CHERUB: People's Republic (34 page)

Amy laughed. ‘Whatever happens I promise not to make you eat any onions.’

43. SUPPLY

CHERUB agents miss out on regular schooling when they’re away on missions and they have to catch up with Saturday morning lessons.

Ryan felt a sense of dread as he packed his books for history, maths and English literature. He hadn’t been able to understand most of the maths homework and he was relying on summaries he’d found on the web to make up for only having read fifteen pages of
To Kill a Mockingbird
.

In between breakfast and history class Ryan had to take Ning across to the medical centre where she’d begin her recruitment tests. It was a drizzly morning with a biting wind.

‘Campus seems bigger without the buggy,’ Ning noted, as she rubbed goosebumps on her bare arms.

‘You can’t get training hoodies in orange,’ Ryan said. ‘But the tests will warm you up.’

The medical unit was state-of-the-art and included a six-bed hospital ward, a dental suite and a sports medicine facility used for fitness assessments and rehabilitating the kind of injuries CHERUB agents commonly pick up in training.

‘Good morning,’ Dr Kessler said, with a thick German accent. ‘Two more recruits for the mincer, eh?’

‘Two?’ Ning said, as Kessler led them down a short corridor.

The sports medicine and fitness testing facilities were similar to ones Ning had been in at Dandong National Sports Academy. Amy was already in the examination room and Dr Kessler bit her head off for sitting on a worktop.

‘This is a medical facility,’ he yelled. ‘Your bottom may look very nice, but it does not belong on my sterile work surface.’

Amy put on an
I’m sorry
face as she jumped down. The other person in the room was a boy who looked about ten. He wore the same boots, trousers and orange shirt as Ning. He had a slim build, with glossy black hair and a Mediterranean complexion.

‘Ning, this is Carlos. Carlos, Ning,’ Amy said. ‘You’ll be going through all the recruitment tests together.’

Carlos was shy and it took a nudge from Amy to get him to come forward and shake Ning’s hand. Ning felt sorry for Carlos as she studied his slim wrist and long slender fingers with chewed nails.

‘Good luck,’ Ning said.

Carlos narrowed his eyes. ‘I don’t believe in luck,’ he said.

Ning thought Carlos sounded arrogant, but she was keen to make nice so she smiled and said, ‘Maybe you’re right.’

Dr Kessler glared at Ryan and Amy. ‘If you see Lottie the nurse on your way
out
of my medical unit, tell her to come immediately.’

Amy and Ryan took the hint about leaving and exchanged smiles as they headed into the hallway.

Ryan wagged his finger at Amy and mocked Dr Kessler’s voice. ‘You will not sit on my sterile surface. If you do I’ll have you shot by the Gestapo.’

‘Kessler’s Jewish,’ Amy said. ‘I wouldn’t make any Nazi cracks in front of him, unless you want to end up with a thermometer up your butt next time you stop by to get your blisters popped.’

‘Good call,’ Ryan said, laughing as he and Amy backed up to the wall to let Lottie the nurse get by. She was pushing a trolley laden with heart monitoring equipment and two rather sinister-looking sets of pincers that were used for muscle biopsies.

‘Kessler’s waiting for you,’ Amy told Lottie.

‘He’s a grumpy old sod,’ the nurse said. ‘And he wonders why everyone quits.’

A cold gust blasted Amy and Ryan as they passed through the automatic exit doors. The rain was coming down quite hard as they set off along a gravel path towards the main building.

‘The height obstacle’s gonna be tricky in this weather,’ Ryan said, as he looked up at a darkening sky. ‘And Ning didn’t seem keen on heights.’

‘If you haven’t got plans I was hoping you’d come over to the mission control building,’ said Amy. ‘I need someone with half a brain to bounce ideas off.’

Ryan reached over his shoulder and thumped on his book-laden pack. ‘I’ve got lessons.’

Amy smiled. ‘It’s funny how you forget stuff. I used to
loathe
Saturday morning lessons, but I haven’t even thought about them since I left campus.’

