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

But that day Jonas would have liked to have heard the bustle of the team’s voices. Would have killed to have felt that he was not alone . . . Of the three cards that he examined there were two that had a few of the necessary markers, and one that stood out. He detested the idea of “rucksack preconceptions”, and when he had youngsters under his tutelage he would rail against the idea of a closed mind, fitting facts to the outlines of prejudice and the distortions that came from blinkered thinking. He would continue to stamp on a conclusion, give it every opportunity to wriggle away, and when it was almost crushed – as would have been any living creature that was unfortunate enough to find itself between the jaws of that brute pictured on his wall – then he might accept that the idea held substance. He needed certainty.

“Nothing soft about him. Enveloped in anger. Never going to say, ‘Sorry and all that, seemed a good idea at the time. Want to settle down now, have a second chance, drive a delivery van, rear some kids, put it all behind me. Oh, the killing? Someone else did that, I was just a bottle-washer.’ Not that sort of man.”

There was a youth, second-year computer studies at Westminster University, had done time in Pentonville for credit card fraud and inside had played in a rock band which was thought by the authorities to be helpful and likely to wean him from potential radicalisation. Wrong: he had taken the black flag shilling, and had travelled to Syria . . . Another had worked in an uncle’s record store in Wolverhampton, and was known for his knowledge of vinyl and had an interest in guitar playing until an imam had snared him, and he had gone and there were reports that he had died in an air strike but not confirmed. And there was another . . . the card that he most often went back to, and . . . The silence was broken by the iron-tipped shoes rattling down the corridor, hesitating momentarily by the door, and the squeak as it opened and closed. The AssDepDG was at his entrance. Jonas did not turn to face his visitor but addressed the wall, the beast.

“Not there yet. But confident that we are close to an identification. Will it come soon enough? Don’t know . . . If I’m right then you will be told.”

The footsteps moved away. The door into the corridor was opened, then closed. He was alone. It would be at least another hour before the pair of them reached the Kent coast where the family were temporarily held. No point in Jonas decrying their ability, their minimal experience: they were what he had. Stretched like a bow string to almost breaking point, reserves committed . . . The three that he had identified for further interest had a common musical background: it was a frail and fine thread with which to work, but the last was more promising. He breathed hard.

“And you are alone. And you may be frightened.”

He gazed at a photograph . . . not that the appearance of any young man would be the same now. Would have aged, and the features would have attracted a hardness, and the eyes would have gone as cold as any predator’s . . . It was a pleasant face that Jonas looked at.

It was too early in the day. Cammy had no wish, yet, to go through the city.

Time enough later for the indulgence of an old haunt and a place of nostalgia. He had trekked up a hill and had passed the formal main gate of what had been Her Majesty’s Prison, Canterbury. He was now hunkered down, behind bushes, and gravestones, like rows of sentinels, shielded him from the few who wandered along the path to the door of St Martin’s.

He knew it well. It was dark, shielded by trees, and pretty much as he remembered it. It was a place of his childhood, a refuge. He could sit there, rain or shine, steaming hot days or chilly with frost on the grass between the stones, and he would be hidden. He knew this place because it overlooked the high red-brick outer wall of the gaol. His mother had gone to the prison every Thursday morning, for 11 o’ clock visiting. He and his half-sister had been dragged along during school holidays. Once, only once, had Cammy been inside. Had smelt the piss, and the disinfectant, and the stale air, and had heard the clang of iron gates slammed shut, and the rattle of keys. The first time had been the last time and he had sat at the table while his mother had tried to make conversation with her eldest child, and he had seemed indifferent to where he was, and had hardly wanted to talk. His half-sister had cried quietly until his mother had kicked her shin. Cammy had not spoken and had stared at the floor. Going in and coming out, queueing with other families, and seeing the smaller faces and bowed shoulders of the inmates, Cammy had made a decision. Never going back. The next time they had come, he had slipped his mother’s hold on his hand and had sprinted up the hill and had gone into the churchyard and made a den for himself and avoided a gardener who tidied and swept, and had been waiting at the prison gate when his mum and his sister had emerged.

His mum had tolerated his defiance. The next year Cammy had won his short-lived scholarship to go to the college high on the hill above the city, and the next year had seen his half-brother come home, loaf and lounge about in the day and disappear at night. The year after the next year, his half-brother had been taken to Maidstone gaol, a Category C offender, another stretch and not the last and his mum had not fought Cammy over attendance. He