The Great Brain Robbery (6 page)

BOOK: The Great Brain Robbery
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‘I supposed you think this is funny!’

Mrs Pinkerton slapped a worksheet down in front of him. Sure enough it had Frankie’s name at the top, but underneath it, in his very own bright green pencil were the words: ‘MRS
STINKERTON PICKS HER NOSE AND EATS IT’ written out exactly one hundred times.

Frankie gasped. ‘I didn’t write that, Mrs Stink— I mean, Pinkerton! Timmy must have switched the papers! He must have put my name at the top! I didn’t do it, I
promise!’

‘That’s a lie!’ cried Timmy triumphantly. ‘Look!’ Timmy grabbed Frankie’s pencil case and showed Mrs Pinkerton and the class the offending green pencil as if
he were a lawyer presenting evidence to the jury.

‘Well that settles it!’ squawked Mrs Pinkerton. ‘I’ve had quite enough of your naughtiness, Frankie! You obviously can’t behave yourself so I have no choice but to
exclude you from our school trip to Marvella’s.’

The class gasped in horror. Never before had such a ghastly punishment been dished out to a pupil of Cramley Primary.

‘In fact,’ flushed Mrs Pinkerton, ‘you can collect your things and go home right now. I’ve had enough of you for one day.’ Frankie opened and closed his mouth like
the class goldfish. He was so shocked he could not think of a word to say, not even to that sneaky, cheating, double-bluffing trickster, Timothy Snotgrass.

‘But that’s not fair, Mrs Pinkerton!’ said Neet, getting out of her chair.

‘Sit down right away, young lady!’ squawked Mrs Pinkerton. ‘Or I’ll exclude you too.’

‘It’s all right, Neet,’ said Frankie, collecting his things together as fast as he could. ‘You go. I’ll see you on Friday.’ He could feel the tears beginning
to burn behind his eyes. The last thing he wanted was for the whole class to see him cry. Frankie gulped back a sob, grabbed his protractor and ran out of the classroom, disappointment crushing his
chest like a python.

 

The next morning Frankie woke up with a soupy feeling in his belly. As he lay on his bed, it seemed to be swaying slightly, as if it were adrift on the sea. Frankie opened one
heavy eyelid and peered blearily around him. The objects in his bedroom slowly settled into their usual places and his bed seemed to steady. But Frankie still had a strong sense that something was
not right. Something strange had happened. Something in the night. Something that he couldn’t quite remember. Frankie stayed motionless under his blankets. He had the impression that if he
moved, even slightly, he would break the delicate threads that connected the new day to the world of sleep. But if he could follow those threads back into the labyrinth of the night maybe, just
maybe, he would remember what had happened. Frankie’s eye alighted on his cupboard door. It stood slightly ajar. Did he leave it like that? He felt the trickle of a memory filter into his
imagination. Then it all came flooding back . . .

In the dead of night Frankie had awoken (or so he thought) to see Gadget the Rabbit hopping through his bedroom door. Frankie rubbed his eyes to check he wasn’t seeing things, but no,
there was Gadget, hopping on to the landing as if it had a life of its own. Frankie shuddered. He didn’t know what his rabbit was up to but a chill in his bones told him it was up to no good.
No good at all. He slipped out of bed as quietly as a moth, slid his feet into his slippers and followed. Peering around the door frame, Frankie saw his toy rabbit bouncing down the stairs, a faint
crackling issuing from its long mechanical ears. He followed on quickly and quietly, making as little noise as possible, as the mechanical toy hopped down to the kitchen, skipped smartly across the
tiles, then leapt through the catflap and headed towards the end of the garden.

Frankie’s heart was thumping like a drum as he stepped quietly into the damp night. He dropped to his hands and knees to avoid being seen and crawled quickly behind the nearest shrub. From
where he was hiding, Frankie saw the rabbit leap up on to the roof of the garden shed, stand on its hind legs and point its ears skywards. Then it began to swivel them around as if trying to pick
up a signal – left, right, left, right – it seemed to be seeking something far off in the distance.
What on earth is it doing?
Frankie wondered.
Who or what is Gadget
trying to communicate with?

The crackling sound turned into a series of pips and long beeps. Gadget had found what it was looking for. The beeps grew louder and the toy glowed a bright luminous blue as the tips of his ears
began to send pulses of light out into the night sky. Frankie frowned. Gadget wasn’t receiving, it was transmitting. It was sending signals to something, to someone, way off in the distance.
But who? The pulses grew more powerful and frequent. The same rhythm of pips and beeps, over and over again, rippling through the night like a wave machine. As he felt the waves pass through his
body, Frankie felt quite sick. He flattened himself against the damp grass and jammed his fingers in his ears . . .

