Dominating his thoughts were not the picture of the crocodile’s head and shoulders, not the one that showed the uneven rows of teeth, but the two circles and the signs that he had not recognised.
The quiet built around him. Usually, even if Room 12 on the third floor, on the south side of Thames House, was empty except for him, he would hear the comings and goings in the corridor outside and doors slamming and voices, greetings and laughter – talk of “fucking traffic”, of babies shrieking all night, of a restaurant that had been a “total bloody rip-off”, and “absolutely off-side, referee a complete wanker”, and he heard nothing. Nothing until . . . the sound of footsteps with iron tips at the toes and heels.
The outer door opened. “You about, Jonas?”
“I am.”
His protector: the man who provided Jonas Merrick with what was known in the Russian mafia as the “roof”, the power in the land that kept him safe. “A bit of a shambles in the night.”
“Affecting me? I don’t think so or I would have been notified.”
“Not affecting you as long as we are not bidding on your behalf at auction.”
“All quiet on my front. Nothing that disturbs me except for that. Nothing . . . ‘nothing’ that I know of.”
“A bad time, Jonas.”
“With respect, a bad time for the last two years. A thumb over the dyke crack.”
“I suppose it’s what we might call a Churchill moment.”
“The Battle of Britain. Churchill asks, ‘What reserves do we have?’ And the fight in the skies is at a desperate stage, and they are coming in waves, and Keith Park answers, ‘There are none.’ Is that where we are?”
Jonas had learned in the last three years that the man he knew as AssDepDG had been baptised with the name of Huw Denys, knew that he was state educated, had worked in pretty much every section of the Service, would not rise higher and entertained a lack of correctness . . . his like would not be seen again. Wanted to have the sole of a boot on the throats of the returnees, gave not a damn – however harmless they now might be – for the one-time fighters languishing in Syrian, Iraqi or Kurdish gaols. Talked up Jonas’s corner in meetings with the Thames House hierarchy. Was an ally but would also, with ruthlessness, keep Jonas tethered to the treadmill.
“With brass knockers on it, you could say . . . Had to rout this team from out of the pub last night. No clean knickers and no clean socks, unless they had them here, no time to go home, and we’ve parcelled them off to meet a courier run. Fully involved in North-East, North-West, West Midlands, and South-West is covering from Bristol almost up to Thames Valley. The onus on our surveillance teams, Jonas, length and breadth of the country, is at breaking-point, unsustainable . . . The courier is sailing tonight from Zeebrugge and will dock at Hull. Believe it is a decisive weapon. Don’t know about a hand-over point, or a target. Big cock-up because North-East were tasked with it, but they made a case for the full works on a Leeds boy. We are shuffling round the board, Jonas – but not your problem.”
“Glad to hear it,” he said without warmth. Was regarded as a “miserable old sod” and did little to prove the title wrong.
“Just thought you should know – just thought you should know not to bid at auction, if you know what I mean.”
Conversation over, footsteps echoing away. Jonas buried himself in the almost private world of his card index archive and searched for new snippets of information on buoyant jihadi fighters gone, fate unknown as the war turned brutally against them, all of them potential returnees if they had survived, and the tantalising scraps offered up by the interrogators doing their business in the holding cages. Flitted between the identities of the fighters he rated as dangerous.
He knew that section of beach because he had been there with his mother and with his elder brother and his sister.
It ran west from the town of Deal. Where he sheltered, the sand had been replaced by an orange carpet of shingle. The boat had been pulled up, high enough to be clear of the surf. He shivered, could not control it. Down the coast was the ferry port of Dover. It would have been twelve years since he had last been on the beach here, and his mum would have taken a day off work, the sun had been shining, and he remembered that she had persuaded his half-brother to come, aged 22 then, and had sat against the low wall at the back of the shingle and had worked his way through a six-pack and had smoked half a packet of fags. And his half-sister had been there and had spent most of the afternoon whining about being bored, alternating the complaints with working on her fingernails. Cammy had stayed on the beach, had hardly spoken, had gazed out on the infinity of the water, and had dreamed of crossing it.
