CHERUB: Class A - Robert Muchamore Page 0,41

the fight had started.
‘Baby cakes?’ Kerry shouted, pressing her knee in harder as Costas gasped for breath. ‘Nobody calls me baby cakes.’
‘OK,’ Costas gurgled. ‘I’m sorry. You can go with James.’
Kerry stood up and let Costas sit still while his face returned to its normal colour.
‘You surprised me,’ Costas said angrily, as he got to his feet. ‘But you better not try anything like that again or I’ll seriously hurt you.’
Kerry couldn’t help grinning. ‘I’ll try to keep that in mind.’
Costas made sure nobody was around before unzipping his backpack. Kerry and James each grabbed two plastic-wrapped bricks of white powder and tucked them in their backpacks. James started walking away.
‘Hang on,’ Costas said. ‘Unless you want me to keep the eighty quid.’
Kerry snatched the money out of Costas’ hand.
‘Pleasure doing business,’ she said.
She started jogging after James.
‘Eighty quid, James?’ Kerry said angrily. ‘I can’t believe you tried to rip me off when you’ve got a roll of twenties in your pocket and I’m only getting pocket money.’
‘It was a mistake,’ James lied. ‘You can have half, of course.’
‘I’m keeping the lot,’ Kerry said, tucking the money into her jeans. ‘Unless you want to fight me for it.’
16. LOST
James and Kerry stepped off the train on to the platform at St Albans.
‘It’s a shame we couldn’t have got here earlier in the day,’ Kerry said. ‘St Albans is really historic. There’s Roman ruins and mosaics and stuff.’
‘Tragic,’ James said sarcastically. ‘Nothing gets my pulse racing like a good mosaic. We’re not going into town anyway. We’ve got to get out to some housing estate.’
Taxis were lined up outside the station. The driver wanted to see James’ money before he’d take them anywhere. The ride took them past farms and some seriously expensive houses, then from nowhere they found themselves surrounded by graffiti and concrete. It was like an alien spaceship had sucked a housing estate out the middle of London, then decided it didn’t like the look of it and dumped it in the middle of nowhere.
The cab pulled up outside a shopping arcade. Everything was boarded up, except a pub that had been converted into a snooker club. It had a reinforced metal door and bars over the slits of glass that passed for windows.
Kerry looked around nervously as the cab pulled away. It was already turning dark.
‘It must be the pits living in a place like this,’ James said. ‘Thornton may be a dump, but at least it’s near to town. Out here you’ve got nothing.’
It turned out the shops were the high point of the area. Beyond them were eight low-rise housing blocks. Three were boarded up, with CONDEMNED BUILDING notices and signs warning people not to go inside without masks to protect them against asbestos dust. There was a pack of dogs roaming around, druggies in dark corners and the only normal-looking people you saw walked fast, like they were afraid of being mugged.
James got the directions out of his pocket.
‘Twenty-two, third floor, Mullion House.’
They found Mullion House, then walked up a foul-smelling staircase and along the third-floor balcony. The door numbers ended at twenty. James rang the bell and an Eastern-European-sounding woman shouted out of the letterbox in bad English.
‘What is you like?’
‘Do you know where number twenty-two is?’ James asked.
‘What?’ she shouted.
‘Number twenty-two?’
‘Wait. I fetch my son.’
The kid who came to the letterbox was about ten. His English was perfect.
‘There’s no number twenty-two,’ he explained. ‘I think all the floors are the same. It only goes up to twenty.’
‘Cheers,’ James said miserably, turning away from the letterbox. ‘Sorry to bother you.’
‘What do we do now?’ Kerry asked.
‘There’s obviously a mistake with the address,’ James said. ‘I’ll call the lady who rings my deliveries through. She’ll sort us out.’
James pulled his mobile out of his tracksuit and dialled. The phone made a bleep and a message flashed on the display: No Signal. Kerry tried hers and got the same.
‘Crap,’ James said. ‘You really know you’re in the middle of nowhere when you can’t get a mobile signal.’
Kerry looked down off the balcony towards the shops.
‘There’s a phone box by the bus stop,’ she said.
James looked down. ‘I’d put the odds of it working at something like a million to one.’
They didn’t have any other choice, so they went to take a look. The phone wasn’t so much vandalised as annihilated. There was no glass, no handset and no buttons; just a burned-up mess.
‘This place is giving me the creeps,’ Kerry said. ‘Do you think they’d