Robin Hood

by Robert Muchamore

  ‘Oh dear,’ Irene said, giving Robin a cheeky wink as he tapped settings to make the graphics card work at full resolution. ‘He’s been a great help.’

  Robin studied his dad’s body language and decided that he didn’t really mind him helping with the class.

  ‘So, the machine is running. What are your next steps?’ Ardagh asked Irene.

  ‘Ensure the previous owner hasn’t left any private data on the system, then run a burn-in program for a few hours to make sure it’s stable,’ Irene said.

  Ardagh gave his pupil a smile. ‘You’ve been paying attention, Irene.’

  As Ardagh said this a beautiful woman in too much make-up and designer heels stepped into the IT classroom.

  ‘Ardagh, could we have a little chat?’

  Robin had never seen her before, but reckoned it had to be Mel. She’d been parachuted in to manage Locksley’s Library & Learning Centre and his dad often moaned that his youthful boss was inexperienced, incompetent and connected to Guy Gisborne.

  As Robin watched Irene check the repaired computer for any personal files, he kept one eye on his dad, who was talking to his boss on the other side of the classroom’s glass partition.

  The conversation between Ardagh and Mel started off friendly, but after a couple of minutes Robin got worried, seeing his dad slump against the glass with a reddened face and dabbing sweat off his brow.

  ‘Just gonna check on my dad,’ Robin told Irene, stepping away from the bench.

  As Robin got close enough to the classroom door to hear, Ardagh put a clammy hand against the glass.

  ‘This is insane,’ Ardagh was saying. ‘Getting rid of me makes no sense.’

  ‘Mr Hood, you know Locksley City runs a competitive re-bidding process for all adult education programmes.’

  ‘How can you teach beginners computing with an online course?’ Ardagh said. ‘That’s like trying to teach soccer to kids who haven’t learned to walk yet.’

  ‘Mr Hood, the matter has been decided!’

  ‘I wasn’t even consulted,’ Ardagh complained. ‘I was teaching here when you were at infant school.’

  The learning-centre classrooms were set around an indoor courtyard, with seating, leaflet racks and an information desk. It was usually a silent space, so at least twenty people could hear Ardagh and Mel arguing.

  ‘You’re set in your ways,’ Mel said firmly. ‘The new online curriculum will offer a wider range of courses and big cost savings …’

  Ardagh tutted and shook his head. ‘You only got this job because your mother is one of Guy Gisborne’s crooked friends.’

  Robin worried about his dad losing his job, but felt proud that he was sticking up for himself.

  ‘Mr Hood, your allegation is ludicrous, and I feel threatened by your behaviour,’ Mel snapped. ‘Please leave the premises and consider yourself suspended pending a disciplinary review.’

  Robin noticed the library security officer striding in. A huge fellow in a puffy jacket, who looked like he’d walked into a shop that sold big gold rings and bought the lot.

  ‘Oh, look, another Gisborne crony,’ Ardagh said loudly, as he eyed the officer. ‘Why bother paying your thugs, when Gisborne can get them cushy jobs on a Locksley City wage? Who’ll replace me – a drug runner or a loan shark?’

  The guard moved fast, pulling a baton off his belt and wobbling a magazine rack as he charged towards Ardagh.

  Robin’s stomach flipped as the guard effortlessly bounced his dad against the glass partition and held the tip of his baton against his throat.

  ‘Leave my dad alone,’ Robin shouted, acting on instinct as he charged out of the classroom.

  The guard eyeballed Ardagh and spoke menacingly. ‘You step back in this building, you’ll be parting company with teeth. And watch that mouth of yours. Gotta be a fool, disrespecting Mr Gisborne in this town.’

  ‘I’m leaving,’ Ardagh said, holding up his hands as Mel made a kick-him-out gesture to the guard. ‘I just need my bag and keys from the classroom.’

  ‘People who insult Mr Gisborne get to walk home,’ the guard grunted, then used his baton to point at a fire exit. ‘Shift!’

  Robin had been so fixated on his dad, he hadn’t noticed the students from the computer repair course coming out behind to watch the action. They made Robin jump as he turned around, then he ducked back into the classroom, grabbing his school bag and his dad’s backpack.

