CHERUB: Mad Dogs (8 page)

James pecked Dana back then tried going for a full-on snog, but she wouldn’t have it.

‘I’m too tired.’

‘But we might not get another chance until we’re back on campus.’

‘Whatever,’ Dana shrugged. ‘All I want is sleep.’

‘Night then,’ James said, sounding a touch wounded.

As they backed away from each other, Dana whispered a warning. ‘And don’t go anywhere near the third bush on the left beside the big tree. I just did something that you wouldn’t want to put your boot in.’

Meatball was an eleven-month-old beagle. Bred for experimentation, the little dog had been rescued by James Adams’ sister Lauren when they’d infiltrated an animal rights group the previous summer.

CHERUB agents aren’t allowed to keep pets, so when the mission was over Meatball ended up living with chairwoman Zara Asker and her family in their detached house half a kilometre from CHERUB campus.

Although Zara’s kids got rough at times, Meatball had settled into a comfortable routine, with a cosy dog basket beside the sofa, a big garden to run around and visitors from campus who made a fuss and took him for walks.

But on this particular Thursday, Meatball had worked out that something was wrong. Zara or Ewart always brought the kids home from nursery before it got dark. None of the house lights were on, his water bowl was dry and he ended up huddled under the telephone table, where he usually went to sulk after getting yelled at for chewing something.

Meatball sprang up when he heard a key in the front door and started barking when he recognised Lauren’s smell through the letterbox.

‘Hello, Meatball,’ Lauren said fondly, as she ran her hands through his bristly coat and felt his tongue lap at her bare ankle. ‘Is you a lonely doggykins? Did they all go out and leave you on your own?’

Meatball had reached adult size, but he was still a young dog and he liked to play. Lauren hadn’t visited for over a week and was pleased to see him, but she couldn’t get Gabrielle’s fight for life out of her mind. The whole of CHERUB campus was on tenterhooks.

Meatball scratched at the door, wanting a walk, then realised it was feeding time as Lauren headed for the kitchen. She flicked on the light and reached into the cupboard above the oven. Lauren was vegetarian, and it pleased her that the Askers had stuck to their promise to feed the animal she’d given them with vegetarian food.

After refilling the water bowl, Lauren snipped open the plastic food packet and smiled when she found Meatball standing with his tail wagging and a set of legs on either side of his food dish. He’d never sussed out that you can’t put the food into a bowl if you stand on top of it.

‘Dozy dog,’ Lauren complained, as she lifted up his back legs and squeezed the packet of food into the bowl.

The result looked uncannily like a turd, but Meatball stuck his head in the bowl and began wolfing his dinner as the phone in Lauren’s jeans started to vibrate. It was her friend, Rat. He’d been Lauren’s boyfriend for a while, but they were both only twelve and after a couple of months the novelty of snogging had worn off and they’d gone back to being mates.

‘Hey,’ Lauren said urgently. ‘What’s happened?’

Rat was under strict instructions to ring Lauren with news about Gabrielle, on pain of an arse-kicking if he forgot.

‘Still in surgery the last we heard,’ Rat said, in his Australian accent. ‘We thought you might know something, seeing as Ewart asked you to check on the dog.’

Lauren tutted. ‘Maybe Meatball will open up on the matter after his sachet of VeggyPet, but I wouldn’t put money on it.’

‘OK, don’t bite my head off. We just thought there was a chance you might have heard something.’

‘So what’s going on up there?’

‘They’ve turned on the heating in the chapel. The vicar is coming in from the village and everyone who wants to can go and light a candle.’

Rat had spent the first eleven years of his life living in a strict religious commune, and tended to freak out at the slightest mention of religion.

‘Are you going?’ Lauren asked.

‘I guess … I don’t think there’s anyone on campus who won’t be there.’

‘It’s so sad,’ Lauren said, as she felt a lump in her throat. ‘Listen, I’ve got to take Meatball for his walk, but I’ll be back on campus within an hour. Maybe we can go and do the candle thing together.’

‘So will Meatball be on his own all night?’

Lauren shook her head as she sniffed slightly. ‘Ewart should be home with Joshua and Tiffany by the time I get back from walkies.’

