‘You use girls,’ Lauren growled. ‘Sex is like eating chips or taking a dump to you; to all boys. You don’t care how it happens, or who gets hurt, just as long as you get plenty of it.’
‘Come off it. First of all, I’m not getting
any
and second the only person in the world I love more than Kerry is you.’
Lauren smiled grudgingly, before breaking out in fresh sobs. ‘I ended up in this room,’ she sniffed. ‘It was
so
horrible. They kept the girls locked up and it made me sick thinking about what had happened to them. Then this man came in and told me to get undressed.’
‘Oh god,’ James said, completely shocked. ‘I had no idea. I’m really, really, sorry.’
‘I don’t mean
that
, James. The bloke didn’t get his hands on me. But I stabbed him and he’s on life support. I hate his perverted guts, but I still don’t want him to die.’
Lauren finally let James close enough to touch her and he pulled her into a tight cuddle.
‘You’re safe now,’ James said soothingly.
‘I wanted to speak to you when I arrived back,’ Lauren sobbed. ‘But then I saw you with your eyes practically out on stalks and Dana’s boobs in your face. It made me want to puke my guts up. Like you were one of
them
.’
‘I can’t help liking girls, Lauren. Sometimes girls are all I can think about, but there’s a
massive
difference between getting off with Dana and trying to rape someone.’
‘It just seemed …’ Lauren said, but couldn’t finish her thought. ‘I came to see you because I didn’t feel like going to sleep. I thought you’d probably be annoyed if I woke you up, but when I walked in and saw
that
…’
‘We didn’t stop ’cos we thought the door was locked.’
‘So what’s with all those papers in your room?’
‘It’s to do with Ewart’s investigation,’ James explained. ‘But don’t worry about that now. Do you want me to come up to your room and sit with you for a while? Or you can come back down and sleep in my room.’
‘Nah, I’ll be OK,’ Lauren shrugged. ‘By the time I climb into bed, I’ll probably be so knackered that I’ll just keel over.’
‘If you’re sure,’ James said, as he gently rubbed Lauren’s back. ‘Goodnight.’
‘And you’re going to own up to Kerry first thing in the morning, aren’t you?’
‘Lauren, I can’t …’
Lauren’s tone stiffened as she put her foot on the first step. ‘If you don’t tell Kerry about Dana, I’m telling her about
all
the other girls. It’s for your own good, James.’
‘Please Lauren,’ James begged. ‘She’ll kick my arse. How exactly is that
good
for me?’
‘You’re my brother and that counts for a lot. But that doesn’t mean I’m gonna let you go on making a fool of Kerry.’
‘Whatever,’ James huffed. ‘You can bring me grapes in the hospital.’
James set his alarm for 4:30 a.m., but he didn’t need it. His head kept churning and sleep remained a remote possibility.
He hoped that Lauren was OK and he was worried about Kerry, but that was nothing compared to going after Ewart. If they were wrong about him, they’d get busted for stealing documents and leaving campus without permission and end up being kicked out of CHERUB.
James looked back into his room as he pulled shut the door, knowing there was a chance that he’d never be back. He knew who lived inside every room and as he walked down the corridor, he realised that he might never see his friends again either: Bruce, Shak, Mo, Gabrielle, the twins;
Kerry
.
He wasn’t looking forward to his next meeting with Kerry, but the thought of never touching her or even hearing her voice again was a million times worse.
James rubbed a tear out of his eye as he waited for the lift, but he was still determined. The only thing worse than being kicked out of CHERUB was the thought of Ewart framing him. And if Ewart had taken one bribe to cover something up, who was to say that the next one wouldn’t lead to the death of a cherub?
‘Hey,’ Dana smiled, when James stepped out of the lift on the ground floor. She looked reassuringly calm and tough.
‘Thanks for this,’ James said, as he broke into a massive grin. There was no way he’d have been able to wade through all the paperwork without Dana’s help and he definitely wouldn’t have had the stomach to go after Ewart.
‘What’s in the backpack?’ he asked, as they walked towards the ground-floor reception.
‘I picked up a few essentials,’ Dana said. ‘Pepper spray, stun guns and listening devices. Plus a few bottles of mineral water and some food in case we get stuck in a car on a long stake-out.’