His mum had been burned twice with her failed relationships, had been looking for love after the first guy disappeared, and the second guy had given her what they called in those days “a bun in the oven”, and must have raided one of his bank accounts to leave a grand in notes in an envelope. Big crises had never come at convenient times in Cammy’s life . . . his GCSE exams had been due to start the next day when the police had called round. His half-sister was dead. She had been part of a TWOC gang – Taking Without Consent – a high-performance Impreza this time, and her chum, the driver, had lost control and the signs were that he’d done so because she’d had her hand inside his flies as he’d come into a hairpin. Had not greatly affected Cammy and his marks had been tolerable. Had done averagely well when the next round of exams had pitched up two years later and they were supposed to determine whether he was “blue collar and crumpled or white collar and starched”, and his mum had been in the Crown Court to see his half-brother go down for fourteen years: conspiracy to supply and a bit of choice enforcement. He didn’t really miss either of them, but his mum did . . . He’d hung around the village and the estate and the cathedral city for another three years and then had taken the flight that would have climbed away from this beach, this coast, and across the Channel behind him.
Through the haze he could see the group of people several hundred yards away, but the view of them was partly blocked by several more grounded fishing boats.
The weather conditions helped Cammy now. The mist behind him, the brief spell of sunshine had gone and low cloud had drifted in. He was regaining his strength, and could shrug away the sodden cold of his clothes . . . Took him back to the days when they had lain all night in the slight sand scrapes and the rain had come on and the only priority was to keep their weapons dry. Always good to attack when the weather was at its lousiest, when the sentries huddled behind sandbags, when the air strikes were postponed and the pilots would have been comfortable and dry in their Mess building. Made a habit of going forward when no sane beggar wanted to put his nose outside, and the first they’d have known that the assault was coming in would have been the mortars that Tomas launched, three in the air and then shifting, and Pieter shooting with extraordinary accuracy with the sniper rifle, and Stan ducking and weaving and running and putting down suppressive fire. Cammy in with them and the rainwater streaming off his face and hard to keep it out of his eyes and carrying the big machine-gun, Ulrike following him, swathed in belt ammunition, and getting forward far enough to be able to blitz the bastards when they broke and ran; what the manuals called “enfilade fire”. Go in fast, and when least expected, and never hesitate until the stop line was reached, and they’d gather and laugh and be panting and swapping tales of how it had been. The adrenaline going into overdrive . . . Times when they had made progress although the weather had been fair, and then it was because their emir, Ruhan, had begged, borrowed, demanded, that he be given a “martyr”; better still if he were allocated a martyr who could drive an armour-plated vehicle. Sometimes the kid would have his own press button to send him to Paradise, but most times the martyr had a minder who stayed back, having checked the electronics, said some kind words, and would send the signal when the kid might have panicked and not done the business. They did not talk about the martyrs, kept away from the kids who had the glazed look of
the walking dead, and who muttered their invocations of words from the Book. He and his brothers were survivors, believed themselves to be indestructible.
Had allowed himself a few minutes of dream time, which was good because it refuelled his anger.
He wriggled ahead, kept his head and shoulders down, tried to keep his backside low. The orange pebbles crunched as he crossed them and he must have left a trail behind him, and there was a spit of rain in the air. He could see down the beach and towards the castle and the town of Deal but he could no longer make out the blue lights of police or Border people or ambulances. He was under a low wall. Could not see over it and used it as cover, and waited, and listened, and waited . . .
He felt warm breath close to his face, then a tongue slurped across his cheeks. The breath was foul and the tongue was noisy as it cleaned his face of sand. He thought it a spaniel, or a spaniel cross. It seemed satisfied with what it had found, and its breath came faster, and it had cleaned both cheeks and now started on his throat. Cammy had waited and listened and had heard no vehicle approaching. He pushed himself up and his knees took his weight.
