People's Republic

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ryan said. ‘Cherubs have the right to refuse any mission, don’t they? I’d just like to put Santa Cruz behind me; work off my punishment hours as fast as I can and move on.’

  This wasn’t really true, but Ryan wanted to make Amy sweat.

  ‘But what about Ethan?’ Amy asked. ‘He could be in danger.’

  Ryan laughed. ‘So Dr D cares about him again now that it suits her?’

  ‘Look, Ryan, I understand why you’re sore. I’ll have to talk to Zara to revoke your mission ban anyway. What if I try to bend her ear? I’ll tell her Dr D has forgiven you, and get your punishment hours reduced, or something like that.’

  Ryan broke into a big smile at the thought of this, but he made sure his emotions didn’t come through in his voice. ‘I suppose I’d have more time to help you if the punishment was reduced.’

  ‘I’ll ask her to knock a hundred hours off,’ Amy said. ‘How does that sound?’

  ‘Pretty good,’ Ryan said. ‘Do you think you could get her to reinstate my allowance as well?’

  ‘Don’t push your luck,’ Amy said, as she gave a dry laugh. ‘I’ll send that e-mail over, you can start reading and I’ll talk to Zara.’

  35. HOSE

  Ning tried going back to the basement, but Ben made her stay upstairs in the kitchen, with the door open so that he could keep an eye on her. Leo went out for about twenty minutes and came back with thick plastic dust sheets, reels of tape, plastic masks and cartons of bleach from a DIY store.

  ‘Put the kettle on, sweetheart,’ Ben said.

  As Ning made mugs of tea, she thought about throwing the boiling water and making a run for it, or grabbing a big knife from a kitchen drawer. But Ben had a bulge under his shirt and she was sure it was a gun.

  Out in the hallway, Ben and Leo rolled the bodies in dust sheets and wound whole reels of tape around them. Then a van backed on to the driveway. They threw the bodies inside and it pulled away.

  Ning thought uneasily about the creepy way Ben spoke and touched her face when they’d met on the stairs. She was pretty sure it was dollar signs not lust she’d seen in his eyes, and she recalled what Chun Hei had said about how much money a girl her age would be worth to a brothel owner or a paedophile.

  It had been stupid staying here so long.

  ‘You’re just a lazy piece of shit,’ Ben shouted from the hallway. ‘You’ll do as I say.’

  Ning’s ears pricked up, and she took a sideways step so that she could see the two men through the kitchen doorway. Leo was on his knees, scrubbing a red mark off the hallway wall, and Ben stood over him with his hands on his hips.

  ‘You could have burned out the van,’ Leo said angrily. ‘Saved all this mess and stench.’

  ‘It’s a two-year-old van,’ Ben yelled. ‘You think I’m just going to throw away ten thousand pounds?’

  ‘You have insurance.’

  ‘You think smuggling vans are legit, you dipshit?’ Ben shouted. ‘I don’t care if you’re too much of a sissy to put up with a little bit of stink. You get your hose and disinfectant, you put on a mask and you hose out that van like I tell you.’

  ‘Why’d you even bring it here?’ Leo shouted. ‘I’m a caretaker. Shit like this is above my pay grade.’

  ‘You were nearby. This house has tall hedges, it isn’t overlooked. I expect everyone who works for me to pull together in a crisis. So are you going to do it, or do you and I have a big problem?’

  Leo towered over his boss, but he took a step back and raised his hands in a surrender gesture. ‘You know we don’t have a problem.’

  ‘That’s good for you, and for your mother back in China,’ Ben said threateningly. ‘I have to go home and change for a dinner appointment. Once you’ve cleaned out the van, get Nikki to come back and pick it up. Then I want you to drive up to the country place with Ning. Clear?’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  ‘Do you know where you’re going?’

  ‘I’ve been there before,’ Leo said.

  Ben started clicking his fingers in Leo’s ear. ‘From now on, when I click you jump. Click, jump. Click, jump. Clear?’

  Ning didn’t know what the country place was, or what to expect when she got there, but she was certain it wouldn’t be good. As Ben kept clicking his fingers and yelling at Leo, she quietly pulled open a kitchen drawer and started hunting for a weapon.

