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

“No, what I’m thinking about is the bonanza coming our way. Tell you something . . . it’ll go, whatever it is, to some lunatic who’ll probably shove it under his bed and keep it there for a rainy day, know what I mean? And if he ever did arm it up he’d end up shooting his foot off. Just an idiot from Bradford or Luton who wants to feel he’s the top cat and has a loud enough shout to have brought it into the country. The chance of it going to a guy who knows what it’s about, how to use it, has the training, is less than nil. Believe me, Mags.”

“And that’s not all shit?”

“You worry too much. An idiot, a lunatic, what he’ll be, just a dreamer . . . And when they do get their act together, Mags, we’ll be at home but the camper won’t be. And you remember those pleasant lads we gave a ride to, who sat in the back with all their bags? How were we to know what they left in – after we dropped them off?”

“Smart thinking.”

“Just a pair of old folks, aren’t we? A bit simple and a bit naive . . . and ahead of the game. Give us a kiss, love.”

Cammy reached the river.

Did not stop, did not break his stride. A short steep slope marked the path down to the river’s bank, and Cammy fell there and pitched forward and was spread-eagled on the path. He dug in an elbow and plunged his fingers into the mud, so he did not go into the water.

He had used the path from the age of eight or nine, had never tripped and fallen. He was exhausted and his feet were painful, and the bread he had wolfed, only half of what he had snatched, ached in his gut. Had to get to Canterbury, then have to find somewhere to rest, then would head for the station and would need to buy a ticket. Mud smeared his clothes and likely there was some on his face, and he was unshaven, and had the scars where Vicky’s guy had hit him with the chair. The wind rattled in the tops of the trees on either side of the river, coming in erratic gusts. It would be quiet, then without warning the branches would clatter and the trunks rub together and scream, and twice rotten branches had broken off and come down, made a whip-crack sound. He knelt, trying to recreate the professionalism that his brothers had trusted in. Listened. Heard the water’s fall and the song of the wind and the breaking of more branches. Waited long enough to know that he was not followed.

He remembered the police who had been in the house when they were searching for his brother, and those who had come when his sister had been killed. He had thought them unimaginative and seeming to speak from a script and they would have been of the same standard as those who his mum had said were camped in the Hunters’ home. Had no doubt that he had fooled them, would be far gone by the time that the first light of the sun popped up over the Margate road and came on to the cul-de-sac and fell on the front of his mum’s house, and the Hunters’ . . . because he was clever, they were not.

“Just keep going,” Jonas said into his phone. “Enjoy the spirit of the chase.”

The boy had been puffing and gasping, like he was a marathon runner and short of training, and he could hear the girl behind him, whining and whingeing and struggling to keep up. He had his torch on, and was tracing the route of a stream that ran adjacent to the river. All making sense, all satisfactory. He saw where the stream came out of a ribbon of woodland, and a stretch of open ground. He stabbed that point on the map and the policeman shrugged, accepted.

A few minutes before, they had been edging their way down the Margate road and Jonas had laughed. Tristram and Izzy had come at a gangling run from someone’s garden and a cat had fled in front of them. They had been holding hands. He did not assess that as anything romantic, more in the interests of self-preservation: they needed each other and would have been frightened if separated, him fearful of losing her and her unwilling to take responsibility for leading. The policewoman had looked around at him and he had read her, had nodded. She had flashed them. Two flicks on the headlights and they had stopped, nearly piled into each other and would have looked up the road and not seen, in the gloom, the cause of it, and Tristram had yanked her after him . . . Now they had called him, had reported where they thought they might be. Very near to the end.

It seemed to Jonas that the dog had also appreciated that matters now moved at pace. It sat upright on his lap and peered through the window, raked eyes over dark pavements, unlit homes and gardens, and a growl was in its throat when they passed two women, trudging along the pavement towards the main road.

His hand went into his jacket pocket, and unzipped a small compartment, a place where a railway ticket could have been stored safely, or coins for a parking meter, or in this instance, or for a key. Attached to the key was a length of pink ribbon. He had asked Vera for some ribbon from her work-basket and she had produced this piece, around a foot long, and he had looped it through and had knotted it securely to the key. For weeks, months, getting on for years, it had remained in his desk drawer. Had been there ever since he had been allocated that small area in 3/S/12 and the desk had been moved in.

They had come on to the main road, the