The Great Brain Robbery Read online

  ‘Have you heard from Wes?’ he asked as they wandered across the playground to where Mrs Pinkerton was blowing the whistle for assembly. ‘He’s not been in touch with me since he went off to stay with his aunt.’ Wes had been one of Frankie and Neet’s closest allies. He was only seven but he was such a smartypants that he had been put into the same class as the older kids. He had been a real help to Frankie and Neet when there had been all that ‘trouble’ at the school the year before. But now he had left and nobody seemed to quite know where he’d gone.

  ‘No,’ said Neet, shaking her head. ‘Not a peep. Poor Wes, it’s terrible, isn’t it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Frankie.

  ‘Didn’t you hear?’ said Neet, surprised. ‘His mum and dad went missing on safari. Nobody knows what happened to them.’

  ‘That’s awful!’ gasped Frankie.

  ‘You bet,’ said Neet. ‘Mrs Pinkerton told me he’d gone to stay with his Auntie Elvira, but Mrs Pinkerton didn’t have the address. He must have left in a hurry.’

  ‘That’s weird,’ frowned Frankie. ‘Why wouldn’t Wes tell us where he was going?’

  ‘I know!’ said Neet. ‘And there’s another thing too, Frankie. It probably doesn’t matter, but I thought I should tell you.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Well,’ said Neet, ‘I heard that Snuffles escaped over the summer.’ Frankie stopped dead in his tracks.

  For those of you who don’t know who Snuffles is, let me explain. As I said earlier, there had been an awful lot of ‘trouble’ at Frankie and Neet’s school. Back then Cramley Primary had been a very different place, a much, much scarier place called Crammar Grammar. The old headmaster, Dr Calus Gore, had been a mad scientist who used the school as his laboratory and the children as guinea-pigs. He had wanted to use his scientific wizardry to turn every child in the school into an exam-passing robot with his terrifying Brain-drain machine. But luckily Frankie, Neet and Wes had put a stop to his plans just in the nick of time. While they were at it, they accidentally turned the headmaster into a fluffy white rat called Snuffles – which was a bit of a bonus. Ever since, Snuffles had been safely locked up in a cage in the first-year classroom. Or so Frankie had thought.

  ‘How did he get out?’ whispered Frankie, horrified.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Neet, ‘but I don’t suppose we need to worry.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Frankie’s brow crinkled up like a crisp. He wasn’t so sure. He hadn’t forgotten Dr Gore’s hair-raising experiments on his classmates, or the time when the headmaster had locked him in a dark cupboard for hours on end. He hadn’t forgotten Dr Gore’s acid yellow eyes or his rasping voice. Dr Gore was as crackers as a parrot and as dangerous as a snake. But Neet was right, wasn’t she? What harm could he possibly do now? Frankie shuddered and tried to shrug off the cold hand of fear that had gripped the nape of his neck.

  ‘Come on, Frankie,’ said Neet. ‘We’ll be late for assembly!’

  The assembly hall was abuzz with excitement. Children were whispering frantically and every now and then a little squeal trilled round the room. Even Mrs Pinkerton looked pinker than usual.

  ‘What’s all the fuss?’ Frankie asked Neet, as their class filed in.

  ‘No idea,’ she replied, ‘but stand back, that first-year’s about to explode!’

  Frankie looked at a little boy who was so excited Frankie actually thought he could see him swelling up like a party balloon.

  Mrs Pinkerton stood up on stage and clapped her hands. ‘Settle down, children!’ she called over the dozens of bobbing heads. ‘Settle down!’ The room hushed quickly. ‘We have a very special visitor here today.’ Mrs Pinkerton beamed like a luminous flamingo. ‘Can anybody tell me who it is?’

  Dozens of hands shot into the air.

  ‘Teddy Manywishes! Teddy Manywishes!’ yelled a nursery tot unable to control herself any longer.

  ‘Now now, Molly,’ frowned Mrs Pinkerton, ‘don’t shout out. And who knows why Teddy Manywishes is here?’

  ‘Toys!’ yelled Molly, who was too crazed with excitement to listen. ‘TOOOOOOOOOYS!’

