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

“I need food and money.”

“With that Victoria girl? Married, I heard. Put you behind her?”

“You have to feed me. At least give me money.”

“Go and rob someone. Mug them, threaten them, isn’t that what you do?”

He pushed himself up, stood his full height. He remembered how it had been, when he had wanted something. They would have gone into a village and the original defenders would have quit, run at the sight of the pick-ups approaching, flying the black flag, and dust clouds spitting from their tyres. Just the civilians left, and if he, or any of his brothers, had gone into even the most wretched home, mud bricks or concrete or corrugated iron, and had demanded food then it would have been brought for them. A family would have gone without in order that the men with guns were fed.

“Something to eat and some money, then I’m gone.”

“They’re watching from the Hunters’ place. They’re waiting for you. Put on the lights in the house and you tell them you’re here.”

“You have bread? Fruit and cheese? I have to eat.”

“I cooked your dinner that night, the night you were on a plane. I cooked it and waited for you. Then put it in the oven, then left it in the microwave, and you did not come, and your food went into the bin. You’ll get no food here . . . Did the girl not feed you?”

“Thought you would.”

“Thought wrong. You know where the knives are, there’s some fruit, and some cheese in the fridge and a loaf. You know how to use a knife, I think. Did you cut throats with a knife? Did you have a knife in your belt, keep it handy so you could slit a throat when the opportunity came up? Cut many, did you? Get the taste for it, slitting and cutting?”

He said, weakly, “I didn’t do that sort of thing. I was a fighter, was ahead, it was other people who . . .”

“Pass the parcel, don’t take blame. So you were ahead of the throat cutters and that makes your war good? No, you just facilitated, were an accessory . . . Did you fight against our people, British people? Kill any of them when you were ‘ahead’?”

“It wasn’t one-sided.”

“That’s super, Cameron. Very good. What, you on the side of the good people?”

“Russians, Syrians, Iranians, the Shi’a fighters from Lebanon. What do you think they were like?”

“I don’t have to listen to that. I don’t want to hear your pathetic justification, your propaganda talk. I just want you to go. And don’t take any of my kitchen knives with you.”

“I need some money.”

“And if I refuse?”

“You won’t . . . I must have some money. You won’t see me again, and that is my word.”

“Important is it, your word? Do I swallow that . . . and keep your justification for others to hear? Don’t want it . . . If I refuse you money will you come after me with your fists or with one of my knives? Just a monster, aren’t you?”

“Money, then I’m gone.”

“You don’t understand, do you? Come on, I’ll show you and then you’ll have learned something. Why you are not welcome.”

“The picture of me, where’s that? My picture.”

“Gone, had no use for it.”

She stood, reached out and took his hand. Held his hand as if he were a stray child and needed taking back to a parent, not her.

Sadie took him out of the darkened sitting-room, led him into the hall, crossed it. Made him go in front of her and gave him a shove to get him started up the stairs.

She could only guess what could be seen from the Hunters’ home: something or nothing. She remembered the brief exchange with the man who had spoken to her on the way home and the agreement, of sorts, she had accepted. Would she back track? She would not. Determined. Stood him in front of the door to what had been his room . . . Cameron had been awarded his own room, and her daughter had a room of her own, and most times when he was at home, and was not in one of Her Majesty’s Prisons, her elder son slept on the settee downstairs. She stood him in front of the door. It would take him a few moments to become accustomed to the light in there, the lack of it. He was inside and she closed the door behind him. It was a matter of consequences, and he would learn what he had done to her: and many others would have learned what they had inflicted on their parents, their families . . . She went into her own room.

If she had been burgled then any self-respecting thief would have easily found her tin box. The bed had a drawer under the mattress. In the drawer were extra blankets for the winter, the lightweight duvets for the summer, and at the back of the drawer was the old tin box. It was there for “a rainy day”, for more than a shower of rain but for a time when the heavens opened. Sadie had a bank account from which her basic bills were paid, but the box held the cash – £50 and £20 notes – for any catastrophe that confronted her. If the fridge packed up, or the boiler needed replacing, if the cooker failed or the washing machine, that was where the replacement would come from. She had not had a holiday, been away with a little packed bag and been a single occupant in a seaside guest-house, since he had gone. How much for him?

How much? After what he had served up for her was £200 right? Rejected. Was £100 suitable? Too much. Would £50 be acceptable, not missed? She thought so. Extracted one note from the folded wad . . . in excess of £1,000 was left in the tin. He would have to make do with what she gave him. She replaced the box in the drawer, and pushed it shut under the mattress. It was an old bed and an old