Authors: Robert Muchamore
‘OK,’ James said, pulling a single out of its sleeve and lifting up the top of the record player. He realised he’d never put a vinyl record on before.
‘It’s automatic,’ Hannah explained.
She laid the disc on the platter and pushed the button that made the arm swing out and drop down on to the vinyl. After a few crackles and pops, the theme tune from
The Monkees
broke out.
‘Oh cool,’ Hannah giggled. ‘Good choice.’
‘I used to watch
The Monkees
on satellite when I was little,’ James grinned.
Hannah stood barefoot on her rug, jiggling to the song. ‘Yeah, me too,’ she nodded.
*
They sat on Hannah’s bed for more than an hour, listening to old tunes and talking about stuff. Hannah acted cheerful, but James sensed sadness beneath the surface. She was a fish out of water at her posh school, she had major hassles with her dad and her best friend now spent nearly all of her spare time looking after her
nan
.
They had their first proper snog, but Hannah abruptly decided that she was hungry when James tried to sneak a hand down the back of her shorts for a feel of her bum.
James trailed her into the kitchen, straightening up his crumpled clothes with a look of disappointment that was probably visible from outer space.
‘Why the sour face?’ Hannah asked, as she laid fish fingers under a hot grill.
‘Oh,’ James said listlessly, sitting with his elbows on the dining table and his cheeks resting in his palms. ‘Nothing.’
Hannah turned and gave James a smile that made him realise he was falling for her. The CHERUB training manual has a whole chapter on the dangers of forming close attachments to people you meet on undercover missions, but this was still the thing about being a cherub that James had the most difficulty with. When this mission ended, the attractive fourteen-year-old girl who was making his lunch and grinning at him would be confined to memory and he’d be back on campus facing life as a social outcast.
‘Don’t think about it,’ James mumbled.
‘You what?’ Hannah said.
James snapped out of deep thought and realised he’d said something he’d only meant to think. ‘I’m tired,’ James said sharply, by way of explanation. ‘Me and Dave were up until three a.m. on the
Playstation
.’
‘It must be
so
cool living without parents. Mine are such dicks.’
James nodded. ‘I guess, but we’ve got sod-all money. And the social worker’s supposed to come in twice a week to see how I’m doing.’
‘You know, I was thinking about your flat. You should get some paint to brighten the place up.’
‘We got a furniture grant from the council. Dave’s gonna drive us up to
Ikea
when he gets the car fixed.’
‘
Ikea
,’ Hannah tutted. ‘That place is the worst of the lot.’
‘Well some of their stuff is dirt-cheap. And your parents might be dicks, but they’ve kept you in nice clothes and fancy stuff for your room that me and Dave couldn’t afford.’
‘I know,’ Hannah said, as she pulled out the grill and tried turning the fish fingers quickly, without burning her fingers. ‘I love my parents, James, of
course
. It’s just, after what happened to Will they’re so strict. They’re scared about me hanging with the local kids and getting involved with drugs and that.’
‘Do Will’s parents still live round here?’
Hannah shook her head. ‘My aunt and uncle couldn’t take it. They sold up and moved down to the coast.’
Hannah paused, then her face lit up. ‘Actually,’ she said, waggling her finger and grinning like mad.
‘What?’ James asked.
‘You just gave me an idea, James. When Auntie Shelley went, she didn’t want anything of Will’s. She threw out all of his stuff and I thought it was sad. So I went up there and rescued some of it. My dad’s got one of the lock-ups over the back. There’s bits of furniture, like Will’s desk and chair. I mean, it’s all sitting there gathering dust.’
The damp smell made James’ nose tingle as Hannah opened the padlocked door of her father’s lock-up. She flicked on a bare bulb. The space was a couple of metres wide, maybe four deep and it needed a good tidy. There were boxes of books piled up to the ceiling, half-empty paint tins, old rolls of wallpaper and a hover-mower resting on a tatty armchair.
‘You don’t even have a garden,’ James grinned.
Will’s stuff was all in one corner: boxes of school books, an office chair, a wooden desk covered in aged Action Man and Power Rangers stickers, a bedside table, angle poise lamp and even a dilapidated computer.
‘What do you reckon?’ Hannah asked, as James stepped over a couple of folding chairs to get a closer look.
‘Yeah,’ James nodded. ‘I could definitely use a chair and desk in my room, for homework and stuff.’
‘You might as well have his computer as well. They go out of date really quickly and it’s just sitting there.’
James had a spiffy laptop with wireless Internet back at the flat, but he realised his alter ego, James Holmes, would probably jump at the chance of a free computer.
‘It’s cool,’ James nodded. ‘But what about your folks? Are they gonna mind you giving this stuff away?’
‘My dad didn’t want me keeping any of Will’s stuff in the first place. He said it was morbid.’
James gave Hannah a peck on the cheek. ‘This really means a lot to me,’ he smiled, as he pulled his mobile out of his pocket. ‘I’ll ring Dave. He’s only round at the car lot and he can help us carry.’
*
Although James and Dave were only going to be in the neighbourhood for a few weeks trying to get the inside line on Leon
Tarasov
, they had to create the impression that they were starting a new life and setting up home in Palm Hill. After Dave helped move Will’s stuff up to the flat, the boys set off for
Ikea
to spend some of the £325 that an associate of Leon’s had shoved through the letterbox while they’d been out.
The
Mondeo
was running smoothly and the freshly repaired air-conditioning was doing its job. Unfortunately, they ran into a black spot on the M25 and ended up crawling through three lanes of traffic at walking pace.
‘So what about Millie’s idea that it’s something to do with drugs?’ James asked.
