The Crims Page 3

  “If you’re back in town, you’d better stay on the straight and narrow,” PC Donnelly said, giving her his sternest look, which only made him look like a terrified puppy. “And, young lady, if I ever catch you driving again, or thinking of driving—or doing anything that rhymes with ‘drive’—you’ll be going straight to jail. Do you hear what I’m saying?”

  Imogen did hear what he was saying. She had very good hearing.

  “Thank you, officer,” she said. “I’m going to take my cousins home now and put them all straight to bed. And I promise I won’t dive or jive or speak to anyone called Clive. . . .”

  “Or disturb a beehive,” PC Donnelly said helpfully.

  Imogen smiled. “I definitely won’t do that.”

  “That’s what I like to hear,” he said. “PC Phillips—would you be so kind as to take this van back to Mr. Martelli? He’s probably finished his bathroom break by now.”

  PC Phillips grunted and, with a final glare at Imogen, walked to the ice cream van, reluctantly clipping the handcuffs back onto his belt. He opened the back door, and the Horrible Children filed out. “There sure are a lot of ’em, aren’t there?” muttered PC Phillips.

  “Too many, you might say,” said PC Donnelly, getting into the police car.

  Imogen watched the two officers drive away. She let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. Now that Headmistress Gruner knew her real name, a new crime on her record could stop her from being let back into Lilyworth. She walked over to the Horrible Children. Their eyes lit up as she approached them. “You’re welcome,” she said.

  But they hadn’t been smiling at her. They all ran (or crawled, in Isabella’s case) right past her. Imogen turned and saw them all hurtling toward a man who was staggering out of the grocery store across the street. She couldn’t see his face behind all the bags, but she recognized him from his mismatched shoes and messy brown hair with crumbs in it: Freddie. The Horrible Children overtook him and hurled themselves into the back of a tiny car. Freddie didn’t seem to notice. He opened the car’s trunk, filled it with shopping bags, and climbed into the driver’s seat.

  Imogen crossed the road and got into the passenger seat of the car, but Freddie didn’t notice her, either. He turned on the engine and smiled at the Horrible Children in the rearview mirror as he pulled away. “Sorry the shopping took so long,” he said. “I forgot we needed milk, and then I forgot to get bread, and then I thought I’d forgotten my wallet, but it turned out I was holding it the whole time. Still . . . I’m sure you found some way to entertain yourselves.”

  Delia elbowed the twins, who had started sniggering.

  Imogen cleared her throat, and Freddie turned to her, startled. “Imogen!” he cried. “You’re not supposed to be here till two!”

  “It’s four,” said Imogen.

  Freddie looked at his watch. “It’s only half past ten!” he said.

  “You’ve got that on upside down,” Imogen pointed out.

  “So I do!” said Freddie, turning his watch around. “Anyway—how did you get here?”

  “Funny you should ask that,” said Imogen. “The kids picked me up in a stolen ice cream van.” Her cousins gasped, and too late, Imogen realized what she had done. She had broken Big Nana’s golden rule: “Never tell on a fellow Crim. Unless you’re bribed with something really nice, like a solid-gold wardrobe.”

  “Wow,” said Delia. “So you’re a tattletale now as well as a goody-goody?”

  Imogen could hear the hurt in her cousin’s voice. Delia had never quite forgiven Imogen for leaving. And Imogen hadn’t exactly reached out to her cousin over the past two years, even though they’d once been as close as sisters. “Sorry,” she whispered, and she meant it, but Delia was already staring sullenly out the window.

  “What have I told you about stealing cars, children?” asked Freddie, turning to scold the cousins and driving straight through a red light.

  “We should always ask an adult to help us,” said Henry. “But this wasn’t a car. It was a van.”

  “All the same, I’m stopping your allowance for another week.”

  “But that’s 347 weeks we haven’t had an allowance now!” squeaked Sam.