‘Good thinking,’ James nodded.
There was nobody in reception at this time of the morning, so Dana stepped behind the counter to a cabinet filled with car keys. James grabbed a Biro and a clipboard with forms attached to it.
‘There’s a Mercedes key up there,’ he grinned.
Dana shook her head as she snatched another key. ‘Golf GTI. I’ve driven this one before. It’s fairly discreet, but it goes like stink if you need it to.’
James quickly filled in the pool car sign-out form. He put their destination as London and wrote
Ewart Asker
in the
member of staff authorising use of vehicle
box.
The Volkswagen Golf was one of more than a dozen pool cars in the driveway at the front of the main building. It was still dark out and the front and rear screens were covered with frost, which James chipped off while Dana picked a set of magnetic number plates from the collection in the boot and stuck them on.
Dana took the driver’s seat and they both rubbed their hands together to warm up as the heater started running and the lights on the dashboard flickered to life.
‘So,’ James said, as Dana backed out of the space. ‘What’s our plan exactly?’
*
Jason McLoud lived in a suburban street, with semi-detached houses set behind paved driveways. James and Dana arrived at 8:45, parking up in the curved road and walking the final hundred metres to number fifty-seven.
When they reached it, James put his foot on the front wall and pretended to lace up his trainer.
‘Looks like McLoud’s wife has left for work already,’ Dana said, pointing discreetly towards the dry patches on the brick driveway where a car had clearly stood overnight.
James noticed a figure moving behind frosted glass on the first floor. He turned to Dana and raised an eyebrow.
‘I see him,’ Dana nodded. ‘Now let’s get out of here before curtains start twitching.’
They were in a posh neighbourhood and two teenagers not in school uniform and staring into a house were likely to arouse suspicion. Instead of turning back towards the car, they carried on past half a dozen more homes before cutting into an alleyway. It led into a sports ground that backed on to the houses.
They squelched around the perimeter of a rugby pitch, passing by the wooden fences at the end of gardens, stopping when they reached the back of McLoud’s house. There were a couple of people walking their dogs on the opposite side of the pitch, so Dana leaned her back against the fence.
‘Make it look like you’re kissing me,’ she said.
James stepped up close to Dana and kissed her on the neck a couple of times before stopping to take a good look through a gap in the wooden slats.
‘It’s no good,’ he said. ‘It’s lower on that side, like a three-metre drop into rose bushes or something.’
‘We’ll have to go in by the front way then,’ Dana said, as James backed away. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’
Dana tugged James’ jacket and they exchanged a quick open-mouthed kiss. ‘Later,’ Dana whispered tantalisingly, as they broke apart.
James thought about Kerry as they carried on towards an exit on the opposite side of the field. Kerry still gave him a buzz every time he was with her but their relationship had gone stale; whereas everything about Dana felt new and exciting.
They emerged into a side road, and two left turns meant that they’d walked in a complete square back to the car.
‘Nine o’clock,’ Dana said, looking at her watch as they clambered in and shut the doors. ‘We’d better get a move on if we want to find out what Ewart’s saying.’
James looked down and realised that his muddy trainers were trashing the carpet in the footwell, but he had more important stuff to worry about. He grabbed a sheet of sticky-backed listening devices from Dana’s backpack. The grey pads were smaller than James’ little fingernail and looked like something you might use to mount photographs.
‘Do you want to do the talking?’ James asked.
‘If you like,’ Dana nodded. ‘You’ll need the palmtop to record the signal from the bugs and there’s a set of walkie-talkies in there somewhere too.’
Once James had everything in his pockets, they got out of the car and walked briskly towards Jason McLoud’s house. They kept a cautious eye out, just in case Ewart decided to turn up early.
When they reached number fifty-one, Dana pulled a mobile and called McLoud’s home phone number. She’d swiped two unregistered pay-as-you-go phones from a store room on campus so that they couldn’t be tracked.
‘Hello,’ Dana said brightly. ‘Is that Mr Jason McLoud?’
Dana waved James on as soon as she heard the elderly man’s voice: if he was on the phone, he’d be unlikely to notice James walking down his driveway.
