Had never had a bolt on the kitchen outer door.
Just had a lock, and the key was never left in it so he could get into the house if he were out late, coming back from work when she and the baby would be asleep. Came in, eased the door shut and locked it again. Well oiled and quiet. The light was on in the hall and threw a beam on to the kitchen table. The day’s post was there. He tiptoed into the hall, left his jacket and overnight bag at the bottom of the stairs. Saw the trail of clothes from the front door, across the hall, and up the stairs to the landing. A mist went over his eyes.
He took the stairs two, or three, at a time and burst into the bedroom. Half-asleep, Cammy jackknifed.
The man was frozen in the doorway, his expression one of disbelief. Tried to speak but had not found his voice, wore a suit and a loosened tie. He held the door open and gawped.
Cammy heard little gagging noises from deep in Vicky’s throat and she had slid away from him and had the duvet up to hide her body, and her head was down and . . . Bit late for regrets, darling, he might have said.
But not much to say, Cammy reckoned, and wondered if the explosion – the poor sod was building for it – would be incoherent sobbing or violence.
She had grabbed too much of the duvet. Had exposed him. He was staring at Cammy’s body – where he was limp, and where the hair was and the scars of two shrapnel wounds, both highlighted by ragged stitching, and where there was a bullet wound, would have had an eyeful of it.
He swung his legs off the bed. There was a chair beside the door, covered with Vicky’s clothes. Tried a smile, nothing much else to offer, would have to come around the end of the bed. Nothing to say that needed saying. The guy, Gavin, grabbed the chair, spilled Vicky’s stuff to the floor.
Back at the car, Jonas attached the lead to the dog’s collar. Dominic asked him how he had done.
“Not bad, had a good look around. Saw pretty much what I wanted to see.”
Babs asked why he had needed a dog’s lead.
“Pretty basic. A dog has gone for a run, and he’s not come back. The owner cannot leave it out for the night so he goes to find it. Consider the time. Close on midnight . . . I reckon that half the street looked out of an upstairs window and saw me and hoped that the ‘poor old sod’ would find his animal and get back to the warm and dry. Clear to you?”
Was asked what they should do with the dog now.
“Don’t know. Have to see how things pan out.”
And now?
“I am expecting a lady to pass. I’m assuming on foot. Mrs Sadie Jilkes and it is her house we are interested in. It’s her son who we regard as a High Value Target. I suppose that with all those toys you have you are wondering if, when, you are going to be unleashed. First things first. You will follow my instructions to the letter. If I tell you to sit then you sit. If I tell you to keep your Safety on, then you keep your Safety on. I don’t argue and don’t negotiate . . . You do as I tell you or you take back the dog to its owner and you drive off and go back where you came from. Because if you dispute those instructions then you are of no use to me. Should this progress to the conclusion I believe will be the outcome, then a champagne moment in your police careers beckons. Even a dog biscuit would be welcome, I am famished.”
He sat in his place and the dog clambered over to settle on his lap.
Chapter 12
In the front passenger seat, the policeman slept.
Jonas was on his phone, had the ability to go into secure networks and chased for more on the destruction of the brothers, the group led by Kami al-Britani . . . Ironic because the stereotype would have had them drawn from refugee camps and the madrassas where kids learned by heart serious lengths of the Book, and the reality was this housing estate on the hill above a traditional village in the Garden of England. The others, he now knew, were from Europe and southern Africa and the north of the American continent. Which went to show that gobbling down easy interpretations was seldom sensible. Now he had a pecking order for the deaths. The dog on his lap sometimes broke wind, occasionally snored and wriggled to make itself more comfortable. He believed his overview was becoming clearer, as if he gazed through the prism of a glass of water that was gradually losing its cloudiness. The policewoman, behind the wheel, turned to him.
“You all right, Mr Merrick?”
“Couldn’t be better,” drily said.
She persisted. “Anything we can do for you?”
