‘Agnes, what happened?’
‘I’d just started my 3 a.m. shift,’ Agnes began, before sniffling. ‘I heard bikes and a Subaru truck. I figured they were stopping for fuel, but there was a big crash as someone kicked in the side door.
‘The company trains us to do whatever robbers say if there’s a raid, but there was this one guy they were calling Flash. He was really creepy and he punched me and threatened to hurt me, even though all I did was kneel down and let them handcuff me to that shelving unit over there.’
‘How many robbers were there?’ Susan asked.
‘Four, maybe five,’ Agnes lied. ‘At first they were calm. I recognised Robin Hood because he had a bow and arrow. He opened the cash machine and it was all calm.
‘But when that dye exploded, his gang started fighting and arguing. I was scared because a gun went off. And one of the women tried to say something to Robin, but he went berserk and shot her for no reason. That’s why there’s drips of blood everywhere.’
‘And then they left?’
Agnes nodded. ‘They kept arguing. One of them drove the truck into the bikes they had parked outside, smashing them up. I was left on my own, still handcuffed to the shelf unit. After they left, I managed to lift the metal shelves off, so I could pull the cuffs over the top and set myself free.’
‘And you’re still wearing the cuffs?’
Agnes held her wrist up to show the camera. ‘The Forest Rangers gave me a hot drink and blanket to calm my nerves, and there’s a locksmith on the way to cut these off.’
‘Finally, do you have any message for Robin Hood and the other robbers?’ Susan asked.
‘I am a totally peaceful person,’ Agnes said, cracking a wholesome smile. ‘I’ve been working here part-time, saving money for when I start university in September. I know there are a lot of problems around Sherwood, but robbing only makes that worse.’
‘Powerful words,’ Susan said, as she gave the camera a solemn look. ‘And now back to Kewpie in the studio.’
20. WHERE ARE YOU, BUTTFACE?
Marion was steaming at Robin, but even more furious that nobody believed a word she said. It was now eight in the morning and she’d already been through everything once with her mum Indio. Now Azeem had come down from the roof with a message that Will Scarlock wanted to speak to Marion in the command tent.
‘It’s better to be honest,’ Indio told Marion gently as they followed Azeem up wooden steps to the roof.
Inside the tent, Will was dressed in a tank top and pyjama bottoms, while two screens that normally displayed security footage had been switched to Channel Fourteen and News 24.
News 24 had a reporter standing outside Seven Stars Service Station. Marion noticed three satellite vans and more reporters and camera operators in the background, along with half a dozen orange Forest Ranger trucks. The scrolling news ticker beneath said: POLICE HUNT FOR ROBIN HOOD – SUSPECTS COVERED IN PINK DYE.
‘This has made an interesting start to my day,’ Will said, drinking coffee from a Stop Climate Change mug as he faced Marion and Indio across the big planning table. ‘So, Marion, tell us what you know.’
‘You’re not in trouble, sweetie,’ Indio added. ‘But it’s vital we find Robin and Flash before the Forest Rangers do.’
‘Mum, I’m not lying!’ Marion growled. ‘For the fifth time!’
‘Let’s stay calm,’ Will said soothingly. ‘Tell us what happened.’
Marion rolled her eyes. ‘I woke up about quarter to six. I was thirsty, so I went to find my water bottle. When I walked past Robin’s bed he wasn’t there. I figured he’d gone to pee in the bucket outside, because sometimes the squeaky door hinges wake me up.
‘Then I noticed his stuff was gone. Boots, phone, bow. I wasn’t worried. Karma and Finn are often up early, so I thought he’d probably gone down to have breakfast with them. But when I checked outside, the motion sensor at the top of the escalator hadn’t been switched off. And I was, like, That’s weird.
‘So I turned it off and walked down. As I got there two security blokes were arriving, looking for Robin because they’d seen the story on Channel Fourteen and didn’t believe it.’
Will placed his elbows on the table and gave Marion a serious stare. ‘I’m not saying I don’t believe you, but I don’t understand how Robin could have left the sports store without someone turning off the motion sensors and turning them back on after.’
