If Found, Please Return part 1
Jun. 2nd, 2012 02:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
llywelaFic! Ask me not where this came from, for I have not the foggiest...
Show: crossover – The Professionals and classic Doctor Who
Author: Llywela13
Characters: Ray Doyle, William Bodie, Dr Harry Sullivan, George Cowley, Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, Sergeant-Major Benton
Spoilers/Warnings: This story assumes all readers will be familiar with both CI5 and UNIT. It is set sometime after Doctor Who 13.01 Terror of the Zygons (Fourth Doctor era), and somewhere around season 1/2 of The Professionals. The Doctor himself does not appear in this story.
Wordcount: 31,345
Disclaimer: CI5 and all characters connected therein belong to Mark 1 Productions. UNIT and all characters connected therein belong to the BBC. I have borrowed them for this story and am making no profit from this.
Summary: CI5 and UNIT would have been around at about the same time in the late 1970s. CI5 weren't keen on other agencies treading over their perceived jurisdiction and UNIT were learning to cope without the Doctor after his departure. So what happened when they found their investigations overlapping?
Author's Note: Nothing deep or meaningful here, this is a straight-up case story. Being an intra-genre crossover, it is leaning toward crack fiction, from a Pros perspective, I know, but it's crack fiction that takes itself seriously, grounding UNIT within the Pros 'verse and playing the story completely straight. Just go with it, 'kay?
Acknowledgements: There is no one I can blame for this except me. But Sue egged me on.
"Hang about, he's on the move." Doyle surreptitiously adjusted the wing mirror as he spoke, to get a better angle on the target.
Duty called. Bodie dropped from idle chit-chat back to business at once. "About time," he muttered, shifting position slightly ready to pull off in pursuit after sitting still just a little too long for comfort – surveillance was never a favourite assignment for the CI5 agents to pull, especially when the target was as boring as this one was turning out to be. He waited for Morley's car to pass before gently easing his own into gear and pulling out to follow, allowing a couple of other vehicles to slide between them as cover.
Morley turned left at the junction. Bodie followed. "So what went wrong?" he asked, picking up the threads of the conversation interrupted by Clive Morley's sudden burst of activity.
"What went wrong when?" Doyle nodded toward the target. "Left again up ahead."
"What do you mean, 'what went wrong when'?" Bodie took the turn. "At the weekend – I thought you were going out with what's-her-name?"
"Pat," said Doyle.
"Pat. I thought you were going out with Pat?"
"Yeah, I was."
"Well?"
"Well, what?"
"Doyle!"
"Yeah, all right, all right. She binned me, if you really want to know."
Bodie laughed. "She never did. I thought you had it all planned, big romantic weekend?"
"That's right, rub it in," Doyle grumbled. "Right at the lights."
"I have got eyes, you know." Bodie accelerated to make it through the junction and around the corner as amber became red, then slowed again to resume their steady, stealthy pursuit of the target, who so far had had a fairly unremarkable day, not even remotely worth their while tailing him. Rain began to splatter against the windscreen, a few drops at first that then settled into a more persistent shower. He flicked the wipers on and squinted at the road ahead to check that Morley was still in sight. "What's this bloke up to?" he wondered aloud.
Doyle snorted. "Your guess is as good as mine, mate."
"I mean, Cowley said –"
"Yeah, Cowley says a lot of things. Never anything useful, though, is it?"
"Well, he has his reasons," Bodie pointed out, although he shared his partner's frustration. They often had to work without much in the way of background information, especially in the early stages of an investigation, but Cowley had been even more close-mouthed than usual about this little fact-finding mission. 'Clive Morley: seek, find and follow' was about all he'd given them to be going on with, no details attached, maybe because there were details he didn't want them to know – but maybe because there were no real details to give.
"Be nice to have a bit more to go on, for once," said Doyle. "'S all I'm saying."
"Yeah, well, if wishes were horses, we'd be rolling in it, wouldn't we?" Bodie span the wheel to follow Morley's car around another corner. "Morley's connected to Stanton and Galbraith and that mob, isn't he?" he mused. "So if there is something in the wind, it's got to be big. And Cowley's just itching for something solid he can pin on that little lot and make stick."
"Isn't he just, the slippery devils," Doyle agreed. "Hang about, where's he going now?"
The traffic was getting heavier now – the rain, too – and Bodie had to concentrate to keep the target in sight. "If we're really lucky," he suggested, "he'll lead us right to – bloody hell!" He slammed on the brakes as a car unexpectedly reversed out of a drive right in front of him, then wound his window down and yelled at the idiot until he got out of the way again.
"Where'd he go?" Doyle was leaning forward, scanning the road ahead for any glimpse of Morley's car.
There was no sign of it. Just up ahead was a four-way junction and Morley was long gone. Bodie groaned. "No chance."
"Oh, brilliant." Doyle slumped back into his seat. "Cowley's gonna love this."
"Bags you to be the one to tell him!" Bodie promptly retorted.
"No, sir. Same story as before. The signal had cut out by the time we got there and whoever was sending it had already cleared out," Regimental Sergeant-Major Benton reported, standing straight-backed before Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart's desk at UNIT's London HQ, chin held high, knowing only too well how little his commanding officer would like what he was hearing.
"And the technical boys still can't tell us anything useful about the transmission," the Brigadier noted, frowning his exasperation.
"No, sir." Benton shared his frustration. "They won't even commit themselves to whether it's human or alien in origin." He hesitated slightly before adding, "The Doctor would have been able to tell us by now…"
"Yes, I'm sure he would, but the Doctor isn't here, is he?" the Brigadier tartly retorted. "Off gallivanting around the universe again with Miss Smith, no telling when he'll be back."
If ever.
The unspoken words hung between them for a moment, and Benton almost wished he hadn't brought it up – the Brigadier got so morose these days when reminded of the Doctor's continued absence. They'd come to rely heavily on their eccentric, enigmatic scientific advisor, over the years, but he'd had itchy feet from the start, and now that he'd got that old box of his working properly again and had given into his wanderlust once more, the intervals between his ever more infrequent returns to home base were growing longer and longer. The time would come, maybe already had, when he would stop coming back here altogether. So if extraterrestrials were going to insist on visiting Earth still, UNIT were going to have to find ways of dealing with them without the Doctor, or so the Brigadier kept saying…however ill-equipped for the task they felt, at times.
"It still seems too much of a coincidence that such an unusual transmission should have started up so soon after that ship came down," the Brigadier continued after a pause, almost as if the thorny issue of the Doctor had never been broached, "but I suppose it doesn't pay to jump to conclusions. The one thing that does seem clear is that whoever is sending the signal, they don't want to be found – they certainly don't seem to stay in any one place for longer than five minutes. You searched the site thoroughly, I take it."
"Yes, sir," Benton confirmed, relieved by the swift return to the business at hand. "We searched the premises and surrounding area, but the only evidence anyone had even been there was the corpse –"
"A human corpse, you say?" the Brigadier interjected.
"Yes, sir."
"And have we identified the man?"
"Not yet, sir. He wasn't carrying any ID. We might have to get on to the police to help establish his identity."
The Brigadier rolled his eyes. "Well, if you really must. I'd rather not involve them any more than strictly necessary, though – police are the last thing we need under our feet for this investigation."
"Yes, sir," Benton agreed. "Dr Sullivan is still examining the body to determine the exact cause of death, but believes he may have been shot with some kind of energy weapon."
The Brigadier perked up at once, predictably enough – it was only to be expected that he'd jump all over that little titbit, unconfirmed though it still was. It wasn't as if they had anything else to go on. "An energy weapon, eh? Well, if true, that would be a clear indication of extra-terrestrial involvement."
"It would, sir," Benton agreed again. "Dr Sullivan will confirm one way or another as soon as he's finished his examination. One other thing, sir. It rained earlier today, so the ground was muddy – we found tyre tracks that indicate a single vehicle entering the property and then leaving again at speed."
"The vehicle our victim was travelling in, I suppose," the Brigadier thoughtfully replied. "But if it left again without him, well, either our extra-terrestrials, if they exist, have learned how to drive – or someone else was there who saw what happened. I want to know who that person was, what they were doing there and what they know about a crashed alien spaceship, unexplained transmissions and a human corpse."
Not much to ask for, then, with little or no evidence to go on. Benton resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "I've ordered a full forensic examination, sir," he reported.
"Very well, Mr Benton." It was a dismissal. "Keep me informed."
