CHERUB: People's Republic

by Robert Muchamore

  ‘I can’t,’ Carlos said.

  ‘Just think about the jump,’ Callum told him. ‘It’s just over a metre, barely more than a step.’

  Carlos looked like he was going to spew again, but he took a short run-up and made it across, with a rather alarming wobble as he landed on the opposite side.

  Ning felt less scared on the obstacle than when she’d been looking up at it, and this was an easy leap compared to feats she’d performed on a much narrower gymnastics beam when she was six years old.

  The mid-section of the obstacle comprised a zigzagging walk along narrow planks, with occasional leaps. As the course progressed, jumps grew longer and the beams narrower and more steeply angled. The final section was a pair of beams less than five centimetres wide, set half a metre apart and sloping down forty degrees.

  Carlos wrapped himself around the beam and began shuffling down on his bum, but he had a mini freak-out halfway across and Callum had to grab hold and rescue him. Ning went last and copied Callum and Connor, balancing one boot on each beam and walking down in four bold steps.

  ‘Nice,’ Connor said, as Ning joined him on the final platform.

  There were two routes to the ground. The first was a jump through the trees on to a crash mat, but this quartet would be using a steeply angled zip wire with a muddy pit at the far end of its landing zone.

  As Callum grabbed a set of padded handles and prepared to make his jump, Connor pointed at a tree and gave Ning instructions.

  ‘The trick is to let go at precisely the right moment,’ Connor explained. ‘Too soon and you’ll fall from a great height and hurt your ankles, or even break a leg. Too late and you’ll end up in the pit. And that pit may look like regular mud from here, but that’s just a dry crust over absolute filth. I’m talking about horse crap, cattle slurry, rotten fruit and chicken feathers. Speaking from experience, it takes about five days’ showering to completely wash the stink off of your skin.’

  Ning looked mildly horrified as she watched Callum speed down to the ground. He made a textbook landing five metres from the pit and rolled forward on to his knees.

  ‘Try not to plant your feet,’ Connor said, as he fitted a grab handle over the wire and helped Carlos to line up. ‘Fall forward like my brother did.’

  After he’d beat her in the pool and generally been a pain all day Ning wouldn’t have minded seeing Carlos plough into the filth. He came agonisingly close, but Callum grabbed him as he tilted towards the dirt.

  Now it was Ning’s turn. It looked a long way down as she reached up and grabbed the handles.

  ‘Step off gently when you’re ready,’ Callum said. ‘Let go when you see your feet a metre and a half from the ground.’

  It was a slow start, but once Ning got going it felt way faster than it looked. About a third of the way down the wire was anchored between two trees, after which the incline grew steeper. Ning looked down as the ground closed in. She almost let go, but decided it was still too high. But the angle was so steep that before she knew it the pit was almost under her.

  She pulled her knees up to her chest, but that only bought her a fraction of a second. The crust caught her boots, creating enough drag to rip her fingers off of the handles. She put her hands out to save herself, but her outstretched arms punched through the crust, closely followed by her entire body in a dramatic belly flop.

  Beneath the crust was half a metre of brown water, while the bottom was a gloopy layer so thick Ning had to use all her strength to pull her wrists out. She got up on one knee, but she couldn’t see with her eyes full of dirt.

  She’d pressed her lips together, but an abominable taste still filled her mouth, and the stench clinging to the inside of her nose was beyond description. Before Ning found her feet she felt something prod her in the belly.

  ‘Grab the pole,’ Connor shouted.

  Ning reached blindly and grabbed the shaft of a long pole. Connor gave it an almighty tug and there was a sucking sound as Ning’s boots were dragged out of the mud. She managed to hold on until she reached the embankment and as she crawled up she felt a hose on the top of her head.

  ‘Keep your mouth shut and try not to swallow,’ Callum advised, as he aimed the hose up high so that a torrent rained down over Ning’s head.

  Her ears were clogged, but the first thing she heard after she’d dug the muck out was Carlos screaming with laughter.

  ‘Oh God, God, God!’ he howled. ‘That’s the funniest thing I ever saw. Ning, do you realise that most of what’s stuck to you came out of a cow’s arse? Oh, man! I’m gonna piss myself.’

