In Spanish he learned to say, ‘I know nothing about, how you say, ‘the Crown Jewels’, I am but a poor Spanish peasant boy’, in case he needed to pretend he was a poor Spanish peasant boy in order to escape from the scene of the crime.
In German he learned to say…well, I’m sure you get the idea.
In Science, Ben quizzed his teacher about how you might be able to penetrate bulletproof glass. Even if you got into Jewel House, removing the jewels was not going to be easy, as they were kept behind glass that was inches thick.
In his Art class, he made a detailed scale model of the Tower of London out of matches so he could role play the daring robbery in miniature.
The week absolutely flew by, never had school been so much fun. Most importantly, for the first time in his life Ben couldn’t wait to spend time with his granny.
By the end of school on Friday afternoon, Ben felt he had all the data he needed to put the daring plan into place.
The story of the theft of the Crown Jewels would be on the TV news for weeks, on every website, and emblazoned across every front page of every newspaper in every country in the world. However, no one, but no one, would suspect that the thieves were in fact a little old lady and an eleven-year-old boy. They were going to get away with the crime of the century!
∨ Gangsta Granny ∧
18
Visiting Hours
“You can’t stay with Granny tonight,” said Dad. It was four o’clock on Friday afternoon, and Ben had just got home from school. It was strange that Dad was home so early. He usually didn’t finish his shift at the supermarket until eight.
“Why not?” asked Ben, noticing his dad’s face was dark with worry.
“I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news, son.”
“What?” demanded Ben, his face darkening with worry too.
“Granny’s in hospital.”
A little while later, once they’d finally found a parking space, Ben and his parents went through the automatic doors of the hospital. Ben wondered if Mum and Dad were ever going to find Granny in here. The hospital was impossibly tall and wide, a great monument to illness.
There were lifts that took you to other lifts.
Mile-long corridors.
Signs everywhere that Ben couldn’t comprehend:
CORONARY CARE UNIT
RADIOLOGY
OBSTETRICS
CLINICAL DECISION UNIT
MRI SCANNING ROOM
Confused-looking patients on trolleys or in wheelchairs were being wheeled up and down by porters, as doctors and nurses who looked like they hadn’t been to bed for days, hurried past them.
When they finally found the wing Granny was in, right up on the nineteenth floor, Ben didn’t recognise her at first.
Her hair was flat on her head, she didn’t have her glasses on or her teeth in, and she was wearing not her own clothes, but a standard issue NHS nightgown. It was as if all of the things that made her Granny had been taken from her, and she was now just a shell.
Ben felt so sad to see her like this, but tried to hide it. He didn’t want to upset her.
“Hello, dears,” she said. Her voice was croaky, and her speech a little slurred. Ben had to take a deep breath to stop from bursting into tears.
“How are you feeling, Mum?” asked Ben’s dad.
“Not too clever,” she replied. “I had a fall.”
“A fall?” said Ben.
“Yes. I don’t remember much about it. One moment I was reaching in the larder for a tin of cabbage soup, the next thing I knew I was lying on the lino staring at the ceiling. My cousin Edna called me a number of times from her nursing home. When she couldn’t get an answer, she called an ambulance.”
“When did you fall over, Granny?” asked Ben.
“Let me think, I was lying on the kitchen floor for two days, so it must have been Wednesday morning. I couldn’t get up to reach the telephone.”
“I am so sorry, Mum,” said Dad quietly. Ben had never seen his father look so upset.
“It’s funny, because I meant to call you on Wednesday, you know just for a chat, to see how you are,” said Mum, lying. She had never called the old lady in her life, and if Granny ever called the house Mum couldn’t get off the phone quick enough.
“You weren’t to know, my dear,” said Granny. “They did all kinds of tests this morning to see what’s wrong with me; X-rays and scans and the like. I’ll get the results tomorrow. Hopefully I won’t be in here too long.”
“I hope so too,” said Ben.
There was an uncomfortable silence.
No one quite knew what to say or do.
Mum hesitantly nudged Dad and mimed looking at her watch.
Ben knew hospitals made her uncomfortable. When he’d had his appendix out two years before she had only visited him a couple of times, and even then it had made her sweat and fidget.
“Well, we’d better be off,” said Dad.
“Yes, yes, you go,” said Granny, with lightness in her voice but sadness in her eyes. “Don’t you worry about me, I’ll be fine.”
“Can’t we stay a bit longer?” piped up Ben.
Mum shot him an anguished look, which Dad clocked.
“No, come along, Ben, your granny will need to go to sleep in a few hours,” said Dad, as he stood up and readied himself to leave. “I’m quite busy, Mum, but I’ll try and pop in over the weekend.”
He patted his mother on the head, like one might a dog. It was an awkward gesture; Dad wasn’t a hugger.
He turned to go, Mum smiled weakly, and then pulled a reluctant Ben across the ward by his wrist.
♦
Up in his bedroom, later that evening, Ben determinedly sorted all the information he’d gathered from school that week.
We’ll show them, Granny, he thought fiercely. I’m going to do it for you. Now Granny was ill he was more determined to do it than ever.
