by Kate Davies
And then suddenly, a huge monster was standing over her—a monster with overly curly fur, a monster that was drooling . . .
Imogen woke up with a start. The monster wasn’t a monster. It was Barney. He was panting, and drooling, and staring right into her eyes.
Imogen pushed Barney away, groaning. He really was the most pathetic attack dog in the history of pathetic attack dogs, which is long and filled with adorable puppies that chased butterflies while their owners were murdered, often with machetes. Almost every single Crim had been kidnapped, and Barney hadn’t done a thing to intervene. When Imogen had been hauled into the ice cream truck outside school, Barney had just laid there and watched them take her. And he was doing the same thing now—sitting there, panting, staring at her.
“Go away!” she shouted. “I don’t have any dog food. Go and catch a rat or something if you’re hungry.” But Barney stayed right where he was.
Imogen sat up in bed and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. She was truly alone in her fight to get her family back now. And she was ready for the most desperate of desperate measures: She was ready to go to the police. She knew Big Nana would hate her for it. But Big Nana was a Kruk—so did it matter what she thought anymore?
She stood up and looked down at Barney, who was still just sitting there, staring at her.
Hang on, thought Imogen. Did I just see something flash in Barney’s eyes?
“Barney,” she said, patting her knees. “Here, boy.”
Barney padded over to her, wagging his tail, still staring straight at her.
She grabbed his collar and pulled him onto her lap. He really was extraordinarily heavy for a dog. . . .
And then she remembered . . . Barney had come home with Al. Fake Al.
Who was actually Gunther Kruk.
She felt around Barney’s neck. Nothing. There was nothing on his stomach, either. But underneath his ear . . .
A switch.
She flicked the switch. There was a whirring noise, and Barney just sort of—turned off.
Imogen stared at the dog, stunned.
Barney was a robot.
What the . . . ?
Imogen wasn’t sure what to do. Why would the Kruks send a robot to Crim House? Because robots can record things and transmit data. . . . Imogen felt sick. Barney is the mole.
And she had let him sleep in her bedroom. Ugh! She couldn’t even trust animals anymore!
And then she heard the front door crash open—and then footsteps, running up the stairs. Too many and too heavy and too dangerous sounding to be Big Nana.
She heard maniacal laughter. Evil laughter. German laughter.
And then she heard someone shout: “Wir werden Sie zu töten, und nehmen Sie Ihr Geld!!!”
It was the Kruk family motto: “We will kill you and take your money!”
Imogen sat extremely still, with her hands shaking. She hardly dared to breathe. It’s actually happening, she realized, just like Big Nana said it would. The Kruks have come to get us. The dog-mole must have deactivated the electronic security system. . . . But where is Big Nana now? Have they found her already?
Feeling sicker than ever, Imogen ran down the back stairs to the Loot Room—Big Nana’s designated emergency meeting place.
Please let Big Nana be here. She punched the code into the door.
And for once, her wish came true.
There, waiting for her, was her grandmother, dressed all in black, strands of red hair escaping from beneath her balaclava. Imogen felt a rush of relief.
“Thank badness you’re okay,” said Big Nana, giving Imogen a rather painful hug. “It’s time. We have to go to the bunker.”
“The bunker?” said Imogen.
“You know,” Big Nana said impatiently. “The bunker.”
Imogen didn’t know. She’d never heard of the Crims having a bunker.
“Every family has a bunker to escape to when their rivals break down their front door and threaten to kill them all,” said Big Nana.
“I’m not sure they do,” said Imogen.
Big Nana shrugged. “Maybe it’s just a Crim thing. And a Kruk thing. Anyway. There’s a secret passage right behind that collection of coronation mugs for King Edward VIII, who was never crowned, rendering the mugs totally pointless. Let’s go!”
Imogen followed Big Nana down a dark, dank tunnel. The floor of the corridor was damp and muddy, and the whole thing smelled worryingly of gas. They crawled blindly, and in silence, until Imogen’s knees started to cramp up.
