The General

  ‘Yep,’ James nodded. ‘Bradford was my target, but he’s been busted and I can’t go back undercover because officially I’m on the run.’

  ‘The riot looked like a laugh,’ Dana smiled, as she clipped a plastic comb to a set of hair clippers. ‘Are you sure you want a number one? ‘Cos once I start there’s no going back.’

  James nodded. ‘I only re-dyed it two weeks ago. If you leave it any longer I’ll still have green bits at the tips. Besides, the last time I cut it really short you said it was sexy.’

  ‘If you say so,’ Dana said half-heartedly, as she turned on the battery-powered clippers.

  She started with the tallest part of the Mohican and clumps of green-tinted hair rolled down James’ back and landed on the towel.

  ‘Is everything OK with you?’ James asked.

  ‘Pardon?’ Dana said, switching off the buzzing clippers.

  James tilted his head up to look at Dana standing behind him. ‘While I was away, you acted kind of distant … I mean, I sent you messages and you never answered me half the time, or called back.’

  Dana turned the clippers back on. ‘Keep your head still or we’ll be here all day.’

  ‘That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about,’ James said bitterly.

  ‘What are you on about?’

  ‘Changing the subject.’

  Dana leaned forward and kissed James’ cheek. ‘I’ve been busy,’ she said. ‘I had that rotten cold and the coursework for my art A-level is doing my head in.’

  ‘But everything’s OK, isn’t it?’ James said. ‘I’ve seen your paintings. Even the ones you say are rubbish are a million times better than anything I could do.’

  Dana tilted James’ head forward and started clipping the back of his neck. As she worked, James reached backwards and pushed his hand up Dana’s baggy shorts.

  ‘Stop buggering about you randy git,’ she snapped. ‘If you don’t keep still, your hair’s gonna end up a right state.’

  But James ignored Dana and yanked her shorts down to her knees.

  ‘Get off,’ she said, turning off the clippers before rapping James on the head with them.

  James tutted. ‘We were all over each other before I went off on the mission.’

  ‘I’m not in the mood,’ Dana said firmly. ‘Keep your head still.’

  ‘Come ooooooon,’ James begged, before jumping off the chair and making a grab for Dana’s bum. ‘I haven’t seen you for three weeks. My nuts are swollen up like mangos.’

  ‘Quit pestering me,’ Dana yelled, giving James a shove and throwing the clippers at his bed. ‘You can cut your own bloody hair.’

  ‘What!’ James gasped, as he chased Dana out into the corridor. ‘I’m sorry. I was only messing about.’

  ‘Learn some respect, arsehole,’ Dana shouted, before heading up the stairs to her room. ‘If I say I’m not in the mood, it means I’m not in the mood.’

  As he headed back towards his room, James saw Kevin leaning sleepily out of his room across the hallway, dressed in the grey CHERUB T-shirt and underpants he’d slept in.

  ‘Sorry mate,’ James sighed. ‘I know you had a late night. I didn’t wake you up did I?’

  Kevin was a recently qualified agent and he hadn’t settled into life in the new building. He wanted James to be his friend and wouldn’t have complained even if he had been woken up.

  ‘Nah,’ Kevin yawned. ‘I need to get down to the dining-room before they stop serving breakfast, anyway.’

  James saw his hair in a mirror as he stepped back into his room. In some spots he was virtually bald, while other areas still had long tufts of spiky green hair.

  ‘What a state,’ James said.

  ‘Do you want me to help tidy up your hair?’ Kevin asked. ‘We used to do each other’s over in the junior block, rather than queuing up for hours when the barber comes around.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ James said eagerly. ‘I could probably reach around and finish it off myself, but it’s a lot easier when someone else does it.’

  ‘I’ll just get dressed,’ Kevin said.

  James sat back on the chair as Kevin came into the room, tying the waistband of his tracksuit bottoms before picking up the clippers.

  ‘Women,’ James sighed. ‘If you want my advice Kevin, keep them out of your life as long as you possibly can.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Kevin smiled, as he turned on the clippers and started working on the tufts of green hair. ‘Keep your head still.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s up with Dana. Before I went away we were in the zone, you know? Now it’s like, poof. She doesn’t answer my calls; she doesn’t like me touching her. I mean, what the hell is with that?’

