‘Full,’ Little John said, as he flicked marzipan crumbs off his stubbly chin.
Ivanhoe gave him another shot of pain relief and he slept like the dead.
Ten hours and sixteen minutes later, Little John opened one sticky eye and looked off the side of the bed at a large yapping dog.
Except …
His brain struggled to process, because the dog had a metal head and a multicolour paisley-patterned body, and there were little hydraulic whooshing noises as it bounced on its front legs, yap-yap-yapping.
Little John wondered if all the sedatives had fried his brain, as he reached out. The robot dog gently nuzzled his palm. It had no mouth, but a vibration unit in its nose buzzed, tickling his hand.
John always had trouble finding well-fitting clothes, but the tracksuit and Sherwood Castle polo shirt someone had placed at the end of his bed while he slept were spot on. And while sportswear wasn’t his style, he felt a little thrill because the tracksuit had a designer logo his dad could never afford.
‘You’re awake,’ Sheriff Marjorie said brightly. ‘Good morning.’
Little John knew her gravelly no-nonsense voice from TV news, but glanced about in a state of confusion until he realised it was coming out of a loudspeaker in the dog’s back. He also realised the dog must have been set to alert Marjorie when he woke up.
‘Is this two-way?’ he asked.
‘Absolutely,’ Marjorie said. ‘Come and join me on the roof deck for breakfast. Take a left from your room and out through the sliding doors at the end of the hallway.’
Little John slid his feet into some pool shoes. He started down the hallway on two crutches, but before reaching the glass doors he’d realised he could walk without them if he stayed on the ball of his left foot, keeping weight off his burnt heel.
The sedatives were still having some effect, so he felt more confused than nervous when he stepped out onto a large roof deck, then jumped as a shotgun blast came from the same direction as the blinding morning sun.
‘Steal my plums and see what you get, you yellow swine!’ Sheriff Marjorie shouted, before taking another blast at the birds in the canopy.
A young lady in a Sherwood Castle golf caddy’s uniform obediently held out another loaded gun, but Marjorie just shoved the empty gun into her chest.
‘Buzz off, I need privacy,’ the Sheriff told the girl, as she turned and saw Little John hobbling towards her, squinting into the sun.
‘Hello,’ John said weakly, as he looked across a linen-covered outdoor dining table with six chairs. There were jugs of coffee and juice and mounds of fruit and whipped cream, all covered by glass domes to keep flies off.
‘The tracksuit fits,’ Marjorie said happily, as she signalled for Little John to sit down. ‘We guessed your size. 3XL.’
Sheriff Marjorie was a sturdy figure, almost as tall as Little John. She usually appeared on TV in dark-coloured trouser suits with her hair up in an austere bun. But in her own home at ten on a Sunday morning the hair was down and she wore furry Pikachu slippers and a Sherwood Castle guest robe.
‘Tuck in,’ Marjorie urged. ‘I’ve got your favourite breakfast things. Steak and scrambled eggs. Waffles with strawberries and whipped cream …’
As Little John sat, he wondered why the most powerful person in the county knew what he liked for breakfast. He also got a weird sense that Marjorie was nervous, rattling her cup as she poured coffee from the insulated pot.
‘You’re obviously confused,’ Marjorie said. ‘Let me start by saying you have no reason to be fearful. The castle is my territory. Gisborne won’t crack a fart without my permission once he steps outside of Locksley.’
There was a metallic ring as Little John lifted the steam-filled dome over strips of medium-rare steak. He put some on his plate, though his appetite was weak after stuffing himself the night before.
‘It’s usually best to tell a story from the beginning,’ Marjorie said. ‘Do you know that your father, Guy Gisborne and myself were childhood friends?
John chewed steak and nodded. ‘You started Captain Cash together. My auntie always teases my dad about how rich we’d all be if he hadn’t sold his shares to you in the early days.’
‘Pauline Hood was in the year above us!’ Marjorie said, nodding fondly, before going back to her story.
‘The only thing Ardagh Hood, Guy Gisborne and I really had in common was that we were outcasts. The brainy lumbering girl, the quiet serious boy who liked to read and the loner who dressed in black and freaked people out with bloody teeth stolen from his father’s dental surgery.
