Might have dreamed it, have imagined it. Saw himself and Vera, side by side, heading west towards a Devon site, their Norwegian friend in the wicker cat basket and the caravan bumping along behind them. Filling each mirror, showing the A303’s hills and bends, was the build-up of traffic that had no chance of passing, and they would be the source of annoyance, even anger, because the queues had no prospect of getting beyond them, not on the A303 and not the way that Jonas drove . . . Might get away by lunch-time the next day – if all went well. Might be there by dusk tomorrow.
“You heard all that, Babs, about dangerous and serious and he called him ‘motivated’. We’re not talking about a guy thumping his wife with a knife at her throat.”
“Too right, Dom. We’re talking about an experienced killer. So I don’t understand why this is not a mob-handed job. The place should be flooded, and we have no risk assessment and no mission statement, and old Merrick seems to make it all up as he goes along.”
“Weird.”
“Worse than weird – except you can look on the bright side.”
What had changed in Jonas Merrick’s life since he had shared a bench, briefly, with Winston Gunn, was that he now commanded an audience. Reflected that he had the same insights now as before, just that none of his colleagues or superiors had bothered to listen to him. They did now, led by the AssDepDG. Had made his bed, had to lie on it, or was “hoist” as Lily might have put it down in the Archive. Could not yet step back. Would have been entitled, hours earlier to catch his normal train that evening, and eat the cottage pie that Vera had made, but was the victim of a compulsion . . . Had once sat next to a chap, same sort of age and from the Russian monitoring section, in the café outside the side door and the chap had been needing to babble: his son had sent them a photo from New Zealand, and the boy was hanging upside down by the ankle at the end of a bungee jump, had done 140 feet and a few inches. The chap had quoted his boy as saying that he knew he had to do the jump from the moment he had landed on that island, had to – could not evade it. Laid his lofty reputation on the line and could not have backed away. But Jonas felt nearly confident of the outcome: had to, or by first light tomorrow he might be face down and breathing, heavily, his last gasps.
“What’s the ‘bright side’, Babs?”
“You’d say ‘breaking a duck’, I’d say ‘losing’ what it is that we’ll never get back. Cop on, like a first shag. Easy once you’ve done it, big deal when you haven’t. Might get to shoot, Dom.”
“Take him down – dangerous and serious and motivated – actually pull the trigger. Myself – and you know it – I’ve never actually been close to pulling the trigger.”
“Actually do it. I was as far down the line as having the red dot on some sod in Margate, with an axe and his missus in an armlock – shouted top of my voice. He did it, dropped the axe, lay down good as gold, closest I’ve been . . . But for real, see him drop – better, I’ll bet, than any shag.”
Which was not as Jonas intended and not as he planned it. He did not move, did not break his breathing.
“What he asked for . . .?”
“Asked for a dog lead.”
“What does he want a dog lead for?”
“Not a clue. Suppose I’d better go and get one. What do I say, that I want it for?”
“Suppose you had. You . . . think of something – good luck.”
He did not think it would be difficult, finding a dog lead. Didn’t matter if it could restrain a Rottweiler or a toy poodle. On an estate like this, there would be dogs two a penny. He felt rested. Very soon he would play-act his waking and then would start, in earnest, the business of putting Cameron Jilkes in a cage and denying him the sweet-scented last thought of martyrdom, the Valhalla final moment of a jihadi life. All about encouraging others, and nothing encouraged less – in Jonas’s opinion – than sitting in a cage for days and weeks and months and years and knowing the key was lost.
Chapter 11
Time drifted for Jonas.
By now had he been at home, he would have been overseeing the cat’s last visit to the flower beds, then checking the locks, front and back, and he would already have folded away the maps on which they based their vacations . . . He had not yet advised Vera that, all being properly in place, they would have done the journey by this time the next day and would be tucked up in the caravan: she might have had a celebratory sherry and he might have opened a beer, low alcohol. Liked that route past Stonehenge: it was always best when the sun was about to set and the stones were in silhouette, or dramatic when the sun had gone and the moon had risen . . . He allowed himself to grin, no mirth, because if the weather stayed as now – steady rain – there would be no setting sun and no rising moon.