"He's dead." Mr Cowley appeared around the door of his office just as Doyle was passing, almost as if he'd been lying in wait. He looked annoyed enough that he might well have been.
Doyle blinked. "Good morning to you, too, sir. Who's dead?"
"Clive Morley." Cowley jerked his head for Doyle to follow him into the office. Bodie was already there, and judging by the look on his face he'd already had an earful.
"Morley? Dead how?" Doyle asked, and fried under the glare his boss turned on him.
"If you two hadn't been incompetent enough to lose him, we might know how he died," Cowley snapped. "He might not have died."
"Well, he was alive and kicking last we saw of him, so –"
"When you lost him, you mean."
"So what did the police say?" Doyle continued, puzzled – when a person of interest turned up dead, the cause was usually straightforward enough even if the exact circumstances weren't.
The look on Cowley's face could have curdled milk. "The police have very little information to share. Clive Morley's death was reported by and is being investigated by the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce." He bit the words out as if they tasted rotten. They probably did.
"UNIT?" More confused than ever, Doyle looked to his partner for enlightenment of some kind, but Bodie simply shrugged and stayed out of it. "What have UNIT got to do with a lowlife like Morley?"
Cowley glowered at him in a way that could only be described as unfriendly. "Quite," he said. "That's what I'd like to know."
"Why were we interested in Morley?" Bodie chipped in at last. It was his turn to fry beneath Cowley's glare, and he added a hasty, "Sir."
"Specifically," Doyle added. "I mean, why now? Why in particular?"
Cowley glared at them both a moment longer before relenting, at least a little. "Something in the wind, you might say," he mused. "Morley was a trusted associate of Eddie Stanton, and Stanton's brewing something. I don't know what – I had hoped Morley might lead us to a few answers, but now we're back to square one with a day wasted." He was looking decidedly unfriendly again as he snapped, "Describe Morley's movements to me, there may be something –"
"We did submit our report, sir," Bodie protested, although Doyle privately thought he was wasting his breath there.
"Never mind your report," Cowley growled. "I'm asking you to tell me, every detail."
"There's not a lot to tell," said Bodie. "We picked him up coming out of the club, tailed him round a few shops –"
"What shops?"
"Newsagent and bookies," Doyle replied. "He bought some fags and a paper and placed a few bets. Stone The Crows at 8/2 in the 1.30. He lost."
"Then we followed him home," Bodie continued. "He was in the house for about…thirty, thirty-five minutes?" He looked at Doyle for confirmation.
Doyle nodded. "Then he went out again and we followed…and that's when we lost him in traffic. Sorry, sir."
"And a few hours later he was reported dead by UNIT," Cowley mused. "No other details forthcoming. So what happened – where did he go, what did he do, how were UNIT involved? That's what we need to find out."
"Have they told us anything at all, sir?" Bodie asked. "I mean, accident, murder, suicide, anything to be going on with, so we know what we're dealing with – natural causes, even? Did he stumble into something of theirs by accident? Or are we treading on their…"
His voice tailed off as Cowley shot him a look that should have drilled holes clean through him. Cowley had clashed with UNIT over jurisdictional demarcation a number of times in the past and hadn't got his way even once, which was unusual for him. So if this investigation was somehow crossing wires with a UNIT operation – or, rather, if a UNIT operation was crossing wires with their investigation…well, that was going to get right up Cowley's nose. Which meant Cowley would be getting up Doyle and Bodie's noses until it was over.
"No information has been released so far," Cowley brusquely confirmed, "Other than the fact that Morley is dead. However, UNIT have agreed to let us talk to their medical officer, who examined the body. That might give us a place to start."
"Here's that autopsy report on Clive Morley, sir," Benton announced as he entered the Brigadier's office with the file.
"Morley?" The Brigadier frowned slightly as he glanced up from the sheaf of papers strewn across his desk. "Oh yes. The body at the farm."
"That's the one, sir. He was killed by an energy weapon of some kind, as Dr Sullivan suspected," Benton summarised.
"Which confirms that someone – or something – definitely survived that crash, then," the Brigadier mused, leafing through the report.
"Yes, sir, so it would seem – it's alien technology, at any rate." Not necessarily wielded by aliens, of course, but it was certainly looking that way.
"And there's been no further trace of that signal?"
"I'm afraid not, sir."
"Which rather leaves us back at square one, doesn't it," the Brigadier sighed. "But now we know that there are aliens on the loose, somewhere."
"Yes, sir," Benton agreed. Aliens on the loose, aliens who were apparently prepared to kill, and they had no idea what they were or where to look for them. Life with UNIT was never dull; you could say that for it. "But we know that humans are involved somehow as well."
"A dead human would seem to indicate that, yes," said the Brigadier, rather more sarcastically than Benton felt was entirely called for. "Have we had the forensic report back on those tyre tracks yet?"
"Yes, sir. Inconclusive," Benton reluctantly admitted. Every potential lead they'd found so far had turned out to be a dead end. "We've taken eye witness reports from the locals describing at least half a dozen different vehicles that may or may not have been heading to or from Elderbrook Farm yesterday afternoon, we're still checking those out. And don't forget we've got those CI5 agents due shortly to see Dr Sullivan about Morley's death."
The Brigadier expressed his feelings about that by rolling his eyes. "Blasted nuisance," he grumbled. "Still, I suppose we must – with any luck they might at least be able to tell us what the man was doing there."
"Yes, sir. I suppose that –"
"Sir!" Corporal Carol Bell, the Brigadier's assistant, came charging into the room at a run. "We've picked up that signal again, fifteen miles west-north-west of the previous location."
The Brigadier was on his feet at once. "Well, don't just stand there, man," he snapped at Benton – rather unfairly, Benton thought, since he was already heading for the door. "Let's move."
"I mean, what do UNIT do, exactly?" Bodie mused as he eased the car through the early morning traffic toward UNIT HQ. "Do you know?"
Doyle shrugged. "No one knows, do they? Except…"
"Except for the people who need to know," Bodie finished for him with an exasperated sigh. It was the standard by-line for UNIT, the response from on high that greeted every enquiry on the subject, no matter who that enquiry came from. "And I thought our business was hush-hush. I mean, even Cowley doesn't have security clearance on their operations. And he's got clearance on everything."
"They've been involved in some big stuff, though, haven't they?" Doyle had his thinking face on. "I mean, there was that flap over that weapons research centre – what was it called? Think Tank – it was UNIT dealt with that, wasn't it? And then again at that energy conference a while back. That was them, too."
"Yeah, I shouldn't remind Cowley about that one," Bodie told him. "Any of them, come to that – he still reckons they should have been ours."
"Yeah, but what actually happened?"
"Well, no one knows, do they?" Bodie obliged his partner by answering the rhetorical question. "Classified to the nth degree."
"So what makes us think they're going to tell us anything this time?"
"Well, they probably won't, will they?" Bodie shared a rueful eye-roll with Doyle. This trip was going to be a complete waste of time and they both knew it. "We still have to ask the questions, though, don't we – where else are we going to start?"
"What exactly is CI5's interest in the deceased, if you don't mind my asking?"
Dr Harry Sullivan RN, UNIT's medical officer, was younger than Doyle had expected – early 30s at the most. Immaculately turned out in naval uniform, he spoke with the clipped tones of a public schoolboy, while his manner was polite, affable…and guarded. He'd been given the job of fobbing them off, Doyle guessed, and didn't seem entirely comfortable with it, but was going to follow orders and stone-wall them anyway. Well, two could play at that game. "We had hoped he might have information pertinent to an ongoing investigation," he said. Nice and vague and formal. "But he disappeared before we had the chance to talk to him."
"What was UNIT's interest in the deceased?" Bodie pointedly added.
Sullivan shrugged. "We had none," he said. "Until his body was discovered during the course of a UNIT operation."
"Don't suppose you'd like to tell us what kind of operation?" Bodie enquired, glancing at Doyle with a meaningful little eye roll; they both knew what the answer to that would be.
"That's classified, I'm afraid," Sullivan replied, predictably enough.
"How did he die?" Doyle asked.
"He was shot." Well, that was a straightforward enough answer, at least.
"By UNIT?" Bodie immediately asked.
Sullivan shook his head. "By a third party. He was already dead when we found him."
"So UNIT's interest was in the third party, then?" Doyle guessed, mulling over the implications. "Can we ask who that was? Might be relevant to our investigation."
"Also classified, I'm afraid." He did actually look as if he regretted not being able to answer the question, as well.
