The Killing (3 page)

The boys caught a whiff of sweat as they passed the entrance to a changing area where a group of Year Ten boys were getting ready for PE. They headed down a corridor lined with historic photos of Trinity rugby teams. After reaching the door leading into the teachers’ car park, James did a full three-sixty check before they passed under the
 
Staff Only
 
sign and down a flight of bare concrete steps. Everything looked new, with scarcely a tyre mark on the yellow lines dividing up the parking bays.

The boys quickly identified Stein’s silver hatchback.
Shak
pulled the metal box out of his blazer and flipped the switch across to transmit mode. James slotted a dealer’s key in the driver’s side door. This key was designed to open any car of this model, but it didn’t contain the embedded microchip necessary to silence the alarm.

‘Ready?’ James asked, waiting for
Shak
to nod. ‘Three, two, one – turn.’

There was a fleeting squeal from the alarm in the instant between James turning the key and
Shak
cancelling it with the gadget. James dived into the driver’s seat and reached across to pull up the little mushroom on the passenger door. By the time
Shak
climbed in, James had reclined his seat. He pulled the clear cover off the vanity light and unscrewed the tiny bulb and the silver plastic fitting in which it was mounted.
Shak
reached up and pushed in a specially constructed replacement that contained a listening device. Once it was clipped into place, James replaced the bulb and the outer cover.

Shak briefly rummaged inside the glove box, checking out the various receipts and scraps of paper for anything interesting. He laid a couple of bits out flat on the glove-box lid and copied them with the handheld scanner. James searched over in the rear seats and in the driver’s door cubby, but all he found was a road atlas and a mass of crumpled paper cups.

‘Is that it?’ James asked as he hit the recline lever, making his seat spring back up.

Shak nodded. ‘Now we just have to make it out of here without getting busted.’

James opened the car door, but as he stepped out, he noticed a reedy female outline emerging at the bottom of the staircase.

‘Damn,’ James whispered, as he quietly pulled shut the car door.

Shak sneaked a glance at the beanpole woman as she lit up a cigarette and puffed as though her life depended on it. The boys had no option but to crouch down low in their seats until she went back upstairs.

They gave it a couple of minutes before following after her. The mission plan called for the boys to hide in a desolate area behind the sports centre for the remaining half-hour of the school day, when they’d be able to walk out of the front gates alongside the real pupils.

As they passed the changing rooms again, James noticed that the PE teacher hadn’t locked the door when the kids had gone into the gym. Tantalisingly, more than a dozen pairs of the orange-piped Trinity trousers were scattered about the room.

‘Keep an eye out,’ James said. ‘I’m gonna whip me some trousers.’

Shak wasn’t exactly happy about James taking an unnecessary risk, but realised that he wouldn’t have wanted to travel back to campus with a giant crack in his trousers either.

James passed by the first few pairs. He was slightly above average size for thirteen, but these Year Ten kids were still bigger. James eventually found a pair that looked right. He ripped off his shoes and quickly slipped into them. Realising that there wasn’t time to transfer everything between the two pairs of trousers, he balled up the ripped pair and crammed them into his backpack on top of everything else.

James stepped out of the changing room and started walking back the way they’d come.

‘Wait,’
Shak
said.

James turned back. ‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing. It’s just, while you were changing, I looked through the window and realised what’s on the other side of that door. Instead of walking out the front and all the way around the edge of the building, we can go out through there.’

James stepped across the corridor and peered through the frosted glass in the door. It clearly led directly to the back of the building.

James shrugged. ‘Why not?’

He pushed down on the handle and nudged the door open with his shoulder. As he did, a loud buzzing sound broke out from a plastic box above their heads. The boys exchanged a shocked look, as a burly PE teacher came steaming out of the gymnasium towards them.

‘What the
 
hell
 
are you two playing at?’

‘Run?’ James asked.

Shak didn’t answer; James just heard a squeal of shoe leather as his friend set off towards the entrance at full pelt.

James’ sister Lauren had wanted to dye her hair black since she was six years old, but her mum wouldn’t let her, no matter how much she whined. The only thing that stopped Lauren doing it in the near two years since her mum had died was a sense that it would have been disrespecting her memory.

In the end it took heavy persuasion from Lauren’s best friend Bethany Parker, who claimed she’d bought black hair dye by mistake. Lauren couldn’t understand how you
 
accidentally
 
bought hair dye and didn’t believe Bethany’s claim for a millisecond; but once the dye was right there, on the bathroom shelf, she couldn’t resist.

Lauren was fairly happy with the result, especially when she put on her black
Linkin
Park T-shirt and ripped jeans, and mussed her hair up so that it looked
punky
. But she wasn’t totally confident and she couldn’t help staring at herself every time she passed something reflective; as though the thousandth glance would reveal some miraculous truth not imparted by the previous nine-hundred and ninety-nine.

She was in a sore mood as she walked along a corridor towards the Pre-Training Briefing (PTB) classroom, because four lads had ganged up on her in the last lesson of the afternoon and spent the whole time taking the
mickey
out of her hair. It didn’t hurt her feelings, because they were the sort of idiots who would have made fun of anything she’d done, but they’d been in her face for the best part of an hour and it ended up severely getting on her nerves. The worst part was having to sit there with a tight grin taking whatever they threw at her, because she knew any sign that they were getting under her skin would only encourage them.

Lauren checked her watch as she passed through an open door into the PTB classroom and headed for a long table marked with a plastic sign saying
 
Team D
. Teams A–C, each five strong, were gathered noisily around some of the other tables. Team C was jointly led by James’ girlfriend Kerry and her best friend Gabrielle, while Team A was led by James’ best friend, Kyle.