  Callum and Connor were smiling a little too as Ning got her eyes open.

  ‘Here, take the hose,’ Callum said, as he threw it towards Ning. As she reached down to grab it Carlos started impersonating her accent again.

  ‘Me Ning. Me the Chinese Scouser. Me covered big, big cow poo. Smell worse than Chinese take away.’

  Ning snapped. She threw down the hose and began storming towards Carlos.

  ‘You little sprat,’ Ning shouted. ‘If you don’t shut your face I’m gonna punch every tooth out of your head and make—’

  As Ning came forward, Carlos dived behind Callum, giving the teenager no choice but to intervene.

  ‘Ning, calm down,’ Callum shouted.

  Ning tried to get behind Callum and grab Carlos, but the seventeen-year-old pushed her back.

  ‘If you start fighting you’ll both fail the recruitment tests for sure,’ Callum said.

  Ning glowered for a few seconds before taking a step back, followed by a deep breath. She picked up the hose as Callum and a still laughing Carlos started walking back towards the main building.

  ‘At least it’s over now,’ Connor said. ‘Hose yourself off as best you can. Then you can go back to your room in the main building and have a proper hot shower. They’ve got this special soap that neutralises smells. If I can find some I’ll bring it up to your room.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Ning said, as she bent forward, hosing off strands of muddy hair.

  ‘Try not to swallow too much until you’ve used some mouthwash and brushed your teeth. I’d bet that broth will turn your stomach out if you drink too much of it.’

  ‘Did Zara give any hint of how well she thought I was doing?’ Ning asked.

  ‘No,’ Connor said. ‘And if she had I wouldn’t be allowed to tell you. Just clean up in your room and wait for a call. Zara will make her final assessment once your exam is marked and all your test results are through from Dr Kessler. It’ll probably be a few hours.’

  47. ALARM

  The Saturday afternoon traffic was awful, so it was gone three when Amy turned a black Mercedes E-class wagon into a trading estate. There were about twenty warehouse units and Kitmeister UK’s metal-sided box was one of the biggest. Most units were closed for the weekend, but there was quite a bit of traffic coming out of Kitmeister’s neighbour which sold timber and doors.

  ‘Could have done without the DIYers,’ Amy said, as she stopped the Mercedes in the access road leading towards the Kitmeister warehouse.

  Max lowered an electric window in the back and studied the building, looking for security cameras and alarm boxes.

  ‘I’m seeing a couple of old-school CCTV cams over the main door and side entrances,’ Max said. ‘Burglar alarm box has the name of a company called Titanium Security.’

  As Max said the name, Alfie sat next to him typing it into a laptop which was linked to a list of every police monitored burglar alarm in Britain. The file also had a list of passwords, which were used when an alarm company detected a fault or did maintenance work.

  Once Alfie had all the details, Amy called up the local police station and spoke in her politest voice.

  ‘Hello, my name is Eileen Smith … I’m calling from Titanium Systems. Our diagnostic software is reporting a fault with the alarm at Kitmeister UK, Unit sixteen on the East Lane trading estate. One of our engineers will be on site in a moment and it may trigger an alarm sig
nal at your station … Not a problem, the deactivation password is DGCD 24425 … Oh, I expect he’ll be on site for two hours at most, but don’t worry I’ll give you another call when the alarm is fixed … You have a good afternoon too, officer.’

  Amy smiled as she dropped her phone into a tray by the armrest and pressed the button to open the boot.

  ‘Radio check,’ Amy said, as she pushed in an earpiece. ‘Amy, check.’

  ‘Max check.’

  ‘Ryan check.’

  ‘Alfie check.’

  ‘All OK,’ Amy said. ‘Someone might get suspicious if I’m parked here. So I’ll drive out by that little kids’ playground thingy we passed on the main road. Do you remember where that was?’

  ‘No sweat,’ Ryan said, as he opened the front passenger side door. ‘Meet you there.’

  The three boys stepped out and went around the rear to grab their backpacks, along with a large hammer and a collapsible ladder. As Amy drove away the trio donned baseball caps and pulled hoodies over their heads.

