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

docked tail. She could pull a mobile out of her pocket and do a treble hit on the 9 button, or she could stand and wave her arms and shout and point to him, or she could run as fast as her legs would carry her, and head back towards the police.

Somewhere in the background of Cammy’s life, but curtained off, there must have been a grandmother, his mum’s mother, but the rift had come when his mum had gotten pregnant with him: never mentioned, never heard from not even on birthdays or at Christmas. He thought of why he had returned to his homeland, and the target he had there, and of the efforts of many to organise the putting of the weapon in his hands, and of those committed to getting him to within sight of his goal. Thought of what the uniformed men and women in that complex of buildings had done to him and his brothers. Would an old woman with a spaniel be permitted to stand in front of him, block him, undermine the whole effort? Would he hit her? Would he disable her, silence her? Thought of it . . . She stood.

Not much to her. A frail little thing, a sparrow of a woman. A slap from him would have felled her.

She took off her coat, and told him what he should do. He crouched on the shingle, beneath the wall, and he squirmed clear of his socks and shoes, and his trousers, then his coat, his anorak and his shirt and T-shirt, down to his underpants. He gathered them up, except for the footwear, and the wind chilled him and rain flecked his skin. He passed her the pile of clothes, pushed his feet into his wet shoes and put on her coat; it was tight, and barely met at the waist and chest, and the wind lifted the hem. She said what she would do with the clothes, and where he should go in the town and which charity shop had the best to offer. She had the bundle under her arm, and the dog at her feet and he fancied she would hurry now that she was without her coat.

“You’ve come from the sea – good luck to you. Don’t hand yourself in. They’ll send you back. You’ll not find hostility here, not among Deal folk. Keep walking, don’t stop, keep going – and God go with you.”

She was, it was claimed, the best informed person in Thames House. She was Lily, and had been, it was said, a useful netball player until a fractured fibula had cut short that sporting career. She was blessed with sufficient common sense on which to float a battleship . . . All the untidy strands came across her desk in the big basement area adjacent to the Archive, and all the little scraps of information, so easily ignored, that might otherwise have had no home. She was adept in finding the right place for apparently orphan information: police, customs, military, and the observations of the general public. The equation between yet another migrant landing on the Kent coast, routine now for the local force and the Border people, and the strange submission from those who had survived an horrendous night crossing. Something of a miracle this one; had spoken of a man who had ushered them across and then had gone overboard and swum away – and then they had clammed . . . Confusing, and probably criminal, and she had in her mind a berth for it in Jonas Merrick, up on the third floor, south facing, in Room 12. The information had been passed on by Kent police from their Dover station and it was stressed that the source had only just returned from the call-out, and their information was sketchy and not yet filtered. She had the names of two officers. Jonas Merrick did fighters coming back from the war. She could not for the life of her comprehend why any “ordinary, decent criminal” would hazard liberty and life by going into the water in a dinghy and crossing 28 miles of congested Channel, and in a storm reported to be of “biblical intensity”. Lily could not think of anywhere else to send it, so the report – vague, inconclusive – went to 3/S/12. No acknowledgement, never was. No gratitude, not expected, but she reckoned that if anyone could find a home for what she had sent upstairs, it was him.

She put out the rubbish, clattering the bin out to the front of her house.

Sadie saw the Hunters queuing up for Trace to lock the front door and drive them down the hill. They waved, she waved back. She could not hear them but imagined what they might say. “Poor woman, what a burden she carries.” “A really decent human being, and look what’s been served up to her.’ And might be something patronising: “Holds herself with such dignity, such courage in adversity.” And a bit that reeked of complacency. “We do everything we can, can’t do more, everything that we ought to do, nothing to blame ourselves for.” She was dog-tired. Up in the small hours for a first shift of cleaning, then a bit of the day, and then out again as the evening started and more cleaning, and she was relied upon and her praises were sung by those who employed her. Of course, it was acknowledged that she carried a bloody heavy cross. Sympathy was given her, bucket loads of it. She had one son in High Security, had a daughter in the graveyard at the back of the house, and another son who had disappeared, left no trace, and who was a “person of interest” to the counter-terror people. Lucky to have any jobs at all . . . The Hunters’ car drove off. She went to her door, stepped inside. She had the house because Cameron’s father, as a peace offering, had left her a brown envelope which was stuffed with fivers, and that