Guy Gisborne had named his customised Mercedes pick-up truck Black Bess. It had a matt-black paint job, enormous spinner wheels, a chromed snorkel exhaust, and a custom-chipped engine good for eight hundred horsepower.
Black Bess broke all kinds of laws, spewing deep grey exhaust, and the mufflers had been removed so it sounded like a race car. But no cop ever dared pull Guy Gisborne over. Nor was any mechanic brave enough to tell him his prized possession had failed an emissions test.
‘Dad!’ Robin yelled from the top of the stairs.
‘I see it,’ Ardagh shouted up. ‘Stay up in your room. Let me deal with them.’
Ardagh also tried sending John upstairs, and Robin heard his brother stubbornly refusing as the cop car pulled up the driveway, while Gisborne swung aggressively off-road, leaving churned brown tracks across the front lawn.
Two cops in dark blue uniforms waddled to the door.
Ardagh was waiting on the doorstep. ‘How may I help you, ladies?’
Robin shuddered, seeing Guy Gisborne step out of the Mercedes, dressed all in black. He’d been Ardagh’s boyhood friend, but while most kids grow out of squishing frogs and forcing weaker lads to hand over their lunch money, Gisborne kept getting nastier.
Robin was surprised to see Clare Gisborne jump out of the passenger side. She was copying her dad’s taste for black leather and sunglasses, with a hefty baton swinging off her hip.
‘Are you Ardagh Michael Hood?’ one of the cops in the doorway asked.
‘I am,’ Ardagh answered, as Robin crept downstairs to get a better look.
The other cop spoke. ‘Mr Hood, following a search of your property, we have discovered four laptop computers that were stolen from the High Street branch of Captain Cash yesterday afternoon. I am therefore placing you under arrest.’
Robin gulped.
The officer took handcuffs from her belt as her partner began reading Ardagh his rights.
‘You have the right to remain silent. This means you do not have to say anything, answer any question or make any statement unless you wish to do so, but anything you do say can be used as evidence in the Sheriff’s court …’
‘What search?’ Ardagh demanded, as he refused to put his hands out to be cuffed. ‘You haven’t searched. You just arrived.’
‘I can make this as hard as you want it to be,’ one officer shouted. ‘Give me your damned wrists.’
Robin’s heart thumped as he kept creeping down the stairs. He’d heard his dad complaining about Gisborne taking advantage of police cuts to sink his tentacles into Locksley Police Department, but seeing two uniformed officers shamelessly do Gisborne’s bidding was still a shock.
‘On your knees, Ardagh,’ Gisborne demanded, taking a coiled whip off his belt as Ardagh reluctantly accepted the cuffs.
‘Leave my dad alone,’ John shouted.
‘I’ll get to you in a minute, Little John,’ Gisborne sneered, then eyeballed Ardagh from less than a metre away. ‘Knees!’ he demanded.
Ardagh defied his boyhood friend, until one of the cops jabbed the back of his thigh with a 50,000-volt stun stick. Clare Gisborne laughed noisily as Ardagh sprawled forward onto his face, groaning and spasming before Gisborne pinned him under his alligator-skin boot.
Robin was now on the landing between the ground and first floor. Four quick arrows would take out the cops and the Gisbornes. Except he’d dumped his archery stuff outside on the porch when he got back in from training …
‘First your big lump of a son assaults my daughter,’ Gisborne began, as he put all his bodyweight behind the heel dug in Ardagh’s back. ‘Then you dare to stand in the middle of Locksley Learning Centre making nasty allegations about me in front of an audience.’
‘You won’t get away with this,’ Ardagh moaned.
Gisborne laughed, uncoiling his whip. ‘Stolen goods worth more than five thousand pounds is a class-C felony, Ardagh. A minimum two-year sentence under Sheriff Marjorie’s zero-tolerance sentencing regime. And since your poor wifey dropped dead, I guess I’d better give social services a bell about your boys.’
Robin clutched his fists and stifled a hiss of rage.
You don’t make jokes about my dead mum and get away with it.
‘But don’t worry, Ardagh. I have chums in child services. I’ll make sure they’re placed in a nice group home on the other side of the forest, so they can’t come and visit.’
