New Guard (CHERUB) (8 page)

As Oli tried to wriggle free, the man rolled over and swung his fist, hitting Oli hard on the chin. Fortunately for the twelve-year-old, the man was too broad to fit in the narrow gap between bed and wall.

Oli moaned in pain as the punch knocked him back, but he was able to squat down, grab the laptop with its trailing power cord, then scramble under the bed and out the other side.

‘You OK?’ Leon asked, as he gave Oli a hand up.

‘No I’m not,’ Oli shouted, clutching at his jaw. ‘The asshole hit me.’

Seeking vengeance, Oli grabbed a glass water jug from a bedside table. He threw it at the man’s head, but it just clanked off the bedframe and didn’t break.

‘Scum!’ the man shouted as he rolled over and punched a red emergency button on a cord around his neck.

A voice came out of the necklace inside five seconds. ‘GoldAlert emergency. What’s the problem, Mr Brown?’

‘I’m being robbed in my bed,’ he yelled, as Leon and Oli zipped up the suitcase and started scrambling down the stairs. ‘Call the police immediately, then contact my mother on her mobile.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Oli said, clutching his jaw but grinning exuberantly as he followed Leon and the wheeled suitcase out the front door down the driveway. ‘We’d better get the hell out of here.’

After parting company with Leon and Oli, Daniel passed through the old lady’s front gate, crossed the street, walked right for fifty metres and grabbed the rear door of a Mercedes van with a hire company logo on the side. James sat on a folding chair in the cavernous rear compartment, watching video from inside the house on his laptop.

The screen showed the feed from six different cameras. In the top left corner, the disabled man was walking around, apparently cured of his paralysis. The centre of the bottom row showed Oli running down the driveway and Leon behind, dragging the wheeled suitcase.

‘Did you get good audio?’ Daniel asked.

James made a fake shudder. ‘That kid has the moral compass of a sewer rat.’

‘I did like you told me, boss. Took the high ground, gave Oli plenty of opportunities to question whether he was doing the right thing.’

‘I heard every word,’ James said. ‘You were great.’

‘But it could be trauma or something,’ Daniel suggested.

James looked confused. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Like, Oli’s been an orphan his whole life. In and out of care homes. Maybe if he got the opportunity to be in a better environment he’d become a better person.’

James snorted. ‘And let me guess, you’d like another week or so to study Oli in great detail and try to unearth this buried potential?’

‘CHERUB
is
supposed to be short of recruits,’ Daniel said.

James broke into a big grin. ‘My cynical side thinks you’re just trying to delay your return to campus. As if you had some kind of horrible punishment hanging over your head, or something.’

Daniel gave it a final shot. ‘I just think Oli deserves a fuller assessment.’

‘So do I,’ James said.

Daniel’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Really?’

‘The latest policy is to spend as much time and effort as possible on testing potential recruits,
before
they reach campus and learn the secret of CHERUB. Not like in my day, when you just woke up on campus after being drugged and got warned that nobody would believe if you said anything.’

‘Waking up naked was creepy too,’ Daniel noted.

‘And you’re not the only one keen to stay off campus,’ James added. ‘Every day there’s a half-metre stack of paperwork, and John Jones blaring in my earhole. Budget reports, mission briefings, threat meetings, education liaison meetings, ethics committee meetings, post mission reintegration plans. And when I’m out here on a mission, all of that becomes SEP.’

‘SEP?’

‘Somebody Else’s Problem,’ James explained.

Daniel cracked a big smile. ‘So how long we gonna study Oli for? Two weeks?’

‘That’s probably pushing it,’ James said, smirking. ‘But I totally need to finish watching the last three seasons of
Game of Thrones
. And on a serious note, the intelligence service is putting so much effort into infiltrating Islamic State, that I think we can justify a bit more time to investigate the remote possibility that Oli didn’t invent the whole terrorist thing.’

‘Love
Game of Thrones
,’ Daniel said. ‘One of the carers made me take my nudie of Emilia Clarke from inside my wardrobe door.’

‘Which one’s she?’ James asked.

‘Daenerys, the dragon lady.’

‘She’s
totally
my dream girl,’ James said, before clearing his throat abruptly. ‘After Kerry, obviously.’

‘Obviously, boss.’

James smiled. ‘In the spirit of thoroughly assessing young Oliver, I suppose we ought to test his mettle in a tense scenario, yes?’

Daniel nodded enthusiastically. ‘I’ll head off now. With any luck, Oli will get his ass bit.’

