Leroy said, “Good evening, Mr Merrick. Difficult old night – I mean the weather.”
Kev asked, “Going somewhere nice, Mr Merrick? Not that it’s my business?”
“It is not . . . A bit of rain never hurt. I’m off to look for a crocodile . . .”
Cammy meandered.
He passed pubs that he had drunk in, had worked in. And a couple of Italian fast food outlets and he’d washed up in the kitchens of both, and past the stationery shop where his mum had carted him before the start of each school term.
The rain was steady. Shop fronts clattered as grilles were lowered. Nothing seemed to have changed since he had last walked here.
Had been with Vicky then and her holding his hand and him with his secret, and nothing said. One drink, later, when they were in the bar, the Miller’s, the place heaving with tourists. He had not slept with her that night, had pleaded tiredness, a headache, a difficult day starting the next morning. No real explanation, because he had a “nothing” job in a builder’s yard where being tired or having a headache was immaterial.
Had walked her home to her mother’s . . . Had hardly thought of her when he was away. Actually even now he had to blink and screw down his concentration to try to recall her face. Cammy, out with the black flags, had never touched any of the girls that came to Syria from England, who had put on the burqas and had the sole ambition of being a jihadi bride. Had never touched Ulrike who was like a Wendy to them, whose message was Stay calm. It is never a crisis. She came from Rostock, up on the Baltic . . . They had not talked about her city, nor his – nor about the North East Transvaal where Pieter was from, nor Toronto which was the city nearest to Dwayne’s family home, no talk of Minsk, nor of Tartu and not of Kiev. A life gone by and holding no value, to any of them.
He drifted on to the main street and the rain settled in his hair and on his collar, and darkness had fallen. Men and women hurried past him. He might have been the only person on the street who had no pressing destination . . . until tomorrow.
And nothing much was altered. A few businesses with different logos, a few windows where trade had changed. Cammy had been far away, had fought in ferocious small arms battles, had been under the terrifying noise and impact of airstrikes, had seen the dead and the dying and the mutilated – and none of it had reached here. He doubted anyone would have cared as they bustled past him.
He thought about Vicky. Sweet, innocent, simple Vicky – would pass her mother’s house as he walked north out of the city, left the cathedral behind him, headed away and up the river, climbed out of Sturry and into the estate where his home was. His home? Of course, his. Where there would be money, and food, and a welcome.
Baz said, “We go through with this?”
He had parked in a lay-by. Had switched off the engine, had gone to the rough grass at the side and had scooped up gravel and dirt and wet earth, had smeared it over both registration plates. She had passed him a roll of cling film from the glove compartment, always kept there – reasonable enough for a couple who are doing picnics out of a camper and needed to keep food fresh. He spread the cling film over both plates, then climbed back in.
“We never welshed before,” Mags answered.
“Said we’d do it, didn’t we?”
“We don’t back down. Not us.”
“And not our business who they are, what it’s for?”
“Sweet fuck-all to do with us, Baz.”
Decision taken. The cling film would act as a reflector off the vehicle plates. The number recognition systems would struggle to read them and the filth spread would make identification even harder. They were out of Germany, were past Namur in Belgium and would soon be in France and close to Lille. He started up the engine. She gave him half of a bar of chocolate, as if that were a reward for keeping going . . .
He asked her to map him a route for Boulogne, which had a ferry route to Folkestone.
He said, if he put his foot down, but kept inside the speed limits, they would get to the French port and beat the alert system of the German authorities. He said that the system did not permit a direct swap of information . . . And at Boulogne, they’d take the cling film off the plates. He finished his chocolate, and put his hand on her thigh, like he used to when they were young, and had a giggle in response.
“We said we’d do it, and took their money.”
Mags said, “Which is a good enough reason for me.”
