Wolfboy might wait an hour, not longer. Might wait an hour . . . If no call were received, if the schedule were broken, Wolfboy would leave the keys in the ignition, then would walk smartly, purposefully, past the entrance to the crematorium and would head for the bus-stop, and would be on his way home. If no call reached him, if the man who intended to die for the cause had in fact been arrested, if he were now in a bleak interrogation room, then the likelihood, Wolfboy had been told, was that he would talk: it was said that very few resisted questioning.
Just another day at the Station.
Two Reaper drones were flown that day and they quartered the airspace above deserted villages north of the Syrian town of Deir Ezzor and over a desert area close to the ruins of Palmyra.
The nursery on the Station was open, and the canteen staff were busy and lunch was about to be served in the Officers’ Mess. Technical teams worked hard at the maintenance of the electronics required to keep the birds airborne some 2,500 miles away, and pilots flew and sensor operators checked their payload of munitions, and the intelligence people sifted what was passed them . . . Twice that morning the Reaper lenses had fastened on to, focused and made sharp, the whitened bones uncovered by the weather from shallow graves, but that was not unusual. They were seen and noted and then the cameras had moved on.
On the south side of Thames House, Jonas took the lift to the third floor, then set off down the familiar corridor which would take him beyond the coffee machines and the confectionery dispenser to Room 12. He had been via the room occupied by the resident nurse, and his face had been cleaned and the scars covered in Elastoplast strips, and his broken lip had been stitched, which was painful. And had been to see the AssDepDG: no inquests and no hindsight examination, and he had been asked what he intended to do in the immediate future, and had answered. Then had been asked what route he planned to take, and had said what road he had chosen. Must have looked a bit of a sight: the mud had dried on his trousers and their creases were long gone and his jacket buttons were torn loose and his shirt was covered in dirt stains and his tie was crumpled, and he had neither shaved nor been able to polish his shoes. He carried his bag, and arrived at the door of 3/S/12 and opened it. The noise stopped. No conversation, no clicking at a keyboard, and no talking into a phone. Action suspended. All eyes were on him, and they tried to strip into his mind and to read him – might not have liked him nor enjoyed his company – but seemed to want to understand him better. No applause and no congratulations. He saw Tristram and Izzy sitting at the central table, already their resignation letters had been copied to him. He acknowledged none of them but went into his private area. The bag would go back in the cupboard, with the sponge bag, the clean socks and the fresh shirt, and pyjamas. All was as he had left it. He did not have time to waste . . . He reached up and unfastened the two pictures. First off the wall was the view of the stagnant pool where two inked circles showed the tip of a nostril and the narrowed eye. He pulled it off the wall, but carefully so that it did not tear. Next, the original picture was taken down, the beast with the horrid set of irregular teeth. He looked around him, was satisfied and went back into the main area. Jonas made a point of first going to where Izzy sat and he dropped in front of her the portrait of the crocodile’s head, and then allowed that of the water expanse to flutter into Tristram’s place. He said nothing. He could have wished them well, could have urged that they think again on their futures and might contemplate withdrawing their resignations. He did not look back and went out through the door and closed it after him. They would have heard his footsteps going away down the corridor.
A cell door slammed. Keys rattled, footsteps retreated, a distant voice yelled abuse at an unnamed target. He sat on the bed, had nowhere else to sit and he gazed at the tiled floor, had nowhere else to look.
Sitting opposite each other at a canteen table, foreswearing the senior dining-room were the AssDepDG and the DepDG.
