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

shore, then goes overboard. Swims away from them. They are the centre of attention: willing helpers, Border people, armed police, ambulances, the whole circus, and no sight or sound of him . . . Chose the worst conditions to attempt the crossing. Would have gauged our door was flapping open. That is ‘out of a clear blue sky’. I hope you understand.”

Both of them had noted that a new print had been taken of the dark still water in Africa or northern Australia. Both were able to identify the nostril and the beaded eye inside the pair of circles. He told them about a policeman and a policewoman from the firearms unit. About explanations that had been picked up when the Iranians were still chilled and in shock, and gabbling thanks to their God and to the “angel” sent to help them. He had a name and identification number, scribbled it, passed it to Izzy.

“What do we need to do, Jonas?” he asked.

“Dig, find me detail – anything, everything, and . . .”

“What’s the chance that he is a criminal, a druggie – a fugitive?” she asked.

“Just do it, just get on with it, just find me detail. Go on, hurry up.”

The audience terminated, they left his work area. The emptiness of the room echoed.

Tristram said, “Proper narky today, the old boy.”

Izzy said, “Because he’s frightened.”

Jonas heard her verdict. Thought it a fair assessment.

He had his filing cabinet open, was hauling out the cards. He had the list in front of him, all those who had gone on to become fighters; none of the names could be accused of cowering in cellars, all were soldiers of the caliphate. Around a hundred names now. His fingers moved over the cards with the blurring pace of a teller counting bank notes in former times. He had each card in view for the time needed to check the name: enough for him. The library of fighters who had gone away and who were – so far – unaccounted for was fixed in his memory.

What to go on, how to move forward? No description, no accent, only two factors to work on.

A leader, a man who inspired confidence, who stood at the front and did not back off. Could take a dinghy into a storm and had shown the amount of courage required by an extended Iranian family to follow, and who had brought them through. A different courage to that shown by Jonas when he sat beside Winston Gunn who wore an explosives vest which was later reported by the ordnance people to have had a killing zone of 50 metres diameter; he had been unprepared and what he did was impromptu, unrehearsed.

A singer, sufficiently familiar with formal church-based christianity that he knew the words and cadences of hymns and psalms, an area far outside the competence of Jonas Merrick who went to church only for funerals, and had been married in a registry office. And along with the Sunday morning and evensong training was the courage that was intensified by having time to consider the odds that were faced.

A formidable man. A serious man. A man of exceptional danger . . . and a man who had alighted on Jonas Merrick’s desk. He was justified in being “narky”, and would have been an idiot not to have been “frightened”. Outside his window, the storm was already history, clear blue skies had fled, and a dreary day had descended on the Thames and light rain fell.

He looked for a match, anything that would begin the process of identification.

The wind was tangling Cammy’s hair, and whipped of his bare legs, revealing the scrapes and the scars and the places where the big blood-sucking flies had bitten and left discoloured spots. There was a scar by his right knee where Ulrike had put in five stitches after probing around for shrapnel.

First he had gone behind the beach huts, had found a path where the autumn’s leaves still swirled, then walked down a residential street, where most of the people who lived there would have still been in bed or pottering around in dressing-gowns making the first cup of tea of the day. Past the castle with the old cannon in revetments on the walls and a sign stating that it was closed for the winter. He thought it a God-forsaken place . . . thought Deal held nothing for him. Wanted to get moving. He was able to manage a lurching run, and started to get blood into his legs and wind into his lungs. The town had more charity shops than he’d remembered. With the wind came the rain, which was useful. Kept the pavements near deserted. He stepped aside for a couple of Zimmer frame punters, and avoided a girl pushing a buggy. The only guy who looked at him was opening up a gallery, wearing a jacket and tie. No one else whom he passed seemed surprised that he wore a woman’s coat, not long enough to cover his knees and not much more than a cover for what old people would have called his modesty.

He came to the charity shop that the coat’s owner had named for him, down at the far end of the main street in Deal and opposite a fine church, now closed to religious worship. He hustled the coat closer to him, and sagged down in the doorway. In the gloom he could see racks of clothing, mostly women’s, and a couple of bookcases filled with paperbacks, and tables loaded with bric-à-brac. He owned nothing except for his trainers, his underpants, his wrist-watch which had been taken from a dead Syrian officer and was good quality, and his empty wallet . . . He would hitch to Canterbury, and his mum would give him cash for the journey to his target. Nobody moved him on, nobody challenged him, but a couple of dogs sniffed at him before being yanked away on their leashes, and a child walking reluctantly with a hurrying, smoking mother made a face at him. His stomach