‘When you get as old as you are, it’s only natural for the mind to start going.’

‘Watch it, cheeky,’ Amy said, as she gave Ryan a little dig in the ribs.

‘I’m happy to help,’ Ryan said. ‘But I’ll have to clear skipping lessons with my handler.’

The rain started blasting in marble-sized balls as Ryan took out his phone. He pulled his hood up as he spoke to Meryl, but by the time she’d agreed to let him help, Amy had jogged about thirty metres ahead.

‘She’s good,’ Ryan said, when he’d caught up. ‘What are we brainstorming?’

‘Football kits,’ Amy said cryptically. ‘But I’m getting bloody soaked, so let’s leave it until we get to mission control, eh? Race you.’

Before Ryan could answer Amy bolted off along the gravel path. It was a kilometre from the medical unit to mission control, but they were both in shape and ran at a good pace. Ryan won, but only because he was prepared to get muddy by crossing the grass, while Amy stuck to gravel.

When they got into mission control they were sodden and breathless. Ryan stood inside the main entrance unlacing his muddy boots as Lauren Adams walked towards them.

She adopted a sarcastic tone. ‘Oooh, is it raining out?’

‘You’ve noticed,’ Amy said. ‘Anything exciting happening?’

Lauren shook her head. ‘Nice and dull, which is good because I’m trying to revise my AS physics. Ewart’s gone to get a late breakfast, I’m manning phones in case an agent calls in with an emergency.’

‘Are there any towels around here?’ Amy asked, as she flicked water out of her hair.

‘I’ll grab a wodge of paper ones from the bathroom,’ Lauren said. ‘Just listen out for any calls in the control room.’

As Lauren hurried off to the bathroom, Ryan peeled the soggy bottoms of his trousers away from his legs. When he looked around, Amy was pulling her T-shirt over her head and her wet bra left little to the imagination.

‘Stop perving,’ Lauren said loudly, as she walked out of the bathroom.

‘I wasn’t,’ Ryan said, turning red.

Once they’d done the best they could drying off, Ryan and Amy walked to the operations centre in the middle of the building. One or two mission controllers were always on duty here, providing emergency support for mission controllers and agents in the field.

Because it was always in use, the operations centre never got tidied properly and there were mounds of paperwork, coffee cups, broken computer components and Post-its spread over six workstations arranged in a semicircle under a double-height ceiling.

‘OK,’ Amy said, as she stood by a white marker board mounted on a side wall. ‘Last night I used a hypnosis technique on Ning. She mentioned seeing a photograph on the wall in an office. Two muddy boys, aged between ten and twelve. They were wearing football kits: maroon and orange hooped socks, maroon shorts and orange shirts. The shirts also had a logo, which Ning described as a
square smiling cartoon
.’

Ryan sat in one of the office chairs, rocking it from side to side as he faced Amy. Lauren was further away with her face in a physics textbook, but half listening to what Amy had said.

‘Why’s the kit so important?’ Ryan asked.

‘Because if we can identify the team that these boys play for, we can get their names. Once we have their names we can find out where they live and who their parents are. Once we know that we can find out who Daddy is and where Daddy works.’

‘At least maroon and orange is unusual,’ Ryan said. ‘Millions of football teams must wear red and black, or blue and white, but who plays in maroon and orange?’

Amy nodded and wrote
maroon and orange
on the whiteboard.

‘How do we know it’s football?’ Lauren asked. ‘I mean. What if it’s rugby, or hockey?’

‘Fair point,’ Amy said, as she added
Rugby?
and
Hockey?
to the board. ‘Although it makes our task harder, not easier.’

Lauren laughed. ‘Sometimes the truth hurts.’

‘You said the boys were muddy,’ Ryan said. ‘Which makes rugby more likely. And hooped socks are quite common for rugby teams.’

‘What happens when you Google football teams?’ Lauren asked.