Ardagh didn’t want Gisborne to see him cry and blinked rapidly to stop tears forming in his eyes.
‘We could easily drop the boys off at social services,’ one of the cops suggested. ‘It’s no bother.’
Gisborne laughed. ‘Get Ardagh on his feet and booked in at the station. I’ll deal with these brats, but there’ll be extra in your wage packets if he arrives with injuries from his attempted escape …’
The cops smiled knowingly at one another as they hauled Ardagh up and marched him out to the battered police cruiser. This left Clare standing back by the front door, while her father closed on Little John.
Being small had taught Robin that mental toughness was as important in any confrontation as size or strength. On paper, Little John was stronger, faster and far bigger than Gisborne. But Gisborne oozed sadistic confidence, while the giant sixteen-year-old was a clammy mess, backing up the staircase, with hands trembling in fear of Gisborne’s whip.
‘Sit at the kitchen table,’ Gisborne ordered, before turning back to his daughter. ‘The little one’s creeping around upstairs. Go fetch him, so he can witness what happens to people who lay hands on my daughter.’
12. BOXING CHAMP WANTS TO BEAT YOUR ASS …
Robin’s sixteen-year-old pursuer had brutal speed. The baton swung from her tactical belt as her combat boots stamped up two stairs at a time.
‘Come out with your hands up,’ Clare demanded. ‘The more energy I waste finding you, the harder I’ll pound when I get you.’
Robin knew his escape route: the same one he’d used when he drained the ink from two biros into Little John’s shampoo bottle.
Robin reached his attic bedroom, then jumped onto his homework desk, reached up to open a roof hatch, then pulled himself up through the hole.
If Clare had looked up when she entered the room, she’d have seen her adversary gently closing the hatch. But she didn’t know about Robin’s climbing skills and her instinct was to check under the bed, then open Robin’s wardrobe.
‘I’m a champion boxer,’ Clare yelled, as she looked in the gap between the chest of drawers and the wall. ‘I’m gonna hang you upside down and make you my new punchbag.’
Robin had been out on the mossy roof a million times, but quickly discovered that his one socked foot was slippery. After peeling it off, he swung a leg around a brick chimney that ran down the outside wall of the house, to the grand fireplace in the ground-floor drawing room.
He climbed skilfully down vertical brick, suspending himself from strong fingers dug into gaps in the mortar.
After reaching a ledge one floor up, Robin made a two-footed leap onto the roof of the shed his dad had wanted him to spend the day cleaning out. This roof looked fragile, so he spun, dropped and splattered his feet and ankles with mud as he hit the ground. The area was always puddled, because it lay below a broken gutter.
Mud squelched as Robin stumbled towards firmer ground. After a quick look around to ensure there was no sign of Clare, he leaned against the side of the house, thinking up his next move.
13. THE RECYCLING BIN GETS IT
The breakfast dishes were still on the kitchen table as Gisborne lashed out with his whip, shattering the ink-blue vase on top of the refrigerator. Ardagh had been collecting pennies in it for years and now they showered the floor, while shards of blue porcelain flew dangerously.
‘Scum like you doesn’t touch my daughter,’ Gisborne roared, as his boot blasted the recycling bin, spewing milk cartons and flattened cardboard across the floor.
‘Robin was hanging off a window ledge,’
Little John pleaded, from his seat at the end of the dining table. ‘If Clare had hit him with that ball it could have knocked him down and killed him.’
‘So what?’ Gisborne asked, as he wound the whip back around his hand. ‘World’s a better place with one less member of your family in it.’
Gisborne picked a jagged shard of blue vase from the floor and closed on Little John with the sharp end. The teen was only wearing the tartan shorts he’d slept in, and his sweaty skin stuck to the chair as he tilted it back.
‘This is gonna be a big scar,’ Gisborne teased sadistically, as the sharp end touched a spot below Little John’s earlobe. ‘A warning to anyone who thinks about touching my family.’
‘She got a tiny graze from some gravel on the courtyard,’ Little John said, trying not to tremble because it made the shard push deeper into his cheek.