“I hate to sound like Delia on a long car journey,” Imogen said, “but are we nearly there yet?”
“And I hate to sound like myself on a long car journey,” said Big Nana, “but shut up and be grateful I haven’t left you behind to be murdered by a woman who carries a nuclear warhead in her handbag.”
They crawled on, not speaking. The tunnel seemed to get narrower and narrower the farther they went. And then, just as Imogen noticed a nasty, insistent, ratty-sounding squeaking coming from above her, the tunnel spat them out into a cold, dark room, as though they tasted revolting.
“Bunker, sweet bunker!” said Big Nana, turning on the light, which buzzed and flashed a few times and then stayed on, casting a greenish wash over the windowless room.
Bunkers are, by definition, pretty depressing places, but Imogen couldn’t imagine a more depressing bunker than this. The walls were made of cinder block, and a label on the ceiling read “Asbestos Tiles. Do Not Touch Unless You Want to Die a Slow, Painful Death.” There was no furniture, unless you counted a broken, fly-covered toilet, which Imogen didn’t. The only food was a few cans of spaghetti and meatballs, labeled “Best Before: 2001.” Scattered across the floor were some Reader’s Digests, dated from 1992. Imogen spotted more than one fanny pack.
Big Nana lowered herself onto a moldy-looking beanbag on the floor. “This isn’t so bad!” she said, which was exactly the opposite of what Imogen was thinking. “We can stay here for a few years at least. I’ve got some sesame seeds stuck in my teeth from breakfast. If I plant them in the mud, maybe they’ll grow. . . .”
“No,” said Imogen. “Absolutely, definitely not. What did you teach me? When the Kruks attack, we have to take action. Our whole family has been kidnapped. We know who’s behind it. And now they have taken over our house, too. We only have one option left.”
“That’s right: stay here until the coast is clear, and catch up on early nineties fashion tips. What do you think of bodysuits?”
“No.” Imogen took a deep breath—this wasn’t going to go down well. “We have to go to . . . THE POLICE.”
“THE POLICE?”
“THE POLICE.”
Big Nana was horrified. “I can’t! Never! Not unless the rats carry my corpse in!”
Imogen was getting frustrated. “It’s better than your plan. You seriously think we should just sit here, hoping that the Kruks get bored of having our family around and let them go?”
“It’s a possibility—have you ever been in a room with Knuckles for more than ten minutes? Very damaging to the eardrums.”
“They won’t let them go!” said Imogen, who was starting to feel furious as well as frustrated. “Why would they? Elsa is crazy. You’ve told me that yourself enough times. And they’ve put masses of effort into staging the kidnappings. It’s almost as if—” And then it hit her—what Ten Little Mice in the Woods had reminded her of. It wasn’t a musical adaptation, or a Netflix series. It was her life. “It’s almost as if she’s trying to recreate the way the mice disappeared in Ten Little Mice in the Woods.”
Big Nana stared at Imogen, nodding, horrified. “Elsa is certainly crazy enough to do that. . . .”
“Please, Big Nana,” begged Imogen. “Elsa’s going to kill them all in one of about four hundred very painful, experimental ways! We have to go to the police.”
But Big Nana shook her head.
“Come on,” said Imogen, softening. “We’ll refuse to talk to anyone except PC Do
nnelly—he hardly counts as a policeman. He’s got Crim blood.”
“People will see us walking into a police station of our own accord! I have my street cred to think of!”
“You’re way too old to have street cred. And anyway, we can wear disguises.”
Big Nana sighed. “Fine,” she said. “Just like every time we play backgammon, you win,” she said. She heaved herself onto her feet and unzipped a suitcase that was lying in the corner of the bunker, under several 1970s copies of Rogue magazine—the style bible for criminal couture. Clouds of dust rose into the air as she did so, and she had a coughing fit so extreme that her face turned purple. Imogen had to go and hit her on the back until she recovered. “Thank you,” she said. “Now . . .” She opened the suitcase and pulled out two disguises—a Victorian maid’s costume and a chimney sweep’s outfit, complete with brush. “These belonged to your great-great-grandfather Jimeny Crim,” she said. “Times have changed, so these aren’t exactly the latest fashions, but they’ll do the job.”
