“Just here, please,” said Granny directing from the backseat of the police car. “Just opposite the Tower. Thank you so much.”
PC Fudge strained as he unloaded the scooter out of his boot. “Well, next time, please remember that mobility scooters are meant only for pavements, not main roads, and certainly not motorways.”
“Yes, Officer,” replied Granny with a smile.
“Well, good luck you two, with the whole… erm… clingfilm-bubble wrap alliance thing.”
And with that, PC Fudge sped off into the night, leaving Granny and Ben gazing at the magnificent thousand-year-old Tower of London on the opposite bank of the river. It was particularly spectacular at night, its four domed towers lit up, its reflection shimmering on the cold dark River Thames below.
The Tower was once a prison, with an illustrious list of former inmates (including the future Queen Elizabeth I, the adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh, the terrorist Guy Fawkes, the senior Nazi Rudolf Hess, Jedward*). Now, though, the Tower is a museum, and home to the priceless Crown Jewels, housed in their own special building, Jewel House.
The unlikely pair of gangstas stood at the riverbank. “Are you ready?” asked Granny, her mask completely steamed up from sitting in the back of a police car for over an hour.
“Yes,” said Ben, trembling with excitement. “I’m ready.”
Granny reached out to hold Ben’s hand, and then she counted, “Three, two, one” and on one they leapt into the dark waters below.
The water was freezing cold even with the wetsuits on, and for a few moments all Ben could see was black. It was terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure.
When their heads bobbed out of the water, Ben took the snorkel out of his mouth for a moment.
“Are you OK, Granny?”
“I have never felt more alive.”
They doggy-paddled across the river. Ben had never been a great swimmer and lagged behind a little. Secretly he wished he had brought his armbands or at least a lilo.
A huge party cruiser, with music blaring and young people shouting, chugged down the river. Granny had swum ahead, and Ben had lost sight of her.
Oh no!
Had she been crushed by the cruiser?
Was Granny in a watery grave at the bottom of the Thames?
“Come on, slowcoach!” shouted Granny as the party boat passed and they caught sight of each other again. Ben sighed with relief, and continued doggy-paddling across the deep dark dirty water.
According to the diagram in Plumbing Weekly, the sewage pipe was situated just to the left of Traitors’ Gate. (This was an entrance to the Tower only accessible from the river, where many prisoners would be taken to be locked up for the rest of their lives or beheaded. Nowadays Traitors’ Gate had been bricked up, so the pipe was the only way into the Tower from the river.)
Then, with a rush of relief, Ben found the pipe. It was partly submerged under the water. It was dark and eerie, and he could hear the echoes of lapping waves reverberating inside it.
Suddenly Ben began to have second thoughts about the whole adventure. As much as he liked plumbing, he didn’t want to have to crawl up an ancient sewage pipe.
“Come on, Ben,” said Granny, as she bobbed up and down in the water. “We haven’t come this far to give up now.”
Well, thought Ben. If a little old lady can do it, then I certainly can.
Ben took a deep breath and propelled himself into the pipe. Granny followed close behind.
It was blacker than black in there, and after he travelled a few metres he could feel something crawling across his head. He heard an eek-eek noise, and could sense something scratching his scalp.
It felt like claws.
He put his hand on his head.
He touched something big and furry. Then he realised the awful truth.
IT WAS A RAT!
A giant rat was clinging to the top of his head.
screamed Ben.
* I lied about that last one, but I would like to see Jedward locked up for ever in the Tower of London for crimes against music.
The sound of Ben’s scream echoed through the length of the pipe. He whacked the rat off his head and it landed on top of Granny, who was crawling up the pipe just behind him.
“Poor little rat,” she said. “Be gentle with it, dear.”
“But—”
“He was here first, now come on, we have to hurry. The sleeping-tonic chocolate cake I gave the guards will be wearing off very soon.”
The pair crawled further up the pipe. It was wet and slippery, and it smelled awful. (Unfortunately for Ben and Granny, it turns out that ancient poo does still pong.)
After a while, Ben could see a shaft of grey in all the black. It was the end of the tunnel, at last!
He hauled himself out of the ancient stone privy, and then reached down the pipe to help his granny clamber out. They were covered from head to toe in disgustingly stinky black slime.
Standing inside the cold dark toilet, Ben spied a glassless window in the wall. They clambered through this and landed on the cold wet grass of the Tower’s courtyard below.
