Authors: Robert Muchamore
12. FLOOD
James cooked up bacon and mushroom omelettes for breakfast. Ryan wolfed it down in his underwear, before heading back to his room to put on the black and yellow tie and green blazer of St Thomas’ Boys school.
‘Remember what we talked about in the briefing,’ James said. ‘To get in with the drug dealers you’ve got to create the impression of being tough and rebellious. But not so crazy that people think you’re unstable.’
‘I know,’ Ryan said.
‘And the photographs?’ James asked.
James had been through all this the day before on campus and Ryan sounded mildly irritated. ‘God, James! I’ve studied the pictures we got from Kentish Town Police, so I know which kids to try hanging out with.’
This part of north London wasn’t known for great schools and St Thomas’ was the worst of a bad bunch. The main building was an old Victorian schoolhouse, the air in the lobby fouled by a putrid aroma coming out of the boys’ toilets.
The woman on reception directed Ryan to an office on the second floor. The head of Year Ten was a lanky IT teacher called Mr Kite.
‘Welcome to St Thomas’,’ he said, as he firmly shook Ryan’s hand. ‘Now, how about we get off on the right foot by tucking that shirt in?’
Ryan grudgingly tucked his shirt in, before sitting through a boring lecture on the difficulties he’d face catching up with the GCSE programme, and how the school had a family ethos and didn’t tolerate bullying or racism.
Once the spiel was out of the way, the bell for first lesson was long gone and Ryan managed to arrive at his science class twenty minutes late. He charged into the room noisily and went straight for a seat near the back.
‘Young man, what are you doing?’ a bearded teacher asked.
Ryan looked down between his legs. ‘Sitting on a stool,’ he said sarcastically, making a couple of other kids laugh.
‘Well, you don’t roll into my lesson twenty minutes late and sit down. Especially when I have no clue who you are.’
Everyone in the class watched Ryan as he strolled to the front of the room and showed the teacher a timetable. There were two kids he recognised from surveillance photos in the room.
The teacher pointed out a name on Ryan’s timetable. ‘Science,
Miss Dingwall
. Do I look like Miss Dingwall to you?’
Ryan grinned. ‘I don’t know, I’ve never met Miss Dingwall.’
The teacher stroked his beard.
‘Some women are pretty hairy,’ Ryan said, which made the classroom erupt with laughter.
The teacher chose to ignore the quip and pointed to the right. ‘Two classrooms down.’
‘All right,’ Ryan said sourly, as he headed for the exit. ‘No need to get snotty.’
‘I don’t like your attitude,’ the teacher shouted. ‘You’re lucky I don’t report you to your head of year.’
Ryan sauntered out, walked down a hallway and then crashed noisily into Miss Dingwall’s classroom.
‘Oh right, you must be the new student,’ she said, in a posh accent. ‘You’re a little late and we’re just about to start an experiment, OK? So if you can quickly copy the diagram on the board, I’ll come over and help you set up, yaah?’
‘Yaah!’ Ryan said.
Ryan immediately recognised three kids from surveillance pictures, but only one had an empty bench next to him. He was a chubby half-Somali, half-English kid called Abdi.
‘Miss, I haven’t got a workbook,’ Ryan said.
But Miss Dingwall had been expecting a new student and was already coming across the room with a workbook, a textbook and several printed worksheets.
As she worked with Ryan, helping him set up the equipment for an experiment, the rest of the class grew so rowdy that she was forced to return to the front and yell at everyone to settle down.
Ryan looked across at Abdi. ‘I’m Ryan,’ he said.
Abdi scowled and looked Ryan in the eyes. ‘And why should I give a shit?’ he asked.
*
Fay and Ning chatted through the night, from little stuff like what films and music they liked to big things like what they planned to do when they got out of Idris.
‘Everyone says I’m just a kid,’ Fay complained. ‘But I’m not gonna let the people who killed my aunt and mum get away with it.’
‘I admire your determination,’ Ning said. ‘But you’d be taking on an entire organisation. Maybe you
should
ride with that cop you were talking about.’
Fay tutted. ‘I’m not a snitch.’
It was gone 3 a.m. when the two girls stopped talking and went to sleep. As a result the pair were tired and grumpy when a guard named Sarah woke them up for school.
Lessons were compulsory in the STC, but each teacher had to struggle with fifteen kids who varied wildly in age and ability and often didn’t have English as their first language. Fay and Ning’s teacher didn’t seem bothered that the pair settled on cushions at the back of the classroom and dozed off.
