The Crocodile Hunter by Gerald Seymour (english novels to improve english txt) 📗

back, stretched, felt joints creak. They’d say his name, wouldn’t they? Say it at the Station where they flew the drones from, and say it back in Syria where people who had known him in the fighting days would learn it from their texts, and there would have been guys who had reached as far as Afghanistan or were in the Benghazi enclave of Libya, they would all hear his name and rejoice in him. Would know his name in the Choir School and in the big comprehensive he had ended up in, and would speak his name and see his picture all the way down the cul-de-sac and to his mum’s house, and she’d hear his name. It was a promise . . . the sun was warming the back of his head and the side of his face.

The old man ambled nearer, led by the dog.

It was how it would be, his mum would hear his name.

The bus was on time.

She had a window seat and a view of the park. It was cold enough outside and warm enough with the bus heaters on for the windows to have misted, but she’d used her sleeve to wipe the glass and had a view of the park and the distant play area.

Sadie saw her son. Saw the man who had stopped and spoken to her, who had brought her, and saw what she thought was the dog from the next road up to hers. Saw her son, certain of it, sitting on a bench and arching his back like he was trying to get stiffness out of it, and he’d have walked, or run, from Sturry village. It was all clear to Sadie, clear as the first fierce peep of the sun that came up over the river and topped the trees and lit the park. Everyone around here loved the park because it was claimed that developers would have built over it if ordinary people had not protested. No fool, Sadie, she understood. She could see a uniformed man and woman standing beside a car, the sun catching the metal of their weapons. Understood that the dog was the trick the man used to get close to her son, to Cameron.

She reached up, rang the bell. Twice. Not a designated bus-stop, but maybe the driver was in a good humour. The bus braked. A door opened. What to say? Could not say, “My boy’s down there and the security police are up close to him, and might call up the firearms and they might shoot him dead, my son.” She hopped down from the bus. As she started to track back along the hedge bordering the stream, she called back.

“Thanks, pet, just forgotten something.”

She would stand and watch, see how it played out on this day, her unsung anniversary. And thought of him as a stranger. Would not interfere, would be late for work, would watch.

Jonas sidled to the bench.

He dripped an image of a harmless old fool, out early because he could not sleep, had brought the dog with him, probably his best friend. Lonely and harmless, searching out company. Would talk the hind leg off a donkey, that sort of man – tedious but without malice, no threat.

Quietly, little soft words, Jonas urged the dog forward: a cheery enough little soul. The lead went taut: he smiled at the young man and pleaded that the dog had a mind of its own. And came closer.

“Lovely morning.”

The sort of anodyne greeting, common courtesy, that he might have employed in a caravan park.

“She’s a right rascal, no harm to her, love you to bits.”

Jonas thought he barely registered with Cameron Jilkes. Had death in his eyes and his chin trembled, and his eyes were bloodshot. His tie hung sideways but the collar button on the shirt was fastened. Filthy shoes and mud splattered up to his thighs. Jonas reckoned it a good a time to make his approach.

“Rough old night? Been on the bottle, have we? Wish I still could, but the bladder prevents it. Moving through, are you?” Innocent and pseudo-friendly and playing the game of the bus-stop bore, doing it well, and the dog was now against Cameron Jilkes’ knee, and nuzzled against him.

“Little terror, she certainly is.” Jonas gazed down at the dog, and let his eyes move across Cameron. There was, of course, another way. He could have backed off and waved Dominic and Babs forward and they’d have come at a fast jog and would have been bellowing to their target to freeze and submit, would have demanded he went down on his face, his hands away from his body, and the target might be intimidated and go to surrender-mode . . . Or might leap up, kick the dog clear and lunge a swinging arm at Jonas if he were idiotic enough to intervene. And he’d be down and into the stream and across it and then lost in the next street or the one going off to the right, then a left turn . . . he’d know them all. It was his home city. Cameron Jilkes free and running, and the forces required for a manhunt and a lockdown were not yet in place . . . He took his time.

“Don’t mind her, do you? Course you don’t. Don’t mind me, do you? Just stopping for a moment, taking the weight off the knees.” Jonas sat on the bench, not too close, not yet.

Jonas thought the young man beside him was outside the limits of his experience . . . quite dissimilar to Winston Gunn. That boy would have been a reluctant volunteer, had had his brain rinsed, washed, tumble-dried, was frightened and missed his mother, and would not have known how to back out. In the months ahead would he thank his God that Jonas Merrick, peeved at compulsory retirement and a token drink in the atrium of Thames House – at the end of a lifetime of hard graft – had sat beside him. Unplanned, unexpected, and Jonas had needed to