For a few moments they lay there, gazing up at the moon and the stars. Ben reached out and held Granny’s hand. She squeezed it tight.
“This is amazing,” said Ben.
“Come on, dear,” she whispered. “We’ve barely started yet!”
Ben stood up and helped Granny to her feet. The old lady immediately started unwrapping the clingfilm that she had waterproofed her handbag with.
This took several minutes.
“I think I may have overdone the clingfilm. Still, better safe than sorry.”
Eventually the mile-long roll of clingfilm was off, and Granny took out a map Ben had cut out of a book in the school library, so the two unlikely thieves could locate Jewel House.
It was eerie being inside the Tower of London courtyard at night.
The Tower is said to be haunted by the ghosts of people who died there. Over the years, several guards have run away in terror, claiming that at the dead of night they had seen the ghosts of various historical figures who had died there.
Now, though, there was something even stranger roaming the courtyard.
Granny in a wetsuit!
“This way,” hissed Granny, and Ben followed her down a walled passage. Ben’s heart was beating so fast he thought he was going to explode.
After a few minutes they were standing outside Jewel House, overlooking Tower Green and the monument to those who were beheaded or hanged there. Ben wondered if he and Granny would be executed if they were caught stealing the Crown Jewels, and a shiver ran down his spine.
Two Beefeaters were lying on the ground, snoring loudly. Their immaculate black and red uniforms emblazoned with ‘ER’ were becoming soiled on the wet ground. Granny’s herbal sleeping tonic in the chocolate cake had worked.
But for how long?
As she hurried past them, Granny let out a familiar quacking sound from her bum. One of the guards’ noses crinkled at the smell.
Ben held his breath – not just because of the smell – but because he was afraid.
Was Granny’s bottom burp going to wake the guard up and ruin everything?
An eternal moment passed…
Then the guard opened one eye.
Oh no!
Granny pushed Ben back, and raised her handbag, as if to clobber the Beefeater with it.
This is it, thought Ben. We’ll be hanged!
But then the guard closed his eye again, and continued snoring.
“Granny, please try to control your bottom,” hissed Ben.
“I didn’t do a thing,” said Granny, innocently. “It must have been you.”
They tiptoed to the huge steel door at the front of Jewel House.
“Right, I just need your dad’s power drill…” said Granny, reaching inside her handbag. With a juddering whirr, she started drilling through the series of locks on the door. One by one the metal locks crumbled to the ground.
All of a sudden the guards snored extremely loudly.
Ben froze and Granny nearly dropped the power drill. But the guards slept on and, after a few nerve-racking minutes, the door was finally unlocked.
Granny looked exhausted. Sweat was dripping down her forehead. She sat down on a low wall for a moment, and then pulled out a thermos flask.
“Cabbage soup?” she offered.
“No, thank you, Granny,” replied Ben. He shifted uneasily. “We’d better get going before the guards wake up.”
“Rush, rush, rush, that’s all you kids do these days. Patience is a virtue.” She poured the last of her cabbage soup down her throat, and rose to her feet.
“Delicious! Right, let’s do this!” she said. The huge steel door creaked as it opened, and Ben and Granny entered Jewel House.
Out of the dark, came a flurry of black feathers, hitting Ben and Granny in the face. Ben was so startled he screamed again.
“Shush!” said Granny.
“What were they?” said Ben, as he saw the winged creatures disappear off into the black sky. “Bats?”
“No, dear, ravens. There are dozens of them here. Ravens have lived at the Tower for hundreds of years.”
“This place is spooky,” said Ben, his stomach knotted in fear.
“Especially at night,” agreed Granny. “Now stay close to me, boy, because it’s about to get a whole lot spookier…”
A long winding corridor stretched out ahead of them. This was where tourists from around the world queue for hours to see the Crown Jewels. The old lady and her grandson tiptoed their way silently along it, dripping smelly icy water from the Thames in their wake.
Finally they turned a corner, into the main room where all the jewels were kept. Like the sun bursting through the clouds on a grey day, the jewels illuminated Ben and Granny’s faces.
The pair of thieves stopped in awe. Their mouths fell open as they looked at the treasures laid out before them. They were more magnificent than anyone could imagine. It truly was the most superb collection of precious objects in the world.