Imogen squeezed into the maid’s dress and tied the lace bonnet onto her head. She looked like a character from a period drama—a really bad one that wouldn’t even win a technical award for lighting design. She turned around to see Big Nana pulling the chimney sweep’s cap on. Her grandmother looked surprisingly like a nine-year-old Victorian boy, just with more wrinkles and slightly nicer teeth.
“Let’s go,” said Big Nana, pulling aside one of the cinder blocks to reveal another secret passage. “This one leads straight to the police station parking lot.” She dropped to her knees and muttered, “I’m getting too old for this nonsense.”
The passage brought them out into an unused shed behind a row of parked cars. Imogen dusted herself off and was about to march into the police station when Big Nana called her back.
“I can’t just walk in there, Imogen,” she said, stepping from foot to foot, as though she needed a wee (maybe she did—the bunker’s broken toilet was too disgusting to sit on). “I’m going to find a crime to commit. Just a little one. That way they’ll bring me in in handcuffs, and I’ll be able to hold my head up high.”
“Fine,” said Imogen. “But hurry up!”
Big Nana whipped a skeleton key out of her pocket and jimmied open the door of one of the many beige Volvos parked nearby.
“Stealing a car is not a little crime!” hissed Imogen.
“I’m not stealing it,” Big Nana said, slipping into the driver’s seat. “I’m moving it. To the disabled parking space. Because as you may have noticed, I’m not disabled at all! Psych!”
“Please don’t ever say ‘psych’ again,” Imogen said as her grandmother swerved into the disabled spot and stepped out of the car, looking very pleased with herself.
“Now we just need to wait for them to arrest me,” said Big Nana, leaning on the hood, as if she were posing for a very niche fashion shoot.
But no one seemed to want to arrest them.
Imogen could see the back of a police officer’s head through the station window. She was pretty sure it was PC Donnelly. He was concentrating very hard on his computer screen and didn’t seem at all interested in what was going on in the parking lot. Which wasn’t surprising, because the only interesting things that happen in parking lots take place after dark and are extremely unpleasant.
“Back in a minute,” Imogen said. “I’ll just go and let Donnelly know that you’d like to be arrested.”
She pushed open the glass door to the police station. PC Donnelly didn’t look up—he had his headphones on and was watching a movie. A movie about horses, Imogen realized as she approached the desk. A movie about tiny horses, running around a field in slow motion, shaking their tiny manes and smiling tiny smiles.
She knew a police officer who was very keen on little horses. And it wasn’t PC Donnelly . . .
Before she could creep back out of the station, the police officer turned around.
PC Phillips. Imogen cursed herself for not being more careful.
PC Phillips didn’t look any more pleased to see Imogen than she was to see him. He minimized his screen and said: “Don’t know what that video was. Just popped up on my screen while I was reading a very official police article about handcuffs and pepper spray and muscles.”
“Is PC Donnelly here?” Imogen asked.
“Nope,” said PC Phillips, clipping and unclipping his handcuffs. “He hasn’t been here for a week. No idea why. He hasn’t called in sick or anything.”
Imogen hit her forehead with her hand, because sometimes you feel so stupid that you actually do that sort of thing. Of course! PC Donnelly was a Crim. Why hadn’t it occurred to her to check in on him? He must have been kidnapped too!
“Hey,” said PC Phillips, who was now looking out of the window at the parking lot. “Is that your grandmother? And is that my car? And is it in the disabled parking space? And did she put it there?”
“Yes . . . ,” said Imogen.
“To which question?”
“All of them.”
PC Phillips snatched up his handcuffs and marched outside, looking unpleasantly pleased with himself. Imogen hurried after him.
“’Ello, ’ello, ’ello,” he said to Big Nana, rocking on his heels.
“Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye,” said Big Nana, and she ran back to the secret tunnel entrance—but PC Phillips was too fast for her.
