'Sounds fair,' Ryan agreed. 'I'll help my brothers. And then we'll be even?'

'Thereabouts,' Trey said. 'And of course, I want the six hundred you took from Oli as well.'

Ryan smiled as he pulled an envelope out of his jacket.

'Your bullet and six hundred quid.'

Trey s.n.a.t.c.hed the envelope. 'Tomorrow after school,' he said firmly, wagging a finger. 'And you'd better not be spreading word about my address. Next time you wanna see me, you call the taxi office and you make an appointment like everyone else.'

19. SQUELCH.

Monty was barely out of his teens, greasy hair and stick thin.

'Fine mess you boys made,' he said, as he unlocked the door marked Sunray Travel Agents and flicked on the lights.

The trashed office hummed with the noise of two dehumidifier units, sucking moisture out of the air, down long pipes and draining into the toilet. Ryan's first couple of steps were OK, but his trainer squelched carpet on the third.

'You gotta clean all the damaged stuff out,' Monty said, as he crossed the wet floor and pointed into the print room. 'All this soggy paper's gotta go downstairs to the rubbish, then the carpet tiles gotta be taken up.'

Dumping the paper didn't take long, but the carpet tiles were h.e.l.l. Crawling around the damp floor on their knees, each lad started in a corner with a Stanley knife and a wallpaper sc.r.a.per. Some tiles came up with a hard tug, but where there was a lot of glue the tiles ripped apart and had to be sc.r.a.ped off piece by piece.

After twenty minutes, Ryan had lifted nine tiles out of more than four hundred. His jeans were soaked, knees and elbows hurt, and his fingers were all gummed with the brown paste used to stick the tiles to the floor.

'You boys better pick up the pace,' Monty noted, as he opened up to let in a smartly dressed service engineer.

Ryan worked along the edge of the part.i.tion separating the desked area from the print room and watched as the engineer stripped down the giant printer.

'They're not designed to have water thrown on them,' the engineer told Monty. 'This machine is a wreck. You'll be better off buying a new or reconditioned machine.'

'No,' Monty said. 'We have a big job for early next week. The machine has to be up and running.'

The engineer nodded sympathetically. 'We have a demonstration unit in our showroom, which we'll be more than happy to make available to you for your printing needs. Then we can have the new 950L model shipped in by the end of next week.'

Monty sighed and thumped the machine. 'We need this machine working by Tuesday. I'll pay you cash to work through the weekend.'

'You'll also get fluorescent printing and full two-year warranty on a 950L,' the engineer continued.

Monty looked panicked as he pointed at the door. 'My boss wants this place cleaned up and running smooth when his boss comes through that door on Tuesday afternoon.'

The engineer stepped back, wiping toner dust from his fingertips on to a rag. 'I'd love to help, but I could work on this machine for a week with no guarantee it'll run again. These things just aren't designed to have water poured inside them.'

The boys kept ripping carpet as Monty showed the engineer out of the building.

'So the mysterious Uncle's gonna show his face here on Tuesday,' Daniel whispered.

'Sounds that way,' Ryan agreed.

Like most things, there was a knack to pulling carpet tiles and by nine the boys had cleared more than half the floor. Monty worked at the back of the room using the Mac Pro to design new menus for a local restaurant.

As the boys worked, they placed listening devices under all the desks, including specially designed low-frequency microphones that were ideal for recording keystrokes. Although tapping any key on a keyboard sounds the same to a human ear, sophisticated listening software can detect a slightly different sonic signature for every key and then use simple decoding techniques to work out what is being typed.

It was past ten and the Sharma brothers had done three-quarters of the carpet tiles when Monty sent them to the shop downstairs.

'Are we getting off soon?' Leon whinged. 'My knees are screwed from crawling around.'

The answer was no. A caged flatbed truck had reversed on to the pavement out front. An overalled man had unlocked the shop's metal shutters, and the boys were shocked by the mess as they stepped inside.

