People's Republic

by Robert Muchamore

  The pictures were arranged in order of importance, and each one had a caption. In the top row were two communist party officials, listed as missing. Ingrid was in the third row: Fu’s wife, wanted for questioning. Ning reckoned Ingrid would be a higher priority by now, because they’d have found the two dead cops. Wei’s picture was at the bottom of the page and he was described as a henchman rather than a driver.

  The next spread was dominated by a victim’s story. A battered-looking woman of thirty with a sombre expression and a half-European baby in her arms. Ning couldn’t bear to read on. She abandoned the drink and burger, folded the two newspapers under her arm and stormed back to confront Ingrid.

  She was still snoring, enveloped in sweaty bedding and vodka fumes. Ning furiously opened the small cabinet between the two double beds. She grabbed the gun Ingrid had put there in case the cops showed up, then reached under the covers and pinched Ingrid’s nostrils.

  ‘Is it true?’ Ning shouted, stepping back from the bed with the loaded pistol aimed at Ingrid’s head.

  Ingrid rubbed her palm across her face, hung over and barely aware of the shout or gun.

  ‘What’s up, babes?’ Ingrid said.

  She still hadn’t seen the gun as Ning threw the two newspapers at her face.

  ‘Is this true?’ Ning shouted again. ‘Tell me the truth, or I swear I’ll kill you.’

  Ingrid’s eyes found focus. She saw the gun and the newspaper headline in the same instant and sprang backwards, knocking the bedside lamp with her elbow.

  ‘It’s complicated,’ Ingrid said. ‘Put the gun down, eh? It might go off.’

  Ning shook her head. ‘If it goes off, it won’t be an accident. You’ve both been lying to me for years. How could you even live with Dad, if you knew he was doing all this stuff?’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ Ingrid said, spooked by Ning’s intense stare and the gun less than a metre from her face.

  ‘Liar,’ Ning shouted. ‘If you didn’t know, why did you go on the run as soon as Dad was arrested? And the money and guns hidden in the cot. You must have known about those.’

  ‘Let me speak, Ning. But take a step back and point the gun down, OK? You can still shoot me, but I don’t want any accidents.’

  Ning saw sense in Ingrid’s argument. She backed up to her bed and sat with the gun in her lap as Ingrid started to explain.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking: What kind of woman can live with a man who treats other women like property? But you’ve got to understand, I didn’t find out like you just did. It was gradual.

  ‘When I met Chaoxiang I worked as an exotic dancer at a club in Dalian. I grew up with bugger all. Only thing I’ve ever had in my favour was big tits and a nice arse, and Chaoxiang likes girls with a curvy Western figure.

  ‘He turned my life into a movie. Suddenly I was being driven around in fancy wheels. Casinos in Hainan, shopping sprees in Shanghai, jewellery worth more than my dad earned in his whole life.

  ‘I knew your stepdad brought girls into some of the clubs, but after I got married I gradually learned more, mainly because your stepdad used my British citizenship to set up companies to avoid tax and regulations.’

  ‘So you turned a blind eye,’ Ning spat. ‘As long as you got to spend your share of the money, you didn’t care what happened to all those innocent girls.’

  ‘Most of ’em aren’t as innocent as they make out,’ Ingrid said. ‘A lot of them do OK. Find husbands abroad, send money home to their families.’

  Ning recoiled at Ingrid’s attempt to justify. ‘But even if one woman was forced to do all that awful stuff against her will, that’s one too many. And what about little kids getting sold to paedophiles? How much jewellery did that buy you?’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ Ingrid said, as she shuddered and batted away the newspaper. ‘I never would have stood for that. And you’re forgetting one thing, Ning. Chaoxiang loves both of us.’

  Ning let go of the gun and rubbed her eyes. ‘I don’t love him any more.’

  ‘Then who else is there?’ Ingrid said softly, as she slid forward on the bed and put her feet on the floor tiles close to Ning’s. ‘You hate your stepdad and you want to shoot me. What does that leave you with?’

  Ning sobbed as she placed the gun back in the cabinet and slid the drawer shut.

  ‘I’ve got nothing left,’ Ning admitted, as tears streaked down her face.

