CHERUB: People's Republic (11 page)

Story continues, page 2–3

More on the Slave Master inside

Full list of arrests and wanted suspects, page 3.

Star Editorial – Fu Chaoxiang must face death penalty, page 6.

One of Fu’s victims speaks out – My four years of hell as Amsterdam sex slave, page 4–5.

Ning felt like she’d been smashed in the face with a brick. Part of her wanted to read on, but she could barely see through the tears welling in her eyes. If the article was true, the man who’d clutched her to his chest on water slides, bought her presents, flown to Chongqing to watch her box and cried when she lost on a split decision, was an evil criminal.

At the top of page three the number for the Dandong police hotline was printed in giant red text. Below it was a bank of small head shots.
If you see these people call immediately
.

The pictures were arranged in order of importance, and each one had a caption. In the top row were two communist party officials, listed as missing. Ingrid was in the third row:
Fu’s wife, wanted for questioning
. Ning reckoned Ingrid would be a higher priority by now, because they’d have found the two dead cops. Wei’s picture was at the bottom of the page and he was described as a henchman rather than a driver.

The next spread was dominated by a victim’s story. A battered-looking woman of thirty with a sombre expression and a half-European baby in her arms. Ning couldn’t bear to read on. She abandoned the drink and burger, folded the two newspapers under her arm and stormed back to confront Ingrid.

She was still snoring, enveloped in sweaty bedding and vodka fumes. Ning furiously opened the small cabinet between the two double beds. She grabbed the gun Ingrid had put there in case the cops showed up, then reached under the covers and pinched Ingrid’s nostrils.

‘Is it true?’ Ning shouted, stepping back from the bed with the loaded pistol aimed at Ingrid’s head.

Ingrid rubbed her palm across her face, hung over and barely aware of the shout or gun.

‘What’s up, babes?’ Ingrid said.

She still hadn’t seen the gun as Ning threw the two newspapers at her face.

‘Is this true?’ Ning shouted again. ‘Tell me the truth, or I swear I’ll kill you.’

Ingrid’s eyes found focus. She saw the gun and the newspaper headline in the same instant and sprang backwards, knocking the bedside lamp with her elbow.

‘It’s complicated,’ Ingrid said. ‘Put the gun down, eh? It might go off.’

Ning shook her head. ‘If it goes off, it
won’t
be an accident. You’ve both been lying to me for years. How could you even live with Dad, if you knew he was doing all this stuff?’

‘I didn’t know,’ Ingrid said, spooked by Ning’s intense stare and the gun less than a metre from her face.

‘Liar,’ Ning shouted. ‘If you didn’t know, why did you go on the run as soon as Dad was arrested? And the money and guns hidden in the cot. You must have known about those.’

‘Let me speak, Ning. But take a step back and point the gun down, OK? You can still shoot me, but I don’t want any accidents.’

Ning saw sense in Ingrid’s argument. She backed up to her bed and sat with the gun in her lap as Ingrid started to explain.

‘I know what you’re thinking: What kind of woman can live with a man who treats other women like property? But you’ve got to understand, I didn’t find out like you just did. It was gradual.

‘When I met Chaoxiang I worked as an exotic dancer at a club in Dalian. I grew up with bugger all. Only thing I’ve ever had in my favour was big tits and a nice arse, and Chaoxiang likes girls with a curvy Western figure.

‘He turned my life into a movie. Suddenly I was being driven around in fancy wheels. Casinos in Hainan, shopping sprees in Shanghai, jewellery worth more than my dad earned in his whole life.

‘I knew your stepdad brought girls into some of the clubs, but after I got married I gradually learned more, mainly because your stepdad used my British citizenship to set up companies to avoid tax and regulations.’

‘So you turned a blind eye,’ Ning spat. ‘As long as you got to spend your share of the money, you didn’t care what happened to all those innocent girls.’

‘Most of ’em aren’t as innocent as they make out,’ Ingrid said. ‘A lot of them do OK. Find husbands abroad, send money home to their families.’

