The Crocodile Hunter

by Gerald Seymour

  Farouk, or Wolfboy, went to clean himself up before going to work.

  A man was coming. A man who would take delivery of a cargo.

  A man would use what was given him, would hurt them hard, and he would have helped . . . Hurt them hard enough for them to scream.

  Cloud was beginning to spread from the east. The wind had dropped, would die away. Or so the weather forecaster had claimed from the bedside radio. Jonas opened the kitchen door to let the cat out.

  Most mornings he slept until the alarm began to beep, but he had been waking early since the matter of returning veterans had been dumped on 3/S/12. He stood on the step in his pyjamas and dressing-gown and on his feet were the slippers Vera had bought him four Christmases before, and the sun rested on his face, threw warmth on his cheeks, as he watched the cat.

  It was the sort of start to a day that, if he let his imagination run riot, gave him most concern. Not a cloud in the skies, not yet. The cat patrolled the perimeter of the garden as if it were a Border Force unit. There was a clear blue sky and those days bothered him. Out of a clear blue sky, unwanted and unheralded, came the “incidents” that were the nightmare of his life. Could not call them “unexpected”, but they came without warning and without any preannounced target. It had been uneventful, free of atrocities, for several weeks and he fancied that the public would have lapsed towards complacency and that the warnings continually trumpeted on the London Underground and in railway stations were slipping from consciousness. The cat moved, large and menacing, around the flower beds. It was in the nature of any individual practised in the arts of counter-terrorism to loathe those sunshine-bathed days when the collective guard sagged. He whistled shrilly, competed with a robin’s call, and the cat turned and came back to him to be fed.

  Almost always playing catch-up in the counter-terror trade, always late and seeking to mitigate disaster, rarely in the driving seat but chasing the moments of chaos and mayhem that came from the clear blue sky. He climbed the stairs. He saw that Vera was awake, and that she had left the duster on the window-ledge and there was no longer a spider on the ceiling which meant that the creature’s risk assessment had failed it.

  He went to shower and shave, then dress . . . Always wore a clean shirt and a sober tie, and always wore his jacket of lightweight tweed and polished shoes, and always took the trouble to clean his spectacles . . . He would be off and out, keeping to the schedule that gave him enough time for the train.

  He thought of the recruits he had been given. They’d have bitched. Would have been in the building long enough to have known of him, his reputation, and wondered why they were assigned to him for mentoring. Might have wondered aloud, either of them when posted, “What the fuck did I do wrong to deserve this?” Not much, and the thought of it was enough for a short-lived smile. He had asked for a pair who had “not yet been washed by the stereotypical thinking of Thames House”, and they were both ignorant enough to have retained an innocence, were not yet acclimatised to the system.

  There had been a previous pair, nice youngsters, and they had complained to the AssDepDG, “with respect and all that, but he’s hardly modern, still pretty much in the steam age”, and the big man had given them a welcoming grin and had invited them to his own partitioned office and had unlocked a drawer in his desk – not gone to the computer screen – and had produced half a dozen blown-up photographs, and their monochrome texture had seemed to enhance their quality: a foyer in a concert hall, where kids had gathered, shattered glass and broken lives, body parts, contorted faces in the last moments before pain and life ended – good photographs for the AssDepDG to keep in his drawer because they were guaranteed to shock. He had said to them, “Prefer this?” Jonas had been told, and he had found them excellent learners, and one was now with the Service out-station in Bristol and the other was in Manchester, and he had been sorry to lose them. He thought the current pair might be good; they had not tricked him but had tested him. He had been found wanting – and was concerned.

  He lived off his instinct, would be naked without it. The man, next in line, would come out of the clear blue sky and he did not know where, nor what trace would be left of him, nor when.

  Dawn had broken. They were in thick mist. No sunshine and nothing visible ahead of them. What concerned Cammy was behind them.

  The Iranians would have heard it too: the sound of the high-powered engine of a coastal patrol vessel. Easy to assume that the vessel tracked them but could not see them except as a blip on a screen; would not have wanted to get close because of the risk of capsizing the dinghy, but the engine noise had kept steady with their slow advance through the slackening waves.

  The Iranians had not queried Cammy, had not second-guessed him. More gulls materialised out of the fog around them, shrieking and hovering above the dinghy. They were nearer to land: he had noticed weed that would have been dislodged during the overnight storm. They would have known that the authorities now shadowed them, would remember what the Chechen had told them: welcomed by naval personnel only too anxious to help, given care if needed, provided with a hot breakfast of porridge and scrambled eggs, and taken to a hostel that would have beds and satellite TV and then a fast track through refugee status by emphasising persecution back in their homeland, then a decent flat and job opportunities. The teacher had questioned Cammy as first light had come. Cammy had told him that the promises were rubbish.

  One moment they were wrapped in a mist blanket, then they were out of it. Nothing to see, then everything.

