Lone Wolf - Robert Muchamore Page 0,9
a serious but stable condition. I can’t emphasise strongly enough that this young teenager is extremely dangerous. So I must ask the public not to approach her, but to inform the police as quickly as possible if you think you’ve seen her.’
The TV cut back to a correspondent standing outside the Belfont hotel.
‘Within the last few hours it’s become clear that a girl fitting the police description robbed a house in the Ardwick area of Manchester; following this, CCTV shows her boarding a train from Stockport to London.’
As Fay sat up in bed, a dry heave rose from her stomach. Her aunt had been busted, the cop was on the critical list and her picture was on every TV screen in the country.
‘You are so screwed,’ she told herself.
The flat was a refuge, at least. Fay had money and weapons, but when she padded through to the kitchen she realised that there was no food. She remembered passing a convenience store the night before and she reckoned it was best to go out while it was dark and the streets were quiet.
The lifts were still out of order, so she buried her head in one of her aunt’s hoodies as she walked down six floors and crossed the street to Dinesh’s Food & Wine. She moved quickly, filling a basket with fruit, chocolate bars, microwave rice and enough tinned stuff to last her a week.
At the counter she felt sick, because her face was staring off half the morning newspapers. She wondered whether she’d have been better off going hungry for a day and hoping that her face dropped out of the news.
Back in the flat, Fay started thinking long term. She had money and weapons. All she’d ever known was robbing drug dealers and she reckoned she could keep that up on her own. Maybe the heat would die down after a week or so. She’d be able to move around more freely. But realistically, could she live on the run, or was she just delaying an inevitable arrest and the consequences of what she’d done?
Fay needed something to take her mind off things, but the apartment didn’t offer much. She made beans on toast, then she lay on the sofa bed, obsessively watching News 24. Every half-hour it was the same story about the cop in a critical condition and the correspondent standing outside the Belfont hotel getting colder but saying more or less the same thing.
Sometimes Fay got upset, thinking about her aunt in prison. Sometimes she worried about the cop, knowing that the consequences would be a lot more severe if he died. Just after ten she started crying. She picked up her phone and thought about turning it on and telling the cops to come and get her.
Then the front door exploded.
‘Police!’
A blast of CS gas came down the hallway. Fay moved instinctively towards a sliding glass door that led out on to a balcony. As she threw the door open she breathed a mix that was half air, half gas, and felt a burning sensation in her lungs.
Freezing puddles soaked Fay’s socked feet as she scrambled out on to the balcony. Cops were coming into the apartment, clad head to toe in black body armour and gas masks. She looked up, but the building’s flat roof was out of reach. She looked down at the chance of death, splattered over the street six floors below. The idea of jumping had a certain appeal, but one of the cops reached on to the balcony and grabbed her hoodie.
He pulled her inside so hard that her neck clicked. The air inside the apartment was full of CS gas, and Fay retched and choked as she was ‘accidentally’ slammed against the apartment wall before a big boot kicked her legs away.
Fay’s head caught the corner of the TV stand as a burly cop slammed her hard against the floor. The officer then ripped her arms behind her back and locked on a set of plasticuffs.
‘Fay Hoyt, you are under arrest on suspicion of attempted murder. You do not have to say anything, but anything you do say may be taken down and used in evidence against you.’
The CS gas made Fay’s eyes stream as the cop shoved her towards the apartment door.
‘We don’t like people who attack our fellow officers,’ the cop growled. ‘You are in deep, deep shit.’
PART TWO
June 2014
6. RANK
CHERUB campus
‘Dammit, team Sharma!’ Instructor Speaks shouted, as he leaned into a changing room stained with