in town. After six years in the job, Sam didn’t set too much store by coincidence.
“Good lad.” Pete looked across to Sam, letting her decide whether they’d got all they needed or not.
“Thanks, Jerome. You’ve been a big help.”
He smiled nervously, and Sam was willing to bet he was hoping for a note to take home to his mum.
It only took them five minutes to get down to the Scowles by car. The area was popular with walkers, particularly at weekends. There were six cars in the carpark. The silver Audi Cutter had described was parked tidily on one side. The doors were locked and the windows were up. There was nothing to suggest it had just been abandoned there, other than the fact that there was bird shit all over the windscreen, plus some blown leaves that had piled up over the air intakes at the base of the windscreen. The interior had a few sweet wrappers lying around but was generally pretty tidy, although the floor mats on the driver’s side showed signs of the red mud that came from walking around the area in wet weather.
The Scowles were said to be the remains of ancient iron workings, deep scars in the landscape, overgrown with tangled trees and their roots. It was popular with dog walkers. God knows how they ever got some of their animals clean again. Sam’s neighbour brought her fat Golden retriever here, and spent almost as long hosing the dog down in the garden as she did walking it.
“I want proof of where Nick Cutter was the night all the shit kicked off at Asda.” She’d slipped the envelope containing the photo of his wife into her pocket. That would give her an excuse to go over to the Eddington Hotel.
“You can ask him now,” Pete said, nodding at the entrance to the carpark where a silver Hilux had just pulled off the road.
The vehicle pulled up behind them and Cutter jumped out, his face animated. “That’s Helen’s car!”
Sam nodded. “How did you get here so quickly?”
“The owners of the hotel told me that one of the animal sightings had been around here. I was going to see if I could speak to the farmer.”
“Let us carry out the interviews, Dr Cutter.” The fact that Helen Cutter’s car was still here and looked like it hadn’t moved for quite a while worried Sam. She didn’t think it was likely that Nick Cutter was behind his wife’s disappearance, but she wasn’t going to take any chances. “I’m sorry to have to ask you this, but can you give me the details of the conference you were at, and who saw you over there?”
Cutter’s blue eyes widened in shock and she saw his jaw clench, then he ran a hand through his hair in a gesture she was starting to recognise and she watched the sudden tension ebb. “I flew from Heathrow to Rapid City, South Dakota via Denver. I gave a paper at a conference at the South Dakota School of Mines. About 150 people saw me.” He gave a rueful grin. “I can’t guarantee they all stayed awake during the paper, though. A phylogenetic analysis of a new early Permian reptile and its significance in early diapsid evolution.”
“Come again?” Pete commented.
Sam dug him in the ribs before he could start scratching his balls in puzzlement. She hadn’t understood a word of what Cutter had just said, either, but she’d bet the house that he was telling the truth. She scribbled what he’d said about the flights and the conference in her notebook.
“Can you give me the names of the students who went with you?”
“Aye. Annabel Robinson, Stephen Hart and Luke Akeman.”
“And did they all go with you on the dig?”
He nodded and his hand went automatically to his hair again. “Do you think I had something to do with Helen’s disappearance?”
“Hard to see how when you left the country the same day she left the house.” Sam smiled her reassuring smile. “Go back to the Eddington Hotel, Dr Cutter. I’ll come and see you later when I’ve asked around for anyone who might have seen Helen.”
Nick Cutter looked like he wanted to argue with her, so she shot him the look she normally reserved for Gav Dacre and the bunch of thieving scrotes he normally knocked about with. The only thing that surprised her was that Helen Cutter’s car wasn’t already up on bricks, stripped of its wheels and anything else the little sods could sell for a few quid.
She handed him the envelope containing the photograph of Helen and he clutched it like a lifeline before turning on his heel and walking back to the Hilux without a word. Before he swung himself up into the driver’s seat, he rummaged in a pocket and chucked something in Sam’s direction.
She caught whatever it was without thinking, and felt something metallic dig into her palm. She opened her hand and looked down at a car key on a worn leather hoop.
Cutter had just thrown her the spare keys to his wife’s car.
****
“Do you believe him, guv?” Pete stuck his feet up on the desk and took a bite out of an iced donut.
Sam slapped his feet off the desk. “Get some digging done.”
“What, like the doc does?”