‘Try not to worry,’ Rat said. ‘She’s in surgery now; they’re doing all they can.’

‘I’ll see you later,’ Lauren said, then shut the call off because she felt tears coming on for the third time that day. She hadn’t been this sad since her mum died. She looked enviously down at Meatball as he licked up the last of his food. She reckoned it would be nice to have nothing do but play, sleep and eat VeggyPet.

‘You greedy pig,’ Lauren said, managing a smile as she slid her hand along Meatball’s back. ‘How could a little dog like you eat that so fast?’

Meatball jumped up on Lauren’s leg as she picked up his lead. When he was a puppy Meatball used to make a big fuss about having his lead hooked on, but now he knew that it meant he was going for a walk and he sat to attention while she hooked it to his collar.

As Lauren slammed the front door and started walking down the patio, she noticed an oversized figure moving through the shadows on the other side of the wall. She froze when she realised it was the hulking figure of the legendary training instructor, Norman Large.

‘Oh it’s
you
,’ Large said.

Following his heart attack seven months earlier, Mr Large had run off a lot of weight and slowly brought himself back to peak fitness. He lived with his partner and daughter in the house next door to the Askers’ and had spent the last hour pumping weights in his garage. His sweatshirt was darkened with sweat.

‘Hello, sir,’ Lauren said awkwardly. She’d once knocked Mr Large out after losing her temper during a training exercise and their relationship hadn’t improved since.

‘Where are you off to?’ Large said, trying to sound friendly. ‘Come over here for a minute. I’ve been hoping to bump into you at some stage.’

Although Mr Large had been on sick leave for half a year, he was still a member of the CHERUB staff and Lauren had to treat him with respect. But she hated the man’s guts and certainly didn’t want a full-blown conversation.

‘I’ve got to take Meatball for his walk and then I’ve got to get back to campus and do my homework.’

‘It’ll only take a minute,’ Large grinned, as Lauren reluctantly stepped across the dark patio, setting off the motion-sensitive light over the Askers’ garage door. ‘As you know, I’ve got to face a disciplinary panel before I can have my job back, because of the erm …
unfortunate
incident leading up to my heart attack last year.’

Lauren smiled acidly. ‘You mean the fact that you went to the pub and got hammered when you were supposed to be in charge of a bunch of kids.’

Large smiled awkwardly back. ‘Well that’s not really fair…’

‘Well you
certainly
didn’t look sober from where I was sitting.’

‘
OK
, I was drunk on duty,’ Large admitted. ‘I know that you and I have never really gotten along, but you were the only senior agent who saw the state I was in before my heart attack that night. Your evidence could be the deciding factor in whether I get my job back after the hearing on Friday next week.’

Lauren enjoyed having some power over Mr Large. After all the times he’d bullied her and made her suffer, he was now reduced to begging her to lie on his behalf.

‘I won’t exaggerate,’ Lauren said firmly. ‘But I am going to tell the truth, which is that you’d had a skinful of beer and you could hardly walk.’

Mr Large changed the subject. ‘He’s a nice little dog, Meatball, isn’t he?’

‘Yeah,’ Lauren nodded.

‘You seem especially fond of him.’

‘He’s really cool; I just wish I’d been able to keep him in my room on campus.’

‘Mmm,’ Large said. ‘But he’s tiny. I mean,
very
fragile. And I was thinking, if you tell that inquiry that I was drunk, they’ll never reinstate me as an instructor. I could be pottering around this house all day with little Meatball right next door and it would be so easy for an accident to occur.’

‘
What?
’ Lauren choked.

‘Oh, you know. Maybe I could step on his little spine and crush him. Or he could get tangled under my lawnmower, or Saddam and Thatcher could accidentally get over the garden fence and maul him …’

Lauren was stunned. ‘You’re blackmailing me? How can you? He’s an innocent little dog!’

Mr Large nodded. ‘And if I get my job back, he’ll
stay
an innocent little dog.’

‘You … you
bastard
,’ Lauren shouted. ‘Only a scumbag like you could come out with a scheme as low as this.’

Mr Large broke into one of his most satanic grins. ‘Temper, temper, little lady.’

‘Zara won’t stand for it if you kill Meatball. She’s the chairwoman; she’s connected to some of the most powerful people in the country.’

