He thought of the comfortable life he and Vera led, and their dreams of short holiday breaks. Thought of the nightmare of being in the darkness of a Syrian night, mortars and grenades exploding, and the jagged lines of red-tipped tracer fire. The shrieks of pain, and the terrifying extent of the chaos. He stared at the photograph of the man with the smear around his mouth.
“We heard other voices in the few minutes it lasted. All in English but we thought there were middle Europeans and Americans and very definitely a South African . . . No hanging about. They were gone . . . In theory we had held the position, but that sells them short. It all went quiet. They had no casualties and when daylight came there were no blood trails. There were four of us, and some two hundred and fifty recruits in the camp. We reckoned there were half a dozen of them . . . By midday, our place was abandoned. Three of their officers were dead and the rest had legged it. Hardly a score draw. They broke the morale of the men holding the line. More important, my team and others had spent six months in the training programme and it was all negated in about five minutes . . . that’s why it was, in my opinion, ‘punching above their weight’. Who were they?”
Jonas seemed to see an innocence in the eyes.
“There had been talk about a small special formation. You hear that sort of thing all the time, but believe it only when you’re hit and it goes badly. The more élite they are, then the better you feel if your arse is kicked. It was a very committed attack, well planned and well directed. It did the job as intended, and I promise you, Mr Merrick, it takes discipline to retire in good order when that job is done, not to hang about. Singing their praises loudest was that sergeant with the weak bladder.”
And saw the cut of the jaw, its power. Not a man who would take a backward step . . . He had a map laid out in front of him, and had drawn a crude circle around the village and the estate off the Margate road.
“That sort of action is not planned by a committee. There will be one of them and the rest are followers. And then intelligence threw in the name of Kami al-Britani as their chief honcho. We find that successive layers of UK military keep bumping into the sort of people that we would like to have had as our senior non-commissioned officers: very able, think on their feet, those who come out on top of any leadership cadre. Just a pity that he was on the wrong side – and best fought when he is respected.
“I have to hack on, Mr Merrick. Been good to speak . . . Oh, and there was a woman with them . . . You’ll not be surprised if I say my sergeant spoke well of him. Why was his life spared? Can’t say, don’t know, except that he’d have had the union flag stitched to his upper arm. What I do say is that we might have hit him at the right time because in the months ahead they were given a heavy battering. When they were pulling back, they were hassled all the way from the air, especially from the drone attacks. It was awesome, Mr Merrick, the force used against them. Did he survive?”
No answer given.
“If you are interested, does that tell me he’s come home?”
Jonas chuckled softly, was about to ring off.
“Remember what I said about ‘respect’, and remember the pounding they’ve taken. And remember that what they dread most is going in a cage. Good night, Mr Merrick.”
The time for evensong was half past five – the central point in the cathedral’s daily routine. The choir came in procession.
Cammy had once been part of this magnificence. A chosen one. His appearance had once been as theirs was. Faces scrubbed, and hair – always seemed to be blond – tidily cut, immaculately parted. Fingernails short and polished black shoes. A white surplice over a purple robe, and a starched ruff – also white – at the throat. They filed in, took their places beside the block of seats where Cammy was.
Worshippers and tourists were pressed around Cammy.
A young man led them. In Cammy’s day, toward the end of his time, an older man had replaced for a few months the choirmaster who had gone on sick leave, or a sabbatical. The boys called the stand-in “old Fergie”.
He listened. He did not need to open the hymn book, Ancient and Modern: recalled it. Cast Me Not Away, one of his favourites, following only minimally behind the “snares of hell” anthem. A woman beside him, her elbow against his, had closed her eyes, and her lips moved and she had the look on her face of adoration. As Cammy remembered it, reverence and praise were heaped on the young voices, and it was understood that they were unique in the church world of their country, were the best. He had come from the estate on the hill above the village of Sturry, had been pulled out of the local state junior school, had sung in auditions, had heard older men and a woman murmuring, tapping pencils, and scribbling notes, and the letter had dropped through the letterbox. His mother had opened it, had slumped on the stairs, had held the single sheet of paper, half a dozen typed lines on it under the address of the college, and tears had streamed on her face and she had been rendered speechless. His half-brother had cuffed him on the shoulder and had muttered that he had “done well”, which was as good as it would get. His half-sister had pulled a face, had hugged him, and then kissed his cheek, left lipstick there. A new school uniform, fitted for his robes, gone with a cheap suitcase to Choir House where he would be a boarding pupil. His accent different to the other new recruits, and his manners rough, and his discipline lax, but as the months had gone by these were tolerated because of his voice, and his ability to learn, and the thing of beauty that he possessed.
He looked at each of their faces. He estimated which were about to feel the weight of failure, pain of rejection. Their voices soared into the upper arches of the great roof . . . He had cared not a damn for the religion. The chanting of priests, the rituals, the heads bobbing towards a faraway altar, the kneeling and the devotion, had mattered as nothing to him. He had been noticed and, in the last months, old Fergie would fix an eye on him and draw him out and would seem, with thin and bony fingers, to conduct only Cameron. His mum came when she could. She would bend her hours, and sometimes he would see her, and sometimes only learn that she had been there when he was at home on those weekends when the choir was not required. She would sit in the back row of the pews opposite and would keep her head ducked down so that she would not catch his eye if he glanced around; she would not have wanted to distract him. She told him that the visits to the cathedral to hear him brightened the whole day, or whole week.
