Badlands (3/5)

[bigtitch]

Title: Badlands (3/5)
Author: bigtitch
Word Count: 19k
Rating: GEN
Characters/Pairing: Cutter, Lester, Ryan, Stephen, Connor, Elvis Harte, OCs
Author notes:After a bad anomaly event Cutter is struggling to cope. Lester forces him to take a holiday. A week fossil hunting on the Durham coast should be nice and relaxing. Unless something else is going on.

This is officially a crossover with Our Girl. Basically I wanted to play with Elvis. However, he only makes a cameo appearance in this fic. There will be a sequel where I get to play with him properly.

The places in this fic are real (although some are operating under a pseudonym). The people are most definitely not real and any resemblance to a real person alive or dead is completely coincidental.

Massive thanks to fififolle for the beta. All mistakes you find are entirely down to me. Also thanks to fredbassett for huge encouragement to start writing again.



Chapter 3

++++

The pub was called the Lumley Arms and had a sign on a post at the front painted with what Cutter assumed were the heraldic arms of the Lumley family. He assumed what with Lumley Hill, Lumley Hill Tower and Lumley Hill Farm that the Lumleys were, or had been, the local bigwigs. Cutter's Scottish peasant heritage dismissed them as English, posh and uninteresting.

The pub itself was never going to win awards for Country Pub of the Year. It was white painted and clearly properly maintained, but consisted of a two storey main building with a plain extension tacked on. There were a couple of wooden tables outside with trestle seating, but that appeared to be the sole nod to a beer garden. The two small barrels either side of the door were planted with some flowers apparently chosen for their ability to withstand neglect rather than their beauty.

A proper local, then, not interested in attracting passing visitors.

The main bar was plain but clean with mostly bench seating and a scattering of copper-topped round tables. A trio of men were sitting around one table with a collection of pint glasses between them. They appeared to be deep in discussion of something and barely looked up as the Middlehams and Cutter walked in. Dave Middleham didn't acknowledge them, but led Anne and Nick straight through the door at the right hand side of the bar marked 'Snug'.

This was a smaller, square room with the turn of the main bar at one end and set out with benches, stools, square wooden tables and a small sideboard blocking what had been another door to the outside. The sideboard was set out with cutlery wrapped in paper serviettes, cruet sets, table mats and a selection of sauce bottles. It didn't seem to be more decorated than the outside had been, but a string of World Cup 2018 England Flags were pinned at the top of the bar.

Anne went straight to what must be their favoured table, sat on the bench seat and gestured for Cutter to sit beside her. Dave went to the bar, leaned over it and yelled 'Shop!'

There was an unintelligible reply from further away than seemed possible in such a small pub. Dave stayed where he was at the bar. A minute later a man appeared from around the corner.

'Sorry, I was changing a barrel in the cellar.' He looked at who had called him and his attitude changed from apologetic to relaxed. "Hey, Dave. How are you doing, marra?'

'Canny. Canny. How are your steaks tonight?'

'We've got some nice rump steaks in.'

'Good.' Dave jerked his finger over his shoulder at where Nick and Anne were sitting. 'Because we've brought one of our guests over to try them. This is Nick Cutter.' He half turned towards Nick. 'Nick, this is Mike Robson. Mike and I went to school together, so if he tells you any stories about me don't believe them!'

Mike Robson was a short, dark haired man with a slightly discontented set to his face, but he broke into a ready enough smile at the introduction. 'Heh! They're all true, I tell you! Nice to have you here, Nick. I hope you enjoy your stay.'

Anne spoke up. 'Mike! Is Claire in tonight?'

'She should be. She only got back from work an hour ago, so I think she's got some things to sort out but then she'll be down.' He turned to Dave. 'The usual?'

Sorting out drinks and menus took a little time because Dave and Mike needed to have a bit of a discussion as to which beer Nick should try. In the end, Nick broke the deadlock by going with what Dave was drinking. Anne watched this with an amused tilt to her head. When Dave brought their drinks over and sat down on a stool, she sent him back to the bar for the menus.