That was all Frankie could remember. He rubbed his head and crawled out from under his blankets. Daylight was now flooding through the window giving the objects in his room a
reassuring brightness. He walked to the cupboard and opened it cautiously. There was Gadget, propped up neatly on the shelf. Frankie picked him up and inspected him. He seemed as plastic and
lifeless as any other factory toy. Frankie sighed. ‘Another nightscare,’ he said to himself out loud, ‘just another nightscare.’ Frankie stretched out his arm to place
Gadget back in the cupboard, but as he did so something caught his eye. Something that made his heart stop still. On the elbow of his pyjama top was a patch of muddy green. Frankie looked down at
his trousers. There were two more patches just below the knee. Grass stains.

 

Alphonsine sucked thoughtfully on her morning coffee as Frankie breathlessly explained what he had seen in the night.

‘Slow down, Frankie!’ said Eddie, feeding Colette a sneaky strip of bacon under the table. ‘I can hardly catch a word!’

‘Sorry,’ said Frankie, taking a deep breath. ‘But you see what I’m saying, right?’ Alphonsine inspected the grass stains closely.

‘You say ze bunny was peeping and blipping.’

‘Pipping and bleeping, yes,’ said Frankie.

‘And do you remember what it sounded like?’

Frankie had no trouble remembering the sequence. It was as if it had been printed on his eardrums. He hummed it out loud for Alphonsine to hear. Alphonsine narrowed her grey old eyes and pursed
her lips so tightly you could have sharpened a pencil between them.

‘Something most fishy is afloat,’ she muttered. Eddie nodded in agreement. ‘I do not know what it is. But I have not smelt anything this fishy since Colette gobbled Mrs
Popper’s kippers.’ Colette blushed with shame.

‘Why do you say that, Alfie?’ asked Frankie.

‘Ze rabbit was sending messages in morse code. It is a very simple code of bips and pleeps. I learnt it during ze war. Very good for sending tip-top secret messages.’

‘What was Gadget saying?’ asked Frankie, alarmed that his toy bunny could do such a thing.

‘It said,
“Project Wishlist – stage one complete”.

‘But what does that mean?’ said Frankie, trying to get his head around what had happened.

‘I haven’t the foggiest,’ said Eddie, ‘but I’ll tell you one thing. That Marvella is not to be trusted. We need to look into this.’

‘True!’ said Alphonsine, holding a finger in the air. ‘We must go to the Marvella shop and sniff it out.’

‘But it doesn’t open till tomorrow,’ said Frankie, ‘and today is the school visit. I don’t have permission to be there.’

‘Permission?’ scoffed the old spy. ‘Pffff! We is working tip-top secret undercover! We do not need nonsenses like
permission.
We must be silent. We must be stealthy.
We must rummage in the dustbins.’

‘Rummage in the dustbins?’ said Frankie, wrinkling up his nose.

‘But of course!’ said Alphonsine, widening her eyes at such a silly question. ‘Dustbins is the best place to start. People is always throwing away things they don’t want
anyone to see.’

‘No one knows how to rummage through a bin like my Alphonsine,’ said Eddie, adoringly.

‘All right then,’ said Frankie, finishing off his breakfast. ‘Let’s go!’

As Alphonsine parked her motorbike in a quiet side road, Frankie pulled off his helmet and looked up at the towering toy palace that dwarfed the street and the surrounding
village. Frankie felt a knot tightening in his stomach.

‘No time to be wasting!’ said Alphonsine, clapping her hands together. ‘Colette will keep watch out.’ The poodle sat up to attention and flicked her beady eyes from side
to side. ‘I will rummage in ze bins – and Frankie, you can sneak about, eyes agoggle, looking for ways in. We meet back here in ten minutes. Find out what you can.’

Frankie crouched behind a skip and checked out the back of the building. As he searched for a way in, he noticed how much the back of Marvella Brand’s Happyland differed from the front.
While the shop front was a fantastical dream castle topped with fluttering flags, the back was an imposing block of glass and steel bristling with swivelling satellite dishes. And while the front
of the store was guarded by a smiley pair of red-cheeked toy soldiers, the back was patrolled by dozens of unblinking security cameras tracking back and forth across the car park. Frankie could not
see a single chink in the cold, smooth wall that towered over him. His best bet, he thought, would be to scale the fire escape at the side. From there, he would be able to peer in through the
windows.

BOOK: The Great Brain Robbery
7.76Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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