The Crims #3 Read online

  Ava didn’t seem that keen on the idea. In fact, she said there was “no way in hell” she was going to “waste any of her time” on “third-rate criminals who couldn’t pick a pocket even if the pocket jumped around waving it’s nonexistent arms, screaming ‘Pick me! Pick me!’” But privately, Imogen reasoned that as long as the Crims were still alive—which they would be, as long as Aunt Bets didn’t start eating the little ones (always a danger)—then she could pick them up later without Ava.

  “Let’s go and ask Big Nana where the treasure is,” Imogen said.

  “I’ll get the thumb screws,” said Ava.

  They opened the door to the cabaret theater and then shut it again straightaway, because there were horrible wailing noises coming from inside—noises that turned out to be Uncle Knuckles attempting to sing “Hello” on the karaoke machine. The noise he was making was so bad that the karaoke machine had spontaneously combusted, but unfortunately, that hadn’t stopped him from singing. The other Crims were sitting on the floor, rocking and weeping, their hands over their ears. The noise was so bad that birds within earshot dropped out of the sky, dead. Far away in London, Adele woke up shuddering, suddenly regretting that she had ever recorded the song. It was terrible.

  Imogen and Ava stood in the corridor outside the cabaret theater, their hands over their ears, trying not to succumb to panic attacks.

  “We’ve got to go back in there and save the others,” said Imogen.

  “I think my ears might explode if we do,” said Ava. “And I like my ears a lot more than I like your family.”

  “Fine,” said Imogen. “You stay here.” She took a deep breath and ran back into the cabaret theater. One by one, she pulled the traumatized Crims out of the room. But even after she had dragged Uncle Knuckles onto the deck—and gagged him so that he’d never be able to sing anything ever again—she could still hear someone wailing, “Hello . . . it’s me. . . .”

  “Can you hear that?” she asked Ava.

  Ava nodded. “Those lyrics will probably be burned into our brains forever.”

  But the song didn’t sound quite as bad as it had when Uncle Knuckles had been singing it. “Wait,” said Imogen. “I think someone else is singing a karaoke version of ‘Hello’ . . .”

  “Why would they do that?!” wailed Ava.

  “Why do good people die?” Imogen shrugged. “Why do I always spill food all over myself when I’m wearing a white T-shirt?”

  Ava cocked her head, listening to the singing. “It’s coming from downstairs somewhere,” she said. “I wonder if there’s another deck down there. . . .”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” said Imogen.

  Ava nodded again. “By sending Isabella on a reconnaissance mission and hoping she makes it back alive.”

  “No!” said Imogen. “We go down ourselves! Supervillains never let their sidekicks do the dirty work.”

  “Not true,” said Ava. “Supervillain sidekicks are always cleaning out litter boxes and doing the laundry. But I get your point.”

  Imogen and Ava left the Crims in a gibbering heap on the deck and went downstairs to find out where the noise was coming from. They passed the dining room and the captain’s cabin, which was full of Justin Bieber memorabilia.

  “It’s getting louder,” said Imogen. She pointed to a spiral staircase. “Maybe it’s coming from the next floor down. . . .”

  The staircase led to a ballroom complete with flashing disco lights and another karaoke machine.

  And about fifty cruise ship passengers.

  Most of them had gray hair and sensible shoes, and almost all of them were wearing either a sun visor or a Hawaiian shirt. They seemed to be having a great time.

  Imogen and Ava stared at the passengers. Then they turned and stared at each other.

  “What is going on?” said Ava.

  It was very clear to Imogen what was going on. The passengers were all dancing (at least they were waving their elbows and stamping their feet, so she assumed they were trying to dance) and singing along to the song Imogen now hated most in the world. (Which is saying something, because Henry had once written a heavy metal tune called “Imogen Smells Like a Pond.” And if you’d ever smelled the pond at the back of Crim House, you’d know just how insulting that was.) But why this was going on was another matter. What were the elderly people still doing on the ship?

  One of the cruise passengers—a nice, ordinary woman whom Imogen would later learn was named Barbara, who liked taking photographs of her grandchildren and watching puppies doing tricks on television, and who definitely didn’t deserve to be trapped on a ship with a collection of criminals—said: “Oh, have you come to tell us it’s dinnertime? The announcement system isn’t working on our deck.”