‘You and Robin are tight,’ Azeem added. ‘This must have taken a lot of planning.’
Marion thumped furiously on the table. ‘I know none of you believe me. You say he can’t have got out without my help. All I can say is, it’s Robin Hood. He climbs like a cat, he hacks computers, and here . . .’
Marion dramatically unlocked her phone and looked upset as she slid it across the table.
‘Look at all my emails, my messages to Robin. There’s no conspiracy, right up to this morning when I texted him: Where are you buttface?
‘The only thing I know is, Flash came to him about a week ago with some idea. I told Robin not to get involved. I love my big brother, but he’s no genius.’
Will nodded slowly. He’d known Marion since she was a toddler, and thought she was an honest person.
‘I believe you,’ he said.
Marion scowled back at her mum. ‘Glad someone does.’
Indio put her arm on Marion’s back, but she batted it off and spoke to Will. ‘Do you think we’ll find them?’
‘Sherwood is immense,’ Will said. ‘We don’t have manpower for a search, but neither do the Forest Rangers.’
As he finished saying this, his walkie-talkie blasted to life.
‘This is the watchtower. We have eyeballs on two males approaching via the south parking lot. I think it’s our boys.’
Will pulled the radio hooked on the waistband of his pyjamas. ‘Are you sure, Neil?’
A laugh crackled down the radio. ‘They’re extremely pink!’
21. HURL YA GUTS
As Marion followed Azeem and Will down from the rooftop tent, she imagined two versions of seeing Robin in her head.
In the first, she grabbed him and yelled, calling him an irresponsible little twerp and reminding him that she’d warned him not to get involved with Flash.
In the second version she just walked up and boxed him on the nose.
But when Marion saw the two failed robbers stumble into Designer Outlets from the disused southern end of the mall, her rage was replaced by pity. Flash looked exhausted and his nose was a bloody mess. Robin could barely walk and the bits of his skin that weren’t neon pink were ghost white.
‘Robin keeps puking,’ Flash told Will. ‘Says his head hurts and he can hardly walk in a straight line.’
Will was more interested in speaking to the guard who’d let them in, getting the watchtower to confirm that the boys hadn’t been tailed by Forest Rangers, or worse.
‘You both need Dr Gladys,’ Azeem said, then grabbed Robin around the waist and threw him easily over her shoulder. ‘Marion, grab Robin’s gear.’
Marion grunted as she grabbed the stuff, which included two heavy assault rifles taken from the SWU.
‘I want a guard on these two until they’ve been questioned,’ Will told his radio, as he caught up.
Other mall residents saw Flash and Robin and gave chase. They’d seen the news reports and fired questions about what had happened.
‘Why did you slap that nice girl Agnes around?’ an elderly woman asked Flash furiously.
‘Just a teenager saving for university. You should be ashamed of yourself!’ another disgusted voice added.
Flash looked baffled.
‘Let’s get them out of sight,’ Will said anxiously, as they neared the clinic.
The clinic was built in the remains of a high-end clothing store. Government hospitals weren’t allowed to treat refugees or anyone without identity documents, so it was the only medical facility available for thousands of Forest People. It
ran on donations, with three nurses and a single elderly doctor, who was tiny, blunt and close to celebrating her eighty-fourth birthday.
Azeem kicked the door of a waiting area crammed with twenty non-urgent patients, many of them kids who all seemed to be screaming. As Flash staggered in behind, they went through another swinging door into a triage area.
‘Are there any beds?’ Azeem shouted as she glanced around. There were a dozen patients bedded in a small ward off to one side, and four more occupied beds lined against the walls of an area that was supposed to be used for examinations.
‘He’ll have to go on the examination table,’ a nurse said, as he rushed by holding a drip bag.
Azeem carried Robin through to a side room, where a couple of elderly patients sat in chairs. She laid him on two tables pushed together with a yoga mat on top.
‘I feel sick again,’ Robin moaned.
‘Make way!’ Dr Gladys shouted, pushing past Will, Marion and Azeem. ‘Why are you all back here? I’m running a clinic, not a blasted circus!’
She turned to Robin. ‘Feel sick?’ she asked.