  *

  Amy called Ryan back fifteen minutes after she’d hung up.

  ‘Zara has no problem with you helping to relocate Ethan and she’s agreed to knock seventy-five hours off your punishment. And I’ll get TFU to pay your two months’ allowance, if you find Ethan. Do we have a deal?’

  ‘I guess we do,’ Ryan said, as he smiled and silently shook a jubilant fist in the air.

  ‘Did you read through the e-mail?’

  ‘Yeah, it all seems straightforward.’

  ‘Great,’ Amy said. ‘If you go over to the mission control building they’ll set up a communications room for you.’

  As Amy hung up, Ryan grabbed a printout of her e-mail and took a brisk ten-minute walk across to the mission control building.

  The high-tech, banana-shaped building was barely six years old, but it’d had a troubled history, with dodgy security systems, faulty heating and burst pipes. Presently the whole place was covered in scaffolding while a team of army engineers replaced large sections of the roof.

  After using his fingerprint to unlock the main door, Ryan found sixteen-year-old black-shirt Lauren Adams waiting for him. She had shoulder-length blonde hair and an athletic build, sort of like a younger, less stunning version of Amy. Ryan didn’t know Lauren well, but she’d given him some one-on-one Karate lessons before he’d entered basic training.

  ‘Haven’t seen you in ages, Ryan,’ Lauren said cheerfully, as she led him down a curved corridor. ‘Good to see you in a grey T-shirt.’

  ‘I didn’t know you worked over here,’ Ryan said.

  Lauren shrugged. ‘Just for a few weeks, maternity cover. It’s good to get experience in areas like Mission Control, because it means you stand a better chance if you want to come back for a summer job when you’re at uni. Here we are.’

  They’d reached the door of a small office, with a soundproof door. A pair of Windows PCs and a Mac sat on a long desk inside.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it. Just yell if you need anything,’ Lauren said.

  Ryan sat in a bouncy office chair and saw that Lauren had printed off a sheet with logins for all of the various Internet and social networking accounts that had been set up for the Ryan Brasker identity he’d used on the mission.

  California was eight hours behind the UK, which made it just after eight in the morning. Ryan jiggled the mouse to wake up one of the Windows PCs and started a monitoring program that would log every piece of information passing through the computer, including keystrokes and audio. Then he put on a wireless headset and logged into a program routed through TFU in Dallas. This would make it appear as if he was talking from a mobile phone in California rather than the UK.

  The screen showed three missed calls, all from the same unknown number. Ryan clicked the call back button and waited for about twenty seconds. Ethan’s voice came on just as he was about to hang up.

  ‘Ryan, is that you?’ Ethan whispered.

  ‘Good to hear your voice, mate,’ Ryan said. ‘Where the hell are you? What happened?’

  ‘I’m not supposed to communicate with anyone,’ Ethan explained. ‘I’m with Lombardi’s people. You know the guy I called on your phone?’

  ‘I remember,’ Ryan said.

  ‘I wanted you to know I’m OK,’ Ethan said. ‘And to talk.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Somewhere near Denver, Colorado,’ Ethan said. ‘I’m in hospital. The plan is to send me back to live with my grandma in Kyrgyzstan, but the hospitals out there aren’t great, so they’re fixing my arm here while they wait for fake ID to arrive so that I can leave the country. My
cell blew up with the house, but the hospital shop sends a trolley around and I got them to sneak me a piece-of-crap pre-pay phone.’

  ‘Do you need help?’ Ryan said. ‘Can’t you call the cops so you can come back?’

  ‘It’s not safe for me in California,’ Ethan said. ‘My uncle Leonid wants me dead.’

  ‘But surely it’ll be easier for him to get at you in Kyrgyzstan.’

  ‘They seem to think my grandma can protect me once I’m over there; bodyguards or whatever. To be honest I’m not keen. My mom always said Kyrgyzstan is a total dive, but it’s not like I have a choice now she’s dead.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Ryan said. ‘I wish there was something I could do.’

  ‘It’s just nice to talk to someone normal,’ Ethan said. ‘I’m going mad lying here, worrying about what’s going to happen. The only thing is, I’m already low on calling credit.’