“No, like a fucking copper does. Find out who apart from young Mr Jude saw Helen Cutter in the area and see if we can get any sightings of her after the night the car park got trashed. Talk to the farmers, see if anyone saw her wandering around their land. They’re more likely to talk to you than they are to me.”
“Look on the bright side, guv, you might lose the Brummie accent in about 40 years.”
“Will I end up with a slopey forehead and no chin as well?”
Whitey flipped her the bird and took a bit out of the last donut before she had chance to make a grab for it.
“And while you’re out there, you can combine it with some more enquiries about the farm thefts. And find out why, if tractors are so fucking easy to nick, the silly sods don’t take better precautions, or don’t they make crook locks big enough?” The same went for all the fucking quadbikes that were still going walkabout. Sam was fed up of getting it in the neck every time something when missing in the Forest. “I’ll be in my office. I’m going to make sure this lot checks out properly.” She waved her notebook under his nose. She’d taken down the travel details Cutter had given them in the car park. It was time to find out if what he’d said checked out.
Three hours later, she’d confirmed that Cutter and his three students had indeed flown from Heathrow to Denver, then caught an internal flight from there to Rapid City in South Dakota. They’d hired a car from Avis in Cutter’s name and he’d shown evidence of identity. The woman on the Avis desk remembered him and the students quite clearly. From the sound of it, Cutter could turn on the charm when he wanted, getting them an upgrade to a larger vehicle for the same price. The fact that one of the students had been – in the woman’s words – drop dead gorgeous, hadn’t gone amiss, either.
Their destination, as Cutter had said, had been the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. They’d spent the weekend at the conference, again exactly as Cutter had said, staying in university accommodation on campus. From there, the four of them had joined an American colleague on a long-running dig on a farmer’s land in the middle of what looked like the back of beyond. They’d spent a fortnight chipping things that Sam couldn’t begin to pronounce out of the rock, and had then reversed their route back to the UK.
In short, Dr Nick Cutter had been exactly where he said he’d been for the entire time. And Helen Cutter had last been seen alive the day after her husband had left for the States. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t seen her at some point in the last ten days.
She ended up making a few calls to the Central Metropolitan University, as well. A helpful administrator arranged for the Faculty Dean to ring her back. The man sounded rather cagey, but Sam put that down to a desire to avoid any bad publicity for the university. It wasn’t easy to look behind his replies, but it sounded like he had more time for Nick Cutter than he had for the absent Mrs – Dr – Cutter. The man hadn’t been keen to be drawn into speculation about the state of the Cutters’ marriage, especially on the phone, but Sam didn’t rule out paying the Dean a visit, although whether her inspector would sanction a trip that far out of town was by no means a certainty. He would probably be worried about her slipping her collar and romping around the fields if she went that far away from her own patch.
After three hours on the phone, Sam was sick of the sight of the glorified broom cupboard that passed for her office. Her back hurt when she finally stood up and she had the beginnings of a headache.
A glance out of the window told her it was lashing down with rain. Whitey wouldn’t be pleased having to tramp around the Forest in that weather.
On impulse, she rang the Eddington Hotel. The owner, a woman in her 60s who’d been desperate to sell the place for as long as Sam had known her, told her that Nick Cutter was propping up the bar, having spent the afternoon quizzing anybody who’d come in for a drink about his missing wife.
Sam rolled her eyes. He hadn’t taken much notice of her instruction to leave the interviews to them. On the off-chance that Whitey was somewhere with a mobile signal, she rang him, but the call went straight to voicemail. She left a message for him to call her.
After flipping quickly through the day’s reports, Sam decided to find out a bit more about Helen Cutter and why she’d stomped out in a huff. She got soaked on her way to the car, but her flat was en route to the hotel, so she grabbed a quick shower and an even quicker cheese sandwich, pulled on a sweater over a pair of jeans, put on a pair of ankle boots and a waterproof parka and then went in search of Nick Cutter.
The Eddington Hotel was an impressive pile just on the edge of the Forest, set in its own grounds, surrounded by an odd mix of regimented Forest Commission planting combined with some natural broadleaved woodland. Trees hadn’t figured much on Sam’s last patch, but since coming to Coleford, she’d made a conscious effort to become less of a townie and had even bought a tree identification guide. So far, she could just about tell an oak tree from a yew. Her only claim to erudition was knowing when to bandy around the word broadleaved. So far she’s only used it once in a conversation with a cute guy from the Forestry, but he’d turned out to be gay as a badger.
