(Jenny's POV)
Getting out of the taxi, I pay the driver and, straightening my black blazer, I head into the police station. I walk up to the front desk, where there's a young dark-skinned woman with long, plaited black hair and big brown eyes who is working on the computer. I clear my throat to get her attention.
"Can I help you?" she asks, looking up from the computer.
"Yes. I was wondering if I can speak to whoever is in charge with the HSBC vandalism case," I say.
"And who might you be?"
I whip out my (fake) ID badge. "Agent Penny Brown of MI9."
I wait with bated breath as the woman checks out the badge. Nodding her head in affirmation, she picks up the phone to call her supervisor.
"Sergeant Bailey? Constable Allard here," she says. "I've got an Agent Penny Brown who works for MI9 wanting to speak to you about the HSBC vandalism case. OK." She hangs up. "Sergeant Bailey is on his way."
"Thank you," I say.
I sit on the bench by a door that leads down a corridor to the cells that Scoop, Homie and JJ are probably in. I look at the various flyers and leaflets on the noticeboard opposite from where I'm sitting: murder cases from a year or so ago, missing person flyers, volunteer leaflets and advice leaflets about various crimes and victim support.
"Agent Brown?" I stand up and see Sergeant Bailey standing by the doorway. The same Sergeant Bailey who had Scoop, Homie and JJ arrested. He holds out his hand. "Sergeant Elliot Bailey. A pleasure."
I take his hand and shake it. "Likewise."
"I take it you and your people are looking into this vandalism case?"
"Precisely. There are MI9 agents across the city interviewing the people who were involved in the attacks. I'm here to interview Timothy Hinklebottom, Homer Apathy and John James McIntyre about their involvement."
"And what makes you think that they will tell you anything, Agent Brown?"
"Oh, they'll be telling me something, Sergeant Bailey." I lay my briefcase on the bench and open it. I pull out a syringe. "This is Truth Serum 2X4B-523P. I inject them with this and the truth will be spewing out of their mouths like Regan MacNeil from The Exorcist. Albeit, I will only use this if they get fresh with me. So… what do you say?"
Bailey looks at the syringe, then at me. Sighing, he motions me to follow him. I place the syringe back into the briefcase and close it and I follow Bailey. He leads me to one of the cells at the end of a long corridor.
Opening the peephole of the cell door, he looks inside. "Mr. Hinklebottom, you have a visitor." He closes the peephole door and turns to me. "You have five minutes."
I nod as he unlocks the door and opens it. I enter into the cell and the door shuts behind me. I look at the cell. It's small, grey and depressing. There's a small square window opposite the door I'm standing at with black rough bars. I look to the right side of the cell and see a stainless steel toilet in the corner by the window with its matching stainless steel basin in the corner by the door. I look to the left side of the cell and there's a white table top anchored in the wall with a plastic grey chair sitting in the corner and in the corner opposite the anchored table top was Scoop. He's sitting cross-legged on a black stainless steel bed that had an unseeingly lumpy grey mattress with a grey woolly blanket and a single white pillow. Despite Scoop being in this cell for about an hour, he looks rough and possibly a bit scared.
"Hello, Mr. Hinklebottom," I say, walking up to him.
"Who are you?" he asks.
"A friend." I take the chair from the corner and I sit opposite of Scoop.
"Look, I've already told the police and now I is gonna tell you: I didn't vandalise nothing!"
"Then at least tell me what you and your friends were up to last night before this vandalism came to life."
Scoop crosses his arms and looks away.
"Timothy… you and your friends are looking at a hefty fine and an ASBO for a crime you're telling me that you didn't do, despite the fact that there are CCTV footage of you three doing so. So unless you tell me what happened last night, I'm gonna walk straight out of this cell and have Sergeant Bailey write up the ASBO. So… what's it to be?"
After about ten seconds, Scoop gives in with a sigh. He uncrosses his arms and turns his head to me.
"Fine, I'll tell you," he says. "Me, Homie and JJ were at my house last night… doing homework, yeah?"
I nod my head. "OK. Is that all you were doing?"
"Yeah. That and listening to music."
"Music?"
"Yeah. We all had our headphones on as we did our homework."
I remember in the CCTV footage of Scoop and the others having headphones on as they attacked the bank. "Who or what were you listening to?"
"We was all listening to a radio station called Swaggerbeatz FM," Scoop answers.
"I've never heard of that station."
"It's a pirate radio station. It's hosted by DJ Mega J."
"And that's what all you three of you were doing?"
"Yeah, until quarter to eleven. I must have blacked out of somethink coz when I woke up this morning, it was half eight."
"Timothy…" I say, standing up. "You've just saved you and your friends from getting an ASBO and a very pricey fine."
I go to the door and bang on it to let Bailey know I was finished. "By the way, Timothy, even though you're innocent, I hope that this is an eye-opener on the path you're gonna choose."
"It certainly has," says Scoop.
The door opens and waving at Scoop, I leave the cell. Scoop stands up from the bed and heads for the door, but Bailey slams the door shut, locking it.
Clearing my throat, I walk down the corridor. "Well, Sergeant Bailey, it seems that Mr. Hinklebottom didn't tell me much about last night and the truth serum didn't help either. Apparently, the boys down at the MI9 lab thought it would be funny to put water in the syringe rather than the serum. But don't you worry, sergeant, when I get back to MI9, those dummy scientists will get what's coming to them."
I push open the double doors that lead to the front desk and entrance. I walk into the reception area and I head for the exit, only to see two of the burliest-looking policemen blocking the exit, their arms crossed and their faces red.
