CHERUB: The Fall - Robert Muchamore Page 0,48

silent for a year or so, she’ll be settled in Britain. Anna can say that she has friends and wants to stay here. The local authority will launch formal care proceedings, Brighton council will become Anna’s guardian and she’ll be given British citizenship.’

‘That sounds quite manipulative,’ Lauren said. ‘And she’s only eleven or twelve.’

‘But the lists demonstrate that she’s thinking about her future. I suspect that one of the other girls inside that boat had been trafficked before and told Anna how to behave if she was captured.’

Lauren gasped. ‘Trafficked before?’

‘That’s common,’ John explained. ‘Once a girl is captured, the criminal gangs who traffic the girls regard them as their property. Girls caught by the British authorities are usually deported straight back to Russia. With no home and no job, the gangsters frequently pick the girls up on the streets again and send them straight back to Britain.’

‘Doesn’t the government do anything to stop that happening?’

John shook his head. ‘It’s all to do with politics. A large proportion of the general public doesn’t like immigration. The government is more popular if it’s tough on immigration and any system the government puts in place to support these girls will be open to abuse. If they start giving special treatment to women who are forced into prostitution, then thousands of other illegal immigrants will start claiming that they were forced into prostitution.’

‘I guess,’ Lauren said weakly. ‘But how can they send girls home with no protection from the gangsters?’

John shrugged. ‘It’s just one of those horrible situations where there aren’t any easy answers.’

20. WOLF

James wasn’t sure if he had what it took to become a training instructor, but he knew that Bruce Norris was the right person to help him. Bruce was fourteen years old and small for his age, but he was an expert in five martial arts and he had a ruthless streak a mile wide.

‘Remember,’ James whispered, as they crept down a dark corridor on the second floor of the junior block. ‘We’ve got to scare him shitless, but we can’t actually hurt him … Not badly anyway.’

‘I know,’ Bruce said. ‘I’m a peaceful person, James. I might have finished fifty or sixty violent brawls, but I’ve never started one.’

The two boys wore boots, combat trousers, black jackets and black gloves. The carer who’d let them into the junior block had told them that she didn’t want all the red-shirts woken up by screaming, so they had to take their victim silently.

As they stepped through an open door into the bedroom Kevin Sumner shared with his best friend, James and Bruce pulled furry werewolf masks over their heads.

‘On three,’ James whispered, as he stared down at the peaceful face of a sleeping ten-year-old. ‘One, two … three.’

As James swung his knee across and pinned Kevin to his bed, Bruce pinched his nose. The youngster’s scream was muffled as Bruce crammed a dirty sock into his mouth, but his eyes shot open wide, clearly petrified at being woken up by two wolfmen.

‘Time for walkies, squirt,’ James said, as he picked Kevin out of bed and slung him over his shoulder.

Kevin kicked and screamed into the vile tasting sock as James carried him along the hallway, down four flights of stairs and out into the night air. After a two-hundred-metre jog across muddy ground, James ripped the sock from Kevin’s mouth and dumped him into a deep puddle.

‘On your feet, scum,’ Bruce shouted, as he and James switched on head-mounted LED lamps.

Kevin sobbed as he scrambled up, barefoot and with nothing but a vest and pyjama bottoms to protect him from the cold.

‘Too slow,’ Bruce shouted, as he kicked the back of Kevin’s legs. He crashed face first into the puddle.

‘Get up again,’ James yelled.

‘Quickly this time,’ Bruce added.

Kevin was crying and shivering.

‘Look at the little baby,’ Bruce said nastily, as he pressed his boot down on Kevin’s bare foot.

James closed up behind, so that the shivering boy was sandwiched with the white lights blazing down on his sodden hair.

‘What do you want?’ Kevin asked weakly.

James didn’t answer the question. ‘You’re now the property of the wolfmen,’ he grinned. ‘Mr Pike has told us that you’re a little snot-nosed scaredy-cat. He says you’ll never make it through basic training because you’re afraid of heights and won’t go over the obstacle. Well, until you pull yourself together and stop acting like a pussy, we’re going to make your life a living hell.’

‘If you run away, we’ll catch you,’ Bruce said. ‘If you