Authors: Robert Muchamore
‘By the time I’ve stuffed this sandwich and the chocolate cake, I probably won’t even remember.’
‘That’s sweet of you to say, James,’ Millie grinned. ‘I haven’t told John yet and I’m not exactly looking forward to admitting that I’ve made a fool of myself. I’ll let you keep those forms to show Dave when he gets home, but make sure you don’t leave them lying around for anyone else to see.’
‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ James asked.
Millie glanced at her watch as she hurriedly bit an unladylike chunk out of her sandwich. ‘Better not, I’ve got a meeting at the station in half an hour. But there is one other thing I brought to show you.’
Millie pulled another sheet out of the bag. ‘Dave called me this morning and told me what Sonya said about her dad getting the money from a robbery. This is a list of the major unsolved robberies that took place between March and July of last year. There are eighty-six altogether, but we estimate Leon needed to make over two hundred thousand pounds to pay off his debts and buy the second pub. That rules out all but four cases.’
‘So, is Leon a likely suspect in any of them?’
Millie shook her head. ‘We don’t think so. In three of the four big robberies the serious crime squad has a good idea who the suspects are, but don’t yet have enough evidence to make arrests. The final robbery was of a security truck taking three million in old banknotes to the Bank of England to be destroyed. But it was very high-tech and almost certainly an inside job.’
‘That sounds a bit beyond Leon
Tarasov
,’ James said.
‘Certainly does,’ Millie nodded. ‘There’s been lots of talk about a robbery amongst the local villains, but if you want my hunch, it’s all a smokescreen put out by Leon. There’s only one way I can see a lowlife like
Tarasov
making an easy two hundred grand.’
James finished Millie’s sentence. ‘Drug dealing.’
‘You just read my mind, James.’
*
When he went back to work, James realised it would be best to make at least a start on his Victorian sanitation essay. He began by skimming through the relevant chapter of his textbook, then he poised his pen at the top of his exercise pad and wrote his full name and the essay title, which accounted for eleven words.
James started off his first paragraph:
During Victorian times there was loads of sewage running everywhere in the streets of London. People were getting sick with diseases we donut do not hardly have anymore like malaria, plague, bowleg and typhoid which were rampant. As time went by it got better because the Victorians built sewers and made the water more cleaner.
James counted sixty-five words, including his name and the ones he’d crossed through. He scribbled out plague and changed it
to
the black death
because that made two extra words. With one thousand four hundred and thirty-three words to go, James got the awful feeling that he’d already written everything he knew about Victorian sanitation.
He realised that his best option was to steal something off the Internet and he was going under his bed to grab his laptop when the doorbell rang.
It was Hannah, dressed in white tights, long grey skirt, a pale green blouse and striped tie.
‘Let me in
fast
,’ Hannah squealed, barging past James and shutting the door.
‘What’s the panic in aid of?’ James asked.
Hannah didn’t answer. ‘You don’t have a girlfriend do you, James?’
James shook his head. ‘What’s going …’
Before he finished, Hannah put her arms around James, went up on tiptoes and started
snogging
him. It lasted half a minute before she pulled away.
‘What’s the matter? What’s with the weird uniform?’
Hannah spoke hurriedly. ‘I hate wearing this. I got suspended from my old school after Will died and my parents made me go private. What’s your mobile number?’
Hannah wrote the numbers on her wrist as James recited them.
‘I couldn’t stop thinking about you in class today, James. The way you defended us on Saturday was amazing. But my dad went nuts after he collected me from the police station and I’m
so
grounded
. He hates me hanging out with the kids around here and I don’t think I’ll be able to wriggle out of it for at least a week. But I’ll try calling later for a chat, OK?’
James smiled. ‘Yeah, sure.’
Hannah gave James another kiss. ‘If my dad catches us, you can always break his arms.’
She picked her backpack off the floor, twirled around in her pleated skirt and headed along the balcony towards her flat.
*
James went for an after-school kick-about with Max and Charlie and got invited to the
Tarasovs
’ for dinner. After his previous experience of a four-course Russian meal, James turned down all
Sacha’s
attempts to make him eat extra helpings.
When he got home, Dave and Sonya were watching TV in the living-room, though mercifully they had their clothes on for once. James went to his room and noticed there was a text on his phone:
DO YOU SUFFER FROM VERTIGO? HANNAH :)
James thought it was a weird message and replied with
NO Y?
Hannah was confined to her bedroom with her phone right beside her, so she replied instantly.
DO U WNT 2 PLAY A GAME?
James was intrigued:
YES
It took Hannah a while to type the next message.
GO 2 2ND FLR TURN LFT. WALK 2 END OF BALCONY. TXT WEN U GET THERE.
James had no clue what Hannah was up to, but he wanted to play along. He grabbed his door keys and phone and headed out the front door and up the concrete steps to the top floor.
ME HERE
, James typed as he headed along to the concrete wall at the end of the balcony. His phone rang a few seconds later.
‘Hannah?’ James grinned. ‘What’s this about?’
‘Can you see the emergency exit door?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Go through the door.’
‘Hannah, what the
hell
is all this about?’
She giggled. ‘Go through the door and you might find out.’
James held the phone to his ear and stepped through a graffiti-sprayed door into a concrete stairwell.
‘Christ,’ James gasped. ‘It reeks of piss in here.’
‘Go up the ladder and through the hatch.’
James looked at the aluminium ladder bolted to the wall and the hatch in the ceiling above it.
‘Hannah, there’s a dirty great padlock on it.’
‘Climb up and push hard,’ Hannah said. ‘I’ve got to go, I’m nearly out of calling credit.’
