CHERUB: Shadow Wave (17 page)

Aizat stopped behind her. ‘Are you mad at me?’ he asked.

Helena turned, with a stiff expression and her long arms folded. ‘I don’t see what good it does us. Wrecking cars just makes people mad.’

‘Maybe,’ Aizat shrugged, as he moved closer to the water and let the incoming wave wash up over his own trainers. ‘Then again, if everyone who was angry like I am damaged something, or stole a few thousand dollars’ worth of property, places like the Regency Plaza wouldn’t exist. Why shouldn’t I fill a truck up with petrol drums and drive the bastard straight into the Regency Plaza reception?’

‘Because you’d either get burned to death or spend the rest of your life in prison,’ Helena said bitterly. ‘You’d probably take half a dozen low-paid hotel staff with you. The insurance company would pay to rebuild the reception and Tan Abdullah wouldn’t miss a beat.’

‘Probably,’ Aizat said, before erupting in a dry laugh. ‘But what good have all your articles and campaigns ever done? Have you ever actually achieved
anything,
sitting in your office typing words?’

Helena threw up her hands with frustration as Aizat stepped closer to her.

‘What do I know?’ she shouted. ‘Bugger it, go and kill yourself. Not that you need my permission anyway. I just came out here to try and help with your campaign. Maybe get you some publicity, but if you don’t want my help I’ll go back to my hotel. I can use the spa, take my stupid bloody golf lessons while some perv photographer leers at my arse, write my thousand-word puff piece for the travel supplement and forget all about this crazy shit.’

‘Has anyone ever told you that you look sexy when you’re angry?’ Aizat grinned.

This comment threw Helena completely off her train of thought. ‘That is
such
an awful pick-up line,’ she said, laughing.

‘So what do you want to do?’ Aizat asked. ‘Are you going to help us or not? Isn’t that the whole reason you scammed this free trip off the newspaper?’

Helena shrugged as she began strolling through the surf. ‘To be honest Aizat, I feel out of my depth. I came here to help some seventeen-year-old kid to kick-start his campaign, but you’re more sorted than I’ll ever be, with your little thieving scam, and kids looking out for spies.’

‘People have always said I’m mature,’ Aizat noted. ‘Didn’t have a lot of choice really. No parents and a seventy-year-old granny who’s a sweetheart, but also the kind of person who’ll give her last scrap of food to a stray dog and forget that she’s got two hungry kids coming home from school in an hour’s time.’

‘Actually,’ Helena said resolutely. ‘You asked me what I want to do. Well right now my head is spinning and the only thing I want to do is go back to my hotel room and get blitzed on all the free booze.’

Helena opened one eye. She was hanging over the side of the king-sized bed with her legs tangled up in the duvet. Her head was pounding and her mouth tasted like sour milk.

Someone was banging on the door. ‘Miss Bayliss?’

‘What?’ she shouted irritably. ‘You’ve got the wrong room. I didn’t order anything.’

She wondered if it was the photographer, or the golf instructor, but the clock said it was nine and she wouldn’t have to endure that torture until noon.

‘It’s Michael Stephens, from Tourism Malaysia,’ the man explained. His accent was English public school. ‘Could I step into your room for a brief chat?’

‘I’m just having a … Hold on, let me put a robe on.’

‘No rush,’ Michael said calmly.

Helena sat up in bed. The mirror on the wardrobe caught her long hair, horribly tangled. Her soaked trainers had left a dark stain on the brand-new carpet. The shower was running and Aizat’s clothes were strewn over the floor.

She kicked his trainers under the bed, picked up his shorts and shirt and ran into the bathroom. It was a large space, with a jetted tub at one end and two sinks. Aizat was blasting himself in the shower cubicle at the far end.

‘Morning!’ he said cheerfully as he opened the shower door. ‘Are you coming in?’

He had the same triumphant morning-after expression as every other man Helena had ever slept with. She dumped his clothes on the slate floor, reached into the shower and shut off the water.

‘What the hell?’ Aizat protested, as streams of foam rolled down his chest.

‘You need to be quiet,’ she warned. ‘It’s a guy from Tourism Malaysia and he can’t know you’re here.’

She closed the bathroom door, hurriedly pulled on the hotel robe and rushed across the room to let Michael inside.

‘Sorry,’ she said, as she faked a yawn. ‘Jetlag
and
I’m a heavy sleeper. Did I miss something?’

