CHERUB: People's Republic (38 page)

But Ryan had noticed Kitmeister catalogues stacked up outside, so he grabbed one and flicked through pages of shirts, shorts, balls and shin pads until he came to socks. There was a double-page spread of SoccaAce socks, one colour, two colour, tricolour, striped and hooped. The order code for orange and maroon hoops was SAOM- followed by another letter depending upon the size.

Ryan opened up the accounts program’s search function and did a search for SAOM*, which ought to give him all the invoices with orange and maroon hooped socks of any size.

14 Results Found

If there was an option to print fourteen invoices in one go Ryan couldn’t find it, so he began printing them off one at a time.

Ryan touched his earpiece. ‘Looks like I’ve got what we came for,’ he said happily, as the first sheet rolled out of a laser printer under the desk.

‘Excellent,’ Amy replied. ‘Don’t forget to make a mess before you leave.’

‘There’s something else,’ Max said. ‘Ryan, when you’ve got the invoices meet me back here in the warehouse.’

The printing was complicated by the paper running out, but all the printers were identical so he just swapped a tray from another machine. When Ryan had all the invoices, he pocketed the USB key and jogged back the way he came. He passed Alfie in the doorway and headed through swinging doors to meet Max in the storage and manufacturing area.

‘Took you long enough,’ Max moaned. ‘Get a look at this.’

‘Kiss my arse,’ Ryan said, as he walked between rows of shelving stacked with packets of sportswear, tracking Max’s voice to a spacious area filled with the equipment used for making transfers and fixing them to football shirts.

Max stood along the back wall, pointing at rows of file boxes. ‘They’re templates for designs,’ he explained. ‘I looked at the orders in progress, and each one has a code. If the code is on the invoices you’ve printed, we might be able to find the template for the design that Ning described.’

‘I’ve heard worse ideas,’ Ryan said, as he spread the invoices across a workbench in front of a thermal transfer machine.

Of the fourteen invoices Max had printed, six included charges for printing sponsors’ logos. Four of these were nowhere near where Ning had been pulled out of Leo’s car, leaving two decent bets.

‘Design code 1207-381,’ Ryan said.

Amy sounded slightly alarmed as she spoke through the earpieces. ‘If you guys have the invoices, why am I still sitting here?’

‘Give us a minute,’ Ryan said. ‘We’re on to something, but it’ll be done by the time I’ve explained it to you.’

The boxes with the design templates were all filed in date order. Max located 1207-381, but the logo was for a pen company.

‘And the other one?’ Max asked.

‘0809-017,’ Ryan said.

As Max ran along the row of boxes, a man shouted, ‘What are you Herberts playing at?’

He was beefy with cropped hair, dressed in a sawdust-covered sweatshirt carrying the logo of the timber place next door. Ryan’s first thought was
what’s happened to Alfie?

‘We’re here doing work experience,’ Ryan said.

‘Do I look like a prat?’ the man said aggressively. ‘I went for a smoke and saw half the bloody lock ripped off the door. You boys better stay right where you are. The cops are on their way.’

Before Ryan could answer, the man heard footsteps behind and spun around. Alfie launched a full-stretch roundhouse kick, catching him viciously in the side of the head. The man crashed sideways into a shelving unit and came out swinging, but while he was big he had no skills. Alfie ducked under the fists, bobbed up and thrust his palm under the man’s chin. His head snapped backwards and he crumpled to the floor in serious pain.

‘Give me your phone,’ Alfie shouted.

Alfie was big for an eleven-year-old, but he had a boyish face and the man couldn’t believe that he’d been floored by two hits from a kid.

‘Don’t eyeball me, tubby,’ Alfie said. ‘Phone, now.’

As Alfie took the man’s phone and threw it up on to a high shelving unit, Ryan touched his earpiece.

