“We truly appreciate you making the long journey down from Edinburgh to meet with us, Sir Gordon,” said Charley. “But since we are the smallest department in the police force, you will understand that our resources are…modest.”
“Hmmm,” huffed Sir Gordon. “How many men do you have available for my case?”
“We will put our entire department at your disposal,” Charlotte reassured him.
“Ten men? Twenty?”
It was Charlotte’s turn to feel uncomfortable. S.C.R.E.A.M. had only three detectives. Charley Steel herself, Billy Flint and their leader, Luther Sparkwell – who at that precise moment was wearing a tatty dressing gown and was slumped face down at the table, apparently fast asleep.
“What you see is what you get, mate,” said Billy.
“Three?” said Sir Gordon incredulously. “THREE! A peasant, a buffoon and a…a…girl!” It wasn’t clear which he was most offended by.
Quite suddenly Luther Sparkwell lifted his head. His hair was wild and his expression wilder.
“Not just any girl,” said Sparkwell. “A scientific genius with a flair for deductive reasoning and more learning in her little finger than you have in the shrivelled walnut you call a brain.”
Sir Gordon harrumphed, but Sparkwell continued. “I am probably the country’s leading expert on the arcane, the bizarre, all things paranormal and unexplained. And that ‘peasant’, as you so charmingly described him, is the best weapon we have in the fight against the supernatural.”
Sparkwell paused for dramatic effect. “Billy is sensitive—”
“That doesn’t mean I like kittens and cry when I graze my knee,” said Billy quickly. “I’m sensitive to the spirit realm.”
“My young friend has a gift,” Sparkwell continued, his fingers twitching like an angry spider. “Billy can detect forces that are not of this world; he can track these entities back to their source. He can literally sniff out the sort of trouble that fools like you –” he aimed a pointed stare at Sir Gordon – “get yourselves into when you meddle with things that are best left alone.”
Sir Gordon squirmed. “Well, I might have been a bit hasty,” he mumbled.
“You might have been a bit dead!” said Sparkwell. “You have stolen relics which should have remained in their tomb never to be disturbed, you’ve incurred the wrath of ancient powers beyond your imagination, and you’ve released a creature over which you have no control. And we –” Sparkwell threw his arms out wildly – “a peasant, a buffoon and a girl, are your only hope!”
A heavy tear started to roll down Sir Gordon’s plump cheek.
The room fell into an awkward silence, punctuated by the man’s sobs.
“He’s crying for his mummy,” said Billy.
Charley pulled a face and gave Billy the look. Billy shrugged.
“You’re right,” Sir Gordon confessed, pulling himself together with a final trumpet-like blast into his handkerchief. “I need your help.”
“So,” said Charley, taking out a notebook and pencil. “Tell us everything you’ve done, you naughty boy.”
With a great hiss of steam and a scream of protest from the iron wheels, the Special Scotch Express hauled itself out of King’s Cross station. Charley and Billy sat opposite each other in their wood-panelled carriage. “Ten and a half hours, Duchess, and we’ll be there,” said Billy cheerfully.
Charley wasn’t a real duchess, although her family were incredibly rich. Billy called her that affectionately. It annoyed her slightly, which was another good reason to do it. Charley pulled a tartan rug across her knees and gave him a glare, which quickly softened into a smile. She looked every bit the young lady, Billy thought. Crisp white blouse, tweed jacket, a small silver fob watch strung like a pendant around her neck. Genteel, elegant, refined. But more fool anyone who thought that she was just some weak girl who needed looking after. Billy knew that Charley Steel had a tongue that could sting sharper than a wasp. And if that didn’t work, there was always the pistol she had hidden beneath that blanket.
Sir Gordon was somewhere on the same train, they knew. But His Lordship was up the posh end in First Class, travelling with his butler and some other servants no doubt. Luther Sparkwell had stayed behind in London. Sparkwell had promised to join Billy and Charley when the case of the Hammersmith zombie had been solved. Even if Scotland Yard were too cautious to publicly mention the crimes that S.C.R.E.A.M. were involved with, it was a matter of professional pride that they always got their man. Or woman. Or, in some cases, thing.