When school ended at 2 p.m., all the girls headed back to the accommodation block.
‘There’s only ever Wendy plus one other guard on duty,’ Fay said. ‘You wanna have some fun?’
Ning looked intrigued, but sounded wary. ‘Nothing that gets my sentence extended.’
‘Agreed,’ Fay said. ‘But there’s only one segregation cell and I’ll bet you five pounds that I can get put in there before you.’
Ning smirked and put her hands on her hips. ‘Are you saying you’re more of a badass than me?’
‘I’m not saying,’ Fay said. ‘I
know
I’m more of a badass than you.’
Once they got back from the education block, most girls started going to their rooms, while a few changed clothes to go join a netball match outside. Fay cut into the laundry room and dived on top of a washing machine.
She tried reaching down the back, but her arms weren’t long enough and she looked back at Ning.
‘Don’t just stand there, give us a hand,’ Fay said, as she started dragging one of the machines away from the wall.
When they’d pulled the machine back half a metre, Fay jumped into the gap behind and wrenched the water hose out of the back. As water began to spew, Fay reached around and pulled the pipes out of the machines on either side.
‘Tip all the powder,’ Fay said.
There were two giant boxes open and the girls each threw the powder in all directions as water began puddling on the floor.
‘Anarchy!’ Fay yelled, as she backed out and headed for their cell.
The pair sat on their beds, waiting for someone to report their sabotage to a guard. It felt like ages, but it was little Izzy who saw the water pouring down the corridor. She ran back to Wendy’s office.
‘Miss, there’s water flooding the laundry room!’
Fay and Ning peeked out of their room as Wendy frantically yelled for the second guard, Sarah, to come running. As the guard splashed down a hallway running with an increasing torrent of water, Wendy dispatched Izzy to go find the facility’s maintenance person.
‘I’m not sure how to shut it off,’ Wendy shouted. ‘There must be a stopcock somewhere.’
As soon as she was sure that the two guards were inside the laundry room, Fay led Ning across the hallway and into Wendy’s office.
Fay immediately opened the filing cabinet and began chucking out files and throwing them across the floor. Ning realised she had to join in and yanked out the desk drawers, scattering their contents.
A bunch of girls had started gathering in the hallway to watch the running water and a couple joined the fun, grabbing the folders and files from Wendy’s desk and throwing them out into the damp corridor. Fay and Ning were both laughing, but also a little bit scared.
Ning thought they’d accomplished what they needed to, but Fay had one final target. She stormed back into the hallway and sploshed her way down to Izzy and Chloe’s room. Izzy had run to get maintenance, but Chloe stood in her doorway and had rolled up a towel to try stopping the flood from getting into her room.
‘Grass bitch,’ Fay shouted, as she gave Chloe a two-handed shove into the cell.
Chloe screamed as Fay kicked her hard in the thigh, then sent her sprawling backwards over her bed. Ning’s instinct was to defend Chloe, but her mission was to get close to Fay and she had to find a way to break up the fight without jeopardising their friendship.
‘This is what you get if you screw me over,’ Fay shouted, as she lined up a punch.
As Chloe braced for a punch on the nose, Ning snatched Fay’s arm.
‘You’ll get done for assault,’ Ning shouted. ‘The cow’s not worth it.’
Fay growled, but seemed to take Ning’s point.
‘You’re lucky,’ Fay shouted, firing a ball of spit in Chloe’s face as she backed up.
‘Let’s get back to our cell,’ Ning said.
As the pair stepped back into the corridor, four huge, black-clad figures charged in up at the end by the laundry room. Izzy tried saying something to one of the men, but only got splattered against the wall before getting an almighty shove.
‘Lockdown, back in your cells!’ the men shouted.
Several girls screamed as the helmeted men shoved them back towards their cells. A girl who fell found a size-twelve boot planted in her stomach before she was picked up and shoved backwards while a man screamed, ‘What did I tell you?’ right in her face.
Fay and Ning scrambled back to their cell ahead of the onslaught. Ning was worried about what was happening to the other girls, but Fay just lay back on her bed, studying her blood-smeared fist.
‘This is what life’s all about,’ she roared. And then she started laughing.
13. ASSEMBLY
Ryan could smell James cooking bacon in the kitchen, but the aroma made him queasy and he wished he didn’t have to get up for his third day at St Thomas’ school.
‘I’m making your breakfast,’ James said, when he burst in a couple of minutes later. ‘You might at least have the decency to get up and eat it.’
