New Guard (CHERUB)

by Robert Muchamore

  ‘What do you mean?’ Ryan asked.

  ‘I mean, if I pay you a hundred quid to go smack someone into next week.’

  Ryan shrugged, so Leon answered. ‘If he won’t, I will.’

  ‘I know potential when I see it,’ Uncle smiled, looking at Mya and wagging a finger. ‘You’re living at Nurtrust, right?’

  Ryan decided to push his luck. ‘I asked Beast about a job at the scrapyard. Full time, part time. He’ll tell you I’m a hard worker. I just moved into the neighbourhood and I’m flat broke.’

  Uncle shrugged. ‘Come by my office at the yard tomorrow morning. I’ll see what we can do.’

  ‘Awesome,’ Ryan grinned. ‘Thank you so much.’

  ‘Now I need some quiet,’ Uncle said, as he made to sit down at one of the desks. ‘You boys better clear out.’

  ‘But Trey said we should—’ Ryan began.

  Uncle laughed as he sat in an office chair. ‘Trey’s lucky that his father is one of my oldest friends. He can get down on his knees and pull up carpet tiles for himself.’

  As the boys headed out, Uncle opened a MacBook and the microphone under the desk recorded his login.

  22. ROCKY

  It was Saturday morning. With no school, kids at Nurtrust were pottering around in nightwear and grabbing breakfast to eat in bed. Ryan hated his cramped room with tiny escape-proof window, so he settled on a sofa in the TV lounge with bacon and hash browns. Rhea sat alongside, tucking her feet under her bum and smiling as she sipped hot chocolate.

  ‘We could do something tonight,’ Rhea said. ‘You got an ID? There’s a club called Passenger, not far from here.’

  Ryan raised his hand. ‘What about my little brother?’

  Rhea shrugged. ‘Leon’s cute, but he’s just a kid.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Ryan said. ‘I like you, but I’m not gonna start some huge row with Leon.’

  Ryan was in shorts and he found Rhea’s hand touching just above his knee.

  ‘I can be very persuasive,’ she purred.

  Daniel picked that exact moment to step in from the hallway.

  ‘A word, brother,’ he said, taking a superior tone.

  Ryan apologised to Rhea as he ditched breakfast and headed out into the hallway.

  ‘Leon’s not gonna like that if he finds out,’ Daniel said, smirking as he led the way to their rooms.

  ‘I just got a text,’ Daniel explained. ‘James wants the three of us to drop by the flat in half an hour.’

  They knocked on Leon’s door, and found him towelling off after a shower.

  ‘Nice zit on your back,’ Ryan teased. ‘Want me to splat it?’

  ‘So what does James want?’ Leon asked, as he dropped the towel and went for jeans, which still had yesterday’s briefs lined up inside.

  ‘Probably wants to tell me how great I am,’ Ryan suggested. ‘How the whole mission was going nowhere, until my magnificence stepped in and saved the day.’

  ‘You don’t half talk some crap,’ Leon said, as he realised that the trousers he’d just pulled up were gummed with carpet glue and went to his locker for a clean pair.

  ‘You heard from Rhea?’ Daniel asked his twin, stirring it.

  Leon instinctively glowered at Ryan. Then shrugged and acted all defensive. ‘I’m not that bothered.’

  Daniel smiled. ‘So Ryan can take a run at her?’

  Leon ground his teeth as he sat on his bed, pulling on socks. Ryan flicked Daniel’s ear and said, ‘Need to get my shoes,’ as he backed out.

  James looked cheerful when the brothers arrived at his flat twenty minutes later. They gathered around the dining-table with mugs of tea and a stack of bacon sandwiches.

  ‘You got mayo?’ Daniel asked, as he lifted the top off a sandwich.

  ‘I won’t have that filth in my house,’ James said, shuddering. ‘So it took about an hour for the microphone to record enough keystrokes to get Uncle’s password. We’ve unlocked the backup I made at the pawn shop and a couple of support staff have spent the night going through the data … Oh balls.’

  The three brothers laughed as a rasher fell out of James’ sandwich and hit the floor between his legs.

  ‘So what have we got on the laptop?’ Ryan asked, as James grated his chair back and grabbed the bacon.