  “So you didn’t hear the captain’s message?” Imogen asked.

  “Oh, no, dearie,” said Barbara. “What announcement? Do you know how long it’ll be before we get to Norway? I can’t wait to see the fjords!”

  Ava looked at Imogen. Imogen looked at Ava.

  “Oh dear,” said Imogen.

  “I’d have put it more strongly myself,” said Ava, “but yes.”

  8

  YOU KNOW THE way you get used to terrible things? Maybe you fall out with a friend, or do badly in an exam, or accidentally hijack a ship full of sweet retired people who believe they’re going to Scandinavia, and you think the world will come crashing down around you, but it just carries on as usual?

  That’s how Imogen felt over the next few days. The cruise ship passengers hadn’t noticed that anything odd was going on, possibly because they were mostly over the age of seventy and suffering from hearing loss/poor eyesight/the belief that everything on a cruise ship happens for a reason, even bad magicians and seasickness.

  The Crims had taken over the running of the cruise ship and were actually quite skilled at hospitality. Aunt Bets wasn’t great at customer service, sure, but she did make very good toast. Uncle Knuckles had volunteered to sing karaoke in the cabaret theater, but the other Crims all burst into tears at the very idea of hearing Knuckles sing again, so he agreed to deliver room service orders instead. The cabaret theater job went to Sam, who had a lovely baritone. He’d found a tuxedo in one of the abandoned cabins and entertained the guests three times a day with tap-dancing routines and songs such as “Cellblock Tango” and “Defying Depravity.” And Freddie had started up his secret poker ring again, except this time it wasn’t secret, because he kept announcing the games over the ship’s loudspeaker. So far, he had won the entire lifesavings of three passengers, who now spent all their time in the bar area, crying. Imogen reminded Freddie to go easy on the poker players; they didn’t need anyone being forced to punch himself in the face and losing all his teeth, à la Freddie’s most indebted player, Unfortunate Pete. But in turn, Freddie reminded Imogen that cruise passengers have more money to burn than retired garbage men who hang out in the Tesco parking lot.

  “Is that where you found your players?” Imogen asked.

  “It’s where I used to find my players,” Freddie replied, pulling out a roll of very crisp euro bills. “Honestly, I should have been working the travel and leisure set all along.”

  A couple of days after the karaoke incident, Imogen and Ava were at the breakfast buffet, spooning cold scrambled eggs onto their plates and filling their pockets with yogurts and oranges, when Delia walked in.

  Imogen waved her over. “Come sit with us!” she said.

  Ava elbowed Imogen, the universal sign for “I don’t want her to sit with us. She’s not very good at white-collar crime.” But Imogen ignored her. She wasn’t going to let Ava call all the shots in their friendship. Just most of them.

  Delia picked up a croissant and a cup of instant coffee and followed Ava and Imogen to a table near the pool. “You know we don’t have to steal the yogurts,” she said. “We’ve already stolen, like, the whole ship.”

  “Correction,” said Ava, flicking her annoyingly shiny hair.
“We stole the ship. You got in the way. And anyhow, your aunt Bets is weirdly uptight about people taking too much food. . . .” She nodded over to Aunt Bets, who at that moment was slapping the hand of a tourist named Kevin, who had helped himself to three sausages, and saying, “You’ve got to get used to small portion sizes if you’re going to Norway. Eating too much makes you vulnerable to reindeer attacks.”

  “I didn’t know that,” said Kevin, happily handing back his third sausage. “I don’t think I’ve ever been on such an educational cruise!”

  “So,” Imogen said, once she’d finished her scrambled eggs, “what do you guys want to do today?” She looked from Ava to Delia and back again; maybe if she just ignored the fact that they hated each other, they’d forget they hated each other too, and they could have steal-overs together (like a sleepover, except that when your friends have fallen asleep, you take their jewelry).

  “Stop trying to make this friendship happen,” said Ava, rolling her eyes and flicking her hair.