Ryan emerged from under his duvet. He wasn’t exactly tearful, but James could tell he was upset.
‘What’s the matter?’
James seemed like a decent bloke, but Ryan wasn’t sure he was the kind of person you could really talk to, so he just said, ‘It’s nothing.’
‘It’s clearly
something
,’ James said, as he sat on the end of Ryan’s bed. ‘If you don’t want to talk to me, I can set up a call with one of the counsellors on campus.’
‘No,’ Ryan gasped, worried that a call back to campus would get put on to his mission record. ‘It’s just . . .’
James smiled as Ryan tailed off. ‘Bloody hell, Ryan, I don’t bite.’
‘It’s just . . . I’m so shit at making friends with people.’
James frowned. ‘You’re a black shirt, so you must have done something right.’
‘I got my black shirt from one big mission,’ Ryan said. ‘And at the start of that I had to make friends with this guy Ethan. I got it so wrong that I almost got the poor kid killed. Now I’m on this mission and I’m
still
useless.’
James thought for a couple of seconds. ‘We’re trying to find a major source of high purity cocaine. Nobody is expecting instant results.’
‘You don’t get it,’ Ryan moaned. ‘Agents like Ning waltz in and make friends with people really easily, but I always fail.’
‘I was always pretty good at that stuff,’ James admitted. ‘It’s mostly about being relaxed, not trying too hard and having a bit of luck.’
Ryan put his hands over his head. ‘But I’m
so
crap. I tried talking to this kid called Abdi who’s in my form and he blanks me. I’ve tried speaking to a few other kids on our target list and none of them want anything to do with me.’
‘If you’re anxious you probably come across as trying too hard,’ James said. ‘But I might be able to set something up that’ll help.’
‘Like what?’
‘Is there a place where the kids you’re targeting spend time?’
‘The Hangout,’ Ryan said.
James shook his head. ‘I mean near the school, during lunch break, or at the end of the day.’
Ryan nodded. ‘There’s a little swing park. Quite a few of the target kids hang there at lunchtime.’
‘OK,’ James said, as he stroked his beard thoughtfully. ‘I’ll have a think. You keep your phone switched on this morning because I’ll probably need to talk to you.’
*
Fay got another three days in segregation for beating up Chloe, but emerged looking cheerful because her sentence wouldn’t outlast the week.
‘Ningy!’ Fay said exuberantly, when she got back to her cell. ‘Ningy, Ning, Ningo, bingo!’
Ning raised one eyebrow and smiled wryly. ‘You can cut that out.’
The two girls hugged like old friends and made high-pitched
squeee
noises.
‘We’ve got our release papers for Saturday,’ Ning said. ‘I put yours up by the window.’
Fay smiled as she reached for an envelope. Her expression changed dramatically when she’d read a couple of sentences.
‘They’re sending me to foster-parents in Elstree,’ she yelled. ‘Where’s bloody
Elstree
?’
‘Way north I think,’ Ning said. ‘Like, past Barnet, or something.’
‘What gives them the right to send me to Elstree? Surely they’re supposed to release me back where I came from.’
Fay steamed down the hallway and entered Wendy’s office without knocking.
‘Elstree?’ she screamed. ‘I’m not from anywhere near Elstree. I thought you got released back into the care of whatever local authority you were arrested in.’
Wendy sat at her desk and looked resigned to another shouting match. ‘You were arrested in Camden,’ Wendy began calmly. ‘But Camden has a network of foster-parents in other boroughs. And given that your aunt was murdered by a gang based in Camden, it was decided that you’d be better off living a few miles out of harm’s way.’
Fay tutted. ‘If Hagar had wanted me dead he’d have done it already. But I’m just a kid. He doesn’t regard me as a threat.’
‘Elstree is a perfectly nice place,’ Wendy said. ‘It’s not like you’ve got friends or relatives in Camden.’
‘I wasn’t even consulted – as per usual,’ Fay huffed.
‘You might have had time to make changes if you hadn’t got yourself locked up in seg,’ Wendy said stiffly.
‘Always
my
fault,’ Fay said, before storming back to the cell.
‘You can always come and visit me,’ Ning said soothingly.
‘Where are you?’ Fay asked.
‘The north of Islington,’ Ning said. ‘Some place called Nebraska House.’
*
Ryan still felt down after another morning of school, moving between lessons without really connecting with anyone. At lunchtime he queued up for sausage and chips at a takeaway near the school, then walked briskly towards the swing park.