His phone beeped in his pocket. The American from that base in the Gulf. Appreciated the call but had imagined it would come when the matter in hand was settled. He did not gush thanks, never did, seldom thanked those who came back to him, but it would have been deep into the small hours where he was soldiering and likely he had been up all night annotating the information . . . more pegs going into the holes and the picture gaining greater focus . . . Kami al-Britani had been coded as Kilo Bravo One. A German woman was listed as Kilo Bravo Two, and an Estonian was Kilo Bravo Three. There had been a South African and a Ukrainian, four and five. The Canadian national was Kilo Bravo Six, and there was a Belorussian who the intelligence analysts had labelled as Kilo Bravo Seven. He listened carefully to the distant voice, did not interrupt.
“So, Kilo Bravo One was the focus point of the group and the others were his shock force, his inner circle. They would have seen themselves as brothers – yes, we did that at military college, your King Harry and the “band of brothers”, élite and special. Grand while it lasted, and what I’ve dug out has them in retreat from Barghuz and probably with the intention of disappearing, heading off to new territory, then hunting down another enemy to scrap with. Trouble was the “disappearing” and the “heading off” failed. Began to be degraded. The file says that Kilo Bravo One lost all his siblings, one after the other. By the time he quit the scene and went off our radar he was alone, our assessment . . . You got a feed on him, Mr Merrick?”
“Just sniffing for him. I’ll call you if it becomes pungent. Please, some guidance.”
“Shoot, Mr Merrick.”
“I believe I already have the answer but what annoyed them most?”
“Made them mess their pants? It’s the eye in the sky. They even started buying up big quantities of kitchen tin-foil, what the lady back home wraps meat in before it goes in the oven. Could not get their hands on the big sheets that they drape over marathon runners at the final line. They thought that the foil would deflect the heat-seeking kit on either the camera lens or on the Hellfire guidance, would shield them. They learned otherwise . . . That eye up there and the soft sound drove them fair to distraction. The top weapon we had. The Russians just dropped heavy ordnance, and the Syrians put barrel bombs out of choppers. Both were Stone Age compared to what we and your people used. Answered?”
“Very clearly. Good night.”
No small talk, nothing about the weather down in Qatar, about the state of the beach and whether the sharks were friendly. He switched off. He did not do a running commentary and would only call the AssDepDG when he had something to tell him: not his concern if the man sweated.
Footsteps approached. Not the ones he expected, but a lurching, stumbling giant. A guy making it back from the pub down in the village and he paused behind them. Pissed against a tree, finished and grunted and struggled to get his zip back up, and then must have realised that the car had folk in it. Would have had a good evening in the pub and was everybody’s friend. Jonas did not do enough stints outside, and was ignorant of how to send an unwelcome visitor on his way. The man was at the driver’s window, belched and then tapped it. The window came down and he must have thought that his luck was in place and chat would be good. An armed cop wearing a bulletproof v
est and with heavy stuff on his lap . . . Could he be of any assistance?
The answer came “Just fuck off, and fuck off fast.”
A response that Jonas thought appropriate, and more footsteps. The drunk stumbled away, and the policewoman returned. She settled in her seat. Turned. Passed him a dog lead. He heard panting, then saw a lolling tongue over her shoulder and smelled its foul breath. He thought it was a spaniel.
Jonas said, “I suppose they thought we needed a dog as well as a lead. Not true. Only need a lead. If we have use for a dog it will be later, not now . . .”
She said, “Disabled owner, needs two sticks for walking. She’s Rosie, that’s the dog. Doesn’t get the exercise it should. And a thermos, tea without sugar, and a half pack of biscuits.”
He had the lead and opened the door. The dog was settled on her thighs and wriggled and must have found it uncomfortable to share her lap with an H&K assault weapon. He stretched, asked that they save some tea for him. He held the lead, let it dangle and swing, kept it prominent, and started to walk towards the second turning on to the right, a cul-de-sac, where Cameron Jilkes had once lived. He looked around him, and he whistled sharply.