The menu was a single laminated sheet covering the pub grub classics without venturing into territory more exotic than a 'Thai-style stir fry'. There were two separate sections for Steaks and Curries. As the three of them considered their choices a couple came into the bar. They called greetings to the Middlehams but didn't come over to chat.

'What do you fancy, Nick?' Anne said.

Nick looked at the menu again. 'Can't decide,' he said. 'I don't know whether to go with a steak or the fish and chips.'

Anne leaned in as though she was going to whisper a secret. 'I'd go with the steak.' She glanced to see if Mike could overhear her. 'There's a reason we only come to eat here when it's steak night.'

'Ah. In that case I'll go with the rump steak and chips.'

Dave ordered for all of them and accepted Nick's payment when he got back to the table. They chatted about a few inconsequential things and Anne was in the middle of a story about a happening at the riding school when the door opened a woman entered. Anne broke off her story. 'Claire!'

Claire was of average height, but slightly above average weight. Her clothes tended towards the pink and frilly and as she sat down opposite Nick her jewellery jangled together. She gave Nick a ready and friendly smile.

'You must be Nick. Anne said she'd try and bring you down here.'

'Yes, I am. Nick Cutter. You're Mike's wife.'

'That's right. How are you finding the tower?'

'It's great, really comfortable.'

Claire kept smiling. 'I'm glad. I can tell you we thought Anne and Dave were mad to do that old ruin up and try and make a go of renting it out. But we were wrong. What are your bookings like, Anne?'

'Pretty solid for July to mid September.'

'That's wonderful.'

The talk shifted to some of the problems of dealing with guests at a self-catering apartment. Nick felt himself forewarned about leaving rubbish anywhere but in the bins upon leaving. He also felt himself a bit under scrutiny from the newcomer to the table. Claire was chatty and her mouth had a near permanent smile, but her eyes were watchful and she had a way of listening with more than usual attentiveness that was at odds with the rest of her demeanour.

A man and a woman came into the bar. 'Is the landlord here?'

'That's me,' Mike said.

'Can we ask you to put up one of these flyers, please?' The woman pulled out a sheaf of A4 papers and handed a couple over. 'It's for Fadwa and Naziah. You know the refugees who've gone missing from Seaham.'

'Yeah, no problem.' Mike took them and glanced towards Claire.

'Put them up on the bar and the notice board by the main door,' she told him. 'That way more people will see them.'

The leafleters thanked them and left. As Claire turned back to the table Cutter caught a strange, knowing look on her face.

'Am I missing something?' he asked her.

'Claire's a social worker,' Anne said.

'Are you their social worker?'

Claire shook her head. 'No, thank god. I'm with adult services. It's just this hype is a bit overdone. Refugees go missing,' she put air quotes around the word, 'quite a bit. More often than not they've just wandered off. Look, most of them come from places without a functioning police service let along social services. So letting your social worker know where you've gone isn't top of the list of priorities for a lot of them. They're much more likely to be found in Whitley Bay or Blackpool than dead in a ditch. So I reckon this campaign is a bit of a waste of time.'

She might have said more but Mike arrived at the bar counter with the food and Claire got up to help serve it.

They ate their steaks and Cutter was relieved to find that Anne's advice had been right. He didn't know what the Lumley Arms' fish and chips were like but his steak was excellent. He noticed Dave's glass was empty and Anne's was getting low, so he got up to get the next round in. When he brought the glasses back to the table, Claire was back sitting in the seat opposite him again.

'So, Nick what do you do for a living?' Her eyes were watchful again, but Cutter thought he knew the source of that. Social workers were trained to pay attention to what people said.

'I'm a scientist. I work for the government.'

'He's looking for fossils,' Dave said.

'What? Government fossils?'