James tapped an icon on his laptop screen. ‘You there, Michael … ? Leon and Oli have left the house. They should be in sight any second now.’

‘Go left,’ Leon told Oli, as they reached a T-junction. ‘We can hide out at my cousin’s place while the heat dies down.’

Oli was chuffed about the robbery and even more full of himself than usual. ‘Screw your cousin and his thirty quid cleaning a garage,’ he said. ‘I know this guy Trey who buys stolen shit. He’ll give us cash. Three hundred at least.’

‘But the cops’ll be looking for us, Oli. Best be off the street, yeah?’

Before Oli got to answer, a battered Renault SUV squealed to a halt in a disabled bay across the street.

‘You thieving little shits,’ the man getting out shouted. He was a big guy, dressed in trackies and a paint-spattered hoodie. Even worse, a huge black Rottweiler jumped out behind on a lead. ‘Gimme the stuff back.’

Oli froze for half a second, before realising that Leon was already running. The pair scrambled into the road to dodge a woman with three young kids.

‘You stop, now,’ the man shouted. ‘I’ll crack your heads.’

Oli was solid, but he wasn’t in the best shape. ‘Wait up,’ he gasped, clutching his side as Leon streaked ahead.

While Leon reached a main road and sprinted past Costa Coffee, Oli found the paint-spattered man and his excited dog closing to within a few metres. Realising that he couldn’t outrun his opponent, Oli scrambled through a gate and ripped a windmill ornament out of a neat front garden. It was made of plastic, but weighted with a concrete base.

The big man overshot the gate, then a combination of leaves underfoot and the enthusiastic Rottweiler tugging on its leash sent him skidding into a painful set of splits. Oli was delighted for two seconds, between his pursuer’s agonised yell and the moment when he let go of the dog’s leash.

‘No!’ Oli yelled.

The twelve-year-old lobbed the windmill, but it just glanced the eighty-kilo dog in the side. After thinking about doubling back towards the gate, Oli made a run at the hedge leading into the next garden. He got a good jump, and would have scrambled over if the Rottweiler hadn’t got a paw on his tracksuit bottoms, dragging him down on to the manicured lawn as a woman stuck her head out of the front door fifteen metres away.

‘Help me!’ Oli screamed, getting sprayed with saliva as the dog jumped on his chest, ripping off barks.

He had no way of knowing that this was one of the CHERUB campus guard dogs, trained to bark and contain rather than maul. As the dog’s writhing weight smeared Oli into the damp grass, he caught a glance of the paint-strewn man struggling to his feet, only to get kicked – fake-kicked – dramatically down by a boy who’d sprinted in from across the road.

Oli realised it was Daniel as the woman by the door ran inside to call the cops. After vaulting the gate, Daniel closed up behind the barking dog and snatched its leash. It took all his strength to haul it back, just long enough for Oli to roll free. As the dog turned to pounce on Daniel, the fourteen-year-old stumbled back and hooked the end of the leash over a fence post.

‘Move your butt,’ Daniel ordered, hitching Oli up by his trackies and throwing him over the hedge, before grabbing the laptop out of the churned-up lawn and making the dive himself.

Oli was confused by the chain of events, but his pursuer appeared to be unconscious and Leon had doubled back and was waiting on the pavement as they exited through another front gate.

‘How slow are you?’ Leon jibed, as Daniel gave Oli a shove in the back.

Muddy, shocked and with strings of dog spit in his face, Oli felt Daniel grab his neck and shove him forward. ‘The cops are gonna be here, start running.’

Oli got dragged by the twins, feeling warm around his crotch and realising that some pee had leaked out when he thought the dog was about to bite.

The reality had been Oli snivelling and peeing his pants, but he’d rewritten the story before the mud dried on his clothes. The three boys were in a tatty chicken shop, with Cokes and a jumbo chips on the plastic table in between.

‘I almost made it, man,’ Oli smiled. ‘That massive pit bull grabbed me, but I was all ready to kick up with both feet. Cane that thing in the head, but the dog got lucky when Daniel pulled it off.’

Daniel shook his head. ‘You’d have been doggie chow if I didn’t come save your ass.’

‘That kick in the face was awesome,’ Oli said. ‘I didn’t realise you know martial arts. I used to do Muay Thai, could have got my black belt, but I got moved to a new foster placement before the grading.’

Oli demonstrated his skills with a little jab.

Leon laughed. ‘You make a fist like that you’ll break your thumb first time you hit someone.’

