Robin Hood

by Robert Muchamore

  ‘He’s twelve years old …’

  Marjorie raised one arm in a don’t interrupt gesture. ‘Let me finish,’ she said. ‘If I help Robin, it has to be done so that Gisborne never knows. And of course, I can’t help if we can’t find him.’

  40. LEARNING TO EMBRACE THE STINK

  Following Robin’s brush with celebrity, Marion led him to a bunch of tables at the edge of the firepit.

  She grabbed two bottles of Rage Cola from an ice box and the instant Robin settled at a table a woman in a striped apron slid him an enamel dish, piled with barbecued pork, baked potato and coleslaw.

  A teenager brought boxes with new boots in three different sizes for Robin to try, before Cut-Throat arrived with a filthy boy-sized denim waistcoat. It had the club’s embroidered pirate logo on the back, with Brigands MC Sherwood written above and Associate below.

  ‘We call these club colours,’ Cut-Throat explained. ‘Associate means you’re under our protection. It’s also the first step to becoming a prospect, and eventually a full-fledged Brigand.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Robin said, warily. ‘I’ve never really thought about joining a biker gang …’

  ‘It’s a splendid career for a young man!’ Cut-Throat laughed.

  The denim vest was stiff with dirt and Robin noted a putrid-meat and blocked drain aroma as he pulled it up his arms.

  Marion sat across the table with her own pork and potato and looked furious.

  ‘Check the sourpuss face on my baby girl,’ Cut-Throat laughed, then squashed the tip of Marion’s nose and made a boop sound.

  ‘Buzz off,’ Marion hissed, batting her dad’s hand. ‘Those are Flash’s colours from when he was a kid, and they should be mine.’

  The smell was putting Robin off his barbecue and he was keen to get rid of the waistcoat. ‘Marion should have it if she wants …’

  ‘I’m not allowed to wear colours because I’m a mere girl,’ Marion explained. ‘Only men can be Brigands.’

  ‘It’s club tradition,’ Cut-Throat said. ‘I may be leader here, but there are Brigands chapters all over the world and we all follow the international rulebook.’

  ‘Misogynistic old farts!’ Marion complained to Robin. ‘When Brigands run their bikes, women are only allowed to ride at the back, if their husband or father is a member and gives them permission. When I’m older I’m gonna crack some heads and get that rule changed.’

  ‘Girl power!’ Cut-Throat said, shaking his head to indicate that he thought his daughter was nuts. ‘I wouldn’t mind, but you make all this fuss and you hardly ever ride the motorbike I got for your last birthday.’

  ‘It’s the principle,’ Marion said, thumping furiously on the table as Cut-Throat walked off to the firepit for some meat.

  ‘You remind me of my dad with the principles,’ Robin said. ‘And I have to wash this waistcoat.’

  ‘Nope,’ Marion said, smiling. ‘You can’t wash club colours. It’s a sign of disrespect.’

  ‘Brigands don’t seem big on the idea of washing anything,’ Robin said.

  ‘Stop being a wuss and embrace the grime,’ Marion urged, as Robin ate his last bits of pork and flipped open one of the boot boxes. ‘After a day or so, you won’t notice the stink.’

  The first pair of boots were tight but the next size up fitted great.

  ‘Better than those crummy trainers,’ Robin said, as he looked down at his new boots.

  Marion couldn’t resist scraping her muddy sole across the front to scuff them up.

  ‘You’re starting to look less like a city boy,’ Marion said, as she admired Robin’s denim waistcoat and boots. ‘And if you’re gonna be wearing colours, I reckon we should put your butt on two wheels and show you how to ride.’

  41. SAFETY GEAR IS FOR WIMPS

  The Brigands might have embraced filthy bodies, but the Harley-Davidsons lined up at the front of their sprawling bike shed were immaculate beasts, with custom paint jobs and non-essential items like mirrors and cargo boxes stripped off to save weight.

  ‘Never touch a Brigand’s bike without asking,’ Marion warned, as Robin admired them. ‘They get very upset.’

  ‘They look like they never get used,’ Robin said.

  ‘Road bikes,’ Marion explained. ‘Designed to cruise but useless in the forest. They tow them out a couple of times a year, when they meet up with other Brigand chapters and do a big run to the seaside, or a pre-arranged punch-up with a rival biker gang.’