Dear reader, not only were they beautiful and priceless, they symbolised hundreds of years of history. There were a number of royal crowns:
• St Edward’s Crown, with which the new king or queen is crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury during the coronation ceremony. It’s made of gold and decorated with sapphires and topazes. Proper bling!
• The Imperial State Crown, in which were set an incredible three thousand gems, including the Second Star of Africa (the second largest stone cut from the largest diamond ever found. No, I don’t know where the First Star is).
• The breathtaking Imperial Crown of India, set with around six thousand diamonds and magnificent rubies and emeralds. Unfortunately not in my size.
• The twelfth century gold Anointing Spoon, used to anoint the king or queen with holy oil. Not to be used for eating Coco Pops.
• Not forgetting the Ampulla, the gold flask in the form of an eagle which contains that holy oil. Like a really posh thermos flask.
• And finally, the famous Orb and Sceptres. That’s a lot of gear.
If the Crown Jewels were featured in the Argos catalogue, they would probably look like this:
Granny took out the rolled-up supermarket carrier bag she’d kept in her handbag, ready to put the Crown Jewels in.
“Right, we just need to break through this glass,” she whispered.
Ben looked at her with disbelief. “I’m not sure we are going to get all of these jewels in there.”
“Well, sorry, dear,” she whispered back. “You have to pay five pence for plastic bags at the shops these days, so I only bought the one.”
The glass was inches thick.
Bulletproof.
Ben had smuggled a few compound chemicals out of his Science class, and combined them to go…
… if set alight.
They stuck the chemicals to the glass with some BluTack. Then Granny attached one end of a ball of pink wool to the BluTack. (Wool would be the perfect fuse.) Then she produced some matches. They just needed to make sure they were far enough away from the explosion. Otherwise they might be blown up too.
“Right, Ben,” whispered Granny. “Let’s get as far away from the glass as we can.”
The pair retreated around a wall, unravelling the pink wool as they went.
“Do you want to light the fuse?” said Granny. Ben nodded. He really wanted to, but his hands were trembling so much with excitement he didn’t know if he could.
Ben opened the matchbox. There were only two matches inside.
He went to strike the first, but his hands were shaking so much that it broke in two when he did.
“Oh dear,” whispered Granny. “Have another go.”
Ben picked up the second match.
He tried to strike it but nothing happened. Some river water must have leaked out of the sleeve of his wetsuit. Now both the match and the matchbox were soaking wet.
“Noooo!” cried Ben in desperation. “Mum and Dad were right. I am useless. I can’t even light a match!”
Granny put her arms around her grandson. As they cuddled, their wetsuits squeaked a little.
“Don’t talk like that, Ben. You are an amazing young man. You really are. Since we have been spending so much time together I am a hundred times happier than I could ever say.”
“Really?” said Ben.
“Really!” replied Granny. “And you are so very clever. You planned this whole extraordinary heist yourself and you’re only eleven years old.”
“I’m nearly twelve,” said Ben.
Granny chuckled. “But you get my point, dear. How many other children your age could plan something as daring as this?”
“But we aren’t going to steal the Crown Jewels now, so it’s all been a massive waste of time.”
“It’s not over yet,” said Granny, as she pulled out a tin of cabbage soup from her handbag. “We can always try some good old-fashioned brute force!”
Granny handed the tin to her grandson. Ben took it with a smile, and then walked over to the cabinet.
“Here goes!” said Ben, as he swung back the tin to strike the glass.
“Please don’t,” said a voice from the shadows.
Ben and Granny froze in terror.
Was it a ghost?
“Who’s there?” Ben called out.
The figure stepped out into the light.
It was the Queen.
“What on earth are you doing here?” asked Ben. “Er… I mean, what on earth are you doing here, Your Majesty?”
“I like to come here when I can’t sleep,” replied the Queen. She spoke in that instantly familiar posh voice of hers. Ben and Granny were surprised to see she was wearing a nightgown and little furry Corgi slippers. She was also wearing the coronation crown on her head. It was the most magnificent of all the Crown Jewels. The Archbishop of Canterbury placed it on her head when she was crowned Queen in 1953. The crown, which dates back to 1661, is made of gold, encrusted with diamonds, rubies, pearls, emeralds and sapphires.
It was an impressive look, even for the Queen!
“I come here to think,” the Queen went on. “I got my chauffeur to bring me over from Buckingham Palace in the Bentley. I have my Christmas address to the nation in a few weeks, and I need to think carefully about what I want to say. One always finds it easier to think with one’s crown on. The question is, what on earth are you two doing here?”