“He’s gone off home now. He’ll take a week’s leave: can’t say that he’ll use it all but at least some of it. It has actually been a rather extraordinary few hours. For us, because we are used to confronting home-grown fighters who have limited experience in weapons and tactics, though still danerous. For him, he will have come from a war zone and will be looking into the skies for fixed-wing fast jets and for missile-carrying drones, and expecting to have close-quarter fighting with top-drawer Special Forces and going right down the scales to Syrian press-ganged recruits but also with plenty of firepower. The ground chosen for our operation was wonderfully banal – a little corner of east Kent, and the most famous cathedral city in the Anglican world. Jilkes would have been awarded a ‘best in show’ rosette where he had been, whereas down there, Canterbury, he’d have been floundering like a bird with a broken wing. Jonas recognised it, and went for the boy’s jugular. Takes all sorts, and thank the good Lord we still have room for him, our Eternal Flame, our Wobby. An unsung hero, the best type . . . So good, these sausages, aren’t they?”
Other than the motor cycle in front of them, the road ahead was clear.
When he had reached the front step, had been fiddling for the key, Vera had opened the door.
“What’s this, some sort of scarecrow?”
He had grinned, a little sheepishly, had said something about needing a bath and a brush-up.
“I suppose you walked into a door.”
A bit of a shrug. He had stood in the hall and had eased out of his coat, then had discarded the stained jacket, had dropped his trousers, then had taken off his shirt and tie.
“Clever door, if it could make those bruises on your throat.”
He had given her a rueful kiss on the cheek, and she had pulled a face, then had gathered up his clothing and he had padded off up the stairs to run the bath, and in the mirror while the water cascaded from the taps he could see the damage on his face that the in-house nurse had sealed. He had called down his hope for a departure time, and she had started to prepare the necessary food, and what else they took, and had gone to the garage to find the cat’s basket. While he lay in the bath she would also have been around to the back door of their neighbour and warned her they’d be away a few days. Might have been asked for how long – might have said she had not been told, and grimaced.
The motorcycle took them at a steady pace, one that recognised without quibble the speed limit for that section of road.
He had come down the stairs and the cat had been shouting abuse from the cage. She had asked, “Not my business, Jonas, but what’s the state of the door?”
He’d said, “The door came off badly. The door’s shoulder took a whack from a truncheon which would have hurt, and the door’s ankle ended up with a dog bite, only a spaniel but done with vigour. And the door won’t be going off to the country for some quiet walks because it will be under lock and key. The best place for a door – be there for a bit, quite a bit.”
Which at the time was enough of an explanation. He was pleased with the expertise he’d shown when he hooked up the caravan to the tow-bar, then bringing it out of the parking area in front of their house, then beginning the journey from the tree-lined road in Raynes Park, where very soon the blossom would make a show. Vera had made a suggestion for a minor diversion as they had headed west. Had shown him a destination on the map, and he had agreed. There was a gin factory in a building once used as a printing works, and the Test river ran through an historic mill beside the factory. He had walked around the site, had seen brown trout from a footbridge, and had stayed close to his wife and had learned about the production of the drink and how the flavours were added from hothouse-grown plants – and then had had a sample, non-alcoholic, in their bar. He had permitted her all the time she might have wanted as if he had no distractions and his scabbing wounds gave no irritation. The place was crowded and several of the other visitors peered at him. At Vera’s guidance, Jonas had wrapped a loose scarf around his throat and it hid the flesh around his windpipe, but he heard her say to a w
oman who had shown particular interest that he’d “had a fight with a door, quite a rough door.” And while Jonas learned about the production of “mothers’ ruin”, he could reflect – briefly – that his opponent would by now have been marched out of the holding cell and would be in an interrogation suite. A relay of questioners would be forming an orderly queue and waiting to get at him and prise open his secrets’ box, which would be the interesting bit for Cameron Jilkes and would keep him alert; more interesting than the following months and years in the cell when no one would come to visit. No one would bother.
They had joined the A303 at the Beacon Hill roundabout, where the motorcycle had awaited their arrival. Jonas flashed his lights and received an acknowledging wave and the rider had pulled out ahead of him, and the rotating blue light on a pole at the back of the bike had been activated. That had been good of the AssDepDG, fixing it with a county’s traffic division, had been appreciated.
“Is that for us?” Vera had asked.
