‘We better go to bed,’ James said, as he picked his boxing gloves off the sand and slid his wet feet inside his trainers. ‘I’m looking forward to the air-boat ride tomorrow.’
‘We never usually do half the cool stuff we’ve done this week,’ Junior said. ‘My dad really likes you for some reason.’
James thought Keith was spoiling them because he was planning to disappear in a few days and would most likely never see Junior again. As they walked towards the house in their dripping shorts, Junior turned around and started walking backwards, staring at the moonlit sea.
‘Just think,’ he said, spreading his arms out wide. ‘If you count the time difference between here and London, in less than three days’ time we’ll be getting up for another miserable Monday at Grey Park school.’
‘Cheer us up, why don’t you?’ James said. ‘Is your eye OK now?’
‘Stings a bit,’ Junior said. ‘I wish we could have had a proper fight.’
James clambered on to the wooden decking at the back of the house and put his foot inside the sliding door. His trainer slipped in something wet. He rested his palm on the wall to steady himself. The light was on in the kitchen and George’s body had rolled off the sofa on the floor.
‘Something’s going on,’ James said edgily.
Junior grinned. ‘What is it, the axe murderer?’
‘I’m serious,’ James said, lifting his trainer out of the sticky liquid.
He felt like his head was going to explode when he realised it was blood.
‘Give over, James,’ Junior said. ‘You’re not scaring me.’
Junior stepped through the door and noticed George on the floor.
‘He really did fall off the sofa,’ Junior laughed.
James crouched down and clicked on a table lamp. Junior saw George was dead, realised his trainers were planted in a puddle of blood and let out a massive scream.
30. BODY
James was still haunted by the cold touch of his mother’s fingers the night he found her dead in front of the TV. George’s body didn’t affect him the same way, though the sight was more horrible. There was blood seeping from a bullet wound under his shirt. It was draining down a hanging arm and along the joins in the floor tiles, creating a grid of red lines leading to the pool of blood by the sliding doors.
James felt like everything was happening in slow motion. He could feel every vibration in Junior’s screams and watch the droplets of saliva spraying out of his mouth.
James had a theory: Keith had shot George for betraying him, then disappeared. But the theory sprang apart as he crept across the room and stared down the hallway through the half-open kitchen door. Three armed men had Keith Moore pinned on a stool at the breakfast bar. It looked like they’d roughed him up.
‘Leave the boys,’ Keith shouted when he heard Junior scream. ‘I’ll tell you everything.’
James knew he only had milliseconds before one of the men beating up Keith came out of the kitchen pointing a gun at him and Junior. He turned back to Junior, who stood rigid in the doorway, staring at George’s body.
‘Run,’ James shouted. ‘Get help.’
Junior snapped out of his panic long enough to hear the order. He jumped off the wooden decking and began sprinting down the beach. James hoped he’d have the sense to run to one of the neighbouring houses and call the police.
James planned to follow Junior, but a thuggish-looking guy emerged from the kitchen before he got the chance. James could see tattoos through the sweat-drenched vest clinging to his skin.
‘Get here, kid,’ he shouted, sliding out the pistol tucked into his jeans.
James burst through the nearest door, into the front living-room where Keith kept his hi-fi and record collection.
‘Hey,’ the man shouted furiously. ‘You wanna mess with me? I’ll kill you before you reach the door.’
He sounded Mexican or something. James didn’t know what the men wanted from Keith, but they’d shown they were prepared to kill and he didn’t fancy being their next victim. He thought about climbing out of the window, but the room only had a long narrow window up near the ceiling. He’d never get through before the man shot him.
There was a key inside the door. Turning the lock bought James a few seconds. He pushed an armchair against the door as the gunman rattled the handle on the outside. James desperately needed some kind of weapon.
‘Unlock this or I’ll shoot you to pieces,’ the man shouted, as he pounded the door with his fist.