  Kevin wondered if he should tell James that he’d seen Dana cheating. But Lauren had warned him not to get involved and James had a reputation for lashing out at the wrong people when he got angry.

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ James said, as the mirror on the front of his wardrobe caught the look of discomfort on Kevin’s face. ‘I didn’t mean to embarrass you by talking about my love life.’

  ‘Guess I’ll be going through the same in a few years,’ Kevin said awkwardly.

  ‘You’re better at haircutting than Dana, anyway,’ James smiled, as Kevin skilfully moved the clippers over James’ head.

  Kevin smirked. ‘I’ll be expecting a decent tip then.’

  After Dana’s moodiness, James appreciated the company of a cheerful eleven-year-old who he knew looked up to him.

  ‘So how was your little mission with my sister last night?’ James asked. ‘I hear there was some trouble.’

  ‘It was good,’ Kevin smiled. ‘At least I got away OK. Lauren and Rat got busted, but Dennis King got them released after a couple of hours in a police cell. Jake came off worst of all. He ended up with twelve stitches in his butt from a dog bite.’

  James burst out laughing. ‘Sounds nasty. Remind me to wind him up about it when I see him.’

  ‘Oh, I forgot the bit you’d have liked most,’ Kevin added. ‘Bethany jumped off a fence and rolled through some vast cow pat. It stank so bad and when we got back to the car it was all mashed into her hair. I think she wants to kill me and Ronan now ‘cos we were pissing ourselves laughing.’

  ‘Excellent,’ James smiled. ‘I wish I’d seen that.’

  ‘I reckon that’s about done,’ Kevin said, as he gave James a final trim behind his ear before switching off the clippers.

  James was pleased with the result, although his scalp looked pale and the clippers had beheaded a couple of zits on his neck, leaving angry red marks.

  ‘Guys!’ Rat shouted, bursting through the door with a ketchup moustache and a tabloid newspaper in his hands. ‘I was having breakfast downstairs when someone spotted this in the paper. You’ve got to check it out. Lauren’s gonna go ape-shit when she sees it.’

  Rat threw the newspaper down on James’ bed. The front page was all about Bradford being arrested and the riot in the Strand, but Rat turned five pages in to a full-colour picture of a girl covered in mud, standing in a puddle beside a wrecked Fiat.

  Fortunately it’s illegal to identify underage criminals so Lauren’s face had been blurred, but you could still see that it was her, and they hadn’t pixelated her hand flicking off the photographer.

  ‘Picture exclusive,’ James read exuberantly. ‘KIDS IN TWO-MILLION-POUND RAMPAGE: A knife-wielding hoodie gang, high on drugs and aged as young as ten, caused over two million pounds’ worth of damage at an air traffic control centre due to be opened by the Queen in less than three weeks’ time …’

  Kevin tutted. ‘Two million, my arse. We had instructions to make it look good but not wreck anything expensive. And how could they possibly know whether we were on drugs?’

  ‘That’s not the best bit,’ Rat said. ‘Read the caption under the photograph.’

  James cracked up as soon as he read it: ‘Happy Chavmas – girl hooligan greets our photographer with a two-fingered salute, shortly be
fore being arrested by military police.’

  ‘Oh that’s priceless,’ James snorted. ‘I’m having a copy of that on my wall!’

  The three boys all laughed as Kevin read the rest of the article aloud and James wheeled his chair back to his desk and gathered up the towel covered in hair.

  ‘I’d better have a shower,’ James said. ‘I’ve got clippings all down my neck.’

  ‘Don’t forget it’s football down by the lake later,’ Rat said. ‘So don’t put your best threads on.’

  ‘I dunno if I’ll be playing,’ James said, as he lifted up his T-shirt to display the huge purple bruise on his back.

  ‘That must hurt,’ Kevin winced.

  ‘Bloody telling me,’ James said. ‘I swear, the only thing worse than an angry woman, is an angry woman who’s got a big stick to whack you with.’

  *

  Two hours later, Lauren emerged from the girls’ toilet and into a corridor streamed with tinsel and cut-out snowmen made by little kids. She’d originally been sentenced to help out in the junior block as a punishment, but she’d enjoyed it and still went over there to lend a hand occasionally.