  ‘Text me your account details,’ Ryan said. ‘I’ll make sure your account stays topped up. Then you can call me to talk any time you like.’

  ‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’ Ethan asked.

  Ryan laughed. ‘It’s not like my family can’t afford it. And after everything you’ve been through, it’s the least I can do.’

  Ethan sounded close to tears. ‘You don’t know how much that means to me, Ryan. You’ve saved my life twice and you’re the only person in the world I can talk to.’

  *

  Leo was in a vile mood as he stood in the house’s driveway hosing out the filth left behind by the two dying girls. Ning thought about making a run for it, but the back door was locked and the garden had a high wooden fence on all sides, while Leo blocked off the front.

  But with Leo out front, Ning was at least free to roam the house. She went to the basement to pack her bag, which still contained eighteen thousand dollars and the lurid yellow treasure box containing her adoption papers, boxing medals, family photos and other junk that connected her to her past.

  Then she dashed back upstairs to the quartet’s room and quickly found a five-pound note and some coins lying on a bedside table.

  It was getting dark by the time Leo reeled in the hose. Ning thought again about running off, as Leo washed himself at the kitchen sink and put on a clean shirt, but he always turned the mortise key in the front door, the windows all had security bolts and if she smashed the glass he’d surely hear and grab her before she made it through. It was better to stick to her plan.

  Nikki rang the bell and collected the keys for the van. Leo yelled at Ning as its engine clattered to life in the driveway.

  ‘Get your stuff, we can leave now.’

  As Ning grabbed her backpack, Leo held out some lengths of washing line.

  ‘It’s a two-hour drive,’ he said. ‘Get in, lie across the back seat and keep your head down so you can’t see where you’re going. If you fidget I’ll pull over and tie you down with this.’

  ‘I’ll be good,’ Ning said.

  Leo’s car was a newish Peugeot. The rear windows were heavily darkened, making Ning suspect that she wasn’t the first person to travel against her will. For the first ten minutes she kept still, seeing nothing but Leo’s hand changing gear. She wasn’t sure if she was just imagining it, but the corpse smell seemed to hang in the air and it made sense because Leo hadn’t bothered to change his trainers or tracksuit bottoms.

  The noise of the car grew louder as they moved on to a faster road. Leo put a talk radio station on, and a woman with a high voice was complaining about how kids on her estate kept tipping her bins over.

  Ning reached into her jeans. She had a short kitchen knife in the big pocket in the front of her sweatshirt, but she went for a reel of string instead. She’d found it under the sink. It was the kind of cord you’d use in the garden to train plants.

  As she pulled the reel out, a couple of coins rolled across the seat fabric and dropped into the footwell, but Leo didn’t notice over the radio and road noise. Ning turned to face the upright of the seat before winding three loops of cord around her good hand. She pulled out a length of eighty centimetres and then made three loops around her bandaged hand with the reel dangling off the end.

  ‘What are you playing at?’ Leo asked, as he glanced back quickly. ‘I told you: face down.’

  ‘I’ve got a stiff neck.’

  ‘You’ll have more than a crick in it if I have to pull over,’ Leo said, raising his voice slightly.

  Ning turned back on to her chest, but she had to keep her hands tucked uncomfortably beneath her body or Leo might look back again and see the cord stretched between them.

  Attacking Leo while they were moving risked a serious accident, so Ning had to wait until they stopped. But they were on a fast road and her hands grew numb as radio callers covered gypsy camps, neighbours who played Reggae until 4 a.m., kids on skateboards and Britain going to pot ever since they abolished national service.

  Finally the car began to slow as they turned off the fast road. Ning almost made her move the first time they stopped, but it was just a roundabout and Leo pulled away before she’d even turned around.

  At the next stop, Leo pulled on the handbrake. Ning sat up quickly and saw a red traffic light at a junction, six cars ahead.

  ‘Hey, I told you once already,’ Leo shouted.

  But this was Ning’s moment. She lunged forward, reaching over the headrest with the cord stretched tight. She whipped it down and pulled it tight around Leo’s neck, then wedged her feet against the back of Leo’s seat to maximise pressure.