  ‘You and me both, pet,’ Ingrid said. ‘I was the one that picked you at the orphanage. Chaoxiang had his eyes on this stick insect in a frilly dress. But I liked you: a little wild thing, rumbling with all the boys in a tracksuit so dirty it could have stood up on its own. I saw myself in you.’

  Ning smiled a little. She’d heard the orphanage story before, but it always came up when her stepdad was around and he’d furiously deny all knowledge of the girl in the frilly dress. But then he’d get a cheeky smile on his face and give Ning a cuddle and say that maybe he had at the time, but that Ingrid had made the right choice.

  The memory made Ning realise that love didn’t have an off switch. She loved her stepdad, no matter what he’d done or what they called him in the papers. She’d probably never see him again. She’d been sobbing for a while, but now she started to cry properly. Ingrid switched beds and gave Ning a squeeze.

  ‘It’s you and me now, babes,’ Ingrid said. ‘Once we’re out of China I can lay hands on some of the cash that was put in my name. We’ll go back to Britain and make a new start.’

  13. HYPE

  Ryan felt lonely as he queued for tater-tots, pizza sticks and peanut butter crackers. In ordinary circumstances he’d have a group of friends by now, but he had to remain a loner to stand any chance of befriending Ethan.

  With a dollar and eighty cents swiped from his lunch card, Ryan took his moulded plastic tray and sat as near Sal and Guillermo as he could. You could barely hear yourself speak, let alone a group sitting two tables across who used Spanish half the time, but Ryan could tell they were talking about the locker room incident.

  Guillermo was hot-headed and none too bright, but Sal was the real bad boy. He’d not changed out of his grey PE shirt and he had big sweat stains under his arms as he stood up from the table, making a dramatic throttling gesture.

  Ryan noted chunky calves, and tightness in Sal’s biceps, suggesting strength training, perhaps for wrestling or American football.

  ‘I’ll wring Ethan’s little chicken neck,’ Sal said. ‘After school we’re gonna be right in his shit!’

  But to Ryan’s eyes, the we’re part of Sal’s talk looked weak. The boys around Sal were entertained by his rant, but they were a bunch of average seventh graders: up for watching a bit of random violence, but unlikely to risk getting into serious trouble.

  One lad warned Sal that he’d be expelled not suspended this time and even Guillermo didn’t seem keen now that he had his phone back and his temper had cooled.

  When Ryan had seen what he needed to, he binned his last two pizza sticks and headed out of the cafeteria. Twin Lakes didn’t allow kids to use phones at lunchtime, but there were never any teachers around to enforce it once you moved out of the cafeteria. He jogged between girls playing soccer on the all-weather pitch, sat with his back to a wire fence and pushed a wireless headset into his ear.

  ‘Rybo,’ Amy said when she answered. ‘How’s the master plan?’

  ‘Don’t you start calling me Rybo,’ he said irritably. ‘I bloody hate that. Listen, I didn’t get to save Ethan in the locker room, but it might all be kicking off after school. Are you home? Can you still log into Twin Lakes’ school records?’

  ‘I’ve had logins for your school’s database since we hacked the system to make sure you got put in Ethan’s class. I just need to run inside.’

  ‘You’re out on the beach?’ Ryan asked, as he heard the distinctive creak of the beach shower door. ‘Nice life for some.’

  ‘Right,’ Amy said, giving a commentary on her actions. ‘The Mac’s coming
out of sleep mode. Googling Twin Lakes Middle School. Contact Us, Enrolment, Sports, Departments, Latest News, Calendar – a-ha – Secure File Access. Safari has remembered all the passwords from last time I logged in. So what is it you’d like to know?’

  ‘The first thing I need is anything you have on a kid called Sal,’ Ryan said. ‘He’s a seventh grader, either in class 7B or 7F.’

  ‘Searching for Sal,’ Amy said. ‘There’s a Salvatore in 7B and a Salvador in 7F. Salvador is twelve years old. He was allowed to skip fifth grade as part of a gifted programme. Reports show straight As.’

  ‘I’m looking for a baddie,’ Ryan said. ‘Read the other one.’

  After a pause, Amy laughed. ‘Is this bad enough for you? Salvatore, enrolled at Twin Lakes December fifth after expulsion from Mission Hill. He’s got about a hundred lines of discipline notes already. His attendance rate is less than sixty per cent.’