  ‘Business accounts mostly,’ James began. ‘Taxi firms, scrapyards, Sunray Travel. Plus classic money-laundering outfits like dry cleaners, web cafes and of course the print shop. There’s also personal stuff in an encrypted e-mail account, lots of e-mails between Uncle and his current wife, telling her how much he misses her when he travels. Hospital bills for his mother’s care home.’

  ‘Is any of it incriminating?’ Leon asked.

  ‘There’s some detailed information about the protection racket,’ James said.

  ‘What about the trips to the Middle East?’ Ryan asked. ‘Isn’t that what we’re here for?’

  ‘We can now access Uncle’s encrypted e-mails but there’s thousands to go through,’ James explained. ‘We know where he’s been and the names of some of the people he’s met. But there are dozens of sets of accounts on the laptop and thousands of documents and e-mails in the cloud. I’ve got four intelligence analysts and a forensic accountant working on this, but it will take a good while to get through it all.’

  ‘So what do we do in the meantime?’ Daniel asked.

  ‘For now, I don’t think there’s much for you and Leon to do. Since it’s the weekend, go see a movie or something.’

  The twins smiled. ‘Can you give us money?’ Leon asked, cheekily holding out beggar hands.

  ‘Scroungers,’ James said, tutting, then smiling. ‘You two have worked hard this week. Just stay out of trouble.’

  ‘I assume I’m still going for my meeting with Uncle?’ Ryan asked.

  James nodded. ‘You’ll hopefully get inside Uncle’s cabin at the scrapyard, drop a few listening devices if you can, but no stupid risks.’

  ‘What about his car?’ Ryan asked. ‘You want me to put a tracker on it?’

  James shook his head. ‘Any tracker worth having is bulky, so I don’t want you taking that risk. I’ll get an adult from MI5 to handle the job.’

  Ryan pulled up at the scrapyard gate in his battered Peugeot. The giant car shredder made the ground rumble, while teams of overalled men drained fuel tanks and stripped valuable parts from cars before they met their doom.

  ‘Uncle wants to see you?’ the guard on the gate said suspiciously. ‘He’s out of the country.’

  Ryan shook his head and sounded firm. ‘Uncle said to meet me here this morning. I saw him in town last night.’

  The guard backed off and spoke into a radio. A car transporter came out as he waited for a response.

  ‘Straight ahead,’ the guard told Ryan finally.

  Mya stood guard at the door of Uncle’s air-conditioned cabin. She eyed Ryan furiously, as he noticed fingertip bruises on her neck, where he’d thrust her backwards.

  ‘Is he in?’ Ryan asked.

  Mya narrowed her eyes. ‘Give me a shot and I’ll beat you into next year.’

  Ryan smirked. ‘I’ll spar with you anytime.’

  ‘I don’t spar with children,’ Mya grunted.

  ‘Nah,’ Ryan teased. ‘You just get beaten up by them.’

  ‘He’s on the telephone,’ Mya barked. ‘Wait.’

  Ryan waited eight minutes. Thinking about the tiny listening devices in the pocket of his hoodie. Thinking about his best escape route if something went wrong, and imagining Rhea, all made up pretty for a night of clubbing. Maybe Leon really had stopped caring about her …

  The cabin door crashed and Uncle vaulted the three metal steps, clattering gravel as he landed and giving Ryan a friendly jab on the shoulder.

  ‘Oi, oi, handsome boy!’ Uncle said cheerfully.

  The man behind was chubby, in a spotless version of the orange scrapyard overall that Beast had worn the night before.

  ‘Gotta walk and talk,’ Uncle expl
ained. ‘Just back from a trip so busy, busy! What do you think of my yard, Ryan?’

  ‘Machines and trucks, like every five-year-old boy’s dream,’ Ryan answered, earning a big laugh as they set off briskly down a gravel path.

  A truck honked and Uncle gave the driver a thumbs-up as they walked a couple of hundred metres.

  ‘I like this business,’ Uncle told Ryan, holding his arms out wide. ‘You start with junk, you end with money. No branding, no advertising, no smartass San Francisco start-up building an app and taking half your passengers.’

  Ryan nodded. ‘You said you might be able to fix me up with some work?’

  Uncle looked over his shoulder at the man in the overalls. ‘What do you reckon, George? Good strong arms on him.’

  ‘Next spot that opens up is his,’ George said. ‘Gimme your mobile, it’ll probably be a few weeks.’