Doyle rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I thought it might be. Was the killer apprehended at the scene, can we at least ask that?"
Sullivan hesitated slightly before replying – probably weighing up whether or not that information fell under the heading of 'classified' as well. "No. No, they were gone by the time we got there."
"So, you lost yours and we lost ours," Bodie wryly remarked. "And since clearly none of us are prepared to tell each other anything, we're not likely to work out what the connection is anytime soon, are we?"
"Where was Morley found?" Doyle asked. "Or is that classified, too?"
Again Sullivan considered the question for a moment before replying, leaning slightly against a table to regard them both appraisingly and shoving his hands into his pockets as he did so – a gesture that completely spoiled the crisp, upright military bearing he'd been sporting up till then, but Doyle found he liked him a little bit better for it, even if his commanding officer probably wouldn't. "The body was found on derelict farmland just outside London," he said at last. "He had no known connection to the area that we've been able to establish – but you might know more about that than us."
"We'd be interested in seeing the location, then," said Doyle. It was worth asking – he'd been slightly more cooperative than expected, so far. "Might help us piece together Morley's movements in his last hours."
"Yeah, and that would help your investigation as well as ours, wouldn't it?" Bodie added. "Find out if he was there by coincidence or design, so to speak."
Sullivan looked dubious.
"Look, at least run it past your guv'nor," Doyle suggested. "Never know, he might say yes."
"He's out on manoeuvres," Sullivan rather vaguely replied. That was odd. What kind of manoeuvres might they be on, middle of a case like this? Doyle had thought the place seemed strangely empty as they came in. If almost the whole of UNIT HQ had cleared out on these 'manoeuvres', what did that imply?
Sullivan was still looking thoughtful – trying to decide whether or not he was authorised to agree to their request, no doubt, if there was no superior officer around to refer it to. If he said yes, it would mean he knew damn well that all evidence of anything 'classified' had already been removed from the scene, that much was certain, so the chances of actually learning anything useful from a site visit were remote – but a long shot was better than nothing. It wasn't as if they had anything else to go on.
At length, Sullivan nodded. "Right-o, then. I'll take you there."
"I say, where's the guard?" Lieutenant Sullivan asked, wearing a baffled frown. It was the first indication that this supposedly routine investigative visit to the derelict farm where Clive Morley's body had been found wasn't going to be quite as straightforward as anticipated.
Bodie snapped to alert at once, and a quick glance in Doyle's direction told him that his partner had reacted likewise. "UNIT left a soldier here?" he checked as they exited the car, eyes scouring every inch of the property he could see. It made sense to leave a man on guard detail, if UNIT wanted to protect the location and see if anyone returned to the scene of the crime, but Sullivan was right: there was no sign of him.
Sullivan nodded. "Look, there's the Land Rover. But no sign of the guard." He glanced around worriedly.
Doyle caught Bodie's eye, shrugged eloquently, and then said, "Could be patrolling the perimeter – or gone off to take a leak, or something."
"Maybe." Still frowning, Sullivan wandered over to the abandoned vehicle, as if to check that the missing soldier wasn't hiding inside.
Bodie looked at Doyle, who quietly asked, "What do you think?"
"I think he knows more than he's letting on."
"He's UNIT. Of course he knows more than he's letting on. Seems genuine about that missing guard, though."
Bodie nodded. The missing guard might still turn up – the farm wasn't small, plenty of land to get lost on – but wasn't a good sign. "Well, we'll see what turns up when we start poking around," he remarked, then turned to Sullivan as he returned from his fruitless examination of the Land Rover. "Where was Morley's body found?"
"Over there –" As Sullivan half-turned to point, a loud bang, like the slamming of a door somewhere, broke the stillness of the air, and he span around in the other direction looking alarmed. The noise had come from the direction of an outhouse, over near what had probably once been stables, a little way apart from the main farmhouse.
"The farm is abandoned, you said?" Bodie quickly checked with Sullivan, who nodded.
"Been derelict for years, according to the agent. Our men searched the property thoroughly. No sign of occupation."
"Could be your missing soldier," Doyle suggested, but the quick sideways glance he tossed in Bodie's direction said he wasn't convinced by that theory, any more than Bodie was.
"Or maybe the killer came back," Bodie dourly added, and watched Sullivan's worried face closely to see how he reacted to that suggestion. The anxious frown intensified – he looked as if he was deeply regretting agreeing to bring them here. Bodie couldn't honestly blame him for that. The identity of Morley's killer was highly classified, after all, presumably for a reason. And they were very exposed, out here in the open.
They approached the outhouse with extreme caution. A look and a couple of quick hand gestures were all it took to agree a course of action with Doyle, who headed for the door with Sullivan in tow while Bodie skirted around the outside in search of a back door, other possible means of exit, or any other signs of life – weapon in hand, just in case.
He'd just rounded a corner and noted the existence of a rear exit to the building – which meant the door slam could as easily have been someone exiting as entering, unseen from their previous position – when what looked like a bolt of lightning, a virtually horizontal bolt of lightning, from somewhere down low rather than the sky, came streaking out of nowhere and struck the wall just above his head. He flung himself to one side to escape the shower of bricks and mortar and then scrambled for cover, frantically scanning the surrounding terrain in search of the source of the lightning, because that wasn't natural, that couldn't be natural.
Another lightning bolt that took out the low wall he'd taken cover behind, sending him scurrying, confirmed beyond any shadow of doubt that it wasn't natural. It was aimed and deliberate. But what was it? Some kind of laser?
Bodie sprinted back behind the building, stumbling slightly over fallen bricks strewn across the loose gravel, blood pounding in his ears as he narrowly avoided a few more pot shots aimed in his direction, which exploded into the wall of the outhouse. He dived for cover, brambles scratching his skin and catching at his clothes as he fell, and then waited, poised ready to run again.
No more lightning bolts.
He allowed himself a moment to catch his breath, the sour aftertaste of adrenaline bitter at the back of his throat. Still no more lightning bolts. He risked a quick peek. No sign of movement. No sign of any more lightning. Whoever'd been shooting at him didn't seem to be pursuing, now he was out of sight.
Satisfied that he was no longer in immediate danger, Bodie turned to look at the outhouse that Doyle and Sullivan had entered just a few minutes earlier and felt the acid churn of renewed panic, deep in his gut. The building had taken several hits of those lightning bolts. It hadn't been in good repair to begin with, and now…the side wall had collapsed, bringing most of the roof down with it – and there was no sign of life.
"Easy now, take it easy," said a voice somewhere close by. Not Bodie.
A groan escaped, unbidden, as Doyle attempted to peel his eyes open, before the blinding pain that shot through his already pounding head made him think better of it. He let them flutter shut again and lay still for a moment, took stock instead, and felt minor aches and pains beginning to make themselves known all over, although the head was the worst. The air was thick with dust, coating his airways with every breath, cloying, and he was lying on an irregular surface, sharp edges digging in uncomfortably here and there. His face felt sticky – and then something soft suddenly pressed against it, just above one eye, startling him. He managed to peel his eyes open at the second attempt and looked straight into the worried face of UNIT's Dr Harry Sullivan, who looked every bit as battered as Doyle felt.
"Wha' 'ppened?" The question, more a reflex than anything, came out as a woozy slur followed by a hacking cough to clear some of that dust off his lungs and throat.
"You don't remember?" Sullivan frowned.
A look like that on the face of a medical professional could result in extreme boredom of the laid up variety if you weren't careful. Doyle redoubled his efforts to collect his scattered memories of recent events. "Th' roof fell," he eventually came up with, shifting uncomfortably.
"Something like that. Hold this here a moment." Sullivan took one of Doyle's hands and placed it over that soft something that was still pressed against his face. Doyle pulled it away to look at it: a handkerchief, with blood on it. Sullivan promptly guided both hand and handkerchief back to their previous position. "You need to hold that there for a moment, old chap," he repeated. "Can you tell me your name?"
The concussion check-list was a familiar enough drill. "Ray Doyle."
"How many fingers am I holding up?"
Doyle blinked at the blurry digits, which refused to come into focus. "Two," he offered. It was a guess.
Sullivan patted his shoulder, a gesture of reassurance that Doyle fuzzily suspected he should find patronising. "Close," he said. "Sit tight a moment while I see if I can find the door."
He disappeared from Doyle's field of vision, which reminded Doyle of something else that was missing. "Where's Bodie?"
"Still outside, I should imagine," Sullivan's voice called back from somewhere out of eyeshot, "Wondering if we're all right."
