CHERUB: The Recruit Read Online Free PDF

carried the bin-liners out to the minibus, James had a quick last look into every room of the flat he’d lived in since he was born. By the time he reached the front door he had tears on his face.
    Kevin tapped the horn of the minibus. He’d already started the engine. James ignored him and went back one last time. He couldn’t leave the flat without a memento of his mum. He rushed upstairs to her room and looked around.
    James remembered that when he was a toddler he used to sit at his mum’s dressing table after they’d shared a bath. She’d pull a pyjama top over his head then stand over him and brush his hair. It was before Lauren was born. Just the two of them, feeling tired and smelling of shampoo. James felt warm and sad. He found the battered wooden hairbrush and tucked it into the waistband of his tracksuit bottoms. Once he had the brush it felt easier to leave.

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    James realised he was stupid. He should have left a bit of cash in the safe. That way Ron would never know he’d been in there. Leaving the photo was a nice gag, but Ron would realise James had taken the money when he saw it. He might try and steal the money back. And if Ron was angry he’d make it ten times harder for James to visit Lauren.
    *
     
    Kevin found James a room and showed him the ropes. Like where the washing machines were and where he could get toiletries and stuff, then left him to unpack. The room had a bed, a chest of drawers, a wardrobe with a locker on each side and two writing desks under the window. The kid who lived on the other side had decorated his wall with Korn and Slipknot posters. There was a skateboard on the floor and boarder clothes hung neatly in the wardrobe: baggy cargos, a hooded top and T-shirts with Pornstar and Gravis logos on them. Whoever James’ roommate was, he looked pretty cool. The other good thing was that the kid had a portable TV on his desk, meaning they could use the Playstation.
    James looked at his watch. He reckoned there was about an hour until his room-mate got out of school. James got the cash out of the bin-liner. It was all £50 and £20 notes, separated into bundles by elastic bands. He counted a couple and realised each bundle was £1,000. There were forty-three bundles.
    James thought of a way to hide the money in case Ron came after it. He had a portable cassette radio from the flat. It was wrecked; half the buttons had broken and the tape player didn’t rewind. James had only taken it because Ron had stolen the good one with a CD player on it.
    James rummaged through his bags of stuff until he found his Swiss army knife. He picked out the screwdriver and undid the back of his cassette player. The inside was all circuit boards and wires. James worked fast, taking the guts out of the player, unscrewing and snapping plastic, leaving only the bits you could see from the front, like the speaker and the slot where the tape went in. He stuffed all but £4,000 of the cash inside the hole, packing the money tight so it didn’t rattle. He screwed the back on again and slid the radio cassette into his locker.
    James took the four odd £1,000 bundles and hid them in obvious places: the back pocket of a pair of jeans, inside a shoe, inside a book. He peeled a hundred off the last bundle to use as walking-around money and taped the rest to the inside of his locker.
    The idea was, if Ron tried to break into James’ room he’d find £4,000 easily and never realise there was £39,000 more stuffed inside a cassette radio so crummy looking even Ron wouldn’t steal it.
    James filled the locker with the rest of his valuables. He banged it shut and put the padlock key on a cord around his neck. He couldn’t be bothered unpacking anything else. He threw as many bags as he could in the wardrobe and kicked what was left under his bed.
    Then he slumped on his bare mattress, staring at the wall. There were hundreds of pin holes and blobs of blu-tack where previous kids had decorated the walls.