  ‘Happy Chavmas, Lauren,’ a gap-toothed boy chanted, as four little red shirts surrounded her.

  Lauren bunched her fist in the little lad’s face. ‘You’re going the right way about losing more teeth, Kurt,’ she warned, before gently squishing the end of his nose.

  The quartet followed her as she hobbled down the hallway towards a classroom, her ankle heavily strapped from the night before.

  ‘Have you seen our presents, Lauren?’ one boy asked.

  ‘We know she has,’ another one said. ‘Tell us, pleeeeease.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Lauren said firmly.

  ‘We’re not idiots,’ a girl said. ‘We saw all the rolls of wrapping paper going in there.’

  ‘At least give us a clue,’ another demanded.

  ‘Aren’t you all in the nativity play?’ Lauren said. ‘Why don’t you go and practise your lines?’

  ‘We know our lines,’ they all chanted.

  Lauren had reached the door of a classroom and she knocked on the glass panel, which had been covered in gold paper to stop the red shirts peeking inside.

  Kevin’s little sister Megan wrapped herself around Lauren’s waist. ‘I have to know what presents I’m getting. Please, please, please!’

  But Megan jumped back when a carer called Pete Bovis opened the door. ‘Scram, you lot,’ he said firmly. ‘I told you to leave Lauren and the other helpers alone. If I see you bugging any of them again, I’ll deduct one present from each of you.’

  Lauren scrambled into the classroom without opening the door far enough to let the kids see what was inside.

  ‘They’re persistent,’ Lauren smiled, as Pete put the bolt back on the classroom door.

  The room was usually used to teach some of the littlest kids on campus. There was a mass of well used ride-on toys, an indoor sand and water play area with a tank filled with toy boats and water-wheels, and a carpeted reading corner stocked with picture books. Presently, one wall was stacked high with boxes of toys and gifts, which were wrapped and labelled at tables in the middle before being moved to the far side.

  Two carers and three qualified CHERUB agents sat at the tables, working through a giant computer printout which listed the presents each red shirt would receive. Some were standard presents for everyone, while others were individually tailored based upon the age and taste of the recipient.

  The four girl helpers had volunteered to get out of more onerous pre-Christmas chores, like cleaning corridors or working in the laundry, but they’d quickly come to realise that wrapping more than a thousand presents for seventy-odd red shirts was a lot less fun than it sounded.

  ‘OK,’ Lauren sighed, as she squatted on a tiny chair designed for a four-year-old and read the next name off her list. ‘Robert Cross, age eight, main presents – laptop, Manchester United kit, Gunslinger Four for X-box. Did anyone see the Sports World bag with all the footy kits in?’

  One of the carers looked around. ‘I had it a minute ago …’

  ‘It’s bleedin’ outrageous the amount of stuff kids get these days,’ Lauren sneered, putting on an over-the-top cockney accent as she grabbed a sheet of silver paper to start wrapping the football kit. ‘When I was eight, all I got was an orange, an apple, and possibly a walnut – if I was extremely lucky.’

  ‘Oh I’m sure,’ Pete smiled, as the rest of the room laughed. ‘What with your mum running the biggest shoplifting racket in North London and all.. .’

  15. MUD

  CHERUB campus grew out of a disused village school that now forms part of the junior block. Over time campus became a secure compound enclosing a small village and several surrounding farms. Cherubs now have access to modern sports facilities and all-weather pitches, but in the early days the only grass pitch was marked out in a neighbour’s field, beside what is now the campus lake.

  During wintertime the lake would flood the pitch and the studded boots of young CHERUB boys – there were no girls in those days – would churn it into a bog. As campus grew, new pitches were built on higher land and the banks of the lake were reinforced to stop the annual flood, but the tradition of playing a football match in a mud bowl on the Saturday before Christmas had remained.

  To create the pitch, water was pumped from the lake to the top of a mild slope and left to run over the grass back to the lake. The campus gardeners then drove tractors over the turf and within half a day a rectangular area would become a sea of huge puddles and ankle-deep mud.