Ning recoiled at Ingrid’s attempt to justify. ‘But even if one woman was forced to do all that awful stuff against her will, that’s one too many. And what about little kids getting sold to paedophiles? How much jewellery did that buy you?’

‘I don’t know about that,’ Ingrid said, as she shuddered and batted away the newspaper. ‘I never would have stood for that. And you’re forgetting one thing, Ning. Chaoxiang loves both of us.’

Ning let go of the gun and rubbed her eyes. ‘I don’t love him any more.’

‘Then who else is there?’ Ingrid said softly, as she slid forward on the bed and put her feet on the floor tiles close to Ning’s. ‘You hate your stepdad and you want to shoot me. What does that leave you with?’

Ning sobbed as she placed the gun back in the cabinet and slid the drawer shut.

‘I’ve got nothing left,’ Ning admitted, as tears streaked down her face.

‘You and me both, pet,’ Ingrid said. ‘I was the one that picked you at the orphanage. Chaoxiang had his eyes on this stick insect in a frilly dress. But I liked you: a little wild thing, rumbling with all the boys in a tracksuit so dirty it could have stood up on its own. I saw myself in you.’

Ning smiled a little. She’d heard the orphanage story before, but it always came up when her stepdad was around and he’d furiously deny all knowledge of the girl in the frilly dress. But then he’d get a cheeky smile on his face and give Ning a cuddle and say that maybe he had at the time, but that Ingrid had made the right choice.

The memory made Ning realise that love didn’t have an off switch. She loved her stepdad, no matter what he’d done or what they called him in the papers. She’d probably never see him again. She’d been sobbing for a while, but now she started to cry properly. Ingrid switched beds and gave Ning a squeeze.

‘It’s you and me now, babes,’ Ingrid said. ‘Once we’re out of China I can lay hands on some of the cash that was put in my name. We’ll go back to Britain and make a new start.’

13. HYPE

Ryan felt lonely as he queued for tater-tots, pizza sticks and peanut butter crackers. In ordinary circumstances he’d have a group of friends by now, but he had to remain a loner to stand any chance of befriending Ethan.

With a dollar and eighty cents swiped from his lunch card, Ryan took his moulded plastic tray and sat as near Sal and Guillermo as he could. You could barely hear yourself speak, let alone a group sitting two tables across who used Spanish half the time, but Ryan could tell they were talking about the locker room incident.

Guillermo was hot-headed and none too bright, but Sal was the real bad boy. He’d not changed out of his grey PE shirt and he had big sweat stains under his arms as he stood up from the table, making a dramatic throttling gesture.

Ryan noted chunky calves, and tightness in Sal’s biceps, suggesting strength training, perhaps for wrestling or American football.

‘I’ll wring Ethan’s little chicken neck,’ Sal said. ‘After school we’re gonna be right in his shit!’

But to Ryan’s eyes, the
we’re
part of Sal’s talk looked weak. The boys around Sal were entertained by his rant, but they were a bunch of average seventh graders: up for watching a bit of random violence, but unlikely to risk getting into serious trouble.

One lad warned Sal that he’d be expelled not suspended this time and even Guillermo didn’t seem keen now that he had his phone back and his temper had cooled.

When Ryan had seen what he needed to, he binned his last two pizza sticks and headed out of the cafeteria. Twin Lakes didn’t allow kids to use phones at lunchtime, but there were never any teachers around to enforce it once you moved out of the cafeteria. He jogged between girls playing soccer on the all-weather pitch, sat with his back to a wire fence and pushed a wireless headset into his ear.

‘Rybo,’ Amy said when she answered. ‘How’s the master plan?’

‘Don’t
you
start calling me Rybo,’ he said irritably. ‘I bloody hate that. Listen, I didn’t get to save Ethan in the locker room, but it might all be kicking off after school. Are you home? Can you still log into Twin Lakes’ school records?’

‘I’ve had logins for your school’s database since we hacked the system to make sure you got put in Ethan’s class. I just need to run inside.’