  ‘Look after your dad,’ Irene told Robin fondly. ‘He’s one of the good guys.’

  A couple of other pupils said something similar.

  Robin felt scared and queasy as he sprinted after his dad. He ran awkwardly with the backpack clutched to his chest, and caught up with him in the staff car park at the back of the building. There were no witnesses out here, so the guard had delivered parting gifts with his baton and boot.

  Robin found his dad on the ground, clutching his hip and close to tears. He felt as much anger as sympathy towards his father.

  ‘Why don’t we load up the car and get out of this crummy town?’ Robin growled.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Ardagh said determinedly, as his son offered a hand up. ‘Locksley is my home.’

  9. GOOD WHOLESOME EXERCISE …

  Robin was almost the smallest kid in his school, but anyone who tried physical bullying hit trouble. First you had to catch him, and he was fast and could climb like a cat. If you did get Robin cornered, you’d find out that he was extremely strong and might put a judo throw in the mix if you riled him up.

  Robin could have made cool-kid status if he’d turned his speed and strength to soccer and spent his limited allowance on sneakers and clothes instead of archery gear and books.

  But he was a lone wolf, preferring solo sports and more interested in reading about medieval archery or surfing a hacker forum than hanging with a bunch of boys lying about masterful attainments in video games and how much money their parents were giving them for their birthdays.

  Robin’s alarm went at 6 a.m. Thursday. Still more eager kid than lazy teenager, he jumped out of bed in the running shirt and grubby shorts he slept in to save time. He crept down from his room in the loft, because Little John was a light sleeper and went nuts if you woke him up.

  He grabbed a water bottle from the fridge, which he attached to a Velcro strip on his quiver. This went over his back, along with Robin’s most prized possession: an ultra-light carbon-fibre recurve bow for which he’d saved his Christmas money, mowed his auntie’s lawn, begged his father – and by some miracle found at forty per cent off when the Nottingham branch of Don’s Sports Megastore closed down.

  Robin’s running shoes were getting a little tight, but he hadn’t mentioned it. Partly because he knew they were short of money, but also because he was secretly proud of how trashed they were. A better sign of the training he put in than coloured certificates or medals.

  After dramatically leaping the five stairs at the edge of the porch, Robin set off from the grand-but-dilapidated six-bedroom house that had been built by his great-grandma, Agata.

  In most towns, it was the place a doctor or lawyer would need a hefty mortgage to buy. But Locksley’s grand homes got stripped for scrap, then lasted until bugs chewed through the support beams, or arsonists had some fun.

  There had been sixty large houses in Robin’s street. Half still stood in some form. None apart from the Hood family pile were officially occupied, though Nottingham University’s north campus was within walking distance and a couple had been squatted by groups of students.

  Robin set off on a kilometre run to the stop sign at the end of his road. Pushing hard, because exhaustion would blot out worries about his dad losing his job and the two thousand words he had to write for Mr Barclay.

  Once his heart was racing, Robin climbed the bars of a rusted gate and dropped into the back garden of Swan House. The copper-domed three-storey home had once been the grandest in the street. It remained in better shape than most, though kids had bricked
every window and the basin of the large front pond had been used by skateboarders. But even Locksley’s skaters and vandals had mostly moved away. Tags and art were fading, and no new ones had appeared for as long as Robin could remember.

  He ran across the puddled basin to an Olympic-sized outdoor pool, now filled only with remnants of burnt tyres and green sludge at the deep end.

  One advantage of living amid desolation was being able to come back and find things the way you’d left them. Nobody had been on Swan House’s grounds since Robin set up targets at the end of the pool more than six months earlier.

  Robin began shooting when his big brother joined an archery club. Little John lost interest when it turned out that a brother four years younger was better than him.

  Robin lost interest when he realised that archery club involved standing still, controlling your breathing and shooting at the same static target over and over. One tiny lapse in concentration could mean losing a competition, and the result was that club archery appealed to people whose other hobbies were model trains and craft beer festivals.