Dave shrugged, as he rolled the car a couple of lengths forward then dabbed the brake. ‘It’s the obvious choice if you can’t link Leon to a robbery. He’s got no history in the drug business, but he’s an opportunist. You saw how quickly his mind worked, slotting us into his little car-theft scam. If Leon saw a chance of making big money through drugs, I think he’d take it.’
‘Mind you, that list was only robberies in the Metropolitan Police area. For all we know, it could have been anywhere.’
The traffic was making Dave moody. ‘Whatever,’ he said irritably. ‘I mean, you can speculate all day long over where Leon got his money from. The only way we’ll get a real answer is by plugging away at this mission. Me with Sonya, Pete and Leon; you with Max and Liza.’
‘I know,’ James nodded, as he watched a wasp crawling up the outside of his window. ‘I’ll try getting into their house more now that Max is off school. Do you think we should place some listening devices?’
Dave shook his head. ‘If you’re on a big mission, you can lay bugs everywhere and we’ll have back-up teams listening in. But we’re small-time here. All we’ve got is me, you, Millie and a bit of oversight from John Jones. It’s not worth running the risk of placing a bug unless we know when and where something juicy is going down. We’ll just end up with hundreds of hours of recordings that nobody’s ever gonna listen to.’
James nodded.
‘To be honest, James, I don’t reckon you’ll get much from your end of this mission. Leon runs his business out of the
Portacabin
and keeps
Sacha
and the younger kids well out of it. With me working part-time on the lot, I’m gonna get to hear what’s going down. I’m friendly with Pete and I’ll eventually get an opportunity to rummage through everything in the
Portacabin
when Leon goes off to a car auction or something.’
‘You could be right,’ James said sadly.
Dave blasted his horn as a car cut in from the next lane, forcing him to jump on the brake. ‘Oh, that’s gonna get you home so much earlier.’
The driver of the car in front poked his hand out the window and flicked Dave off.
‘Up yours too,’ Dave snarled, before calming down a little and resuming his conversation with James. ‘You’ve been pretty lucky on your missions so far, kiddo. You earned most of the glory on that drugs mission and when we were locked up in Arizona, but I reckon it’s gonna be the David Moss show this time.’
James thought about it for a second and realised that he didn’t really mind.
‘Who cares?’ he grinned. ‘I won’t be earning any black T-shirt for this sideshow. So you can have your glory. As long as the weather stays nice and I get to spend a few weeks chilling with Hannah …’
‘Kids these days,’ Dave tutted, as he shook his head and struggled to keep a straight face. ‘Fancy putting a bit of skirt before the mission.’
James started to laugh. ‘Oh yeah Dave, you’d
never
do that.’
*
The boys arrived back at five in the afternoon. They’d bought cheap blinds to go up all the windows, bedside lamps, some shelving for the living-room and a couple of rugs to cover over the grubbiest areas of carpet in the bedrooms.
Hannah was grounded, but Max and Pete
Tarasov
both turned up. Pete brought some tools and a stepladder. He helped Dave put up the blinds, while James and Max screwed the pine shelving together. When the younger boys finished, they moved into James’ room and wired up Will’s old computer on the battered desk. The machine ran fine, but there weren’t any games or other cool stuff on the hard drive, so they headed down to the football pitches to join the nightly kick-about.
The end of school had put Palm Hill’s teenage population into a jubilant mood. James enjoyed himself too. At CHERUB, everyone was in good shape and his lack of
footballing
talent was evident; but amongst ordinary kids, his strength and high level of fitness made him look average.
The game meandered through an orange sunset into the bluish glow from streetlamps, but they ran out of players just before eleven, when Charlie went off with Liza
Tarasov
and a couple of slightly younger kids got hauled in by tetchy mums. James picked his shirt off a wooden bench and used it to wipe the sweat dripping out of his hair.
‘You
wanna
come over to my place some time tomorrow?’ Max asked, as they walked upstairs to their flats. ‘I’ve got four controllers for my X-Box. We can call up a couple of other guys and have a FIFA tournament or something?’
‘Yeah, that sounds cool,’ James nodded, grabbing his keys out of his pocket as they stepped on to the balcony. ‘We’ll sort it tomorrow. You’ve got my mobile number.’
James couldn’t decide whether to take a shower as he pushed open the front door. On one hand he was boiling hot, but on the other his legs were wasted and he just wanted to crash out in bed.
‘Dave, you awake?’ James asked, as he leaned into the living-room.
He didn’t get an answer, so he wandered through to the kitchen, stuck his head under the cold tap and began gulping down water. When he was satisfied, he wiped his mouth on the shirt and dumped it on the dining table, before cutting across the hallway to his room.
As James opened his door, he caught a strong whiff of burning. His heart raced as he scrambled out into the hallway and yelled.
‘
Fire!
’ James screamed.
Dave was sprawled across the double bed, with his bum on display and his duvet tangled around his legs.
‘Come on,’ James shouted frantically, slapping Dave on the leg. ‘Dave, wake
up
.’
Dave rolled on to his back and opened his eyes. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I think there’s a fire in my room!’
Dave shot up and flicked on the new
Ikea
lamp beside his bed.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked, as he rolled out of bed and pulled his shorts up his legs.
‘I’ll call the fire brigade,’ James said, reaching for his phone.
‘Did you see flames?’ Dave asked. ‘Maybe the smell blew in from somewhere out the back. Let me check it out first.’
James lowered his phone, as Dave jogged up to his bedroom and rested his palm flat against the door.
‘It doesn’t feel hot, James. Did it feel hot when you opened the door?’
James shook his head. ‘No, just really smelly.’
Dave opened the door a few centimetres. Both boys caught the burning smell, accompanied by a whirring noise. Once Dave was satisfied there were no flames, he reached in and flipped on the light. The room was engulfed in a grey haze. Dave stepped across to the window and flung it open. James followed him in and realised the smell was coming from the back of the computer.