  The rest of the Horrible Children didn’t seem that bothered, though. The twins were playing cards (both of them were cheating), and Henry was busy teaching Isabella how to use a lighter. Delia, meanwhile, had taken matters into her own hands. Imogen watched as she reached over and pulled Freddie’s wallet from his pocket, took out a twenty-pound note, and slipped it back. Imogen didn’t tell on her cousin this time, but Delia scowled at her, anyway. Imogen sighed. She had only been back in Blandington a few hours and she’d already made an enemy. Somehow this wasn’t as satisfying as the mutual hatred she shared with Bridget Sweetwine.

  Imogen closed her eyes and tried to imagine what was happening at Lilyworth now. It was just before dinner, and normally, Lucy and Alice and Catherine would be gathered in a circle around her in the common room, laughing hysterically at her jokes.

  What would happen without her there? Would Alice try to make the jokes? God, would Catherine?

  As if Freddie knew what she was thinking, he turned to Imogen and asked, “How come you got kicked out of Lilyworth? I thought you were going to be headmistress.”

  Imogen grunted. “Head girl,” she corrected. “I was. But then someone wrote an anonymous letter to the headmistress telling her that I’m a Crim and that I lied on my application.”

  Delia raised her eyebrows. Before Imogen had left home, she’d never gotten on the wrong side of anyone, except for one time when she stood up in front of Uncle Clyde just before Aunt Bets hit him with a saucepan. “Don’t like it so much when someone tells on you, do you, Imogen?” Delia said.

  “This was different. This was an evil, lying goody-goody who was out to destroy my life,” said Imogen.

  “Sounds familiar,” said Delia.

  Imogen decided to ignore her. She felt completely and utterly alone. She didn’t fit in with her family anymore, and just being around them made her miss Big Nana in a way she’d never wanted to feel again. She told herself she just had to hold on till they got to the Crim house. Then she could lock herself in her parents’ quiet, tidy apartment in the east wing and never see her cousins again, except for birthdays, Christmases, and parole hearings, like nature intended. In the meantime, she’d talk to Freddie. He might be terrible at everything—especially driving, Imogen thought, as he went the wrong way around a roundabout—but at least he was pleased to see her.

  “So be honest,” she said. “Uncle Clyde didn’t really pull off The Heist, did he?”

  Uncle Clyde had spent the last twenty years planning The Heist—a carefully crafted, amazingly idiotic scheme to steal his long-lost Captain Crook lunch box back from Jack Wooster, his former friend and current enemy. Jack Wooster hadn’t stolen the lunch box exactly, but when they were both eight years old, he’d persuaded Uncle Clyde to swap it for a pair of X-ray specs. These X-ray specs did not work. Uncle Clyde had realized that immediately. But when he pointed this out to Jack, he had refused to swap back.

  Reclaiming the lunch box had become a matter of principle for Uncle Clyde. The fact that it was now worth a small fortune might have had something to do with it, too—Captain Crook had become something of a cult figure since the character had been discontinued for sparking a crime wave among the under-fives.

  The plans for The Heist took up a whole wall in Uncle Clyde’s room; it was a complicated assortment of drawings, charts, maps, and rubber bands. They involved every member of the Crim family (he updated the plans each time a new baby was born), along with several innocent animals and an unsuspecting bouncy castle.

  Everyone in the Crim family knew about The Heist. Everyone knew it was a terrible idea. Everyone had always refused to go along with it.

  Until now, apparently.

  Freddie’s eyes widened so much, Imogen wondered if he’d lost a contact lens. “No, he rea
lly did!” he insisted. “It was amazing, really—the whole thing went exactly according to plan.”

  “That really is amazing,” said Imogen, still skeptical.

  “Well . . . except for the bit I was supposed to do,” said Freddie. “I think I overslept or something. I can’t quite remember.”

  “You missed the whole thing?”

  Freddie nodded. “But that’s good, in a way. I didn’t end up in jail, so I’m around to look after the kids!”

  And it’s clear Freddie’s doing a wonderful job, Imogen thought, glancing behind her. Look, Isabella’s wearing a towel as a nappy.

  “So was everyone being arrested part of the plan, too?” she asked.

  “Well . . . no,” said Freddie. “But at least all the kids got away!”

  “Yes,” said Imogen, watching as Henry “tattooed” his name on Isabella’s arm in pen. “That really is a blessing.”