Large shrugged. ‘I’ll say it was an accident and nobody will ever prove that it wasn’t.’

‘I can’t believe you,’ Lauren said, as she stepped backwards. ‘You’re barely even human, do you know that?’

‘I’m only asking for one little favour,’ Mr Large coaxed. ‘And you know, Meatball’s pelt would be just the right size for a nice winter hat.’

‘Come on, Meatball,’ Lauren said, tugging on the lead as she started walking towards the road.

She tried not to let the fear show in her voice, but she was shaking all over.

The chapel was one of the few buildings on campus that had existed before CHERUB was founded. The humble stone church had served a rural parish from the 1780s until the entire area was commandeered by the government during World War Two.

With pews for fewer than eighty, it was too small for major occasions like Christmas carol services, and the various faith groups on campus preferred using more comfortable meeting rooms in the main building. But the drafty chapel remained the spiritual heart of campus and when lit by candles the uneven walls and cobwebbed roof beams were as emotive as the grandest cathedral.

More than a hundred candles had been placed around the framed photograph of Gabrielle on a long table. James’ best mate Kyle Blueman and his ex-girlfriend Kerry Chang stood at the entrance, handing candles to the procession of cherubs and staff. They each took a turn, stepping up to the table and lighting their candle before standing it with the others.

Kyle stood in the chapel entrance facing CHERUB’s death-in-service memorial. The names of four agents were carved on its stone surface:

There was space for more names and everyone hoped Gabrielle O’Brien wouldn’t be the next.

‘We’ll need more candles in a minute,’ Kerry whispered, as she looked under the fold-out table in front of them and realised that she was on the last box.

Kyle nodded. ‘There’s a load more in the vestry. I’ll go and fetch them.’

But as Kyle turned away, his mobile phone chimed into life. Evil eyes came at him from all directions.

‘Turn that thing off,’ Dennis King – one of the senior mission controllers – said stiffly, as several kids tutted.

‘Sorry,’ Kyle grimaced, but as he pulled the phone out of his top he saw the name
Michael Hendry
on the display. He dived around the table and into the graveyard outside as he flipped the phone open.

‘Michael, how’s it going?’

‘I can think of better days,’ Michael said, as Kyle realised he’d sounded too flippant. ‘Just wanted to call someone for a chat, you know?’

Kyle had recently turned seventeen. Despite a reputation as a con-merchant, he was well liked and a lot of people came to him for advice.

‘I’m here whenever,’ Kyle said. The wind blew through the darkness as he crouched beside the headstone of a long-dead farmer to stop the buffeting in his ear. ‘Are you still at the hospital?’

‘Nah, I’m back at the Zoo – that’s the care home we’ve been living in. They’re talking about pulling our mission, but I put up a fight so they’re letting me carry on for now.’

‘Are you sure it’s safe?’

‘I’m sure it’s
not
safe,’ Michael said bluntly. ‘Another gang just declared war, but me and Gab have put two months into this. I want to carry on and I know she’d be the same if I’d taken the knife.’

‘Maybe you
would
be better off back at campus,’ Kyle said tactfully. ‘It sounds like you got into a serious row and the cops will be after you, won’t they?’

‘We’ve got a liaison with the head of the anti-gang taskforce, but he’s the only cop who knows about our mission,’ Michael said. ‘There’s going to be a full-scale murder investigation and I dropped my phone at the scene, so they’re bound to haul me in. But the gang members will want to sort their own business and it’s not the kind of neighbourhood where eyewitnesses are gonna pour out of the woodwork.’

‘Wall of silence,’ Kyle said.

‘Exactly.’

‘So have you seen Gabrielle?’

‘She was in a sterile room,’ Michael explained. ‘All I got was a two-second glimpse as they wheeled her into theatre. The doctor explained that your guts are a whole maze of organs and tubes. She could be in surgery all night and it all depends where she was stabbed. A couple of centimetres can make the difference between being OK and bleeding to death.’

‘Any news on who stabbed her?’

‘The cops are looking at CCTV from some of the buildings around there. Hopefully Gab can identify him when she comes round – if she comes round … Or at least give a description.’