It had been a convenience store, filled with scruffy metal shelving racks, for food, magazines and stuff. At the rear there was a big empty s.p.a.ce where there had once been fridges selling milk and beer.

The ceiling bulged where floodwater had collected from the floor above. To the left, part of the ceiling had collapsed completely, leaving a hole big enough to climb through and a run of dangling strip lights. Water had drained from the vinyl floor, but it had filtered through concrete and plaster to get here, leaving a layer of pinkish silt over everything.

The overalled man was a giant, with knockout body odour and BEAST tattooed across his knuckles.

'If it's metal it goes on the truck,' Beast explained, ill.u.s.trating the point by pounding a metal shelf so hard that it buckled before crashing to the floor. 'Wanna get home before one. So I'm working hard and you're working hard. Dig?'

'Dig,' Leon said, earning a scowl for daring to grin slightly.

The noise was mad as the three boys and Beast tore into the shop fittings, ripping out shelves and bashing ones that wouldn't budge with rubber mallets. By the end the brothers had little cuts all over their hands and sweat-soaked clothes smeared in plaster dust.

'Need one lad to help unload at the other end,' Beast announced. 'Other two can p.i.s.s off home.'

Ryan was the oldest and, since he'd not yet registered at the local college, he didn't have school in the morning. It was close to midnight, so there was little traffic as the truck headed north out of the city. The metal shelving up back crashed over every b.u.mp, and even though Ryan was past smelling like a rose garden himself, he gagged at the stale sweat smell coming off Beast's filthy overall.

'You know Trey?' Beast asked.

'Met him once,' Ryan said, as the truck pulled on to the A41, heading east out of the city.

Beast grunted. 'Trey thinks he can pull the wool over Uncle's eyes. Better to own up in my book.'

'Sure,' Ryan agreed.

'Specially since Uncle's tight with Trey's dad. Worst Trey will get is a kicking.'

'Don't know all the ins and outs,' Ryan said, looking out as a motorbike shot by, doing at least a hundred. 'He'll kill himself.'

'Son's got a bike,' Beast admitted, smiling slightly. 'I said to him, if you crash and break your legs, don't come running to me.'

It was a bad joke but Ryan laughed, because Beast knew stuff that he wanted to hear.

'What does Uncle do exactly?' Ryan asked.

'Fingers in a lot of pies,' Beast explained. 'If you're loyal he's a top man. I'm not the sharpest, but I've been alongside him twenty years, man and boy. Started at the sc.r.a.pyard straight out of school, 'bout a month after me. Now, Uncle owns the joint and I'm still out in the truck, picking up sc.r.a.p.'

They turned off the ring road and hurtled down a rutted track that set all the metal in the back rattling and jarred all the bits of Ryan's body that hurt after six hours' graft. Inside was like the sc.r.a.pyard scene from Breaking Bad and every other thriller Ryan had ever seen, with stacked-up cars and red London buses awaiting their last ride.

'Got the biggest car shredder in Europe down there,' Beast said proudly, as he pointed out left into darkness. 'Have to shut it down at night 'cos the estate lot what lives behind moan about the noise. Back in the old days we used to smack down anyone who complained to the council, but Uncle makes us behave ourselves these days.'

Beast roared with laughter as he stopped abruptly, then reversed up to a mound of random sc.r.a.p. The pair climbed in the back cage and spent ten minutes throwing out the metal shelves.

'Is there a toilet?' Ryan asked.

Beast laughed. 'Don't stand on ceremony, son.'

As Ryan peed on sc.r.a.p, Beast headed towards a pair of cabins and unlocked a door. The first cabin was some sort of site office, filled with staff lockers and safety gear. The second was more modern, with blinds at the window and an air conditioner on the roof.

'Is that Uncle's office?' Ryan asked, as Beast came out and started locking the other hut.

'Never stays in one place for long,' Beast explained, as he handed Ryan a half-litre bottle of cola. It was cold to touch.