Michael was a smoothie, dressed in a tailored linen suit and mirror-shined shoes. ‘I wanted a quick word,’ he said, as he glanced disapprovingly at the clothes, beer cans and half-drunk wine bottles strewn across the room. ‘Out on the balcony perhaps?’

‘Of course,’ Helena said.

She felt like a naughty little girl who was about to be told off as Michael settled into a chair on the balcony.

‘Is everything OK?’ Michael began.

‘It’s good,’ Helena agreed. ‘A really beautiful place.’

‘You went up to the resettlement camp with one of the locals,’ Michael said. ‘The security office was concerned for your safety.’

Helena realised this was going to be one of those conversations where nobody said what they really meant. Michael knew that she’d met with local activists who’d then trashed a car belonging to the hotel spy.

‘He seemed like a nice guy,’ Helena said. ‘I went out for a jog. We got chatting. He invited me up to his home. I suppose that’s a risk for a girl on her own in a strange place, but—’

Michael took some folded papers from the pocket of his suit. They were printouts of articles she’d written for the Guilt Trips website.

‘Are you the same Helena Bayliss who wrote these?’ Michael asked. ‘Because to be frank, Tourism Malaysia doesn’t have a good relationship with this organisation.’

Helena combed her fingers through her hair and tried to laugh it off. ‘I finished university less than a year ago. I’m trying to get a full-time job on a newspaper. A friend of mine recommended that I work for Guilt Trips as a way of adding to my CV. They pay for each article. Not a lot, but I’ve got rent and twenty grand of student debts. The big newspapers aren’t exactly battering down my door, so I take whatever work I can get.’

‘I see,’ Michael said suspiciously. ‘And it’s travel journalism that you want to work in?’

‘Oh yes,’ Helena agreed.

Michael gave a patronising wag of his finger. ‘It’s a small field,’ he warned. ‘Everyone knows everyone else. Your article must have been commissioned by Jane Baverstock.’

‘She’s my editor on this piece,’ Helena nodded.

‘Great lady,’ Michael smiled. ‘Jane and I go a long way back. We worked together for the New Zealand tourist board for a number of years. She’s a good contact to have if you want to get on as a travel journalist. You want to keep on the right side of her.’

Helena understood that Michael was making a veiled threat: if her article mentioned displaced villagers, his old pal Jane Baverstock wouldn’t publish it.

‘That’s why I’m really excited about doing this piece on the Regency Plaza,’ Helena said, as she pumped herself with false enthusiasm. ‘Up to now I’ve done all serious stuff. But this article, with the golf lesson angle, gives me a chance to show that I write lighter things as well.’

To Helena’s relief, Michael seemed to swallow this line and his tone became warmer. ‘So you won’t be writing about Langkawi for Guilt Trips?’ he asked.

Helena laughed the suggestion off. ‘I’ll be sticking to my brief from the newspaper.’

‘Sensible,’ Michael said stiffly. ‘And you know, there are a few whingers up in those jungle settlements, but most now earn good money working in the tourist industry and the Malaysian government has put a lot of money into their welfare. They’ve got clean water and electricity. Education, health programmes. None of that could happen without the money that tourism brings.’

Helena sighed with relief as Michael left the room. She wasn’t sure if he’d believed everything she said, but she reckoned the wannabee journalist act had at least bought some breathing space.

As she settled on the bed, feeling sick and headachy, Aizat emerged naked from the bathroom.

‘Did that dickhead say
health
programmes?’ he spluttered angrily. ‘My grandma nearly died up there. Half the kids in the resettlement camp had diarrhoea and vomiting. We’ve had no doctor and no plumber to look at our drains. In the end a group of relatives on the mainland clubbed together and paid a doctor to come out. I know because I brought him in my boat and picked up our medicines on the mainland when I brought him back.’

But Helena wasn’t listening. The trip wasn’t going the way she’d planned and she was in a state.

She’d imagined that she’d arrive, sneak off to meet Aizat and use her experience of campaigning for Guilt Trips to enthuse Aizat’s followers and revitalise their campaign. She’d then take her golf lessons and further her newspaper career by writing her bland travel supplement article and head home having accomplished two major goals.

Instead, she’d been rumbled by hotel security within minutes of stepping outside and found that the local campaigners had their own radical ideas. To make everything completely perfect, she’d got hopelessly drunk and slept with a seventeen-year-old.