‘Yeah,’ Robin croaked. ‘But my stomach’s empty, so I just retch. And my head is throbbing so bad.’
The doctor showed zero sympathy. ‘That’s what you get for running off doing daft things and worrying everyone silly!’
She rocked Robin’s head side to side, squinted as she shone a light into his left ear, then experimentally scratched at the pink stuff crusted to his skin.
‘How’s your balance?’
‘Wobbly,’ Robin answered.
‘Your inner ear contains cells called otoconia that control balance,’ the doctor explained. ‘When your ear gets blocked or infected, they stop working. We’ll get a nurse to scoop out as much pink stuff as we can, then flush the rest with a syringe.’
‘Is that painful?’ Robin asked.
‘Not as painful as what you deserve,’ Dr Gladys said, before stepping outside and giving Flash an even briefer examination. ‘Broken nose! Buy painkillers from the pharmacy and make an appointment to have it reset if you don’t like how it looks when the swelling goes down.’
22. THRILL-SEEKING PERSONALITY
With only two nurses on duty and a ton of patients with problems more serious than a clogged ear, Robin had to wait five queasy hours before a nurse had time to sort him out. When he was finally free to go, his head throbbed, his feet were horribly blistered from walking in wet boots and he had a giant swelling where his elbow thumped the floor behind the sandwich counter.
But the pain wasn’t as bad as Robin’s sense of shame. He needed a towel and clean clothes before he could take a shower. He tried sneaking into the sports store and up to his den without being spotted, but Otto was charging around, pulling Finn in a wooden cart, and Karma was keeping an eye on them.
‘Marion says she’s not talking to you,’ Karma told Robin. ‘I downloaded a product safety sheet from a company that makes dye packs. It says the pink will dissolve with a mixture of washing-up liquid and lemon juice. I mixed a batch and put it up by your bed in the clear bottle, with a couple of scouring pads.’
‘Thanks,’ Robin said. ‘Is Flash around?’
‘There was a rumour that some Brigands have snuck into the mall to sort him out,’ Karma explained. ‘I think he cleaned up, then went into hiding.’
After getting his stuff, Robin headed up to the roof and took the longest shower of his life. Scraping the pink stuff off his skin wasn’t too bad, though the wiry pads and strong detergent left his skin raw. Hair was the nightmare, because the dye had dried in clumps like marshmallow that had to be picked out, and Karma’s cleaning mix contained lemon juice, which he knew all about when a tiny bit got in his eye.
After a zombielike walk back to his den, Robin saw that Marion had taken her bedding and the rest of her stuff back downstairs. He’d missed a whole night’s sleep, but his mind kept going when he lay on his bed, so he moved to the sofa and felt sorry for himself as he flicked on the aged TV for the early-evening news.
The good thing was that two viewers who’d seen Agnes in earlier bulletins remembered her from a Sherwood Women’s Union kidnapping and called Channel Fourteen to say she wasn’t the innocent gas-station attendant she’d claimed to be in her TV interview.
The bad was that Agnes heard she’d been rumbled before the Forest Rangers. She’d knocked out a radio journalist while he was taking a leak and escaped in his car.
As Robin watched he used the last drops of Karma’s cleaning solution to clean his bow, then found a small screwdriver and used it to disassemble his busted laptop. The inside was full of trapped pinkish water and it was clearly beyond repair.
But Robin knew the metal platters that hold data inside hard-disk drives have an airtight seal, so his hacking tools, passwords and family photos ought to be retrievable. He used his phone to search for water-damaged hard drive.
According to YouTube tutorials, the best technique was to seal the damaged hard drive in an airtight box filled with grains of uncooked rice. After a day, the rice would have absorbed all the moisture from the circuits and you could recover your data. Both videos warned about the dangers of powering up the drive too soon, because a single drip of water could be enough to cause a short-circuit and kill the unit.
Robin undid more screws, pulled a plug and retrieved the playing-card-sized hard drive. As he dried the worst of the moisture on an old T-shirt, he figured he’d be able to get a plastic box and some rice if he went to the Maid family den downstairs. But they’d probably be having dinner and he dreaded facing everyone. Especially Marion.