Gisborne looked around as his daughter arrived in the kitchen doorway, breathing heavily.
‘Where’s the brat?’ Gisborne asked.
Clare’s voice was high, like she was properly scared. ‘I searched all over. Cupboards, bathrooms, under beds. Robin must have doubled back on me.’
Little John felt relieved, but Gisborne didn’t tolerate failure, even from his own daughter.
‘He’s a scrap of a kid,’ he shouted, pounding on the table and making Clare jump.
She stepped closer and gave a pleading look. ‘Daddy, I tried really hard.’
Gisborne booted the recycling bin again, then wagged his finger furiously in Clare’s face.
‘If you want to be Daddy’s princess and do your hair and wear pretty dresses, you have my blessing,’ Gisborne said sharply. ‘But if you want to learn the business, you will perform like any other associate and suffer the consequences if you don’t. Is that clear?’
Little John almost felt sorry for Clare as he watched Gisborne signal towards his heavy whip.
Would he hit his own daughter?
‘Understood, Daddy … I mean, sir,’ Clare said, nodding obediently as she backed out and headed for the stairs.
She hoped she’d missed a door. Or maybe there was a loose bath panel someone Robin’s size could squeeze behind …
Gisborne grabbed the shard off the kitchen table.
‘Now, where were we?’
Little John was so scared he thought he might pass out, but his fear of what Gisborne might do if he fought back remained greater than his fear of getting slashed.
At least until the blue glass pricked his skin and drew blood …
The spike of pain flipped Little John into a primitive fight-or-flight response. He swung a huge arm, knocking Gisborne sideways. The gangster was surprised by Little John’s speed, but quickly regained balance and went for his whip.
‘You don’t wanna take your punishment?’ Gisborne roared, as he lashed out with the whip. ‘Then your life just got a hundred times worse.’
The first lash sent a snapping sound through the kitchen and Little John yelped as the whip shredded his T-shirt and left a deep red welt beneath.
Little John stumbled sideways over to the kitchen drainer, grabbing a wooden tray to shield himself, as Gisborne pulled back for another shot. But as Gisborne swung he felt the whip’s handle tear out of his hand.
There was a sharp, hollow thud, and when he looked to see where the whip had gone, he saw its thick leather handle pinned to the door of a kitchen cabinet by an aluminium arrow.
‘Hands high, Gisborne,’ Robin said, his next shot already loaded and a silver arrow pulled back ready to shoot.
14. OOOF, THAT’S GOTTA HURT
Robin had been squatting outside the front door and reached in to grab his quiver and bow as Clare moved back upstairs.
Then Robin closed in, hoping to surprise Gisborne when he reached the kitchen. But he had to act sooner when Little John threw his punch.
‘You haven’t got the guts to kill me,’ Gisborne taunted, as he stared down Robin’s arrow. ‘And when you surrender, I’ll have you strapped to a door and given a thousand lashes!’
‘I don’t know if I’m a killer,’ Robin admitted, as he lowered his aim. He did a good job keeping fear out of his voice. ‘But a shot through your knee will keep you limping for a few months.’
Gisborne smiled, admiring strength even when he was on the wrong end of it.
‘So how do I walk out of here, little boy?’ he asked, as he cast a wary glance back to see Little John standing passively by the sink, holding his wounded shoulder.
Robin wished he’d thought further than trying to save Little John from getting his face sliced open, as Gisborne daringly took a step closer.
‘I need your whip, your wallet and your car keys,’ Robin said firmly.
‘Where can you go?’ Gisborne taunted. ‘You can’t hide from me.’
‘Your people don’t control the forest.’
Gisborne laughed noisily. ‘A city kid in Sherwood Forest? If the snakes don’t get you, the outlaws will.’
Robin backed down the hallway as Gisborne closed in again. His bow felt heavy.
‘I’m not debating with you,’ Robin said. ‘If I let go, this arrow splits your kneecap and comes out the other side.’
Gisborne gestured towards the bottom of the stairs. Robin flinched as he saw a shift in the light above. Clare had made herself known to her father by signalling in a mirror at the bottom of the stairs and now she’d vaulted the stair rail on the first landing.
