CHERUB: The Sleepwalker - Robert Muchamore Page 0,88

kissy.’

‘Screw you both,’ Jake growled. ‘And I didn’t cry… Well, barely … And only because I was in a lot of pain. And Mac says the way I saved Fahim was straight out of the textbook and one of the bravest things he’d ever seen.’

Mac came through the door and gave the agents a suspicious look. ‘What are you three whispering about?’

‘Nothing,’ the trio said in unison, before Lauren asked about Fahim.

‘The cops have taken him to casualty to get the wound on his back stitched.’

‘Will he really be coming back to campus?’ Rat asked.

‘Of course,’ Mac nodded. ‘I’m not convinced that he’ll pass the recruitment tests, but we made a promise and we’ll stick to it.’

‘I can imagine his big arse on the assault course,’ Jake snickered.

Lauren poked him in the back. ‘I thought you liked him.’

‘He’s OK,’ Jake said defensively. ‘I was just saying … Like, when he takes his shirt off he’s got all rolls of flab. He looks like a little Buddha or something.’

‘Jake Parker, you’re seriously out of order,’ Mac snapped. ‘He’s lost both parents in the space of a month. You’re probably the closest thing he’s got to a real friend.’

‘All right,’ Jake said indignantly. ‘Didn’t I just save the dude’s life, for god’s sake?’

Rat laughed. ‘Don’t start crying again, Jakey-poos.’

Jake made a zapping noise like a stun gun firing, which shut Rat and Lauren up. Mac was mystified by this, but he’d spent enough years working amongst kids to know that you never get anywhere when you probe into their private jokes.

‘Lauren, you said you had something to show me,’ Mac said.

‘Yeah, over here,’ she nodded. ‘After we gave Asif his injection I put on some plastic gloves and took a rummage through the bags he’d placed by the door. The first one had money and passports like you’d expect, the second had all this weird junk inside and it kind of looks like bits out of an aeroplane.’

‘Really?’ Mac said, raising an eyebrow.

Lauren gave Mac a set of polythene gloves from her equipment pack. Unfortunately, they were her size so it was a squeeze getting them on.

‘Most of it’s in this one,’ Lauren said, pointing out a wheeled Delsey case with a broken strap. ‘The weird thing is the boxes look new, but the stuff inside them is ancient.’

Mac’s gloved fingers rustled as he picked out a small box that had been opened by Lauren. Inside was a dusty contraption, with a battered-looking circuit board which had a tiny electric pump attached to it. The outer casing had been daubed with thick yellow paint and a red hologram sticker with the initials FCX on it.

‘Wow,’ Mac said, breaking into a relieved smile.

Jake curled up his nose as he peered inside the bag. ‘Looks like a load of junk to me.’

‘FCX,’ Mac said, sounding increasingly excited as he opened a couple more cardboard boxes.

‘It’s painted on all of them,’ Lauren nodded. ‘What does it mean?’

‘It means I’m guilty of the same crime as the kids in Fahim’s class who called him a towel head and a suicide bomber,’ Mac said.

Lauren was baffled. ‘Eh?’

‘Someone gives you an Arab name like Hassam Bin Hassam and tells you that they’re linked to the destruction of an airliner. What does it make you think they’ve done?’

‘Terrorism, obviously,’ Lauren said.

‘And that’s why we’ve been pissing into the wind for the past two weeks,’ Mac said, pounding a jubilant fist into his palm. ‘If Fahim’s family had been Dave and Bert Spratt from Bognor Regis, would we have thought that they were terrorists? No. All the evidence about Hassam and Asif was that they were traders, not terrorists. Tax evaders and rule breakers, but no links to terrorism apart from an Arab surname.’

‘Mac,’ Lauren said firmly, ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but you’re ranting on and on and I haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about. What does this random junk have to do with the plane blowing up?’

‘FCX stands for Flight Certification Expired,’ Mac explained. ‘The Anglo-Irish airliner that crashed over the Atlantic was twenty-one years old. It was no spring chicken, but airliners cost tens of millions of pounds and they’re built to last a good thirty years.

‘However, many components inside a plane have a significantly shorter lifespan. They might only be certified for three years, five years, ten years or whatever. When aircraft are brought in for scheduled maintenance, the components are replaced. As the pieces are removed they’re sprayed and given an FCX