  She led Robin to a less pristine world of tool cabinets and grease at the back of the shed. There were more than thirty battered dirt-bikes, from kid-sized ones up to machines with powerful engines designed for cross-country racing.

  A guy in a mechanic’s overall had a bike spread out in a hundred pieces over a long bench.

  ‘Uncle Steve, do you ever get to the end and find you’ve got bits left over?’ Marion asked cheekily.

  The guy came over and gave Marion a hug, leaving out the hands because they were black with grease.

  ‘You hardly ever visit any more,’ Steve said fondly. ‘Your bike’s up back. I take her out and run the engine over once in a while. But it’s a shame she gets so little use.’

  ‘I get busy,’ Marion said, as Steve moved a couple of other bikes out of the way before wheeling out her orange Honda. ‘And my pal Robin needs an easy one to learn on.’

  Steve looked Robin up and down before grabbing a battered bike with a titchy engine.

  Marion saw Robin’s look of disappointment and laughed. ‘It’s not cool, but it’s plenty fast for your first lesson.’

  She grabbed a battered open-face helmet for Robin, but didn’t bother with one herself.

  As Robin made his first wobbly run and turn on the muddy oval that ran around the clearing, Marion got surrounded by four lads aged between ten and thirteen. They all looked like tough guys, with associate colours on their backs, mud-crusted jeans and an authentically feisty Brigand aroma.

  They regarded themselves as expert riders and while they acted friendly, they kept offering advice and trying to take over teaching Robin until Marion got irritated and yelled at them.

  Robin had natural balance and coordination and quickly got a feel for the bike, but came a cropper when he got cocky and picked up speed.

  ‘Brake gently on mud,’ Marion shouted, as she rode behind.

  But a bump panicked Robin and he braked hard. The front wheel dug into the soft ground and launched him over the handlebars, before the bike flipped and the rear wheel landed on his back.

  Marion looked worried as she sprinted over and lifted the bike away, but the four boys were all cheering and laughing.

  ‘Nice one, dummy!’ the littlest kid shouted.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Robin lied, close to tears, but gritting his teeth and trying to ignore the pain because he didn’t want to show any weakness.

  After faster runs around the clearing, Marion led Robin on a longer trail that the Brigands had hacked through a couple of kilometres of forest. The course zigzagged over a stream bed and she took delight in hitting the accelerator in the deepest part, which made her back wheel spin up and spray Robin with gooey river mud.

  ‘That face!’ Marion howled when they got back to the clearing. ‘You look like a walking mud pie!’

  The concentration required to learn a new skill had tired Robin out, and Marion was ready to quit for the day, but Nico, the oldest of the four biker lads, offered Robin a real ride on the back of his race-tuned bike.

  ‘You’ll fill your pants,’ one of the younger boys warned.

  ‘You’ve had enough excitement,’ Marion agreed, as she started wheeling her bike towards the shed. ‘Let’s grab a cold drink.’

  But shooting Guy Gisborne had made Robin one of the cool kids for the first time in his life and he wanted to show off.

  ‘Robin Hood knows no fear!’ he joked, as he straddled the back of Nico’s growling Kawasaki.

  ‘Arms locked around my waist,’ Nico warned. ‘Don’t squi
rm.’

  Five seconds into the ride, Robin knew fear in a big way.

  He’d expected a faster version of the trip he’d taken with Marion, but it was totally different. Besides being noisier and more than twice as fast, Nico didn’t so much ride as expertly throw the bike around under his body.

  The back wheel slid out, the ground zoomed past millimetres from Nico’s kneecap and at least five times Robin thought, No way we’re not smacking into this, before Nico flicked past the obstacle with a burst of throttle and mud spraying off the back wheel.

  Marion thought Robin was going to puke when he stumbled off Nico’s bike. But a sense of exhilaration and the fact he’d survived made him gasp, then erupt in laughter.

  ‘You’re insane!’ Robin told Nico, as he gave him a high five. ‘And I don’t care what I have to do to get the money. I am so getting myself a bike.’

  42. DEEP-FRIED EVERYTHING

  Robin decided that if germs and filth didn’t wipe out the Brigands, then heart attacks from excessive meat consumption would.