  Pitch markings were impossible, but a set of ancient wooden goal posts marked the ends of the playing area. The matches were always played after dark, so a set of portable floodlights, which frequently broke down, were put in each corner.

  There were two marquees, one where players got hosed down before running to the changing rooms by the athletics track for a hot shower. The other contained a barbecue serving burgers and hot dogs and a large PA system set up to pump out loud rock music.

  It was only five in the afternoon, but the sky was black and a mean wind blew across the lake. Almost everyone on campus, from the youngest red shirts to black shirts like James, had turned out. They were all well wrapped, wearing football boots or old trainers plus gloves, hats, thick tracksuits and hoodies or sweatshirts. Retired cherubs who were visiting for Christmas and dozens of staff gathered around tables, picking off bottles of beer and glasses of champagne.

  James found himself in a crowd close to the edge of the pitch, where a bunch of red shirts were already running around kicking mud at each other. As he peered about, searching for mates, a hand tapped on his shoulder from behind.

  ‘Kyle,’ James said exuberantly, as he eyed his best friend. ‘When’d you get back, man? Why didn’t you come see me?’

  ‘I just drove up from Cambridge,’ Kyle said. ‘I hoped I’d get here by two, grab a late lunch and catch up with everyone, but the traffic’s shit at this time of year.’

  ‘My man!’ James grinned, as Kyle handed him a bottle of Kronenberg from the adults’ table.

  ‘Just keep it out of sight,’ Kyle warned.

  ‘So how’s university?’

  ‘Good,’ Kyle nodded. ‘It’s really sociable and there’s a really big gay scene. It’s tempting just to go out and party every night, but money’s pretty tight.’

  ‘Last time you said you were looking for a job.’

  Kyle nodded. ‘I’ve started doing door security at a gay bar. It’s good money, although you have to deal with your fair share of tossers.’

  ‘Thought you’d be too small to land a job as a bouncer,’ James smiled.

  ‘Couple of big yobs in rugby shirts came into the bar one night and began mouthing off about faggots and queers. They started pushing this dude around. I ended up inviting them outside and knocked ‘em cold with a metal dustbin lid.’

  James laughed. ‘Good to s
ee the old combat training still coming in handy.’

  ‘Anyhow, the next time I went in for a drink the landlord offered me a job. I get a tenner an hour in readies and all the booze I can drink!’

  ‘Sounds good,’ James smiled, before downing three gulps of his beer and burping loudly.

  ‘Are you playing in a match?’ Kyle asked.

  James shook his head. ‘I got my back done in by a cop last night. Doc says I might wreck it completely if I start rolling around in the mud.’

  ‘I thought about your mission when I saw the riot on the news last night,’ Kyle said. ‘So how’s everything else?’

  ‘Not bad,’ James shrugged. ‘Dana’s being weird for some reason, but that’s women for you.’

  ‘Happy Chavmas!’ Kyle said, as he saw Lauren hobbling towards them on her dodgy ankle.

  Most people would have got a mouthful, but Lauren liked Kyle and hadn’t seen him for ages so she gave him a hug and a quick peck on the cheek.

  ‘How’s it going?’ Kyle asked, but before Lauren could answer the rock music stopped and a cringe-inducing squeal came through the PA system.

  Chairwoman Zara Asker stood by the barbecue tent with a microphone in one hand and her baby daughter Tiffany held in the other.

  ‘Can I have some quiet please,’ Zara said, as the microphone squealed again and Tiffany shielded her ears with her little hands. ‘The classrooms are closed until the new year, it’s Saturday night and I’m proud to announce that on CHERUB campus, Christmas starts here!’

  A huge cheer and applause ripped through the crowd as James looked down in time to see Zara’s four-year-old son Joshua grabbing his leg. He had Meatball on a lead and Lauren crouched down and started making a fuss of the little beagle.

  ‘Look at you all muddy,’ Lauren cooed. ‘You’ll moan later when Zara puts you in the bath.’

  ‘Just a few warnings before we kick off,’ Zara announced. ‘It’s very cold and wet out here. I can live with a few of you getting injured, but I’m going to be very cross with anyone who gets chills or hypothermia. The matches last fifteen minutes, and when you’ve finished I expect every player to take a hot shower and change into clean, dry clothes.