Marjorie aimed a hand towards the door. ‘I have no beef with you, Robin. You can walk away, but my offer of protection expires when I leave this room. If Gisborne catches you, that’s your problem. If Rangers arrest you, that’s your problem. If you get sick and need a hospital, that’s your problem.’
‘Don’t be like Dad,’ Little John begged. ‘Swallow your pride and take what’s on offer.’
Robin felt boiling hot, with sweat streaking down his neck and a lump in his throat.
He was afraid of Gisborne, and this was probably the only way he could ever be safe. He reckoned he could tolerate the new name and the boarding school, but the idea of accepting Marjorie’s offer didn’t feel right and his brain was in tangles until the reason finally snapped into focus:
Sheriff Marjorie is a terrible person.
She’ll do whatever it takes to get what she wants, and she admits she doesn’t care about me … If I accept the offer, she’ll own me. Go to a school she picks. Spend holidays with people she picks. If I get in trouble, I answer to her. If I want anything, I have to ask her.
The idea of going back to the mall with Marion and seeing people like Indio and Will made Robin feel good. Being in a strange place where he didn’t know a soul and Sheriff Marjorie pulled all the strings felt like a black hole.
‘Thanks for thinking up a plan to help me,’ Robin told Marjorie. ‘But my answer is no.’
Marjorie seemed relieved, because looking after any kid is a pain and she’d saved six years of boarding-school fees. But Little John looked furious.
‘See you at your funeral, dumbass,’ he growled, then shook his head as he followed his mum outside.
47. ONE DASH OF EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL
Tybalt’s nose was a bloody mess and Marion called a taxi because there was no way he could drive. Robin had disappeared, and she found him in front of the museum, slumped on a bench facing swaying reed beds in the adjoining nature reserve.
‘I wish my mum was still around,’ Robin sniffed.
Marion didn’t know what to say, but put an arm around Robin’s back while keeping a wary eye out. The area wasn’t busy, but Robin’s face had been on the news and the front of the museum faced a wooden boardwalk where people jogged or passed through when they took toddlers to feed ducks in the reserve.
‘We can’t stay in the open, Robin,’ Marion said gently. ‘Let’s head back to Designer Outlets. You’ll feel less stressed once you’ve cleaned up. We can find some nice food on the roof and watch a movie or something.’
Robin looked up sharply, rubbing soggy eyes then shaking his head determinedly.
‘I want to do stuff, not watch stuff,’ he said firmly. ‘I need money to help my dad.’
‘You’re in the wrong frame of mind,’ Marion said. ‘Show your plan to Will. He’s done heaps of robberies.’
‘Stick-ups with guns isn’t hacking,’ Robin said. ‘That’s like comparing boxing with chess.’
Marion sighed and gave him another squeeze.
‘If you’re backing out, I’ll do the robbery on my own,’ Robin said. ‘Locksley has eighty thousand empty houses I can hide in overnight. Could you meet me and take me back to Designer Outlets in the morning?’
Marion smiled. ‘You do tend to fall into ravines when I’m not guiding you.’
Robin looked at her with pleading eyes, and Marion softened because his expression and his dirty face were adorable …
‘Fine, I’ll help with your stupid robbery,’ she groaned. ‘But if I get busted and wind up in juvenile boot camp with some brute making me do push-ups in mud, you’ll be totally off my friends list.’
48. DROP IN ON AN OLD PAL
While most of Locksley crumbled, a couple of smart new developments had cropped up on the outskirts, providing modern homes for people like the Chief of Police, the CEO of Locksley Redevelopment Corporation and a variety of clean-cut folks shipped in to make Gisborne’s front companies look respectable.
One such house, with a Spanish colonial vibe and a Range Rover on the driveway, belonged to Nasha Adale, the controller of Locksley’s public bus system. Her oldest child, Alan, had just finished a dreary Monday afternoon at Locksley High and he was curious about a slight gym-locker smell as he slotted his key in the front door.
‘Hey,’ Robin whispered.
Alan jumped back, then glanced around and saw his long-term friend and a girl with striking blue eyes squatting behind shrubs.
