CHERUB: Brigands M.C. - Robert Muchamore Page 0,43

the insurers sold them at auction here in the UK. Three were bought by a second-hand bike dealer. The fourth was bought by the Metropolitan Police purchasing department and delivered to Hornsey police station, which just happens to be the headquarters of NPBTF.’

‘It’s a plant or something,’ Neil explained.

The Führer smiled. ‘The chassis number of the bike you’ve been riding matches the number in the auction catalogue.’

Neil tried not to gasp. Could the police really have spent all that time creating his false identity, only to send him undercover with wheels purchased openly at a bike auction?

‘I think the private investigator we hired earned his money, don’t you Neil Smith? Or should that be Leicestershire police sergeant Neil Gauche, currently on attachment to the National Police Biker Task Force?’

Neil realised there was no point pretending any more. For two years he’d lived with the possibility that his cover would be blown. He’d played out the scene a million times in his head, but now it was for real his mouth was dry and his brain as dead as a walnut.

‘Get out of the car,’ the Führer said, as he pulled his jacket open to reveal a gun. ‘I don’t want your blood all over my leather.’

Neil looked around as he stepped into the verge with the corn towering up alongside him, but there was no escape. Teeth was already out of the car and he’d be shot in the back the instant he made any move.

‘Hands on your head,’ the Führer shouted. ‘Start walking into the corn.’

Neil felt like crying as he imagined how it would pan out. He was due to report in to his handler at 6 a.m. Once his bosses knew he was missing they’d start a search. If he was left in the corn field they’d probably find the body within a few days, but more likely the Führer would already have made arrangements for a burial site hundreds of kilometres away, or to have his body chopped into a dozen pieces and fed to a batch of hungry pigs. Maybe some day they’d figure it out. Or maybe there would be a TV show about the disappearance of a heroic undercover police officer …

Neil considered his mum. She was in her sixties. She’d make a big fuss, but they weren’t close. He’d only seen her a couple of times a year since leaving for university at eighteen and he didn’t have a wife or kids. The lack of close family was one of the reasons Neil got accepted for undercover work, but he’d always seen himself settling down into less demanding police work and doing the wife, mortgage and brats thing.

The corn rustled until the trio reached a break in the planting.

‘Time to kneel, Neil,’ the Führer said, smiling at his own pun as he screwed a silencer to his pistol. ‘This is going to be a proper pain in the arse, you know? Have you any idea how much heat we’ll take when an undercover cop turns up dead?’

‘So don’t shoot me then,’ Neil trembled. ‘You’re a smart man. You kill a cop and you’ll have detectives so far up your arse you won’t be able to operate.’

‘Cop’s gotta die,’ the Führer said. ‘Anything else sends the wrong message.’

A wasp buzzed close by Neil’s head and stubbly grass pricked through the frayed knee of his jeans. Bollocks, he thought to himself as the Führer pressed the silencer against the back of his skull.

16. BREAKFAST

By the next morning Dante had stopped worrying about making friends on campus. Bethany’s birthday party made a great ice-breaker. After everyone ate cake and got yelled at by one of the campus caretakers for setting off fireworks indoors and potentially burning the building down, they headed into town in one of the campus minibuses, went bowling and finished up eating in a big group in the Nandos that opened up after Chicken Deluxe went bust.

Dante woke up late. After his mission he was entitled to a week off before resuming lessons and training, but he regretted missing the chance to have breakfast with everyone else. The only people he knew in the canteen were James Adams and Kerry Chang, but they sat together reading the music reviews in the Guardian and it didn’t look like the kind of scene you were supposed to interrupt.

Dante grabbed potato waffles, bacon and a packet of Crunchy Nut, but as he sat at an empty table James called him over. ‘Do we smell or