James slid one of Keith’s LPs off its rack. He’d learned in weapons training that you can make a dagger by shattering any object made out of hard plastic. He leaned the record sleeve against the wall and stamped on it with his bloody trainer.
The gunman shoulder-charged the door.
One of his colleagues shouted after him from the kitchen. ‘You need a hand?’
The gunman didn’t sound worried. ‘It’s just some smartass kid who’s gonna be feeling a lot of pain real soon.’
Three deafening shots fired into the door, blasting away the lock. James tipped the pieces of the album out of its sleeve and grabbed the longest shard of what, until a few moments earlier, had been a valuable purple vinyl edition of Led Zeppelin IV.
The gunman kicked the door twice, barging the armchair out of the way. James backed up to the wall beside the door, with the shard of purple vinyl clutched tightly in his hand. His heart drummed like it was set to burst. If he got this wrong, he’d end up with a bullet through his head.
The second he saw the pistol coming through the door, James grabbed the muzzle with one hand while plunging the sharp piece of plastic into the gunman’s wrist. The man screamed out. His fingers sprang apart and James snatched the gun, before backing up to the opposite wall and turning it around so that his finger was on the trigger.
The man tugged the plastic out of his arm as he stumbled over the armchair. He faced James off with a self-assured grin.
‘Big gun for a little boy, eh?’ he said, showing off a rack of yellow teeth. ‘Are you really gonna shoot me?’
Some sort of commotion broke out in the kitchen. Keith Moore screamed in pain.
‘Get on your knees and put your hands on your head,’ James stuttered.
The man edged closer. James remembered his firearms training: from a safe position you can shoot to wound, but if you’re in mortal danger you can’t risk missing. You have to aim for the biggest target: the chest.
‘Don’t make me shoot you,’ James said desperately.
The gun weighed a billion tons in his trembling hands. The man ignored the threat and kept moving closer. James didn’t want to shoot, but what choice was there? He held his breath to steady the gun.
‘You ain’t gonna kill noooooobody,’ the man sneered, as he lifted his shoe off the carpet, preparing to take a step that would bring James into reach.
A shockwave ripped through the room. The bullet slammed into the gunman’s chest from less than two metres. His feet lifted off the floor as his body crashed backwards into the upturned armchair. Stunned by the fact that he’d just fired a bullet into a real human being, James felt sick as he scrambled over his bleeding victim and out into the hallway.
James ran into the back living-room, planning to escape via the beach, but another gunman was frogmarching Junior across the sand towards the house. He ducked back into the hallway, hoping the man walking up the beach hadn’t spotted him. It could only be a matter of seconds before the men in the kitchen came out to investigate the gunshot. The only way out the front of the house was by walking past the kitchen door, which would be suicidal. That only left one option.
Still holding the pistol, James ran upstairs. He went into his room, grabbed his mobile phone off the bedside table and called John Jones. A woman answered.
‘Is John Jones there?’
‘I’m Beverly Shapiro,’ the woman said. ‘Is that James Beckett?’
‘Yeah,’ James said. ‘Where’s John?’
James gasped with relief. ‘Thank god. Listen, I’m at Keith Moore’s house. There’s a whole bunch of gunmen downstairs. They’re beating Keith up, trying to get some kind of information out of him.’
‘I’ll call the local cops out,’ Beverly said. ‘Can you make it out of the house?’
‘They caught Junior running down the beach. I think they’ve got guys watching outside.’
‘I’m calling the cops right now,’ Beverly said. ‘You find yourself a good place to hide and keep this line open.’
James thought about hiding, but he didn’t think he’d be safe for more than a few minutes. The cops would take longer than that to arrive and even when they did, they’d be unlikely to come charging straight into the house and risk getting shot. James considered hiding out at the top of the stairs and shooting at anyone who tried to come up. It might have worked in a house with one staircase, but Keith’s Miami home had three. Four if you counted the metal walkway that led across to the garage.
The garage.