He’d spent ten minutes working up the nerve to go downstairs when he heard boots on the escalator.
‘Can I come in?’ Will Scarlock asked.
‘Free country,’ Robin said warily.
In addition to noticing Will’s horrendous brown teeth, Robin spotted that he was holding a screw-top bottle filled with a creamy orange liquid and a zip-up pouch under one arm.
Robin shuffled over so Will could join him on the sofa.
‘Mango lassi,’ Will said as he passed Robin the bottle. ‘Indio said it’s one of your favourites. And there’s curry and rice downstairs if you’re hungry.’
Robin was thirsty and took two gulps of the sweet yoghurt drink.
‘I’m really sorry I caused everyone trouble,’ he said weakly, as he wiped a creamy moustache with his little finger.
‘I’ve got five kids, including four lads,’ Will said warmly. ‘Neo’s the youngest and he’s grown up now. I like to think I know a bit about raising boys, but my four all made big mistakes along the way.’
‘As bad as me?’ Robin asked.
‘Sam was the wildest,’ Will admitted. ‘Though he didn’t make it to the TV news. My point is, experience has taught me that yelling and punishing your kids doesn’t do much. The important thing is to work out why a mistake happened and make sure everyone learns from it.
‘Robin, I’m not a psychologist, but I think you have what they call a thrill-seeking personality. You’re clever, you’re independent, but you get bored easily and you love taking risks, whether it’s dropping a skateboard off a crazy ramp, or robbing a cash machine. Do you know the worst thing you can do to a thrill seeker?’
He paused, but Robin didn’t know the answer and kept staring into his lassi.
‘You’re like a big ball of energy,’ Will said. ‘When Gisborne put that fat bounty on your head, Indio and I saw the danger you were in and did everything we could to keep you safe. But by not letting you have any independence, we made you so crazy that . . .’
Robin finished Will’s sentence. ‘I ran off and did something super-dumb.’
Will laughed and slapped Robin on the back. ‘I’m not saying you’re not responsible for what happened. But it’s our fault too, because we didn’t listen to your needs.’
‘Does this mean I’m not getting punished?’ Robin asked hopefully.
‘In your drea
ms, pal!’ Will said, clapping his hands and switching to a harsher tone. ‘You can catch up on sleep tomorrow, but for a month after that you’re gonna be up at six every morning, feeding chickens, collecting eggs and cleaning crap out of their sheds.’
‘I deserve it,’ Robin admitted.
‘But I’ve spoken with Karma and Indio. We’re going to let you be more involved in things and try to help you make better decisions. I’ll probably never be able to give you as much freedom as you want, because you’re a crazy twelve-year-old with a bounty on your head. But I promise we’ll listen and try to stop you dying of boredom.’
As Robin nodded, Will held out the pouch he’d brought in under his arm.
‘I got what you asked for,’ he said. ‘Details of Sherwood Castle’s IT systems, from my source.’
‘That was quick,’ Robin said, as he pointed awkwardly towards the damp computer parts. ‘But I’ll need a new laptop. There’s only so much you can do with a phone.’
‘Your share from the Captain Cash job is upstairs in the safe,’ Will said, as he stood up from the little sofa. ‘Let me know how much you need, and don’t be scared to go downstairs and grab some food. You’re not Indio and Karma’s favourite person right now, but you’ve got to eat.’
‘Is Marion down there?’ Robin asked.
‘She is, and I suggest you be careful,’ Will said, cracking a big smile as he headed out of Robin’s den. ‘Marion has her father’s temper and she said something about kicking the little twerp’s butt.
PART III
NEARLY THREE WEEKS LATER
23. DEAD POSH SCHOOL RUN
The Jackson Pollock splatter painting in the white stone hallway of Sheriff Marjorie’s penthouse was worth fifty times more than the entire crumbling Hood homestead where Little John had lived for the first sixteen years of his life.
His mother’s wealth also bought a robot dog, a thirty-seat home cinema, balconies with spectacular views over Sherwood’s green canopy, twenty-four-hour room service and access to the resort’s pool, spa and gym.
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