A woman sat on a bench. She held an expander lead. She reeled the dog in and gave it a treat from her pocket. She studied him, and he gazed back at her. He thought her middle or late 70s, well wrapped against the chill of the early morning, wearing a long coat that showed only her ankles and the collar was turned up. A fleece hat was tugged down over her head, protecting her ears. He thought that while she studied him she would be considering what to do, and the dog wagged a docked tail. She could pull a mobile out of her pocket and do a treble hit on the 9 button, or she could stand and wave her arms and shout and point to him, or she could run as fast as her legs would carry her, and head back towards the police.
Somewhere in the background of Cammy’s life, but curtained off, there must have been a grandmother, his mum’s mother, but the rift had come when his mum had gotten pregnant with him: never mentioned, never heard from not even on birthdays or at Christmas. He thought of why he had returned to his homeland, and the target he had there, and of the efforts of many to organise the putting of the weapon in his hands, and of those committed to getting him to within sight of his goal. Thought of what the uniformed men and women in that complex of buildings had done to him and his brothers. Would an old woman with a spaniel be permitted to stand in front of him, block him, undermine the whole effort? Would he hit her? Would he disable her, silence her? Thought of it . . . She stood.
Not much to her. A frail little thing, a sparrow of a woman. A slap from him would have felled her.
She took off her coat, and told him what he should do. He crouched on the shingle, beneath the wall, and he squirmed clear of his socks and shoes, and his trousers, then his coat, his anorak and his shirt and T-shirt, down to his underpants. He gathered them up, except for the footwear, and the wind chilled him and rain flecked his skin. He passed her the pile of clothes, pushed his feet into his wet shoes and put on her coat; it was tight, and barely met at the waist and chest, and the wind lifted the hem. She said what she would do with the clothes, and where he should go in the town and which charity shop had the best to offer. She had the bundle under her arm, and the dog at her feet and he fancied she would hurry now that she was without her coat.
“You’ve come from the sea – good luck to you. Don’t hand yourself in. They’ll send you back. You’ll not find hostility here, not among Deal folk. Keep walking, don’t stop, keep going – and God go with you.”
She was, it was claimed, the best informed person in Thames House. She was Lily, and had been, it was said, a useful netball player until a fractured fibula had cut short that sporting career. She was blessed with sufficient common sense on which to float a battleship . . . All the untidy strands came across her desk in the big basement area adjacent to the Archive, and all the little scraps of information, so easily ignored, that might otherwise have had no home. She was adept in finding the right place for apparently orphan information: police, customs, military, and the observations of the general public. The equation between yet another migrant landing on the Kent coast, routine now for the local force and the Border people, and the strange submission from those who had survived an horrendous night crossing. Something of a miracle this one; had spoken of a man who had ushered them across and then had gone overboard and swum away – and then they had clammed . . . Confusing, and probably criminal, and she had in her mind a berth for it in Jonas Merrick, up on the third floor, south facing, in Room 12. The information had been passed on by Kent police from their Dover station and it was stressed that the source had only just returned from the call-out, and their information was sketchy and not yet filtered. She had the names of two officers. Jonas Merrick did fighters coming back from the war. She could not for the life of her comprehend why any “ordinary, decent criminal” would hazard liberty and life by going into the water in a dinghy and crossing 28 miles of congested Channel, and in a storm reported to be of “biblical intensity”. Lily could not think of anywhere else to send it, so the report – vague, inconclusive – went to 3/S/12. No acknowledgement, never was. No gratitude, not expected, but she reckoned that if anyone could find a home for what she had sent upstairs, it was him.
She put out the rubbish, clattering the bin out to the front of her house.