Vicky should not have had any complaints. There were precious few of the girls, her contemporaries at school, who – at her age – could boast a modern, well-equipped three-bedroom home, valued at around £300,000, had a healthy baby, a husband who worked all hours – and a mother-in-law with constant advice. Precious few of the girls would have known what it felt like to be suffocating – no shortage of air but a surfeit of boredom. And precious few of the girls would have walked away from the chance of time out with Cammy Jilkes. She went downstairs, and into the kitchen. It was a bad night and one of the gutters was overflowing, and she started to make herself a cup of coffee. There was a microwave meal for two in the fridge, that she would have shared with her husband, except that he was going to be away that night, and she’d not be bothered with the effort of heating it for a half portion for herself. She sat at the table to start the shopping list for the weekend; later, if she stayed awake, she’d flick through the Kentish Gazette, see what jobs were on offer . . . didn’t have to, made clear to her.
The doorbell rang, a prissy little chime.
She was out of her chair. Let it ring once more, and there would be bawling upstairs. She went to the door. The security light had come on in the porch. A couple were ducking for cover and she saw a car parked half in the driveway and half over the pavement. She did not have a light behind her and they might not have realised she was there.
She heard, “This, Tristram, is a piss awful night. Shall I lead?”
“Doubt it’s going to be the crown jewels, Izzy, but you gush the sympathy better than I do . . . Ask her if she’s seen Gustave.”
They were both laughing as she opened the door. Each flashed a card at her that showed their photographs and had a motif of a crown. He said his name was “John”, and she said her name was “Betty”. So, that was two lies straight up. But “Betty” said that it was a “security matter”, and Vicky doubted that was an untruth. They came in. She had not invited them. She pointed up the stairs, put a finger over her mouth. She thought they both grinned but sheepishly, as if babies weren’t part of the world of security. They went into the kitchen and sat themselves at the table.
The guy, who was not “John”, admired a print on the wall, a view of an old bridge and the river – given them by her mother-in-law. Personally, Vicky would have binned it. She assumed that was a chat-up line for whatever level of spooks they were. She disliked the pair of them, had not taken long to form her opinion. She did not ask if they would like coffee or tea, anything.
“So? Yes? How can I help?”
The girl who was not “Betty” said, “Don’t want to waste your time, Victoria. You used to know a boy called Cameron, Cameron Jilkes . . .?”
She did not answer, did not have to. Nor would she help them.
“You used to be friends with Cameron Jilkes? An item? Boyfriend, girlfriend?”
No response, stared back at them. And remembered.
“Then he went away . . . Counter Terrorism Command interviewed you once it was known that he’d travelled to Syria. I’ve read the transcript . . . you said that you had no warning that he was leaving the UK, let alone that he intended to enlist in a terrorist army. Correct?”
She supposed them to be Cammy’s enemy. Smoother than the mob that had turned up before, had treated her like shit and had reduced her mother to tears and her dad had gone into the garden because otherwise he might have taken a crowbar to them. Then, supercilious and loading contempt on her . . . Now, more polish and more apparent manners, except that it was plain they were dealing i
n low-life and she’d be just the “totty” they’d have expected him to be sniffing after. She wondered why they’d called Cammy by the name of Gustave – would not ask.
“I understand also, Victoria, that you were visited a year or so after he went. By the way, he was not a stretcher-bearer, was not helping bombed-out refugees, was not driving a taxi. He was a signed up fighting man. In a combat unit. He may be alive and on the run out there; he may be dead – we haven’t heard but it’s possible because the war area is chaotic. But it is also possible he is alive and coming home. May already have returned to the UK. Whatever your feelings for him in the past, Victoria, I should tell you that he is now regarded as a particularly dangerous individual . . . If he has survived. Is that clear to you?”
Like a game of chicken. What the kids did on the dual carriageway going out to the village from the Leisure Centre. Chicken games between the pavements and the central reservation and drivers going berserk. She stared at them. They stared at her. Neither looked away. She would have been poker-faced but they’d assumed the expressions of those shop assistants who have pulled out a dress in a pricey boutique and were now bored half out of their minds, going through the motions, just needed answers from the customer. They were the enemy.
