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

counsel, welcome or not, that stress levels inside the fortress are as acute as those found in any military front line where direct combat is joined. The defenders have their own private army offering a separate layer of security around Thames House . . .

Kev and Leroy had been newcomers to the police protection detail assigned to the headquarters building of the Security Service on a particular wintry evening three years before. Easy for them to remember it. Should have been an underwhelming leaver’s drink in the atrium with one glass of cheap Spanish or Italian bubbles, maximum two, and a parting gift handed over, and a speech of gracious thanks that would have been hustled through. Except that the leaver had not shown, and the press-ganged guests had gone on their way and the atrium had emptied; was silent, deserted, when the guy himself had turned up, a little tongue-tied by way of explanations, and had dumped a job on them. A miserable little wretch was sitting in a café around the corner, and they were to get there soonest and take him into custody. They had watched him hawk-like and their index fingers had never been further than a centimetre off the triggers of their H&Ks. The guy had left the building and the would-be jihadi boy had covered his face with his handcuffed arms, might have wept, crumpled and defeated, and no explanation was given to Kev and Leroy, except that it was “all being sorted”. The guy had left through the internal gates, had fed in his access ID, and the red light had flashed and a buzzer had warbled – the sign that the card had been electronically destroyed – and he’d gone into the night. A duty officer had shown up, flustered, and that was hardly going to be forgotten. And – the guy’s ID had been cancelled, he had no access to the building, but he was back a few hours later, just before their shift ended, and . . . never an explanation. They had learned, Kev and Leroy, that they could set their watches by the time this guy came into work. Not long now, about fourteen minutes, rain or shine, never varied.

An unremarkable guy, hardly a bag of laughs. About once a week they had a smile off him. Had never heard his name, and had never seen anyone greet him – with the one exception of that first morning after the ID cancellation, then Deidre on Reception had picked up a phone as soon as he was through the outer door and buzzed upstairs, and one of the officer toffs from an upper floor had come scrambling out of a lift to greet him, and had done a big charm bit – and the guy had seemed barely grateful. Not easily forgotten but they still knew nothing of him, nor what section he worked in. Kev had been a corporal in the Parachute Regiment, and Leroy had risen to sergeant in a fusilier battalion, and both had done Afghanistan tours and each reckoned himself a good judge of a man: neither could make head nor tail of this fellow . . .

He was always in early, beat the main rush: if he was late then that would have been the fault of the signals or the points on the track. And another thing that distinguished him was the attachment on his right wrist and the chain to his briefcase that played bloody havoc with the metal detector arch. Always good to see that rather familiar face, though neither had any idea of what he did inside the building.

That day, the points were good and the signals worked, and the train was on time. Jonas Merrick was swept out of the carriage, and planted on the platform and needed to walk briskly or he would have been knocked flat in the crush to get clear of Waterloo. No one gave him a glance. He hurried, keeping a tight hold on the fraying handle of his briefcase, and the chain hung sleek inside his shirtsleeve.

The same route was taken every working day. If the pavements had not been made of weathered concrete, and the roads he crossed not of hammered down tarmacadam, there would have been a pattern of his footprints . . . down the steps of the main entrance to the station, past the place where the train robber once ran a flower stall, down Lambeth Palace Road, head down and with purpose, too concerned with his thoughts to glance at the A&E structures of St Thomas’ hospital. He did not concern himself with health matters, seemed to be lasting well, and Vera had no problems that she’d bothered to broach with him. By the time he was in sight of Lambeth Palace he could smell the river, unique and pungent, then over Lambeth Bridge.

The wind cut across him. There was rain in the air and it stung his cheeks. With his free hand he held his trilby, had no wish to see it cartwheel from his head and be swallowed by the river or fall onto a barge’s deck. He was thinking of his day and was oblivious to the presence of those around him who also headed for Thames House: Jonas knew very few of them. He kept to himself. The building was ahead of him; his desk was on the third floor, next to a masked window.

If it had not been for the events of that night, he would have been consigned to retirement and this trek from the station would have been part of his past. Not that Jonas would have attended any of those Christmas lunches for retired staff where the Director General gave a résumé of the problems faced by the Service in the previous year. Nothing classified, of course.

His memory was powerful with clear recall of that night. He had gone home. Had sat on the train, later than usual. Had walked up his street, past the Derbyshires’ house from which a TV