“Very kind, I don’t think so.”
“What we say, if you can’t catnap in a car then don’t do this job. You used to it? Sleeping on the floor or in cars?”
“First time, actually.”
“I’d have thought . . .”
“My experience, boxes are not often satisfactorily ticked. Conventional images usually lead us off-track. Anyway, I’ve been catching up on sleep.”
“But, sleep or not, you are backing yourself?”
“Have to. It’s where we are.”
“Where I’m from, Mr Merrick, faced with this sort of threat – potentially big, possibly non-existent – we’d have a committee sitting in and a Gold commander. Down here at ground level we’d be the pawns and shunted round the board. Does that make you a big player, maybe a bishop, if you call it yourself?”
“I do. I try to anticipate events.”
“That’s it, try to, and that’s the best you can do?”
“And it’s the best your Gold commander can do, try to anticipate.”
“If you try to, and you screw up – excuse my language, Mr Merrick – get it wrong . . .”
“I believe I have anticipated well. I’m confident. What if my picture of the boy, his character, his psychology, his plans, are wrong?”
“That is my question, Mr Merrick. No impertinence intended.”
“None taken. My humble opinion is that I know pretty much where he will be, and what target he will think he is moving towards tomorrow.”
“If you are wrong?”
“If I am wrong, the people I seek to protect become defenceless. If I am wrong, then many who could be innocent of blame for this long-running fiasco in the Middle East will have a very bad day. If I am right, then those same innocents will go about their usual business. And those who I claim are the boy’s targets will stay in ignorance. It is the way life runs.”
“We take responsibility.”
“Yes, a weighty responsibility.”
“And live with it.”
“We all do, and accept realities. I offer you a confidence, officer: we are stretched to snapping point. That everyone can sleep safe in their beds demands that resources are managed with the acceptance of a gamble. Of course it is a gamble. Life is a gamble.”
“Makes for a lonely old world, Mr Merrick.”
“Indeed. I don’t complain. Lonely also for him. We must not forget him. I have to say that I find excessive examination of the prospects of failure and the ethics of responsibility tend to get in the way of doing the job, straightforward or not. Nice dog, this Rosie, well mannered. Last word on the subject, I imagine it’s not all milk and honey for our boy.”
He was gathering up his clothing, the last pieces that had come off and were lying on the landing.
“You bastard, pig – get the hell out of my house.”
Then the scream from inside the bedroom: Cammy thought Vicky and Gavin would have been hanging on to each other, strangers, but recognising the need to stay close. They’d sort it out . . . Did he care? Not greatly.
“Get out . . . Go, go to hell.”
Cammy could not imagine the reaction he’d have had if he had come back to wherever – his mum’s home, or the first hostel in Raqqa, or the old army camp in Deir Ezzor – and his girl had been on her back with her legs splayed and a bloke beside her, bollock naked. Had never been a girl who had mattered enough to him.
To begin with, Gavin – husband and supposed “hunter gatherer” – had gone quiet, like he’d swallowed his tongue.
“Get out
of my house. Do you know what you’ve done? Does it matter to you?”
Had an anguish to it. As if he believed a wrong had been done that could never be righted. Well, their business, not Cammy’s. He had reached the hall, had his underwear and socks on and retrieved the rest of his clothes.
“I suppose where you were, you thought yourself something special. People bowed and scraped – not because of who you were but because you had a bloody weapon. Means all you were is a bully. Pity is you weren’t killed there. You will be, though. You will be killed.”
Gavin had picked up the chair where Vicky’s clothes had been, and was framed in the bedroom doorway. He was yelling and Vicky had now chimed in, and was sobbing. Predictably, the baby had woken, and now chimed in. Would wake next door, would rouse half the street. All of them blubbering . . . Gavin, wronged and humiliated, was coming down the stairs with the chair raised.
“Decent people will finish you off. Decent people don’t have a rifle, but that doesn’t make them frightened of you.”