  “Yeah,” said Delia, rolling her eyes and flicking her hair, in an uncanny imitation of Ava. “My personal brand is being really shallow and self-obsessed and not having any friends except the people I pay to be around me.”

  Ava looked at Delia, interested for a moment. “Is it?” she said. “I didn’t know you had a personal brand.”

  “I’m pretending to be you, you big, shiny idiot,” said Delia.

  Imogen had to physically restrain Ava from attacking Delia with her Swarovski crystal–encrusted penknife. Luckily, she’d had lots of practice preventing murders.

  “Just you wait—” said Ava. But just then, the dining room door swung open, and Big Nana walked up to them.

  “Lovely to see you all playing together nicely,” she said, smiling her comforting yet disturbing smile.

  Imogen, who was still holding Ava and Delia apart, said, “Can I trust you two not to kill each other till I get back? I need to talk to Big Nana about something.”

  “No,” said Ava and Delia at the same time.

  “But I do want to go and watch Sam’s ten a.m. performance,” said Delia. “He’s taking requests, and I want to hear what he can do with Kitty Penguin’s latest album. Also, I’m going to request that he stops adopting feral animals as pets. You know he has nine cockroaches now, named after the Supreme Court judges?”

  “Fine,” said Imogen, letting go of Delia and Ava.

  Ava made “you’re dead” motions to Delia as she left the room.

  Imogen walked up to Big Nana and pulled her aside. “Listen,” she said, looking around to make sure Ava couldn’t overhear. “Does Captain Glitterbeard’s treasure really exist? Because if it doesn’t, things are going to get sticky. And by sticky, I mean dangerous. And by dangerous, I mean someone is going to take us all out the back and kill us, possibly with a cocktail umbrella. And by someone, I mean Ava.”

  Big Nana looked at Imogen. Her eyes were clear and blue, like honest paddling pools. “I wouldn’t lie to you about something this important,” she said.

  “But I don’t understand why you didn’t tell us about the treasure sooner,” Imogen said. “We always need money for things like leg reattachment operations and bail money and tins of Scotch broth soup—”

  “The Crims do get through a surprising amount of Scotch broth.” Big Nana nodded. She took Imogen’s hand and patted it. “I never mentioned it because I never thought we’d get to the Caribbean,” she said. “We can barely all make it to the newsstand and back without someone being arrested. And of course I don’t actually know how much the treasure is worth. But Glitterbeard was a much more fearsome pirate than his brothers Ordinarybeard and Cantgrowabeard. So it’s probably worth quite a lot. . . .”

  Imogen looked at Big Nana. Despite everything, she believed her. And because she believed her, she started to feel a bit guilty for promising the treasure to Ava and arranging for her family to be marooned on an island. But at least she’d managed to keep her family alive . . . so far . . .

  Imogen didn’t have time to feel guilty for long, because moments later, Nick and Nate came pelting down the stairs, calling out to her and Ava.

  “There’s another ship out there!” yelled Nick, pointing out to sea.

  “Well, that’s to be expected,” said Imogen. “It is the ocean.”

  “No,” said Nate, trying to get his breath back. “There’s another pirate ship. The Golden Bounty!”

  “And if its name is anything to go by, it’ll be full of treasure,” said Nick.

  “Yeah, but your grandmother’s called Big Nana, and she’s only, like, five foot two,” said Ava, sauntering over, her hands in her pockets.

  But Nick and Nate weren’t listening. “It’s time for a proper pirate attack!” said Nate. “Entertaining the passengers is so boring. They keep tipping me. It’s no fun being given money, instead of stealing it.”

  Ava shook her shiny head and crossed her shiny arms (she had just moisturized). “Absolutely not,” she said. “We have to lie low. We don’t want to attract any . . . undue attention from—”

  Imogen had a feeling the end of the sentence was going to be “the Gull.” But Ava never finished the sentence. Because that’s when they heard cannon fire coming from the upper deck.

  They ran upstairs. The Crims—dressed, luckily, in their awful pirate outfits—had launched a full-scale attack on the Golden Bounty. Delia was manning the cannon, barking orders to everyone like a bossy dog.

  “What does she think she’s doing?” said Imogen.

  “She must have a death wish,” said Ava. “Oh well. I like making people’s wishes come true.”