‘You’re out on the beach?’ Ryan asked, as he heard the distinctive creak of the beach shower door. ‘Nice life for some.’

‘Right,’ Amy said, giving a commentary on her actions. ‘The Mac’s coming out of sleep mode. Googling Twin Lakes Middle School.
Contact Us, Enrolment, Sports, Departments, Latest News, Calendar
– a-ha –
Secure File Access
. Safari has remembered all the passwords from last time I logged in. So what is it you’d like to know?’

‘The first thing I need is anything you have on a kid called Sal,’ Ryan said. ‘He’s a seventh grader, either in class 7B or 7F.’

‘Searching for Sal,’ Amy said. ‘There’s a Salvatore in 7B and a Salvador in 7F. Salvador is twelve years old. He was allowed to skip fifth grade as part of a gifted programme. Reports show straight As.’

‘I’m looking for a baddie,’ Ryan said. ‘Read the other one.’

After a pause, Amy laughed. ‘Is this bad enough for you? Salvatore, enrolled at Twin Lakes December fifth after expulsion from Mission Hill. He’s got about a hundred lines of discipline notes already. His attendance rate is less than sixty per cent.’

‘Is there anything about sports?’ Ryan asked. ‘He’s bigger then me so if it turns out he’s a kickboxing champ or something I’d really like to know before I start a punch-up.’

‘He was removed from the wrestling squad. Coach’s reason:
Persistent violation of attendance code and poor attitude
.’

‘Wrestlers don’t punch or kick,’ Ryan said. ‘I can deal with that as long as I don’t let him get close.’

‘This isn’t so good,’ Amy said. ‘It says Sal was recommended for expulsion less than three weeks ago after being found on school premises with a knife. On appeal the school board reduced it to a final warning and a suspension.’

Ryan tutted. ‘Shit.’

‘Want me to call in a bomb scare?’ Amy said, only half joking.

‘I can probably handle it. But last period is a seventh-grade elective, so I need to know where everyone’s gonna be.’

Amy sounded confused. ‘What, like picking the class representative?’

‘Not election, elec
tive
. Lessons you pick yourself, remember I got stuck with Chorus because I was a late enrolment?’

‘And you sing so nicely in the bath now,’ Amy said.

‘You’re a ball of laughs today,’ Ryan said acidly. ‘I need to know what electives Ethan, Yannis, Sal and Guillermo have, because I have to be in the right place when fisticuffs start.’

‘Understood,’ Amy said. ‘I need to access the seventh-grade timetables. Ethan and Yannis are together – no surprise – in Spanish, classroom L8. Guillermo is in Family and Consumer Science, room G9 and Sal is in Writers’ Workshop, room G16.’

Ryan laughed. ‘You have to wonder how Sal’s novel is coming along.’

‘So where are you?’

‘I’m in the music block, which is as far from Writers’ Workshop and Spanish as you can get. So I’m gonna have to sprint from the music room. With any luck I’ll be able to catch Sal and Guillermo as they leave G building, and be on the spot when they get their mitts on Ethan and Yannis.’

*

The rumours were flying in fourth period Science class.
The big fight. Crazed bunch of Latinos fighting Ethan and Yannis. Maybe knives. Maybe a group of tough white kids turning it into a full-blown race war
.

Bored kids can make a big deal out of anything. Ryan knew it was mostly hype, but the talk didn’t do his nerves any good. This was the biggest mission of his CHERUB career and even with all his combat training, a big muscly kid like Sal would be no walkover.

Ryan heard no rumours in fifth period because he was lined up with sixteen other kids, holding copies of a songbook called
Middle School Gershwin
and repeatedly droning a version of
I Got Plenty O’ Nuttin
while the old granny who taught chorus kept telling them to
Rip into it
or
Show more passion
.

And then it was show time. Ryan muscled his way to the door and burst out on the first pip. Last lesson on a Friday put a spring in everyone’s step and he wasn’t the only kid anxious not to miss the fight.