'What do you think you're doing?' James asked. 'You're not coming. No way.'

'Kerry asked for a third person.'

'You're not trained.'

'I'll ride along,' Lauren said. 'If Kerry doesn't want me, I'll look after the bikes.'

James knew how stubborn Lauren could be. He didn't have the time or energy to argue.

'Fine,' he said. 'But don't think I'm taking the rap for you if we get in trouble.'

'I'm ten years old,' Lauren said proudly. 'I can make my own decisions.'

14. CURRY.

There wasn't much traffic, but what there was drove dangerously fast. It took twenty minutes to ride across to the industrial park. Thunderfoods had a full car park and lights on everywhere. The factory worked 24/7, sending out truckloads of chilled pastas and curries to supermarkets.

Kerry led them into an alleyway between two warehouses.

'Are you sure you want to do this, Lauren?' she asked. 'We could get in serious trouble if we're caught.'

'If you want me to help, I'm up for it,' Lauren said.

'So what's this about?' James asked.

'I got more information from Dinesh,' Kerry explained. 'It's amazing what you can wheedle out of a boy if he thinks you're up for a snog.'

'Did you snog him?' Lauren asked.

Kerry laughed. 'No chance.'

James was relieved. It was worth being dragged out of bed at midnight just to hear that.

'Anyway,' Kerry said, 'Dinesh doesn't get on with his dad. He reckons Mr Singh is a hypocrite when he tells him to behave and do his homework, when he's a crook himself. So I go: How is your dad a crook? And Dinesh starts explaining how his dad nearly went bankrupt and KMG bailed him out. I said I didn't believe him. Dinesh tells me there's a storage building at the back of Thunderfoods' production plant. He says he's been inside and seen bags of cocaine. Security seems pretty lax: I've already sneaked right up to the warehouse door, but I can't get inside without my lock gun.'

'What if there's a security system?' James asked.

'There is,' Kerry said smugly. 'You need a swipe card.'

She pulled a plastic card out of her shorts. 'I nicked this one off Mr Singh.'

'And what about the beer?' Lauren asked.

'We need a cover story,' Kerry explained. 'If we get caught, we act like kids who got drunk and decided to cause some mischief.'

Kerry took the beer off Lauren. She pulled the tab and swallowed a few mouthfuls, then dribbled some down her T-shirt.

'It's more believable if we've got the smell of drink on our clothes and breath.'

James took the can off Kerry and did the same. Lauren hated the taste and spat hers in the gravel. 'I don't want to get beer on my new top,' she said.

'Give us,' James said.

He s.n.a.t.c.hed the can off Lauren, poured most of it on the floor and splashed the dregs over her hair.

'OK,' Kerry said. 'Don't forget to act drunk.'

They staggered through the Thunderfoods car park, keeping behind the cars. Then it was over a stretch of lawn to the side door of the warehouse. James handed Kerry his lock gun.

'You're quicker than me,' he said.

Kerry fiddled with the lock, while James and Lauren sat in the gra.s.s yawning. It was an eight-lever deadlock, one of the trickiest kinds to pick.

'You want me to try?' James asked.

Kerry sounded edgy. 'You won't do it. It needs a different attachment.'

She unscrewed the back of James' lock gun. There were nine different-shaped picks inside and it was tough to tell them apart in the dark.

'This one or bust,' Kerry said, clicking a different pick on to the gun.

She rattled about for another half minute.

'Finally,' she sighed, pushing the door open.

The alarm pipped until she swiped the security card. They couldn't turn the light on in case someone saw it through the windows. It felt spooky, shining their torch beams around the cavernous black s.p.a.ce. The racks of metal shelving were filled with sacks and tins of ingredients for the factory next door.

'Maybe that's how they get the cocaine into the country,' James whispered. 'Disguised as curry powder or something.'

'No,' Kerry said. 'Dinesh described clear bags filled with white powder. And he said KMG people came and did something with it upstairs.'

'Kerry,' James said, 'I hate to say this, but maybe your little boyfriend is just trying to impress you. This building doesn't even have an upstairs.'

'We should split up,' Kerry said, deliberately ignoring James. 'There's a lot of shelving to cover.'

They each took a row of shelves and started working along, searching for the white powder. The shelves went up ten metres. You'd need a forklift to access the higher bays.

Lauren whispered to Kerry between the rows of shelves, 'Come look at this.'

Kerry dashed over. Lauren's torch shone on a few clear polythene sacks filled with white powder.

'Borax,' Lauren said. 'It's what you mix with pure cocaine to make the weaker stuff they sell on the street.'

'How do you know that, Miss Smarty-Pants?' James asked.

'I read your mission briefing,' Lauren said casually.

James tutted. 'Lauren, do you know how much trouble you could have got in if you'd been caught reading someone else's mission briefing?'

Lauren laughed. 'Less than the amount you'd have been in for leaving a secret briefing lying on your bathroom floor.'

'James,' Kerry gasped, 'you're not even supposed to take briefings out of the mission preparation rooms.'

'I know,' James said, shrugging. 'But I usually smuggle a few bits out to read while I'm on the toilet.'

Kerry took photos of the borax.

'So, Keith Moore stores his borax here,' James said. 'There's nothing illegal about borax. Mr Singh will just say they use it as disinfectant.'

'There must be more to it,' Kerry said. 'Keith wouldn't bail out a company this size in return for shelf s.p.a.ce. Dinesh said about upstairs.'

