“No!” shouted Granny as her hearing aid began whistling furiously.
“Yes!” shouted Ben. “No!”
“Yes!”
“Nooo!”
“Yeeees!”
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
“YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!”
This went on for a few minutes, but to save your ears, I've tried to keep it short.
“There is absolutely no way I am letting a boy of your age come on a heist with me! Especially not to steal the Crown Jewels! And most important of all it’s impossible! It can’t be done!” exclaimed Granny.
“There must be a way…” pleaded Ben.
“Ben, I said ‘no’ and that’s final!”
“But—”
“No buts, Ben. No. ‘N’ and ‘O’ spells ‘no’.”
Ben was bitterly disappointed, but the lady was not for turning. “I’d better go then,” he said, despondently.
Granny looked a little downcast too. “Yes dear, you’d better, your mummy and daddy will be very worried about you.”
“They won’t be—”
“Ben! Home! Now!”
Ben was sad to see that Granny was becoming like one of the boring grown-ups again, just when she’d started to become interesting. Still, he did what she said. Apart from anything else, he didn’t want to make his parents suspicious, so he raced home and climbed up the drainpipe to his bedroom window, before rushing downstairs to the living room.
Unsurprisingly, though, Mum and Dad hadn’t been worried about where Ben was at all. They had been too busy planning their son’s rise to dancing superstardom to notice he was gone.
Dad had been calling and calling the national under-twelve dance competition hotline until finally he got through and secured his son a place. Mum was right, the competition was at the town hall in just a couple of weeks’ time. There was no time to lose, so Mum had been working every waking moment on her son’s Love Bomb outfit.
“How’s the rehearsals going, boy?” asked Dad. “You look like you’ve worked up quite a sweat.”
“Fine, thank you, Dad,” lied Ben. “I really am getting something really spectacular together for the big night.”
Ben cursed his runaway mouth.
Something spectacular?
He’d be lucky if he didn’t fall over and knock himself out.
“Well, we can’t wait to see it! Not long to go!” said Mum, not even looking up from the sewing machine, as she stitched a row of hundreds of sparkling red hearts down the side of his Lycra trousers.
“I’d kind of like to practise on my own for now, Mum, you know...” Ben gulped nervously. “Until it’s completely ready to show you.”
“Yes, yes, we understand,” said Mum.
Ben sighed with relief. He had bought himself a bit more time.
But only a little bit.
In a couple of weeks Ben was still going to have to perform a solo dance routine for the whole town.
He sat on his bed, and reached underneath it for his stash of Plumbing Weeklys. Flicking through an issue from the previous year, he saw that it contained a feature entitled ‘A Short History of Plumbing’, that focused on some of London’s oldest sewage pipes. Ben frantically turned the pages to find it.
Eureka! There it was.
Hundreds of years ago the River Thames, on the banks of which the Tower of London is situated, had been an open sewer. (Technically speaking, that means there was a lot of wee and poo in it.)
Buildings along the riverside simply had big pipes leading from their toilets straight into the river. In the magazine were detailed historical diagrams of various famous buildings in London, showing where their old sewage pipes connected to the river.
And…
Ben’s finger ran down the article…
Yes! A chart of the sewer pipes at the Tower of London.
This could be the key to stealing the Crown Jewels. One pipe was nearly a metre wide, big enough for a child to swim up. And maybe big enough for a little old lady too!
The article also said that, when the plumbing systems were modernised and proper sewers installed a lot of the old pipes were simply left where they were, because it was simpler than digging them up.
Ben’s head spun as he thought about what this meant. It was possible – just possible – that there was still a huge pipe leading from the Thames into the Tower of London, and that most people, apart from very keen plumbing enthusiasts, had forgotten it was there. Ben wouldn’t have known himself, if he hadn’t been a long-term subscriber to Plumbing Weekly.
He and Granny could swim up that pipe, and get into the Tower…
Mum and Dad were wrong! he thought. Plumbing can be exciting.
Of course, it was a sewage pipe, which wasn’t ideal, but any poo and wee still in it would be hundreds of years old.
Ben didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing.