He had been cut out of the choir, had known it was coming, and had known that his voice had suffered the first indications of what one of the adult choir members had called “imperfections”. Had noticed that old Fergie had begun to take a keener interest in him, and had started, not often, to wince when Cammy hit certain notes.
They were all condemned – Cammy as much as any of the kids he was listening to now, in their white and purple, singing to the rafters far above. Put crudely, “because their balls are going to drop”, their voices would deepen. Most would stay on at the college because they had “made a good impression”, had shown promise at cricket or rugger, or had taken to a musical instrument, or were doing well in the classroom. Did not harbour what old Fergie called the “rebel streak”. It was the way of the estate, for the young’uns, that retaliation should be got in first. In two years, the college had not taken the estate out of Cameron Jilkes. At the last evensong he was no longer allocated a place in the front row and nearest the choirmaster. His mum was not there.
It was expected that he would be leaving both the choir and the college. Surplus to requirements and considered “unsuitable material”. Did not have to be done with pain and angst; rough edges would have been planed smooth and scholarship money made available.
They sang Nunc dimittis. His lips moved with the words, so well remembered . . . Could remember the day trip, a week before decisions were made for the future of those whose voices were breaking, “changing”.
“We went by coach for lunch at Sandwich, a pretty little place, and then on to the Roman fortifications at Richborough.”
>
The pipe smoke filled the room, then was wafted towards an open window. Tristram would have prompted had it been necessary; Izzy had shorthand and took a note.
“I think I was quite popular. They called me ‘old Fergie’. I was temporary, a stand-in, just there for a few months. My difficulty came when some of the voices were no longer fit for purpose. I was in the front line for passing on the bad news: and worse news, in a very few cases, was when we were parting company lock, stock and barrel. He knew he was going to take the bullet. I could see a hardening of attitude, a different child, and we are talking of a thirteen-year-old – as if a mask was removed, left the real personality bare.”
The former choirmaster lived in a bedsit in a decaying post-war block. The nobility of the great cathedral down the road was far away. He was slouched on a faded settee and Tristram and Izzy were sitting on upright chairs.
“It is an amazing ruin. Probably the best example of the power of Rome’s occupation of England. Huge high walls and all still in extraordinary condition, and clear signs of the gatehouse, home for two centuries to the Second Augustinian Legion. Wonderful place. All the boys were spellbound by it, the size, its authority. Except one child. That was Cameron. I was singing its praises. He challenged me. One thing to disagree, another to challenge. Perhaps my language was florid, I’d talked up Roman power. He called out from his usual place at the back of any group, called my remarks, ‘Rubbish’. Pushing it a bit, you could say. I told him firmly, slapping him down, these ruins are remarkable, should be admired. He said, voice cracking, gruffness setting in, ‘That’s rubbish. Look around you. All collapsed. Thought they’d last for ever. Just a heap of stones.’ They had had a dose a week or so before of Shelley. This child was no fool. Had made the connection. Quoted back at me: ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings, Look on my works ye mighty and despair . . .’ ”
Tristram recited, “Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare. Did it at school.”
Izzy said. “The lone and level sands stretch far away. Big poetry isn’t just for posh kids. He had a point.”
“It was a calculated piece of impertinence. What I’m saying is that Cameron had set his face against anything that represented power, discipline, tradition. The choir was acceptable to him because he was its star; not for the glory of God or the beauty of the hymns and responses. He was the centre of attention . . . A week later, after his situation had been thrashed around by the staff at the college, and the decision had been taken, it was my job to break the news to him. ‘Sorry, Cameron, but we don’t think going on here is in your best interests. We’ll do all we can to find you another school, more suitable for your needs.’ No tears, no explosion of bad language, just a deadening of the eyes. I had my hand out, to shake his, which I thought the correct gesture. I was ignored. He turned on his heel after a momentary glare of contempt, and left the room. He closed the door carefully, did not slam it, did not make a scene. Never heard of him again until the news of where he’d gone. Did not surprise me.”
Tristram said, “Thank you for your time.”
Izzy put away her notepad.
Old Fergie said, “I suppose you are here because he’s back. I doubt he’s changed except that he has probably hardened further. I hazard an opinion: he’ll not roll over. You’ll have to shoot him. I can hardly believe I am saying that. I doubt I am wrong – shoot him dead.”
The Hunters were home.
Trace was in the kitchen, preparing their tea, and Karen was upstairs washing her hair, and Bradley was looking at Royal Navy brochures, still waiting to hear whether he had been accepted for the electronics course, and Dave came down the stairs after changing out of his work suit. The television was on in the front room but nobody was in there so no one was watching. Darkness was gathering. There were not many street lights to illuminate the facades of the houses, the parked cars and the little pocket handkerchiefs of grass by the paths to the front doors. He would always go to the front window, look out and around as if he were some sort of neighbourhood sentry. He’d check there were no vehicles that he could not identify, and no strangers loitering, and his gaze would always linger on the house on the far side and further down, the last in the line.
