CHERUB: Mad Dogs (37 page)

As James broke into fresh air and sunlight he saw that the bus terminal and surrounding car parks were jammed with passengers who’d been evacuated when the truck crashed into the side of the building.

Under normal circumstances a breach of security would have brought out the entire local police force to seal off the airport; but all their spare manpower was on the other side of town dealing with the Runts and Slasher Boys. Sasha knew that he had fewer than a dozen airport police to deal with and reckoned that his escape was only a matter of getting lost in the crowd.

‘Free money,’ Sasha shouted, as he crossed the road outside the terminal.

He grabbed a handful of hundred-dollar bills out of the carrier bag and threw them upwards. They’d been vacuum-packed, so the money spun high into the air before the wind separated it.

Sasha repeated the exercise as they jogged on through the packed bus terminal. By the time the third pile of money began fluttering down people had caught on. There were a few shouts of
oh my god
and
it’s real
and people started scratching around the floor. When Sasha threw a fourth, larger pile over his shoulder and towards the airport entrance, a crowd of over a hundred surged forward to pick it up.

Several armed officers had now reached the exit, but they had no chance of catching Sasha and James as more than a hundred people fought over the fluttering dollars.

‘I always wanted to do this,’ Sasha said, as he launched a final volley of money.

Within two minutes James and Sasha were in a giant parking lot several hundred metres clear of the terminal. There was no sign of pursuit and they’d slowed to a brisk walk. The only people nearby were evacuees who’d returned to sit in their parked cars.

‘We need to lose the overalls,’ Sasha said, before pulling his two-way radio out of his pocket. ‘I’m in the east side car park; can someone get a car out here to pick us up?’

As Sasha spoke James noticed a female cop dive out from behind a panel van just ahead of them. It was the same woman who’d shot at them from behind the security booth. She’d made an educated guess that Sasha would try vanishing into the crowd and instead of pursuing him through the terminal she’d run around the outside of the building and sprinted ahead.

‘Hands up,’ she shouted firmly, as she aimed her machine gun at Sasha’s chest. He was wearing body armour, but from this kind of range there was no guarantee it would save him.

James wasn’t in the mood for any more trouble and threw down his gun, but Sasha kept moving towards her.

‘You shoot me and you’ll be under investigation for months,’ Sasha grinned, as he dropped the carrier bag of money. ‘There’s still more than a hundred grand in there. If I left it here for you, nobody would ever know.’

‘Final warning,’ the officer shouted.

By this time Sasha was less than three metres from the female officer. James glanced back and saw another cop and an airport security guard running between the cars towards them.

‘One more step,’ the officer said, but she realised that Sasha had no intention of stopping and pulled the trigger.

‘Christ,’ Sasha said, sounding oddly composed as the bullet knocked him backwards. Although his body armour had been punctured it had taken most of the force out of the shot and the metal case had lodged itself between two ribs.

‘Well isn’t it your lucky day,’ the officer said, as she stood over Sasha with the gun aimed at his face.

The police ended up arresting thirty-six Slasher Boys and eighteen Runts. Fourteen more youths and two police officers had been hospitalised and whilst five had gunshot wounds, serious stab wounds or burns, only one person had died.

While Sasha was taken to hospital under police guard, James found himself stripped to his boxers and locked in a police cell. The surrounding cells were packed with Runts and Slasher Boys, banging on the walls and screaming threats at each another.

Every so often the cops would come and take someone for questioning. With two officers in the hospital and more sent home injured, the ones who remained on duty didn’t stand for nonsense. Anyone who mouthed off got a slap or a baton in the guts and prisoners who stood by the flaps in their doors claiming to be hungry or thirsty were told either to shut up or to drink water out of the toilet.

‘We cleaned ’em just last year,’ a female officer cackled. ‘So lap it up, boys!’

Baiting the cops was the one thing that united the rival gangs. Her words inspired a defiant chorus of
get your tits out
, which only ended when the loudest Runt’s cell was opened by three officers with riot shields. James heard his screams as they pinned him back against the wall and let the female officer demonstrate inappropriate use of an extendable baton.

After more than ten hours without food and nothing but a teensy carton of orange squash to drink, James jumped up when his cell door came open.

‘Your mum must be shagging the Chief Constable,’ the officer said sarcastically, as he threw a stiff paper overall and a set of flip-flops at James. ‘You’re getting bailed.’