‘Amy, we’ve been spotted by a local. Bring the car in. We need to be ready for a fast exit.’ Then he let go of the earpiece and tore into Alfie. ‘What the hell are you playing at? You were supposed to be on lookout.’

‘It’s a long drive back,’ Alfie explained. ‘I needed the toilet.’

‘How old are you, five?’ Ryan shouted. ‘Couldn’t you just whip it out and pee against the wall?’

Alfie shook his head. ‘It was a number two and I can’t ride back to campus with a shitty arse.’

‘OK, that’s too much information,’ Ryan said, torn between losing his temper and laughing.

A triumphant shout made Ryan spin around and see Max holding a stencil outline for a cartoon character shaped like a slice of bread and the name
Nantong Bakery
beneath it.

‘Holy crap,’ Ryan said jubilantly, before touching his earpiece. ‘Amy, we’ve
definitely
cracked it. Max has found the logo. The square cartoon man was a sandwich.’

‘I’m pulling into the estate’s main entrance,’ Amy said. ‘Kick up a quick storm and I’ll meet you out front in two minutes.’

Max grabbed the invoices and the stencil design. Alfie heard the man from the wood shop groan, but he didn’t look like he was up to much more than that, so he let him be.

‘Make sure we’ve got everything,’ Ryan said. ‘Alfie, have you got the ladder?’

As the trio headed out they created a wave of destruction, knocking printers and LCDs on to the floor, scooping stuff off desks, tipping over a water dispenser and ripping plants out of pots.

Max managed the most spectacular piece of damage by lifting up an office chair and shattering the glass partition behind the receptionist’s desk.

Ryan was first out of the building and alarmed to see a posse of four blokes striding purposefully across the car park towards him. They were all big, and all but one wore safety boots and the wood shop’s distinctive green sweatshirt.

‘Oi-oi!’ the one in the lead shouted. ‘Stop walking right where you are.’

‘Thieving little bastards,’ another added.

Ryan turned back inside and shouted, ‘We’ve got company.’

Max raced out, closely followed by Alfie, who had the collapsible ladder in one hand and held a yucca plant like a spear in the other.

‘You poofters can’t catch us!’ Max shouted, making a wanking gesture as he started running after Ryan.

Alfie’s bulk made him slower than Ryan and Max, but he still had an edge over the chasing pack. Ryan pushed through a waist-height hedge and reached the approach road. He saw Amy driving the Mercedes into the trading estate’s entrance about a hundred metres away and realised they had a problem.

The road Ryan stood in reached a dead end at the locked gates of a toner supply company. To get to Amy they’d have to get through the four men, two of whom appeared to be brandishing lengths of wood.

‘Why run this way, dick brain?’ Alfie asked, as he emerged from the hedge.

Ryan knew he’d get into a pointless argument if he replied.

‘They’re old and slow,’ Max said contemptuously. ‘Let’s have ’em!’

‘Put your stuff down and wait for the cops,’ one of the men shouted.

‘Slags,’ Max shouted, shaking his fist in the air as he led a charge.

Ryan wasn’t convinced that taking on four well-built blokes was a better course of action than getting arrested by the cops and waiting for CHERUB to arrange their release, but on the other hand he’d never live it down if he left his mates to fight alone.

As Max launched a two-footed flying kick, Alfie brandished the yucca plant like a lance and used it to fend off a bloke swinging at him with a two by four plank. Ryan was a few metres behind and faced a mad-eyed fellow who’d circled behind Max and Alfie.

‘Stay,’ the man ordered, as he swooshed a plank of wood through the air. ‘Wait for the cops or I’ll give you a pasting.’

‘Make me,’ Ryan said as he kept jogging.

The man swung with the plank, but Ryan kicked back explosively. The plank shattered against the sole of his trainer. He caught its pirouetting end out of the air and swung it around, belting his opponent hard across the knuckles. As the man stumbled back, Ryan dropped him with a kick in the guts.