  “I’ve got to tell you—they can be a bit of a handful at times!”

  “You don’t say,” said Imogen.

  “But it’ll be so much easier when you’re living with us.”

  Imogen stared at him. She felt a creeping sense of dread. “Living with you? Er, I just assumed I’d live in my parents’ apartment.” Away from all of you, she thought, and the chaos you cause.

  “Oh, no,” said Freddie, shaking his head. “You have to stay with me till your parents get out, because you’re a minor. And who knows how long that’ll be, eh? You’ll be sharing a room with Delia.”

  Considering recent events, “You’ll be sharing a room with Delia” was the most horrifying sentence Imogen had ever heard. Except maybe “I’m afraid the evidence is overwhelming” and “You have been expelled from Lilyworth Ladies’ College.” Imogen cast a quick glance at her cousin and could see from her expression that the feeling was mutual.

  “I hate to disappoint you, Freddie,” said Imogen, turning back to him and smiling sweetly to hide her panic, “but there is no way I’m living with you. I’ll stay in my parents’ flat.”

  “No you won’t,” said Freddie. “You’re twelve. That’s too young to live alone. Them’s the rules!”

  “But you don’t care about rules!” said Imogen, not bothering to hide her panic anymore.

  “I’m sorry,” said Freddie. “I’m putting my foot down.” And he did—onto the accelerator.

  “Brake! Brake!” Imogen cried as Isabella sailed through the air and landed on her lap, still slurping happily at her sippy cup.

  “Imojim!” said Isabella, and she jabbed Imogen in the stomach with her tiny but powerful foot.

  “Great roundhouse kick!” said one of the twins.

  “Why isn’t she in a car seat?” Imogen asked Freddie.

  Freddie shrugged. “I’ve lost it,” he said. “I think it was absorbed back into the car. See? You have to come and live with us. I need your help.”

  “Wait.” Imogen sniffed the air. “Is that smoke?”

  She turned to look. It was smoke. The backseat was on fire, and the Horrible Children were roasting marshmallows over the (rapidly spreading) flames.

  Imogen grabbed Isabella’s sippy cup, took off the lid, and emptied the contents on the fire. The flames fizzled and died.

  “You’re such a killjoy,” Henry moaned as Imogen snatched the lighter from him and pocketed it.

  Imogen looked at Freddie and shook her head. It was a miracle that the Horrible Children were still alive, with him looking after them. She didn’t seem to have much choice. It wasn’t as though things could get much worse, anyway. “Fine,” she said. “I will come and live with you.”

  They were nearly home now. Imogen looked out the window at the streets of Blandington: There was the toy shop where the twins had stolen their My First Prison. . . . There was the tree Henry had torched in his very first arson attack. . . . There was Aunt Bets’s money laundry. And there was the hedge Imogen and Delia had used as their hideaway, where they’d made each other crimeship bracelets and sworn never, ever to tell on each other, no matter what. Imogen felt another stab of guilt.

  And suddenly, there it was in front of her: Crim House. As Freddie pulled into the driveway, the sheer ridiculousness of the building struck her for the first time.

  Once, a long time ago—before the Crims moved in—the house had been as dull as every other house in Blandington. It’d had the same gray front door and the same gravel driveway. But it certainly wasn’t boring anymore. The gravel in the driveway had been replaced with marbles stolen from local children. The front door was now painted in multicolored stripes—all the Crims had an opinion about what color it should be, and none of them were good at compromise.

  The house itself was a little wonky; before her death, Big Nana had stolen two floors from a nearby mansion and grafted them onto the roof. And to celebrate Isabella’s first birthday, Aunt Bets had stolen a Boeing 747 and glued it to the conservatory. The house now had an east wing, a west wing, and two airplane wings.

  Imogen climbed out of the car and picked her way through the strange objects littering the front garden: a fake dinosaur skeleton, the bottom half of a horse costume, an empty box labeled “SNAKES! DEFOREMED BUT DEADLY. DO NOT OPEN!”

  She looked up at the house and sighed. She thought she’d left all this behind, but now here she was . . . back where she had started.

  She couldn’t bear to call it “home” without Big Nana there.

