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

do this job. You used to it? Sleeping on the floor or in cars?”

“First time, actually.”

“I’d have thought . . .”

“My experience, boxes are not often satisfactorily ticked. Conventional images usually lead us off-track. Anyway, I’ve been catching up on sleep.”

“But, sleep or not, you are backing yourself?”

“Have to. It’s where we are.”

“Where I’m from, Mr Merrick, faced with this sort of threat – potentially big, possibly non-existent – we’d have a committee sitting in and a Gold commander. Down here at ground level we’d be the pawns and shunted round the board. Does that make you a big player, maybe a bishop, if you call it yourself?”

“I do. I try to anticipate events.”

“That’s it, try to, and that’s the best you can do?”

“And it’s the best your Gold commander can do, try to anticipate.”

“If you try to, and you screw up – excuse my language, Mr Merrick – get it wrong . . .”

“I believe I have anticipated well. I’m confident. What if my picture of the boy, his character, his psychology, his plans, are wrong?”

“That is my question, Mr Merrick. No impertinence intended.”

“None taken. My humble opinion is that I know pretty much where he will be, and what target he will think he is moving towards tomorrow.”

“If you are wrong?”

“If I am wrong, the people I seek to protect become defenceless. If I am wrong, then many who could be innocent of blame for this long-running fiasco in the Middle East will have a very bad day. If I am right, then those same innocents will go about their usual business. And those who I claim are the boy’s targets will stay in ignorance. It is the way life runs.”

“We take responsibility.”

“Yes, a weighty responsibility.”

“And live with it.”

“We all do, and accept realities. I offer you a confidence, officer: we are stretched to snapping point. That everyone can sleep safe in their beds demands that resources are managed with the acceptance of a gamble. Of course it is a gamble. Life is a gamble.”

“Makes for a lonely old world, Mr Merrick.”

“Indeed. I don’t complain. Lonely also for him. We must not forget him. I have to say that I find excessive examination of the prospects of failure and the ethics of responsibility tend to get in the way of doing the job, straightforward or not. Nice dog, this Rosie, well mannered. Last word on the subject, I imagine it’s not all milk and honey for our boy.”

He was gathering up his clothing, the last pieces that had come off and were lying on the landing.

“You bastard, pig – get the hell out of my house.”

Then the scream from inside the bedroom: Cammy thought Vicky and Gavin would have been hanging on to each other, strangers, but recognising the need to stay close. They’d sort it out . . . Did he care? Not greatly.

“Get out . . . Go, go to hell.”

Cammy could not imagine the reaction he’d have had if he had come back to wherever – his mum’s home, or the first hostel in Raqqa, or the old army camp in Deir Ezzor – and his girl had been on her back with her legs splayed and a bloke beside her, bollock naked. Had never been a girl who had mattered enough to him.

To begin with, Gavin – husband and supposed “hunter gatherer” – had gone quiet, like he’d swallowed his tongue.

“Get out of my house. Do you know what you’ve done? Does it matter to you?”

Had an anguish to it. As if he believed a wrong had been done that could never be righted. Well, their business, not Cammy’s. He had reached the hall, had his underwear and socks on and retrieved the rest of his clothes.

“I suppose where you were, you thought yourself something special. People bowed and scraped – not because of who you were but because you had a bloody weapon. Means all you were is a bully. Pity is you weren’t killed there. You will be, though. You will be killed.”

Gavin had picked up the chair where Vicky’s clothes had been, and was framed in the bedroom doorway. He was yelling and Vicky had now chimed in, and was sobbing. Predictably, the baby had woken, and now chimed in. Would wake next door, would rouse half the street. All of them blubbering . . . Gavin, wronged and humiliated, was coming down the stairs with the chair raised.

“Decent people will finish you off. Decent people don’t have a rifle, but that doesn’t make them frightened of you.”

Cammy was dragging on his trousers. The chair was swung high and dislodged the light shade on the hall ceiling, then broke the bulb and Gavin was huge against the wall and flailed again with the chair, and caught Cammy. The blow took him across the side of the face, a chair leg whacking his cheek, and his ear. Another blow came. Cammy ignored it, had the trousers on, was fastening his belt.

“People are decent and ordinary . . . they will finish you, believe it.”

Cammy was defenceless. More blows with the chair. Twisted his head in time to avoid the tip of the chair leg that might have caught his eye, instead the impact was against his lip. Tasted blood, his own blood. Her sobbing was louder and the baby screamed fit to bust, and the noise of it dinned around him. He saw a savagery in Gavin’s face. When was the last time that the guy had ever racked up such anger? Ever? His own blood was in his mouth and he was now fastening his shirt, and blood was on his hands and on his shirt front.

“You know what ‘ordinary’ is? One day you will look at those around you and realise they have control of you. The ordinary people.”

His brothers had never seen Kami al-Britani cower. Never seen him show fear. Vicky was on the landing, had the baby at her shoulder and was patting its back. It yelled, she yelled, and her man still came after Cammy.

“Victoria said you were a shit and dangerous. Your Ma