Authors: Robert Muchamore
There was a microphone inside the duplicate car, so everyone back at the hotel could hear what was going on.
‘
Shit
,’ Patricia yelled as she banged her palm on the steering wheel.
‘Mummy,’ Charlotte said, pointing an accusing finger. ‘You said a
rudey
word.’
Patricia got out of the car and stormed back to the house. ‘Michael, can you come and look at this car? It’s not starting.’
Michael stepped out, dressed in boxers and carpet slippers.
‘She used a rude word, Daddy,’ Charlotte said, as her father got into the driver’s seat.
‘Sometimes grown-ups say naughty words when they’re upset, sweetie. I think the car is broken and it made Mummy cross.’
‘Can you fix it?’
‘I don’t know about cars, Charlotte. We’ll have to call the mechanic.’
‘What’s mechanic?’
Michael ignored his daughter’s question as he stepped out and confronted his stern-faced wife.
‘I’ll call out the Auto Club,’ Michael shrugged. ‘You’ll have to wait in for them.’
‘Why
me
?’ Patricia said indignantly. ‘I can’t wait in. I’ll have to take Charlotte to nursery on the bus and then I’m getting my hair done.’
‘It’s your day off,’ Michael said. ‘I’ve got a neighbourhood watch meeting in the bloody community centre at half eleven.’
‘You said they’re just a bunch of pensioners with nothing better to do.’
‘They
are
,’ Michael said. ‘But I’m a community police officer, it’s part of my job.’
‘You’ve got nearly two hours. The mechanic should be here before then.’
Charlotte whined from inside the car. ‘Mummy, I want to get out.’
Michael grunted at his wife. ‘Fine. I’ll wait for the mechanic. It’s
your
day off, but you piss off and get your hair done. I guess the world would stop spinning if that didn’t happen, whereas we don’t need our car at all.’
‘Get me out,’ Charlotte screamed, kicking her pink trainers against the seat in front of her.
‘It wouldn’t kill you to get off your lazy backside and do something around here for once,’ Patricia yelled, as she ducked inside the car and unhooked Charlotte’s seatbelt.
08:51
Ray’s voice came through to the hotel suite from his position inside the grey van. ‘Base, that’s it. I can see Michael going into the house.’
Kerry and Lauren were still squeezed up on the chair sharing the headphones as John grabbed a microphone. ‘Thanks Ray, got that. I’ll get Chloe to switch over the phone at the exchange.’
‘Been there, done that,’ Chloe said. ‘We’ve now got the option of answering any call Michael makes.’
‘CHERUB
has
the technology,’ Lauren said, deepening her voice to make herself sound like a movie trailer.
John looked at Kerry and Lauren. ‘You’d better keep the chatter down when this call comes through – in fact, scrub that order. Lauren, you’re not even dressed and Kerry, your hair looks like a bird’s nest. We might need you for something later on, so get yourselves scrubbed. Then go downstairs and get breakfast before the buffet closes.’
Lauren looked back at John. ‘Can’t we
please
stay long enough to hear the phone call?’
‘No,’ John said sternly. ‘This isn’t Chat FM you’re listening to here. This is a mission and we’ve all got jobs to do, now scram.’
The girls skulked out of the room and began rowing over who got first dibs in the shower.
‘Keep the noise down,’ John yelled. ‘And you’re not that big, you can shower together and save time.’
‘But …’ Kerry said reluctantly.
‘Think of the water you’ll save,’ Chloe laughed. ‘It’ll be good for the environment.’
A phone that was linked up to one of the computers started ringing almost as soon as the girls had gone. After three rings, Chloe let a call-centre program on one of the computers answer it with a message she’d recorded a few days earlier.
‘Hello, my car …’ Michael Patel spluttered, before he realised he was speaking to a machine.
‘
Welcome to the Auto Club home-start hotline. We’re sorry, but all our operators are busy at this time. Your call matters to us and one of our operators will take it as soon as they become available. For your convenience, please have your membership number ready
…’
‘For
god’s
sake,’ Michael yelled, as light classical music broke out over the line. ‘Why can’t anyone just answer a telephone these days?’
08:59
Leon had given Dave a set of keys for the car lot. As he undid the padlock on the gate, Dave looked over his shoulder at the orange Mercedes van parked across the street, knowing that the CIB agent Greg Jackson was watching him from inside.
Leon and Pete never made it to the lot much before quarter past nine, which meant Dave had a few minutes to run some final checks. He unlocked Leon’s office and filled the kettle to brew up. Then he pulled the Palm Pilot out of his rucksack and ran a diagnostic on the five listening devices he’d set up on the lot over the previous week. He was a little perturbed when he entered the access code for the first bug, only to find that the signal was very weak. He flipped through the other four devices, and found they were completely dead.
Dave felt a shot of panic. This was the most important location in the sting operation and one weak audio signal coming out of the tool shed wasn’t going to cut it. He frantically checked out of the window to make sure nobody was approaching the cabin, before grabbing the two-way radio out of his pack.
‘John, Chloe, I’m in big trouble here.’
John’s voice crackled through the speaker. ‘Dave, what’s wrong?’
‘I’m not picking up a scrap of sound through the Palm Pilot. Can you double-check at your end?’
‘Will do.’
It took thirty seconds for John’s reply to come through.
‘They’re all dead,’ John called anxiously.
‘I’ve got a signal on one,’ Dave said.
‘If they’re all down, it must be a problem with the booster aerial that relays the signal up to the satellite. Where did you hide it?’
‘On the cabin roof,’ Dave said.
‘Is Leon there yet?’
Dave looked at his watch. ‘Not for eight to ten minutes, I reckon.’