‘Made me jump,’ Alan moaned, then smiled. ‘Good to know you’re alive.’
‘This is Marion,’ Robin said. ‘Are you home alone?’
Alan nodded. ‘Mum picks my sister up from rugby practice and gets in about six o’clock. Dad’ll be home a while after that.’
‘Perfect,’ Robin said, as he stepped towards the open front door.
Alan blocked his path into an immaculate white-tiled hallway. ‘Not in those boots. You gotta come around the side.’
He jogged into the house, out through sliding patio doors at the back and took the bolt off a gate at the side of the house.
‘My parents will figure if you trail muck everywhere,’ Alan explained. ‘We had Locksley P.D. here asking me questions about your habits. My ma is tight with Gisborne’s people and she’s lecturing me: If you know about that hoodlum boy Robin Hood, you tell the police or there’ll be big trouble!’
‘Please don’t snitch.’ Robin smiled, knowing his oldest friend wouldn’t.
Marion hadn’t seen this kind of house before and gawped as she walked past the hot exterior blast from air conditioners and into a garden with a pool and a trendy wood-fired oven.
‘Use the pool shower,’ Alan said, pointing to a slatted wooden cage up against the back of the house. ‘I’ll grab towels.’
Marion showered first. Robin gave her a spare T-shirt from his bag of clothes, but it was short, so Alan found some shorts and a two-seasons-old Macondo United shirt that fitted her fine.
Alan and Marion sat with their feet in the pool eating chips and dip, while Robin shampooed twice to get all the mud out of his hair.
‘Your dad still got that 3D printer?’ Robin asked, reaching down to grab chips as he towelled off.
‘In the garage, with all the other junk he never uses.’
The two boys headed to a triple garage, home to jet skis, an electric piano, hunting gear and soccer goals.
‘You printing keys for another robbery?’ Alan asked. ‘Hope it works better than your fiasco in Mr Barclay’s office …’
Robin almost swallowed his tongue and was thankful Marion had stayed out by the pool.
‘Don’t mention that,’ Robin hissed. ‘Marion thinks I know what I’m doing.’
‘Poor deluded creature.’ Alan laughed, then took the cube-shaped printer upstairs to his room, where it wouldn’t immediately get spotted if a parent arrived home freakishly early.
3D printers are fiddly to set up. Robin’s hacker pal had hooked him up with the digital design for a tool that engineers use to open cash machines, but the printer’s error light kept flashing, until Robin realised Alan’s dad hadn’t run the cleaning procedure after the only time he’d used it.
After ten minutes unscrewing a nozzle and picking chunks of melted plastic out of the filament dispenser, Robin started his print job and headed downstairs, where Alan and Marion had crashed in front of a true-life car-chase show called Triple-Digit Speed.
‘You know the graffiti wall behind the gym at school?’ Alan asked.
‘Sure.’ Robin nodded as his eyes hunted for his half-drunk tin of Rage Cola.
‘There’s a massive new mural,’ Alan said. ‘It says Robin Hood Lives. And the double-o in Hood is drawn like a pair of balls with an arrow sticking out of them.’
Marion laughed so hard that her feet flew up in the air. ‘Seriously?’
‘Get out of town,’ Robin said, as he flopped over a couch.
‘You’ve attained legend status,’ Alan said. ‘I’ll take a picture next time I go
around there.’
‘How much longer for your 3D lever thingy to print?’ Marion asked.
‘Half an hour if it doesn’t crash,’ Robin said, as a car on the TV smashed through a barrier and got obliterated by a truck going the opposite way.
‘You guys can stick around till just before six,’ Alan said. ‘But you’ll have to give me time to clear towels and stuff. Cos I’m a dead man if my parents find out you were here.’
‘Yeah,’ Robin said, shaking his head slowly. ‘You’re the one whose life is in danger …’
49. THE LOVELY SHIMMERING UNICORN
It’s hard sneaking around a busy part of town when your face has been all over the news. But Robin was short, and Alan’s ten-year-old sister was above average height, so he slipped nicely into her striped leggings, pink Converse All Stars and a lemon hoodie with a shimmering unicorn on the front.
