CHERUB: Class A - Robert Muchamore Page 0,42

let us phone from inside the snooker club?’
‘I wouldn’t chance it,’ James said. ‘It looks like the kind of place where you’d get your throat cut.’
‘So what then?’ Kerry asked.
‘Let’s get the hell out of here. There’s no way to call another cab, so we’ll wait for the bus. Our phones will work once we get into town. I’ll make some calls and sort this shambles out.’
They wandered across to the bus stop. Kerry glanced at the timetable.
‘There’s only one bus an hour,’ she said. ‘I think we just missed one.’
There was hardly any traffic about. They sat on the pavement near the bus stop with their feet in the gutter. Kerry picked a dandelion from a crack in the tarmac and twirled it between her fingers.
‘Do you think you’ll get in trouble with KMG for this?’ she asked.
‘I’ve got the bit of paper with the address written in Kelvin’s writing, so they can hardly blame me.’
‘It’s pretty incredible,’ Kerry said.
James nodded. ‘Especially when you think what these drugs are worth.’
‘How much?’ Kerry asked.
‘There’s twelve kilos. I sell coke for sixty a gram and there’s a thousand grams in a kilo. So each kilo is worth sixty thousand pounds. That’s … seven hundred and twenty thousand altogether.’
‘Wow,’ Kerry gasped. ‘That makes our eighty-pound delivery fee look a lot less generous.’
‘Course, that’s the street price and this is being sold wholesale, but I’d still bet KMG isn’t shifting this lot for any less than three hundred grand.’
‘You could buy a nice house with that sort of money.’
James giggled. ‘Maybe we should do a runner.’
‘You know, it’s cool the way you can do those sums in your head.’
‘I’ve been able to do it since nursery,’ James said. ‘Before my mum died, she ran this huge shoplifting gang and she got me to work out her sums; like, who owed how much and who was due what wages.’
‘Did she ever get busted?’ Kerry asked.
James shook his head. ‘Nope. But when I was little, I used to have nightmares where the police came and took Mum and Lauren away. Junior made some comment the other day about his dad ending up in prison. He acted like it was a joke, but I could tell it worries him. I remembered how I used to be, and it made me feel really shitty about us using him to help put his dad in jail.’
‘I suppose every bad guy has someone who loves them,’ Kerry said.
They watched the sunset as the minutes dragged by. When the streetlights flicked on, James looked at his watch.
‘The bus shouldn’t be long now,’ Kerry said.
Three lads came out of the snooker club and started walking towards them. One was a big guy in his twenties, with a beard and curly brown hair down his back. The other two were skinheads in their late teens. Probably brothers, with ghostly complexions and spindly limbs. They weren’t the first people who’d passed by, but something about them put Kerry and James on edge.
The taller skinhead stopped by Kerry.
‘Waiting for a bus?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Kerry said, standing up. ‘That’s what people usually do at bus stops.’
‘I thought you might be waiting for a hunk like me to come by and sweep you off your feet.’
The shorter one gave James a shove. ‘You her boyfriend, blondie?’
‘Piss off,’ James said, shoving him back.
‘Got any money?’ Shorty said, eyeballing James. ‘Not for very long you won’t have.’
Both skinheads pulled knives out of their pockets. CHERUB training teaches you to make an instant decision when you see a knife: either grab the assailant’s wrist before the blade is in a threatening position, or back away if you don’t have time. James and Kerry went for the first option, grabbing the two skinny wrists and yanking their arms behind their backs. Kerry twisted the tall one’s thumb until his knife dropped on to the pavement, then smacked his head against the concrete bus stop. After freeing the other knife, James punched Shorty in the back of the head, before ducking down and picking both blades off the floor. He handed one to Kerry.
‘We don’t want trouble,’ Kerry said, waving the knife. ‘We’re just waiting for the bus.’
The two skinheads didn’t back off, but they didn’t look confident either. The guy with the long hair had waited in the background the whole time. He moved up between the skinheads and smiled.
‘You two seem to know some pretty fancy moves,’ he said, breaking into a grin. ‘You got any that will stop