'I hate to keep saying it,' James said, 'but there is no upstairs.'

'Yes, there is,' Lauren said. 'This building has a pointed roof, but the ceiling in here is flat.'

'Good thinking, Lauren,' Kerry said. 'You obviously got all the brains in your family. There must be a loft up there.'

The three of them pointed their torches at the ceiling. The beams got dim over such a distance, but they eventually spotted a hatch that had to lead into the loft.

'How can we get up there?' Kerry asked.

'Easy,' James said. 'It's like a computer game. If you look, the shelves in some bays are closer together. You can use them like a ladder.'

'And we thought all those hours on the Playstation were wasted,' Kerry said, smiling. 'Lauren, you stay down here and keep lookout. Me and James will climb up.'

Lauren nodded. James doubted she'd have been so agreeable if he'd been giving the orders. They clambered up the closely s.p.a.ced shelves, feeling their way with their hands. They walked along the shelves, stepping over sacks and tins until they came to the next easy-to-climb section. Lauren shone her torch on them, lighting their path as best she could.

The top level was fifteen metres above ground, but the shelves were three metres deep, so it felt safe. There was a wooden pole with a hook on the end for undoing the loft hatch. Kerry pulled it open. James shone his torch into the hole while she pulled out the ladder. It clattered down, banging against the metal sheet on which they stood. The hundreds of fluorescent tubes in the ceiling a few centimetres from their heads started plinking to life. James and Kerry dived down and shielded their faces while their eyes adjusted to the light.

'What the h.e.l.l did that?' James whispered.

'Someone must have come in,' Kerry said. 'They'll never see us up here, but where's Lauren?'

They crawled to the edge of the shelves on their bellies. James leaned over one side, Kerry over the other.

'I can't see her,' Kerry said. 'It looks like she's had the sense to get out of sight.'

There were two sets of footsteps, accompanied by women's voices. James caught a glance of them. They were both fat, wearing hairnets and dark blue overalls.

'Bay forty-six,' one woman said.

They walked slowly, reading the numbers printed on the shelves.

'Pota.s.sium carbonate,' the woman said, leaning into the bay. 'This is it, in the blue drums.'

Something whumped against the floor, echoing around the warehouse. James peeked over the side. A sack of orange powder had exploded on the ground, almost directly below them. Lauren must have knocked it off a shelf.

The two women started walking towards the spill.

'I better see if Lauren's OK,' James said.

Kerry nodded. 'Be careful. Keep out of sight.'

But when he turned around, Lauren was crawling along the metal towards them.

'Why didn't you hide behind something?' James whispered angrily.

'Sorry,' Lauren said, looking ashamed of herself. 'I wanted to be with you guys.'

Even though it was tense, James couldn't help smiling. 'Now you know why you need training: so you don't get scared so easily.'

'I wasn't scared,' Lauren said defensively. 'Just ...'

Kerry anxiously shushed the pair of them. 'You're making too much noise.'

Down at ground level, the two women were standing by the burst sack, hands on hips, staring up at the ceiling.

'We must have a ghost,' one woman grinned.

The other one laughed. 'I'm not sticking around to see if he chucks another one at us and it's not gonna be muggins here who cleans that mess up, either.'

The women picked up their boxes and switched out the lights as they left. The three kids kept still, making sure the women were gone and letting their eyes readjust to blackness. Kerry lit her torch and shone it up the metal ladder.

'Bet you a pound there's nothing up there,' James said.

Kerry didn't find him funny. 'There better be after all this messing about.'

She went up the ladder first. There were no windows in the loft, so it was safe to switch on the lights. Even before James got up the ladder, he could tell they'd found something good from the grin on Kerry's face.

Kyle woke up at 3.30 a.m., in a smoky room snarled up with sleeping bodies. He didn't know if he'd pa.s.sed out or fallen asleep, or what the stain on his trousers was, but he remembered it was the wildest party of his young life. The host would be grounded for a year when her parents got back from the Lake District.

Kyle had hammered himself with alcohol and thumping music. Now he was suffering. Anyone else would have crashed back to sleep, but Kyle wanted to get home, have a shower and put his clothes in to soak. He'd always been neat. One of his earliest memories was of chucking a tantrum over going on to a beach with a load of other kids because he didn't like getting sand on his clothes.

It took Kyle a while to find the room where he'd dumped his sweatshirt. He got abused when he trod on some naked guy's ankle in the dark. He stepped over more kids crashed out on the front lawn as he went out of the front gate towards the bus stop. He waited forty minutes for the night bus, which dropped him on the wrong side of Thornton estate at half-four in the morning. Everything looked wrong as he stumbled towards the house: all the lights were on and there was a grey Toyota he didn't recognise parked on the drive.

Nicole wasn't home, but everyone else was in the living room. Lauren had dropped to sleep on the couch. Ewart had his laptop computer on the coffee table. A balding man in a suit and tie sat next to him.

'What's going on?' Kyle asked. 'Did I miss something good?'

'Yeah,' James grinned. 'It turns out bringing Kerry on this mission wasn't a dumb waste of time after all.'

Kerry gave James a look, but she was too full of herself to get offended.

Zara introduced Kyle to the stranger. 'This is John Jones. He's in charge of the MI5 taskforce that's targeting KMG, so we called him over to look at the pictures.'

John Jones reached over and shook Kyle's hand before speaking. 'You kids are amazing,' he grinned. 'When Dr McAfferty offered me a CHERUB unit, I thought it was some kind of joke.'