Cutter gave a short laugh and shook his head. 'Not exactly. I work on a kind of early warning system. Fossils are what I do in my spare time.' He tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice for that last sentence, but wasn't completely sure he'd managed it.

'Early warning system? That sounds interesting?' Claire leaned forward inviting more information.

'Er,' Cutter began.

'He could tell you, but then he'd have to kill you,' Dave supplied.

Cutter was grateful for the intervention, he hated having to negotiate these kind of conversations. A line of Stephen's came into his head. 'Of course, I wouldn't kill you. I'm a scientist. It'd be someone else who'd kill you!'

Dave laughed loud at that quip and Anne joined in. Claire, although she smiled, wasn't letting him off the hook so easily.

'So you're on holiday looking for fossils, then?'

'Yes,' said Cutter around a mouthful of chip, 'and UFOs. You haven't seen any strange, bright lights along the coast or out to sea, have you?'

The table went silent. His companions didn't exactly drop their cutlery and get to their feet in shock, but Anne and Dave stopped eating and they all looked at him seriously.

Anne broke the silence. 'Fossils and UFOs? That's an odd combination!'

'Well, the UFOs are more for a colleague of mine. When I told him where I was going he looked it up and found some reports by the staff at a radar station that they'd seen strange lights at times.'

'What, you mean government reports?' Dave asked.

'No, this stuff is on UFO spotters' websites,' Cutter said quickly, trying to edge the conversation away from this being some government secret. 'I told my friend I'd ask.'

'Well, you can find fossils in the next beach north from Mayfield beach,' Dave told him. 'You can find what's left of the radar station in the field next to the tower. And a right bugger it is to plough around, I can tell you! But you're on your own with UFOs!'

'To be honest you don't seem the type to be into that kind of thing,' Claire told him.

Cutter backed away from her gaze a little. 'Like I said, it's more on a friend's account than mine. He's the one that's into that sort of thing. I'm just doing him a favour. Most of the time these things are just based around people not knowing when they're looking at a planet in the sky rather than a star.'

'What planet?' This was Mike coming to pick up the empty glasses.

'UFO's,' Dave told him. 'Sounds like some people reckon we've been visited by ET!'

'Absolutely not,' Mike stated.

Cutter was surprised at his surety.

'Look. If any UFO landed round here the local lads would have it stripped and sold for scrap before you could say "Take me to your leader"!'

They all laughed at that and Cutter was careful to turn the conversation away from what he was doing on his stay with them. He made a mental note to look at the remains of the radar station when he got the chance. Negotiating these kind of conversations was always difficult for him. Extracting information was a lot easier with an anomaly to point to and an SAS trooper to back you up.

They stayed for a couple more pints after they had finished their meal and Mike entertained them all with stories handed down about how the village had faired in World War Two. The story about the village's amateur fire-fighters arguing about whose turn it was to hold the fire-hose while a house was burning down was good enough to have been in an episode of Dad's Army.

He thanks Mike and Claire for their hospitality when the time came to leave. Claire told him to come back anytime, but Cutter still felt that her eyes were watchful over her smiling mouth.

++++

It was dark by the time they got to the farm, so Anne, who was driving, took the car right to the door of the tower.

'That was a great evening, thank you,' Cutter said as he got out. 'You were right about the steaks.'

'You're welcome,' Anne said. 'Look if you want good fish and chips then the best place for it round here is the Black Diamond pub on the front at Seaham Harbour. It's nothing fancy, not a gastropub, y'knaa, but they use fresh fish and the portions are good.'

'Thanks,' Cutter said. 'I'll give it a go. Good night.'

''Night.'

Cutter fished for his keys in his pocket as he went to open the door. He might not find any fossils or useful information on this trip, but it looked like he was going to be well fed at least.

++++

Cutter sat in front of his laptop facing the nearly insurmountable task of getting in contact with a friend he shouldn't have lost contact with in the first place.