"What the hell?" I say to myself. I turn around and see four policemen including the woman in the front desk blocking the other doors. Bailey makes his way to the front. "What is the meaning of this, Sergeant Bailey?"
"While you were having a talk with Mr. Hinklebottom, I took the liberty in calling MI9 to see if there was an Agent Penny Brown working for them," he says. "Turns out that there is a Penny Brown – but she's forty-five years old!"
Uh-oh!
"So, while we're waiting for an MI9 car to come and take you away 'Agent Brown', you're gonna tell me exactly who you are and why you want to know about the HSBC vandalism case," Bailey tells me. "Unless you are who I think you are…"
A loud roar on the street drowns out Bailey's words. It's not a pneumatic drill because I didn't see or hear any road works on my way to the station or when I went in. What is that deafening roar?
"Can you hear me?!" Bailey yells over the roar.
There's a vibration in my chest. It's my phone. I pull it out of my inside blazer pocket and ignoring the missed calls and voicemail messages I read the text.
Cover your ears and run for cover!
Placing the phone back into my pocket, I head for the side of the vending machine by the door and cover my ears. There's an earth-shattering roar. A roar so powerful it shatters the glass of the front desk and the windows of the station, knocking out the burly policemen, Bailey and the others.
"What the hell just happened?" I ask, suddenly confused. I uncover my ears and peek my head out from the vending machine and there's a biker. He's astride a large motorcycle, leaning over the handlebars, grinning at me with such adorable dimples from under his red-and-black helmet, gunning the engine with his black-gloved hands.
"Jump on," he yells, slapping the space on the leather seat behind him.
I look at the unconscious police officers, then at the biker.
"Jump on!" the biker repeats.
I leave my hiding place of the vending machine and head out of the police station, jumping over the knocked out policemen and pull myself up onto the back of the big, black-and-chrome motorcycle, and grab the biker's leather-jacketed shoulders as he pulls away with an explosion and a powerful jolt.
The biker roars through a red traffic light, nearly colliding two middle-aged women on bikes. The streets whir by in a blur of parked cars and shops.
Where is he taking me? What am I doing here? I don't know him. I don't know anyone like him.
The big motorcycle seemed to explode again and with a burst of speed, the biker roars on, heading north towards Acton.
"Hey – stop! Stop!" I cry, suddenly regretting my impulsive decision.
But he can't – or won't – hear me.
I grip his shoulders, leaning against his jacket to my face out of the onrushing wind. I've made a mistake. I've made a terrible mistake.
xxoOoxx
A short while later, the biker skids to a stop at the entrance of Acton Park near Acton Central Overground Train Station, nearly ploughing into the back of a Volvo Land Cruiser. A woman dressed in a grey suit, walking a gigantic Rottweiler, sneers at the biker and gives him a dirty look. The big, sad-faced dog sniffs at the motorcycle. The woman tugs its leash and pulls it away.
Laughing, the biker slides off the seat and, pulling off his helmet, turns to me. He's tall and powerfully built with straight, dark hair and light eyes, and a perfect, straight nose. "Ugly dog, huh?"
I struggle to arrange my windblown hair, but it's impossible. "You nearly ran it over."
The biker shrugs his shoulders.
"Listen, it was really nice of you to rescue me," I say, then demand while pulling at my hair, "but who the hell are you?"
"I'm a friend of Zeke Williams," he replies. "Kenzie Simms."
"Of course." I slide forward on the seat so I could grip the handlebars. "He knew what I was doing was suicide, so he calls for back-up."
"Just call me your knight in shining leather." Kenzie grins. He runs a hand back through his short, straight hair.
"Right… well, I better call Zeke then, to thank him." I climb off the seat and pull out my phone from my blazer pocket and call Zeke.
"Jenny!" Zeke hails. "So nice to hear from you. Are you calling me from your own phone or from the police station's?"
"Ha, ha, very funny, Zeke," I say. "Still, thanks for sending in reinforcements."
"I had a feeling that the ol' boys in blue will catch you out, so I called Kenzie. What do you think of him?"
I turn to look at Kenzie. He smiles at me, revealing the deep dimples in his cheeks. Smiling back, I turn away from him. "Good-looking as he is, I would still prefer Frank to Kenzie."
"Hm. Anyway, how did you get on at the station?"
"Turns out that Scoop, Homie and JJ were listening to music while they while doing their homework last night."
"Is that all?"
"Uh-uh. Scoop then tells me that he blacked out from quarter to eleven last night till half eight this morning."
"All three blacked out while they listened to music?"
"Yeah. On their headphones."
"Who were they listening to?"
"A DJ called DJ Mega J. He hosts a pirate radio station called Swaggerbeatz FM."
There's tapping in the background. He's typing like quicksilver.
"I've hacked into Mega J's email account. His real name is Jerome Harris," Zeke tells me. "And he and his radio station are at 24 Swete Street, Plaistow."
"Plaistow?! That's the other side of London!" I exclaim.
"I'm sure Kenzie will take you there. That's if you ask nicely."
I laugh sarcastically and hang up. I turn back to Kenzie. "Hey, Kenzie? Got enough petrol in your motorcycle for a trip to the other side of London?"
"Just filled my tank up this morning. Hop on." He jumps onto the seat. "Where do you wanna go?"
I slide onto the back seat. "Swete Street, Plaistow."
"Alrighty, then! East London, here we come!" Kenzie starts the motorcycle with a roar and bursts away from the kerb, spins around and heads for Plaistow, while I hold onto the shoulders of his leather jacket for dear life.