She came down the stairs. A light was on on the landing above her.
Cammy had waited, waited some more, had considered whether to turn and head away, and had rung the bell again.
A man walked along the road towards him. He wondered if that were her husband. Had kept walking and had ducked his head so that his expression could not be seen: none of his business if Victoria, number 8, had a visitor on a wet night at that late hour. Cammy had not hidden, had no longer cared whether he was seen or not. Another man had brought a dog out, last comfort stop for the night, and Cammy had seen the animal oblige and it had crossed the concrete strips where the car was parked and had gone on to next door’s handkerchief of grass and had squatted there. All that while he was waiting. He saw her shape. Heard her voice.
A whisper, hissed and barely audible, “All right, all right, I’m coming. Leave your key somewhere? Don’t ring it again.”
A bolt drawn back, a key turned. His mum locked the front door, and the back door, only from habit: used to say, “Nothing in here worth pinching so I’m not making this into Fort Knox.” Vicky had the full works on the door. It was opened. She looked into his face. She wore an ankle-length nightdress, prim and too old for her, had a robe over her shoulders but hanging open. Her hair fell loose on to her shoulders. No recognition but not much light was on his features. Modesty made her clutch at the robe and pull it across her.
A nervy frown and a sharp query, “Yes?”
Cammy did not answer her but did the smile. What had won him through bad times, what had left Vicky – years before – chasing after him. Did it slow and measured and he saw the realisation dawn on her. A hand up to her mouth and a little squeal and her eyes widening. Another frown as if indicating that her memory of an old face, one from a few years ago, might deceive her. A blink, because she might have been already asleep, and one hand still over her mouth and the other dropping its grip on the robe and wiping at her eyes, and her face all clean and shiny, her make-up washed off. He tried to recall how it had been, the last time he had seen her . . . remembered his excuses, a headache, an early start at work. And in his room, under the mattress were his airline ticket and enough cash, US dollars, for the one-way trip, and his passport. Probably he’d have said, “See you, love, I’ll call you.” Left it vague, but didn’t have the recall.
Her mouth was wider and her hand no longer covered it and the robe sagged open.
Gasped, “Fuck me, fucking hell. Cammy . . .”
And his smile grew because in this street, in this house, he doubted she ever used that language. Wouldn’t have done “dirty talk” here, the way they had. Not that he did dirty talk where he’d been. The guys would not have liked it and Ulrike would have hissed that the language was “out of order” . . . Then anger on her face, her lips pouting and accusation welling. And she had cause to bawl at him, even if she woke the baby, took a foot back, no slippers, bare feet, burgundy-painted nails, and kick him hard in the shin, to turn him around and shove him through the door, and slam it, bolt and lock it. The anger faded, and she must have been deluged with questions she wanted to ask, and then – perhaps – thought, “Fucking inquest, what for?” Cammy had not touched a woman in the years since he had taken the train out of Canterbury and gone to the airport, and had never thought he needed to because he was with his brothers, was never alone. The rain fell on him, and the wind blustered around him and through the door and cannoned into her and flattened her nightdress across her chest and waist and thighs.
Did not know what to say, so said nothing.
Her call. Stay or go? He did the smile, and she went through the emotions, then jerked her head. Two steps forward. She closed the door behind him. Seemed to quiz him; How long? Mouthed an answer; A couple of hours. Standing there, facing each other was time wasted.
She said, “Fuck, and I’ve missed you, you bastard.”
There were prints on the wall of the hallway, and he stepped around a buggy, and carpet on the stairs, and a pseudo antique table with a phone on it. If she had stayed with him, if he had not taken the ride to the airport four years before, if they had shacked up together, then it would have been in a couple of rooms, a bed-sit, and a kitchen in the corner, poky space, and watching the pennies let alone the pounds. Now she had a tidy home, and she had done well if that was what mattered to her . . . She had his anorak off, dropped it on the mat. Then had his jacket off.