He had until tea time to plan the greatest jewel theft in history.
∨ Gangsta Granny ∧
19
A Small Explosive Device
The next morning, as Mum and Dad went through song after song to select some music for their son’s upcoming dance competition, Ben sneaked out of the house and cycled to the hospital.
When he finally found Granny’s ward, he saw that there was a bespectacled doctor perched on her bed. Nevertheless, he raced over excitedly to see the old lady, so he could share the plan with her.
The doctor was holding Granny’s hand and talking to her slowly and quietly.
“Just give us a moment alone please, Ben,” said Granny. “The doctor and I are just talking about, you know, lady things.”
“Oh, er, OK,” said Ben. He sloped back to the swing doors, and leafed through a sickly-looking copy of Take a Break.
The doctor passed him and said, “I’m sorry” before leaving the ward.
Sorry? thought Ben. Why is he sorry?
And he walked tentatively over to his granny’s bed.
Granny was dabbing at her eyes with a tissue, and when she saw Ben approach she stopped and shoved it back up the sleeve of her nightdress.
“Are you OK, Granny?” he asked softly.
“Yes, I’m fine. I just have something in my eye.”
“Then why did the doctor say ‘I’m sorry’ to me?”
Granny looked flustered for a moment.
“Erm, well, I imagine he was sorry that he wasted your time in coming here. There is absolutely nothing wrong with me, as it turns out.”
“Really?”
“Yes, the doctor gave me the test results. I’m as fit as a butcher’s dog.”
Ben hadn’t heard that expression before, but he imagined it must mean very, very fit.
“That’s brilliant news, Granny,” exclaimed Ben. “Now, I know you said ‘no’ before – ”
“Is this what I think it is, Ben?” asked Granny.
Ben nodded.
“I said ‘no’ a hundred times.”
“But what, young man?”
“I’ve found a weakness in the Tower of London. And I have spent all week working on a plan of how we can steal the jewels. I think we can really do it.”
To his surprise, Granny looked intrigued. “Pull the curtains and keep your voice down,” hissed the old lady, flicking the switch on her hearing aid to full power.
Ben quickly pulled the curtains around Granny’s bed, and then sat down next to her.
“So, at the stroke of midnight we swim across the Thames in scuba-diving gear, and locate the ancient sewage pipe, here,” whispered Ben, showing her the detailed diagram in the back issue of Plumbing Weekly.
“We have to swim up a sewage pipe?! At my age!” said Granny. “Don’t be daft, boy!”
“Shush, keep your voice down,” said Ben.
“Sorry,” whispered Granny.
“And it’s not daft. It’s brilliant. The pipe is just wide enough, look here…”
Granny lifted herself up from her pillows and moved closer to the page in Plumbing Weekly. She studied the diagram. It did indeed look wide enough.
“Now, if we swim up the pipe we can get inside the Tower undetected,” continued Ben. “Everywhere else around the perimeter of the building there are armed guards and security cameras and laser sensors. Take any other route in and we wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“Yes yes yes, but then how the blazes do we get into Jewel House where the jewels are kept?” she whispered.
“The sewage pipe ends here at the privy.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The privy. It’s an old world for toilet.”
“Oh yes, so it is.”
“From the privy it’s a short run – ”
“Ahem!”
“Er, I mean a short walk across the courtyard to Jewel House. At night the door to the house is of course locked and double locked.”
“Probably triple locked!” Granny didn’t seem that convinced. Well, Ben would just have to convince her!
“The door is solid steel, so we’ll drill out the locks to open it – ”
“But the crowns and the sceptres and all that gubbins must surely be kept behind bulletproof glass, Ben,” said Granny.
“Yes, but the glass isn’t bomb proof. We’ll set off a small explosive device to shatter the glass.”
“An explosive device?!” spluttered Granny. “Where on earth are we going to get that from?”
“I swiped a few chemicals from Science class,” replied Ben with a smirk. “I am pretty sure I can create an explosion big enough to get through that glass.”
“But the guards will hear the explosion, Ben. No, no, no. I’m sorry, that’s never going to work!” exclaimed Granny as quietly as she could.
“Well, I thought of that,” said Ben, momentarily delighted with his own ingenuity. “You need to board a train to London earlier that day, posing as a sweet old lady – ”
“I am a sweet old lady!” protested Granny.
“You know what I mean,” continued Ben with a smile. “From the station you take the number seventy-eight bus, all the way to the Tower of London. Then you give the Beefeater guards chocolate cake with something in it to make them sleep.”
“Oh, I could use my special herbal sleeping tonic!” said Granny.
“Er, yes, fantastic,” said Ben. “So, the guards eat the chocolate cake, and by night-time they will be fast asleep.”
“Chocolate cake?” protested Granny. “Surely the guards would prefer some of my delicious homemade cabbage cake*.”
≡ Granny’s recipe for Cabbage Cake:
Take six large mouldy cabbages
Mash up the cabbages with your potato masher
Put the cabbage mush into a backing tray
Bake in the oven until your whole house smells of cabbage
Wait for a month for the cake to go stale
Slice and serve (sick bucket optional)
“Erm,” Ben squirmed.