Ben and Granny looked at each other, ashamed.
Being told off was bad enough at the best of times, but being told off by the Queen was on a whole other level of being-told-offness, as this simple graph demonstrates:
“And why do the pair of you smell like poo-poo? Well?” pushed Her Majesty. “I am waiting.”
“I am solely to blame, Your Majesty,” said Granny, bowing her head.
“No, she’s not,” said Ben. “It was me who said we should steal the Crown Jewels. I talked her into it.”
“That’s true,” said Granny, “but it’s not what I meant. I started this whole thing, when I pretended to be an international jewel thief.”
“What?” exclaimed Ben.
“Pardon?” said the Queen. “One is terribly confused.”
“My grandson hated staying with me on Friday nights,” said Granny. “I heard him one night, calling his parents and complaining about how boring I was—”
“But Granny, I don’t think that any more!” protested Ben.
“It’s all right, Ben, I know things have changed since then. And in truth I was boring. I just liked to eat cabbage and play Scrabble, and I knew deep down that you hated those things. So I made up stories from the books I read to entertain you. I told you I was an infamous jewel thief called ‘The Black Cat’…”
“But what about those diamonds you showed me?” said Ben, feeling shocked and angry that he’d been deceived.
“All worthless, dear,” replied Granny. “Made of glass. I found them in an old ice-cream tub at the local charity shop.”
Ben stared at her. He couldn’t believe it. The whole thing, the whole incredible story, was made up.
“I can’t believe you lied to me!” he said.
“I— I mean…” said Granny, falteringly.
Ben turned to glare at her. “You’re not my gangsta granny after all,” he said.
Then there was a deafening silence in Jewel House.
Followed by a rather loud and rather posh cough. “Ahem,” said an imperious voice.
“I’m terribly sorry to interrupt,” said the Queen, in her clipped tones, “but might we get back to the important matter at hand? I still don’t understand why the two of you are here in the Tower of London in the middle of the night, smelling of poo-poo, and attempting to steal my jewels.”
“Well, once I had started, the lie grew and grew, Your Majesty,” continued Granny, avoiding Ben’s eyes. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. I just got carried away I suppose. It was so nice to spend that extra time with my grandson, to have fun with him. It reminded me of when I used to read him bedtime stories. That was in the days when he didn’t find me boring.”
Ben fidgeted. He was starting to feel guilty, too. Granny had lied to him, and that was horrible – but she’d only done it because she was upset that he thought she was dull.
“I had fun too,” he whispered.
Granny smiled at him. “I’m glad, little Benny. I’m so sorry, I really—”
“Ahem,” interrupted the Queen.
“Oh yes,” said Granny. “Well, before I knew it, things had snowballed, and we were planning to take on the most daring robbery of all time. We climbed up the sewage pipe, by the way. We don’t usually smell like this, Your Majesty.”
“I should hope not.
Ben was feeling really guilty now. Even if Granny had never been an international jewel thief, she certainly wasn’t boring. She had helped plan this robbery with him, and now here they were in the Tower of London at midnight, talking to the Queen!
I have to do something to help her, Ben realised.
“The robbery was my idea, Your Majesty,” he said. “I am so sorry.”
“Please let my grandson go,” interjected Granny. “I don’t want his young life ruined. Please, I beg you. We were going to return the Crown Jewels tomorrow night. I promise.”
“A likely story,” murmured the Queen.
“It’s true!” exclaimed Ben.
“Please do what you want with me, Your Majesty,” continued Granny. “Have me locked up here in the Tower for ever, if you like, but I beg you, let the boy go.”
The Queen looked lost in thought.
“I really don’t know what to do,” said the Queen eventually. “I am touched by your story. As you know, I too am a grandmother, and my grandchildren find me dull sometimes.”
“Really?” asked Ben. “But you are the Queen!”
“I know,” the Queen chuckled.
Ben was stunned. He had never seen the Queen laugh before. She was usually so serious, and never cracked a smile when giving her speech on TV at Christmas, or opening Parliament, or even watching comedians at the Royal Variety Show.
“But to them I’m just their boring old granny,” she continued. “They forget that I was young once.”
“And that they too will be old one day,” added Granny, with a meaningful look to Ben.
“Exactly, my dear!” agreed the Queen. “I think the younger generation need to have a bit more time for the elderly.”