He chirped, “Must have the wrong vehicle to escort, but we’ll not deny a gift horse.”
The road in front stayed clear. Behind Jonas and Vera would have been a convoy of motorists going puce with frustration. He and Vera, and the constabulary, would have been subject to violent abuse, and a few tried to take the matter into their own hands and accelerated up the road in an attempt to pass the caravan, then had found the centre of the road occupied by a police motorcyclist. No overtaking was permitted. They passed Stonehenge. It looked spectacular that late afternoon. Clean sunshine fell on the stones and the lichen was highlighted and the sky was scoured by the winds so the clouds moved fast. Very pretty . . .
Not so in the interview suite. He imagined an atmosphere of scrupulous politeness directed toward Cameron Jilkes, and they would have been beavering to locate the weapon he would have used . . . By now, but for the scrap in that Canterbury park, it would all have been over at the Station that Jonas assumed would have been the target. Blood and guts and smoke and sirens, and recriminations on a grand scale. They would want to find that weapon and quickly, and learn about the contacts in this country and abroad. Would want to exploit that window of opportunity when the prisoner had so recently gone into the net.
After Stonehenge and Winterbourne Stoke, the A303 widened to dual carriageway. Not that it would help the grumbling convoy in their wake. Nothing passed him. Jonas reckoned the motorcyclist might have been the most perverse character in that force’s traffic section. The rider was out in the fast lane, and brooked no overtaking. After Wylye, and after Chicklade, were steep hills where Jonas needed to drop his speed below the limit, and then the rest of his following log-jam had to ape him. So pleasant, Vera remarked, not to have the hassle of traffic. It was good not to speed and the cat in its basket would not be thrown around on the back seat of their car. By the time they reached the turning for Wolverton Oak, Jonas imagined that the cars and lorries and vans behind him stretched all the way back to the Keysley Down crossroads. He thought himself richly rewarded for his encounter in the park.
Coming towards the junction for Stoke Trister to the south or Stoney Stoke to the north, he flashed his headlights, and the rider acknowledged him, gave a gloved salute. He indicated left . . . There was a small site they had heard of at the pub in Stourton Caundle, a Dorset village. He swung the wheel, waved to the motorcyclist, and he was gone and the traffic squashed behind was in racing mood. He felt quite tired. Not as tired as his opponent would be. The questioning would be remorseless and, from what Jonas had read, they would exact every possible advantage from the early sessions because opened windows should always be used to maximum effect.
They were now on narrow B roads and she called out the directions from her phone. There were cows grazing beyond neat hedgerows, and sheep, and a tractor was shifting silage on a trailer. Jonas felt the stress drip off him and Vera had looped her arm around his, and he thought he might sleep many hours when he had parked the caravan, hooked up the power and the water, and stretched and walked around the site as dusk fell. Cameron Jilkes was unlikely to see any cows or sheep for twenty years, and no country dusk to watch as the sun dipped through the trellis shapes of leafless old trees.
She gave him good warning of the turning out of Stalbridge Weston to Stourton Caundle, and said, “Jonas, I suppose I ought to know . . . what sort of day was it for you?”
He pondered for a moment and a low branch scraped the caravan’s side. They would be working hard on Cameron Jilkes, bleeding him, and unlikely he would hold out much longer, would want a bed and food and to lie in darkness and contemplate his misery. He deliberated on what he should say. Took a deep breath.
“A near-run thing. That sort of day. Could have been worse – yes, quite a bit worse.”
“Are you finished with it, Jonas, or not finished?”
“The cat will be glad when we get there. Trouble is that those sort of near-run things keep coming along, without an end in sight. Probably, sorry and all that, not finished . . . The cat’s been very good . . . No, not finished if they sniff out another crocodile.”
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Table of Contents
About the Author
Also by Gerald Seymour
Title Page
Imprint Page
Dedication
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Endmatter page 1
Endmatter page 2
The Crocodile Hunter Page 38