  But when Robin delved online he found videos of speed archers, who shot rapidly by holding several arrows in their drawing hand, rather than pulling them one at a time from a quiver on their backs.

  He YouTubed trick archers, skilled enough to shoot vitamin pills and incoming arrows out of mid-air. Robin’s favourite archers combined shooting with parkour and gymnastics, firing arrows while somersaulting or vaulting around a course, hitting targets in rapid succession.

  He’d watched their videos hundreds of times, and been surprised how friendly they were when he couldn’t figure out how to master certain skills and sent messages asking questions.

  There was even a bunch of madmen in Albania who filmed videos where they set arrows on fire and used them to blow stuff up – although they hadn’t posted any new videos since the one where Hajar set her boyfriend on fire …

  Before the invention of gunpowder, archers were the most crucial weapon in battles. Robin read history books full of legends about seemingly impossible archery feats and internet forums where people argued about who the greatest archers were.

  Some reckoned it was the Scythians, who massacred thirty thousand Roman legionaries in the Battle of Arbutus. Others vouched for disciplined lines of English longbowmen, or Mongols who were the first to master the art of shooting from horseback.

  One story that fascinated Robin was of a Cheyenne tribal chief. Legend said he could shoot one arrow high in the air and fire off ten more before it landed.

  Robin wasn’t anywhere near ten – not least because his fingers were still too short to hold more than four arrows. But he’d recently mastered a trick where he fired one arrow towards the target at the far end of the pool with a high arcing trajectory, then loaded and shot two more into the centre of a target before the first arrow hit.

  Hitting the centre of a target down the length of a swimming pool was something Robin had practised so often, it was almost automatic. But the slower, arcing arrow was vulnerable to a gust of wind so there was always an element of luck.

  Robin completed his trick three times successfully, and decided that was an omen.

  Yesterday was a nightmare. Today will be awesome.

  After retrieving his arrows, Robin took a run and hurdled through a giant window into what had once been a ballroom. Over the past year, he had set up more than fifty targets in the abandoned houses, and while his sprint to the end of the street was always the same, he made the run back an adventure. Taking different routes and shooting his targets from different distances and angles.

  After his scare on the ledge the day before, Robin wanted to show himself that he hadn’t lost his nerve, so he picked a hazardous route he’d only tried a couple of times before. After a run-up, he made a powerful jump and grasped one of the stair rails on an upper balcony that ran around three sides of the ballroom.

  While dangling from the polished rail by the fingertips of one hand, Robin used his strong abs to pull up his legs and hooked one foot between posts. With two firm holds, he swung up, grabbed the railing and flipped over the wooden handrail onto the balcony.

  The inside of the wrap-around gallery was lined with empty library shelves, thick with dust and dead bugs. Robin used the shelves as a ladder, then reached up to open an angled roof window. After a rusty squeal as the window swung open, Robin pulled himself through a tight gap and scrambled out onto the sloping roof.

  There were missing tiles and one section of the roof was entirely broken away, forcing Robin to cross bare roof-beams. A slight gust made him wobble as he neared Swan House’s green copper dome. Scavengers had stripped the easy-to-reach metal around the dome’s base, but none had braved going higher to claim the valuable sheets near the top.

  This left gaps around the base where the dome’s metal frame was exposed. Robin stuck his head through, peering down three and a half floors into a gloomy mosaicked entrance. If he could find a big climbing rope, maybe someday he’d tie it off and abseil down …

  But for now, Robin satisfied himself by freeing a loose roof tile and watching as it dropped down and shattered.

  10. SIBLINGS HIDE THEIR LOVE FOR EACH OTHER

  Robin was suspended from school, so he stayed out longer than usual, doing an extra run through deserted streets. The only other soul he saw was one of the student squatters, jogging in cheetah-print leggings.

  ‘Hey, arrow boy!’

  The sun was low but hot and Robin trailed sweaty footprints down the hall as he arrived home. He stumbled into the kitchen with mud-spattered legs, lobbing his empty water bottle in the sink and grabbing another from the fridge.

  ‘’Sup?’ he said, slightly breathless as he washed his hands.