‘We had our fallings-out, but drifted back together because there wasn’t anyone else. From Elementary School Eight through Locksley High, right up until I moved to the capital to work for King Corporation.’
Little John nodded. ‘You helped me because my dad is an old friend?’
‘Not entirely,’ Marjorie said, as Little John again sensed nervousness. ‘When I came back to run for sheriff, I naturally wanted old friends at the core of my campaign. Guy Gisborne was easy to persuade. He knew a friendly sheriff could make his dodgy dealings easier.
‘I made your dad a generous offer. King Corporation was funding my campaign for sheriff, and in return I would give them the juiciest public contracts. But your father had a trusted reputation in the community. I offered him a lucrative contract running Locksley & Sherwood Healthcare’s computer systems, if he spoke at some meetings and helped get local businesses behind my campaign.’
Little John smiled as he spooned cream onto a waffle. ‘My dad’s too straight to agree to anything like that!’
‘I mistakenly assumed that by age twenty-six, your father would have become more realistic about the way the world works,’ Marjorie explained. ‘But Ardagh was furious with me. He ranted that I was nothing but a pawn. He said he’d rather starve in a gutter than feast on King Corporation’s scraps.’
‘We never starved,’ Little John said drily, as he folded the waffle and stuffed it in his mouth. ‘But I’ve eaten more Great Value tinned macaroni than I’d care to remember.’
Marjorie sighed. ‘Ardagh worked harder than anyone to start Captain Cash. There was some bitterness that he sold his share to me before things took off, but on a personal level your father and I stayed friends.
‘To help Ardagh calm down, I asked the waiter for a second bottle of wine. We teased one another about the paths our lives had taken and dug up stories about old times. We woke in the same bed with dreadful hangovers …’
Little John made an eww face as a half-chewed strawberry dropped off his tongue.
‘And nine months later, you popped out,’ Marjorie finished.
38. I BET YOU WEREN’T EXPECTING THAT
Marion led Robin on a five-kilometre trek. The first part was tough forest, but they jogged once they began following abandoned railway tracks. They took cover twice, once to hide from a rowdy group of refugees who’d been out cutting firewood, and once when a surveillance drone buzzed overhead.
Robin felt wary when Marion said they were less than ten minutes from the Brigands’ camp. If you believed the Locksley Gazette, the Sherwood Forest chapter of the Brigands Motorcycle Club were vicious thugs who sold drugs to school kids, set fire to little old ladies and terrorised shopkeepers.
He knew the Gazette was biased, but it didn’t help when he started noticing orange Ranger jackets and pieces of Castle Guard uniform strung up in the trees. One even hung upside down with a body inside.
‘It’s a shop dummy,’ Marion grinned, when she saw Robin’s face. ‘Chill out. Nobody’s gonna harm you if you’re with me.’
They walked another hundred metres before Marion pulled out a battered yellow radio. She spoke to Robin as she dialled in a transmission frequency.
‘If you ever come here alone, never get any closer than those two big trees with the bike wheels hanging off,’ Marion explained. ‘The camp perimeter is protected with motion-sensing flame throwers and bear traps that’
ll snap your leg off. And unlike Designer Outlets, the guards here shoot first and ask questions later.’
‘Tremendous,’ Robin said, shaking his head.
‘Main gate, this is Cut-Throat Baby,’ Marion told the radio. Then, after she got no response, ‘Main gate, do you hear me?’
She tutted and looked at Robin. ‘I bet my dad has changed the frequency without telling me. I’ll try the old one …’
Marion turned the frequency knob and got a cheerful response straight away.
‘Sister, sister!’ a youngish male voice came back. ‘Stay where you are, I’ll guide you in.’
Ninety seconds later a guy appeared between the big trees, giving a thumbs-up sign. He was about sixteen, ridiculously handsome, with curly blond hair. Muscles swelled under his shirt and he wore an ammo belt bristling with grenades and clips for the compact machine gun slung over his back.
Marion dashed out from cover and gave him a hug.
‘I can’t believe they trusted you on security detail,’ Marion said, before looking back at Robin. ‘This is my big brother, Flash.’