Dave Hunter felt a soft spot for his neighbour, Sadie Jilkes; they all did. Her curtains weren’t drawn, there were no lights on. He knew it was important to Sadie to keep her bills to the minimum. She walked to a bus-stop that was further from her home than the nearest because it cost her less to board and get off there. He thought they did not do enough for her: did not know what else they could do; social invitations were invariably rebuffed. He dragged the curtains across the window.
The television news had reached the weather forecast, and that part of the south-east would have a decent start to the day tomorrow, and there would be a dry night and light winds . . . fact was that the forecast was pretty much the same as most days. Fact also was that life in their road stayed simple, ordered, and that crises seemed not to happen. An unremarkable street, he would have said if describing it “on a hill, looking down on the city, plenty of fields near us and a cemetery where I’ll probably get parked. Nice place where nothing much happens.” Sadie would be at work somewhere in the city, sweeping and wiping and dusting, emptying waste-paper bins and filling black bags and pushing a vacuum cleaner, and likely she’d have toilets to deal with too. Not his business, that Sadie Jilkes had a son in gaol, had a daughter who was in that cemetery, and another son who was God knows where – if he was still alive.
A wry smile slipped on to the face of Jonas Merrick.
He imagined the reactions of those who worked further down the corridor, because they had not heard him pass their doors at his usual time. The same down in the big front hall where the women sat behind desks and checked out internal staff and external visitors. The same for the police who patrolled the pavement outside. All of them would have said they could set their watch by the time he left. Not that evening.
The traffic was nose to tail and headlights gleamed, and beyond them was the river with slow-moving barges and a single pleasure boat. He now involved himself in the lives of strangers.
It was his skill to insert himself into the existence of people who would have no reason to think they were being examined by a man they knew nothing of. His computer had the power to penetrate their telephone logs, to dig out their mobile numbers, to excavate their bank accounts. Below his picture of the crocodile in the still, dark pool and the photograph of a young man with a pleasant smile, he crouched, frog-like, over his keyboard. Almost caressed the keys, seemed to win favours from it.
He had been, as if with a scalpel, into the life of a one-time girlfriend. Had found her picture, pretty girl, before her wedding. And another with her baby and her husband and her mother-in-law. Had her job references, her bank accounts and her husband’s, had her address.
Had passed on the details, to Tristram and Izzy, told them what he needed.
Had gone on a virtual tour of the street at the top of the hill off the main road to Margate. Had used the computerised attachments to walk him along it and then to stop in front of a semi-detached house, the last in the row, a cemetery behind it. It looked in need of repair. A decent home, but uncared for: the paintwork needed attention and weeds grew in what had once been a small shrub bed. He had a list of neighbours. The property next to that of Mrs Sadie Jilkes was in the name of an Asian couple and he had established that they ran a Post Office franchise. There were others; the process was tedious but he preferred to make his own investigations, then hold to his own decisions . . . There was a family that lived diagonally opposite. The man was an accountant . . . the family seemed unremarkable. And remembered . . .
. . . A year and a half before. After his gong had been pinned, and after the detailed debrief of Winston Gunn, a rule had been broken. What rules were for – Jonas did not believe in the inflexible. Young Winston, failed suicider, had been spirited away to a
safe house, and a mobile phone was made available so that he could speak to his mother once a week. And the poor boy had shown extraordinary emotion at being permitted to make those calls. Jonas had ramped it, as if rewarding Gunn for his levels of cooperation and his treachery to those once his associates, now in the “chokey”, and a visit was arranged. Farida had been controlled, dignified, had wrapped her arms around her errant kid and hugged him. Winston, unsuccessful in his bid for martyrdom, had been in distraught tears and had clung to her. A monitoring psychiatrist had written a few paragraphs for a report about the importance of the image of his mother in the mind of a fighting man. Not a girlfriend but a mother – more important than anyone else for the fighter far from home.
He would be gone within an hour. He had one more call to make then he would be gone. The clock raced and there was no chance of serious reinforcement being granted him. But he preferred to carry his own responsibilities, not share them. It was a lousy night out there that he would soon be going into before improvement in the morning and probably turning into a lousy night where young Cameron was.
A priest had noted the presence of the gaunt young man at the evensong service. Had seen a tough and weathered face and the blemishes on it from acute sunburn and the blisters from insect bites, had been confused by the old man’s clothes he wore, but recognised him. Had always rather liked the boy. Had thought he had taken a generous and yet responsible line with him. Would not denounce him, not that evening. Would go in the morning, after Cameron Jilkes had visited his mother, spent a night in his own bed, and had then taken a bus into town to check himself in at the police station. He would go himself, but later. He would make an excuse to justify his delay in reporting the recognition. Had seen the face, had thought it haunted. Believed the experience of that form of warfare would have scarred deeply, and was pleased that the young man would spend time with his mother before surrendering.
The Crocodile Hunter Page 19