That was where Billy’s unique talents came into play. While the rest of his family were out robbing post offices, the young Billy had stayed at home and thought about monsters. Billy was different like that. Even as a child he’d had a connection to the paranormal realm. He could see invisible things and sometimes even talk with them too. There were ghosts in his street. And an angel at number twenty-two, and a demon, disguised as a very old man, living over the greengrocer’s. Billy couldn’t explain his skill, and he certainly couldn’t control it. But it was definitely a very useful ability if your job was solving supernatural crimes.
“So remind me,” said Billy, “what have we got so far?”
Charley pulled out her notebook and, licking the tip of her finger, she flipped through the pages. “Last year Sir Gordon funded an expedition led by…” She scanned her small neat writing, searching for the name. “Alan Quinn.”
Billy rubbed his chin. “He’s a bit of a lowlife from what I hear.”
“You know him?”
“I know of him,” said Billy. “I’ve got a cousin who runs a gambling den and I remember there was an Alan Quinn who played cards for high stakes and built up so much debt he had to leave the country. Last I heard he was out in Africa, organizing big-game hunting and safaris for wealthy nobility. Archaeology isn’t his usual line at all.”
“He did incredibly well for his first dig then,” said Charley, “considering the vast haul they brought home. Did he just get lucky?”
“More likely Quinn was just hired muscle. You know how these things work – the rich man says where he wants to dig, and the poor men do the digging.”
“Sir Gordon is the one with a passion for Egyptology, so I suppose it’s possible that he was the one who worked out where to find the tomb. He certainly takes all the credit.”
“He didn’t seem like a ‘mastermind’ to me,” said Billy.
“But if Sir Gordon didn’t discover the tomb,” said Charley, “then who did?”
“Probably one of the local Egyptians. Who would know where the treasure was buried better than them?”
“Who indeed?” said Charley, placing a big question mark at the foot of her page.
“So what about this rampaging mummy?” Billy leaned forward in his seat. “Any theories?”
Charley ticked them off. “It could be a hoax, someone trying to frighten Sir Gordon for some reason. An actor paid to play a gruesome role. Possibly Sir Gordon cheated Quinn out of his rightful share and this is his revenge.”
“Possibly. Or?”
“It might be a genuine mummy, risen from its centuries-long sleep and fulfilling its curse.”
Billy sat back, satisfied. “We’ve not done a mummy before.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” said Charley. “Remember that ‘mermaid’ we were called in to investigate?”
Billy nodded. “Where it turned out that the man who ran the Hall of Curiosities had sewn half a dead monkey to half a dead fish.” He pulled a face. “Disgusting, wasn’t it? And how about the werewolf woman of Hampstead Heath?”
“Or, as we came to call her, the unfortunately hairy old lady of Hampstead Heath.”
They both laughed.
“But the imp was real, wasn’t it?” said Billy. “Remember how it spat when we captured it.”
“Six inches tall and teeth like a piranha.”
“And what about that boggart?”
“Tough case,” said Charley. “I never t
hought we’d get it back in its hole.”
“But a real mummy,” said Billy wistfully. “That would be something special.”
“Fingers crossed,” said Charley. “Let’s open the file, see what else Luther has got for us.”
Billy couldn’t help but grin as he pulled out the scarlet file, sealed with wax. Normal police files were manila, boring old brown. Serious and gruesome crimes were in black folders. But S.C.R.E.A.M. files were red. Red for unknown, red for strange. Red for danger.
Billy cracked open the seal with his thumb, and excitedly leafed through the pages inside. “Lots of information on ancient Egypt…”
“Lovely light reading for the journey,” said Charley.
“Hello?” said Billy, pulling a document from the pack. “Luther has included some information from the Edinburgh police – he must think that it’s connected.”
