The Fall

by Robert Muchamore

  ‘Amazing,’ Anna grinned, as she clapped her hands together. ‘I only speak when the translator comes and then all they talk about are my problems, so I don’t answer.’

  ‘I know that feeling,’ Lauren nodded. ‘The carers just keep going on and on. Sometimes I just want to stick my iPod on and tell them to get stuffed.’

  Anna burst out laughing. ‘I can’t believe you’re a Russian.’

  ‘I can practise my language with you,’ Lauren grinned. ‘What a weird coincidence …’

  18. TRAINING

  It was late Sunday night and James was back at campus. He was watching TV in bed when Lauren called.

  ‘Yo, bitch,’ James grinned. ‘How’s it hanging?’

  ‘Not bad, gay boy,’ Lauren said softly. ‘The girl I’m supposed to be chumming up seems nice, but she’s really quiet. I spent the afternoon showing her how to make Scoubidous.’

  ‘Why are you whispering?’

  ‘I’m in our bathroom, Anna’s in the next room. Did you make up with Kerry?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ James nodded. ‘I think she cut me some slack ’cos it was my birthday bash.’

  ‘And how was the spa?’

  ‘Good,’ James grinned. ‘This gorgeous woman gave me a massage and it was bloody hilarious because Bruce got this dirty great fat bloke with hairy knuckles. Then we all got kicked out of the steam room for throwing buckets of cold water around. And then I saw this beauty therapist and she put this mud pack on my face and gave me a manicure.’

  ‘I can’t believe I missed it,’ Lauren moaned. ‘I’ve always wanted to go to one of those places.’

  ‘You know how my nails are usually all broken and dirty? They’re all neat and shiny now and she gave me some tips and a bottle of this special lotion to put in the bath. It’s supposed to dry my skin out and stop me from getting spots.’

  ‘So all you boys enjoyed it?’

  ‘Except Bruce,’ James laughed. ‘I didn’t expect to, but I’d definitely go again if someone else was paying. And you should have seen Kerry and Bethany in the beauty shop afterwards. They spent a fortune.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘I dunno, it all just looked like expensive pots of smelly gunge to me. We got you a little present, ’cos you missed out. It’s like a gift set of all these different oils and this wooden ball thingy for massaging your back. Oh and don’t worry, I checked before we paid and they said it didn’t contain any animal products or stuff that was tested on animals.’

  ‘Thanks, James,’ Lauren said. ‘By the way, I’ve got some great photos from last night on my phone. There’s a superb shot of that old colonel waving his walking stick when we mooned him off the balcony.’

  *

  James had a 7 a.m. combat training session on Monday mornings, so he was knackered when he reached the dining-room at quarter past eight. Meryl cornered him as he headed towards Kerry and Kyle at their usual table.

  ‘Nice healthy start.’ Meryl stared pointedly at James’ tray, which was stacked with bacon, eggs, beans, fried bread and hash brown.

  ‘Don’t you start on that,’ James moaned. ‘You know Zara’s made them turn the Coke machine off until lunchtime now?’

  Meryl shook her head. ‘You drank Coke with breakfast?’

  ‘Not every day … And I only ever drank diet ’cos the normal kind makes me fat.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Meryl said, looking mildly horrified. ‘I’ve noticed that you’re only studying for five GCSEs and a Further Maths A-level at the moment. Your schedule looks very light, so we’re going to have to make some adjustments.’

  James tutted. ‘But I’ve already got Maths and Russian A-levels, miss. My Spanish is good enough to pass an A-level already, and I’m so good at maths that I’ll ace Further Maths and Physics when I get around to taking them. Five A-levels will get me into whatever university I want.’

  ‘James, I’m fully aware that CHERUB language training and your exceptional ability in mathematics means that you’ll have no problems getting into university. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to allow you to spend the next three years coasting. All cherubs are bright and we expect you to push yourselves. Kerry should be able to get three easy language A-levels when she takes them next summer, but she’s still studying for nine GCSEs and she’s almost a year younger than you.’

