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

boy no longer looked for him, would have given up on him. More shoving, more fists and more boots: it would have been close to the time, both boys down, when one kick hit an unprotected head and jolted it hard enough to affect the brain tissue . . .

He had not gone there, travelled over the frontiers, for a cause. Had been purely selfish, had looked for the gratification of fighting, chewing on danger, and feeling the pump of big weapons at his shoulder. And while it had been good, he had loved it. Had saved the child in the Channel crossing because otherwise the Iranians, in their panic, would have capsized the dinghy. He had no need to save these particular victims. Close enough to see that one more kick to the groin would do life changing damage to his organs. Cammy walked away.

Not his business; he felt no shame, too preoccupied. He heard the sirens. A cop car was coming close and the lights were brilliant blue on the West Gate tower. The gang scattered, fled. He turned and saw the two boys helping each other to stand. Not his fight. Had he intervened he would have destroyed the knot of youths, put them to flight, but he had not.

“Boss, I just need to slip out . . . be an hour, not more. That all right, boss?”

It was not all right, and the hour ahead would be busy, but Farouk’s employer – the owner of the café – knew him well enough, would not have considered him unreliable, and there was a distant relationship through marriage . . . but only an hour. Plenty came through the café at that time in the evening and the weather made no difference. Farouk asked if he could take the scooter out the back. Would get it back in the hour.

The keys were thrown to him. The café boss might have realised that this employee had attracted interest from the counter-terror people, might have heard that he was hassled by them, was under sporadic surveillance. Might have . . . But his work ethic was not to be faulted. He would not ask where Farouk wished to go in mid-shift, why he needed to be gone, no prior warning, what business was so important.

The journey was to the northern outskirts of the city, the Kirkstall area, west of the allotments and sandwiched between the Aire river and the railway tracks. Streets of terraced homes, and the one where he headed had a lock-up garage at its rear. The cinder track was not overlooked. It was probably illegal but the council had better things to do than worry about a cottage industry doing vehicle repairs. Farouk set off. Rode with confidence, heading for the garage, and wearing a crash helmet with a tinted visor.

He felt good, thought himself blessed with power. It was close to a year since he had been granted a meeting, in a car park in the moorlands towards the Pennine hills, and had been allowed to talk with a man of authority, and had explained his idea, and had talked of the qualities of the individual needed if a plan were to become an action. A month before, he had been summoned again, had been told that such an individual had been identified, was on his way; the work had started and he imagined the pace of it was now frantic. A week before he had been told the day it would happen . . . tomorrow. He rode fast on the wet roads and at times was showered in spray, and rejoiced.

“Hello, Mum.”

“Hello, darling.”

“You sound good.”

“Not too bad, darling. Nothing to complain about.”

“Where are you, Mum?”

“In an accountant’s, but there are solicitors on the next two floors. Doing the lavatories. You don’t want to know.”

“Isn’t there other work you could be doing? I worry about you, Mum.”

“Staggering actually, that the women’s are worse than the men’s, how they’re left. I manage . . . Anyway, what’s your news?”

A pleasure for Sadie Jilkes was getting a call from the Category A wing where her elder son was held. His news? Not much actually. Was doing shifts in the gaol laundry, which took him out of his cell. Was enrolled in a reading group and that was positive and meant more time off his landing. They’d had an attempted suicide on the landing the week before last but the guy had screwed it, had failed, seemed cheerier now . . . They chatted a bit. She always wanted to hear from him but there was so little to say because she could not share his life and he had no part of hers. The conversation, as usual, petered out. She didn’t visit anymore, saw little point in it and the journey to where he was held now was awful, and expensive, and there would have been even less to say if she was back in an interview room and across a glass screen. He was not a child, was damn near middle-aged, and she dreaded him coming home in a couple of years, feet up on the sofa, dirty plates on every table and leftover pizza, and . . .

“Anyway, good to hear you, darling, but I have to get on.”

“Love to you, Mum.”

The call was cut. She went back to work. It was a bad night outside and the last few evenings the late buses had been erratic. Worse things had afflicted Sadie Jilkes’ life than cleaning toilets and waiting for delayed buses, and she tried not to think of them . . . First time the older boy had gone down, custodial. The night her girl had been in the accident, and the funeral. Cameron leaving that school, and Cameron making a mess of the next place, and Cameron gone and her reporting him missing, and Cameron found and the “filth” – what the older boy called them – crawling over her home. Tried to get rid of the thoughts but it was hard. She flushed a toilet. Her supervisor said she was the most conscientious of all the women