“Let me see,” said Charley, scanning the page, eager to get to the juicy bits. “It’s a burglary report. Police were called to the home of Lady Marigold Tiffin to investigate reports that her necklace, the famous Dalton diamonds, had been stolen. Blah, blah, blah…” She paused. “Luther has put a note in the margin – apparently Lady M was a guest at the mummy unwrapping.”
“Coincidence?” said Billy.
“Doubt it,” said Charley. “Luther Sparkwell believes in a lot of things, but coincidence isn’t one of them.” She read on. “There’s a statement from a Mrs Whisker, housekeeper to the Tiffin family for nearly twenty years—”
“Let me guess,” Billy interrupted. “She didn’t see anything.”
Charley shook her head. “Oh ye of little faith,” she teased. “She actually said, ‘I didn’t see nuthin’.’”
“They never do,” Billy sighed.
“Inspector Diggins, who’s investigating the burglary, insists that he will ‘dig out the truth’.”
Billy sighed again, louder this time. “I bet he says that all the time.”
“You’ll like this though,” said Charley. “Traces of sand were found at the crime scene, which suggests our mummy really was involved.” Her face lit up. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“You’d kill for a bacon sandwich?”
Charley smiled. “I don’t think this mummy is working alone.”
“How do you make that out?”
“Imagine you are a five-thousand-year-old mummy, recently risen from the dead to walk the earth again… What could you possibly want with diamonds?”
“So if we find who wants the diamonds then we might find who is behind all this,” said Billy excitedly.
“Exactly! And who wants diamonds?”
“Everybody in the world,” said Billy. “Doesn’t really narrow it down much, does it?”
The ten-and-a-half hour journey up the Great Northern Line grew into a miserable and tiring fifteen-hour journey. Engineering works on the track held up the train for what felt like an eternity, and a further delay at York turned a half-hour lunch stop into two more wasted hours. As the Special Scotch Express dragged itself the last two hundred miles to Waverley station in Edinburgh, Billy and Charley were both flagging, the rocking of the carriage lulling them into the waiting arms of sleep.
Billy didn’t know how long he had been sleeping. The train compartment was chilly and the seat was so hard that Billy actually felt more tired now than he had done before he nodded off. His back ached, his mouth was dry and his eyes were crusty. Still half asleep, Billy poked his finger into the corner of his eye. “Sleepy dust”, his mother called it. But this felt different, wrong somehow.
There was so much of it. Not just a few specks near his tear duct, but dozens and dozens right across his eye. Billy rubbed more intently, feeling hundreds of grains; sharp and hard against his skin. He tried to open his eyes to blink the stuff away, but it felt as if his eyelids were glued shut. There were clumps of the foul grit gumming his eyelashes together, so much that he had to really strain before they pulled apart and he could see again. By now, Billy’s heart was punching against his ribcage, like a boxer in the fight of his career.
His mouth was as dry as a desert. Billy poked out his tongue to moisten his lips and instantly regretted it. His lips were coated with grains too and now the inside of his mouth was full of the stuff. Billy coughed and spat while his hands frantically brushed his hair, his shoulders, chest, arms, legs. Everywhere.
Urgently Billy glanced over to where Charley was still sleeping. It looked as if frost had settled on her. She was covered from head to foot in tiny granules, the moonlight through the window making the crystals glisten coldly.
But it was not ice.
They had both been covered with sand.
Pushing down his rising sense of dread, Billy roused Charley gently.
“Charley,” he said softly. “Don’t be afraid, but something has happened to us.”
She moaned, as all sleepers do when the joy of dreaming has to end too soon. But then she felt the sand clinging to every pore of her skin and she was instantly awake.
Charley shook her long ginger hair and sent a thousand grains spilling to the floor of the carriage. Calmly – Much more calmly than me, Billy thought – she flicked the sand from her clothes.
“It’s a message,” said Charley, pointing to a square of parchment on the floor.
