on your bathroom floor.’
‘James,’ Kerry gasped, ‘you’re not even supposed to take briefings out of the mission preparation rooms.’
‘I know,’ James said, shrugging. ‘But I usually smuggle a few bits out to read while I’m on the toilet.’
Kerry took photos of the borax.
‘So, Keith Moore stores his borax here,’ James said. ‘There’s nothing illegal about borax. Mr Singh will just say they use it as disinfectant.’
‘There must be more to it,’ Kerry said. ‘Keith wouldn’t bail out a company this size in return for shelf space. Dinesh said about upstairs.’
‘I hate to keep saying it,’ James said, ‘but there is no upstairs.’
‘Yes, there is,’ Lauren said. ‘This building has a pointed roof, but the ceiling in here is flat.’
‘Good thinking, Lauren,’ Kerry said. ‘You obviously got all the brains in your family. There must be a loft up there.’
The three of them pointed their torches at the ceiling. The beams got dim over such a distance, but they eventually spotted a hatch that had to lead into the loft.
‘How can we get up there?’ Kerry asked.
‘Easy,’ James said. ‘It’s like a computer game. If you look, the shelves in some bays are closer together. You can use them like a ladder.’
‘And we thought all those hours on the Playstation were wasted,’ Kerry said, smiling. ‘Lauren, you stay down here and keep lookout. Me and James will climb up.’
Lauren nodded. James doubted she’d have been so agreeable if he’d been giving the orders. They clambered up the closely spaced shelves, feeling their way with their hands. They walked along the shelves, stepping over sacks and tins until they came to the next easy-to-climb section. Lauren shone her torch on them, lighting their path as best she could.
The top level was fifteen metres above ground, but the shelves were three metres deep, so it felt safe. There was a wooden pole with a hook on the end for undoing the loft hatch. Kerry pulled it open. James shone his torch into the hole while she pulled out the ladder. It clattered down, banging against the metal sheet on which they stood. The hundreds of fluorescent tubes in the ceiling a few centimetres from their heads started plinking to life. James and Kerry dived down and shielded their faces while their eyes adjusted to the light.
‘What the hell did that?’ James whispered.
‘Someone must have come in,’ Kerry said. ‘They’ll never see us up here, but where’s Lauren?’
They crawled to the edge of the shelves on their bellies. James leaned over one side, Kerry over the other.
‘I can’t see her,’ Kerry said. ‘It looks like she’s had the sense to get out of sight.’
There were two sets of footsteps, accompanied by women’s voices. James caught a glance of them. They were both fat, wearing hairnets and dark blue overalls.
‘Bay forty-six,’ one woman said.
They walked slowly, reading the numbers printed on the shelves.
‘Potassium carbonate,’ the woman said, leaning into the bay. ‘This is it, in the blue drums.’
Something whumped against the floor, echoing around the warehouse. James peeked over the side. A sack of orange powder had exploded on the ground, almost directly below them. Lauren must have knocked it off a shelf.
The two women started walking towards the spill.
‘I better see if Lauren’s OK,’ James said.
Kerry nodded. ‘Be careful. Keep out of sight.’
But when he turned around, Lauren was crawling along the metal towards them.
‘Why didn’t you hide behind something?’ James whispered angrily.
‘Sorry,’ Lauren said, looking ashamed of herself. ‘I wanted to be with you guys.’
Even though it was tense, James couldn’t help smiling. ‘Now you know why you need training: so you don’t get scared so easily.’
‘I wasn’t scared,’ Lauren said defensively. ‘Just …’
Kerry anxiously shushed the pair of them. ‘You’re making too much noise.’
Down at ground level, the two women were standing by the burst sack, hands on hips, staring up at the ceiling.
‘We must have a ghost,’ one woman grinned.
The other one laughed. ‘I’m not sticking around to see if he chucks another one at us and it’s not gonna be muggins here who cleans that mess up, either.’
The women picked up their boxes and switched out the lights as they left. The three kids kept still, making sure the women were gone and letting their eyes readjust to blackness. Kerry lit her torch and shone it up the metal ladder.
‘Bet you a pound there’s nothing up there,’ James said.
Kerry didn’t find him funny. ‘There better be after all this messing about.’
She went up the ladder first. There were no windows