‘Mr McLoud,’ Dana continued. ‘I’m pleased to tell you that Penguin Travel is able to offer you a special four-hundred-pound discount on one of our Caribbean cruises.’
As McLoud went into a clearly audible rant, demanding to know how they’d got hold of his number and threatening to complain to the telecoms regulator, James cut down the side of the house and crouched between the wall and McLoud’s MG convertible.
‘If cruising isn’t your thing, how about a Florida vacation? I’m sure your grandchildren would love—’
‘Piss off and don’t call me back,’ McLoud shouted, before slamming down his phone.
His voice was so loud that James could hear him through the hallway window. He grabbed his walkie-talkie and whispered: ‘In position and ready to go.’
‘Roger that,’ Dana replied as she pocketed her phone and walkie-talkie. She started walking towards McLoud’s front door and rang his bell.
As soon as James heard the bell ringing, he pulled the sheet of tiny listening devices out of his pocket and began creeping into the back garden. The bugs were designed to detect speech through vibrations in glass. His job was to creep around the outside of the house, sticking a bug to each window while Dana kept McLoud busy on the doorstep.
‘I’m not buying anything,’ McLoud said, when he opened the front door. He was clearly still in a mood from the fake sales call.
Dana turned on all of her feminine charm for the slender journalist, who wore carpet slippers and a hearing aid.
‘You must be Becky’s granddad,’ Dana said.
McLoud looked confused. ‘I don’t know that name.’
While Dana explained that she was here to see her friend Becky and that she couldn’t understand, because she’d definitely been given the address of Becky McLoud at 57 Hillcrest Road, James moved swiftly across the back garden. He stuck bugs to the kitchen window, a small window in the hallway and the conservatory at the back. Finally, as he heard McLoud tell Dana that his surname
was
McLoud, but that he was one-hundred-percent certain that no one called Becky had ever lived in his house, James crept back to his position alongside the car.
‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you,’ Dana said.
‘It’s not a problem,’ McLoud said, though the groan as he closed his front door indicated otherwise.
As James ran back up the driveway towards the road, Dana leaned across and stuck a bug to the long window at the front.
‘Needn’t have bothered with that one,’ James said as they walked back towards the Volkswagen. ‘It’ll be in the conservatory at the back. There’s cups and biscuits already set out on the table.’
‘Excellent,’ Dana said. ‘We’d have been buggered if he’d taken Ewart upstairs to his study or something. I reckon we ought to move the car out of sight. We don’t want Ewart spotting us as he drives by.’
Dana drove the Volkswagen down the alleyway leading towards the rugby pitches, then did a three-point turn so they could pull out quickly. James sat in the passenger seat with the palmtop computer rigged up to record the signals from all six listening devices. He had a power line plugged into the cigarette lighter and another cable going into the iPod socket on the dashboard, so that they could listen through the car stereo instead of the tinny speaker built into the computer.
For twenty minutes, they listened to Jason McLoud as he pottered around his house, listening to Radio Four and humming Bert Kampfert’s
Swingin’ Safari
. Then the doorbell rang.
Dana eyed the clock on the dashboard. ‘Right on time,’ she said, as she pressed the engine start button.
‘Where are we going?’ James asked.
‘Now he’s inside, we can drive up to the house. We’ll get better reception and we can wade in if Ewart tries anything funny.’
‘Ewart was on campus when the secretary and the scientist were killed,’ James said. ‘I don’t think he’s a murderer.’
Dana nodded as she indicated left and pulled out of the turning. ‘Maybe not, but if he’s made a deal with Hilton, tidying up the loose ends might well be part of it.’
It was a narrow road, so she pulled up on the kerb two doors from McLoud’s house, on the opposite side of the street. The road was on a slight hill, and they had a good view down towards the front of number fifty-seven. Ewart had parked a Lexus in the driveway.
‘Is that one of the CHERUB pool cars?’ James asked.
‘Don’t think so,’ Dana said. ‘At least, I’ve never seen it if it is.’
James shook his head. ‘So where did the money for that come from, I wonder?’
‘Patch the sound through then,’ Dana said.
James tapped a stylus on the palmtop screen and the background noise from inside the house came through the speakers in the dashboard. James flipped through the different signals until he picked up the sound from the bug stuck to the conservatory window.