  A woman in a tracksuit threw a ball for a dog to chase.

  A man, wrapped against the wind, ran on the sand.

  He could see the beach huts, prettily painted in pastel colours, and could see vehicles speeding on an open road behind them, and saw a pensioner couple, each with a stick.

  Cammy said, “You never saw me. I was never with you.”

  His little group were huddled down. They gawped at him, then looked ahead and would have seen the waves rising and falling and heaving; and the crisp white crests and then the broken, foamy water running helplessly up a dark sand incline, and falling back because the power of the storm was past, and the gales had fled. The younger child, probably near unconscious from the cold and the experience in the sea, squealed. Would have seen the people and the huts, and the road and the cars and, away to the south of the shoreline, the dull height of the cliffs. He could not have done it on his own; had brought them to their promised land; had gained strength from the camaraderie of singing the hymn and the psalm. Like it had been a deal between two parties, and both satisfied with the outcome, and nothing much more to be said, except . . .

  “Good luck. Don’t look back. I was never with you.”

  A last glance, and everything in front of him was so normal. He thought that in a moment the patrol boat would emerge from the mist. The runner had stopped. The dog ignored the ball and had begun to bark. The older man hooked his stick on his elbow and took out his mobile phone. The dinghy shook as the teacher and the psychologist and their women and their children waved frantically. Cammy cut the engine. He reckoned the fuel tank must have been just about empty. They would drift the rest, be taken by the waves, but not with him.

  A last deep, lung-filling breath. He rolled over the side, went into the water with barely a splash. He went under . . . would have been frightened if he were not a swimmer, terrified if he had not done – years before but not forgotten – the lifeguard training. Under the water and flailing with his feet and making distance . . . If they had looked for him they might have seen a dark shape that became fainter, and might have seen a flick of the top of his head and might have seen an arm break the surface, then disappear beneath the water.

  He needed to separate himself from them. No more thoughts of homeland, nor of childhood and his mother and all that had once been familiar. Fleetingly, Cammy saw the land and the beach and where the road petered out beyond the huts. He swallowed and he spat. He could not see the place on the
beach where the dinghy would ground but imagined that the runner and the dog walker and the pensioners, and all the others who were on their way to work or were out for early exercise, would have been scrambling down the steps from the esplanade. Imagined it, and thought also that the Iranians would wait until the dinghy was stuck and then would begin to climb out and step down into the slight surf. The men would be first, and then the women, and the kids might push past and jump clear.

  His knees grazed a rock protruding from the sand. He kept swimming. It would be fully light soon but for the moment he was helped by the unbroken ceiling of cloud. It was the best that he could have hoped for. He swam parallel to the shore, only in four or five feet of water but that was enough. Suddenly the sand shelved steeply. He used his hands and his knees to propel himself forward. His head was out of the water and he was ringed by the surf rolling back and he pulled his shoulders clear, and his hips, then his legs, and the weight of his sodden clothing dragged him down. He lay on the sand and gasped for breath and seawater ran off him and made a puddle around him. Cammy knew where he was . . . There was a small fishing boat beached high on the sand in front of him and below its hull was a shadowed, sheltered place. He was exhausted, had barely the strength to breathe. He had come home.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “No. Should I have done?”

  Babs and Dominic were constables in the Kent police force, Tactical Firearms Unit.

  “You know what it was like last night, a hell of a gale. It’s a miracle they got across,” she said.

  “A foul night. Reckoned our roof might come off,” he said.

  He stood back. Had his H&K in his hands, routinely ready and finger alongside the trigger guard, armed and with the Safety on, and watched them closely . . . A rum little group barely believable that they had made it across. She had the same weapon, and both also sported Glocks in holsters flapping against their upper thighs, and they had all the gear for Tasering, and sprays and gas and cuffs, and their belts sagged under the weight of it all. They were always called out when migrants made it across and up on to a beach.

  “Say they’re Christians, that God and a love of Jesus kept them safe.”

  “I believe anything after seeing what they came in, knowing what they came through. Probably believe that pigs were flying overhead.”

  “They were singing hymns.”

  “Had good cause to – a wise shout.”

  They had come with sirens and blue lights from the station at Dover. A member of the public had called in but there had already been a warning from the Border Force vessel people. They were deployed because there was a fear, a mood shoved out from the Security Service in London, that “returnees” could come back in the cover of a migrant trip, be snuggled up close to Iranians or Syrians or any of the others who’d take to the water in the hope of better things to come. Except, the weather the last night had been horrific and it would have needed serious courage, big time, to attempt to cross. Every time they had been deployed they had been confronted with a little huddle of pitiful wretches, shivering, teeth chattering, and looking as threatening to public order as a flock of cowed sheep.