‘What about my clothes?’

‘All personal effects have been taken for forensic examination. As you can imagine there’s a bit of a backlog today; so I wouldn’t bank on seeing any of ’em this side of Christmas.’

James pulled the overall up his limbs and fastened the zipper along the front. The flip-flops slapped against his heels as the officer led him down a hallway to the Charge Sergeant’s office.

‘Sign here and here,’ the officer said, as he slammed a clipboard down on his desk.

James was knackered and came precariously close to writing James Adams instead of James Beckett; not that anyone would ever have noticed.

‘Don’t come back,’ the officer who’d taken him from the cells said, as he shoved James towards a door.

James had no phone, money or even proper outdoor clothes so he was a bit worried until he spotted Chloe at the end of the corridor.

‘You OK?’ she smiled, as she handed him a bottle of water and a large fruit and nut bar.

‘You beauty,’ James grinned, as he tore the bar open and crammed six chunks into his mouth. ‘I’m
totally
starving.’

‘Come on,’ Chloe said, as James ripped the top off the water and downed half of it in one go. ‘I’ve got Maureen and the others out back in the car park.’

‘Where are we going?’ James asked quietly, as they walked up a flight of steps. ‘Campus?’

‘Straight away,’ Chloe nodded. ‘Bruce knocked out Riggsy to preserve evidence. We’ve doped him up so that he won’t remember much when he comes around, but there’s few Mad Dogs wandering the streets and I’d rather you boys didn’t bump into them.’

Chloe had a Toyota people carrier parked in the darkness amidst police vans and cars. Maureen was in the driver’s seat, Bruce in the middle row and Michael was in the back wearing a disposable overall like James’.

‘Looks like I was the only one smart enough not to get nicked,’ Bruce giggled, as James sat beside him.

James turned around to ask Michael if he was OK.

‘Cops treated me like dirt, but I’ll live.’

‘Michael says the fighting around the warehouse was mental,’ Bruce grinned, as Maureen drove the big Toyota out of the parking space.

‘What happened about Major Dee?’ James asked.

‘Not a thing,’ Chole said. ‘As far as we can tell he pegged it as soon as he saw the Runts coming. The police followed the car he was in and pulled him over, but they got nothing. Not even a Stanley knife or a spliff in the glove box.’

‘That’s a bit crap,’ James tutted. ‘What about the surveillance? Weren’t some of Dee’s lieutenants seen in the warehouse setting up the drug deal?’

Bruce shook his head. ‘You mean the talcum powder deal.’

‘
What?
’ James gasped.

Chloe nodded, as the Toyota turned a sharp corner. ‘After a good deal of fighting the cops did manage to surround the warehouse,’ she explained. ‘The explosion destroyed a lot of evidence, but the car boot was down when it went off and the bags of drugs were protected from the blast. Only problem was, they’d already been switched.’

‘Do you think Sasha robbed them?’ James asked.

‘We’re pretty certain that Simeon Bentine was behind it, either with or without the Mad Dogs,’ Chloe said. ‘The cops went to Simeon’s office and he’s vanished into thin air.’

James tried to figure all of this out in his head. ‘So we got Sasha. Savvas is in the hospital and Bruce got the van before it was burned out, which should give us enough evidence to nail Riggsy and the rest of the Mad Dogs.’

‘That’s about right,’ Chloe said.

‘No sign of the Kruger brothers or any of the money yet though,’ Bruce noted. ‘Wheels and the others who got away won’t be showing their faces any time soon.’

‘But they’re all either locked up or on the run,’ James said. ‘Which isn’t a
bad
result.’

‘But it’s a long way shy of our original plan to get all of the senior Mad Dogs and Slasher Boys in one little warehouse and surround them with cops,’ Michael said.

‘It’s a shame,’ Chloe yawned. ‘We didn’t touch Major Dee and we can’t press drugs charges against anyone because there weren’t any drugs.’

Maureen shook her head. ‘And in that sort of chaos it’s going to be hard to prove which weapon belonged to who. They’ll all claim to have picked up someone else’s weapon to use in self defence because their life was in danger and nobody will testify. The lawyers will have their work cut out getting convictions.’