  ‘Yeah, but …’ James stammered. ‘I mean, Kerry’s a good all-rounder. I’m rubbish at anything where you need to do loads of reading and writing. She can write an essay in half the time it takes me.’

  ‘Well, if you don’t want any more academic work, there is one other option.’

  James perked up. ‘Is there?’

  ‘Our head training instructor, Mr Pike, is always on the lookout for kids who are willing to help prepare some of the red-shirts for basic training. Especially at the moment, what with Mr Large recovering from a heart bypass and Miss Smoke on maternity leave.’

  ‘Oh,’ James said, clearly not keen on Meryl’s suggestion.

  Cherubs were often asked to help out with training younger kids, but training instructors were some of the least popular staff on campus and helping them out didn’t win you many friends. Plus, training instructors often worked as hard as or even harder than the trainees themselves.

  Meryl smiled. ‘If you don’t want to help Mr Pike with training, James, I’ll have to enrol you on a couple of extra academic courses. I hear that Mr Reddit is starting a new Latin for Beginners and there are GCSE courses in sociology and economics that started a few weeks back. Once you’ve caught up on the backlog, you’ll probably find them quite enjoyable.’

  ‘No,’ James gasped. ‘Come off it, Meryl, you know I’ll hate every minute. And Latin? I mean, what the hell use is that unless you want to grow up and become a Latin teacher?’

  ‘How about helping Mr Pike then?’

  James looked sullenly at his tray of breakfast. ‘I suppose it’s the lesser of two evils.’

  ‘Great,’ Meryl smiled. ‘You’ve got an appointment to see Mr Pike after lessons this afternoon.’

  ‘But…’ James spluttered. His heart sank as he realised that Meryl had stitched him up.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d go for the Sociology and Latin,’ Meryl smiled. ‘Now you’d better go eat your plate of grease before it gets any colder.’

  *

  Lauren would have to attend a Brighton secondary school, but it was going to take a few days to sort out a place and that didn’t exactly break her heart. When all the other kids in her unit had eaten breakfast and gone off to school, she pushed open the door of her room and began going through Anna’s stuff.

  It was a pitifully brief search. Anna had stepped off the boat with nothing but the clothes she stood up in and had collected only a few items of clothing and knick-knacks in the weeks since she’d arrived in Britain.

  Lauren flipped carefully through a collection of note books filled with Anna’s felt-tip drawings. She had a deliberate style, with thick black outlines carefully coloured in. Some pages were doodles, while others documented Anna’s attempts to learn English, with rows of tiny pictures and hand-drawn images with descriptions written in English and spelt out phonetically in the Russian alphabet beneath them.

  After going through the desk drawers, Lauren climbed up the ladder to Anna’s bed. A tiny picture caught inside a plastic key fob had been taped to the bedpost. The photograph had water damage around its edges and showed Anna in a photo booth. She looked eight or nine years old and was propped on the leg of a very young-looking mother. On the woman’s other knee was a stern-faced baby, with straight dark hair and a dummy in its mouth.

  Lauren had seen an enlargement of the picture amongst the paperwork she’d read on the drive down, but seeing this tiny fragment of Anna’s past still made her feel sad.

  She began a careful inspection of Anna’s bed, first holding up the pillows and looking to see if anything had been slipped inside and then working her way around the edges of the mattress. Besides dust, cr
umbs and a grubby sock, Lauren found a bunch of papers with Anna’s writing on them.

  The sheets had been torn from lined exercise books. They had no drawings on them, just neat lists written in Russian with a purple gel-ink pen. Each list started off the same. Point one was always keep identity secret, and point two, work hard in school and learn good English.

  After that the lists diversified. Some lists continued sensibly:

   (3) Get a well paid job.

   (4) Find Georgy and bring him to Britain.

   (5) Start my own business (Hairdressing or Car Dealer).

   (6) Become rich and buy a nice house.

   (7) Get married and have a boy and two girls.

  While other lists were outpourings of Anna’s wildest fantasies:

   (3) Go to loads of clubs in London.

