“What do you want me to say? He had a superb natural voice . . . I heard what happened, the Syria business. I’d like to think that he was not responsible for any of the really beastly things that were done there. That’s all I can tell you, but I have a name and a number for the choirmaster who took Cameron on, retired now . . . A difficult boy, but in that brief window while his voice was perfect he soared to great heights . . . Did he die out there? Don’t misunderstand me, I hope he did. A free spirit. Not one to languish in a cell, behind barred windows.”
At the door, they were again asked, “Forgive me, did I ask you? Did you tell me your names?”
The phone rang and the child was crying.
The cot was in front of her, the phone was out in the hall, and the ironing board was between the two, and a pile of washing filled the plastic basket.
It was the time that Gavin had said he’d call to let her know whether the conference would go on through the evening and whether he’d stay overnight.
Vicky did not particularly enjoy the motherhood experience, had not taken to the housewife role chores, did not particularly relish the marriage bit either and him working all the hours God gave him for their “future security”. No time left for fun, for excitement, for challenge . . . She picked up the phone.
“Hello, love, just thought I’d check in with you. We’re between meetings, so I had the chance to ring, and we don’t know yet how it will be later. I think it will be an overnight job but . . . Love, what’s wrong?”
What was wrong was that the baby was filling its nappy, and was hungry, and was yelling.
“What I’m saying, we may stay and may not. The talk after lunch was excellent, the new model, electric, really interesting. Sorry, is it not convenient?”
Hardly convenient . . . Put the phone down, skirted the ironing board, caught her ankle in the flex, spilled water out of the iron, swore, picked up the little one . . . God, the stink . . . and shoved the dummy in its mouth, which would, according to her mother-in-law, distort the baby’s face.
She retrieved the phone. Her husband was saying, “. . . so that’s where we are about this evening but most likely we’ll do the overnight, unless . . . Well, I’ve told you that. Anyway, the new electric model is very exciting, it’s incredible. Is it not convenient?”
“Not really, no. Have a nice evening, and don’t drink too much. See you tomorrow . . .” She rang off.
The phone was on the hall table beside the wedding picture. On the rebound, and expensive, and she had thought of him all through the first honeymoon night. She took the baby into the kitchen to heat its food. In the kitchen was a framed photograph of the baby in her arms paid for by her mother-in-law. After the rebound wedding the rebound baby had arrived.
He had been a wonderful shag and he was exciting and different but he had gone and had never said anything approaching a farewell . . . This was her life now, and she fed the baby and had some gurgles in exchange and some wind and some smiles, and then she’d get back to tackling the ironing: the harder she worked the better she was at suppressing the memories.
“Hello, Cameron . . . Welcome home.”
He was sitting in the middle row: across the aisle were the places that would soon be taken by the choristers. Each of the cushions carried the name of an archbishop and the date he had been elevated to the see of Canterbury. He could have sat on John, 1486–1500 or Simon, 1366–1368, but had chosen William who had been in office from 1375 to 1381. He did not move, did not turn.
“All those years, but faces don’t change. Thought it was you.”
He had heard the man sit behind him and imagined it was a tourist, a visitor. The voice had startled him and he might have made a poor fist of hiding his reaction.
“Was it that bad there? As bad as we read about?”
The gentle voice was familiar, but he could not put a face to it.
“But all over now? Pretty hellish if you were on the receiving end, yes?”
The voice was little more than a whisper and Cammy had to strain to hear each word and inflexion in the voice. There was no pretence of sympathy in the words. Cammy could have said what he imagined he would say if he were interrogated – not that he would be – about the propaganda being fed into the minds of the wonderful British public and that the black flag guys – with a few exceptions – were nowhere close to matching the atrocities dished out daily by the Syrian régime or its coterie of allies. He thought the voice cold.
“We had the police and the spooks crawling all over us when it was first revealed you’d gone. Dismembering your life history. Caused quite a stir.”
Should have considered this, but had not. He had made the journey, had been sent to the recruitment camp where they were kept under close guard while the vetting was done, then to the front line. The group had formed, his brothers, and the war had started to turn and what might have happened here had seemed distant. What sort of men and women would they have been, those who came to pick at the entrails of his life, and his mother’s, and who had traipsed around the cathedral and the college, trying to join dots? Boring little people. No respect for them. They would not understand a free spirit, and the excitement of the hammer against the shoulder of the big machine-gun, and the adrenaline pump of the charge across open ground – and the brotherhood, and how strong they had been, all of them together.
“Do not imagine that I make judgements. I see no point in joining the condemning rabble, but your side did seem to take a quite unpleasant approach to conquest. I thought the burning alive of that Jordanian pilot was just horrible. But I am not about to morph into the role of inquisitor, accuser. I just live out my years here and recall good times and some rather lovely young voices.”