  OF COURSE, FREDDIE had forgotten his keys. Crim House was the most regularly burgled house in Blandington—mostly by Crim children practicing their breaking-and-entering skills—so there were twelve separate locks on the door.

  “We’ll just have to break in again,” Delia said. “Who wants to pick the first lock?”

  All the Horrible Children put up their hands. Imogen did not.

  “Aren’t you going to do one, Imogen?” Nick (or Nate) asked, wiggling the first lock open with a broken TV antenna he’d picked off the yard.

  “No,” said Imogen, her arms crossed. Although in her mind, she was already going through the steps. . . .

  “Don’t you miss crime at all?” asked Nate (or Nick).

  “No,” Imogen said again quickly.

  “Liar,” Delia said as she pushed one of her bobby pins into the second lock. “You always said there was nothing like the thrill of breaking the law.”

  Imogen flushed. It was strange to hear her own words quoted back to her. Had she really said that? “Yes, well. I’ve changed,” she said.

  “We can see that,” said Delia. She didn’t make it sound like a compliment.

  When the door was open at last, the Horrible Children ran inside and headed straight for their rooms.

  “We’ve put an extra bed for you in Delia’s room,” Freddie said as he and Imogen followed the others inside.

  “Shame,” Delia called from upstairs. “If I’d known you’d turned into a rat, I’d have gotten you a cage instead.”

  Imogen put her hands on her hips. “Yeah, well,” she said, “if I’d known you’d turned into a brat, I’d have . . .” She tried to think of a comeback. She couldn’t. Freddie gave Imogen a sympathetic look. “My insult skills are rusty,” she explained. “At Lilyworth, I was very nice to people.”

  That wasn’t entirely true. At Lilyworth, Imogen would have cut a girl like Delia down to size in no time—she would have given her one of the terrifying stares she used on first years, new teachers, and anyone who described themselves as “kooky”—but Delia had a strange power over her. Although Delia was annoying and selfish and a liar and childish and spiteful and vain and mean and quite possibly psychopathic, she was also the best friend Imogen had ever had.

  Imogen walked into the living room and picked up an old family photograph from the mantelpiece. There was Big Nana in the middle, smiling her crooked smile, her red hair blazing. The other Crims stood around her like eccentric planets orbiting a very criminal sun.

  “Not the same without her, is it?” Freddie said, coming up beh
ind Imogen.

  Imogen shook her head, putting the photograph down. She shouldn’t have been surprised by how much she missed her grandmother, but Big Nana had always told her “Missing people is stupid. Especially if you have a catapult,” and as a rule, Imogen tried to follow her advice.

  “Big Nana would be so pleased to think of you and Delia sharing a room,” Freddie said, smiling.

  Imogen looked at Freddie. “Yeah, right,” she said. “Big Nana always said you should never share a room with a relative unless they’re an interior designer.”

  “She also said, ‘Keep your friends close, your enemies close, and your family even closer,’” said Freddie. “Or was it ‘Keep your enemies close, your family closer, and your friends in a dungeon’? Either way . . .”

  Imogen sighed. She wasn’t going to win this one. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll share with Delia.”

  Freddie smiled and patted her head, as if she were a dog. “Good boy, Imogen.”

  “I’m a girl.”

  “That’s what I meant. Want me to carry your bags upstairs for you?”

  “Actually, they got left behind at the station, when the kids picked me up,” said Imogen.

  “I’ll get them,” said Freddie, pressing some buttons on his phone.

  “Thanks,” said Imogen. “Who are you texting?”

  “Oh . . . no one. I’m setting an alarm to remind me why I’m leaving the house,” he explained as he walked back toward the front door. “The other day I went out for a pint of milk and I ended up joining a mariachi band. I got quite good at playing the maracas, but everyone had dry cereal for breakfast.”

  As soon as Freddie had left, Imogen climbed the creaking stairs to the second floor. On the wall between the twins’ bedroom and the bathroom was an old tapestry showing some medieval criminals stealing things from some monks. And behind the tapestry was the door to her family’s apartment. She pushed it open and shut it behind her, leaning against it as she looked around.