  Leo’s legs spasmed as he gasped, making him floor the accelerator pedal. But with the handbrake on, the car only managed to shoot two metres forward and hit the car in front. The cord cut into Ning’s wrists, but she didn’t let go as she looked around the side of the headrest and saw Leo’s head lolling as the cord tightened across his windpipe.

  Up ahead, a furious man climbed out of his dented car as the lights turned green. Leo seemed to have stopped fighting as Ning unwound the cord from her bloody wrists. As she reached into the footwell to grab her backpack, cars trapped behind honked and traffic started moving in the other lane.

  Ning threw a door open and stepped into the road. There was a tiny gap between moving cars and she forced a taxi to brake as she ran to the kerb. When she reached the pavement, she started running as fast as she could.

  PART TWO

  FIVE WEEKS LATER

  36. GREEN

  It was late afternoon and Ryan was logging his eighty-first hour in the recycling centre on CHERUB campus. He wore a blue overall and thick gloves as he wheeled a giant plastic bin towards his nine-year-old brother Leon and Leon’s best mate, Banky. The two red-shirts had earned themselves thirty hours’ recycling duty for sneaking out of bed with a cache of fireworks.

  ‘Mind your toes,’ Ryan said, as he grabbed the base of the bin and tipped it up.

  A wave of clothing spewed out across the floor, accompanied by a whiff of socks and BO.

  ‘Aww,’ Banky moaned, as Leon pulled his overall up over his nose.

  ‘There’s masks in the changing area if you want them,’ Ryan said, as he picked out a muddy sock and held it up. ‘People are supposed to only put clean clothes in the recycling bins, but as you’ve noticed it doesn’t always work that way.

  ‘You need to sort all this lot into four piles. Pile one – anything that’s clean and still in reasonable condition gets packaged up and sent to Africa. Anything with a label saying it’s pure wool or cotton can be recycled and goes into pile two. Pile three – synthetics, mixed fibres and clothes that are really filthy can’t be recycled. These go to landfill. Finally, pile four is anything that has a CHERUB logo on.’

  ‘What happens to them?’ Leon asked.

  ‘Nothing with a CHERUB logo can leave campus for security reasons,’ Ryan said. ‘It all goes in the incinerator.’

  ‘Can we use the incinerator?’ Leon asked.

  ‘Nope,’ Ryan said. ‘One of the maintenance staff burns secure w
aste in the incinerator every Wednesday. And it’s all automatic, so all you see is a few wafts of smoke coming out the chimney on top of the building. Any more questions before you start?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Banky asked. ‘Is it true you got five hundred hours because you’re a granny basher?’

  Ryan smiled. ‘Not true. I got five hundred hours because I slapped the piss out of an annoying little red-shirt who asked me dumb questions.’

  Banky and Leon looked at each other and smiled.

  ‘Oooh, isn’t my brother clever,’ Leon said sarcastically. ‘He turned things around so that the joke was on us.’

  Banky spoke in a pompous professorish voice. ‘Yes, Leon, old bean, I thought it was a terrific use of humour. Jolly clever indeed.’

  ‘All right, smart arses, get on with it,’ Ryan said, as he started walking away.

  ‘Where are you skiving off to?’ Leon asked. ‘We can’t do all this on our own.’

  ‘I’ve got to fetch all the glass bottles from the kitchens,’ Ryan said.

  As Ryan walked towards the exit he felt a smartphone vibrating in his back pocket. He pulled off his filthy gloves and checked the screen. Ryan still had his normal phone, but this extra one was set up just for communicating with Ethan. It recorded every word, logged every message and automatically relayed everything to TFU headquarters in Dallas.

  Ethan’s arm had multiple complex breaks from the car injury and the doctors in his Colorado hospital weren’t happy with the way it was healing. His message to Ryan read: May be out of touch 4 a bit. Texting from hospital toilet! Op in an hour. Kinda shitting self cos it was painful last time.

  The broken arm was partly Ryan’s fault and he felt guilty as he tapped a reply: Hope op goes well m8. Been reading a book on chess. Gonna beat you soon!

  As Ryan pushed the phone back in his pocket he noticed someone ducking under the opened portion of the recycling centre’s main roll-up door. To his surprise it was Amy Collins.