‘And the gang war rolls on,’ Bruce said dramatically. ‘Only the Slasher Boys are the real psychos and without the Mad Dogs keeping them in check there’s going to be absolute carnage.’

‘The Runts have got a lot of manpower though,’ Michael said. ‘If someone took charge, they’d be a match for the Slasher Boys.’

‘They’re bound to get more organised,’ Bruce said. ‘There must be one Runt with a few brain cells.’

James stared out the window at the passing streetlamps and sounded annoyed. ‘So basically we just spent two months trying to stop a gang war, but all we’ve done is made it worse.’

‘Not necessarily,’ Chloe said, feeling like it was her duty to cheer up the three tired agents. ‘We gathered a lot of intelligence, all of which the anti-gang taskforce will use in their ongoing battle. Just because we’re going back to campus before everyone is in prison doesn’t mean that the mission is a failure.’

‘It’s still crap though,’ Bruce said. ‘We came so close.’

‘Oooh, burgers,’ James said, as they whizzed past a couple of fast-food joints. ‘Can we stop? Apart from that chocolate, I haven’t eaten since breakfast.’

‘I hate that greasy shit,’ Michael complained. ‘It turns my guts.’

‘Right now I’m so hungry I’d settle for a dead rat on a stick,’ James said.

Maureen looked across at her boss. ‘There’s a roundabout up ahead, Chloe. I can turn back if anyone wants something to eat.’

‘No,’ Chloe said definitively. ‘Wait until we’re out of Luton. I want to get as far out of this godforsaken hole as I can.’

‘And never come back,’ Bruce added.

It was eleven o’clock when James arrived back on campus and closer to midnight by the time he’d ditched his paper suit and cleaned up. Dana was asleep, but he was desperate to see her.

‘Hey,’ James said softly, as he sat on Dana’s bed and reached across to dab her on the chin. She always slept in the far corner of her double bed, with her face buried and a shoulder touching the wall.

James got a rush as she opened her eyes and gave an involuntary smile. She shuffled across the bed and gave him a toothpasty kiss.

‘How did everything go today?’

‘Not great,’ James said wearily. ‘I ended up robbing an airport, our informant seems to have stitched us up and made off with half a million quid’s worth of cocaine and the cops didn’t arrest half the people we were expecting to.’

‘I saw the robbery on the news,’ Dana yawned as she sat up. ‘It goes like that sometimes, mate. In fact, in my case I think it’s gone like that a bit too often.’

‘Listen,’ James said. ‘I’ve got something to tell you. Kind of a confession.’

Dana cracked a giant smile. ‘Who was she? Not April Moore again?’

James was taken aback by the casual response. ‘It wasn’t April but, I mean … How can you put it like that?’

‘I know what you’re like,’ Dana explained. ‘Your eyes are out on stalks every time something goes by in a short skirt and I’m a realist: you were gonna get up to something on a mission sooner or later.’

‘But that’s not
really
me,’ James said. ‘Well … I
was
like that when I was with Kerry. But I cheated on her loads of times and it ended up that there were all these lies between us; and Lauren blackmailing me and people making comments behind my back. It got so that I could hardly look Kerry in the eye. I hated all the lying and I was never going to cheat on you.’

Dana looked confused. ‘But you did anyway?’

James wrung his hands together. ‘Well here’s the thing. I was kind of…Well…I sort of
accidently
had sex with this guy’s daughter.’

Dana’s mouth dropped before she burst out laughing. ‘Accidentally,’ she hooted. ‘What, you were strolling along minding your own business when you tripped over and landed on a naked girl?’

James was completely thrown. He’d expected tears and violence.

‘It wasn’t like that,’ James said. ‘I was having a bath. She threw off her clothes and climbed in with me. She was pretty sexy and … I mean, let’s face it, no guy is gonna turn that away.’

‘OK, you’ve confessed,’ Dana said icily. ‘What now?’

Now that she’d stopped smiling, James could see the hurt in her eyes. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I was stupid and I swear it’ll never happen again. You can do anything you like to me. I mean, if you feel like hitting me you can hit me. Or I’ll buy you dinner, or write one of your essays – anything. Just
please
give me another chance.’

‘Does anyone else know?’ Dana asked.

‘Bruce overheard, but he’s sworn to secrecy.’

‘So you didn’t rush up here to tell me before I found out some other way?’