Up ahead, Alfie had triumphed medieval style with a yucca plant sword and the collapsible ladder serving as a shield. Max’s opponent was crawling away holding his stomach, while the fourth man didn’t like what he’d seen and was running for cover.

Amy pulled up fifty metres away. She blasted her horn and shouted into her earpiece.

‘Move your butts, the cops will be here any minute.’

Max got in first. Alfie climbed in the other side and rather than faff about opening the front door Ryan dived in quickly beside Max. Amy set tyres squealing as Ryan pulled up the door. The boys flew across the car as she launched into a high-speed reverse, followed by a squealing handbrake turn.

‘Not exactly textbook,’ Alfie said, as Amy put the car in drive and sped off, ‘but that was the best ruck I’ve had in months.’

Amy sounded cross as she blasted her horn and cut on to a section of dual carriageway. ‘Please tell me that amidst that carnage you kept hold of the invoices.’

‘I’ve got them,’ Max said, as he pulled them from the pack still strapped to his back.

It was only as Ryan reached around to put on his seatbelt that he considered the clump of muddy roots resting in his lap, stretching across Max’s knees and ending up with spiky leaves sprouting up around Alfie.

‘Why have you still got the bloody yucca plant?’ Ryan asked.

‘I’ll find a new pot for it when we get back to campus,’ Alfie explained. ‘I’m thinking of naming it Doris.’

48. RESULTS

Ning felt down as she showered in her room. She’d strained her shoulder in the pool, and it really hurt as she scrubbed and scrubbed with a watery deodorising soap that smelled of alcohol and left her skin raw and dry.

When she stepped out, she saw that someone had been in her room. They’d left a tray of sandwiches, juice and tea on the bed, taken the foul-smelling kit away and replaced it with a clean set. As she sat down in a robe, pulling the sandwiches apart to see what was inside, Ning noticed a piece of folded paper tucked between the tea pot and the milk jug:

Please report to my office at 6 p.m. Do not leave your room unless you hear a fire alarm. If you need anything urgently dial 75 on your phone and speak to my assistant.

Zara Asker, Chairwoman.

It was just after three and Ning knew the wait would be agony. She nibbled sandwiches and flipped through news channels on the TV. Some actor had died, someone had been blown up in the Middle East, an MP had resigned.

She’d seen the news regularly at Kirkcaldy and the fact that there were hardly ever any stories about China always made her feel homesick. The news also made her wonder about her stepdad. Was he in prison? Had his trial begun? Had he already been executed?

Ning spotted a pencil next to the bedside phone and used the back of the note to write down her prospects:

Fight – Did better than Carlos, but argued with Zara.

Exam – Did pretty good ???

Rabbit – Good.

Pool – Carlos crushed me.

Height – Did OK, except at the end. Lost temper.

She’d hoped things would seem clearer in writing, but the results looked as mixed on paper as they’d been in her head.

At half-five she flicked off the TV and started getting dressed. She felt like a visiting alien as she peeked into rooms, and saw CHERUB agents having Saturday afternoon video game competitions, or watching sport on TV. In the lift down to the ground floor, she was accompanied by two girls dressed for tennis. They chatted confidently as Ning stood in the back corner of the lift with an intense feeling of paranoia.

She reached Zara’s office eight minutes early, but Zara let her straight in and she sounded warm as she told Ning to sit down.

‘You did well,’ Zara said, making Ning break into a smile. ‘Amy didn’t give me much time to read through your personal file, but I quickly realised you were going to match or exceed all the physical requirements for joining CHERUB.

‘However, I was less certain about your suitability for working undercover. You have a history of discipline problems, in terms of following instructions, being disruptive and getting expelled from schools. So, I arranged the tests to make you uncomfortable, to stress you mentally, try and irritate you, or make you blow up and quit.’

‘I did kind of lose it with Carlos at the end,’ Ning said.

Zara laughed as she pressed a button on her intercom. ‘You can all come in now.’