‘I know,’ Oli said defensively, as he dipped chips in brown sauce and filled his mouth.

‘So if we walk back into Nurtrust with a wheelie case filled with booty, chances are we’ll get busted in three seconds flat,’ Leon said.

‘School will still be open for homework club,’ Daniel said. ‘There’s nothing in my locker yet.’

‘Case won’t fit in.’

Daniel shrugged. ‘Everything else will, though.’

Oli was chomping to say something, but had to swallow his chips first. ‘I told you, man. I know this guy, Trey. I’ve nicked stuff before and he’ll pay us in cash. He’s a serious dude, like Islamic State terrorism.’

The twins both laughed.

‘What’s your problem?’ Oli growled.

Leon smirked. ‘No offence, man, but you’re a little
colourful
.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Well, you’re almost a Muay Thai black belt, but you don’t know how to make a proper fist,’ Daniel said. ‘You’re the top goal scorer for your school team, but you run slow and get out of breath after two hundred metres. You owned a PS4 but you didn’t know where the L2 button was.’

Oli started going bright red.

‘It’s OK, dude,’ Leon said. ‘We like you. But you don’t need to make crazy shit up to impress us.’

Oli didn’t know what to say, but broke into a huge involuntary smile as Leon gave him a shoulder thump, hard enough to rock him off his plastic seat into the chicken shop’s front window.

‘I never had much in my life,’ Oli said. ‘I guess I trash-talk sometimes. But Trey is for real.’

Leon smiled. ‘You’re sure we won’t get blown up by a USAF drone strike if we visit his flat?’

‘Screw you,’ Oli said, giving the finger with his muddy hand. ‘I’ve nicked stuff before and he buys it. And a few times I’ve done jobs for Trey, like bricks through windows and shit.’

This sounded pretty far-fetched and Daniel snorted. ‘Why does Trey want you to put bricks through windows?’

‘He runs a protection racket,’ Oli said, folding his arms furiously when he saw the expressions on the twins’ faces. ‘That’s god’s honest truth, you assholes. If you don’t believe me, we’ll go see him.’

Leon decided to call Oli’s bluff. ‘Now?’

Oli scraped up the last few chips and stood up. ‘Number eighty-four bus. Ten-minute ride. You coming?’

The trio kept a wary eye out for cops as they waited for the bus and got off by a stop under a railway arch. A cobbled alleyway took them past Asian taxi drivers standing in a noisy circle alongside their parked Priuses and into a cab office under a railway arch.

The receptionist behind the Plexiglas screen looked suspicious when Oli asked to see Trey.

‘He knows me,’ Oli explained.

‘He’s in a meeting,’ the woman said, as a cynical eyebrow flickered beneath her headscarf. ‘Have a seat.’

An old-fashioned bottled gas heater gave off a sweet smell as the boys squished together on a knackered sofa. Leon flicked through an ancient copy of
FourFourTwo
magazine, while Daniel played with his phone, texting James to let him know what was occurring.

‘Just in case there’s any argument,’ Oli said, as he slid a Samsung Galaxy with a pink cover out of his pocket. ‘Everything is split three ways, but the money from this is mine.’

‘Where’d you get that?’ Leon asked.

‘Remember that snivelling girl who I locked in the shower?’

‘Abigail,’ Leon said.

Oli nodded. ‘Gotta pick a pocket or two, eh?’

‘Her mother died and you ripped off her phone?’ Daniel said incredulously.

Oli shrugged and smirked. ‘Life’s a bitch, then you die.’

A flimsy door by the service counter came open, and a haze of cigarette smoke along with it.

‘Trey’s ready,’ an old dude in carpet slippers said. All three boys stood up, but he pointed at Oli. ‘Just you.’

As Oli vanished inside with the wheeled case, Daniel looked at Leon, shook his head and spoke in a whisper. ‘Who robs a girl whose mother just died?’

Leon nodded in agreement. ‘Before we go back to campus, I’m gonna bundle Oli into one of the shower rooms at Nurtrust and give him
such
a beating.’

‘It’s a nice thought, but they’ll kick our asses out of CHERUB if we do that.’

‘Who’s gonna tell ’em?’ Leon asked. ‘James is cool.’

The pair played with their phones and clock watched. Five. Five fifteen. Five twenty-five.

‘Maybe they killed him,’ Leon suggested.

‘Maybe he took our share and legged it out the back way,’ Daniel suggested.