James realised that was his best chance. He leaned out into the corridor as Beverly said something into the phone.
‘What?’ James asked.
‘I said, the police are on their way. Have you found a safe place to hide?’
‘I don’t think it’s safe up here,’ James said. ‘Someone’s gonna come up looking for me any second.’
‘I told you to hide,’ Beverly said stiffly. ‘Keep calm and wait for the police.’
‘No way,’ James said. ‘I’ve got to bust out.’
He tucked the phone into the waistband of his soggy shorts, without ending the call. He sprinted down the hallway to the master bedroom and found Keith’s trousers on the floor. He grabbed a bunch of keys from the pocket and rapidly flipped through them. There were keys to a couple of the Porsches and a Mercedes, but James thought the huge four-wheel-drive Range Rover would give him his best chance of escape.
When he got back into the hallway, he heard footsteps on the staircase. He fired a shot towards the stairs, knowing it would make the men stay back for a minute or two.
James cautiously opened the door at the end of the hallway. He checked no one was around outside, before stepping on to the metal steps that linked the house to the garage. He opened the door into the garage and walked down a set of spiral stairs to ground level, before unlocking the Range Rover and sliding on to the driver’s seat.
He put the key in the steering column and started the engine. Clipping on his seatbelt to cut off the annoying bing-bong noise, he pressed the button on the dashboard that opened the garage doors and the iron gates at the front of the house.
The wooden doors, less than a metre from the front of the car, began parting slowly. James knew someone would hear them if he just sat waiting. He put the car in drive, floored the accelerator pedal and ploughed through. He had to slam on the brake to avoid a brick wall as chunks of wood sprayed in all directions around the car.
As he put on full steering lock and turned towards the gate, James’ heart sank. The front gates were still closed. The button on the dashboard hadn’t worked. James realised the gunmen must have short-circuited the automatic gate when they broke into the house. The Range Rover might have been able to break them open, but the gunmen had their two cars parked in front of the gates, ready for a quick getaway.
As James looked around, frantically trying to work out an alternative escape, a bullet came out of a first-floor window, ripping through the roof of the car and punching a neat hole through the front passenger seat. James floored the accelerator and spun the car around. He pointed the Range Rover at the thickly planted terraces around the house, hoping the car was powerful enough to punch through a hundred metres of trees and plants. If it was, he’d be able to escape on to the beach at the back of the house.
The chunky front tyres reared on to a set of narrow steps. The car crawled up a gentle slope, rocking from side to side as it trampled bushes and tore a couple of small trees out of the ground. Chunks of stone and wood clattered against the underside of the car, then it hit a massive palm tree and ground to a halt.
The car slipped backwards as a second bullet ripped through the tailgate. The noise made James’ eardrums pop. He thought he might have to bail out and run for it, but the car’s automatic gearbox slipped into its lowest ratio. The rear tyres dug into the soft ground. James dabbed the accelerator. After a touch of wheelspin, the car toppled the palm tree and bounced over its thick trunk.
At the top of the slope, the ground levelled off on to a tiled patio. James swerved around Keith’s brick barbecue and picked up speed as he rolled downhill. It was much easier navigating through the low bushes and flowerbeds on the windswept ocean side of the house. At the bottom, James swerved to avoid Keith’s fishpond, then floored the accelerator. He needed to pick up speed to break through the fence at the back of the house.
A thin concrete post shattered as the front of the car ripped a hole through a tangle of plastic mesh and barbed wire. The car nose-dived off a metre-high wall. The back wheels spun in free air until the front wheels burrowed into the soft sand and pulled the front of the car forward. Once all four wheels were firmly planted on level ground, James hit the accelerator and began tearing along the sand, dragging a ten-metre section of chain link fence behind him. He nudged the steering wheel from left to right until the wire disentangled itself from the rear bumper.
