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

– then would drop him on the A257, around Shatterling or Durlock, and he’d get a bus from there into Canterbury. The van driver must have felt good that day – like a bond had come up, or a promise was going to be honoured – and had wriggled in his seat and brought a five pound note out of his hip pocket and had palmed it to Cammy – “Think nothing of it, mate, can lose that on expenses and not even be trying”. He had come from a world where death came casually and frequently, where suspicion was rampant, where strangers were questioned, interrogated . . . He had been dropped off at a bus shelter. A bus had come along in half an hour and his stomach groaned again in hunger, but he had eaten that morning in the charity shop, and going without food or drink, for a day and a night, was not remarkable.

The bus was almost empty; he did not have to talk. He had used most of the £5 on his fare. The cathedral tower was in the distance as they skirted the housing estates on the edge of the city.

He would see his mum, then would move on. He would be in the city in a few hours, had a schedule worked out in his mind, then would move on. He stepped off the bus and kept his head down. It was his own ground, his own territory.

Jonas fidgeted, rapped a pencil on his work surface, was annoyed with himself for displaying his stress.

Tristram said, “They’re just two coppers – ordinary, conscientious plods – and this is their valued judgement.”

Izzy said, “They were there within a few minutes, no one else had done much of a debrief before they pitched up. The boat people are Iranian and Christian, two adult males, two females and two children – don’t have the family alignment yet. They were in Bordeaux, in a café, and a guy who was sheltering there and had no money was going to be slung out by the manager. The family felt some sympathy and it was a deal of convenience. The guy ‘borrows’ a vehicle, drives them to Dunkirk. They had a smuggler contact there.”

“Had a price agreed, complete rip-off. There was a powerful wind over there last evening. Only an idiot would take to the water.”

“The guy takes over negotiation, will pay one tenth of the price. Does some ‘persuading’ on the goons, a weapon at the top goon’s throat, and they take the dinghy, an inflatable, and launch.”

As he listened, Jonas Merrick played games in his mind: worked up a profile of a man who would go to sea in those conditions, would ally himself to a helpless gaggle of unfortunates who could offer him nothing other than a way of crossing the Channel in secrecy.

Tristram said, “The Iranians called him an angel. He went into the water – mid-channel – when a kid was washed overboard. He brought the kid back . . . If this had happened off the coast here on a Bank Holiday Monday then people would be talking about medals. They’re sick, all heaving their guts up.”

Izzy said, “Vomiting everywhere, and baling for their lives, and terrified, and they’re hit by the bow wave of a monster container ship and they’re damn near dodging other craft. He starts to sing.”

A frown settled on Jonas’s forehead. Slight, but pursued by a twitch of his eyebrows – as if greater concentration was being brought to bear on what they said. He stared into the middle distance and his eyes took in the crocodile’s head and the smooth waters of a lagoon. He was hearing little that was new and had not figured in the report directed to him by Lily down in the bowels of the building; he needed flesh on bones, meat on them.

“They all join in. Hymns. In English.”

Tristram said, “So, the plods wanted to know who he was – what he called himself and everything they knew about him.”

Izzy said, “Who is this guy belting out Ancient and Modern into the elements? They seemed to realise they’d spilled too much, had nothing more out of them.”

“Like a tap turned off. Like they protected him. Couldn’t get another syllable out of them . . . The ‘angel’ stayed anonymous.”

He told them to go down there. Immediately. Felt a cold on his neck and did not know whether he would be lucky, every time lucky. Snapped at them to go, go fast.

Chapter 6

He spoke to himself, and to the crocodile pinned to the wall. Quietly but not in as measured a tone as he would have wished.

“Not a quitter. Not if he went through that storm.”

He glanced down occasionally but not from necessity. He knew the names on the list, and was familiar with their backgrounds and motivations. All of them represented a high degree of risk.

“If he were a quitter he would have taken a look at that storm, turned over in his sleeping-bag and closed his eyes. Waited for another day, or night.”

There were three cards that he kept flicking back to, where his eyes would linger momentarily then go back to the beast with the scaled skin and the awkward and uneven teeth.

“He’s not coming back because he’s missing home, because they don’t serve cod and chips in any café along the Euphrates. He’s coming back to hit and to hurt.”

Jonas usually liked it least when the work space beyond his partition walls buzzed with voices and the squealing of chairs being shunted around, and the odd claps of laughter or peals of humour, and liked it even less when voices were raised in dispute: then, he would permit a slow snarl to drag across his face and he would believe they were beneath his attention . . . Not that morning, quiet bounced off his walls.

“He comes back to hit and to hurt. It dominates him, consumes him. No other explanation. Forget anything about him softening, wanting to put it all