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

never been this bad before, not even in the dark times when the Irish had tried to bomb the city into political capitulation. Not at any time in his Cold War experience, not during the previous years of the jihadi emergency.

He waited for the lift and the shape pressed against his hip, hard and uncomfortable. The lift came.

“All good, Jonas?” he was asked by the AssDepDG. There were lines on his forehead, bags beneath his eyes and damn near a shake in his hands.

“Everything’s good,” he said, his face impassive.

“If it gets more than you and the allocated resources can manage, then shout and . . .”

They travelled down two floors. “I doubt I will.”

“I’ll come running with what I can muster, tea ladies and God knows who else.”

“I think I understand, thank you.”

He was alone again descending to the ground floor. The building operated “a need to know” culture, but few had more need to understand the pressures for the commitment of trained personnel. Jonas assumed that some 500 investigations were underway at any one time. He rarely smiled, not even to himself in private moments of humour, but he enjoyed the image of AssDepDG leading a platoon of the women who used to push the tea and biscuit trolleys, and those who shuffled around delivering and retrieving post items, and chauffeurs, and the sweepings off front desk reception. The doors opened.

He saw Lily. She greeted him, shyly, perhaps admired him and perhaps knew of the gong in Vera’s knicker drawer.

“You’re late this evening, Mr Merrick.”

“Am I? I suppose I am.”

He hurried towards the desk. There was an elderly security man there, would have been a company sergeant major from the old Irish days, now eking out time until his pension could be drawn, and a woman – thin as a rake – beside him. Lily, from the Archive, would be whispering to the colleagues around her that it was extraordinary for him, quite bizarre, for old Jonas still to be in the building this late. He thought he saw a nod and an understanding wink from the pale, thin little creature in her chair and the heavy built man sitting beside her. “Good God, shouldn’t he have been long gone? Gone before we came on shift?” Fat chance that he would not be noticed

He reached the internal gate. He was slow going through and his coat caught, and a red light flashed . . . Struggling with the damn thing did not help free him. Security approached. A button was pressed. The coat came away from the clamp that had held it. And there was a clatter of metal on the hard floor.

Handcuffs shivered on the surface, rattled, then fell still. Shiny ones, looking as new as the day they had come off a production line.

Jonas Merrick had been issued with the handcuffs nineteen years before. They had stayed wrapped in tissue paper from the day he had received them. Astonishment on their faces . . . what in the good Lord’s name was Jonas Merrick doing with a pair of handcuffs? Security maintained a poker face, and went down on one knee to pick up the handcuffs and give them to Jonas. Then, bent again and retrieved from the base of the gate a pair of small keys on a split ring, straightened up stiffly and handed them to Jonas.

“Best to be able to open them, Mr Merrick, don’t you think? Helps to be able to unlock them if they’re not going to be just an ornament. Goodnight, sir.”

This time they went into his bag, joining his sponge bag and his pyjamas, his socks, underwear and folded shirt. He went out of the main entrance and stood on the steps. He had mapped out his route, would walk past the open space with the statue of the Burghers of Calais, past the bench he had shared with Winston Gunn, and then the Palace of Westminster – the building he was credited with saving – then would take the underground train north, one change, to get to the mainline station. He hesitated on the pavement. Two armed police faced him. He knew them well enough, and thought them always close to the limits of bonhomie, verging on the impertinent. They should have been gazing up and down the street, watching for a bomber or a gunman or a grenade thrower, but instead they stared at him. Had he been certain of his lip-reading skills, he’d have sworn on the Book that one whispered, “Fuck me, I’ve seen everything now”, and would have been asnwered. “Never thought it, the Eternal Flame gone out.” And, “I’m not bloody messing, Kev, but if Eternal Flame goes out, then we face serious times.” And, “Too right, Leroy, too right, or times that are more than serious.”

Leroy said, “Good evening, Mr Merrick. Difficult old night – I mean the weather.”

Kev asked, “Going somewhere nice, Mr Merrick? Not that it’s my business?”

“It is not . . . A bit of rain never hurt. I’m off to look for a crocodile . . .”

Cammy meandered.

He passed pubs that he had drunk in, had worked in. And a couple of Italian fast food outlets and he’d washed up in the kitchens of both, and past the stationery shop where his mum had carted him before the start of each school term.

The rain was steady. Shop fronts clattered as grilles were lowered. Nothing seemed to have changed since he had last walked here.

Had been with Vicky then and her holding his hand and him with his secret, and nothing said. One drink, later, when they were in the bar, the Miller’s, the place heaving with tourists. He had not slept with her that night, had pleaded tiredness, a headache, a difficult day starting the next morning. No real explanation, because he had a “nothing” job in a builder’s yard where being tired or having a headache was immaterial.

Had walked her home to her mother’s . . . Had hardly thought of her when he was away. Actually even now he had to blink and