  Ardagh had grapefruit and espresso and a paint-spattered Sony radio tuned to a classical station. Little John overwhelmed a wooden chair at the end of the dining table, eating half a box of cereal from a casserole dish and dressed in his purple Locksley High polo shirt.

  ‘How come Robin’s allowed to go out and play if he’s grounded?’ Little John asked.

  Robin knew his brother was stirring, but still took the bait. ‘It’s not playing. It’s training.’

  ‘Training is like I do,’ John carped. ‘At school, with a coach, for an actual sport …’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be,’ Robin said, as he grabbed a cereal box and was relieved that Little John had left some. ‘I’m fitter than you, faster than you and I’m capable of thinking for myself.’

  Rather than intervene, Ardagh turned up his radio and announced, ‘There’s too much negative energy between you boys! Take some breaths and listen to Mozart.’

  ‘Make Robin shower,’ Little John demanded, wafting his hand.

  Robin tutted. ‘It’s a miracle I can get in there, with your epic dumps and the time you spend gelling your stupid hair.’

  Ardagh’s focus on Mozart was foiled by the station cutting to a commercial.

  Don’t take fright, when money’s tight …

  ‘Cos Captain Cash will set you right,’ the two boys sang in unison, before laughing.

  Robin smiled at his brother, feeling almost fond as he remembered the risk Little John took tackling Clare Gisborne. The brothers loved each other, but did a great job hiding it when there were points to score off their dad.

  ‘Please don’t sing that jingle!’ Ardagh said gently.

  ‘Robin, your school suspension is supposed to be a punishment,’ Ardagh flicked the radio off. ‘I don’t want you surfing or reading in your room all day. The big shed behind the house needs clearing out, so I can treat the woodworm.’

  ‘Eh?’ Robin gawped, as Little John clapped and laughed. ‘What about my essay?’

  ‘Nobody’s been in that shed in years.’ Little John beamed. ‘I bet there’s dead rats and squirrels! All kinds of nasty stuff …’

  ‘You can do the essay over the weekend,’ Ardagh said. ‘It’s a dry forecast today. Pull everything out
onto the driveway and hose it or scrub it clean. Then wash down the floors and walls.’

  ‘What’s the point cleaning a shed nobody uses?’ Robin asked sourly. ‘Are you gonna help me, at least?’

  Ardagh shook his head. ‘I’ve got two meetings in Nottingham. If I’m not working at the library, I need extra freelance work.’

  ‘No point showering if I’m gonna be crawling around in dirt,’ Robin said.

  ‘A commendable decision, Father,’ Little John said joyously. ‘That boy is out of control. He needs discipline!’

  Robin shot up from his Shredded Wheat and yelled. ‘Stop winding me up, you massive turd!’

  ‘Stop winding me up,’ Little John squeaked, mocking Robin’s unbroken voice.

  Ardagh eyed his oldest son. ‘If you don’t cut out the verbal jabs, you can spend the weekend painting the wood with creosote and helping me repair the roof.’

  The threat of hard labour shut Little John up.

  ‘Everything’s on top of the washer waiting for you,’ Ardagh told Robin. ‘Key, mop and bucket, hose, dust mask and gloves.’

  ‘I hear it’s gonna be super-hot today,’ Little John said, then tried to look innocent as Robin and his dad scowled at him. ‘What, can’t I talk about the weather now?’

  11. THE BRAVE OFFICERS OF LOCKSLEY P.D.

  Robin’s room spanned the entire width of the attic. He liked this, because he had archery targets at the far end, and could sit in bed shooting his bow, until his dad yelled because the thud of arrows hitting the target drove him crazy.

  Robin felt grumpy as he pulled on a long-sleeved rugby shirt and some old jeans. The whole world was on his back and he was reluctant to admit that it was about ninety-nine per cent his own fault.

  He was at the end of his bed pulling his first sock on when he heard a deep growling sound. The traffic out here was light enough for any vehicle to be an object of curiosity, but a jet-engine roar sent Robin scuttling across to look out the attic window.

  There were two vehicles approaching the house. The first was a trashed sedan with blue lights and Locksley Police Department painted down the side. The second was the source of all the noise, and Robin knew who owned it.