Knew of it but had not been there. Cammy had been on the front line, trying to hold positions in the effort to take control of Kobane. The bombing had been incessant but the tide had turned. Accepted no responsibility. He wondered if he should turn his head, peer into the face of his accuser, answer him. Wondered if he should stand up and leave, head left towards the presbytery and the Trinity Chapel and find somewhere else to sit and avoid scrutiny. Or turn right and go out past the quire screens and back into the nave . . . But he had come here to relive the past and to go would be to turn his back on his youth and on the choir – a time when he had soared, been proud. He stayed where he was, did not turn.
“I’m not looking for the sanctity of the other crowd’s confessional though I am quite practised in discretion. There won’t be a price on your head, not here in leafy Kent, but they’ll want to talk to you. What I heard, the sort of gossip we get in this place, is that you were regarded as a serious fighting machine. Some of the Scandinavian countries, so I read, have adopted a policy of greeting their jihadis and putting them on de-radicalisation programmes. Like nothing ever happened, like it was all a mistake and the sort of jape that youngsters get up to. Not the attitude taken here, Cameron. Is it my duty to go up the Old Dover Road to the police station and report our meeting? Or is that not necessary?”
He stared straight ahead. Spoke from the side of his mouth. The man’s head was bent forward the better to hear him and he smelled fresh toothpaste, imagined it a necessary part of the modern cleric’s presentation. He said he had made errors and deeply regretted the shame and the pain he had inflicted on those good enough to love him . . . That he planned to go to his home that evening, after the beauty of the evensong service, spend time with his mother, make his peace with her, then go to the police station in the morning . . . Lied fluently.
“Seems satisfactory. I think I can live with that.”
And would ask for his mother’s forgiveness.
“I hope you’ve left the hate behind . . . Please, Cameron, give my best regards to her, a fine and decent lady . . . What time will you be at the police station?”
He named the hour, and hung his head, a gesture of his sincerity.
“That is sensible and intelligent. I wish you well.”
/>
Cammy heard the priest leave his seat. He did not have to turn because he walked to the front, moving slowly, with the aid of a stick, along the length of the pews where visitors sat for evensong. He thought he had lied with conviction. As he had lied to his mother “Just popping out, Mum” and had not come back. As he had lied to the interrogators who were paranoid about informers and had questioned him at the jihadi recruitment camp, told them of his devotion to their cause . . . Cammy had no doubt that the priest would honour their agreement and would not go to the police station before noon. By then he would be far away, heading for his target, working into position for his last attack.
“It is about priorities, Jonas.”
He did not reply. Had requested a meeting with the AssDepDG, had heard the clatter of his heavy shoes in the corridor and the internal echo as the outer door opened into the work area, empty still.
“I had priority ‘problems’ before, a couple of hours back. Now I have priority ‘difficulties’, and each hour it is harder. We have diminishing resources, as you know, and I have put our maximum effort into the places where we have the maximum danger.”
Jonas shrugged.
“You have identified the returnee that you believe crossed the Channel this morning?”
Jonas pointed at the picture that carried, in his own handwriting, the initials of Cameron Jilkes.
“And he comes from Canterbury, and may return there, but you do not consider him to be the type that will renounce his immediate past? Want to ‘start again’, accept that the interlude is over? You don’t predict that?”
Jonas shook his head. He was reading his screen, absorbing the young people’s report of their interview with the retired school teacher. They were now on their way to meet with a choirmaster, retired. He had the intelligence report from the Gulf, and had a call in to a Special Forces veteran, a decorated sergeant. Jonas prided himself on being honest. He did not believe that he should milk short-term opportunity, nor ever gild a threat to get it higher up a ladder of concern. Priorities demanded truths.
“I cannot instruct resources to send a full surveillance team to Canterbury, Jonas. Simply, I do not have those numbers. Your colleagues were sent to Hull to meet a courier returning from the Continent. The courier, and his wife, are carrying – to our best knowledge – an RPG-7 launcher and a number of the bloody things it propels. Capable of penetrating buildings. Effective at well over a quarter of a mile. That is why we have scrambled from here. Except . . .”
Jonas waited to be told. He raised an eyebrow, but his own pitch was all that concerned him.
“It is – and I am sure you know this as well as I do – a devastating weapon. It is being shipped here from the Balkans. From a family on hard times. Most of those unfortunates who endured their civil war would have followed the old Irish advice ‘kept a pike in the thatch’. A pike, or a rifle, or an anti-tank missile launcher. Kept it in the event of hostilities flaring again, or kept it for when the family finances faced a rainy day, and they could flog it off. It came from near Mostar. The Croats tracked it, then the Slovenians and then the Austrians. We were very happy with the degree of cooperation extended. The couriers are a couple from the East Midlands, pensioners, looking for a bonanza payday. Pushed into a pick-up at a fuel station outside Cologne, so we were reliant on our esteemed German colleagues . . . God and do those beggars not delight in extolling their virtues . . .”
Jonas felt old, old and weary. He blinked but did not turn to face the AssDepDG. Would have been, for his superior, therapeutic to have a chance of bouncing his frustrations – and fears – onto another’s shoulders.