She crashed down on Robin’s back, but not before he’d fired.
‘Hell!’ Gisborne bawled, doubling over in pain as he crashed backwards into the kitchen table. He was stunned and weakened by the arrow, but still went for his whip. As he lashed out, Little John grabbed a microwave off the kitchen cabinet, snapping the plug out of the socket.
The microwave weighed nothing in Little John’s immense arms. As its door flew open and the glass turntable dropped out, John thrust the end of the microwave into Gisborne’s head, making him stagger sideways in a daze.
For all his running, judo and climbing, Robin was helpless under Clare’s bulk. A palm thrust to the underside of her chin bought half a second, but Clare had trained with her father and his bodyguards since she was six years old.
She easily flipped Robin onto his belly and snapped him into a brutal chokehold between her thighs.
Using her legs left Clare free to pull a small throwing knife from her tactical belt. Little John made a huge target as he charged fearlessly down the hallway.
Robin’s eyes blurred with tears of pain. He was turning blue and shards from the broken vase dug into his chest. But the thought of Little John catching an expertly thrown knife brought out superhuman strength. Robin bucked, freeing his head enough to turn and bite into Clare’s trousers.
As Clare yelped, the knife dropped out of her hand. Little John dived, like he was going after a loose ball on a rugby pitch. Robin blacked out for an instant and Little John’s bulk crashed into Clare.
Robin’s neck crunched and his brother’s knee smashing his nose was no less painful for being an accident. Then he wriggled free, gasping and blurry-eyed, as Little John threatened Clare with his clublike fist.
‘One move and I’ll knock you cold.’
Blinking and bloody-nosed, Robin stumbled into the kitchen to check on Gisborne. Little John’s swing with the microwave had knocked him out and he was slumped against a kitchen cabinet, with an arrow sticking out of his …
Robin raised hands to his face and gasped. He’d been aiming to shatter Gisborne’s kneecap, but Clare’s leap had knocked off his aim and his arrow now stuck out of Gisborne’s black leather trousers. Deeply embedded in the place where no man wants to get shot.
15. THIS IS A FINE OLD PICKLE
Robin had a bloody nose where Little John caught him with his knee and red drips pelted the kitchen floor as he tied the unconscious Gisborne with his own whip.
Clare was too dazed to resist as John snatched her phone, so she couldn’t call for help.
Then he stripped off her tactical belt – complete with pepper spray and a big hunting knife – before dragging her into the little toilet under the stairs and barricading the door with a wooden chest, braced against the opposite wall.
‘Now what?’ John asked, as he faced Robin across the kitchen table.
Little John was three times heavier and four years older than Robin. But he was also a guy who’d spend fifteen minutes staring out of a window deciding whether he needed to wear a coat. So, from picking Dad’s birthday card to figuring out what to do when the town’s number-one gangster was tied up in the kitchen, there was only ever going to be a decision if Robin made it.
‘We’re dead meat if we stay here,’ Robin said, his voice nasal because his head was tilted to stop the bleeding. ‘Gisborne’s people will soon realise he’s missing.’
Little John nodded. ‘But where do we go? Aunt Pauline’s?’
Robin tutted. ‘Two whole streets away? And the first place they’ll look.’
‘Where, then?’
‘Sherwood Forest.’
John looked appalled. ‘It’s full of snakes and outlaws,’ he blurted. ‘Gisborne said we won’t last five minutes.’
Robin tutted. ‘Stay in Locksley until Gisborne’s goons find you, if you like. I’m packing gear and hiding in the forest.’
‘We could get a train or bus to the capital,’ John suggested. ‘You can vanish in a big city as easily as the woods.’
‘The only bus from here goes to Nottingham, a town crawling with Gisborne’s thugs and Sheriff Marjorie’s people. From Nottingham there’s a train south every few hours, but you can bet Gisborne will have spies looking out for us. And if you’re thinking of a taxi, guess what?’
Little John sighed. ‘Every taxi driver in town pays off Gisborne to keep their job.’
‘Pack a bag, quickly,’ Robin urged, as he reached into Gisborne’s leather coat and dug out his phone and the keys to his truck.
Robin Hood Page 4