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

Raynes Park. Jonas was skilled at looking after himself. From his seat, he had ducked his head in a closet gratitude to the girl, but she had already forgotten him and had a physics textbook in one hand and steadied herself with the other . . . He imagined her as a potential victim.

It was a familiar mind-game for Jonas Merrick. He would take an individual as they walked towards him and past Lambeth Palace, or on the concourse at Waterloo, or along the pavement at Raynes Park before turning into his own street, and he would imagine where they might face the random danger of a jihadi assault. They were the ordinary people, the innocents, the ones who had no interest in the politics and fault-lines of the Middle East, even less interest in the schisms between Shia and Sunni worship, and yet they were front line cannon fodder. An attack on them was only considered worthwhile if many tens of them were left dead in a station, a shopping mall, or the foyer of a concert hall . . . Could summon up a conversation on the sweet-smelling grass and under an apple orchard’s trees, the requisite 72 virgins in place, and two suiciders – and one might have been little Winston Gunn. Questions: “How many did you get, bruv?” Answer: “Only got four, couldn’t get into a crush of them.” A snort: “What? Only four, bruv? Fuck’s sake, I did nineteen. You know what they say?” A shrug, and embarrassment: “What do they say?” Laughter and a cuff on the shoulder, and the girls all over them, “Not worth getting out of bed in the morning for less than ten, bruv . . .” He had a sense of comfort. Jonas did not consider that Cameron Jilkes, Kami al-Britani, posed a threat to the girl who struggled with the physics text, or the guy standing next to her who wore a London bus driver’s uniform, or the businessman in his suit and his loosened tie, or the two women who had splurged that afternoon in the Oxford Street stores. Not worth it. Not deserving of his man’s anger.

Surrounded by the innocent and the ordinary, Jonas Merrick doubted he attracted the remotest attention . . . He believed he knew Cameron’s journey, and had an estimation of the sort of target to be attacked, and reckoned he knew the legacy the man would want to leave. The light had faded and all he saw of the countryside was when headlights speared a passage along narrow hedged roads – funny old place for a battlefield – and a cathedral city, a place of homage and pilgrimage, would make it funnier.

He thought also that he knew what Cameron Jilkes wanted least in the few hours before his intended death. Believed he knew how it would end for a man who was off course, had lost all certainties.

Cammy was halfway down the High Street when he heard shouts and jeering. Shops had closed, some were shuttered, and the first wave of the young boozers was out, marching in phalanx formations. More shouts, and abuse.

The day’s litter was not yet cleared, and bin bags were stacked outside the fast food outlets, and the rain was persistent, and there was little that was obvious to drag kids out of their homes or student hostels. He was near the statue of Geoffrey Chaucer, had learned about him at the choirboys’ college. Could have recited a few of the lines and . . . He listened.

More shouting up ahead, the bridge where the river flowed under the street. Some around him tucked down their heads and hurried away from the disturbance. Others paused and gawped. Cammy kept going, knew where he was headed and had enough time for it: had assumed that his mum would have the same routines. Something that was locked in him was the belief he had hardly been away and that the world in which he had once existed had stayed constant, petrified, marooned in a time lapse. Him fighting, him the hero, him with his band of brothers and on the front line, and the rest of his old life just plodding along, unchanged. The shouting reached a fevered pitch. Aggressive, hostile. He saw a knot of people by the boarded-up windows of a shut-down Poundland store. He kept walking.

It was a pedestrian street. Cammy walked in its centre. People came towards him, some scuttling home after the last dregs of the city’s day, and some could have been heading for the first clubs that would open or the pubs that had a Happy Hour. He kept his position in the centre of the street. People backed away from him. One glance was enough for them . . . a kid might have challenged him, but his mates knew better, would have seen the expression in Cammy’s eyes, and had tugged him aside.

He came level with the store and the plywood sheets that covered its windows. The jeering had become abuse which had become anger. Two boys, their backs against the plywood, were hunched over, trying to protect their heads and their stomachs.

He stood. Cammy stopped walking in the centre of the street.

He thought the two boys were gays. There was a shuffling movement in the doorway to the right of them and their tormentor, and a rough sleeper was hurrying to gather up his blanket and the loose shape of a squashed cardboard box. Had a small dog on a length of rope.

Cammy could see one of the boys had smudged lipstick, and the other, as the light caught his face, seemed to be wearing dark eye-shadow. He wondered if they had been holding hands, or had even thought they were unseen and had kissed in the shadows – or might not have cared a damn and could have been in the centre of the street and making their feelings for each other crystal clear. He counted half a dozen in the knot, but Cammy knew about crowds and thought this was only the beginning and