“They lost the vehicle on its way to Zeebrugge. They lost it, Jonas. Fucking lost it. The Germans lost it. We think they showed out and then the old boy at the wheel did some basic procedures and dumped them. It would be nice to report that the Germans then put out a Europe-wide alert, but they sat on their hands. I anticipate that we’ll get a string of mealy-mouthed excuses, not their fucking fault. So, I have kept the team from here as a flying column. When, or if, we hear of this weapon on the move, I can divert them. But, what if they are able to change vehicles and arrive at another ferry with a different set of wheels? What if they are well enough organised to have a second set of travel documents? What if . . .? That is where I am, Jonas.”
He stared at the two faces on his wall: the one of Cameron Jilkes, and the one that showed an unnamed beast, no doubt sunning itself at the time the picture was taken, digesting a previous day’s feed, but almost certain in the next few hours to slip back into the dark deep water, and lie sill, patient, beneath the surface. Jonas Merrick never argued his corner, accepted that he could rarely alter decisions taken, would not bicker over it. An alternative strategy was obvious, and he could have recited why it would be rejected. The thought was offered.
“Call in the police? An option, but not one we would like. They crawl over us, Jonas, always anxious to pinch territory, kleptomaniacs for gaining acreage. They bring little to the party beyond heavy boots, rigid rule books. There is faint praise for the Service’s efforts in this bloody war. There are those who would restrict us, emasculate us. Not on my watch. You have a Jo who is drifting back to the UK, intentions unknown. I have a lethal weapon freewheeling across the near continent. And we have a list of potential targets as long as your arm and throw in a leg. We’ll manage, we have to manage. And we’ll have to manage the matter of priorities.”
Again the shrug, which was enough.
The footsteps clicked away. He would speak soon to his probationers, and would speak to that section in the building that dealt with access to police support units. Jonas felt older, tired, was dreaming fleetingly of the joys of driving on a crowded west country route with a caravan bumping and swaying behind him. And waited for a call. Cammy looked a pleasant enough lad – but the photograph was not yesterday’s and Jonas assumed that many men were changed by the experience of war. The light was slipping outside and the river gleamed and rain dribbled on his window. Thought also of the lost launcher and the projectiles that could penetrate a tank’s armour, and what type of man would be skilled in its use. Too much to think of and answers coming that were unwelcome.
Chapter 8
“They punched above their weight – know what I mean?”
Jonas told him to expand.
“They were a small unit. We’d heard of them but didn’t have a contact. Must have been that bad hour, the one before dawn, when we all want to be in bed, and the people that we were training were in their pits, wanting to be anywhere but in that camp. The front line was stable, but the black flag guys had tried to break through, and had failed. Maybe we were complacent, but . . .”
Jonas had a young British officer on the phone. He had taken some tracking, was out on the wastes of Dartmoor, a freshener course in survival with the Marines. Two years before he had been with the Special Boat Service and had been attached to a supposedly “good guys” crowd of anti-régime and anti-jihadi fighters.
“. . . always difficult when complacency settles. The feeling was that they had made their main effort, had not dislodged us, that we had done our job well. Normally if they attacked they would come in yelling and screaming, fire points from every angle and probably a suicide boy, or two of them, to blast a hole. It’s intimidating, but you get notice of them coming. Not this time. Came in the small hours, and there were very few of them. They were quiet, and they took us by surprise. Hit very hard, gave us heavy stick. There were four of us in the training team, in our command building, but one of our sergeants had gone out for a piss, and . . .”
Jonas thought he knew the part of the moor where the officer spoke from. Vera had said that it was not necessary always to have a sea view, and that a break in the shelter of one of the tors – Dartmoor or Bodmin – would be pleasant. He thought he could hear the rattle of rain falling on canvas roofing, not that Vera would have minded rain if she were snug in her caravan. His mind could wander but not his
concentration, and most of the time his eyes were on the face on the wall beside the crocodile.
“. . . caught short at an inconvenient time, as we later reminded him. Odd thing was that we were able to remind him. We had bulbs slung from cables, linking the command post to the mess hall and to the latrine pits. Shots were fired. My sergeant was still zipping his flies and groping for his weapon when he’s confronted by this guy. Black kit, black mask, black-painted assault rifle. English voice. The barrel is pointed at my sergeant – we’re talking half a dozen paces, point-blank range, where your granny couldn’t miss. South of England accent. He was dead, effectively, my sergeant. Nowhere to go, illuminated, a weapon on him. This guy says, no lie, just says, ‘Get the fuck out of the way, and stay there, out of the way.’ He does. Each pace he takes to the command bunker he’s expecting to be shot in the back. Funny old world. They don’t hit the bunker, but they create five shades of shit amongst the people we’re supposed to be indoctrinating into close quarters warfare. They’re chucking grenades around, and incendiaries. Blitzing the camp. We’re trying to put down suppressive fire but we don’t have targets, and I don’t have enough assets to leave the protection of that building. They stay clear of us, like we’re not important. There was a method to it.”
The Crocodile Hunter Page 18