Sadie saw the Hunters queuing up for Trace to lock the front door and drive them down the hill. They waved, she waved back. She could not hear them but imagined what they might say. “Poor woman, what a burden she carries.” “A really decent human being, and look what’s been served up to her.’ And might be something patronising: “Holds herself with such dignity, such courage in adversity.” And a bit that reeked of complacency. “We do everything we can, can’t do more, everything that we ought to do, nothing to blame ourselves for.” She was dog-tired. Up in the small hours for a first shift of cleaning, then a bit of the day, and then out again as the evening started and more cleaning, and she was relied upon and her praises were sung by those who employed her. Of course, it was acknowledged that she carried a bloody heavy cross. Sympathy was given her, bucket loads of it. She had one son in High Security, had a daughter in the graveyard at the back of the house, and another son who had disappeared, left no trace, and who was a “person of interest” to the counter-terror people. Lucky to have any jobs at all . . . The Hunters’ car drove off. She went to her door, stepped inside. She had the house because Cameron’s father, as a peace offering, had left her a brown envelope which was stuffed with fivers, and that had been good enough as a deposit, but it was a lousy house and marked down in price because of the new-build subsidence crack all down the back of it. The mortgage would have been a struggle but her elder boy had known people who could shift money, launder and rinse it, and would have done a good deal and had something spare, and paid off a good chunk of what she owed. She’d make some toast, and probably peel an apple.
And would have the same the next day which was her usual feast on her birthday. She’d have a card from the gaol. Always a pretty one, always the only one.
She ate the toast, could not be bothered to peel an apple. Made a cup of tea with yesterday’s teabag. If she sat down and wept then the likelihood was that she’d go into the trees at the back and sling a rope over a branch and find something to stand on and . . . She often took the wastebins’ newspapers, and the colour supplements, and brought them home: would never sit down and let the tears come. She kept a shrine to Cameron, the room he had taken over when his half-sister had been killed, mangled and unrecognisable in the crash. Drank the tea and climbed the stairs.
The room was never opened. Was as the counter-terror police had left it.
They had come in, mob-handed. Cold and polite, but with an air of contempt for her, like she was responsible. Behaved correctly until they had reached Cameron’s room. Had torn it apart . . . She had sat on the stairs and the front door had been open and she had seen the net curtains flicking across the street
, and had noted that the dog-walkers and the buggy-pushers averted their eyes and kept on the move, but would have seen – and would have heard.
Shelves down, cupboards and drawers dismantled, carpet ripped up off its tacks and the floorboards screaming as they were lifted, bed stripped and the mattress slashed open. Some broken glass, might have been the picture frames, and china fragments because they had cracked open a piggy bank. Sadie had not uttered a word that day, did not cry now. Probably they would have been in better humour if they had found some black flag propaganda leaflets or posters, or a heap of books on revolutionary warfare. Nothing there to soften the blow of a failed search, had even slit open the little beggar’s bear which had been with him for nearly 20 years and had been hidden away at the back of a wardrobe shelf, had spilled out its guts. They had left shamefaced. A heavy footfall coming down the stairs and she’d not shifted her backside, not an inch, had made them step around her. They had driven away, she had gone up and had looked into his room. Had gazed at the chaos, had been knifed by the humiliation. Damaged furniture, scattered clothes, dumped pictures of a fresh-faced chorister. Had closed the door. Would have locked it if there had been a key. Had closed it and had never opened it again. A sort of sealed shrine. The way it would stay and the anger at what Cameron had inflicted on her would never leave, her promise.
She went into her bedroom. Had a photograph there of her elder son who always wrote cheerfully from his cell block, claimed he was doing well. Had another photograph – of her daughter, and went once a week to talk to her. Had no picture of Cameron.
She lay on the bed, closed her eyes, but did not sleep.
“It’s out of a clear blue sky, figuratively that is . . .”
Tristram and Izzy stood at the entrance to Jonas Merrick’s work area. Listened. Both would have tried to disguise their inability to fathom the logic of his remark.
The Crocodile Hunter Page 12