‘Dad said you two might turn up,’ Flash said as he gave Robin a crunching handshake.
‘His real name is Kevin,’ Marion told Robin. ‘But someone dared him to drink Flash floor cleaner when he was eight and he had to have his stomach pumped …’
‘You need to follow me really carefully,’ Flash warned Robin. ‘One of our guys put extra bear traps down. He was supposed to mark where he put them, but he was drunk, and he held the map upside down.’
‘For goodness sake,’ Marion said, shaking her head and looking at Robin. ‘This place is a shambles.’
‘Not like Designer Outlets,’ Flash said derisively, as he started walking. ‘Will prancing around with his clipboard, making shower rotas and giving home-grown courgettes to refugees.’
Robin caught a sweet burning smell as they passed a small clearing with two noisy diesel generators. Tangled plugs and cables lay next to a puddle like an electrocution waiting to happen. They followed the cables past battered old caravans and camper vans, most of which had been jacked up on stilts to prevent flooding.
The filthiest kid Robin had ever seen whizzed by on a mini-bike as they broke into a large oval clearing. Three wild pigs were being barbecued in a firepit at the centre, but to get there they had to cross a stretch of churned mud which formed part of a track the Brigands used to race dirt bikes.
Robin’s sneaker got sucked off in the mud and Flash plucked him out.
‘You need proper boots in this forest,’ Flash said, as Marion dug the sneaker out of the mud and Robin felt humiliated by his unimpressive arrival: carried like a toddler and plonked on dry ground with one shoe missing.
People had stepped down from their campers to see who’d arrived, including a monstrous bare-chested bloke with a wiry black beard and an enormous tattoo of the devil riding a Harley-Davidson across his back.
‘My baby girl,’ he bellowed, as he scooped Marion off the ground with one giant arm and kissed her on the cheek.
‘This is my dad, Jake,’ Marion told Robin, as he put her down. ‘But everyone calls him Cut-Throat.’
Robin decided not to ask how Cut-Throat got his nickname as the huge man swung towards him.
‘Find this boy some boots from the stores!’ Cut-Throat shouted, before leaning forward and glaring into Robin’s eyes. ‘What’s this I hear about you spending the night in the forest with my only daughter?’
Robin went from embarrassed red to terrified white and tried to speak words but just made a blarrrr sound.
‘Dad, don’t be a git,’ Marion said, giving him a gentle kick on the ankle. ‘He’s a good guy.’
‘I believe that’s true,’ Cut-Throat said, smiling as he placed a hand on Robin’s bow. ‘Anyone who shoots Guy Gisborne in the plums can count Cut-Throat as a friend!’
Cut-Throat took a phone out of jeans matted with dirt and engine oil and passed it to Flash before hoisting Robin up onto his shoulders.
‘I want a picture with this heroic son of a gun! Can you believe how little he is?’
Robin didn’t appreciate being reminded that he was undersized, and Cut-Throat’s hair stank of booze and old sweat, but he smiled for the photo, and a second one where Cut-Throat pulled Marion into the shot.
Flash got his own phone out for a selfie and soon Robin was engulfed, getting his picture snapped with glamorous biker mums, a young lad holding toddler twins, Flash’s teenaged pals, an old guy with gold dentures and finally a group shot where Robin aimed his bow at the camera, while at least thirty Brigands piled in behind, shaking their fists.
When the crowd died off, Robin felt overwhelmed by all the back slaps, high fives and strong handshakes.
‘They’re crazy,’ Marion said, amused by Robin’s obvious discomfort, ‘but even Castle Guards don’t mess with Brigands.’
39. THE KING OF LOCKSLEY HIGH
Little John froze, his mouth gaping wide enough for pigeons to nest in the hole.
‘I didn’t realise I was pregnant for six months,’ Marjorie explained, as John’s chest squeaked like a leaky balloon. ‘I was running for sheriff. I put the side effects of pregnancy down to being exhausted from campaigning, and since I’m large the physical signs were not obvious.’
‘It was you!’ Little John gawped, as he returned to Earth and dabbed his napkin on the strawberry juice dribbling down his chin. ‘You sent me presents on my birthday. The postmark was always China, and Dad said the government would never give you a visa to visit me.’