Bodie'd stayed outside; they'd come inside – searching this derelict farm where Clive Morley's body had been found. And then there'd been some kind of explosion and the roof had caved in…. It all came back in a rush and Doyle started upright – and his stomach rolled, protesting the sudden movement.
There was a scramble and a clatter nearby, and then Sullivan was at his side again, easing him through the wave of nausea. "Try not to move just yet. You've had a nasty crack on the head," the doctor advised.
It was probably good advice, except that they were trapped in this building, which had collapsed on top of them, and Bodie would be going frantic outside trying to dig his way in to them, and there was something strange going on here. He couldn't afford to just lie around nursing a bumped head. Doyle stubbornly shook his head, which was a mistake, a definite mistake, the flash of pain that shot through it was white-hot, but he tried again to sit up anyway. Sullivan helped this time. The room span around him as he moved, dizzying and disorienting, and his stomach lurched in protest, but he eventually made it to a more or less upright position, leaning against the remains of an interior wall.
Sullivan kept a firm hold of his shoulders until the nausea passed and his breathing settled down again. "Better?" he asked at length.
Doyle managed a terse little nod and looked around. From his new position he could see the state the building was in – fallen masonry everywhere, a few tiny fires smouldering here and there – and was mildly impressed that they'd both managed to survive the collapse. "D' you find the door?" he asked.
"Not yet." Sullivan gave him another long, hard look, and was apparently satisfied with what he saw as he then stood up and scrambled away over the rubble once more, toward the spot where the door was obscured behind fallen beams and brickwork.
He was moving gingerly, Doyle noticed, and favouring one arm. "Are you all right?" he belatedly thought to ask.
Half-turning to glance back across the debris he was attempting to negotiate, Sullivan offered him a wan little smile that wasn't as reassuring as he probably intended it to be. "Bruised, nothing broken," he said, scrubbing a hand through his hair as he turned once more to survey the debris blocking the exit. He attempted to shift some of it and got a face full of thick black dust for his trouble, stumbled away coughing and spluttering.
Time to stand up and start helping, Doyle told himself, and started to struggle to his feet. Sullivan hurried back to him at once, still coughing. "I'm okay," Doyle insisted, wobbly but upright.
"I'll be the judge of that," Sullivan countered. Typical doctor: always thought they knew best. He held up a finger – definitely only one this time – and told Doyle to follow it. Doyle obliged him by tracking the movement of the finger with his eyes, up and down, left and right, by way of proof that he could now see straight once more.
"Right, let's see about that door, then," he said, as firmly as he could manage, and began to cautiously navigate the unstable heaps of rubble, only slightly aided by Sullivan – although now that they were both more or less mobile, he wasn't entirely sure that the other man was that much steadier than he was. The building had collapsed on them both, after all.
Between them, with a lot of wobbling and wheezing, they managed to shift a bit of the rubble without bringing too much more down on their heads. Sound from the outside world began to filter through – muffled shouting and banging and cursing, which told Doyle clearly that his partner was likewise digging in the other direction. He yelled back and redoubled his efforts. Slowly, digging from both sides, they managed to clear a hole through which Bodie became visible, looking grimy and relieved. Head pounding and ears ringing, Doyle attempted to muster up a smile for his benefit. "What kept you?"
"What the hell is going on here? I thought you said the place was abandoned?" Bodie rounded on Sullivan the moment the three of them had made it safely out of the collapsed outhouse and retreated behind the relative shelter of a nearby barn.
"It was. It was searched, top to bottom." He'd dropped to the ground, looking battered and bruised, and was rubbing at his shoulder with a pained expression.
Doyle looked even worse. He'd also flopped to the ground in a heap and Bodie knelt alongside him to take a look at a bloody gash over his eye; it looked nasty, but was already scabbing over. "Is he all right?" he demanded of Sullivan, who nodded.
"Slightly concussed."
"I'm fine," Doyle growled, pushing him away. "But I'd like to know what happened. Why'd the building collapse like that?"
"Someone was shooting at us," Bodie grimly told his partner, who frowned at him in incomprehension.
"Shooting doesn't knock a house down, Bodie."
"It does when it's lightning that's being fired!" Bodie retorted with feeling.
Doyle looked bewildered. "What? I thought I was supposed to be the one with concussion."
"I've never seen anything like it, Ray," Bodie admitted. "I don't know what it was – some kind of laser, maybe? All I know is it looked like a lightning strike but wasn't, it was focused and aimed, a weapon – powerful enough to knock a house down."
"It was an energy weapon." This came quietly but decisively from Sullivan.
Bodie fixed him with a long, hard glare. "A what?" He'd known the man was withholding information, expected it – it was his job, after all, to keep UNIT's secrets – but didn't like it any the better for that. Especially when it landed a building on his partner's head. The fact that the building had also landed on Sullivan's own head was neither here nor there.
"An energy weapon," Sullivan wearily repeated, scrubbing a hand through his thick curly hair to dislodge the worst of the brick fragments and dust that were caught in it. "The same weapon that killed Clive Morley, at a guess."
"You said Morley was shot," said Doyle, dabbing at his bloody forehead with a grimy hand.
"He was. He was shot with an energy weapon of some kind. It seems reasonable to assume it was the same thing we just experienced."
Bodie shook his head, angry and confused. Nothing that had happened since they arrived here had made any sense at all. "No, I know weapons, believe me, and I've never seen anything like that before," he argued.
Sullivan looked tired. "No," he said. "No, you wouldn't have."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Is it a new weapon?" Doyle asked, frowning. "Still in development, something UNIT was responsible for? Is that it?"
"And now it's fallen into the wrong hands?" Bodie added, suspecting his partner may be on to something there.
Sullivan shook his head and said no, but Bodie wasn't convinced. Neither was Doyle, apparently. "Stanton's had links with arms dealing, hasn't he?" he mused, turning to Bodie.
Sullivan looked interested. "Who's Stanton?"
"An associate of Clive Morley," said Bodie, watching his reaction closely through narrowed eyes. "Are we right? Has some experimental weapon been mislaid, maybe picked up by Stanton's mob? Come on, be straight – we're way past worrying about what's classified and what's not, here."
Sullivan shook his head again. "Believe it or not, gentlemen, I actually wish it were that simple," he sighed. "Although I suppose it's possible the arms trade link might help explain Morley's involvement. Somehow." The way he was frowning suggested he still wasn't sure how the pieces fitted together, though – although he did at least have more of those pieces to be going on with than Bodie and Doyle did, and remained frustratingly reluctant to share everything he knew with them. He glanced around anxiously. "Look, do you think we could make it back to the vehicles? I need to call this in to HQ, ask for backup. The Brigadier should be back by now."
The UNIT Land Rover and Bodie's car were both within sight of their position, and the idea of backup – even UNIT backup – was very attractive just now. Cowley'd be wondering where they were, as well, come to that.
"Ambulance for the pair of you wouldn't go amiss, either," Bodie muttered, eyeing the cuts and bruises both were sporting. While Doyle and Sullivan in unison insisted that they were fine, he tried to gauge the distance they'd have to cover…but then shook his head. "Open ground, not enough cover – and we don't know the range of that weapon. I'm not sure I'd want to risk it, not without knowing more."
"We can't just sit here all day, though, can we," Doyle countered. "If there's someone out there with this new gun, what's to stop them coming looking for us? They know we're here, don't they?"
They did – they'd definitely seen Bodie, if not the other two – and just because they hadn't come looking yet didn't mean they weren't going to.
"Wait, is that…? Oh, I say." Sullivan was now looking in the other direction entirely, an expression of dismay on his face.
"What?" Bodie turned to see what he was looking at. At first all he could see was more derelict farmland, but then…there it was: a body, half hidden by the overgrown weeds it had fallen among. The missing guard, presumably. Definitely dead, Bodie could tell that much even from this distance, but the doctor seemed to feel the need to check for himself, up close and personal. He unexpectedly broke from cover and scampered across the open yard toward the body, ignoring Bodie's shout of protest. At least he had the sense to keep low.
No lightning strikes ensued. Maybe whoever had the weapon hadn't seen him. Either that or he was out of range – which would mean they might be safe to make a run for the vehicles, after all. It was still an idiot move, breaking cover like that.
Exasperated, Bodie turned to Doyle, who shrugged. "He's a medical officer, isn't he," he mildly observed. "Not a field agent."