  ‘Is there anything about sports?’ Ryan asked. ‘He’s bigger then me so if it turns out he’s a kickboxing champ or something I’d really like to know before I start a punch-up.’

  ‘He was removed from the wrestling squad. Coach’s reason: Persistent violation of attendance code and poor attitude.’

  ‘Wrestlers don’t punch or kick,’ Ryan said. ‘I can deal with that as long as I don’t let him get close.’

  ‘This isn’t so good,’ Amy said. ‘It says Sal was recommended for expulsion less than three weeks ago after being found on school premises with a knife. On appeal the school board reduced it to a final warning and a suspension.’

  Ryan tutted. ‘Shit.’

  ‘Want me to call in a bomb scare?’ Amy said, only half joking.

  ‘I can probably handle it. But last period is a seventh-grade elective, so I need to know where everyone’s gonna be.’

  Amy sounded confused. ‘What, like picking the class representative?’

  ‘Not election, elective. Lessons you pick yourself, remember I got stuck with Chorus because I was a late enrolment?’

  ‘And you sing so nicely in the bath now,’ Amy said.

  ‘You’re a ball of laughs today,’ Ryan said acidly. ‘I need to know what electives Ethan, Yannis, Sal and Guillermo have, because I have to be in the right place when fisticuffs start.’

  ‘Understood,’ Amy said. ‘I need to access the seventh-grade timetables. Ethan and Yannis are together – no surprise – in Spanish, classroom L8. Guillermo is in Family and Consumer Science, room G9 and Sal is in Writers’ Workshop, room G16.’

  Ryan laughed. ‘You have to wonder how Sal’s novel is coming along.’

  ‘So where are you?’

  ‘I’m in the music block, which is as far from Writers’ Workshop and Spanish as you can get. So I’m gonna have to sprint from the music room. With any luck I’ll be able to catch Sal and Guillermo as they leave G building, and be on the spot when they get their mitts on Ethan and Yannis.’

  *

  The rumours were flying in fourth period Science class. The big fight. Crazed bunch of Latinos fighting Ethan and Yannis. Maybe knives. Maybe a group of tough white kids turning it into a full-blown race war.

  Bored kids can make a big deal out of anything. Ryan knew it was mostly hype, but the talk didn’t do his nerves any good. This was the biggest mission of his CHERUB career and even with all his combat training, a big muscly kid like Sal would be no walkover.

  Ryan heard no rumours in fifth period because he was lined up with sixteen other kids, holding copies of a songbook called Middle School Gershwin and repeatedly droning a version of I Got Plenty O’ Nuttin while the old granny who taught chorus kept telling them to Rip into it or Show more passion.

  And then it was show time. Ryan muscled his way to the door and burst out on the first pip. Last lesson on a Friday put a spring in everyone’s step and he wasn’t the only kid anxious not to miss the fight.

  The music block was on the eastern side of the school site and Ryan found himself leading a charge of two dozen seventh- and eight-grade boys through the paved gap between the old and new school buildings. He’d hoped to make it to the front of the new building and pick up Sal and Guillermo as they exited, but by the time Ryan arrived the crowd coming out of the new building was merging with a smaller group exiting the old.

  On a normal day bodies filtered quickly, with most kids going left towards yellow buses in the east parking lot, while a smaller number went the other way to walk home or be collected by parents. But today there were enough kids searching for the big fight to jam up the whole concourse in front of the school.

  Ryan felt hopeless as his run became a slow shuffle with bodies packed around. None of the teachers knew why the crowd wasn’t clearing, but a couple were soon waving arms and ordering kids to keep moving and clear off the main path.

  Then some random kid shouted from a first-floor window. ‘It’s on out back.’

  About a quarter of the school knew about the fight. Groups, including the lads that came through behind Ryan, started shuffling back the way they’d come, while others with no idea what the shout meant got in their way.

  Ryan pushed bravely between two big eighth graders, skipped over a low chain fence and broke into a sprint across the lawn alongside the old building, which was marked out of bounds.

  ‘Hey you, boy, come here!’ a teacher shouted. ‘And you lot!’

  Ryan set the trend and twenty sixth- and seventh-grade boys risked detention to follow him. He burst into a side entrance of the old building and skimmed the dress of a startled Spanish teacher.