  Neet and Frankie giggled at Mrs Pinkerton, who was doing her best to look cross.

  ‘Now as you all know, Teddy Manywishes is the store mascot for our wonderful new toyshop, Marvella Brand’s Happyland, and he is here this morning to tell you something very special. So I’d like you all to give him a big Cramley School welcome.’

  ‘GOOD MORNING, TEDDY MANYWISHES,’ chanted eighty small voices.

  The lights turned a dim shade of green and an enormous teddy dressed as a genie appeared in a puff of shimmering smoke.

  ‘Oooooooooohhhhh!’ cooed the children, their eyes widening into round, sparkling pools. Teddy Manywishes took a low bow, a big furry smile on his big furry face.

  ‘GOOD MORNING KIDS!’ said the teddy, in a high cartoon-like voice that Frankie thought made him sound like a squirrel with a blocked nose. ‘My name is Teddy Manywishes and I make children’s wishes come true!’ The enormous bear made a sweeping gesture with his paws and a burst of rainbow sparkles drizzled down over the gobsmacked children. ‘Now, which of you kiddlywinks likes toys?’ Dozens of hands shot into the air as the assembly hall erupted into shouts of ‘Me! Me! I do! Me!’ Some of the children were so excited they were up on their feet, bouncing up and down like Mexican beans. Frankie wasn’t sure he liked being called a kiddlywink but, as the air fizzed around him, he felt his worries dissolve like a spoonful of sherbet.

  ‘Well, let’s just see what ol’ Teddy Manywishes can do.’ The giant bear clapped his furry paws and – SHAZZAM! – a large pink envelope appeared between them.

  ‘Oh, wow! Oh, wow!’ gasped Neet, jiggling about in her chair.

  ‘Now what’s this?’ piped Teddy Manywishes in his cheery, squeaky voice. The children held their breath as the bear drew out an even pinker card. ‘Oh, my! It looks like an invitation! Who’d like to come up and read out what it says?’

  Frankie found himself springing to his feet and waving his arms in the air.

  ‘What’s your name, little feller?’

  Frankie couldn’t believe it – Teddy Manywishes had picked him, HIM! Frankie burbled his name.

  ‘Well, come along now, Frankie Blewitt, we’re all waiting.’

  Frankie dashed to the front before the teddy changed its mind. He took the card between his hands. It looked just like the party invitation that his cousin Amelia had sent him the year before – all pink and sparkly, and decorated with rainbows and unicorns. He took a deep breath and read it out loud:

  ‘Miss Marvella Brand would like you, the children of Cramley Primary, to come to a party at her new store. There will fun, games and surprises!’

  The children of Cramley gasped with delight. Nothing this exciting had happened in Cramley-on-the-Crump since the giraffes escaped from Mr Jojo’s circus and went stampeding down the high street.

  ‘Carry on now, Frankie,’ trilled the bear, staring down at him with his big furry face and blinking his enormous mechanical eyes. ‘What else does it say?’

  Frankie felt slightly unnerved by this huge smiling face hovering above him like a fuzzy balloon. Or was he just overexcited? He could no longer tell. He continued reading:

  ‘You will spend the whole day at my magical Happyland before taking home a toy of your choice!

  ‘Lots of love and kisses

  ‘Marvella XXX’

  Frankie’s heart was beating like a hamster’s as the children whooped and cheered around him.

  ‘You can sit down now, Master Blewitt,’ said the teddy in his strange, squeaky voice. But Frankie was so dizzy with excitement he hardly heard him.

  But not everyone was as excited as the schoolchildren of Cramley Primary. Alphonsine hummed and hawed and wrinkled her nose as Frankie told her about the visit over dinner.

  ‘I do not trust it,’ Alfie sniffed, mopping up some sauce with a crust of bread. ‘I do not like it. I am most suspishy. Why would a to
yshop be giving toys away? They must want something. They must be up to something. I smell a fish!’

  ‘You smell a rat,’ Frankie grumbled, disappointed that Alfie couldn’t see how great it would be to spend a WHOLE DAY at Marvella’s. He might even get his hands on a Mechanimal Generation Three.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Alphonsine, ‘there is something very ratty about it. I do not like it at all.’