Lauren sat down next to Bethany Parker. Bethany’s little brother, Jake, sat opposite and Dana ‘Cheesy’ Smith was at the other end of the table, as far from everyone else as she could get.

Jake was nine years old. He wouldn’t be able to enter basic training until he turned ten, but his education was already being geared towards becoming a CHERUB agent. On top of normal lessons, Jake had daily Karate and Judo sessions and was almost fluent in Spanish and French. Now he was set for his first taste of outdoor CHERUB training, as the most junior member of Team D.

Dana was a fourteen-year-old tomboy who’d been recruited to CHERUB from an Australian children’s home. She sat with her legs out straight and her arms folded over a filthy combat jacket. Dana had been a qualified CHERUB agent for four years, but while an imposing physique had taken her to numerous Karate trophies and three wins in CHERUB’s annual triathlon, her mission performance had been unspectacular and she still wore a grey shirt.

Lauren half-smiled as she grabbed a chair. ‘Hello Dana.’

‘Hello,
 
boss
,’ Dana sneered in her Australian accent, without bothering to change her
 
No one likes me, I don’t care
 
scowl.

Lauren had discovered that being one of the youngest navy shirts on campus was a mixed blessing. It was cool in a way, but it was awkward when she found herself outranking kids who were several years older.

‘Where’s your big bro?’ Dana asked, as Lauren dragged her chair up to the table.

‘James won’t make it to this briefing,’ Lauren said. ‘I’ll have to make notes for him. He should be back by eight o’clock.’

Jake butted in. ‘Your hair looks ridiculous.’

Lauren bunched a fist. ‘Not as ridiculous as your face will in a minute.’

Jake tutted contemptuously. ‘I’m so scared.’

Lauren looked at Bethany and shook her head. ‘Boys are
 
such
morons
.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Bethany said, giving her brother a withering look.

The classroom went silent as CHERUB’s most ruthless training instructor stepped in. Mr Large was tailed by two of his assistants, Mr Pike and Mr Greaves. The two younger men perfectly fitted the CHERUB instructor mould: tall, fit, in their late twenties with the physiques of heavyweight boxers. Greaves and Pike were both ex-CHERUB agents who had pursued careers in elite military units after they’d retired.

Everyone was scared of Mr Large, but Lauren had more cause than most. Mr Large still held a monster grudge against her for knocking him into a muddy hole with a spade.

‘Silence you pigs,’ Mr Large yelled as he slammed the classroom door.

Bethany leaned over and whispered in Lauren’s ear. ‘His moustache has got bigger. It looks like he’s got a gerbil
Sellotaped
to his lip.’

Lauren was tickled by the image of Mr Large sticking a rodent to his face. She couldn’t help giggling and a second later Mr Large was screaming at her.

‘What’s so amusing, young lady?’

‘Nothing sir,’ Lauren said, grinding her teeth as she realised that attracting Mr
Large’s
attention was the absolute worst thing she could have done.

‘So you’re laughing at nothing? What’s the matter? Have you gone mad? Get to your feet, girl. Everyone stands to attention when they’re talking to me.’

Lauren stood up sharply.

‘I see you’ve earned a navy T-shirt already,’ Mr Large spat. ‘And the black hair to suit your black little heart. I still think of you every morning, Lauren Adams, when I wake up with that pain in my back where you hit me. I should be in Norway with Mr Speaks and Miss Smoke right now, running basic training. But my bad back means I’m stuck here, looking at your disgusting, fat, little face. You’re puke, Adams. What are you?’

‘Puke sir,’ Lauren answered, brimming with rage as she remembered the hours of torture Mr Large had put her through during basic training. She would have felt guilty if she’d injured anyone except him.

‘Stand up front by the blackboard. You can help me with a little demonstration in a moment.’

Lauren took a stroppy walk towards the blackboard, while Mr Large looked around the room. ‘Is everyone here?’

After a pause he answered his own question. ‘Where is the elder brother of Puke?’

‘He got called on to a mission early this morning,’ Bethany explained. ‘But he should be back by eight o’clock.’

‘Perfect,’ Mr Large steamed, scowling at Lauren as if she was somehow to blame for this.

Lauren propped herself against the blackboard. Gabrielle and Kerry both looked at her sympathetically and shrugged, as if to say
 
What can you do?

‘So, my little cupcakes,’ Large said. ‘This exercise is designed to give you all experience of working as a team in a
 
highly
pressurised
environment. For some of you it will be your first experience of mission training, while the older members will have their leadership and team-building skills put to the test.

‘The basic rules are as follows. There are four teams of five. Each team is led by an experienced agent ranked navy T-shirt or higher. They will be accompanied by three other qualified agents ranked grey or navy. Finally, each team contains a nine-year-old red shirt who will be getting their first taste of advanced CHERUB training. Every team member will be given six eggs, with their names written on the shells – that’s thirty eggs per team. You must carry these eggs about your person at all times.

‘After a short drive to the SAS training centre down the road, the four teams will be released into the urban warfare training compound at twenty hundred hours this evening. The winners will be whichever team is in possession of the largest number of their own unbroken eggs twelve hours later. That’s zero eight hundred hours tomorrow morning. To help focus your tiny minds, the team or teams finishing up with the lowest number of unbroken eggs will enjoy an extra-long cold shower, before accompanying me on a cross-country run with heavy packs, immediately after the training session is over.

‘The team leaders must decide on strategy. You can be passive, by hiding yourselves. Or aggressive by going out and hunting down members of other teams to destroy their eggs. You’ll find useful extra equipment scattered around the training area. The only rules are that you must release any prisoners you capture as soon as they have surrendered their eggs. Also, you can’t remove anyone’s protective clothing, use physical torture, shoot your weapons at targets less than three metres away – oh, and you can’t kick the boys in the balls.’