  Max took a can of spray paint from his pack as Max and Alfie stretched out the ladder. Alfie leaned it against the wall close to the alarm box, because although they’d dealt with the alarm’s link to the local police station the sound from the bell box would still attract attention.

  Ryan climbed up and used the hammer to knock the plastic cover off the bell box. This unveiled a standard arrangement of a large plastic siren, attached to a backup battery.

  It took three swift belts with the hammer to shatter the siren. The alarm’s anti-tamper system was activated, but all that came out were crackling noises.

  ‘Job done,’ Ryan said, as he slid down.

  Meantime, Max had sprayed black paint over the lens of the security camera. He’d established that there was a deadlock and an electric card swipe on the door. He had the skills to override both, but they were supposed to be yobs, so he attacked with a crowbar.

  The double doors were made from a soft wood and Max punched a hole above the main lock with the crowbar’s sharp end, then he pushed the hooked end through the hole and tried wrenching the lock out of the doorway.

  ‘Weed,’ Alfie said, as he pushed Max out of the way.

  Alfie needed all his strength and bulk to rip the deadlock out of the door frame. The electronic lock was much weaker and it simply took a shoulder charge to burst in.

  ‘Right, now what?’ Max said, as Ryan looked around a lobby with foam chairs and a fancy reception desk.

  ‘Alfie, stay here and keep lookout,’ Ryan said. ‘Me and Max will split up and search. We need to find a computer which can access Kitmeister’s invoices. It’s most likely to be in an office: accountant’s, director’s or something like that.’

  Amy’s voice came through the boys’ earpieces as Ryan headed down a narrow hallway with a whiff of drains. ‘Ryan, are you in yet?’

  He touched his earpiece to activate a microphone. ‘We’re in.’

  ‘It’s all restricted parking,’ Amy said. ‘Give me a call when you’re ready and I’ll pull up somewhere near that green mound thingy by the estate entrance.’

  ‘No worries,’ Ryan said.

  He’d reached an open-plan office, with three desks and a separate room at the far end. He jiggled the mouse on all the computers, hoping that one had been left on. He had no luck, so he went into the separate office, sat in a big leather chair and switched on the computer.

  ‘It’s all clear here,’ Alfie said over the com.

  ‘You only need to tell us if it’s not,’ Max answered.

  Ryan drummed his gloved hand on the desk as the computer booted up. The machine asked for a log in password, so he switched it off, plugged in a USB stick and rebooted, pressing CTRL and F10 to enter the machine’s set-up mode. From set-up he quickly changed the computer’s settings so that it would boot up from his USB stick, bypassing the computer’s hard drive.

  ‘Now you’re my bitch,’ Ryan told himself, as he rubbed his hands together.

  The USB was configured with a special cut-down version of Windows which was customised to mirror all the host machine’s settings and turn its hard drives into slaves. When it finished booting, Ryan searched the C drive for accounting software, opened up Sage Accounts and selected the invoicing module.

  He’d been taught a few things about accounting software, but Ryan was no expert and felt out of his depth as he flipped through screens showing Kitmeister invoices, starting with the most recent. The problem was that the invoices had stock codes and said things like Kit 43566 size L QTY3 rather than something useful like orange and maroon hooped socks.

  But Ryan had noticed Kitmeister catalogues stacked up outside, so he grabbed one and flicked through pages of shirts, shorts, balls and shin pads until he came to socks. There was a double-page spread of SoccaAce socks, one colour, two colour, tricolour, striped and hooped. The order code for orange and maroon hoops was SAOM- followed by another letter depending upon the size.

  Ryan opened up the accounts program’s search function and did a search for SAOM*, which ought to give him all the invoices with orange and maroon hooped socks of any size.

  14 Results Found

  If there was an option to print fourteen invoices in one go Ryan couldn’t find it, so he began printing them off one at a time.

  Ryan touched his earpiece. ‘Looks like I’ve got what we came for,’ he said happily, as the first sheet rolled out of a laser printer under the desk.

  ‘Excellent,’ Amy replied. ‘Don’t forget to make a mess before you leave.’

  ‘There’s something else,’ Max said. ‘Ryan, when you’ve got the invoices meet me back here in the warehouse.’