  ‘And maybe I can find some tasks more suited to your skills in the meantime,’ Uncle said, throwing a couple of punches to make his point. ‘Eh, son?’

  Ryan smiled as Uncle explained to George.

  ‘Mya takes down guys weighing three hundred pounds. But this lad had her pinned under a table.’

  George smiled. ‘Maybe he can visit that woman on the estate who calls Environmental Health every time we run the shredder after seven …’

  Ryan smiled as they rounded a corner into a section of the yard with a high wire perimeter around it. Inside was a large aluminium hangar, three storeys high, with sliding orange doors which were raised at the bottom.

  After ducking under, Ryan found himself in a room full of machinery. Most dated from the seventies or eighties with beige control cabinets fitted with LED displays and tiny amber-screen monitors. There were several huge cylinders and mechanical arms. At the far end was a workshop where three men seemed to be disassembling some kind of ancient pump.

  ‘Are these fairground rides?’ Ryan asked.

  George and Uncle roared with laughter.

  ‘Engineering parts,’ Uncle explained. ‘We break them down for spares and scrap what’s left. If you get it right, it’s extremely profitable.’

  As George and Uncle began a conversation with one of the guys working on a pump, Ryan studied the equipment and recognised a couple of major oil company logos. Lots of the gear had gauges with measurements in barrels or gallons and he realised that the giant posts which he’d initially imagined were spokes from a fairground ride were drilling rods. In the far corner there were four giant drill heads.

  As he stepped in further, Ryan realised that close to half of the hangar was lined with control consoles and tatty spare-part boxes bearing the tartan logo of a company called Offshore Marine Exploration. It seemed significant, because he knew that Uncle was up to something in the Middle East, and that the region’s economy was dominated by oil. He’d have liked more time to explore, but Uncle was on the march after his conversation.

  ‘So I’ll need your number,’ George reminded Ryan, as they ducked back under the door. ‘You can find your way back to your car?’

  Ryan tapped his number into George’s iPhone and Uncle shook his hand.

  ‘Be in touch,’ George said, making a phone with his fingers before striding off after his boss to inspect some other area of the yard.

  Ryan sauntered back to his car and got sworn at by a crazy guy who almost mowed him down in a dump truck. When he neared the cabin, he saw Mya sat on the steps out front wearing a big smile. Then he noticed a broken wing mirror on the ground beside his Peugeot.

  ‘What the hell?’ Ryan shouted, as he picked up the mirror and stormed over to Mya. ‘Did you do this?’

  Mya half smiled. ‘There’s some pretty big rats around the yard. Maybe one of them bit it off.’

  ‘Bitch,’ Ryan hissed.

  Mya shot up. ‘You want a piece of me?’ she shouted. ‘You made me look weak in front of my boss.’

  This time she had her arms up. Ryan had no idea if he could beat Mya again, but he didn’t have anything to gain by fighting and the car belonged to CHERUB, so he didn’t much care about the mirror either.

  ‘I’m too much of a gentleman,’ Ryan said, bowing sarcastically as he got into the car.

  Mya flipped him off with both hands as he drove away.

  23. SKY

  ‘Yo!’ James said, as he let Ryan into the flat.

  James had gone full slob, dressed in shorts and his lucky Arsenal shirt, watching Soccer Saturday with a bottle of beer and a half-eaten Domino’s.

  ‘Pepperoni,’ James said. ‘Gone a bit cold, but you can zap it.’

  ‘Plates?’

  James opened a cupboard over the sink and passed Ryan a plate.

  ‘So how’d it go?’ he asked, as Ryan grabbed two slices and set the microwave for ninety seconds.

  ‘Mixed,’ Ryan admitted, as the pizza rotated. ‘I didn’t get inside Uncle’s cabin, but I might have a lead. There was a shed with a whole bunch of oil pumps and drilling equipment. And these consoles, all manufactured by a company called Offshore Marine Exploration.’

  ‘Did you ask Uncle what they were?’

  Ryan nodded. ‘He said they strip the equipment for parts. I just found it interesting that half the hangar was full of oil stuff.’

  ‘Definitely interesting,’ James said, as he grabbed his laptop from under pizza boxes. ‘I had a preliminary report from the forensic accountant. The scrapyard is Uncle’s biggest earner by far, but it’s reported big losses for the past three years. He said it was because they’d been purchasing a lot of gear at auction, but only realising a small fraction of its cost at resale.’