  His dinner was a vast T-bone steak, served with a heavy mac and cheese made with vintage cheddar and double cream. Then a smiley old Brigand hung a big pot of cooking oil over the firepit and started deep-frying Mars and Snickers bars for all the kids.

  ‘It’s the best and worst meal I’ve ever eaten,’ Robin told Marion as he blew on a parcel of batter filled with dangerously hot melted chocolate.

  Marion laughed. ‘It’s fun visiting Dad, but the kids here run wild. When I get back to Designer Outlets I actually want to eat salad and do what I’m told for a week.’

  While the mall had tons of space, the Brigands’ stilt-mounted camper vans were packed out. Cut-Throat shared his ten-metre trailer with his girlfriend Liz, his oldest son Flash, his two younger sons and his girlfriend’s teenage daughter from a previous relationship.

  Since the weather was mild and dry, Marion dragged two rusting sunloungers from a junk pile around the back and used them to make beds under a covered platform in front of the camper. They shared the space with barrels of drinking water, pallets of tinned food and Cut-Throat’s elderly pit bull.

  It wasn’t bedtime, but Marion and Robin were both frazzled and content to lie back, letting the rich food settle as they messed with their phones and watched the rowdy evening scene in the clearing.

  A guy playing guitar by the firepit had a small audience, a Nottingham Kebabs soccer game ran on a projector screen and some people who were almost too drunk to stand had decided it would be a terrific idea to have an axe-throwing competition.

  ‘It won’t end well,’ Marion predicted, as one of her little brothers dozed in her lap.

  She looked sideways to nose at what Robin was doing with his phone and laughed when she saw pictures of dirt bikes.

  ‘Even cheap ones are over eight hundred quid,’ Robin sighed.

  Marion shrugged. ‘Brigands have cleared a couple of tracks to get in and out, but apart from that, bikes are useless in the forest. And you’re wasting money buying a new bike. Heaps of rich kids get them as presents and barely use them. I think Dad got mine from Captain Cash, like six-fifty for a mint-condition ride that would have been two thousand new.’

  ‘I hate Captain Cash,’ Robin grunted.

  But he was googling the Captain Cash website and starting a search for used dirt bikes when Marion’s phone buzzed with a web call from her mum.

  ‘She’ll be lucky, with the Wi-Fi out here,’ Marion told Robin, before answering. ‘Hey, Ma … You’re a bit tinny, speak slow … I’m doing good. Robin’s fine, if a little muddy …’

  Robin listened curiously as Marion kept her voice low, so she didn’t wake her brother.

  ‘Oh, you know, the regular Brigands stuff … I’ve eaten four kilos of saturated fat, and drunk lunatics are throwing axes at blocks of wood … Sorry, your voice broke up again … What …? Of course, I can take him. Then we can go back to the mall? … Thank God. One night with Dad is my limit … I’ll pass you over.’

  Robin looked confused as Marion held her phone in front of his face.

  ‘Me?’ he said.

  Marion nodded.

  ‘Mrs Maid?’ Robin said, which made her laugh.

  ‘For God’s sake, call me Indio.’

  ‘Sorry …’

  ‘Listen, buddy,’ Indio began. ‘I had a natter with the lawyer, Tybalt Bull, earlier. He’s very interested in taking on your father’s case. The police are being obstructive and saying your dad is too sick to see a lawyer. But Tybalt would like to meet with you at eleven tomorrow, so you can tell him exactly what happened. How does that sound?’

  Robin nodded. ‘Anything that’ll help my dad get out of prison.’

  ‘Tybalt says Gisborne has spies watching his office in central Locksley. So he’ll meet you at a spot near the river.’

  ‘OK,’ Robin agreed. ‘But didn’t Will say this guy charges ten thousand pounds?’

  ‘Good legal work never comes cheap,’ Indio admitted. ‘But your father may be entitled to government legal assistance. And we may be able to scrape up some money. Do you have anyone who might chip in? A grandparent, an aunt or uncle? Maybe a close friend of your father’s?’

  ‘My aunt Pauline, I guess,’ Robin said. ‘She might help, but no way she has ten thousand.’

  ‘Try not to worry about money,’ Indio said brightly. ‘Meet Tybalt tomorrow and we’ll take things from there.’