   (4) Make friends with rich and famous people.

   (5) Marry a hunky football star and move to Barcelona.

   (6) Find Georgy and buy him a house next to ours in Spain.

   (7) Start my own airline with my husband’s money.

   (8) After a difficult start, I become richest woman in the world.

   (9) Pay men to go back home and kill everyone I hate. Slowly!!!

  Some of Anna’s lists were funny, while others made Lauren sad. Lauren had never actually written out lists like this, but she occasionally did something similar when she couldn’t fall asleep, lying in bed and plotting out her future.

  Anna’s lists were vague, but they still told Lauren a lot. First of all, the police psychologists suspected that Anna hadn’t spoken about her past because she was traumatised. But the lists made it clear that that she was deliberately keeping her identity a secret. Second, Anna only ever mentioned rescuing Georgy, who Lauren guessed was the toddler in the photograph. This meant that Anna’s mother was either dead, or had no contact with her daughter.

  It wasn’t the kind of concrete information that Lauren would need to unearth the traffickers, but she’d made a start.

  19. INSTRUCTORS

  CHERUB’s training instructors worked from a tatty prefabricated hut outside the basic training compound. James rapped on the metal door.

  ‘Come in,’ Mr Pike shouted.

  The room had threadbare carpet, a few shabby desks and was littered with dirty sportswear and damp towels. The tang of old sweat and body spray hung in the air.

  Mr Pike sat at the head of a long table, with his deputies Mr Speaks and Mr Greaves along the sides. James was surprised to see that Mr Greaves had his camouflage trousers rolled up and his feet in a bowl of water.

  ‘Pull up a pew, James,’ Mr Pike said, as he pointed to an insulated jug in the middle of the table. ‘Coffee?’

  James nodded as he sat down. He felt extremely odd seeing the three powerfully built instructors off duty. Normally you only had close encounters with these men when you were terrified or exhausted, yet here they were at the end of a day’s training looking like three middle-aged blokes who just wanted to go home and fall asleep in front of the TV.

  As James took a mouthful of his coffee, he noticed that the confidential files of eight red-shirts and three new recruits were spread over the table.

  ‘There’s a new session of basic training starting in a month’s time,’ Mr Pike explained. ‘This is our preliminary meeting. We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate, try and pair them off into evenly balanced partnerships and also finalise the exact nature of the exercises we’ll be taking them on, without overspending on the travel budget.’

  James was surprised. ‘I always thought you paired kids off at random.’

  ‘Quite the opposite,’ Mr Pike said. ‘CHERUB is always short of agents and the powers that be put us under a lot of pressure to get everyone through basic training.’

  ‘Without lowering our standards,’ Mr Speaks added, as he ran a length of grubby towel between his toes.

  ‘I want you to take a look at this young fellow,’ Mr Pike said, as he slid one of the folders across the table towards James. ‘You’re pretty confident on the height test obstacle these days aren’t you?’

  James nodded. ‘I’ve been over it that many times now, I don’t even think about it.’

  ‘The little fella in that folder is having some serious problems.’

  James flipped the file open and saw a black and white picture of a red-shirt boy who’d turned ten three weeks earlier. His name was Kevin Sumner. James didn’t know him, but he’d seen him around campus.

  ‘So he’s scared of heights?’ James asked.

  ‘Terrified,’ Pike nodded, ‘and he hasn’t got a hope of getting through basic training unless he combats his fear. Kev’s a tough young fellow, with a good head on his shoulders, but he went on a rollercoaster when he was seven years old. The emergency brake came on when he was half-way around a three-sixty-degree loop and he spent three hours hanging upside down before the fire brigade got him out. He’s been petrified of heights ever since.’

  ‘So, you want me to take him through it gently?’

  Mr Pike shook his head. ‘We’ve been there, tried that and Kevin’s thrown up all over the T-shirt. I want you to use a different technique. Remember how you learned to swim?’