Liz Burnett was from Aberdeen and he had met her in his first days at university in Brighton. They were on the same floor in halls and had bonded when he'd come across her trying to explain 'tablet' to a bemused Brummie. She was studying Physics, he Palaeontology and there was something about being Scots studying science in England that was enough to keep their friendship going.

When they had left halls for their second year, they had gone into a shared house together with other friends. It had only been because Cutter had moved in with Helen in his third year that he hadn't stayed sharing the same accommodation with Liz until they left.

Liz hadn't approved of Helen. She'd never said anything against her, but neither had she said anything in praise of her. When Helen disappeared, Cutter looked back at Liz's careful silence on the subject and felt a bit aggrieved. Now he looked back at them and realised Liz was right.

How to reach across those years and those silences?

A sudden picture of Liz standing in the kitchen at halls, cooking tablet for the entire floor came into his mind. She was smiling in his memory and that called an answering smile out of him.

He created a new email.

Hi Liz,

Long time no see! I should have been in contact a long time ago and I'm sorry. But I'm in the area for a week on holiday and I'd love to meet up with you if we can.

Best

Nick Cutter

PS Do you still make tablet?

It wasn't perfect, but it would do the job. He hit send.

++++

Cutter was running across the tarmac towards the factories again. He could hear the girls screaming, but this time he was alone. He carried a rifle. Even as he raced to save the children that fact bothered him. What was he doing with a gun? He got to the corner where they had found the girls. They were there, prone and bloody on the floor. A raptor was bent over them, tearing at their flesh. He raised the rifle to fire.

The raptor turned its head to him and spoke.

'Why are you doing this, Nick?' It was Helen's voice.

'What about you? You're killing them!'

'It's what we do, Nick. It's what we are. You have to know that. It's what you are.'

'No!'

Nick raised the rifle to his shoulder and pulled the trigger.

Nick sat up in bed and found the light switch with less fumbling than the night before. He always hated it when Helen showed up in his dreams, but this one was worse than usual.
++++
Before Cutter went UFO hunting he checked through Connor's files on the USB drive that Stephen had given him. He was slightly disappointed to find how little there was. This wasn't going to be a grand hunt for a previously unknown anomaly site. The whole thing consisted of a dozen reports from the Royal Observer Corps stationed at somewhere called Beacon Point during the war that they had seen a bright light in the direction of Mayfield Beach and would the radar station send someone to investigate and get them to put the light out. The inevitable reply from the radar station that they hadn't seen anything, nothing was happening. Somehow Cutter could feel the officer at the radar station getting more and more irritated as the reports went on even though the formal language of the replies didn't change. Maybe Cutter was projecting his own emotions on to it.

The dates of these reports were interesting, though. They were every six months or so, but not on the same date each time. Someone on the UFO website had looked at the dates and calculated that they matched up with the full moon before each solstice. Cutter thought about the kind of mind that could do that kind of correlation and decided that whoever Makkem73 was they were probably wasted at whatever job they were doing. Connor had helpfully provided a list of dates that corresponded to the full moons before solstices. The last date on the list was tomorrow night. Connor had put some stars and exclamation points next to it.

Cutter might have got excited over that if it hadn't been for the total lack of reports once the war ended. The radar station had stayed operational until the mid 1950s, but it reported no more lights, presumably to the relief of whoever was in charge.

It was slim pickings despite Connor's enthusiastic punctuation marks. Cutter was half way to abandoning it, but then changed his mind. What else did he have to do?

++++

Dave Middleham had been right about where the radar station was. At least the remains of the building lay at the edge of the field next to the tower. There were horses in that field so it looked like he had given up trying to plough there at least for the time being.

Cutter hadn't had high expectations of what he was going to find, but the remnants of the buildings failed to live up to even that. It looked to have been a complex of about five small huts. Now all that was visible through the tangles of nettles and brambles were a few brick walls, cracked concrete slabs and a curved section of corrugated iron roof that gave off the same ammonia smell as the pill box down on the beach. Cutter wondered who bothered to come out here and use it as a toilet, but then accepted that peeing on the place was probably the correct response.