Marion nodded as she blinked moist eyes. ‘I sent your gifts and cards via the King Corporation office in Beijing.’
Little John sounded sore. ‘You dumped me, so you could be Sheriff of Nottingham and live in the penthouse of a half-billion-pound castle …’
‘I did want you,’ Marjorie insisted. ‘Giving you up was the toughest decision I’ve ever had to make. But I was desperate to be Nottingham’s youngest sheriff and I could hardly campaign as a mature and responsible candidate while pregnant from a one-night stand.’
‘Mum …’ Little John said, experimenting with the word as the weirdness made him feel like he was up with the birds, looking down at himself.
Sheriff Marjorie gulped, but was determined to get her whole story out.
‘We made a cover story, saying I had to return to the capital to deal with a crisis at King Corp. Ardagh said he’d take care of you once you were born, and I knew he’d be a decent father.
‘Your dad wouldn’t take money, because he said I was corrupt. But we agreed I could build up a university fund and send you birthday and Christmas presents.’
‘Were either of you ever going to tell me?’ Little John asked.
‘After my term as sheriff ended,’ Marjorie explained. ‘Back then, I never dreamed I’d be elected for four consecutive terms …’
Sheriff Marjorie was unpopular around Locksley. Little John had heard people say Gisborne had helped win her the last two elections by intimidating potential rivals and getting his thugs to stuff ballot boxes with votes.
In return, Sheriff Marjorie turned a blind eye as Gisborne took total control of Locksley. Murdering rivals, stealing millions in government grants meant to help the city’s poor and making sure his cronies were appointed to every senior post, from Chief of Sanitation to City Mayor.
This is the mum I’ve spent my whole life dreaming of …
But while the big principled reasons to not like Sheriff Marjorie were all in John’s head, he wasn’t feeling them.
Instead, he felt thankful that Sheriff Marjorie had extracted him from the most terrifying experience of his life, and it was hard to see his mother as some evil monster when she sat three metres away with tears in her eyes and wearing crazy Pikachu slippers.
There was also practical stuff. John had gone from Locksley’s Most Wanted to armour-plated. He was wearing a tracksuit that probably cost more than every other item of clothing he owned put t
ogether. And while his dad wouldn’t approve, John saw himself living the fantasy where you go to the mall with a brick of hundred-pound notes and buy everything you want …
Sweet clothes, fancy holidays, the best phone, a gaming laptop. A BMW convertible after his driving test. Pretty girls smiling as he parked outside Locksley High, and basically getting to be king of the whole darned school …
‘You’ve gone quiet,’ Marjorie said warily.
John blinked and felt his own tears forming. ‘A lot to process …’ he said. ‘And after the last few days my head’s in a mess.’
Marjorie nodded.
‘I’m not going to pretend I’m the motherly type, but I’ll do my best,’ she promised. ‘Obviously you can stay here with me while your dad’s in prison. I travel a lot on business, but Sherwood Castle has everything you need: food, laundry, gym, massage, tennis, swimming pool … I’m sure you’ll want more clothes and things, so you can take one of the King Corporation helicopters to Nottingham and go shopping.’
Little John smirked and mouthed helicopter, before a more serious thought hit.
‘What about my dad and Robin?’
‘Ardagh is a grown man,’ Marjorie said, as her body stiffened. ‘I gave him plenty of opportunities, but he’s always made it clear that he doesn’t want my help.’
Little John was surprised by her abrupt change of tone, but also understood how frustratingly stubborn his dad could be.
‘What about Robin?’ John asked.
‘You’re my child. He’s not.’
Little John narrowed his eyes and matched his mother’s determination. ‘Robin is not your son, but he is my little brother. I love him, and I don’t want Gisborne getting hold of him.’
Marjorie looked up at the morning sky, as Little John worried that he’d pushed too far and upset her. But seconds later, she nodded slowly, indicating that she grasped her son’s point of view.
‘I’m Gisborne’s ally, not his master,’ Marjorie said, thoughtfully. ‘Robin shot and humiliated him. He’s going to be incredibly angry and if I openly protect Robin it could shatter our relationship.’
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