CHERUB: Brigands M.C. - Robert Muchamore Page 0,77

an indebted customer regularly brought the two seventeen-year-olds into conflict, but their friendship ran back to primary school and as Julian drove they reminisced about sleepovers, birthday parties, boy scouts and PS2 games.

The A38 was busy but the traffic moved freely. It took eighty minutes to reach Exeter and the beginning of the M5 motorway. Julian kept the Fiat in the middle of three lanes and the needle glued on seventy miles per hour.

‘How’s things with Caitlyn?’ Julian asked, as he overtook a truck. It was a bright day. The Smiths How Soon is Now? was coming out of the radio, but mostly drowned out by the engine noise.

‘Caitlyn’s wild,’ Nigel smiled. ‘Smokes most of my profits, but I’m being compensated in other ways, if you get my meaning.’

‘You hang with James Raven much?’ Julian asked.

‘I spend most of my time with Caitlyn, but I see him around. He’s bloody clever, you know? He spent a couple of hours sorting out some maths stuff that I couldn’t get my head around.’

‘I messed it up with Ashley,’ Julian admitted.

Nigel nodded. ‘Get all macho when someone hits on your bitch and you’d better be pretty sure that he’s not a third dan Karate black belt and kickboxing expert.’

‘No bullshit?’ Julian asked.

‘Well that’s what he claims and he looks the business,’ Nigel smiled. ‘So I’ve got no intention of finding out.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Julian moaned, as he thumped the steering wheel. ‘What are the odds on this?’

Nigel looked over his shoulder and realised they were being flashed by a police BMW. ‘Were you speeding?’

Julian pointed at the speedometer. ‘Seventy, dead on.’

‘It’s probably just routine,’ Nigel said. ‘Pull over and play it cool.’

Julian had only been driving six months and racked his brain trying to think what he’d done wrong. It took a half mile for a break to open up on the inside lane. He pulled across behind a Shell tanker and into the hard shoulder.

When he’d completely stopped, a tannoy blasted out from between the flashing blue lights in the cop car’s radiator. ‘Turn off your engine and place your hands on the steering wheel.’

One officer stayed at the wheel of the patrol car, while the Asian officer on the passenger side got out and walked towards the Fiat. Nigel rolled down his window, and the officer crouched down and spoke across him to Julian.

‘Do you know why you were stopped?’

Julian shook his head. ‘I was doing seventy, dead on. There were cars whizzing past me in the fast lane.’

The officer shook his head. ‘I want you to step carefully from your vehicle, then come around to the front with me. Bring your licence and vehicle papers with you.’

Trucks and coaches thundered by in the lane alongside as Julian opened his door and edged out. His jaw dropped as he saw the mud obscuring three letters of his number plate.

‘I had no idea,’ he gasped. ‘It must have sprayed off the back of another car, or something.’

The policeman gently scraped the mud with the tip of his boot and shook his head. ‘That’s dried on hard. I’d say it’s been there for a day or two.’

‘I’ve got a window scraper,’ Julian said. ‘I can take it right off.’

‘You do that, but I’ve still got to write you a ticket.’

Julian looked surprised. ‘For a muddy number plate?’

‘Zero tolerance,’ the cop explained. ‘We get a lot of people trying to pull that stunt to avoid getting detected by speed cameras.’

As the cop said this, his colleague came running across from the car. ‘The number plate runs clean,’ he said, before whispering something in the Asian officer’s ear.

The Asian studied Julian’s licence and eyed him suspiciously. ‘Where did you come from this morning?’

‘Salcombe,’ Julian said.

‘You’re not in school today?’

‘It’s a study day.’

The officer smiled. ‘Doesn’t look much like studying to me. Where are you headed?’

‘Bristol,’ Julian answered. ‘Visiting friends.’

‘There was a serious incident at Exeter airport this morning,’ the officer said. ‘Two young males were involved in a violent theft and left the airport in a red hatchback. Have you got anything to say about that?’

‘Would you object if we searched your car?’ the other officer said, as he looked in the back at a pile of cardboard boxes marked Josie’s Florist.

Julian raised his hands anxiously. ‘That’s got nothing to do with us.’

The traffic was too noisy for Nigel to pick up words, but his heart fluttered as he saw Julian’s increasingly nervous body language.

The white police officer spoke into his radio, explaining what he’d found