“I am assuming, Victoria, that you have had no contact with him since he left the UK . . . We’d like an answer though, Victoria . . . Any contact with Cameron Jilkes since he left the UK? Or, Victoria, I can escort you down to the central police station in the city and put you in the cell block and then bring you into an interview room, and can ask you again: ‘Any contact with that little fucking animal, Cameron Jilkes?’ Which?”
Hated them. Hated their confidence, hated them being in her home, hated the sneer in “Betty’s” voice, hated the lies. Imagined having to ring her mother-in-law and ask for emergency baby-minding favours because “Well, I’m being carted off to the slammer for interrogation about Cammy who used to shag me before your son, limp dick Gavin, came on the scene.” Spat it through her mind . . . Still the smiles but hard eyes. She supposed it was a code-name they had for him, Gustave. Their eyes bored into her, and then the girl who was not Betty started, ever so gently, to ease her chair back as if playtime were over.
Vicky said, “I’ve heard nothing from him. No contact. Nothing.”
“He may have left Syria a year ago. He’s been on the run, if he’s still alive, since then. No contact? I am being very serious, Victoria, because an untruth now would involve a criminal offence and probably a prison sentence. Have you heard from Cameron Jilkes in the last fifteen hours, since early this morning?”
She shook her head, was crying quietly. A card was passed her. It showed a crown, and the Latin words Defendere Regnum, and she’d no idea what that meant and the guy wrote their names on the card above a printed phone number with a London code. If he did call, if, then she should ring that number.
They stood, made their way to the front door and let themselves out. She heard the car engine start, then its radio starting up, some sort of jazz . . . She took the card off the table, tore it into small pieces and binned it, then made that cup of coffee.
Jonas caught the train at the King’s Cross/St Pancras terminal, had never started or finished a journey there before.
The train was a Javelin. Comfortable, clean, fast, and full. A schoolgirl had looked hard at him as he’d stood in the corridor as the carriages lurched out of the station and must have thought him either in poor health or decrepit, had given up her seat . . . had shamed him. They went out past the Olympic site – he had put heavy hours in before and during the competitions, but had not watched any events: had no interest. A quick stop at Stratford International and then at Ebbsfleet, and they were nearing Ashford. He was shamed because he had never – not once – given up his seat on the run to or from Raynes Park. Jonas was skilled at looking after himself. From his seat, he had ducked his head in a closet gratitude to the girl, but she had already forgotten him and had a physics textbook in one hand and steadied herself with the other . . . He imagined her as a potential victim.
It was a familiar mind-game for Jonas Merrick. He would take an individual as they walked towards him and past Lambeth Palace, or on the concourse at Waterloo, or along the pavement at Raynes Park before turning into his own street, and he would imagine where they might face the random danger of a jihadi assault. They were the ordinary people, the innocents, the ones who had no interest in the politics and fault-lines of the Middle East, even less interest in the schisms between Shia and Sunni worship, and yet they were front line cannon fodder. An attack on them was only considered worthwhile if many tens of them were left dead in a station, a shopping mall, or the foyer of a concert hall . . . Could summon up a conversation on the sweet-smelling grass and under an apple orchard’s trees, the requisite 72 virgins in place, and two suiciders – and one might have been little Winston Gunn. Questions: “How many did you get, bruv?” Answer: “Only got four, couldn’t get into a crush of them.” A snort: “What? Only four, bruv? Fuck’s sake, I did nineteen. You know what they say?” A shrug, and embarrassment: “What do they say?” Laughter and a cuff on the shoulder, and the girls all over them, “Not worth getting out of bed in the morning for less than ten, bruv . . .” He had a sense of comfort. Jonas did not consider that Cameron Jilkes, Kami al-Britani, posed a threat to the girl who struggled with the physics text, or the guy standing next to her who wore a London bus driver’s uniform, or the businessman in his suit and his loosened tie, or the two women who had splurged that afternoon in the Oxford Street stores. Not worth it. Not deserving of his man’s anger.