James heard the call go dead. He pocketed his phone and clambered up the ladder. He couldn’t see a way past the padlock, but he pushed as instructed and a crack of sunlight opened up. James realised the screws had been removed from the hinges opposite the lock. He shoved the flap all the way open, then pulled his body up through the opening and out on to the flat roof of the block. The sun was right in his eyes, but he recognised Hannah’s silhouette coming over the asphalt towards him.
‘Jailbreak,’ Hannah grinned as she wrapped her arms around James. ‘There’s another hatch in my flat. It’s outside my room and my old man’s downstairs watching TV.’
She’d changed out of school uniform into a T-shirt and leggings.
‘You look great,’ James said, suddenly conscious that his hair was everywhere and he smelled sweaty from playing football.
‘Thanks,’ Hannah said. ‘Did you ever hear about Will?’
James felt a little awkward. ‘Max mentioned it. He was your cousin or something, wasn’t he?’
‘The silly fool,’ Hannah said sadly. ‘Come here, I’ll show you.’
Hannah took James’ hand and led him to the edge of the roof. She stood with the toes of her Nikes poking over the edge.
‘Careful,’ James said, stopping a shoe-length further back. ‘It’s a good view over central London; we must be quite high up here.’
Hannah gave a half-smile, ‘Well it is called Palm
Hill
.’
James felt stupid. ‘Yeah, I suppose it is.’
‘But you’ve got to look down,’ Hannah said. ‘And you’ve got to be right on the edge to get a buzz out of it.’
James shuffled half a step forwards and looked down the face of the building. Compared to the highest part of the assault course on campus, it didn’t seem that scary. At least, it didn’t until James noticed the hopelessly mangled banister down at ground level.
‘This is the exact spot,’ James said.
‘They haven’t even had the decency to repair the railing,’ Hannah said, backing away from the edge and looking sad. ‘Every time I walk past there, I can see Will with his back broken and the blood pouring out of his ear.’
‘Were you two good friends?’
‘I used to like playing with him when I was little,’ Hannah said. ‘But not so much later on. Will was a geek; into computers and stuff. He didn’t have any mates, but he was funny and really, really clever. Towards the end he started getting wasted all the time. I think he was depressed.’
James wasn’t sure what to say. ‘Did he kill himself?’
‘He might have done,’ Hannah shrugged. ‘But he didn’t leave a note or anything. Most people reckon he just got so wasted that he forgot where he was and fell off.’
‘Poor guy,’ James said solemnly, taking a final glance down the face of the building, before stepping away from the edge.
Hannah rested her head on James’ shoulder and giggled nervously. ‘You must think I’m a right
nutter
asking you up here. I spent all day thinking up a way to meet you while I was grounded and … Well, this must be your worst date ever.’
James put his arm around Hannah’s back. ‘Nah, it’s cool,’ he smiled reassuringly. ‘The view up here is great. I bet all the lights in the city look beautiful when it gets dark.’
James kissed Hannah briefly on the lips, but she still looked sad and James realised it wasn’t the right moment for a snog. He ended up sitting on the warm asphalt with his back resting against a metal vent and Hannah’s head in his lap. They talked about all kinds of stuff as the sun dropped.
James really liked Hannah. She had a laid-back air and a cruel sense of humour. He wished they’d met under different circumstances. Then he could have told her about Lauren and his mum and who he really was, instead of having to stick to his stupid back story.
Dave was at the dining table reading the
Daily Star
. James strolled in and waggled a mass of crumpled exercise paper under his nose.
‘Ta-
da
,’ James announced. ‘Not a bad morning’s work. One thousand, five hundred and eleven words on Victorian sanitation. Three colour diagrams and all in my best handwriting.’
Dave looked up and grinned. ‘You really pushed the boat out with the extra eleven words, eh? What’s with the big stain?’
‘I knocked a can of Coke over it, but luckily the ink didn’t run.’
‘Maybe you should rewrite that page, James. You know how fussy Mr Brennan is. Turning in Coke stains is just begging for him make you do a total rewrite.’
James realised Dave was right, but the prospect of doing more work knocked the edge off his good mood. ‘Damn … Oh well, I’ll redo it tomorrow, it’s only copying out one page. So how come you didn’t get any schoolwork?’
‘I’m waiting for my A-level results,’ Dave explained. ‘My handler says I still look young enough to stay on at CHERUB for another year before I start at university, but I reckon I might go off travelling instead. I fancy seeing Thailand and Australia and stuff.’
James grinned. ‘Cool.’
Dave turned the page of his newspaper and gasped. ‘Sweet! Imagine waking up next to a set of those.’
James scooted around the table to look at the picture of a topless model sitting on a soccer ball. ‘Legs are too skinny,’ he grinned. ‘Although I still wouldn’t say no.’
Dave glanced at his watch. ‘Oh, it’s quarter to twelve. Raul wants the car delivered before eight this evening …’
‘Who’s Raul?’ James interrupted.
‘Just some guy who works with Leon. He rang me through with the job. I don’t want to get caught up in the rush-hour traffic, so I say we head off somewhere decent and get lunch. Then we’ve got to ride the tube up to Pinner.’
‘Is that a long way?’
Dave nodded. ‘North-west London, way out on the Metropolitan line. We’ll have to change trains at Baker Street and the house is a quarter of an hour from the station. Then we’ve got to deliver the car to some lock-up near Bow Road.’
‘Have you told Millie all this?’
‘Course,’ Dave said. ‘Once there’s no risk of it compromising our mission, she’ll tip off the vehicle crime unit.’