  The attack was going just as well as the attack on the cruise ship had gone, i.e., not well at all. The crew of the Golden Bounty were standing on the deck of their ship, bemused, while the Crims ran around waving cutlasses and setting fire to things that shouldn’t be set fire to. But at least the tourists were enjoying themselves. Imogen could hear them whooping and cheering from the deck below.

  “The brochure didn’t say there’d be such great entertainment!” said Kevin.

  “This is way better than bingo!” said Barbara.

  Once again, Al was the only Crim who seemed to have a clue what he was doing. He shouted to the captain to steer the cruise ship toward the Golden Bounty, but the captain was still making clucking noises and flapping his nonexistent wings. So Al raced up to the control room, his frilly shirt flapping in the wind, and grabbed the steering wheel.

  “Starboard,” Al yelled piratically as the cruise ship turned toward the Golden Bounty. He pulled them alongside the other ship and yelled, “Delia, keep firing that cannon! Henry, fetch the gunpowder! Clyde, Nick, and Nate, swarm the deck!”

  Uncle Clyde, Sam, and the twins took his order a bit too literally. They did jump aboard the Golden Bounty, but they pretended to be bees while they did it. The tourists whooped and cheered again as the Crims buzzed about the deck.

  “Ugh,” said Delia, shaking her head. “Families can be so embarrassing sometimes.”

  “I love interactive theater,” Barbara said to a man named Jeremy, a retired carpenter who was really excited about seeing Norway’s famous wooden churches. “I once saw a production of Hamlet in a public toilet. But this is even more exciting! Pirates who are also bees? Only a genius or an insane person could come up with something like that!”

  “She doesn’t know how right she is,” said Imogen, watching Uncle Clyde pretending to sting the captain of the Golden Bounty, a more than usually insane gleam in his eyes.

  Imogen shook her head. “That doesn’t look like a pirate ship. It’s probably a cargo ship. I bet it’s full of goldfish. Or corn. Or— What else is golden?”

  “Gold!” screamed Uncle Clyde.

  “You idiots!” Ava screamed authoritatively. “No way is that ship transporting gold. It doesn’t have good enough security! It’s probably full of sewage or something! Get back here!”

  But the Crims were very good at ignori
ng authority figures.

  “Seriously!” Ava shouted. “You’re all going to regret this more than people with lactose intolerance regret eating ice cream!”

  “Food intolerances are a myth!” said Big Nana.

  “I HATE TO DISAGREE,” shouted Uncle Knuckles, holding his sword to the neck of the Golden Bounty’s captain, “BUT HAVE YOU SEEN WHAT HAPPENS TO ME WHEN I EAT LENTILS?”

  “I’ve smelled what happens to him,” said Aunt Bets. “And it isn’t pleasant.”

  Imogen looked down at the Golden Bounty from the cruise ship. If she could have died of embarrassment, she would have. Her mad uncle and her equally mad cousins were still pretending to be insects. Sam had found the ship’s cat and seemed to be having an actual conversation with it. A one-way conversation, sure, but that didn’t seem to bother Sam. Henry had found some gunpowder, but had succeeded in only blowing his own pirate hat off his head. And Uncle Knuckles, who was at least holding the captain hostage, kept saying things like “THIS DOESN’T HURT TOO MUCH, DOES IT?” and “THOSE ARE LOVELY SHOES. WHERE DID YOU GET THEM?”

  At what felt like very long last, Al and Big Nana pulled themselves together and rounded up the rest of the Golden Bounty crew at gunpoint. The crew actually looked a bit relieved—at least they understood what was happening now.

  “Hand over your treasure!” growled Big Nana.

  “If this large gentleman would let me go and stop shouting in my ear, I’d be happy to,” said the captain.

  “OKAY!” Uncle Knuckles said as quietly as an extremely loud pneumatic drill.

  Imogen held her breath. The captain was walking over to the hold and unlocking the door. . . . Had the Crims’ attack actually worked? Maybe the Golden Bounty was a pirate ship! They did have a cat, and everyone knows that pirates love cats, almost as much as they love taking things that don’t belong to them and singing songs about rum.