The Crocodile Hunter by Gerald Seymour (best summer reads of all time txt) 📕

How had it gone? Jonas had shrugged.

Was there a good turnout? He’d grimaced.

A decent speech from the big man? Gave a gesture that meant he could not answer directly.

Were the right things said? Just a lift of the eyebrows.

What had they given him? Thirty-five years’ work, what was the present? He had muttered that he didn’t know what the retirement gift was, had not been there when it should have been presented, then had turned away from her as if the interrogation irritated him.

What had happened? Where had he been? Was there a “difficulty”? Raincoat off and on the hook, and the wrist bracelet unlocked and the briefcase, empty but for his sandwich box, stowed away under the hall table, and his hat slotted above his coat. No explanation offered. Except that he was rather tired, and needed a lie down, and a cup of tea would be welcome. Halfway up the stairs he had stopped. He had not turned to face her but had spoken from the side of his mouth. “It was a funny old evening, dear. An unpredictable one, and sort of made a bit of a nonsense of the timetable. What was planned didn’t happen. I’ll tell you what occurred, but that’ll be ‘one day’, not tomorrow. Think the best place for me is bed.” She had not pestered him. He’d undressed, put on his pyjamas, had brushed his teeth, and flopped on the bed, had stared at the ceiling, had reflected on the evening and his contact with Winston Gunn. The events had played in his mind and he’d remembered each of the heartbeats in his chest when he’d taken the vest and lobbed it over the retaining wall and heard it plummet into the water. Still awake when Vera had come up, he’d seen her shadow movements as she laid her clothes on the chair and put on her usual long nightdress, and she’d slipped into bed and had turned away and had seemed to sleep, or try to. No conversation, nothing said.

There was a clock in a church over to the west from the centre of Raynes Park that struck the hour. Her pretence at sleep was poor . . . she was a good wife for a man working in the Service, did not expect to be briefed on the classified work he carried out at Thames House. Trouble was that he was wider awake than he had been when getting into bed, and the latest worry was whether the alarm had been switched off. He did not have to be up at ten minutes to six the next morning, and Vera would not need to be in the kitchen, making his sandwiches and filling his flask . . . A car crawled along the road. He thought it stopped outside the Derbyshires’, then nudged forward, then dawdled. He heard a door open and a murmur of voices. He was good at recognising speech. He switched on the bedside light, told Vera to stay upstairs, went down and unlocked and opened the front door. The Assistant Deputy Director General was coming up his path. It was past four. Jonas felt foul, limp, and without energy. He had always reckoned that the AssDepDG rather despised him, might have been the originator of the Eternal Flame jibe, and the speech in the atrium would have been short, the minimum that courtesy demanded.

On the doormat, he was told, “You have my very sincere congratulations, Jonas. You are something of an example to us all, we are in your debt. What is particularly impressive is that you made a device safe when normal procedure would have called for a mass evacuation of Westminster, Parliament, all those jokers who mill about there. And on top of that would have been a lockdown while little Master Gunn would have been surrounded by marksmen and have the chance to go to God like any good martyr. Instead he is alive and singing with a canary’s full vocal strength . . . Would there be any chance of a cup of tea for me and Harry? I’ve underestimated you, Jonas, and I feel ashamed to admit it. You showed tonight an instinct of how to react that very few in that great heap of a building could have matched. I’m making a rather humble request, Jonas. These are stark times, as you know damn well – I want you there. Want you back at your desk. Sorry, too valuable to be retired . . . Put it another way: if that little beggar had detonated, then the reputation of the Service would have been shredded, credibility gone. A generation of officers would have been damaged. Back at your desk, Jonas – please. Sorry to ask again, but a cup of tea if that’s possible for Harry and me.” It was then that Jonas had realised that Vera was at the bottom of the stairs, and she’d said something about him being rude in not inviting his guests inside.

They’d sat around the kitchen table. Vera had made tea and put some biscuits on a plate. Harry was a pool driver and had stayed silent, and Vera had only queried whether milk and sugar went with the tea, and Jonas had bitten his lower lip, and remembered sneers and mocking insults, but – of course – had accepted.

Jonas had said later, “They want me to go back, to cancel retirement. It’s because of something that happened tonight. They want me to keep working.”

Vera had said, “Thank God for that.”

They were still talking and the cat had come in through the flap, and the alarm had gone off upstairs. He had showered and shaved, and dressed, and Vera had done toast and cereal for them all, and Jonas had talked about his filing system, its value, and what he looked for . . . At that time in the morning it was a fast run into London, and it was comfortable in the car and smooth