The only good thing was that she was a long way from home and hopefully nobody who mattered would ever get to hear about it.

Over the next two days Helena took three golf lessons, made some useful contacts while dining and drinking with fellow journalists and tried not to feel guilty as she indulged in spa treatments, whirlpool baths and a speedboat tour around the island.

Her relationship with Aizat was awkward. He was cute, but she wasn’t going to sleep with him again. They exchanged a few texts and discussed meeting up one more time to talk about campaign strategies, but she didn’t speak properly to Aizat until he called her mobile at half-six on Saturday evening.

She was in her room, hair wrapped in a towel and trying to pick an outfit for the official hotel opening.

‘We need your help to get us into the hotel,’ Aizat explained.

Helena was alarmed at the prospect after what she’d seen happen to the Suzuki two nights earlier. ‘What are you planning to do, exactly?’ she asked. ‘They’ve brought in extra guards for all the celebrities. This place is sealed up tighter than a bank vault.’

Aizat laughed. ‘Have you ever watched
Star Wars?
You know, the plucky team of raiders going in to knock out the Death Star. That’s me, Noor and the gang in about three hours’ time.’

‘You’re not going to be violent, are you?’ Helena asked.

‘No violence,’ Aizat said. ‘But it’ll be hard getting out of the hotel with all this security. So we were thinking that some of us could hide out in your room for a bit and leave the hotel when things die down.’

Helena was torn. She’d come out here to help Aizat, but wasn’t sure how far he was prepared to go.

‘I don’t know,’ she said warily.

‘Words unmatched by deeds have no importance,’ Aizat said fiercely.

‘You’re quoting Che Guevara at me?’ Helena said. ‘At least you read the books I sent you.’

‘I think you’re getting soft, sitting up there with your free mini bar and your double quilted bathrobe.’

Helena sat on the corner of her bed and bit her bottom lip. Aizat was intense, compelling and more or less right. She’d been charmed by her surroundings and the comfortable lifestyles of older journalists, with their kids at public school and holiday cottages in Sicily. But did she really want to spend her life taking golf lessons and writing about restaurants?

‘Are you still there?’ Aizat asked.

‘Just thinking,’ Helena said eventually, before sighing. ‘OK, OK, of course I’ll help you.’

*

Helena came out of the lift and stepped into the Regency Plaza’s huge lobby. It was just after eight o’clock. The space was crowded and men in tuxedos walked their eyes up and down Helena’s long legs and shoulderless ivory dress.

‘You look stunning,’ Michael Stephens said. ‘Have you been enjoying your stay?’

‘Very much, thank you,’ Helena agreed. ‘Though I feel outgunned, surrounded by all these big diamonds and designer outfits.’

A black Bentley pulled up in front of the lobby. Flashguns popped as a vaguely familiar face and his girlfriend stepped out on to red carpet.

‘So who is he?’ Helena asked.

‘Not a golf fan, I take it,’ Michael laughed. ‘That’s Joe Wright-Newman. Currently ranked third in the world, winner of two major titles. How have your lessons been going, by the way?’

‘My shoulders are aching, but I’ve hit a few good drives. My teacher said I’m above average.’

Michael spotted someone across the lobby and broke into a big smile. ‘If you’ll excuse me Helena, duty calls.’

As Michael shook a fat man’s hand, Helena turned left out of the lobby. She walked along twenty metres of marble flooring, with lush palms and trickling water on either side, then swept her room key through an electronic reader. A large door slid open and she stepped outside into the hotel’s deserted pool complex.

She glanced at her watch, then strolled innocently along the poolside until she reached a women’s rest room. Noor stood inside a cubicle, dressed in a set of the blue and orange overalls worn by hotel maintenance staff.

‘That’s my spare,’ Helena explained, as she handed over a credit-card style key. ‘Is there anything else you need?’

‘Just this,’ Noor said. ‘Thank you.’

*

The opening ceremony required everyone to leave the hotel - which many of the guests had been staying in for the past three days - and line up behind a thick gold ribbon outside the hotel entrance. This ribbon was then cut simultaneously with five pairs of giant scissors held by Joe Wright-Newman, a famous opera singer, two Malaysian pop stars and governor Tan Abdullah.

After cheers and applause, four hundred guests filed into the hotel’s main dining-hall. Tan Abdullah was a small man who limped about on a crumbling hip joint, and he sat at the head table, which ran horizontal to all the others.