“I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” said Ben. “If I hadn’t been so selfish and moaned about old people being boring none of this would have ever happened.”
There was an uncomfortable silence.
Granny rummaged in her handbag and offered the Queen a bag of sweets. “Murray Mint, Your Majesty?”
“Yes please,” said the Queen. She unwrapped it and popped it into her mouth. “Gosh, I haven’t had one of these for years.”
“They’re my favourite,” said Granny.
“And they last so long,” added the Queen as she sucked it, before composing herself again.
“Do you know what happened to the last man who attempted to steal the Crown Jewels?” enquired the Queen.
“Was he hung, drawn and quartered?” asked Ben excitedly.
“Believe it or not he was pardoned,” said the Queen with a wry smile.
“Pardoned, Your Majesty?” said Granny.
“In 1671, an Irishman by the name of Colonel Blood tried to steal them, but was caught by guards as he tried to escape. He hid this very crown I am wearing now under his cloak and dropped it on the ground just outside. King Charles II was so amused by Colonel Blood’s daring attempt that he set him free.”
“I must Google him,” said Ben.
“I don’t know what Googling is,” said Granny.
“Nor me,” chuckled the Queen. “So, in royal tradition, that’s what I am going to do. Pardon you both.”
“Oh thank you, Your Majesty,” said Granny, kissing her hand.
Ben fell to his knees. “Thank you, thank you, thank you so much, Your Majesty…”
“Yes yes, don’t grovel,” said the Queen, haughtily. “I cannot abide grovelling. I have met far too many grovellers during my reign.”
“I am so sorry, Your Majestical Royal Majesty,” said Granny.
“That’s exactly what I mean! You’re grovelling now!” replied the Queen.
Ben and Granny looked at each other in fear. It was hard not to speak to Her Majesty without grovelling at least a little bit.
“Now jolly along quickly, please,” said the Queen, “before this whole place is overrun with guards. And don’t forget to watch me on the telly on Christmas Day…”
It was dawn by the time they trundled back into Grey Close. This time there was no police car to give them a lift. It was a very long way home from London on a mobility scooter. Over the speed bumps they went, bump bump bump, and whirred into Granny’s drive.
“What a night!” sighed Ben.
“My word, yes, good golly I do feel rather stiff from sitting on that thing for so long,” said Granny, as she eased her old and tired body off the scooter. “I am sorry, you know, Ben,” she said after a pause. “I really didn’t mean to hurt you. It was just so nice spending time with you, I didn’t want it to stop.”
Ben smiled. “It’s OK,” he said. “I understand why you did it. And don’t worry. You’re still my gangsta granny!”
“Thank you,” said Granny softly. “Anyway, I think that’s quite enough excitement to last a lifetime. I want you to go home, be a good boy, and concentrate on your plumbing…”
“I will, I promise. No more heists for me,” chuckled Ben.
Suddenly Granny froze.
She looked up.
Ben could hear a helicopter whirring overhead.
“Granny?”
“Shush…!” Granny adjusted her hearing aid and listened intently. “That’s more than one helicopter. It sounds like a fleet.”
The sound of police-car sirens screeched from all around, and within moments heavily armed police surrounded them from every angle. Granny and Ben couldn’t see any of the bungalows in the close any more because they were trapped behind a wall of policemen in bulletproof vests. The whirr of police helicopters overhead was so deafening that Granny had to turn her hearing aid down.
A voice came over a megaphone from one of the helicopters. “You are surrounded. Put down your weapons. I repeat, put down your weapons or we will shoot.”
“We haven’t got any weapons!” shouted Ben. His voice hadn’t broken yet and it came out a bit girly.
“Don’t argue with them, Ben. Just put your hands in the air!” shouted Granny over the noise. The gangsta pair put their hands up. A number of especially brave policemen surged forward, pointing their guns right at Ben and Granny. They pushed them over and pinned them to the ground.
“Don’t move!” Came the voice from the helicopter. Ben thought, How could I move with a great big policeman kneeling on my back?
A flurry of leather-gloved hands made their way up and down their bodies and fumbled through Granny’s handbag, presumably searching for guns. If they had been searching for used tissues they would be in luck, but they didn’t find any weapons.
Ben and Granny were then handcuffed and brought to their feet. Out from behind the wall of policemen stepped an old man with a very big nose wearing a pork-pie hat.
It was Mr Parker.
Granny’s nosy neighbour.