His scruffy hair passed for girly once Marion swept it back, fixed a couple of hair grips in it and packed the mess under a baseball cap.
‘It’s not that funny,’ Robin protested, as Alan rolled around his bedroom floor clutching his sides and claiming that he was going to die.
‘I think he’s got a great bum for leggings,’ Marion grinned.
Marion’s battered forest boots looked wrong with Alan’s shorts and hockey shirt. He had clown feet and his sister’s shoes were too small, but Alan dug some suitably sized Nikes out of years-old junk at the bottom of his wardrobe.
Alan gave hugs and wished them luck when they left. Nobody batted an eye at two girls riding a city bus into the centre of Locksley.
After stepping off at the semi-derelict transit terminal, they took a short walk, hiding Marion’s wooden bow and Robin’s heavy bag of clothes on an overgrown lot behind Hipsta Donut.
Then they split up, Marion heading for Locksley’s civic square six blocks west, and Robin cutting through nettles into the back lot of Hipsta’s. He caught a dose of nerves and the stupid jingle as he stepped through the automatic doors of Captain Cash.
Don’t take fright when money’s tight …
‘We close in eight minutes,’ the security officer warned Robin as he swept into the main part of the store.
He’d assumed it would be quiet this near closing time, but the place was a zoo, busier than when he’d visited with his dad.
He walked between rows of cabinets, lowering his gaze when he passed Rhongomaiwenua, unlocking a sliding glass panel and retrieving an Xbox controller for a kid with a cast on his wrist.
‘This is your last one ever,’ his mum warned. ‘You can’t hurl the pad every time you lose …’
It was quieter at the rear of the store, where the two ATMs stood back to back and glass cabinets gave way to raised platforms displaying larger items like lawnmowers and kid-sized electric cars.
Robin spent a few minutes pretending to be interested in a box filled with wetsuits, while two toddlers tussled over the driver’s seat of a mini police car.
‘This store is now closed,’ a recorded announcement began. ‘Please leave the premises, or move to the front of the store to purchase your items. Captain Cash is available twenty-four hours a day online. So why not check us out …’
A dad came over and retrieved the two kids. After a backwards glance down the row of cabinets, Robin ducked through a rack of used skis and squatted in a shadowy gap between a ride-on mower and the box of wetsuits.
50. MA ON THE WARPATH
Locksley Civic Square was dominated by City Hall, a grand affair built in the days when property taxes gushed in from giant auto makers. Now the windows were cracked and dirty and the elaborate rooftop clock shaped like a car’s front grille was stuck at half past two.
The sun was dipping as Marion hid in an alcove on marble steps leading up to Locksley Art Gallery’s permanently boarded entrance. It felt tense, with more people milling around than you’d expect two hours after Central Court and City Hall closed. New graffiti had just been sprayed at the base of the statue of town founder Winston Locksley:
END POLICE CORRUPTION
Indio had sent her daughter five increasingly fraught texts and Marion took a deep breath before playing her mum’s latest voicemail.
‘Marion, you are pushing your luck!’ Indio snapped. ‘I don’t know what you and Robin are up to, but it’s a quarter past seven and Tybalt said he left you at lunchtime. I demand to know where you are. I got your text telling me not to worry, but three words is not good enough! Stop dodging my calls and ring me the instant you get this.’
Marion shuddered as she tapped five to delete.
Indio was worried, and Marion didn’t like lying. But her mum would only get madder if she called back and explained that she was hiding at the edge of Civic Square waiting for trouble to break out, at which point she’d call Robin, so he could use the fact that all the cops would be distracted to help stage a robbery …
Another message pinged. This one from Marion’s brother, Flash.
Why do you want to know when the trouble is starting?
Your old lady is going bonkers, calling everyone asking if they’ve seen you.
Marion groaned as she texted back:
PLEASE tell me when it is supposed to kick off.
I’ll explain why tomorrow.
Flash replied immediately.
Any minute now
Indio’s gonna ground you for a month.
Marion texted back:
Cheers for answering
I’m betting three months :-)
Marion smiled at her own joke, but felt stressed. Even if everything went to plan, she’d still be in big trouble.
