CHERUB: Class A - Robert Muchamore Page 0,55

James slumped on his bed feeling pleased with himself. Ewart would look an idiot when the drug test came back. Then he had a horrible thought: if Kelvin had called down the stairs a couple of seconds later…
James relived the drunken instant when the dish of white powder was just centimetres from his face. He felt sick when he realised how close he’d come to snorting a dangerous drug – and getting himself booted out of CHERUB.
22. NICOLE
Junior called James on his mobile.
‘Dude.’
‘You sound happy,’ James said. ‘What’s up?’
‘It’s pandemonium here,’ Junior said. ‘I’ve got a killer hangover and the pigs arrested over eighty KMG people last night. My dad thinks he’s about to get busted. He keeps running up to the curtain every time a bird flies past the window.’
‘Mr Singh got nabbed,’ James said. ‘Dinesh spent the night here. Ewart’s taken him to the airport to meet his mum.’
‘They nicked Uncle George and Uncle Pete,’ Junior said. ‘They’re not my real uncles, but they’ve been working for Dad since before I was born.’
‘So how come you’re in a good mood?’ James asked.
‘Nicole, of course,’ Junior said. ‘I had my hands everywhere. No offence, James, I know she’s your sister and everything.’
‘She’s in hospital,’ James said. ‘The coke did her in.’
‘No way,’ Junior gasped. ‘That explains why I couldn’t get her mobile. Is she OK?’
‘Yeah, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up about seeing her any time soon. She overdosed once before,’ James said, repeating Zara’s latest cover story. ‘Ewart and Zara are terrified that she’s gonna end up killing herself. They’ve arranged for her to go back to a care home in London for a psychiatric assessment.’
‘Oh, my god,’ Junior blurted. ‘I’m really sorry, man. I’d never have offered her coke if I’d known she had a problem. How long will she be gone for?’
‘Um,’ James said, scratching for an answer, ‘it all depends on the assessment, I suppose … She might not be back at all … Anyway, I just heard Zara pulling up with a carload of shopping. She goes loopy if I don’t help her unload.’
‘I’ll see you then,’ Junior said. ‘April asked if you fancied coming round for Sunday lunch?’
‘Maybe,’ James said. ‘I don’t know what’s going on at the moment, with Nicole and that. I’ll ring you later.’
James ended the call. There really was a car pulling up, but it was John Jones. Zara made tea while John Jones explained what had been going on over the last twenty-four hours.
‘It all came out of the production facility you kids found at Thunderfoods. KMG imports and distributes cocaine through lots of different channels, but you guys uncovered the weakest link in the chain. Almost every gram was being packaged in the automated plant at Thunderfoods.
‘We wired the place with cameras and bugs and watched everybody who came and went through binoculars. I’ve been on drug investigations where you go months without finding a good lead. Once we had Thunderfoods under surveillance, we started getting so much information we had to bring in extra staff to handle it.
‘You’d get a couple of guys coming in to mix and package a few kilos of coke. It’s boring work, so they’d usually start gossiping. They were off guard and the quality of the information was unbelievable. Names, dates, phone numbers, flight numbers. What are you doing next week? Where’s your next shipment coming in? What deal is old so-and-so working on at the moment?
‘We’ve made a hundred arrests already, but we’re not even scratching the surface. We’re sending information to police stations all over the country and another two or three hundred guys are gonna get pulled over the next few days. By the time we’re done, KMG will be lucky if it can sell a bag of sweets in a school playground.’
‘I just spoke to Junior,’ James said. ‘Keith Moore still hasn’t been arrested.’
‘That’s politics,’ John said. ‘Us MI5 guys wanted to keep the undercover work going until we had enough evidence to get Keith, but the police wouldn’t hold out. They’ve got hundreds of people working on Operation Snort. Not just police officers, but the administration and back-up staff that go with them. It’s costing over a million pounds a month and there was talk of shutting it down if they didn’t start getting results.’
‘So Keith Moore might get off?’ Kerry asked.
John smiled uneasily. ‘I hope not, Kerry. I’d say out of the top ten people in KMG, we’ve got enough evidence to put eight