The Crocodile Hunter Gerald Seymour (best ereader for pdf TXT) 📖

lift him, hassle him, question him, allow him to sweat and cringe and maybe spit out some useful detail. If Jonas Merrick had declined to endorse the swoop then it would not have taken place. He had shrugged: the man they would lift was a minor player.

There were others who mattered more.

There were the ones that he knew of, ones that he had an inkling of, and there were the ones on whom he had scant information and did not know where they were or what they planned, or how great were their networks; those were the ones who frightened him . . . not that Jonas Merrick ever showed personal fear. Because the team who worked at the round table with screens in the centre would be out into the small hours, their line manager would have permitted them to come to work late. Jonas appreciated the quiet around him. He thought well on the train in and on the return journey, and could marshal ideas as he walked from Waterloo and across Lambeth Bridge, and he was good at home when the cat lay on his lap, half buried by files and covert photographs. The boy they would lift tonight was of scant importance; the arrest would make a headline and shake the cage and further clog up the judicial process . . .

More important were the young men coming home. They were on the move, drifting back to what they knew. Consumed with hatred and anger, comfortable with brutal violence.

Too many whom he could not name, and far too many that he had no location to pin them to. He had files out and the drawers of his cabinets gaped. He was old-fashioned and used the practices that had long been consigned to the trash bin, but he believed he had the nose and would back his own judgement. That was why the AssDepDG now supported him, stood his corner. He thought outside the loop, was unconventional, and needed the support of a protector, the senior man. They had no common traits, were chalk and cheese, but Jonas was now blessed by his back being watched. Each fed from the other but the link was never spoken of by either of them. Jonas Merrick would not have thought himself unique in his skills, and there were others scattered through the building who gnawed away at similar problems and who might have a better success rate and might not. He could only support himself and hope he was right in the conclusions drawn. If he were wrong, and the others, then their opponents would be under the radar and the results would be catastrophic . . . Each day worse than the last, and each week and month more desperate than those that had gone before.

He heard footsteps.

A measured tread, a door opening and closing and then a gentle rap on the glass and a grunt from Jonas. His protector had sought him out, often did, and wanted it frank, no soft soap.

“Morning, Jonas.”

A ducked head as a reply.

“Anything fresh, anything I should have?”

“Not yet.”

“Out of a clear blue sky?”

“Where it always comes from.”

“And attempting the impossible – to be lucky every time. Which cannot happen. How’s that cat?”

“The cat’s fine . . . It’s always out of the clear blue sky. And then we have to be running, and running fast.”

“Pleased about the cat, Jonas . . .”

And he was gone, and Jonas was back in his files and the quiet settled around him again, and only an idiot would believe quiet meant that peace cloaked the streets around the building, and in their principal cities and across the country. Jonas Merrick was no idiot.

Chapter 2

Time for the lunch hour that Jonas Merrick awarded himself.

No requirement to go to the canteen and queue. Vera would have cooked for him by the time he was home in the early evening, and for now there were the sandwiches she had made, and the flask she had filled.

Slivers of impatience filtered around and over his partition. They were a disciplined crowd, after a fashion, in that section of A Branch, but that afternoon time was moving slowly, and they wanted the hands of the wall clock to shift faster . . . There were cold pork slices with a smear of pickle on them, and he munched and contemplated and nibbled at a tomato grown early in the greenhouse that Vera supervised, and afterwards he would have his flask and a small chocolate bar, and an apple that he would fastidiously peel. Outside his immediate orbit, beyond the partition, as they shrugged into protective vests or checked the comms links (on the basis that communications failures screwed more operations than any other single cause) they would have known there was not a chance of him coming out of his den and wishing them well, telling them what to look for. He had a new name. Among them he was now known as Wobby. The old one, attached to him with contempt, Eternal Flame, had been ditched.

He knew he was Wobby, had heard it when he was sitting at his desk and taking a short, sweet, doze, and they would have assumed, outside the partition, that he slept. He was Wobby because of a description given him by the AssDepDG. It would have been the morning after he had been brought back to Thames House, retirement day cancelled. The big man, unshaven, same shirt as the night before and tie askew, had apparently come into 3/S/12, before the commuter crawl had reached Waterloo or while he was still walking past Lambeth Palace, later than usual, had flicked his fingers for attention. There was a woman who fixed defective computers on that floor, and she’d been there, and was similarly addicted to caravan holidays. She’d told him. Rare for that sort of exchange in Thames House, but the love of caravan sites had proved a clincher. The team had been told that Jonas Merrick had been brought back and would rejoin the team. There had been frowns and pulled faces