  “What I’m saying – just eavesdropping – there was a guy with them, brought them across. Took on the smuggler clan and saw them off, then took them into the water, saved the life of one of the kids who had a ducking. Then started singing, a hymn and a psalm, and sung over and over like an old record with a scratch on it. They called him an angel, an angel of God.”

  “Which one is he?”

  Dominic was single; late twenties, more pounds on his gut than there should have been. Took too little exercise because for the last seven years he had been a part of a small county force firearms team. Looked at the little group that didn’t seem to possess the resolution to “take on” a smuggler group – cruel bastards, what their briefings said, and good at handing out rough stuff – nor the sanctity of that elusive angel.

  “That’s the problem. Not there. That’s what they’re saying.”

  “Meaning?”

  Babs, married and with a daughter who would now be heading for school, was six years older, wore her looks well. She shrugged.

  “He led the singing, kept them afloat, literally and mentally. Brought them through. They had sight of the beach and he called to them, ‘I was never with you’. Went over the side . . . They’ve gone dumb now, you noticed that? Like he was a no go area and shouldn’t have been talked of.”

  “Shit, bloody hell.”

  “Went over the side. Ditched them. Can you add that one up?”

  “Nine marks out of ten for a cluster-fuck . . . and a half-hour start on us. Be a bad boy, wouldn’t he?”

  She said he would be a bad boy. Gone into the sea to avoid being picked up. It had started out as pretty routine, now was heading into territory beyond their immediate experience. Left them flattened . . . She went back to the car where she would not be overheard by the crowd that had gathered in a half-circle near the migrants. It would set alarm bells pealing when she reported in.

  He’d had his coffee, eaten his pastry.

  Jonas was in the garden behind Thames House, sitting on a bench, and the low sunlight came through the canopies of the trees.

  A man worked with a rake and tidied where there was nothing to tidy. He saw him often enough, had never spoken with him, and liked the dedication that brought the fellow to these gardens, unchained the gates, kept them in a state of perfection, fulfilling a duty. He had his barrow, and at his waist were secateurs, and after he had raked he would clear the rubbish bins and painstakingly pick up each cigarette butt thrown on the grass or the paths, and if birds had defecated on the historic gravestones then the faces would be wiped clean. A troubled man; the garden would have been his best home . . . Jonas had heard it said that the man had done service for a Five operation in southern Spain. He seemed humble . . .

  Jonas was ready to confront his own day. He went to the side entrance. The police were there, close to the end of their own shift.

  One said, “Morning, sir, looks like a lovely day.”

  The other said, “Let’s hope, sir, that’s what we’re in for, clear blue skies.”

  And Jonas said as he passed them and their loaded firearms, “Have to hope that – yes – that things don’t change. Can but hope.”

  Chapter 5

  Room 3/S/12 was deserted. Almost every day, Jonas was first in. Not that day. Clear evidence that the team had been and gone.

  A mess covered the circular table; some of their screens showed the “save” images: dogs, cats, children, beach scenes. There were coffee beakers, single-use, and the wrappings of sandwiches and pastries were stuffed in the bins. In one corner was a pile of lycra, what the joggers and cyclists wore for the journey to work . . . He did not know where they had gone, what had called them out.

  He went behind his own partition, unfastened the handcuff and chain at his wrist, and began to unlock his filing cabinets and his desk computer. Next he would remove the sandwiches from his briefcase, and the flask. No note had been left for him, hardly surprising.

  He was permitted to beaver away behind his screen, and had the patronage of the AssDepDG, was safe behind his firewall, and his insights and predictions went on a roundabout cruise along the corridor and up the stairs and landed on the desks of more senior managers – and his patron – and then came back down and were slotted into the workload of the team.

  He took off his jacket and arranged it on the hanger; another reflex action was to straighten his tie, then to loosen a reef in his belt to make sitting at his desk more comfortable. Other than for comfort breaks, visits down the corridor and near the emergency stairs, he would not move until the scurried departure out of the building, back along the river and into the station for the journey home.

  Not something he had looked forward to, but the first task of the day was to transfer an image from his phone and play it through his printer. The machine spluttered into ac
tion. The main working area, and Jonas Merrick’s space, were expected to be tidied, the desks cleared and the screens locked down, so that the cleaners could come in overnight. They were all vetted and regarded as truly faithful of the security rigours, and they would take out all the overnight paper debris, along with food rubbish and the usual mountain of squashed tissues and water bottles. Discarded paper would be earmarked for shredders or general disposal. Torn segments of a view of a dark stretch of water, location unknown and unimportant, where debris floated and where the surface was undisturbed, would not have been regarded as a security lapse. The cleaners had removed what he had, dismissively, torn up. The new picture was spat out. A pair of circles had been marked on the picture. He took a magnifying glass from the drawer of his desk and used it to scrutinise the two areas of water within the circles; good enough to see the nostril cavity and the brightness of the eye. From the top drawer he found his Sellotape. He stretched up, fastened the picture to the wall.