CHERUB: The Fall - Robert Muchamore Page 0,77
use long-standing contacts within the Soviet weapons industry to set themselves up as illicit weapons dealers, but have griped constantly about their low wages, low status and the lack of pension provision.’
Dana nodded. ‘Sounds like the sort of people who’d take a bung to bump off Denis Obidin.’ Then she burst out laughing.
‘What’s so funny?’
Dana read an extract written by a health visitor seven years earlier: ‘James Choke is a bright and thoughtful eight-year-old, although he does have difficulty controlling his temper at times. Unfortunately, James’ bedwetting problem persists and this is not helped by his younger sister, Lauren, who teases him mercilessly and refers to him as Mr Piddle Pants.’
‘Hey,’ James gasped. ‘Gimme that. You’re supposed to be going through Ewart’s stuff, not my personal file.’
‘I’ve got to be thorough,’ Dana giggled.
‘Dana, I could be kicked out of CHERUB and you’re making jokes.’
‘I know it’s serious, piddle pants. It might have escaped your attention, but I’m running as big a risk as you.’
Dana couldn’t stop laughing as James turned sourly back to his paperwork.
‘Is your laptop switched on?’ she asked, a couple of minutes later. ‘I need the internet.’
‘Sure. Are you on to something?’
‘Maybe; I’ll tell you in a minute. What do you know about Hilton Aerospace by the way?’
James shrugged. ‘Not a huge amount. It’s a British company, but it has massive contracts in Aero City, refurbishing Russian airliners and stuff.’
‘Contracts with Denis Obidin?’ Dana asked.
‘Absolutely,’ James nodded. ‘The Obidin family practically owns the whole town.’
‘Both dead,’ Dana said, as she frantically tapped at James’ laptop.
‘Who’s dead?’ James asked as he put his paperwork down on the carpet and shuffled over to the computer on his knees.
Dana held up a handwritten list of names. Ewart had scrawled arrows, numbers and question marks between them. Dana pointed to each name in turn: ‘Denis Obidin, dead. Boris and Isla, dead. Lord Hilton, still alive but if I’m reading this diagram right, Ewart thinks he used a holding company to pay Boris and Isla fifty thousand dollars. Then there’s this guy, Sebastian Hilton; I’m not sure where he links in but I guess he’s Lord Hilton’s brother, or son, or something.’
‘Just saw a photocopy of his Who’s Who entry in my pile,’ James said. ‘He’s Lord Hilton’s son, a Member of Parliament and the new junior intelligence minister.’
‘And the plot thickens,’ Dana grinned, as she tapped another search into Google.
‘So what are these four other names?’ James asked, as he looked at the bottom of the piece of paper.
‘Clare Nazareth,’ Dana said, reading a local newspaper report from the laptop screen. ‘Research scientist Clare Nazareth died tragically from carbon monoxide poisoning in her Hertfordshire home. The fifty-eight-year-old mother of two had worked for Hilton Aerospace for more than thirty years and had published more than eighty scientific papers. Her most notable work was in the field of ceramic jet engine technology.’
‘Does it say when she died?’ James asked.
‘Two weeks yesterday.’
‘That’s just after I got back from Aero City.’
Dana had a Google search on another name running in a different tab. ‘Oh,’ Dana gasped. ‘Another one bites the dust.’
James looked at an image of an elderly woman on his laptop screen as Dana read aloud: ‘Seventy-three-year-old Madeline Cowell was found dead in her Hertfordshire home. Two sons, recently widowed, blah, blah, blah, possibly confused over her medication. Police believe there are no suspicious circumstances.’
‘Who was she?’
Dana clicked on a couple of different links, but didn’t find anything new. ‘Maybe we’ll pick something up in the documents.’
‘So what about these two other names at the bottom?’ James asked. ‘Jason McLoud and Sarah Thomas.’
Dana pointed to a sheet standing in the out tray of James’ printer. ‘Looks like McLoud is a scientific journalist. I did a search for his name and it came up with hundreds of articles, so I narrowed it down by doing Jason McLoud Hilton Aerospace.’
James pulled the piece of paper out of his printer. The article was from the online edition of Aerospace World magazine.
NO SURPRISE AS CERAMIC JET TECHNOLOGY
FACES ANOTHER SETBACK
By Jason McLoud
Since the dawn of the jet age, engineers have tried replacing metal components inside jet engines with ceramics. Theoretically, the thermal properties of a ceramic engine should enable it to spin faster and produce significantly more power than a metal equivalent, but reality has consistently failed to live up to the hype.
The latest blow is the decision by Hilton Aerospace to stop funding its ceramics research facility in Aero City, Russia. This correspondent travelled to Aero City