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

the opportunity to think, search for guidance in a crystal ball, be listened to, respected. Both might have imagined that they had entered an asylum. He was not interrupted.

“There is space for another image. You will find it for me this afternoon. Quite a busy afternoon actually because I have an appointment arranged for you. The picture you will find will show an expanse of water. Somewhere hot and the water is stagnant and reflects undergrowth on a bank, drifting weed floating on a current. A deer might come to drink, or a wading bird flop down from a branch and look to spear a fish. The predator remains unseen, but the fact that he, or she, is not seen does not mean that the hunger or irritation has lessened: on the contrary, it has increased. Perhaps the sharp-eyed man, the crocodile hunter, will identify the killer. If he does not, then the deer or the bird, the innocent, will die – or the tourist swimmer, or the farmer. The predator has great patience, especially when an empty belly or irritation governs behaviour. It is submerged . . . a body that is ten feet long, or fifteen feet, could be twenty, is below the water. It will use all the natural aids available to stay concealed, it can employ the debris in the river. The water is dark, impenetrable, and no outline of its body is visible. So, it cannot be seen and therefore cannot be thwarted? No . . . not true.”

No response, except that both gazed up at the picture and he thought they concentrated on the mouthful of heavy, sharp, white teeth and imagined their ability to take off a leg or an arm as surely as the shrapnel from any home-prepared explosive device.

“It has to breathe. It needs air. It has lungs that are serviced by nostrils. It cannot breathe unless the nostrils are above the water-line, and, whatever the camouflage employed, the nostrils are visible. They can be seen if the hunter knows what he looks for. It must see. It has eyes set almost at the top of its scaled head that can be mistaken for a waterlogged dead tree, but sometimes there is light coming off an eye, a reflection, and that can be a giveaway of his presence. The nostrils and eyes could be a half-inch or an inch above the surface and you have to search hard to locate them . . . We have to. If we do not, then the innocents are slaughtered and we have failed. Do I make myself clear?”

“I think so.”

“Understood.”

Jonas said, “I am not interested in those silly girls who flocked to Syria and spread their legs and now want to get back to the comfort and security of our country. They are irrelevant. Nor am I much interested in the boys who dropped out of college, took a crash course in Islamic studies, who might have chopped a few heads off, but then ran as fast as skinny feet would carry them when the real fighting started, surrendered, claim now they want a ‘fair trial’: tedious little creatures. I care about the crocodiles . . . There were British-born fighters who went to Syria, and they are not entangled with a girl and with brats. They will not surrender, but they are hungry for vengeance, they incubate hatred . . . They have been subject to retreat and failure, they have had their bums bombed from dawn till dusk, have been tracked by drones and by Special Forces military, and now they are coming back and they will have the intention of hurting us . . . We have to look for the nostrils and the eyes. Nearly through . . . Where they’ve gone this evening, that is not in the league I have been describing. I deal with those coming back, the returnees, the crocodiles we can barely see. Submerged until they strike. We look in what seem to be peaceful waters and have to see the nostrils or the eyes . . .”

He saw the chin of the young man wobble, quiver, like a sentence was planned but he hesitated as to whether to deliver it.

“May I ask a question, Mr Merrick?”

“You may, and I am usually Jonas.”

“If it is not out of place – you have the QGM. Can I ask in what circumstances?”

Jonas was dismissive. “They come round by rote, same as a lottery card win, a pin going into a list of names. And not gossiped about. We frown on gossip.”

He repeated the image he wanted them to find, then print – nostrils and eyes – and told them where they should be and when. Perhaps they had social engagements but his glance withered them and neither spoke. They stumbled out, could not get away from him fast enough.

It should not have been known, ought to have been an in-house secret. A mistake in the addressing of an envelope had let it out. Vera had the medal at the bottom of her knicker drawer. Had not been to the Palace in a hired suit, but had been invested, in a degree of privacy, at a Royal’s country home, no photographs taken. No announcement for internal consumption had been made, nor anything for the general public: the few who had whispered had been isolated, then bollocked, and warned of consequences . . . Nor had criminal charges been brought against Winston Gunn.

He gazed a long time at the crocodile picture. Imagined the beast watching, waiting, drifting with the flow of water and moving closer to a target – clever and deadly.

The tide had turned, the wind had freshened, and the wall of surf pushed closer. Cammy’s gaze alternated between the water and the white caps that chased the surf and the far horizon.

He had been in Marseilles, had met a man in a housing estate, dismal towers on the hills above the airport, and the man was the contact that pushed him towards Bordeaux. The talk between them had been of the Channel. A shrug, a cough, a spit on to the pavement as