Once the wire was gone, everything seemed eerily calm; just the gentle whoosh of the air-conditioning and a few hundred metres of level sand lit up by the headlamps. James looked back in the mirror. Nobody seemed to be coming after him. He reached into his shorts and grabbed his mobile.
‘Beverly, are you still there?’
‘What the hell was that noise?’ John Jones asked, sounding like he was in a bit of a state. ‘Did I hear gunshots? Are you OK?’
‘I’m OK, but I might have just killed some maniac and now they’ve got hold of Junior. I’m driving along the beach in Keith’s Range Rover. When I see a gap between the houses, I’m gonna pull up on to the road.’
‘OK,’ John said. ‘You’re sure nobody’s following?’
‘Not so far as I can tell.’
‘Do you know how to drive to the IHOP from where you are at the moment?’
‘Sure,’ James said. ‘It’s only a couple of kilometres.’
‘I’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes. Beverly will be with me. She knows you’re my informant, but she doesn’t know anything about CHERUB, so watch what you say.’
‘No worries,’ James said.
‘Get off the beach as quickly as you can and drive sensibly. You don’t want to get picked up by the cops.’
*
The pancake place was closed, so they ended up in a twenty-four-hour McDonald’s across the street. John sat across the table from James, while Beverly got apple pies and coffees at the counter. James looked between his legs at his blood-stained trainers.
‘A hundred and nineteen ninety-nine,’ James said bitterly. ‘The first lot got stolen, now this lot are ruined.’
John Jones laughed. ‘Maybe it’s god’s way of telling you that a hundred and twenty pounds is an obscene amount of money to pay for a pair of plimsolls.’
Beverly put the tray of coffees on the table and squeezed up next to James on the plastic bench. She was small, about twenty-five, with long chestnut hair and freckles. She didn’t look hard enough to be a drug enforcement agent.
‘I spoke to the local units,’ Beverly said. ‘The bad guys got rattled when you escaped. They tried to take Keith Moore away in their car. The police spotted them and there was a shoot-out. Keith Moore took a bullet through his shoulder. It’s early days, but they think he’ll be OK.’
‘What about Junior?’ James asked.
‘The guys knocked him around quite badly. He’s been tak
en to hospital, but it’s too early to say what kind of state he’s in.’
‘I hope he’s OK,’ James said anxiously. He took a sip from his steaming polystyrene cup. ‘So who were those guys? What did they want with Keith?’
‘They’re probably linked to the Lambayeke cartel,’ John said. ‘I’d bet my last dollar bill that they were after the numbers of Keith’s secret bank accounts.’
‘I thought Keith dealt with Lambayeke,’ James said. ‘Weren’t they friendly?’
‘Keith dealt with the Lambayeke cartel for twenty years,’ John said. ‘But they’re not the kind of people you invite round to your house for a dinner party. As long as Keith was buying drugs from Lambayeke and making them money, they left him alone. Then KMG collapsed around Keith’s ears. He’s not going to buy any more drugs, he doesn’t know who he can trust and he’s sitting on a big pile of money.’
‘So they decided to rob him?’ James said.
‘That’s right,’ John nodded. ‘Keith Moore has millions stashed away in illegal bank accounts. So they send some thugs in to take Keith hostage and smack him around until he gives them all the bank account details and transfers all his money over to them.’
‘Keith would have had no comeback,’ Beverly added. ‘You can hardly go to your local precinct and complain that the money you made selling illegal drugs that’s stashed away in illegal overseas bank accounts has been stolen.’
‘It’s almost the perfect crime,’ John said. ‘Except the guys they sent in were so incompetent they forgot to check upstairs and get you and Junior out of bed.’
‘Actually,’ James said, ‘we weren’t in bed. Me and Junior sneaked out and went down the beach for a midnight swim.’
He thought it was best not to mention the boxing match.
‘Well, it’s a good job you did,’ John said, breaking into a smile. ‘Otherwise you’d have woken up with a gun pointing at your head.’
31. CATCH
CHERUB: Class A Page 21