With sand beneath his nails and in the corners of his mouth, Billy picked it up and read:
Billy dashed out into the corridor. His head snapped back and forth, searching the shadows for movement. His inner sixth sense was reaching out, searching the invisible realm for traces of the supernatural.
Something had been there, Billy knew. There was a taint in the air – an oily smokiness which only Billy could detect – and a metallic tang in his mouth like blood. Magick had passed this way, he was certain. Old and dangerous magick.
But the traces were faint and fading fast.
“We’re too late,” he told Charley with a snarl, as he stumbled back into their carriage. Billy’s “gift” came at a price; each time he used it he was left drained. Right now he could barely stand and was clinging to the door frame for support.
Billy breathed in through his nose, his head clearing as the scent grew cold. “‘The Sandman’ is long gone.”
Charley shuddered. “It’s monstrous to think that someone was in here, watching us while we slept.”
Billy closed the compartment door again, although it didn’t make him feel any safer. “Do you think Sir Gordon is being followed?” he wondered out loud, scratching his head and dislodging still more sand. The train shuddered then and began to slow. “Edinburgh, finally,” declared Billy, looking through the window and seeing the unmistakable silhouette of the castle looming over the city.
“Quick,” said Charley. “Gather up some of the sand in an envelope, I want to analyze it as soon as we get to our lodgings.”
“Isn’t sand just sand?”
Charley gave a theatrical sigh. “How simple it must be in your world, Billy Flint.”
“Right,” said Charley, as she steered her wicker wheelchair towards the open train door and the platform that lay beyond it. “This is how we’re going to do it.” She spotted a porter and waved him over. “He can take the weight on the footrest while you support me with the handles.”
“You don’t want me to just bump you down on my own then, like we do on stairs?”
“Only if you want to tip me out,” said Charley. “Honestly, you can tell who’s got the brains on this team.”
Once Charley was safely down on the platform, Billy left her to it. Charley had very strict rules about her chair. Charlotte Steel decided where she wanted to go for herself; nobody pushed her around.
Billy gathered up their bags. Charley had five to his one, he noticed. Typical girl.
At the far end of the platform Sir Gordon and his entourage were whisked away into a waiting coach without so much as a second glance in their direction.
“We’re fine, thanks,” Billy
called out sarcastically. “But it was kind of you to offer.”
“Forget it,” said Charley, “we’ve got the address for the hotel. We can make our own way there.” A cold rain was blowing in from the east and her teeth started to rattle in her jaw.
Billy shivered as the damp night air wormed its way beneath his coat. “Lead on, Duchess,” he said with a smile.
They were heading towards the exit when a small boy called out to them. “Hey, wait up!” said the lad. He came pounding along the platform towards them, a Scottish terrier bouncing at his side. “Did ye see any policemen on the train?” asked the boy anxiously, while the dog ran round and round him, tangling him in its lead. “Sir Gordon sent me… The footman should’ve come but he’s run away, so I’m s’posed to take them to their hotel…only I fell asleep when the train was so late.” The young lad looked at them, his eyes pleading like a puppy’s, bigger even than the terrier’s. “I’ll get a hiding if I’ve missed them. Charles Steel and William Flint. Have ye seen them?”
“We are them,” said Charley, extending her hand. “I am Detective Constable Charlotte Steel and this is Detective Constable Billy Flint.”
“Away with you!” said the Scottish lad in disbelief. “He’s only a few years older than me and you’re a poor wee cripple.”
Billy winced. Charley wouldn’t take that lying down.
“You can believe it or not,” said Charley, spinning her chair so her back was to him. “Come on, Billy. I’m not in the mood for this.”
“I was on the lookout for two men,” the boy explained, dodging round to face her and whipping his cap from his head as a mark of respect. “I’m Doogie McCrimmon,” he said, “and I’m sorry for my mistake, miss.”
Charley pushed her chair forward until one wheel was crushing Doogie’s foot. Doogie winced. Charley rocked the wheel slightly, until she heard him whimper. “All forgiven,” she said breezily. “Who’s your friend?”
The Mummy's Revenge Page 2