Extraordinary how Cammy made it up the stairs because by the time he reached the last step, his clothing was scattered. All he’d done was the laces of the brogues, and her fingers had careered over his body. Belt loose and trousers dropped, and the shirt heaved off and two buttons broken, and his T-shirt and him kissing her, full on. He finished it, took off his own socks . . . she said, an afterthought and not important, that her husband was on a work thing, staying over. Into the marital bedroom and the robe dropped and the nightdress over her shoulders.
As good as he had remembered her, and then the gasp.
“Are those wounds? Is that what happened to you? How many holes? How did you live through . . .”
And he kissed her harder, covered her mouth, and they fell together and the bed heaved.
“What do you want?” the man had asked and had stood suspicious and defiant on the mat in the hall.
“Very sorry to disturb you,” Izzy had said.
“Could we please come in?” Tristram had asked.
No outside porch to give them shelter. They’d have looked half drowned, her hair would have been flattened on her head and the rain would have been running off his nose. They were probationers, trying to make their way in the covert and complicated world of the Security Service. And they had been scared and had walked along the cul-de-sac and had identified the house where Jonas Merrick had told them to be . . . Didn’t know whether their target – Jilkes, Cameron – was already at the location, didn’t know whether he was armed. Nor did they know how this family home, chosen by Merrick, would react. The curtains drawn, no lights on in the room and there would have been a view of the end of the road, the top, where it widened to make a better turning space, and where the semi-detached brick-built home stood, dark and lifeless.
“Who are you?”
“We are actually a government agency and . . .”
“Don’t piss about, Tris – we are from the Security Service. May we please come in. If you didn’t know it, sir, it’s raining out here.”
One thing to be scared and coming up a road, not knowing where a jihadi might be, and no weapon to hand, and they were a boy and a girl, and they had held hands, and had arrived on a neighbour’s doorstep. Needed to produce identification. She had to open her shoulder bag, dig inside and produce the wallet, and flash the card embedded under a cellophane cover. He had to take his plastic card from the zipped inte
rnal jacket pocket where he thought it was safe. Both needed spare hands, and they were held, and she might have blushed scarlet and might have groaned, and the man saw it. Cards produced, and shown and him peering at them and wanting to take them and move away to the light and neither permitting him to handle them. And then a woman in a dressing-gown at the top of the stairs and demanding to know who visited them, that time of night. Then two kids behind their mother, and them wanting to know too.
The man had said, “Any conman could rig up that card. No thank you, on your way and . . .”
Tristram had had his foot in the door, could take the weight of it. “This is a matter of importance. We are not here without reason.”
Izzy had her weight against Tristram’s back so he’d not shift. They should have been smiling and oiling their way forward, and giving all the shit about “national security”, then been honoured guests. “I think if we could just come in and explain, we’d . . .”
The man had said, “I think not. I am not obligated to open my house up, no warning and no clarification and no verification. Just get on your way.”
“Not a helpful attitude.”
“Not intended as a threat but failure to cooperate could rebound severely against you.”
The man was pushing harder and it was the fiasco moment, and Tristram had the flash thought in his mind that he’d be phoning up old Jonas, the crocodile hunter, and saying they’d failed to get past the lowest level of base camp, and it was the boy at the top of the stairs who saved the day.
“Steady, Dad. Of course it’s genuine. Think about it, Dad, where we are. Opposite Sadie. We can see her front door. It’ll be about that bastard . . . Let them in, Dad, it’ll be about Sadie’s bastard. Do it, Dad.”
And they had been let inside, had been economic with the facts, but the boy had smoothed their path. They sat in the Hunters’ front room and watched, sat close to each other . . . aware that it was comfortable when they held each other’s hands. Sat watching the front door of the house where Jonas Merrick was certain the target would show. And, the house into which they had intruded was quiet, no creaking boards above them, no movement. And they watched.
The Crocodile Hunter Page 25
