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

a low voice singing in the background. They ran it through all the filters because it was so strange. This is a crack unit in the black flags, and among them is a guy singing a Christian anthem. It’s one we used to do at convent school – How Great Thou Art. This is an ISIS crowd, and he was singing a hymn. It’s two years ago that it was heard . . . I’ve nothing else on singing.”

Before she rang off she gave Jonas the name of an American combat officer who was seconded into intelligence, and a line that would link to him.

“Thank you, Alice, and thank you for your aural footprint.”

It made good enough sense to him. He felt little immediate satisfaction because now they would be running, desperate to catch up, and always so little time. He rang Vera, was fulsome in his apology.

Chapter 7

Jonas’s screen told him that it was nearing the time that he should have been preparing to clear his desk, leave everything tidy behind him and think about getting his coat on and heading off into the evening. That night of the week, Vera usually made a cottage pie for their supper. She had sounded surprised at his message, but had not quizzed him.

He was, he thought, almost at that moment when he could press the button, let loose the sirens and the alarms, and could circulate the photograph and biography of Cameron Jilkes. Others might already have done so. Down by his knee was the cupboard that held his bag. Others would have been fearful that should their world collapse, should an attacker break through the defences, should a bomb detonate, should a vehicle swerve on to a pavement and pile into commuters, tourists, innocents, they would have to explain to a subsequent inquest why they had backed off. Better to pass the parcel and give one’s superiors the responsibility of calling the shots . . . A quick and rather guilty smile at the thought of it. His fingers clattered on his keyboard.

In the office space there was still only the emptiness and the rattle of silence. It was why he was prepared to invest a few more hours, at his desk, his screen, his card files. The room beyond his partition was deserted because the men and women who usually milled there were committed. It would be the same in many other parts of the building, where the surveillance teams had their space. Nothing more to throw into the hunt and the chase, the defence of the state and its streets. It was possible that in a week or within two weeks, the pressure on resources would have eased: possible, but unlikely. It would be the same with the numbers of police serving in counter-terror units.

Vera had said to him, “Jonas, you’ll not be doing anything stupid?”

He had replied, “No dear, nothing stupid, it’s just that we’re thin on the ground.”

“Don’t do anything daft. I’ll cook the dinner anyway, and we’ll have it whenever.”

“Yes, whenever. Anyway, I’d better be getting on with things.”

“Nothing idiotic, Jonas.”

“And I’m sorry about our dinner, very sorry, and the inconvenience.”

He’d rung off. Had he lingered, she would have questioned him about the contents of the bag, would they be creased, a multitude of matters that he could not, at that time, handle. The bag had been brought to the office on the evening before his investiture. If it had to be awarded him, he would have preferred it to have come in the post, but powers beyond the reach of Jonas Merrick, and convention, had demanded that the medal be pinned in person . . .

He had been earnestly asked to give some detail on the circumstances where he had found himself sitting next to young Gunn, but he had been sparse with his answers and the “royal” might have had the impression that security confidences were not to be shared. The bag, as Jonas remembered it, contained socks, a folded shirt, underwear, pyjamas and his shaving stuff, and a toothbrush. He had stayed overnight at a B&B, and been driven there and back, and had been “economical” with anecdotes on getting back to Raynes Park.

He had not known resources to be so stretched, at break-point, in all his time in the Service. And himself? Also stretched. Good at disguising the stress, adept at masking it, most of the time. He could have looked up at the image of the beast with the ferocious teeth, or at the dark pool from a lagoon or a tidal estuary and seen two ringed areas, could have focused his attention on the picture of a young man whose mouth had a smeared and untidy halo around the lips. Could have . . . and then pondered why he, Jonas Merrick, a low-grade official in a Service with a payroll of thousands, seemed to have so much weight on his shoulders. He allowed that moment of indulgence. Of course, self-inflicted. Had he not been out of the building that evening, and walking in the light rain, had he not sat down next to a prospective suicide bomber, had he not been on a bench adjacent to the Mother of Parliaments where the “great and the good” paraded, and had he not been stupid enough to tug free the cables running from the power pack to the detonator, he would now be in gentle retirement, with abundant time to plan caravanning holidays. He was an oracle. Unloved but now with a basket full of grudging respect, his opinion valued. It was a time of maximum danger. Jonas feared that he would buckle under the weight of those pressures . . . Of course he was not alone. Many men and women in the building endured similar burdens, tried to worry through. He could have said that his reputation, unwanted, damned him.

He called, spoke to Izzy. Told them what he wanted.

The bag was light, would be easy to carry. He called the AssDepDG’s office and named a time when he would appreciate a meeting . . . and