"Well, non-field agents should stay out of the field, then, shouldn't they," Bodie snapped.
Continue to Part 2
Show: crossover – The Professionals and classic Doctor Who
Author: Llywela13
Characters: Ray Doyle, William Bodie, Dr Harry Sullivan, George Cowley, Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, Sergeant-Major Benton
Spoilers/Warnings: This story assumes all readers will be familiar with both CI5 and UNIT. It is set sometime after Doctor Who 13.01 Terror of the Zygons (Fourth Doctor era), and somewhere around season 1/2 of The Professionals. The Doctor himself does not appear in this story.
Wordcount: 31,345
Disclaimer: CI5 and all characters connected therein belong to Mark 1 Productions. UNIT and all characters connected therein belong to the BBC. I have borrowed them for this story and am making no profit from this.
Summary: CI5 and UNIT would have been around at about the same time in the late 1970s. CI5 weren't keen on other agencies treading over their perceived jurisdiction and UNIT were learning to cope without the Doctor after his departure. So what happened when they found their investigations overlapping?
Author's Note: Nothing deep or meaningful here, this is a straight-up case story. Being an intra-genre crossover, it is leaning toward crack fiction, from a Pros perspective, I know, but it's crack fiction that takes itself seriously, grounding UNIT within the Pros 'verse and playing the story completely straight. Just go with it, 'kay?
Acknowledgements: There is no one I can blame for this except me. But Sue egged me on.
"Hang about, he's on the move." Doyle surreptitiously adjusted the wing mirror as he spoke, to get a better angle on the target.
Duty called. Bodie dropped from idle chit-chat back to business at once. "About time," he muttered, shifting position slightly ready to pull off in pursuit after sitting still just a little too long for comfort – surveillance was never a favourite assignment for the CI5 agents to pull, especially when the target was as boring as this one was turning out to be. He waited for Morley's car to pass before gently easing his own into gear and pulling out to follow, allowing a couple of other vehicles to slide between them as cover.
Morley turned left at the junction. Bodie followed. "So what went wrong?" he asked, picking up the threads of the conversation interrupted by Clive Morley's sudden burst of activity.
"What went wrong when?" Doyle nodded toward the target. "Left again up ahead."
"What do you mean, 'what went wrong when'?" Bodie took the turn. "At the weekend – I thought you were going out with what's-her-name?"
"Pat," said Doyle.
"Pat. I thought you were going out with Pat?"
"Yeah, I was."
"Well?"
"Well, what?"
"Doyle!"
"Yeah, all right, all right. She binned me, if you really want to know."
Bodie laughed. "She never did. I thought you had it all planned, big romantic weekend?"
"That's right, rub it in," Doyle grumbled. "Right at the lights."
"I have got eyes, you know." Bodie accelerated to make it through the junction and around the corner as amber became red, then slowed again to resume their steady, stealthy pursuit of the target, who so far had had a fairly unremarkable day, not even remotely worth their while tailing him. Rain began to splatter against the windscreen, a few drops at first that then settled into a more persistent shower. He flicked the wipers on and squinted at the road ahead to check that Morley was still in sight. "What's this bloke up to?" he wondered aloud.
Doyle snorted. "Your guess is as good as mine, mate."
"I mean, Cowley said –"
"Yeah, Cowley says a lot of things. Never anything useful, though, is it?"
"Well, he has his reasons," Bodie pointed out, although he shared his partner's frustration. They often had to work without much in the way of background information, especially in the early stages of an investigation, but Cowley had been even more close-mouthed than usual about this little fact-finding mission. 'Clive Morley: seek, find and follow' was about all he'd given them to be going on with, no details attached, maybe because there were details he didn't want them to know – but maybe because there were no real details to give.
"Be nice to have a bit more to go on, for once," said Doyle. "'S all I'm saying."
"Yeah, well, if wishes were horses, we'd be rolling in it, wouldn't we?" Bodie span the wheel to follow Morley's car around another corner. "Morley's connected to Stanton and Galbraith and that mob, isn't he?" he mused. "So if there is something in the wind, it's got to be big. And Cowley's just itching for something solid he can pin on that little lot and make stick."
"Isn't he just, the slippery devils," Doyle agreed. "Hang about, where's he going now?"
The traffic was getting heavier now – the rain, too – and Bodie had to concentrate to keep the target in sight. "If we're really lucky," he suggested, "he'll lead us right to – bloody hell!" He slammed on the brakes as a car unexpectedly reversed out of a drive right in front of him, then wound his window down and yelled at the idiot until he got out of the way again.
"Where'd he go?" Doyle was leaning forward, scanning the road ahead for any glimpse of Morley's car.
There was no sign of it. Just up ahead was a four-way junction and Morley was long gone. Bodie groaned. "No chance."
"Oh, brilliant." Doyle slumped back into his seat. "Cowley's gonna love this."
"Bags you to be the one to tell him!" Bodie promptly retorted.
"No, sir. Same story as before. The signal had cut out by the time we got there and whoever was sending it had already cleared out," Regimental Sergeant-Major Benton reported, standing straight-backed before Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart's desk at UNIT's London HQ, chin held high, knowing only too well how little his commanding officer would like what he was hearing.
"And the technical boys still can't tell us anything useful about the transmission," the Brigadier noted, frowning his exasperation.
"No, sir." Benton shared his frustration. "They won't even commit themselves to whether it's human or alien in origin." He hesitated slightly before adding, "The Doctor would have been able to tell us by now…"
"Yes, I'm sure he would, but the Doctor isn't here, is he?" the Brigadier tartly retorted. "Off gallivanting around the universe again with Miss Smith, no telling when he'll be back."
If ever.
The unspoken words hung between them for a moment, and Benton almost wished he hadn't brought it up – the Brigadier got so morose these days when reminded of the Doctor's continued absence. They'd come to rely heavily on their eccentric, enigmatic scientific advisor, over the years, but he'd had itchy feet from the start, and now that he'd got that old box of his working properly again and had given into his wanderlust once more, the intervals between his ever more infrequent returns to home base were growing longer and longer. The time would come, maybe already had, when he would stop coming back here altogether. So if extraterrestrials were going to insist on visiting Earth still, UNIT were going to have to find ways of dealing with them without the Doctor, or so the Brigadier kept saying…however ill-equipped for the task they felt, at times.
"It still seems too much of a coincidence that such an unusual transmission should have started up so soon after that ship came down," the Brigadier continued after a pause, almost as if the thorny issue of the Doctor had never been broached, "but I suppose it doesn't pay to jump to conclusions. The one thing that does seem clear is that whoever is sending the signal, they don't want to be found – they certainly don't seem to stay in any one place for longer than five minutes. You searched the site thoroughly, I take it."
"Yes, sir," Benton confirmed, relieved by the swift return to the business at hand. "We searched the premises and surrounding area, but the only evidence anyone had even been there was the corpse –"
"A human corpse, you say?" the Brigadier interjected.
"Yes, sir."
"And have we identified the man?"
"Not yet, sir. He wasn't carrying any ID. We might have to get on to the police to help establish his identity."
The Brigadier rolled his eyes. "Well, if you really must. I'd rather not involve them any more than strictly necessary, though – police are the last thing we need under our feet for this investigation."
"Yes, sir," Benton agreed. "Dr Sullivan is still examining the body to determine the exact cause of death, but believes he may have been shot with some kind of energy weapon."
The Brigadier perked up at once, predictably enough – it was only to be expected that he'd jump all over that little titbit, unconfirmed though it still was. It wasn't as if they had anything else to go on. "An energy weapon, eh? Well, if true, that would be a clear indication of extra-terrestrial involvement."
"It would, sir," Benton agreed again. "Dr Sullivan will confirm one way or another as soon as he's finished his examination. One other thing, sir. It rained earlier today, so the ground was muddy – we found tyre tracks that indicate a single vehicle entering the property and then leaving again at speed."
"The vehicle our victim was travelling in, I suppose," the Brigadier thoughtfully replied. "But if it left again without him, well, either our extra-terrestrials, if they exist, have learned how to drive – or someone else was there who saw what happened. I want to know who that person was, what they were doing there and what they know about a crashed alien spaceship, unexplained transmissions and a human corpse."
Not much to ask for, then, with little or no evidence to go on. Benton resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "I've ordered a full forensic examination, sir," he reported.
"Very well, Mr Benton." It was a dismissal. "Keep me informed."
"He's dead." Mr Cowley appeared around the door of his office just as Doyle was passing, almost as if he'd been lying in wait. He looked annoyed enough that he might well have been.