He didn’t want to upset Granny, but there was no way anyone would eat a piece of Granny’s cabbage cake unless they were intimately related to her, and even then they would probably spit it out when she wasn’t looking.
“I think a chocolate cake from the supermarket would be better.”
“Well, you seem to have thought of everything. I’m very impressed, you know. The idea of using that old pipe is genius.”
Ben flushed with pride. “Thanks.”
“But how did you know about it? They don’t teach you that stuff at school do they, about sewage pipes and that?”
“No,” said Ben. “It’s just…I’ve always loved plumbing. I remembered the old pipes being in my favourite magazine.” He held up Plumbing Weekly. “It’s my dream to be a plumber one day.”
He looked down, expecting Granny to tell him off or mock him.
“Why are you looking at the ground?” asked Granny.
“Um…Well, I know it’s silly and boring to want to be a plumber. I know I should want to do something more interesting.” Ben felt his face turn burning red.
Granny put a hand on his chin and gently tilted his head up. “Nothing you did could ever be silly or boring, Ben,” she said. “If you want to be a plumber, and it’s your dream, then no one can take it away from you. Do you understand? All you can do in this life is follow your dreams. Otherwise you’re just wasting your time.”
“I…I guess.”
“I should hope so. Honestly! You say that plumbing is boring, but here you are, planning to steal the Crown Jewels, for goodness sake…and it’s all down to plumbing!”
Ben smiled. Maybe Granny was right.
“But I have a question for you, Ben.”
“Yes?”
“How do we escape? A plan like this is no good if you are going to get caught red-handed, my lad.”
“I know that, Granny, so I thought we should go out the way we came in, through the sewage pipe, and swim back across the Thames. It’s only fifty metres wide, and I’ve got my hundred-metre swimming badge. It will be a doddle.”
Granny bit her lip. She obviously wasn’t sure that any of this would be a doddle, not least swimming across a fast flowing river at night.
Ben looked at her with hope in his eyes.
“Well Granny, are you in? Are you still a gangsta?”
She looked deep in thought for quite a while.
“Please?” pleaded Ben. “I’ve loved hearing all about your adventures, and I really want to go on a heist with you. And this would be the ultimate: stealing the Crown Jewels. You said yourself it was every great thief’s dream. Well, Granny? Are you in?”
Granny looked at her grandson’s glowing face. After a while she murmured, “Yes.”
Ben leaped from his chair and hugged her. “Brilliant!”
Granny lifted her weak arms and embraced him. It was the first time in years she had really hugged him.
“But I have one condition,” said the old lady with a deadly serious look in her eyes.
“What?” whispered Ben.
“We put them back the next night.”
∨ Gangsta Granny ∧
20
Boom Boom Boom
Ben couldn’t believe what Granny had just said. There was no way he would risk stealing the Crown Jewels only to put them back the very next night.
“But they are worth millions, billions even…” he complained.
“I know. So we’d definitely get caught if we tried to sell them,” replied Granny.
“But…!”
“No ‘buts’, boy. We put them back the next night. Do you know how I evaded prison all these years? I never sold a thing. I just did it for the buzz.”
“But you kept them, though,” said Ben. “Even if you didn’t sell them. You’ve got all those jewels in your biscuit tin.”
Granny blinked. “Yes, well, I was young and foolish then,” she said. “I have learned since that it is wrong to steal. And you need to understa
nd that too.” She gave him a fierce look.
Ben squirmed. “I do, of course I do…”
“It’s a brilliant plan you’ve put together, Ben, honestly it is. But those jewels don’t belong to us, do they?”
“No,” said Ben. “No, they don’t.” He felt a tiny bit ashamed now that he’d been so horrified at the idea of giving back the jewels.
“And don’t forget that every policeman in the country, maybe even the world will be looking for the Crown Jewels. They’ll have all of Scotland Yard after us. If we were found with them we’d be thrown into prison for the rest of our lives. That might not be so long for me, but for you it could be seventy or eighty years.”
“You’re right,” said Ben.
“And the Queen seems like such a nice old dear. We are around the same age actually. I would hate to upset her.”
“Me too,” murmured Ben. He had seen the Queen on the news loads of times and she seemed like a nice old lady, smiling and waving at everybody from the back of her giant pram.
“Let’s just do it for the thrill. Agreed?”
“Agreed!” said Ben. “When can we do it? It will have to be a Friday night when Mum and Dad take me to stay at yours. Did the doctor say when you’ll be out of hospital?”
“Erm, oh yes, he did, he said I could leave anytime.”
“Fantastic!”
“But we need to do it very soon. How about next Friday?”
“Isn’t that too soon?”
“Not at all, your plan seems very well thought out, Ben.”
“Thank you,” said Ben beaming. It was the first time ever that he felt like he had made a grown-up proud of him.
“When I get out of here I’ll get on to pinching the equipment we need. Now run along, Ben, and I will see you next Friday night at the usual time.”
Ben pulled back the curtain. Mr Parker, Granny’s nosy neighbour, was standing right there!
Gangsta Granny Page 6
