two low-rise housing blocks and ended up back on the main road, about a kilometre from where he’d started. He slowed to a stroll, crossed the street and walked into a Tesco.
Ryan opened the wallet he’d stolen and studied the ID. Then he took out the little Alcatel, looked at the calls received and dialled the number of the guy who told him to go to the minicab office.
‘Hey, it’s Ryan,’ he told the phone, still a touch breathless.
A deep voice came back at him. ‘Who?’
‘You told me to drop the money at the cab office, but something happened.’
The man sounded suspicious. ‘Something like what?’
‘I got jumped a few nights back. I saw one of the guys who jumped me standing by the car-wash across the street from the cab office. I managed to knock him out and nab his ID.’
The guy sounded shocked. ‘You’re the one that just knocked Fat Tony out? What the hell did you do that for?’
Ryan was confused. ‘I don’t know who Fat Tony is, but he was part of the trio who robbed me the other night.’
‘Fat Tony runs our car-wash. He works for Hagar, same as everyone else. You’d better get your arse back here and explain yourself.’
‘I . . .’ Ryan stuttered. ‘Hang on a minute, I’ll call you back.’
As he pocketed the phone, Ryan couldn’t work out what was going on and his mind was whirling. If Fat Tony was one of Hagar’s people, he must have been working for the other side. Ryan had over twenty grand of Hagar’s money in his backpack, but there was no way he was going to walk back to the cab office. It would be his word against Fat Tony’s, and what were the chances they’d believe a kid they’d never met before?
After pocketing the Alcatel, Ryan pulled his regular CHERUB-issue iPhone out of his pocket and called James.
‘You should have called me before you took Fat Tony out,’ James said, once he’d grasped Ryan’s rapid-fire explanation.
‘The guy was getting into his car. You had no signal and I had to make a decision.’
‘Fair enough,’ James said. ‘Keep walking uphill towards Crouch End, I’ll come and pick you up on the bike.’
‘Thanks,’ Ryan said.
‘See you in ten,’ James replied. ‘Fifteen tops.’
‘Can you make head or tail of this?’
James thought for a couple of seconds. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘As it goes, I think I’ve got a pretty good idea what’s going on.’
27. PLANTS
Of the eight Xs marked on Ning’s map, there was one she liked most. It was a rectangular shed, easily big enough for all the trellis and forty-eight banks of lights. There was a well-hidden car park with dandelions growing out of cracks in the concrete, a peeling sign that said Marston Bowling Club and the best of the empty parking bays reserved for the club president.
Besides Fay’s trawl of Google Maps, Ning had done extra research, using local newspaper archives and the Camden Council planning website: the bowling club had sold up and built a new indoor green on cheaper land to the north, but a developer’s plans for luxury apartments had been refused planning approval.
Even more interestingly, Ning had found a Land Registry record online, which showed that around the time Warren’s cousin was building all the trellis for a grow house, ownership of the former bowling club had been transferred from the property developer to an untraceable shell company based in Jersey.
It was impossible to tell if Hagar owned the shell company, but it was exactly the kind of set-up a drug dealer would use if he was trying to protect assets from detection by police and tax authorities.
Ning followed her hunch and went to the bowling club first. It felt good working alone, pursuing her mission to bring down a drug empire without the constant handicap of having to act as Fay’s sidekick.
She approached warily, shielding her face with the brim of a baseball cap. If this was Hagar’s grow house, there would certainly be security cameras, and after taking down the stash house his entire crew would be on the lookout for someone matching Ning’s description.
With her face aimed at the gravel, Ning entered the car park, holding a beer bottle and wavering about so that she seemed drunk.
The first signs weren’t promising. The car park was empty, there was no noise from inside, no obvious security cameras, and the building’s windowless aluminium siding gave no clue about what, if anything, was happening inside.
The building’s entrance was down