Doyle blinked. "Good morning to you, too, sir. Who's dead?"
"Clive Morley." Cowley jerked his head for Doyle to follow him into the office. Bodie was already there, and judging by the look on his face he'd already had an earful.
"Morley? Dead how?" Doyle asked, and fried under the glare his boss turned on him.
"If you two hadn't been incompetent enough to lose him, we might know how he died," Cowley snapped. "He might not have died."
"Well, he was alive and kicking last we saw of him, so –"
"When you lost him, you mean."
"So what did the police say?" Doyle continued, puzzled – when a person of interest turned up dead, the cause was usually straightforward enough even if the exact circumstances weren't.
The look on Cowley's face could have curdled milk. "The police have very little information to share. Clive Morley's death was reported by and is being investigated by the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce." He bit the words out as if they tasted rotten. They probably did.
"UNIT?" More confused than ever, Doyle looked to his partner for enlightenment of some kind, but Bodie simply shrugged and stayed out of it. "What have UNIT got to do with a lowlife like Morley?"
Cowley glowered at him in a way that could only be described as unfriendly. "Quite," he said. "That's what I'd like to know."
"Why were we interested in Morley?" Bodie chipped in at last. It was his turn to fry beneath Cowley's glare, and he added a hasty, "Sir."
"Specifically," Doyle added. "I mean, why now? Why in particular?"
Cowley glared at them both a moment longer before relenting, at least a little. "Something in the wind, you might say," he mused. "Morley was a trusted associate of Eddie Stanton, and Stanton's brewing something. I don't know what – I had hoped Morley might lead us to a few answers, but now we're back to square one with a day wasted." He was looking decidedly unfriendly again as he snapped, "Describe Morley's movements to me, there may be something –"
"We did submit our report, sir," Bodie protested, although Doyle privately thought he was wasting his breath there.
"Never mind your report," Cowley growled. "I'm asking you to tell me, every detail."
"There's not a lot to tell," said Bodie. "We picked him up coming out of the club, tailed him round a few shops –"
"What shops?"
"Newsagent and bookies," Doyle replied. "He bought some fags and a paper and placed a few bets. Stone The Crows at 8/2 in the 1.30. He lost."
"Then we followed him home," Bodie continued. "He was in the house for about…thirty, thirty-five minutes?" He looked at Doyle for confirmation.
Doyle nodded. "Then he went out again and we followed…and that's when we lost him in traffic. Sorry, sir."
"And a few hours later he was reported dead by UNIT," Cowley mused. "No other details forthcoming. So what happened – where did he go, what did he do, how were UNIT involved? That's what we need to find out."
"Have they told us anything at all, sir?" Bodie asked. "I mean, accident, murder, suicide, anything to be going on with, so we know what we're dealing with – natural causes, even? Did he stumble into something of theirs by accident? Or are we treading on their…"
His voice tailed off as Cowley shot him a look that should have drilled holes clean through him. Cowley had clashed with UNIT over jurisdictional demarcation a number of times in the past and hadn't got his way even once, which was unusual for him. So if this investigation was somehow crossing wires with a UNIT operation – or, rather, if a UNIT operation was crossing wires with their investigation…well, that was going to get right up Cowley's nose. Which meant Cowley would be getting up Doyle and Bodie's noses until it was over.
"No information has been released so far," Cowley brusquely confirmed, "Other than the fact that Morley is dead. However, UNIT have agreed to let us talk to their medical officer, who examined the body. That might give us a place to start."
"Here's that autopsy report on Clive Morley, sir," Benton announced as he entered the Brigadier's office with the file.
"Morley?" The Brigadier frowned slightly as he glanced up from the sheaf of papers strewn across his desk. "Oh yes. The body at the farm."
"That's the one, sir. He was killed by an energy weapon of some kind, as Dr Sullivan suspected," Benton summarised.
"Which confirms that someone – or something – definitely survived that crash, then," the Brigadier mused, leafing through the report.
"Yes, sir, so it would seem – it's alien technology, at any rate." Not necessarily wielded by aliens, of course, but it was certainly looking that way.
"And there's been no further trace of that signal?"
"I'm afraid not, sir."
"Which rather leaves us back at square one, doesn't it," the Brigadier sighed. "But now we know that there are aliens on the loose, somewhere."
"Yes, sir," Benton agreed. Aliens on the loose, aliens who were apparently prepared to kill, and they had no idea what they were or where to look for them. Life with UNIT was never dull; you could say that for it. "But we know that humans are involved somehow as well."
"A dead human would seem to indicate that, yes," said the Brigadier, rather more sarcastically than Benton felt was entirely called for. "Have we had the forensic report back on those tyre tracks yet?"
"Yes, sir. Inconclusive," Benton reluctantly admitted. Every potential lead they'd found so far had turned out to be a dead end. "We've taken eye witness reports from the locals describing at least half a dozen different vehicles that may or may not have been heading to or from Elderbrook Farm yesterday afternoon, we're still checking those out. And don't forget we've got those CI5 agents due shortly to see Dr Sullivan about Morley's death."
The Brigadier expressed his feelings about that by rolling his eyes. "Blasted nuisance," he grumbled. "Still, I suppose we must – with any luck they might at least be able to tell us what the man was doing there."
"Yes, sir. I suppose that –"
"Sir!" Corporal Carol Bell, the Brigadier's assistant, came charging into the room at a run. "We've picked up that signal again, fifteen miles west-north-west of the previous location."
The Brigadier was on his feet at once. "Well, don't just stand there, man," he snapped at Benton – rather unfairly, Benton thought, since he was already heading for the door. "Let's move."
"I mean, what do UNIT do, exactly?" Bodie mused as he eased the car through the early morning traffic toward UNIT HQ. "Do you know?"
Doyle shrugged. "No one knows, do they? Except…"
"Except for the people who need to know," Bodie finished for him with an exasperated sigh. It was the standard by-line for UNIT, the response from on high that greeted every enquiry on the subject, no matter who that enquiry came from. "And I thought our business was hush-hush. I mean, even Cowley doesn't have security clearance on their operations. And he's got clearance on everything."
"They've been involved in some big stuff, though, haven't they?" Doyle had his thinking face on. "I mean, there was that flap over that weapons research centre – what was it called? Think Tank – it was UNIT dealt with that, wasn't it? And then again at that energy conference a while back. That was them, too."
"Yeah, I shouldn't remind Cowley about that one," Bodie told him. "Any of them, come to that – he still reckons they should have been ours."
"Yeah, but what actually happened?"
"Well, no one knows, do they?" Bodie obliged his partner by answering the rhetorical question. "Classified to the nth degree."
"So what makes us think they're going to tell us anything this time?"
"Well, they probably won't, will they?" Bodie shared a rueful eye-roll with Doyle. This trip was going to be a complete waste of time and they both knew it. "We still have to ask the questions, though, don't we – where else are we going to start?"
"What exactly is CI5's interest in the deceased, if you don't mind my asking?"
Dr Harry Sullivan RN, UNIT's medical officer, was younger than Doyle had expected – early 30s at the most. Immaculately turned out in naval uniform, he spoke with the clipped tones of a public schoolboy, while his manner was polite, affable…and guarded. He'd been given the job of fobbing them off, Doyle guessed, and didn't seem entirely comfortable with it, but was going to follow orders and stone-wall them anyway. Well, two could play at that game. "We had hoped he might have information pertinent to an ongoing investigation," he said. Nice and vague and formal. "But he disappeared before we had the chance to talk to him."
"What was UNIT's interest in the deceased?" Bodie pointedly added.
Sullivan shrugged. "We had none," he said. "Until his body was discovered during the course of a UNIT operation."
"Don't suppose you'd like to tell us what kind of operation?" Bodie enquired, glancing at Doyle with a meaningful little eye roll; they both knew what the answer to that would be.
"That's classified, I'm afraid," Sullivan replied, predictably enough.
"How did he die?" Doyle asked.
"He was shot." Well, that was a straightforward enough answer, at least.
"By UNIT?" Bodie immediately asked.
Sullivan shook his head. "By a third party. He was already dead when we found him."
"So UNIT's interest was in the third party, then?" Doyle guessed, mulling over the implications. "Can we ask who that was? Might be relevant to our investigation."
"Also classified, I'm afraid." He did actually look as if he regretted not being able to answer the question, as well.
Doyle rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I thought it might be. Was the killer apprehended at the scene, can we at least ask that?"
