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

captured, had gone through harsh interrogation, had coughed up Saddam’s hiding place in the dirt. If the tyre had not emptied Ruhan would likely have been trapped in the net himself: he liked to tell that story. He had not cheated again.

Once he had owned a powerful and impressive face, a jutting chin and strong bones and a trimmed beard and deep eyes. Always he carried the webbing slots that could take eight, even ten, loaded magazines for his rifle. The weapon and the ammunition had not helped him and his face was distorted because of what had been shoved into his mouth . . . His camouflage trousers were at his ankles and his grey underpants were at his knees and his groin was a mess of dried blood and already insects were feasting.

Cammy said, a hoarse whisper and passed on ahead by Mikki and behind by Ulrike, “But he was not us.  We go forward, we stay strong. We are together. We have each other.”

They were a typical family living in the estate high on the hill above the village of Sturry, looking out over the Kent countryside, with a landmark view of the tower of Canterbury Cathedral. It was that time in the morning when they all headed for work or college. Dad was an accountant’s gofer, did the heavy lifting that the partners avoided. Mum did the cash till at a pet food outlet on the way into the city and had once been judged Employee of the Month. Bradley was their elder child and had a job on a building site while he waited to hear whether the Royal Navy would accept him and train him in weapons electronics, and their youngest was Karen, who was at sixth form college and wanted to be a dental nurse. They were out all day, came home knackered, but tried to manage a family event at the weekend. They were the Hunters, and financially ahead of the Just About Managing households in the brick semi-detached homes below them, going down the hill. Nothing to be complacent about but coping well with the difficult times.

Trace would drive and drop Bradley at the builder’s yard where he learned about scaffolding then Karen at college, and last would be Dave, letting him off at the bus-stop on the main drag into the city, and then she would go to the pet food store’s parking lot. Always late, always a bit frantic – and Dave delaying them today because he couldn’t find his phone, and . . . then he was in the car, and Trace pulled out of the carport, but had to brake sharply because the neighbour over the road pulling her shopping basket behind her, didn’t see them. Trace braked. They all stared out. Sadie might have been a mile away, or might have been half asleep, or might have been . . . What Trace always said, in her youth Sadie must have been a great looking girl and had the relic of a lovely face but, God, time had not treated her well. What Dave always said, they should have made a bigger effort with Sadie because, years before, she had been the best and most popular and reliable childminder or babysitter they’d ever had.

Dave had his window down. “Morning, Sadie, don’t seem to have seen much of you. You doing all right?”

Trace leaned across him. “Bit hectic at the moment, Sadie, but when we straighten up you must come round for a coffee . . . Late, sorry – see you soon, Sadie.”

They were rewarded with a distant smile that gave little away of her thoughts, and a bit of a shrug. Then they were accelerating and their neighbour was trudging the last steps to her front door, negotiating the long grass. They always called her Sadie. Did not know whether she was Mrs Jilkes or Miss Jilkes, did not know much more than her name, Sadie, and that her life was tough, tougher by a long mile than anything the Hunters had experienced. She always looked as if she had been put through a mangle, the colour gone from her face, and the flesh squeezed off her body, and a vacant stare in her eyes.

“We should make a bigger effort,” Karen said.

“One son banged up, her daughter gone on an overdose,” Bradley said. “I don’t know what we used to talk about . . . As for Cameron, well, he’s . . .”

“We’ll try and be a bit more sociable – not a bed of roses, her life. That kid, what he’s done to her . . .” Dave said.

The talk moved on and the view of Sadie Jilkes lugging her shopping bag up the road was pushed back, out of sight and out of mind. Plenty of everything else to talk about. Hadn’t been at the time, not when her youngest – Cameron – had brought the full apparatus of the Security Service and the Counter Terrorism Command crammed into their little road.

“. . . as for that kid, little Cameron – excuse my language – bloody good riddance. What he did to his Ma, it was shameful.”

Thames House, on the north side of the Thames, had been built 90 years ago, constructed of clean Portland stone and granite. Now, the lower windows have reinforced glass, proof against explosives and high-velocity gunfire, and are shuttered; higher windows have blinds through which dull light filters, but the faces of those inside are never visible. It is a building protected by Acts of Parliament and is heavily guarded. It is the workplace of those charged with being in the front line of the defence of the realm. Good days have been seen there and bad ones . . . There have been the numbing reactions when the “enemy” has won and bombers have attacked underground trains, concerts, buses, restaurants and bistros and the mayhem has been brutal and the inquests open and savage; and there have also been successes, of which few are trumpeted, when catastrophe has been averted. It is said among the psychologists who patrol the corridors and give