She wondered if she was an idiot as she tilted her head up and saw the beginning of sunset. Robin was cool, but she was putting her head on the chopping block for someone she’d known less than a week.
When she looked back down Marion noticed heaps of people marching into the square via an archway between the office buildings. There were a few people she recognised, including the woman who sprinted towards the centre of the square and fearlessly climbed Sir Winston Locksley with a long flag draped over her back.
An ominous rumbling came from outside the square as Marion tapped her phone and found Robin’s name, so she was ready to message him. There were now more than a hundred Forest People in the square, with more coming from all directions.
A half-brick got lobbed through one of City Hall’s windows and a cheer went up as the flag unfurled, tied around Sir Winston’s neck. The flag had a tree with branches shaped like a fist and the slogan:
FOREST SCUM BITES BACK!
Marion felt proud seeing her people standing up for themselves. She wanted to run down the gallery steps and join the mob, but she had a job to do and sent a message to Robin.
Kicking off now. Looks EPIC!
Some of the Forest People moving into the centre of the square were chanting Robin Hood and hurling ripe plums at an office occupied by one of Gisborne’s companies, but their chants were drowned out when the ominous noise grew deafening.
Black Bess roared into the square, blasting its horn as it skimmed the bottom of the steps a few metres from Marion’s alcove.
It mounted the pavement and drove in a wide arc, sending protestors scattering as it picked up speed, then went straight for the steel-and-glass facade of Locksley Central Court.
Marion gasped as the enormous bull bars of Gisborne’s stolen ride smashed through plate glass into the court lobby, obliterating X-ray barriers and skidding to a halt near the foot of an escalator.
The courthouse alarms had erupted, and cop sirens were getting closer.
Marion was supposed to sprint back and help Robin, but she was engrossed as Black Bess’s engine cut. Then shocked when two young men jumped out.
They wore ice-hockey masks, but Marion knew her brother from his posture and swaggering walk. She wasn’t sure whether to feel proud or horrified.
‘Everyone get back,’ Flash yelled into the square.
H
is passenger ran over shattered glass and vanished into the crowd, while Flash took a mini gas blowtorch from his trouser pocket, lit the flame and tossed it into the back of the SUV. They must have sprayed fuel inside, because the whole interior flared instantly, and Flash almost got hit by a whoosh of flame venting through the side window.
‘Gisborne, you suck!’ he shouted, before scrambling out to back-slapping rapture from the crowd.
Gisborne’s car burning in the lobby of Locksley’s corrupt courthouse felt like a perfect symbol of protest and sent the crowd into a frenzy. Some smashed glass and sprayed graffiti. Others charged up the steps of City Hall, trying to force their way inside.
51. MEANWHILE, SIX BLOCKS EAST
Robin sat dead still, staring at his leggings and pink Converse as the day’s final customers cashed cheques and loaded a used treadmill into a truck. A security guard walked every aisle, picking a lost cardigan off the floor and sticking her head into the customer bathroom. But she didn’t stoop low enough to see the twelve-year-old hiding.
Isla the manager was the last out, switching off ceiling lights but leaving the ones inside the glass cabinets. Robin turned slightly, so he could see as she set the intruder alarm. Once outside, Isla slammed the shutter over the main entrance and drove away in the last car on the lot.
Now the alarm’s motion sensors were armed, Robin had to be even more careful not to move. He stared at the burner phone he’d picked up in his dad’s office, waiting for Marion’s message, unsure whether he’d be there for minutes or hours.
His back ached, the leggings itched and a flashing red light coming from the sign on top of Hipsta Donut gave his hiding place a seedy vibe. Then he got a bleep.
Kicking off now. Looks EPIC!
‘All right,’ Robin said, peeling the leggings away from his bum as he scrambled out of hiding.
He put on cleaning gloves to hide fingerprints, then stepped between the skis and made two strides before the alarm box by the main entrance triggered. The box buzzed gently, allowing thirty seconds to enter a code before the main bell erupted and an automated call went to Locksley P.D.
Robin Hood Page 14