  ‘Right,’ Robin said, then thoughtfully added, ‘I really appreciate you and Will helping out.’

  ‘It’s what decent people do,’ Indio said. ‘Now put Marion back on. I want to make sure she knows where she’s taking you.’

  As Robin handed the phone back to Marion, he looked at the animated Captain Cash logo on his own screen.

  Seeing the logo at the same time as thinking about ways to pay his dad’s lawyer triggered the memory of his visit to collect the mound of junk computers. In particular, the manager’s revelation that Ardagh had written a white-hat security report on the Locksley branch that had never been acted upon.

  As Marion listened to a set of directions to the spot where they’d meet Tybalt in the morning, Robin opened the email app on his phone, logged out of his own account and felt pleased that he’d used one of his early experiments with keylogger software to capture his dad’s passwords.

  Once Robin was logged into Ardagh’s business email, he did a search for messages containing the phrase Captain Cash, and was rewarded with eight results, including one titled Report Summary – Attached.

  It was only fifteen pages, but the file took a minute to download on the Brigands’ sluggish Wi-Fi.

  ‘Wotcha looking at?’ Marion asked, as she peered over.

  Robin ignored her as the file popped open on a report summary page, and he read the introduction:

  This report sets out seven critical security flaws that make the Locksley High Street branch of Captain Cash highly vulnerable to online fraud and real-world theft.

  Section B lists twenty-three additional issues that require less urgent attention …

  ‘Critical security flaws,’ Marion read. ‘How’d you get hold of that?’

  ‘Working at Locksley Learning Centre didn’t pay much, so Dad also freelanced as a security consultant,’ Robin explained. ‘He wrote this report last year, but King Corporation were too cheap to act on any of his recommendations.’

  Marion’s eyes opened wide. ‘So there’s a way to rob Captain Cash?’

  Robin half smiled. ‘There might be, if I ever get a chance to read this report without you butting in …’

  43. LIPSTICK SMILEY BUTT

  Robin cracked a big yawn as he sat at one of the tables by the firepit, struggling to eat a giant breakfast bap filled with fried egg, thick-cut bacon and brown sauce.

  He’d sat up until eleven, studying his dad’s Captain Cash security report, visiting his favourite hacker websites and gathering enough info to put together the outline of a robbery plan.
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br />   It was almost nine, but the camp was dead apart from little kids, a man cooking breakfasts to order and a couple of bored women who’d come off overnight security detail.

  There were empty cans and bottles everywhere. One guy snored noisily in the spot where he’d passed out, and someone had pulled his jeans down and drawn a lipstick smiley face on his hairy butt cheek.

  A metal door crashed as Marion emerged from the toilet block.

  ‘Wow, I feel better for that!’ she announced cheerfully, as she glanced about. ‘Did Flash get his ass out of bed yet?’

  Robin nodded. ‘He said good morning and vanished into the bike shed.’

  Marion poured coffee from a flask and put a ton of cream and sugar in. After a couple of mouthfuls, Flash rolled out of the shed on a whirring lime-green dirt bike.

  ‘Eco-Cross Warrior!’ Marion laughed, reading the logo on the bike frame as Flash pulled up in near silence. ‘It suits you.’

  Flash looked like he’d had too good a time the night before, with gluey eyes and squashed curls.

  ‘Bikes should sound like thunder and have flames painted on them,’ Flash explained to Robin. ‘But electric bikes are almost silent, so they’re nifty for moving around the forest without tipping off every outlaw, Ranger and Castle Guard within half a kilometre.’

  Flash used a spider strap to secure Robin’s bow and Marion’s backpack over the rear wheel. Since Marion had longer arms, she got to wrap herself around Flash’s waist and Robin became the meat in the sandwich, squashed between the two siblings with his head turned sideways to breathe.

  Luckily there was only ten minutes riding a bumpy forest trail before they broke out onto a dirt road.

  With two passengers and luggage, Flash drove sensibly, and the only other traffic was a motor-rickshaw straining to pull a trailer piled with illegally cut timber.

  The final stretch towards Locksley was steeply uphill. Flash stopped at the edge of a small lookout area with spots for six cars. It had been built for its spectacular vista over the forest, but the picnic tables had rotted, the coin-operated binoculars were smashed and thieves had forced open the cashboxes.