‘I had a quick mess with the web,’ Amy said. ‘You get thousands of random teams. I tried searching for
orange and maroon kit
too and all I got was a Sydney rugby union side.’

‘And the Internet’s not geographical,’ Ryan said. ‘You can’t narrow your search down to teams in specific areas, unless you know an exact place name. But what about local newspapers? You know, they always report kids’ football matches and have team photos and stuff. We know the approximate area where Ning was. We could get copies of local newspapers from all around. There might be a hundred or so and you’d have to go through lots of back issues. It would take a while, but it’s far from impossible.’

‘Worth thinking about,’ Amy agreed, as she wrote
local newspaper archives
on the whiteboard. ‘I suppose you could even try calling the newspapers up, because a local sports correspondent might know which teams play in which colours.’

‘But you’d tip people off that we’re looking,’ Lauren said.

‘I don’t think that’s critical,’ Amy said. ‘We can easily find an excuse. Say we’re police looking for a young burglar or mugger seen wearing those colours, something like that.’

‘What about the sponsor’s logo?’ Ryan asked. ‘Like, I know you can’t type
square cartoon man
into Google, but there must be a place where trademarks are kept. And they must be indexed somehow.’

‘Long shot,’ Amy said. ‘But that’s what brainstorming’s all about.’

As Amy wrote
trademark registry?
on the whiteboard, Lauren shot out of her seat.

‘I played under-nines’ football before I joined CHERUB,’ she said excitedly. ‘My mum ordered a kit and got this local shop to sponsor us, in return for which she agreed to stop robbing them.’

Ryan looked confused. ‘What was your mum, a stick-up merchant?’

Lauren laughed. ‘She ran the biggest shoplifting gang in London. And none of that really matters.’

‘So what are you getting all excited about?’ Amy asked.

‘Kit suppliers,’ Lauren said, as she typed
football kit suppliers
into the computer in front of her. ‘My mum ordered three or four catalogues, I can remember looking at them, picking out the colours.’

‘I get it,’ Ryan said. ‘There are tens of thousands of kids’ football teams in the country. Hundreds of leagues, hundreds of local newspapers, hundreds of schools, youth clubs and churches that run them, but you’re saying there are probably only a dozen or so companies that supply printed football kits. And most of them would have records of who they’ve sold kits to and what colours they were.’

Amy broke into a smile. ‘Nice one, Lauren,’ she said, as she wrote
KIT SUPPLIERS!!!
up on the board. ‘And if it’s like most businesses, the market for kits is dominated by a few big companies. If we can identify the biggest kit suppliers, then get them to send us a list of everyone who’s ordered an orange and maroon kit in the past five years, there’s a decent chance we’ll locate the team we’re looking for.’

‘I’m extracting a list of—’ Lauren began, but a phone rang before she could finish and she reached out to grab it. ‘Unicorn Tyre Repair, how may I help you?’

As Lauren dealt with a stricken CHERUB agent at the other end of the country, Amy stepped across to Ryan.

‘We’ll get a list of kit suppliers off Google,’ Amy said. ‘Then we’ll crosscheck company names against Companies’ House business records, so that we can pick out the ones with the biggest financial turnover. Then we’ll start making phone calls, starting with the biggest and working our way down.’

‘A lot might be closed on a Saturday,’ Ryan said.

Amy nodded. ‘But I’d still like to get on with this. We’ll get the company directors’ names and crosscheck against bank databases to get home addresses and contact details. I don’t care if they’re golfing, sailing their boat or visiting Granny. We’ll find out who sells orange and maroon football kits, then who’s been ordering them and where they play.’

‘Might take a while tracking all these people down,’ Ryan said.

Amy nodded in agreement. ‘You got any mates who wouldn’t mind getting out of Saturday morning lessons?’

44. TREADMILL

Dr Kessler’s idea of a little pinch was closer to Ning’s idea of complete agony, but the small piece of muscle tissue that had been removed from her thigh would give a wealth of information on her physical potential when stained and viewed under a microscope.