What a waste of time. Cutter walked back to the tower. As he did so he met Dave Middleham who was pushing a wheelbarrow filled with something agricultural.

'You found it then?'

'Yes, thanks.'

'Anything interesting?'

Cutter shook his head. 'No. Nothing. I don't think ET has been visiting.'

Dave laughed. 'I'll tell Mike and Claire they can sleep sound in their beds, then.'

'Yeah. I think the citizens of Mayfield are safe from alien abduction!'

'What are you up to now?'

Cutter thought for a second and then checked his watch. It was nearly twelve. 'You know I think I might try those fish and chips Anne was talking about.'

'Good idea. Tell Alan Scott I sent you and he'll look after you.'

Cutter thanked him and walked back into the tower. Back inside, he pulled out the USB drive from his laptop and shut it down. He picked up his backpack and went back to the door. If the day was going to disappoint him on the research front the least it could do was feed him well.

++++

Google Maps told Cutter that the Black Diamond pub was only a five minute walk away from the ASDA supermarket where he'd gone shopping on his first day in the area. Cutter pulled into the supermarket car park rather go hunting for another place to park that might not exist. It was busier at lunchtime than when he'd visited it first thing in the morning. He chose a parking spot away from the main door and closer to the street and hoped no one would notice him not actually shopping.

The drive to Seaham hadn't sharpened Cutter's appetite enough that he felt like eating straight away. He decided to walk around the centre a little and see what was there. Maybe he could buy a souvenir for Lorraine to thank her for her efforts in arranging this trip. The accommodation was perfect. It wasn't her fault that everything else was turning out to be a bit of a disappointment.

It didn't take Cutter long to realise that he wasn't going to find anything suitable for Lorraine or anyone at the ARC. Seaham was a perfect example of a place hit hard by industrial decline and not really succeeding in pulling itself out of it. He wasn't the expert in architectural history, but it seemed to him that nothing new had been built for twenty years apart from the supermarket he'd just come from. The main pedestrianised shopping street was mostly charity shops and pound stores. Several shops looked like they'd been boarded up for years. There were planters are regular intervals beside metal grill benches, but there was nothing growing in them except weeds, crisp packets and empty beer cans.

There were signs that this had been a prosperous town once. There were some imposing buildings such a masonic hall, a magistrates court with Doric columns and some fine Georgian houses. It was just that the rest of the town seemed shrunken around them. Like an old man putting on his best suit and finding it too big for him.

There was something else. There were brown tourist road signs for the Harbour and Marina, the Harbour Beach and Seaham Beach, but that was it. Cutter had never been to a seaside town less interested in being a seaside town. There wasn't a single amusement arcade to be seen, not even anywhere to buy a bucket and spade.

Cutter looked at this grey town under grey skies beside a grey sea and was grateful when his stomach rumbled. Maybe food could lift his mood.
++++
The Black Diamond pub was on a street overlooking a rectangle of green above the cliffs. It was a three storey, solid looking building, painted grey and with the windows picked out in white. It looked clean and presentable from the outside which gave Cutter hope, but had a large flag of St George in one window which made him wary. The notice above the door informed him that Alan Scott was licensed to sell all intoxicating liquor on or off the premises.

There was a dining room off the hall to the right as he came in, but it looked unused. He took the door to the left and found himself in a large bar room. The tables by the windows were both taken, so Cutter sat at one by the wall. He took off his jacket, put the bag on his seat and made sure he had his wallet with him as he went up to the bar.

A tall man with greying hair and the physique of a rugby player was standing behind the bar polishing a glass.

'Are you Alan?' Nick asked as he came up to the bar.

'Yes. Who's asking?'

