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

make few considered actions, all done by instinct – which was why the Health and Safety gurus in the building had given him the mother and father of bollockings for endangering himself. Rather liked the boy, Winston Gunn, now alert and alive with his assumed identity and liable to throw his arms around Jonas Merrick’s neck, hug him as if that were the best gratitude he could offer. And visits to “neutral locations” to see his mother, and . . . Nothing was the same, no factor matched.

“Little terror, always hungry. Never has enough to eat. You’ve stuff in your pocket, haven’t you?” The dog strained closer to Cameron Jilkes and its nose snuffed and pressed against the young man’s pocket. Jonas sensed annoyance, but needed the dog close up and causing distraction . . . If the one-time fighter ran and failed to get clear, if the guns came after him, then he would have the chance to steel himself and would go for the old one, the tried and tested solution, that of “suicide by cop”. Could fake the sudden movement that seemed to be going after a weapon hidden inside his jacket. Could appear to be reaching into a pocket where there might well be an explosive vest’s contact device, and might be in a bus-stop queue or outside a primary school gate just as the mums and kids were gathering. This parcel of parkland, here, would be the first opportunity for a “safe” shot, no ricochets and no collateral, and might be the last. Not how he wanted it to end. Jonas could be stubborn, rarely changed his mind when an intention was fixed. Did not want him dead, too easy for him.

“Won’t be long. Couple of minutes, then I’d better be pressing on.” He sat on the bench. Let loose a little sigh of relief as if it was welcome to get the weight off his knees. He played the part well, feeble and without malice. He could smell him. It was that rank odour of a body coated in sweat and grime.

“Don’t mind me, will you.” Jonas sat upright, seemed relaxed and was not, and the dog pressed its snout against Cameron’s pocket.

“Bloody hell, Dad, look.”

Trace driving, Dave beside her, and their kids in the back. Instead of heading straight into town, where they’d get a parking space at that hour, she’d knocked the schedule back a few minutes to go by the Leisure Centre and drop Karen off for a fast hard swim to get the night’s events out of her system.

“It’s them, Ma, isn’t it?”

Karen had seen them first, and Bradley followed the line of her arm, and Trace had slowed to get into the lane that would take them to the Centre’s drop-off bay.

Like the nightmare of the night was resurrected. Dave had them. He said, “Kids are right, it’s them. Don’t know where she’s been, but it was wet – snooty bitch – and he’s there large as life. They’re with cops. See them.”

Trace pulled in, went up on to the pavement, ignored the traffic offence, pretty rare for her. “Got it, cops and guns . . . There’s an old guy over by the benches and he’s got a dog with him. See it?”

“On the bench, you reckon that’s Cameron, love?”

“Could be . . .” and Trace came off the pavement, and did a U turn and drove into the car park and reckoned, rightly, that if they took a space at the back then they’d not be noticed.

“We just keep our heads down,” Dave said. “I mean, we’re sort of part of it. Didn’t want to be but are. We’ve the right to be here, see it finish.”

Not a great view from their car, but adequate. They could see the saloon car in front of them and a woman cop, black overalls, kneeling by the front fender, a rifle at her shoulder, and another cop, a young guy using the roof of their car as a resting place for his rifle, his eye in the sight. Sitting on the tarmacadam beside the front of their car were the couple that had been in their home, mud-spattered, wet, quiet, as if unwilling to distract in any way as a crisis moment approached. Beyond the car was open grass and sunlight and fading daffodils, and the bench. Sure enough, Cameron sat there. Sure enough also that some old idiot had wandered into the middle of a police operation, might blow it.

They’d never had a dog. Cammy could remember the dogs at the gaol on the other side of the city that patrolled the outside wall, big bastards with bared teeth and straining at their lead. The dogs in Syria were as adept as the vultures in clearing up carcases: they did the job in the towns and the high-flier birds did it in the desert. Nobody in Syria kept a dog as a pet and any of them that hung around where there was food would have been carpeted in fleas, and showing their ribs . . . They were just foul and when there were too many the recruits would be sent out with rifles to improve their shooting skills.

This dog had started to irritate Cammy. It had already pulled a slice of bread from his pocket. This time he had been transferring it to his mouth when the dog had slobbered over his trousers: he had given the bread to the dog which had been dumb because that only further encouraged it . . . He supposed the old beggar next to him was gagging for some meaningless conversation. He might have said, “Good to meet you, old boy. My name is Cammy, and I was once from Sturry, just up the hill from here. Right now, to those that matter in my life, I’m Kami al-Britani. I was in Syria. They had the muhajireen, the foreign fighters, the ones that did the hard yards. I was in that lot and with some great guys, my brothers. We didn’t take any of that religious