  Ryan’s best guess was that Sal and Guillermo had sneaked out early and ambushed their targets as they left fifth period.

  Thirty rubber soles squealed and skidded on the floor behind, but Ryan didn’t know the school well. He overshot, missing the short corridor that emerged into the concrete play area on the opposite side of the building. By the time he’d spun around the chasing pack had swept past and he was tangled up with a bunch of sixth graders who’d joined in with no idea what they were running after.

  ‘Out my way,’ Ryan shouted, splatting a little kid against the wall as he burst through a set of swinging double doors and back out into the sunshine.

  The group who’d overtaken Ryan were thirty metres ahead and about to merge with kids who’d been able to take a shorter route around the front of the old building. Off to the left, three eighth-grade girls and a teacher stood by Yannis, who sat on the concrete making a high-pitched wail.

  He’d run twenty-five metres before being caught by Sal and Guillermo. Ryan only got a glimpse, but it seemed he’d suffered nothing worse than a few kicks and punches before the teacher waded in.

  CHERUB training had made Ryan fast and fit and as the boys ahead flagged he ran flat out to catch them up. There were kids glued to the windows up on the first floor behind, but Ryan couldn’t tell what they were seeing until he’d bounded up sixteen steps at the far side of the play area.

  As he neared the top step, the vista opened out into green space, marked out with a baseball diamond. It had a couple of small stands and a fancy electronic scoreboard sponsored by the local GMC truck dealer.

  The main event was taking place beyond the far side of the field, more than two hundred metres away. With the sun in his face, Ryan could only see Ethan’s skinny-legged silhouette, with Sal close behind. It was like a scene from a wildlife film, with Sal playing the lion and Ethan the poor baby gazelle about to get its throat ripped out.

  The chasing pack was about eight strong, though it was impossible to tell if they’d be participants or spectators when Sal caught his prey. Guillermo was even further back, his chubby frame barely capable of a jog.

  Ryan had closed to within seventy metres when Sal made his lunge. Ethan fell hard, ploughing into the grass and lucky not to injure his neck as he did a complete head over heels. Sal got a knee across Ethan’s waist, but Ethan knocked Sal off and scrambled back to his feet.

  ‘He’s been stabbed,’ one of the kids runni
ng behind Sal shouted.

  By this time, Ryan was less than twenty metres from the action and watched as Sal ripped out the compass stuck in his arm.

  ‘You’re dead, faggot,’ Sal shouted, as he started running again.

  Ethan had opened a twenty-metre gap and Sal was now amidst the chasing pack. Ryan was less than five paces behind, and after going flat out over six hundred metres he was still full of running when other boys were slowing.

  After stressing all day, it finally felt like Amy’s plan might pay off.

  Ethan had no idea that one of his pursuers had both caused his problems and intended to defend him. He ran in terror, clutching a stitch down his side and heading for a wire mesh access gate used by school groundskeepers. The only problem was, he had no idea if it was locked.

  A couple more kids had dropped out of the pack. As Ethan stumbled breathlessly into the gate, Sal led the chasing pack, with Ryan and three other kids a few paces behind. Ethan’s hands trembled as he reached down and grabbed the metal drop-peg that locked the gate in place.

  The hinges squealed as the gate opened enough for Ethan’s slim body to slide through. As the peg clanked back into its slot, Sal reached the gate and the pack concertinaed behind him. Ryan didn’t know the school’s layout well and got his bearings as the boys around him caught their breath.

  They were in the far north-east corner of the school grounds, with a busy four-lane highway less than fifty metres away. Ethan stood in a curved single-lane driveway which Ryan recognised from when Amy had driven into the school with him a few hours earlier.

  Sal reached down to lift up the peg, but there was a gap in the fencing so that you could reach it from outside and Ethan used his remaining strength to launch a vicious back kick, catching Sal’s fingers and making him howl in pain.

  Ryan was impressed: for a kid blessed with neither speed nor strength, Ethan had done a decent job fending off one of the hardest kids in his year. But he was also concerned: if Ethan ran another hundred metres, he’d be in front of the admin building amidst kids, parents and teachers. Sal would be lucky to get a few punches in before an adult intervened, which meant Ryan had no chance to save him.