Cammy was dragging on his trousers. The chair was swung high and dislodged the light shade on the hall ceiling, then broke the bulb and Gavin was huge against the wall and flailed again with the chair, and caught Cammy. The blow took him across the side of the face, a chair leg whacking his cheek, and his ear. Another blow came. Cammy ignored it, had the trousers on, was fastening his belt.
“People are decent and ordinary . . . they will finish you, believe it.”
Cammy was defenceless. More blows with the chair. Twisted his head in time to avoid the tip of the chair leg that might have caught his eye, instead the impact was against his lip. Tasted blood, his own blood. Her sobbing was louder and the baby screamed fit to bust, and the noise of it dinned around him. He saw a savagery in Gavin’s face. When was the last time that the guy had ever racked up such anger? Ever? His own blood was in his mouth and he was now fastening his shirt, and blood was on his hands and on his shirt front.
“You know what ‘ordinary’ is? One day you will look at those around you and realise they have control of you. The ordinary people.”
His brothers had never seen Kami al-Britani cower. Never seen him show fear. Vicky was on the landing, had the baby at her shoulder and was patting its back. It yelled, she yelled, and her man still came after Cammy.
“Victoria said you were a shit and dangerous. Your Ma must be ashamed of you, her son. Bastard, weren’t you? One-night stand and she ended up with you.”
At the first camp, where the foreign fighters were housed, they had been taught self-defence, unarmed combat stuff, all the moves that would show the emirs which of the newcomers were worth spending time on, and which could be dumped into administration or could just be fed into the front line, human wave and all that crap. Cammy could have taken two steps up the stairs, could have deflected the swing of the chair, pushing it aside. He could have chopped at the husband’s throat with the heel of his hand and seen him drop dead on the carpet. Or put two fingers into his eyes which would have blinded him. Cracked his forehead against the man’s nose and he’d go down sobbing at the pain. Could have put a knee into the man’s groin and done it hard enough so that the will to fight would leave him and he would be lying on the floor, moaning – and the chance of a sibling for the baby would be out the window. He did not do any of them, just finished dressing and took the blows.
“You think your Ma will welcome you? Well, you’re wrong. Nobody wants you. You’re on your own. Was it like that where you were? Filling in time between wrecking places, wrecking people? You’re a freak, that’s all you are.”
Because he did not flinch, nor duck his head away, but rode the blows and let the cuts bleed on his face, he could see Vicky. She had retrieved the robe, not that it hid much of her, and he saw the dull death in her eyes, and she could not silence her own crying nor her baby’s. Cammy could have stopped the attack on him at any moment but didn’t. He picked up his jacket and anorak and was tying his shoe laces. And said nothing.
“Just get out.”
He opened the front door. Thought the rain was slackening. Turned to face the guy at the bottom of the stairs . . . and Cammy feinted, as if to go forward, as if to retaliate. Gavin stumbled back and slipped, caught himself in the chair, and went over, and Cammy smiled softly at him; had let him know what might have been and he’d carry that to his grave, the memory of that moment . . . No room for fear in the last few hours available to Cammy.
He went out, leaving the door to swing in the wind, walked down the path to the pavement. Could have killed him . . . felt the blood on his face . . . Could have killed him and thought as little of it as if Vicky’s husband had been a Syrian, an Iranian, a Russian. Could have closed him down. She would read about him, would see his picture in the paper, on the TV. Would know he had shown no fear. And it was time to get up the hill above Sturry village and find his mum.
Her voice was strident in the night. “They were here. Same people as when you went, the Security Service. They’re expecting you, waiting for you. Did you think you could slink back and not be noticed? They’re looking for you. Tracking you. I hope you’re cowering in a ditch, pissing yourself, when they get you. Fuck you for coming here.”