  ‘Money laundering?’ Ryan suggested.

  ‘That was my first thought,’ James said. ‘Channelling profits to an overseas subsidiary to avoid UK tax. I’ll give the accountant a call and see what he can find.’

  As James grabbed his mobile, Ryan opened his phone, Googled Offshore Marine Exploration and began to read a Wikipedia entry.

  Offshore Marine Exploration (OME) was an Aberdeen-based company, specialising in the design and manufacture of oil drilling equipment … OME was a technology pioneer during the development of deep-water oil fields in British and Norwegian waters in the late 1970s … Company expanded aggressively in the 1980s, with over 300 employees producing oil drilling and extraction control systems for oil markets throughout the world … Floated on the London Stock Exchange 1986.

  Shares hit hard in the Black Monday crash of October 19th 1987. OME was declared bankrupt in 1991 and assets bought by Texas-based rival GeoPump Inc … GeoPump moved production of OME equipment to Mexico … Manufacture of OME-designed equipment ceased in 1995, when GeoPump filed for bankruptcy.

  ‘Hey, Georgiou,’ James told his phone. ‘I want you to run a search on the accounts of Uncle’s scrapyard. Any invoices related to oil drilling equipment, especially if it says it’s manufactured by OME … Really … ? Really … ?’

  Ryan looked round at James, who seemed properly excited.

  ‘So?’ Ryan asked, when the call ended.

  James was grinning. ‘I think you’ve lucked into something on your little tour, mate. Georgiou says he’d already noticed that Uncle’s yard was making large purchases of surplus equipment from oil exploration companies in Scotland and Norway. In 2015 almost two million pounds went out, but then all the equipment gets written off as scrap in the company accounts.’

  Ryan looked baffled. ‘Which means?’

  ‘No idea,’ James said. ‘But Georgiou did give me a number for a company called OME911. Apparently they were paid to do some repair work on OME equipment at Uncle’s scrapyard about two years back.’

  Ryan found a link to the OME911 website through Google, but the link bounced to a domain registry: Buy this and thousands of other domains from just $99.

  James was peering over his shoulder. ‘Use Wayback Machine.’

  Ryan quickly found a 2012 version of the OME911 site on Wayback and read aloud, ‘OME911 is the leading solution for onsite r
epair and maintenance of Offshore Marine pump and control systems. Our three engineers are former OME employees. We are the only company with full access to OME schematics and software diagnostic tools.’

  James tried a phone number on the site’s contact page, but it rang dead.

  ‘Looks like they shut up shop,’ James said. ‘Print off the contacts page.’

  James took his laptop and logged into the security service database. This gave him back door access to company, tax and banking records for most EU citizens. It took a few minutes for James to interrogate tax databases and make a Word document containing the names and last known addresses of the UK employees of OME911.

  Ryan grabbed a printout of these details from an inkjet in James’ bedroom, settling back on the sofa as James began checking out the names, hoping to find someone who might have a clue why Uncle was buying up OME equipment.

  ‘Holy crap,’ James said, as he turned the laptop to show an article from an Aberdeen newspaper.

  Oil man Chris Carlisle dies after drug overdose in Birmingham Airport Hotel.

  Ryan realised Carlisle was one of the three engineers pictured on the OME911 website, as James started Googling the other two.

  ‘Birmingham airport’s only a couple of miles from Uncle’s scrapyard,’ Ryan noted.

  James nodded excitedly as his fingers tapped keys. ‘Big coincidence, or what?’

  Ryan grabbed a tablet and started his own Google hunt, as James used the MI5 database to access tax and mobile phone records for the other two engineers.

  ‘Gordon Sachs, Kam Yuen,’ James said, as he looked at a pair of Vodafone bills on his laptop screen. ‘Neither filed their personal tax return this April. Both stopped making calls on their mobile phones – Gordon in October last year, Kam stops a few weeks earlier. And that’s around the time Chris Carlisle was found dead in his hotel.’

  ‘You think all three got murdered?’ Ryan asked. ‘I’ve got a phone number for the fourth employee.’

  James looked confused. ‘There were three engineers.’

  ‘And a company secretary,’ Ryan said, as he rattled James’ own printout. ‘Morag Henderson.’