Surrounded by the innocent and the ordinary, Jonas Merrick doubted he attracted the remotest attention . . . He believed he knew Cameron’s journey, and had an estimation of the sort of target to be attacked, and reckoned he knew the legacy the man would want to leave. The light had faded and all he saw of the countryside was when headlights speared a passage along narrow hedged roads – funny old place for a battlefield – and a cathedral city, a place of homage and pilgrimage, would make it funnier.
He thought also that he knew what Cameron Jilkes wanted least in the few hours before his intended death. Believed he knew how it would end for a man who was off course, had lost all certainties.
Cammy was halfway down the High Street when he heard shouts and jeering. Shops had closed, some were shuttered, and the first wave of the young boozers was out, marching in phalanx formations. More shouts, and abuse.
The day’s litter was not yet cleared, and bin bags were stacked outside the fast food outlets, and the rain was persistent, and there was little that was obvious to drag kids out of their homes or student hostels. He was near the statue of Geoffrey Chaucer, had learned about him at the choirboys’ college. Could have recited a few of the lines and . . . He listened.
More shouting up ahead, the bridge where the river flowed under the street. Some around him tucked down their heads and hurried away from the disturbance. Others paused and gawped. Cammy kept going, knew where he was headed and had enough time for it: had assumed that his mum would have the same routines. Something that was locked in him was the belief he had hardly been away and that the world in which he had once existed had stayed constant, petrified, marooned in a time lapse. Him fighting, him the hero, him with his band of brothers and on the front line, and the rest of his old life just plodding along, unchanged. The shouting reached a fevered pitch. Aggressive, hostile. He saw a knot of people by the boarded-up windows of a shut-down Poundland store. He kept walking.
It was a pedestrian street. Cammy walked in its centre. People came towards him, some scuttling home after the last dregs of the city’s day, and some could have been heading for the first clubs that would open or the pubs that had a Happy Hour. He kept his position in the centre of the street. People backed away from him. One glance was enough for them . . . a kid might have challenged him, but his mates knew better, would have seen the expression in Cammy’s eyes, and
had tugged him aside.
He came level with the store and the plywood sheets that covered its windows. The jeering had become abuse which had become anger. Two boys, their backs against the plywood, were hunched over, trying to protect their heads and their stomachs.
He stood. Cammy stopped walking in the centre of the street.
He thought the two boys were gays. There was a shuffling movement in the doorway to the right of them and their tormentor, and a rough sleeper was hurrying to gather up his blanket and the loose shape of a squashed cardboard box. Had a small dog on a length of rope.
Cammy could see one of the boys had smudged lipstick, and the other, as the light caught his face, seemed to be wearing dark eye-shadow. He wondered if they had been holding hands, or had even thought they were unseen and had kissed in the shadows – or might not have cared a damn and could have been in the centre of the street and making their feelings for each other crystal clear. He counted half a dozen in the knot, but Cammy knew about crowds and thought this was only the beginning and if there were a commotion and the chance of amusement then more could come to share the sport.
The boys made no sound, just attempted to protect their bodies. Perhaps their lack of defiance annoyed the gang . . . He remembered a neighbour’s cat, a weedy and unlovable beast that would come over the garden fence with a mouse in its mouth, carrying it by a fold of skin at the back of its neck. It would dump the mouse on the patio at the back door. The cat needed the mouse to contribute to the fun, show some spark, attempt a break-out. If the mouse did nothing other than tremble, then the cat would bash it with a paw, try to get a reaction, would be irritated if the mouse did not scamper . . . Now, the gang shouted insults, violent and obscene.
The Crocodile Hunter Page 21