Sullivan hesitated slightly before replying – probably weighing up whether or not that information fell under the heading of 'classified' as well. "No. No, they were gone by the time we got there."
"So, you lost yours and we lost ours," Bodie wryly remarked. "And since clearly none of us are prepared to tell each other anything, we're not likely to work out what the connection is anytime soon, are we?"
"Where was Morley found?" Doyle asked. "Or is that classified, too?"
Again Sullivan considered the question for a moment before replying, leaning slightly against a table to regard them both appraisingly and shoving his hands into his pockets as he did so – a gesture that completely spoiled the crisp, upright military bearing he'd been sporting up till then, but Doyle found he liked him a little bit better for it, even if his commanding officer probably wouldn't. "The body was found on derelict farmland just outside London," he said at last. "He had no known connection to the area that we've been able to establish – but you might know more about that than us."
"We'd be interested in seeing the location, then," said Doyle. It was worth asking – he'd been slightly more cooperative than expected, so far. "Might help us piece together Morley's movements in his last hours."
"Yeah, and that would help your investigation as well as ours, wouldn't it?" Bodie added. "Find out if he was there by coincidence or design, so to speak."
Sullivan looked dubious.
"Look, at least run it past your guv'nor," Doyle suggested. "Never know, he might say yes."
"He's out on manoeuvres," Sullivan rather vaguely replied. That was odd. What kind of manoeuvres might they be on, middle of a case like this? Doyle had thought the place seemed strangely empty as they came in. If almost the whole of UNIT HQ had cleared out on these 'manoeuvres', what did that imply?
Sullivan was still looking thoughtful – trying to decide whether or not he was authorised to agree to their request, no doubt, if there was no superior officer around to refer it to. If he said yes, it would mean he knew damn well that all evidence of anything 'classified' had already been removed from the scene, that much was certain, so the chances of actually learning anything useful from a site visit were remote – but a long shot was better than nothing. It wasn't as if they had anything else to go on.
At length, Sullivan nodded. "Right-o, then. I'll take you there."
"I say, where's the guard?" Lieutenant Sullivan asked, wearing a baffled frown. It was the first indication that this supposedly routine investigative visit to the derelict farm where Clive Morley's body had been found wasn't going to be quite as straightforward as anticipated.
Bodie snapped to alert at once, and a quick glance in Doyle's direction told him that his partner had reacted likewise. "UNIT left a soldier here?" he checked as they exited the car, eyes scouring every inch of the property he could see. It made sense to leave a man on guard detail, if UNIT wanted to protect the location and see if anyone returned to the scene of the crime, but Sullivan was right: there was no sign of him.
Sullivan nodded. "Look, there's the Land Rover. But no sign of the guard." He glanced around worriedly.
Doyle caught Bodie's eye, shrugged eloquently, and then said, "Could be patrolling the perimeter – or gone off to take a leak, or something."
"Maybe." Still frowning, Sullivan wandered over to the abandoned vehicle, as if to check that the missing soldier wasn't hiding inside.
Bodie looked at Doyle, who quietly asked, "What do you think?"
"I think he knows more than he's letting on."
"He's UNIT. Of course he knows more than he's letting on. Seems genuine about that missing guard, though."
Bodie nodded. The missing guard might still turn up – the farm wasn't small, plenty of land to get lost on – but wasn't a good sign. "Well, we'll see what turns up when we start poking around," he remarked, then turned to Sullivan as he returned from his fruitless examination of the Land Rover. "Where was Morley's body found?"
"Over there –" As Sullivan half-turned to point, a loud bang, like the slamming of a door somewhere, broke the stillness of the air, and he span around in the other direction looking alarmed. The noise had come from the direction of an outhouse, over near what had probably once been stables, a little way apart from the main farmhouse.
"The farm is abandoned, you said?" Bodie quickly checked with Sullivan, who nodded.
"Been derelict for years, according to the agent. Our men searched the property thoroughly. No sign of occupation."
"Could be your missing soldier," Doyle suggested, but the quick sideways glance he tossed in Bodie's direction said he wasn't convinced by that theory, any more than Bodie was.
"Or maybe the killer came back," Bodie dourly added, and watched Sullivan's worried face closely to see how he reacted to that suggestion. The anxious frown intensified – he looked as if he was deeply regretting agreeing to bring them here. Bodie couldn't honestly blame him for that. The identity of Morley's killer was highly classified, after all, presumably for a reason. And they were very exposed, out here in the open.
They approached the outhouse with extreme caution. A look and a couple of quick hand gestures were all it took to agree a course of action with Doyle, who headed for the door with Sullivan in tow while Bodie skirted around the outside in search of a back door, other possible means of exit, or any other signs of life – weapon in hand, just in case.
He'd just rounded a corner and noted the existence of a rear exit to the building – which meant the door slam could as easily have been someone exiting as entering, unseen from their previous position – when what looked like a bolt of lightning, a virtually horizontal bolt of lightning, from somewhere down low rather than the sky, came streaking out of nowhere and struck the wall just above his head. He flung himself to one side to escape the shower of bricks and mortar and then scrambled for cover, frantically scanning the surrounding terrain in search of the source of the lightning, because that wasn't natural, that couldn't be natural.
Another lightning bolt that took out the low wall he'd taken cover behind, sending him scurrying, confirmed beyond any shadow of doubt that it wasn't natural. It was aimed and deliberate. But what was it? Some kind of laser?
Bodie sprinted back behind the building, stumbling slightly over fallen bricks strewn across the loose gravel, blood pounding in his ears as he narrowly avoided a few more pot shots aimed in his direction, which exploded into the wall of the outhouse. He dived for cover, brambles scratching his skin and catching at his clothes as he fell, and then waited, poised ready to run again.
No more lightning bolts.
He allowed himself a moment to catch his breath, the sour aftertaste of adrenaline bitter at the back of his throat. Still no more lightning bolts. He risked a quick peek. No sign of movement. No sign of any more lightning. Whoever'd been shooting at him didn't seem to be pursuing, now he was out of sight.
Satisfied that he was no longer in immediate danger, Bodie turned to look at the outhouse that Doyle and Sullivan had entered just a few minutes earlier and felt the acid churn of renewed panic, deep in his gut. The building had taken several hits of those lightning bolts. It hadn't been in good repair to begin with, and now…the side wall had collapsed, bringing most of the roof down with it – and there was no sign of life.
"Easy now, take it easy," said a voice somewhere close by. Not Bodie.
A groan escaped, unbidden, as Doyle attempted to peel his eyes open, before the blinding pain that shot through his already pounding head made him think better of it. He let them flutter shut again and lay still for a moment, took stock instead, and felt minor aches and pains beginning to make themselves known all over, although the head was the worst. The air was thick with dust, coating his airways with every breath, cloying, and he was lying on an irregular surface, sharp edges digging in uncomfortably here and there. His face felt sticky – and then something soft suddenly pressed against it, just above one eye, startling him. He managed to peel his eyes open at the second attempt and looked straight into the worried face of UNIT's Dr Harry Sullivan, who looked every bit as battered as Doyle felt.
"Wha' 'ppened?" The question, more a reflex than anything, came out as a woozy slur followed by a hacking cough to clear some of that dust off his lungs and throat.
"You don't remember?" Sullivan frowned.
A look like that on the face of a medical professional could result in extreme boredom of the laid up variety if you weren't careful. Doyle redoubled his efforts to collect his scattered memories of recent events. "Th' roof fell," he eventually came up with, shifting uncomfortably.
"Something like that. Hold this here a moment." Sullivan took one of Doyle's hands and placed it over that soft something that was still pressed against his face. Doyle pulled it away to look at it: a handkerchief, with blood on it. Sullivan promptly guided both hand and handkerchief back to their previous position. "You need to hold that there for a moment, old chap," he repeated. "Can you tell me your name?"
The concussion check-list was a familiar enough drill. "Ray Doyle."
"How many fingers am I holding up?"
Doyle blinked at the blurry digits, which refused to come into focus. "Two," he offered. It was a guess.
Sullivan patted his shoulder, a gesture of reassurance that Doyle fuzzily suspected he should find patronising. "Close," he said. "Sit tight a moment while I see if I can find the door."
He disappeared from Doyle's field of vision, which reminded Doyle of something else that was missing. "Where's Bodie?"
"Still outside, I should imagine," Sullivan's voice called back from somewhere out of eyeshot, "Wondering if we're all right."