'Worked hard,' Beast said, as Ryan downed half the bottle in four gulps.

'Got any jobs here?' Ryan asked. 'Anything that pays? I'm young, but I'll pull my weight.'

'No chance,' Beast said, as he locked up his truck before setting off towards a battered BMW. 'Besides, a lad your age should be studying.'

Ryan moved to get in the pa.s.senger side, but Beast shook his head.

'I ain't your taxi service,' Beast grunted. 'You'll pick up a night bus from the stop at the end of Savoy Crescent. And don't hang around, 'cos there's a few guard dogs on the loose in here.'

Beast floored the gas, spinning up his back wheels and flailing Ryan with grit. Ryan had been hot all night, but now the breeze caught sweat-soaked jeans and hoodie. He considered investigating the huts, maybe even picking a lock and having a rummage. But CHERUB teaches you never to act without preparation.

Ryan batted a clump of mud off his cheek, and double-tapped his earlobe to activate the microphone on his com unit as he set off at a jog.

'You there, James?' Ryan asked. 'Did you catch all that?'

James laughed. 'Sounded like progress to me, pal. You OK?'

'I'm trashed,' Ryan said. 'Can you pick me up?'

'Last time you rode on the back of my motorbike you said it was the most terrifying experience of your whole life,' James noted. 'And that you'd never ride with me again.'

Ryan reached the electronic gate and realised that Beast had shut it behind him. Glancing around, he found a tear in the fence close by.

'Well you're still alive,' Ryan noted. 'So I guess your riding isn't that deadly.'

20. BAGS.

It was past 3 a.m. by the time James dropped Ryan back at Nurtrust and filed a detailed report so that staff on campus could start doing background research. He still looked tired the following noon, as he walked into a Costa Coffee in central Birmingham and spotted an Asian woman. She had tight-cropped hair and wore dayglo Nikes and leggings, like she'd be heading towards the gym.

'Tanisha?' James asked, as he approached holding freshly squeezed orange and a triple espresso. 'Can I get you something?'

'I'm good,' Tanisha said.

'Thanks for meeting at short notice,' James said, as he settled on a leatherette bench and laid a doc.u.ment pouch on the table. 'Are you good friends with Inspector Patel?'

Tanisha smiled. 'Aisha started off as a community support officer, back when I was a junior scribbler for the East Birmingham Echo. We got to know each other quite well.'

'Inspector Patel said you're the person to talk to if you want to know about Uncle. She said you wrote articles about him, most of which weren't published.'

Tanisha raised a hand and sounded blunt. 'Who are you?'

James pulled a credit-card-sized ID out of his wallet. It showed him as a detective inspector with the Metropolitan Police.

'And who are you really with?' Tanisha said, smirking.

'That's a genuine ID,' James said defensively. 'Look at the hologram.'

'I know they fast-track graduates in the Met, but how old are you? Twenty-five, tops.'

James s.n.a.t.c.hed back his Met Police ID and swapped it for his real one.

'Her Majesty's Intelligence Service,' Tanisha read. 'So you want to know if Uncle is a radical, sending all that racketeering money back to Islamic State in Syria or wherever?'

'Is he?' James asked, before glugging his orange juice.

Tanisha laughed. 'The answer is complex.'

'Story of my life,' James grinned.

'Uncle or Martin Jones to use his proper name ...'

'Is that his real birth name?'

'Uncle was born in 1968, when racism was far more out in the open than it is today,' Tanisha explained. 'Welsh mother, Pakistani father. They decided to give him an English first name and use his mother's surname.

'There's not much remarkable about his childhood. Parents ran a shop in North Wales, and moved to Birmingham when Uncle was ten. He was a tough lad. Got in trouble with the law. Spent time in borstal, two kids by the age of nineteen.'

'Religious?'

Tanisha shrugged. 'Not until he married his second wife, who was Muslim. He built up a little crew that hit the big time during the taxi wars in the eighties.'

'Taxi wars?' James asked.