‘Do you think you’ve got time to get up on the roof and have a go at fixing it?’
‘I can try,’ Dave said. ‘But I’ll have some explaining to do if he turns up early.’
‘We’re dead in the water if we can’t get Leon’s conversations on tape. You’ll have to risk it.’
Dave anxiously checked his watch and tucked the Palm Pilot and two-way radio into his shorts. He grabbed a dustbin from near the entrance of the lot and dragged it up to the cabin. He stood on the lid, then hauled himself on to the corrugated metal roof.
It wasn’t a nice place to be, but as he clambered over the moss and bird droppings, he could at least identify the cause of the problem: some drunk had lobbed an empty vodka bottle on to the roof of the cabin, knocking the stubby grey booster aerial out of its mounting bracket.
Dave clicked it into place, then pulled the Palm Pilot out of his pocket and scanned quickly through the five transmission frequencies. They were all back at full strength.
He crawled towards the dustbin to get down, but as he did he noticed Pete getting out of the passenger door of his uncle’s Jaguar to open the gate. There was no way he’d be able to clamber down before being seen.
09:07
John was delighted to see the signal graphs from the bugs on
Tarasov’s
car lot shoot back into the green.
‘Looks like he’s fixed it,’ John said to Chloe. ‘Good lad.’
Michael Patel had been on hold for nine minutes, getting more and more ratty as the calling system repeated its loop. Chloe finally decided to put him out of his misery and grabbed a telephone handset, which was rigged up to the computer in front of her.
‘Good morning, this is Chloe speaking. Auto Club would like to apologise for the delay in answering your call this morning. Can I have your name and membership number please?’
While Chloe took down the details of the problem with Michael’s car, John had moved into the bedroom. He unbuttoned his shirt, stepped out of his trousers and grabbed a yellow and blue Auto Club uniform out of his wardrobe.
09:11
Dave lay flat against the corrugated rooftop, with his nose uncomfortably close to a fresh splat of birdlime. Pete and Leon stood by the gate looking up and down the street.
‘Dave must have unlocked,’ Leon said angrily. ‘Nobody else has keys. But where’s the little idiot legged it to?’
Dave heard the conversation continue as Pete followed his uncle into the cabin.
‘Look,’ Leon said. ‘The kettle’s hot.’
‘I checked in the toilet,’ Pete said.
Dave couldn’t climb down on to the bin without being seen through the cabin window. He realised his only chance was to drop off the back of the roof into the derelict builders’ yard next door. He crawled furtively, knowing that he was only separated from Leon and Pete’s heads by forty centimetres and a sheet of wobbly metal that amplified every noise he made.
When he got to the rear edge, Dave slid his legs over the side before dropping down into a tangle of weeds. He narrowly missed clattering into a set of rusted paint cans as he stumbled forwards, then swept most of the dirt off his clothes. He set off towards the street, keeping low to avoid being spotted through the wire by Leon or Pete.
There were a couple of missing planks in the wooden fence along the front of the yard. After checking that nobody was coming, he trampled down some stinging nettles, pulled in his stomach and squeezed through the gap on to the street. Dave realised he needed an excuse for leaving, so instead of heading straight back he ducked into the newsagents and caught his breath as he queued up to buy a newspaper and a pint of milk.
He strolled on to the lot a couple of minutes later, trying to look innocent as Leon exploded out of the door of his cabin.
‘Morning, boss,’ Dave said.
‘What sort of prick are you?’ Leon yelled as stood in the doorway. ‘
Get
in here.’
Dave acted dumb as he stepped into the cabin. ‘What?’
Leon slammed the door. ‘What?
What?
I drive in here and I find that
everywhere’s
unlocked and you’ve legged it, that’s
what
. There’s over a hundred grand’s worth of cars here. Are you off your head or something?’
Dave jiggled the pint of milk. ‘I thought we might run out later in the day.’
‘You mean to say we haven’t even run out?’ Leon shouted. ‘Did your mother drop you on your head when you were a baby or something? Give me your keys back, right now.’
‘Come on Leon. I just got chatting to Mr Singh in the newsagents and lost track of time. The car keys were all locked in your safe and I was only gone for five minutes.’
‘Keys,’ Leon repeated.
Dave got the keys out of his shorts and dangled them in front of Leon. ‘I’m really sorry, boss.’
‘Count yourself lucky,’ Leon said, as he snatched them. ‘You do something as dumb as that again and you’ll be out of a job.’
‘You’ve been really good to me, Leon. I swear it won’t happen again.’
Leon flicked Dave away with his hand. ‘You’d better get out there and make yourself look busy before I
really
lose my temper. Start off with the Mini. That time-waster had his kids in the back yesterday afternoon. There’s handprints all over the windows.’
09:49
John pulled on to the
Patels
’ driveway and blasted the horn of his yellow and blue recovery truck.
‘Hello, Mr Patel?’ John said, jumping down from the cab as Michael came out of his front door. ‘Is this the vehicle with the problem?’
Michael nodded. ‘Yeah, the wife was taking my daughter to nursery this morning and it wouldn’t start. It’s as dead as a doornail.’
‘Was there any sign of a problem before this morning: squeaks, rattles, high oil consumption?’
Michael shook his head. ‘I’ve had the car just over six months and this is the first glitch we’ve had.’
John nodded, as Michael handed him the car keys. ‘Nice cars, BMWs. All the fancy gizmos go wrong now and then, but we still don’t get to see many of them.’
John leaned under the steering wheel and popped the bonnet open. He spent a couple of minutes under the hood, waggling the dipstick and pretending that he knew what he was doing, before looking up at Michael.
‘Was this car ever in an accident?’ John asked.
Michael shook his head. ‘Not that I know of. What makes you ask that?’