They walked in a small phalanx into the Officers’ Mess. It was a traditional RAF Station building: a wide hallway, walls covered with paintings – some good, some less so – of the aircraft that, over the years, had flown from the long runway on the east side of the village. They were in the flat lands of Lincolnshire, in the heart of the East Midlands surrounded by prosperous farms. They need not have stayed so late in the prefabricated buildings in which, at least four days a week, they went to war. Well before their weapons platforms had landed at a Turkish-administered airfield, the two Reapers had been handed over to local ground control for the process of bringing them in and lining them up and dropping them down. But a bond existed between the mainstream crews that operated the unmanned machines, and the guys stayed in their padded seats, watching, almost as friends, until they had landed.
Now they came to the Mess for a late-night drink. They had families scattered on the base who might have been waiting up for them, wanting to talk about bills, or school reports . . . a host of matters that had nothing to do with the testing, taxing business of flying the platforms – burdened by bombs and lethal missiles – over the war zone. They went for a last drink in the Mess, still wearing their flying kit overalls with rank insignia on the shoulders and with the bright colours of the Union flag sewn on to the upper arms. It was necessary for these modern-day warriors, whose craft sneaked silently and unseen over a distant battlefield, to wind down after a day in the comfort of their ergonomic chairs. Truth was, the strains on their minds of this “removed” form of warfare had the potential to play merry hell with their family lives. They had all spent the day, the pilot and the sensor operator and the mission intelligence goon assigned to each Reaper, watching the sectors awarded them: one had had a wadi and the other a village community, and they had overflown both sites and had looked for the High Value Targets that the intelligence fed them, and for individual vehicles. Twice that day, one had gone to the state of readiness before releasing a Hellfire, then had backed off from firing, and the other had done great figure of eight patterns in the high skies and had not prepared to shoot. The crews would never have admitted that spending those hours in the negative state – no explosion to watch on the screen, no plume of smoke rising, no clearance of the cloud when the debris fell back to the ground, no bodies to count – left them taut and frustrated. They had done their debrief and had walked to the Mess and would try to relax and talk about holidays, barmaids in the surrounding villages, vehicle showrooms, and football. Would try to wind down and then would go home. Would all tiptoe into the kids’ bedrooms and see a sleeping child and ease out, then would go down to the kitchen where the wife might be watching a TV show, flicking the pages of a magazine, wrestling with a tax form, and there would be the brief exchange
that was possible if the anxiety, the tension, of the day had been successfully degraded in the Mess.
“Hi, love, day go all right?”
“Bit knackered, but good – thanks.”
And “good” meant that they had not done a “splash” on a flat-roofed building and taken down three or four jihadis who intelligence reckoned to be prime targets, and then found it was a place where their version of the Mothers’ Union was chatting. Had not hit a gathering of supposed fighters, and learned – too late – that they had “rifled” a wedding party with a Hellfire. “Good” meant there had been no cluster-fuck moments, and they had not needed to choose which little grey shadow on the ground went quickly to Paradise and which lived until the next day’s Reaper patrol.
Sitting on the lower bunk in their cabin, Baz and Mags had a good view of the quayside.
The last vehicles had gone through the parking lot before driving on board. The sounds of the big doors rising and then clamping tight shut. Men on the quayside dangling huge ropes and then dragging them on board after they had been freed. The shake in the ferry from the surge of the engines. It went out slowly. Baz had the trained eye and Mags had the nose for what was unusual. Neither his eye or her nose had warned them. Baz thought it was all as he had predicted. The camper was a deck below them. Stowed away in the van was the package . . . sure as God spoke if Baz had had to lift it clear he’d have done himself a hernia. A hell of a weight. He knew about the Russian built RPG-7 launcher and about the armour-piercing capabilities of the projectiles that were effective at least up to 400 yards. Not much, but enough. A tidy weapon, he’d have said.
As they had gone on board, him driving and her beside him, and the platform had shaken under them, Baz had said, “You all right for this, last time of asking?”
The Crocodile Hunter Page 27