  The printing was complicated by the paper running out, but all the printers were identical so he just swapped a tray from another machine. When Ryan had all the invoices, he pocketed the USB key and jogged back the way he came. He passed Alfie in the doorway and headed through swinging doors to meet Max in the storage and manufacturing area.

  ‘Took you long enough,’ Max moaned. ‘Get a look at this.’

  ‘Kiss my arse,’ Ryan said, as he walked between rows of shelving stacked with packets of sportswear, tracking Max’s voice to a spacious area filled with the equipment used for making transfers and fixing them to football shirts.

  Max stood along the back wall, pointing at rows of file boxes. ‘They’re templates for designs,’ he explained. ‘I looked at the orders in progress, and each one has a code. If the code is on the invoices you’ve printed, we might be able to find the template for the design that Ning described.’

  ‘I’ve heard worse ideas,’ Ryan said, as he spread the invoices across a workbench in front of a thermal transfer machine.

  Of the fourteen invoices Max had printed, six included charges for printing sponsors’ logos. Four of these were nowhere near where Ning had been pulled out of Leo’s car, leaving two decent bets.

  ‘Design code 1207-381,’ Ryan said.

  Amy sounded slightly alarmed as she spoke through the earpieces. ‘If you guys have the invoices, why am I still sitting here?’

  ‘Give us a minute,’ Ryan said. ‘We’re on to something, but it’ll be done by the time I’ve explained it to you.’

  The boxes with the design templates were all filed in date order. Max located 1207-381, but the logo was for a pen company.

  ‘And the other one?’ Max asked.

  ‘0809-017,’ Ryan said.

  As Max ran along the row of boxes, a man shouted, ‘What are you Herberts playing at?’

  He was beefy with cropped hair, dressed in a sawdust-covered sweatshirt carrying the logo of the timber place next door. Ryan’s first thought was what’s happened to Alfie?

  ‘We’re here doing work experience,’ Ryan said.

  ‘Do I look like a prat?’ the man said aggressively. ‘I went for a smoke and saw half the bloody lock ripped off the door. You boys better stay right where you are. The cops are on their way.’

  Before Ryan cou
ld answer, the man heard footsteps behind and spun around. Alfie launched a full-stretch roundhouse kick, catching him viciously in the side of the head. The man crashed sideways into a shelving unit and came out swinging, but while he was big he had no skills. Alfie ducked under the fists, bobbed up and thrust his palm under the man’s chin. His head snapped backwards and he crumpled to the floor in serious pain.

  ‘Give me your phone,’ Alfie shouted.

  Alfie was big for an eleven-year-old, but he had a boyish face and the man couldn’t believe that he’d been floored by two hits from a kid.

  ‘Don’t eyeball me, tubby,’ Alfie said. ‘Phone, now.’

  As Alfie took the man’s phone and threw it up on to a high shelving unit, Ryan touched his earpiece.

  ‘Amy, we’ve been spotted by a local. Bring the car in. We need to be ready for a fast exit.’ Then he let go of the earpiece and tore into Alfie. ‘What the hell are you playing at? You were supposed to be on lookout.’

  ‘It’s a long drive back,’ Alfie explained. ‘I needed the toilet.’

  ‘How old are you, five?’ Ryan shouted. ‘Couldn’t you just whip it out and pee against the wall?’

  Alfie shook his head. ‘It was a number two and I can’t ride back to campus with a shitty arse.’

  ‘OK, that’s too much information,’ Ryan said, torn between losing his temper and laughing.

  A triumphant shout made Ryan spin around and see Max holding a stencil outline for a cartoon character shaped like a slice of bread and the name Nantong Bakery beneath it.

  ‘Holy crap,’ Ryan said jubilantly, before touching his earpiece. ‘Amy, we’ve definitely cracked it. Max has found the logo. The square cartoon man was a sandwich.’

  ‘I’m pulling into the estate’s main entrance,’ Amy said. ‘Kick up a quick storm and I’ll meet you out front in two minutes.’

  Max grabbed the invoices and the stencil design. Alfie heard the man from the wood shop groan, but he didn’t look like he was up to much more than that, so he let him be.

  ‘Make sure we’ve got everything,’ Ryan said. ‘Alfie, have you got the ladder?’