Bodie'd stayed outside; they'd come inside – searching this derelict farm where Clive Morley's body had been found. And then there'd been some kind of explosion and the roof had caved in…. It all came back in a rush and Doyle started upright – and his stomach rolled, protesting the sudden movement.
There was a scramble and a clatter nearby, and then Sullivan was at his side again, easing him through the wave of nausea. "Try not to move just yet. You've had a nasty crack on the head," the doctor advised.
It was probably good advice, except that they were trapped in this building, which had collapsed on top of them, and Bodie would be going frantic outside trying to dig his way in to them, and there was something strange going on here. He couldn't afford to just lie around nursing a bumped head. Doyle stubbornly shook his head, which was a mistake, a definite mistake, the flash of pain that shot through it was white-hot, but he tried again to sit up anyway. Sullivan helped this time. The room span around him as he moved, dizzying and disorienting, and his stomach lurched in protest, but he eventually made it to a more or less upright position, leaning against the remains of an interior wall.
Sullivan kept a firm hold of his shoulders until the nausea passed and his breathing settled down again. "Better?" he asked at length.
Doyle managed a terse little nod and looked around. From his new position he could see the state the building was in – fallen masonry everywhere, a few tiny fires smouldering here and there – and was mildly impressed that they'd both managed to survive the collapse. "D' you find the door?" he asked.
"Not yet." Sullivan gave him another long, hard look, and was apparently satisfied with what he saw as he then stood up and scrambled away over the rubble once more, toward the spot where the door was obscured behind fallen beams and brickwork.
He was moving gingerly, Doyle noticed, and favouring one arm. "Are you all right?" he belatedly thought to ask.
Half-turning to glance back across the debris he was attempting to negotiate, Sullivan offered him a wan little smile that wasn't as reassuring as he probably intended it to be. "Bruised, nothing broken," he said, scrubbing a hand through his hair as he turned once more to survey the debris blocking the exit. He attempted to shift some of it and got a face full of thick black dust for his trouble, stumbled away coughing and spluttering.
Time to stand up and start helping, Doyle told himself, and started to struggle to his feet. Sullivan hurried back to him at once, still coughing. "I'm okay," Doyle insisted, wobbly but upright.
"I'll be the judge of that," Sullivan countered. Typical doctor: always thought they knew best. He held up a finger – definitely only one this time – and told Doyle to follow it. Doyle obliged him by tracking the movement of the finger with his eyes, up and down, left and right, by way of proof that he could now see straight once more.
"Right, let's see about that door, then," he said, as firmly as he could manage, and began to cautiously navigate the unstable heaps of rubble, only slightly aided by Sullivan – although now that they were both more or less mobile, he wasn't entirely sure that the other man was that much steadier than he was. The building had collapsed on them both, after all.
Between them, with a lot of wobbling and wheezing, they managed to shift a bit of the rubble without bringing too much more down on their heads. Sound from the outside world began to filter through – muffled shouting and banging and cursing, which told Doyle clearly that his partner was likewise digging in the other direction. He yelled back and redoubled his efforts. Slowly, digging from both sides, they managed to clear a hole through which Bodie became visible, looking grimy and relieved. Head pounding and ears ringing, Doyle attempted to muster up a smile for his benefit. "What kept you?"
"What the hell is going on here? I thought you said the place was abandoned?" Bodie rounded on Sullivan the moment the three of them had made it safely out of the collapsed outhouse and retreated behind the relative shelter of a nearby barn.
"It was. It was searched, top to bottom." He'd dropped to the ground, looking battered and bruised, and was rubbing at his shoulder with a pained expression.
Doyle looked even worse. He'd also flopped to the ground in a heap and Bodie knelt alongside him to take a look at a bloody gash over his eye; it looked nasty, but was already scabbing over. "Is he all right?" he demanded of Sullivan, who nodded.
"Slightly concussed."
"I'm fine," Doyle growled, pushing him away. "But I'd like to know what happened. Why'd the building collapse like that?"
"Someone was shooting at us," Bodie grimly told his partner, who frowned at him in incomprehension.
"Shooting doesn't knock a house down, Bodie."
"It does when it's lightning that's being fired!" Bodie retorted with feeling.
Doyle looked bewildered. "What? I thought I was supposed to be the one with concussion."
"I've never seen anything like it, Ray," Bodie admitted. "I don't know what it was – some kind of laser, maybe? All I know is it looked like a lightning strike but wasn't, it was focused and aimed, a weapon – powerful enough to knock a house down."
"It was an energy weapon." This came quietly but decisively from Sullivan.
Bodie fixed him with a long, hard glare. "A what?" He'd known the man was withholding information, expected it – it was his job, after all, to keep UNIT's secrets – but didn't like it any the better for that. Especially when it landed a building on his partner's head. The fact that the building had also landed on Sullivan's own head was neither here nor there.
"An energy weapon," Sullivan wearily repeated, scrubbing a hand through his thick curly hair to dislodge the worst of the brick fragments and dust that were caught in it. "The same weapon that killed Clive Morley, at a guess."
"You said Morley was shot," said Doyle, dabbing at his bloody forehead with a grimy hand.
"He was. He was shot with an energy weapon of some kind. It seems reasonable to assume it was the same thing we just experienced."
Bodie shook his head, angry and confused. Nothing that had happened since they arrived here had made any sense at all. "No, I know weapons, believe me, and I've never seen anything like that before," he argued.
Sullivan looked tired. "No," he said. "No, you wouldn't have."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Is it a new weapon?" Doyle asked, frowning. "Still in development, something UNIT was responsible for? Is that it?"
"And now it's fallen into the wrong hands?" Bodie added, suspecting his partner may be on to something there.
Sullivan shook his head and said no, but Bodie wasn't convinced. Neither was Doyle, apparently. "Stanton's had links with arms dealing, hasn't he?" he mused, turning to Bodie.
Sullivan looked interested. "Who's Stanton?"
"An associate of Clive Morley," said Bodie, watching his reaction closely through narrowed eyes. "Are we right? Has some experimental weapon been mislaid, maybe picked up by Stanton's mob? Come on, be straight – we're way past worrying about what's classified and what's not, here."
Sullivan shook his head again. "Believe it or not, gentlemen, I actually wish it were that simple," he sighed. "Although I suppose it's possible the arms trade link might help explain Morley's involvement. Somehow." The way he was frowning suggested he still wasn't sure how the pieces fitted together, though – although he did at least have more of those pieces to be going on with than Bodie and Doyle did, and remained frustratingly reluctant to share everything he knew with them. He glanced around anxiously. "Look, do you think we could make it back to the vehicles? I need to call this in to HQ, ask for backup. The Brigadier should be back by now."
The UNIT Land Rover and Bodie's car were both within sight of their position, and the idea of backup – even UNIT backup – was very attractive just now. Cowley'd be wondering where they were, as well, come to that.
"Ambulance for the pair of you wouldn't go amiss, either," Bodie muttered, eyeing the cuts and bruises both were sporting. While Doyle and Sullivan in unison insisted that they were fine, he tried to gauge the distance they'd have to cover…but then shook his head. "Open ground, not enough cover – and we don't know the range of that weapon. I'm not sure I'd want to risk it, not without knowing more."
"We can't just sit here all day, though, can we," Doyle countered. "If there's someone out there with this new gun, what's to stop them coming looking for us? They know we're here, don't they?"
They did – they'd definitely seen Bodie, if not the other two – and just because they hadn't come looking yet didn't mean they weren't going to.
"Wait, is that…? Oh, I say." Sullivan was now looking in the other direction entirely, an expression of dismay on his face.
"What?" Bodie turned to see what he was looking at. At first all he could see was more derelict farmland, but then…there it was: a body, half hidden by the overgrown weeds it had fallen among. The missing guard, presumably. Definitely dead, Bodie could tell that much even from this distance, but the doctor seemed to feel the need to check for himself, up close and personal. He unexpectedly broke from cover and scampered across the open yard toward the body, ignoring Bodie's shout of protest. At least he had the sense to keep low.
No lightning strikes ensued. Maybe whoever had the weapon hadn't seen him. Either that or he was out of range – which would mean they might be safe to make a run for the vehicles, after all. It was still an idiot move, breaking cover like that.
Exasperated, Bodie turned to Doyle, who shrugged. "He's a medical officer, isn't he," he mildly observed. "Not a field agent."
"Well, non-field agents should stay out of the field, then, shouldn't they," Bodie snapped.
Continue to Part 2