She pulled up as close to the main door as she could get and made a quick dash for shelter.
The receptionist looked up as Sam burst in and gave her a friendly smile. “Hello, Sergeant.”
Sam had never set eyes on the girl before, but the locals had information systems that would make GCHQ go green with envy. She smiled back. “Is Dr Cutter still in the bar, Chloe?” Sam was a copper, she could read a name badge at ten paces.
The girl smiled again and nodded.
Sam walked through to the bar. It was all soft lights and wood panelling and, on a wet Monday, it was clear that quite a lot of the guests had already decided that the sun was over the yardarm somewhere in the word.
Nick Cutter was perched on a bar stool, with his back to her. The fire blazing at one side of the room had clearly been enough for him to leave his old army jacket in his room and come downstairs in a pale blue and white striped shirt. His hair was sticking up in damp spikes, telling Sam that Cutter had either done what she’d done and grabbed a quick shower, or alternatively, he’d just come in from tramping the woods and fields. She’d put her money on the latter.
Sam slid onto the stool next to him. That finally attracted Cutter’s attention. He turned to face her, a sudden wild hope lighting up his vivid blue eyes.
“There’s no definite news as yet,” Sam said quickly, hating having to dampen the rush of hope she’d seen in his eyes. She wanted to hold onto Jerome Jude’s possible identification until after Whitey had done his trawl for information, but from the look in his eyes, if Nick Cutter was guilty of doing any harm to his wife, she’d eat her much-hated uniform hat. Without ketchup.
“Nice of you to tell me in person.”
Sam wasn’t sure whether he was being sarcastic or sincere, but she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. “We’ve got people out talking to the local farmers.” Well, for people read PC Pete White, but there wasn’t much point in laying Gloucestershire Constabulary’s manpower woes at his door. “I’m hoping to hear back shortly.” Provided the idle bugger picked up his voicemail messages before clocking off and heading home for the shepherd’s pie his long-suffering mother had no doubt cooked for him. According to Peter, Monday was always shepherd’s pie day. There were times when Sam envied that degree of certainty in life. The only certainty in hers at the moment was that the pizza in her fridge was probably past its sell-by date. But as long as it hadn’t gone furry, she’d take a chance on it.
“Can I get you a drink?” Cutter offered. “You look like a hot toddy wouldn’t go amiss.”
“I’m driving, but a lemonade would be good.” She smiled at the lad behind the bar. “Lemon, no ice.”
Cutter pushed his empty glass across the bar. After pouring Sam’s lemonade, the barman held Cutter’s glass up to the optic for a double measure of Famous Grouse.
Sam gestured to a sofa in a quiet corner. “Shall we?”
Cutter looked a little surprised, but Sam was beginning to think that was his default setting. “Aye, why not?”
The sofa was comfortable, and from it Sam could see most of the bar and two different exits. You could take the girl out of Birmingham, but you couldn’t take Birmingham out of the girl.
“Tell me a bit more about the argument you had before Helen left,” Sam said, doing her best to keep her body language friendly. “You said it was something to do with anomalies in the fossil record. What sort of anomalies?”
This time, the silence really did stretch to breaking point.
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Date: 2017-09-15 07:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-15 07:18 pm (UTC)It really was a lot of fun to write. I have a massive fondness for outsider POVs and would like to write more of them.
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Date: 2017-09-15 07:35 pm (UTC)You're drawing out the characters perfectly.
*g* Great ending for the part, too. Sneaky Hound!
I do have a slight question about this line:
Nick Cutter looked like he wanted to argue with him, so she shot him the look she normally reserved for Gav Dacre and the bunch of thieving scrotes he normally knocked about with.
I'm not getting who Nick wanted to argue with, and why she was giving him that Look. Is there a line missing, maybe?
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Date: 2017-09-15 07:43 pm (UTC)Ooops, my typo. It should have been 'her' not 'him'. Thanks for the catch.
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Date: 2017-09-15 07:52 pm (UTC)I thought that might be it.
I do adore Sam. :)
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Date: 2017-09-16 08:34 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2017-09-16 07:02 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2017-09-17 09:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-17 10:14 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2017-09-17 06:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-24 05:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-24 09:37 pm (UTC)