At that moment, he heard a creak in the floorboards and his bedroom door flew open. His mum burst in holding a big piece of Lycra that looked ominously like his ‘Love Bomb’ outfit.
Ben quickly concealed the magazine under his bed, which made him look incredibly guilty.
“I was just going to get you to try this on,” said Mum.
“Oh yes,” said Ben, as he sat on his bed awkwardly, his heels pushing the remaining Plumbing Weeklys out of sight of Mum’s prying eyes.
“What’s that?” she said. “What did you hide when I came in? Is that Nuts magazine?”
“No,” said Ben, swallowing his guilt. This looked way worse than it was. It looked like he was hiding a naughty magazine under the bed.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Ben. I think it’s healthy you are expressing an interest in girls.”
Oh no! thought Ben. My mum’s going to talk to me about girls!
“There’s nothing embarrassing about being interested in girls, Ben.”
“Yes there is! Girls are gross!”
“No, Ben, it’s the most natural thing in the world…”
She’s just not stopping!
“THE DINNER IS NEARLY READY, LOVE!” came a shout from downstairs. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING UP THERE?”
“I AM TALKING TO BEN ABOUT GIRLS!” Mum shouted back.
Ben was so red that if he opened his mouth wide enough he might be mistaken for a postbox.
“WHAT?” cried Dad.
“GIRLS!” shouted Mum. “I AM TALKING TO OUR SON ABOUT GIRLS!”
“OH, RIGHT!” Dad shouted back. “I’LL TURN THE OVEN OFF.”
“So, Ben, if you ever need to—”
BRING BRING. BRING BRING.
It was Mum’s mobile phone going off in her pocket.
“Sorry dear,” she said, placing the handset to her ear. “Gail, can I call you back? I am just talking to Ben about girls. OK, thanks, bub-bye.”
She hung up the phone and turned to Ben. “Sorry, where was I? Oh yes, if you ever need to have a little chat with me about girls, then please do. You can trust me to be very discreet…”
For the first time in his life, Ben skipped to school the following morning.
Through his love of plumbing, the previous night he had discovered that the Tower of London had a weakness. The most impregnable building in the world, where some of the country’s most dangerous criminals had been imprisoned and executed, had a fatal flaw; a large sewage pipe that led directly into the River Thames.
That ancient tube would be his and Granny’s way in and out of the Tower! It was a quite brilliant plan, and Ben’s body couldn’t hide its excitement at this amazing discovery.
That’s why he was skipping.
Now he couldn’t wait until Friday night when his mum and dad would once again pack him off to Granny’s.
Then he would be able to convince the old lady that together they really could steal the Crown Jewels. Ben would bring along the diagram in Plumbing Weekly of the Tower of London’s sewage system to show her. The two of them could stay up all night and work out every detail of the most daring robbery of all time.
The problem was that a whole fat week of lessons and teachers and homework stood between now and Friday night. However, Ben was determined to use the week at school wisely.
In his IT lesson, he looked up the Crown Jewels and memorised every detail on the web page.
In History, he asked his teacher questions about the Tower of London and exactly where in the building the jewels were kept. (That would be the Jewel House, fact fans.)
In Geography, he found an atlas of the British Isles and pinpointed precisely where on the Thames the Tower is situated.
In PE, he didn’t accidentally on purpose forget his kit like usual, instead he did extra press-ups so his arms would be strong enough to pull himself up the sewage pipe that led into the Tower.
In Maths, he asked the teacher how many packets of Rolos you could buy with five billion pounds (which is what the Crown Jewels were said to be worth). Rolos were Ben’s absolute favourite sweets.
The answer is ten billion packets, or twenty-four billion actual Rolos. That’s enough for a year at least.
And Raj was sure to throw in a few extra packets for free.
In his French class, Ben learned how to say, “I know nothing about the theft of, how you say, ‘the Crown Jewels’, I am but a poor French peasant boy”, in case he needed to pretend he was a poor French peasant boy in order to escape from the scene of the crime.
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!
“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.
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.”
“Yes, but—”
“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*.”
“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.”