“I’m arresting you in the name of the law, which, as everybody knows, is Sandra,” he said, snapping the handcuffs onto her wrists.
“I’ll speak only to PC Donnelly!” Big Nana cried as PC Phillips pushed her toward the police station.
“Then you’ll be silent for a very long time,” said PC Phillips, grinning madly, like an overexcited cat. “PC Donnelly has gone missing.”
And then Big Nana swore, which made PC Phillips very happy, because it meant he could charge her with verbally assaulting a police officer; he loved charging people with crimes almost as much as he loved miniature ponies.
He marched Big Nana down the long corridors, past the cell the Crims had been released from a few weeks’ previously. “Wait,” said Imogen. “We need to tell you something! We need to report a crime! A really serious one!”
“Then you’re in luck,” said PC Phillips. “Because I’m taking you to see the new chief constable.”
Big Nana stopped walking. “New chief constable?” she said.
“Yes,” said PC Phillips, pushing her in the back so she stumbled forward, stopping outside a big, black door. “He’s got a great mustache. And a good name. Literally: Norman Gud.”
Imogen looked at Big Nana.
Big Nana looked at Imogen.
Imogen was feeling rather guilty for insisting they go to the police. She had a sinking feeling that, like Ten Little Mice in the Woods, this was not going to end well.
Chief Constable Gud’s office looked like an ordinary chief constable’s office—lots of photographs of him shaking hands with famous people, a box of doughnuts, several speed handcuffing trophies—except that the famous people he was shaking hands with were all terrorists, or dictators, or members of U2.
Chief Constable Gud himself looked a lot like an ordinary chief constable—shiny buttons on his uniform, very good posture, a really marvelous mustache—but his hair was so blond, it was white, and his eyes were piercing and blue, and his name tag said “Stefan Kruk,” which was a bit of a giveaway.
“So,” said Stefan Kruk. “We meet again.”
“Actually we meet for the first time,” said Imogen, who was a stickler for accuracy in stressful situations.
“Whatever,” Stefan said dismissively. “You Crims are all the same. Pathetic. Stupid. Bad at chess.”
Imogen opened her mouth to protest—she had been president of Lilyworth Chess Club and was famed for her use of the Sicilian defense—but Big Nana gave her a “shut up” look, so she shut her mouth again, and pretended she’d just been doing an impression of a turbot.
“You have f
allen right into my trap,” Stefan continued, leaning back in his chair.
“Actually, we walked into it,” corrected Imogen.
Stefan looked at Big Nana. “Is she always this much of a pedant?” he asked.
Big Nana nodded, rolling her eyes, as if to say, What can you do?
Stefan steepled his fingers and leaned across his desk. “If you ever want to see your family members alive again, you will come with me. OR ELSA!”
“Else,” Imogen said quietly.
“No. Elsa,” said Stefan. “That was an intentional pun. What, you don’t like puns?”
“Of course I do,” said Imogen. “I dote uh-pun them.”
“That was terrible,” said Stefan.
“Not my best,” Imogen admitted. “But I am under quite a lot of stress at the moment.”
“Using puns against us,” muttered Big Nana, shaking her head. “The Kruks are even more diabolical than I remembered.”
Stefan clapped his hands and shouted, “Up!” Big Nana and Imogen scrambled to their feet.
“Out!” he shouted, and they walked silently out of his office, past PC Phillips, toward the parking lot.
“In!” he shouted, and Big Nana and Imogen slid into the back seat of a waiting police car.
“Drive!” Stefan yelled as he climbed into the front seat. “Oh, wait. You can’t do that. That’s my job.”
We have to get out of here, Imogen thought—and a plan began to form in her mind. . . .
Stefan started up the engine and pulled away, humming a sinister tune as he drove through Blandington.
“That’s the Kruk’s premurder anthem,” hissed Big Nana. “They sing it to relax themselves before a really big killing spree, often involving goats. We need to get out of here.”
“I don’t get it!” Imogen whispered back. “Why do they want to kill us? What’s in it for them? It can’t be to get Blandington. . . .”