The kids with links to Hagar’s operation were a close-knit bunch of Year Nines and Tens. They lurked at the back of the park on a skateboard ramp, while Year Seven kids mucked about on the swings and the roundabouts.
Ryan got a text from James,
All set?
He dabbed ketchup over the screen of his iPhone as he responded.
Ready when U R.
A couple of minutes later, six boys came into the park wearing the black blazers of the nearby Dartmouth Park school. None of the sextet had ever been near Dartmouth Park. They were all CHERUB agents, including Ryan’s mates Max and Alfie and a kid called Jimmy who looked like he could break rocks with his head.
‘St Thomas’,’ Jimmy shouted, as he approached the kids by the skateboard ramp. ‘Why you got this park? It’s nearer to our school than yours.’
A target of Ryan’s named Ali took the bait. ‘You got the massive reservoir park, right next to your school.’
Jimmy laughed. ‘That’s ours, but now we’re taxing this park.’
Ryan picked up the last of his chips as eight of his target kids moved towards the six CHERUB agents.
‘Why don’t you start something?’ a target called Andre shouted as he stepped out to the edge of the skating ramp. ‘You bitches be lucky to leave this park on two legs.’
As Andre stepped forward, CHERUB agent Alfie DuBoisson met him with a fist in the face.
‘Our park!’ Alfie shouted.
The St Thomas’ kids piled forward into the CHERUB agents. Blows flew in all directions, but the results were predictable as combat-trained CHERUB agents knocked three kids on their arses. One St Thomas’ kid charged in with a lump of wood, but was swiftly disarmed by Max and had the wood shoved up the inside of his blazer.
As the melee erupted between fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds, most of the little kids scrambled out of the park gate. Ryan balled up his chip paper and charged towards the action.
‘Think you’re hard?’ Ryan taunted, as he strode in with chest puffed and fists bunched.
The first rival Ryan faced was his friend Alfie. They’d fought in the dojo a few times and Ryan always got his arse kicked. But this time Ryan launched a pivoting roundhouse kick and Alfie acted out a backwards stumble, clutching his ribcage.
Jimmy had a Somali named Youssef in a headlock, until Ryan approached and karate-chopped him in the neck, forcing him to let go before giving him a two-fingered eye jab that didn’t quite make contact.
As Jimmy stumbled back with his hands over his eyes, another CHERUB agent charged at Ryan and ended up sprawled on his face from a trip.
‘Any more of you wanna piece of me?’ Ryan yelled.
The St Thomas’ kids who’d been knocked down in the initial onslaught were still mostly crawling around on the ground, while four of the CHERUB agents were getting to their feet. At the centre of it all, stood Ryan.
‘I got four of you,’ Ryan yelled confidently. ‘Where’s your bravado now?’
Alfie was the first CHERUB agent back on his feet, but as Ryan stepped closer he turned and started running. Within a few seconds the other CHERUB agents had all turned and run away.
‘Dartmouth Park,’ Ryan taunted, as they ran off. ‘Dartmouth Shite, more like.’
By this time, most of the St Thomas’ kids were back on their feet. Abdi, who’d repeatedly blanked Ryan in science class, came up behind and gave him a friendly thump on the back.
‘You see that eye gouge on the big kid?’ Abdi shouted. ‘He’s gonna be feeling that one!’
‘Where’d you learn your skills?’ Andre asked.
Ryan smirked. ‘I’ve been moved around a lot of schools and there’s always someone waiting to take a pop at you.’
‘Righteous,’ another kid said, before offering to bump fists. ‘Reckon we’d have handled it though. It’s just they took us by surprise.’
‘Surprise,’ Abdi agreed.
‘So where you from?’ Andre asked.
Ryan made a circle with his pointing finger. ‘All around. My parents died, so I live with my brother, James. He’s got a job working as a mechanic, so hopefully we’re gonna be here for a while.’
‘Didn’t I see you going in a house on the Pemberton estate?’ Abdi asked.
Ryan nodded. ‘That’s right.’
‘You should come over to The Hangout,’ Abdi said. ‘You must practically be able to see it from your house.’
‘I’ve seen it,’ Ryan said. ‘I wasn’t sure if it was cool, plus it’s not like I know anyone round here.’
‘Come tonight,’ Abdi said. ‘There’s pool, table tennis, girls.’
‘Not that they’ll go near you, Abdi,’ someone said.
Ryan tried to sound nonchalant, even though he was all excited on the inside. ‘Guess I might check it out,’ he said casually.