'I'm Nick. I'm staying at Dave Middleham's place. They told me to come here for fish and chips.'

'Oh yes? That's good. They send a few people my way. Nice to meet you.' He reached his hand across the bar and gave Nick a firm handshake. He picked up his order pad. 'Where are you sitting?'

Following Scott's advice, Nick ordered haddock and chips with mushy peas. He sat down with a pint of Cloister beer which was as good as he was told it was. There were a dozen men in the bar, which was going in for 'traditional but not overly designed' as decor with old fashioned miner's lamps as the motif. Cutter approved.

Looking around, Cutter spotted a newspaper on the chair at the window table to his right.

'Is anyone using this?' he asked the man sitting there.

'No. Please.' The man gestured for him to take it.

The man's accent was more south east England than north east and Cutter looked a little more closely at him as he reached to grab the paper. He was worth looking at. He was young, dark haired and tanned with a face that wouldn't have been out of place in a fashion magazine. He caught the man's eye and they exchanged the quick slightly embarrassed smile of Englishmen who have nearly got close enough to get introduced to each but aren't going to. Still, as Cutter picked up the paper and settled back in his seat he shot the young man another glance. He'd got the strongest impression that he'd been recognised.

How? He hadn't met the young man before. Even Cutter would not have forgotten a face that handsome if he’d met its owner before. He went through every permutation of lecture and meeting that he'd done in the past couple of years and drew a blank. If he didn't know the young man then how did he know Cutter? Was he on a wanted poster somewhere?

Cutter frowned to himself as he opened the newspaper and then he worked it out and it took all of his self control to keep his attention on the paper and not turn to glance or stare at the stranger at the table beside him. It was the way the man sat. The way he was relaxed yet alert. The way he was in one of the best spots in the bar to see everything that was going on without seeming to look. The way he owned the space he occupied. Cutter had seen it often enough for himself, most often in the Ship Inn close to the ARC. It was the way Ryan, Lyle, Ditzy, Kermit and the rest of the special forces guys sat. Cutter would bet good money that the young man was special forces, too, probably SAS. And yes, thinking about it, of course Cutter's picture would appear in briefing notes along with the rest of the ARC team if a troop happened to be on standby in the capital.

Cutter turned the page in the newspaper he was only pretending to read. But in that case why not say something? It had to be because the soldier was on a job, undercover probably. In that case, it was Cutter's job not to blow it. Cutter forced himself to try and relax. There was nothing to see here, just a visitor reading the paper and wondering when his fish and chips were going to arrive. He wasn't at all aware of anything secret or to do with undercover special forces soldiers. In fact, what special forces? Cutter made himself be very interested in what the food critic 'Mr Eats' had to say about Sunday lunch at the Blue House pub in Haswell Plough.

Luckily, because Cutter's acting skills were strictly limited, his lunch arrived a few minutes later. The haddock was surprisingly large with the chips and peas portions to match. The quality matched the quantity, though, and Cutter had no difficulty in concentrating on eating rather than anything else that was happening around him.

When he'd made a respectable dent in the food pile in front of him, Cutter sat back in his chair and sipped his beer. A young man in a dark green sweatshirt was standing by the bar, drinking a beer and chatting with the landlord. From the snatches of conversation that reached him it sounded like the man was having girlfriend and mother problems.

Cutter's presumed special forces guy stood up, walked the length of the bar and disappeared though the door marked 'Gents'. Cutter went back to his meal. A few chips later, the young man in green at the bar also headed off to the toilets. Cutter kept his head down to hide any trace of recognition on his face. That was it then, a meeting with a contact, Cutter was sure of it.

Cutter ate a couple more chips and then pushed his plate away. He was genuinely full but had no desire to linger in this place that was full of secrets somehow. He picked up his jacket and his bag, complimented Scott at the bar on the food and left before either of the other two men came back.

He didn't know what was going on and he wanted no part of it. He had enough secrets of his own to be getting along with, thank you.