  James would never forget. When he first arrived at CHERUB, he’d been terrified of water and a month of intensive swimming lessons had made no difference. In the end, it took two bullying sixteen-year-olds repeatedly throwing him in the deep end of a swimming pool to combat his fear.

  ‘You’ll have to be ruthless, James,’ Mr Pike said. ‘Pick one of your mates to help you. You can both take whatever time you need out of lessons and if you can get Kevin to go across that obstacle unassisted, I’ll make sure you get a passing grade in any subject you choose.’

  ‘You mean I get out of having to do my History coursework?’

  ‘I can set that up if that’s what you want,’ Mr Pike nodded. ‘But remember, the technique only works if that kid is more frightened of you than he is of plunging off a fifty-metre drop.’

  James looked at the photo and wondered if he had the cruel streak necessary to become a CHERUB training instructor. But then again, it was totally worth it if it got him through GCSE History.

  *

  John Jones was staying at a guest house less than a kilometre away from the Aldrington Care Centre. When Lauren got bored of sitting around waiting for Anna and the other kids to get back from school, she arranged to meet John in a nearby café and told her carer that she was going for a walk.

  The café was in the back of a baker’s and the smell of warm bread filled the air as Lauren and John drank mugs of tea and ate doughnuts.

  ‘I’m starting to wonder if young Anna’s as innocent as she seems,’ John said.

  ‘Why’s that?’ Lauren asked.

  ‘Those lists you read show that she’s determined not to reveal her identity. That’s a pretty smart move if you want to stay in England.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘If Anna had revealed her name and told the authorities where she was from, she probably would have been deported back to Russia within a matter of days.’

  ‘But we know she’s Russian now,’ Lauren said.

  John nodded. ‘Yes, but the rules don’t permit the authorities to simply stick a child back on the first plane to Russia. They have to know who she is, where she came from and that someone will look after her when she returns. We’ve checked with the Russian police and nobody has reported Anna missing. If she can keep silent for a year or so, she’ll be settled in Britain. Anna can say that she has friends and wants to stay here. The local authority will launch formal care proceedings, Brighton council will become Anna’s guardian and she’ll be given British citizenship.’

  ‘That sounds quite manipulative,’ Lauren said. ‘And she’s only eleven or twelve.’

  ‘But the lists demonstrate that she’s thinking about her future. I suspect that one of the other girls inside that
boat had been trafficked before and told Anna how to behave if she was captured.’

  Lauren gasped. ‘Trafficked before?’

  ‘That’s common,’ John explained. ‘Once a girl is captured, the criminal gangs who traffic the girls regard them as their property. Girls caught by the British authorities are usually deported straight back to Russia. With no home and no job, the gangsters frequently pick the girls up on the streets again and send them straight back to Britain.’

  ‘Doesn’t the government do anything to stop that happening?’

  John shook his head. ‘It’s all to do with politics. A large proportion of the general public doesn’t like immigration. The government is more popular if it’s tough on immigration and any system the government puts in place to support these girls will be open to abuse. If they start giving special treatment to women who are forced into prostitution, then thousands of other illegal immigrants will start claiming that they were forced into prostitution.’

  ‘I guess,’ Lauren said weakly. ‘But how can they send girls home with no protection from the gangsters?’

  John shrugged. ‘It’s just one of those horrible situations where there aren’t any easy answers.’

  20. WOLF

  James wasn’t sure if he had what it took to become a training instructor, but he knew that Bruce Norris was the right person to help him. Bruce was fourteen years old and small for his age, but he was an expert in five martial arts and he had a ruthless streak a mile wide.

  ‘Remember,’ James whispered, as they crept down a dark corridor on the second floor of the junior block. ‘We’ve got to scare him shitless, but we can’t actually hurt him … Not badly anyway.’

  ‘I know,’ Bruce said. ‘I’m a peaceful person, James. I might have finished fifty or sixty violent brawls, but I’ve never started one.’

  The two boys wore boots, combat trousers, black jackets and black gloves. The carer who’d let them into the junior block had told them that she didn’t want all the red-shirts woken up by screaming, so they had to take their victim silently.