  ‘Alphonsine is right.’ Eddie nodded. ‘I wouldn’t put much past Marvella Brand. I’d stay away from that toyshop if I were you.’ Frankie poked at his dinner, crossly. He didn’t see what was so very ratty about it. But, all the same, Alphonsine’s doubts left a niggle in Frankie’s mind. A niggle that he couldn’t quite shake, however hard he tried.

  As Class 5C made their way to the playground, Neet reached into the inside pocket of her blazer.

  ‘I got a card from Wes this morning,’ she said. Frankie’s eyes lit up.

  ‘How is he?’ asked Frankie. ‘Is he coming to visit soon?’ Neet passed Frankie the card. The front showed a picture of a jolly-looking Father Christmas overseeing his elves as they loaded his sleigh with toys.

  ‘It’s a bit early for Christmas cards, isn’t it?’ said Frankie. ‘It’s only October.’

  ‘Right,’ said Neet. ‘It’s weird. And it doesn’t sound like Wes at all.’ Frankie opened the card and read. ‘Dear Neet and Frankie, I am at my Auntie Elvira’s. It is raining non-stop. Everything is soaking wet. Hope to see you soon. Wes.’

  Neet was right. It was nothing like Wes’s usual notes and letters. There were no jokes or wacky ideas, only the kind of boring stuff you write when you can’t think of anything to say.

  ‘It’s like someone else has written it,’ said Frankie, ‘and there is no return address.’

  Frankie frowned and started to reread the card. But he didn’t get very far.

  ‘No playtime for you, Frankie Blewitt!’ Mrs P was blocking his path. ‘You and Timmy are on detention, remember?’

  Frankie hated detention. Who doesn’t? While Neet was outside in the autumn sunshine, he had to sit in the classroom with Timmy Snotbags and write ‘I MUST NOT START FIGHTS’ one hundred times over. Urrgh! So unfair! thought Frankie. I didn’t start it, Timmy did. I never would have hit him if he hadn’t been such a twazzock, and anyway . . . But there was no point arguing. He had been sentenced to spend the lunchbreak at his desk, so he picked up his pencil and got on with it.

  Timmy was in a funny mood. He had been ignoring Frankie all week, but that afternoon he seemed strangely pleasant.

  ‘Could I borrow your spare pencil, Frankie?’ Timmy asked politely.

  ‘Okaaaay,’ Frankie replied, ‘but I’ve only got this green one.’

  ‘That’s perfect,’ said Timmy with a smile. ‘Listen, Frankie,’ he continued in his most grown-up voice, ‘shall we put it all behind us – let bygones be bygones?’

  Frankie wondered if he had cleaned his ears out properly. But Timmy seemed to be serious.

  ‘Uhh . . . sure, Timmy!’ Frankie smiled, relieved. ‘I’d like that.’

  The boys sat in silence for half an hour, diligently copying out their lines. Frankie had been stuck in detention so many times before that he had perfected a method of writing lines that made it as quick and painless as possible. He would start by writing ‘I’ over and over again down the margin, followed by ‘MUST’, followed by ‘NOT’, and so on. Try it next time you’re in detention, it takes half the time, I promise.

  ‘I’ll take them down to Mrs Pinkerton’s office,’ Timmy offered once time was up, handing back Frankie’s pencil.

  ‘Thanks, Timmy,’ Frankie replied. ‘That’s nice of you.’ Timmy smiled a small compressed smile that made his mouth look like a squeezed lemon, snatched Frankie’s worksheet and hurried out of the classroom.

  Later that afternoon, Frankie was sitting in his Science lesson, designing a gadget for getting spiders out of the bath and dreaming about the trip to Marvella’s, when a furious Mrs Pinkerton burst into the classroom. Frankie had never seen her so cross. She had turned such an alarming shade of fuchsia it was hard to tell where her jumper ended and her face began. Uh oh, somebody’s in trouble, thought Frankie, glad to have got his detention over with.

  ‘Frrrankie BLEWITT!’

  Frankie looked up from his desk, confused.

  ‘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.