CHERUB: Brigands M.C. - Robert Muchamore Page 0,105

he circled the van. Once he felt safe, he put on a set of clear plastic gloves and pulled the small video camera out of his pocket. The back doors of the van were unlocked and he caught a whiff of fish as the light mounted on the video camera illuminated the boxes.

‘Could start a nice little war with that lot,’ McEwen said a couple of minutes later when Neil arrived. ‘Grenades, assault rifles, bullets. There’s even an RPG launcher in there.’

Neil was shocked. ‘George didn’t order any RPG launcher.’

McEwen shrugged. ‘Maybe they’ve got other customers. Or maybe it’s for the Führer’s private armoury.’

‘What now?’ Neil asked.

‘There’s some miniature tracking devices in the BMW,’ McEwen explained. ‘We can use them to follow individual boxes when the weapons are moved. Unfortunately the mini trackers are a lot less reliable than the big suckers we stick on the cars.’

‘And then we watch and wait,’ Neil said. ‘The question is how long? Hours, days, weeks?’

‘I expect that the Brigands will want their money ASAP,’ McEwen said, as he looked at his watch and yawned. ‘All I know for sure is that I’ve been on duty since I got out of bed this morning, so I hope your boss Chief Inspector Johnson is sending someone down here to relieve us before too much longer.’

‘Someone’s coming down from our London HQ,’ Neil said, shaking his head ruefully. ‘But we’re gonna have to keep our eyes propped open for a few more hours yet.’

37. HOME

James spent the night on a huge feather mattress and managed breakfast in bed before 8 a.m., when a driver from campus arrived to take him and the bike back to Salcombe. The roads were Sunday-morning quiet and driving a van registered to an organisation that doesn’t exist means you can’t pick up speeding fines, so they made three hundred and twenty miles in less than five hours.

According to Radio Cambridge the trouble at the Tea Party had resulted in several stabbings, four people with serious burns and one fatality. The story had also made it on to the tail end of national radio news.

James couldn’t be seen arriving home in a van, so they pulled over fifteen miles from Salcombe. It was a glorious morning as James rolled his bike down a ramp and he powered off with only a slight headache and his busted helmet visor to remind him of the day before. The clear roads and lush countryside made him feel like he was riding through a TV commercial.

The long journey the day before had boosted James’ confidence in the saddle. He rode fast and when he pulled on to the brick driveway he’d have been happy to turn back and do it again. He rummaged in his backpack, but couldn’t find his door key and rang the bell.

Lauren came to the door in pool shoes and James’ Green Day T-shirt. ‘Where’s your key, div?’ she said dourly.

‘I wondered where that shirt disappeared to,’ James said. ‘You look seriously rough.’

‘Joe’s party,’ Lauren explained in a flat voice, before raising her arm to show off a plaster cast.

‘Who’d you punch?’ James grinned.

‘You’re so funny,’ Lauren said, and wandered into the kitchen with James behind her. She reached up into a cupboard and grabbed two fizzy paracetamol tablets from a medicine box. As she dropped the pills into a glass of water, Dante came in from the garden smelling of grass. His bare chest glistened with sweat.

‘How convenient,’ Dante complained. ‘Lauren can’t push the mower with her broken wrist and you turn up just as I roll it back into the garage.’

Hot from his ride, James filled a mug with tap water and gulped it down. ‘You still haven’t told me how you did your wrist in.’

‘Let Dante explain,’ Lauren said, waving her hand in front of her face. ‘I’m going back to bed for a bit. Tell Chloe that if she makes lunch I don’t want anything.’

‘Not even a nice pickled beetroot and raw liver sandwich?’ James teased.

Lauren glowered at her brother. ‘James, if I spew up I’m gonna aim at you.’

‘You should have seen her,’ Dante said quietly, as Lauren padded upstairs to her bed. ‘She drank about a dozen wine spritzers. She was completely smashed. She tried squatting in the hedge at the bottom of the road to take a piss and she fell into the drainage channel.’

James burst out laughing. ‘You’re shitting me! She doesn’t usually get drunk. She always says she doesn’t like the taste of