The Bare Bum Gang and the Holy Grail (9 page)

‘Come on then,’ I said. ‘Let’s finish this mission.’

Chapter Eleven

THE APPROACH TO THE GRAIL

ON WE PLODDED
for what seemed like an hour, but which, according to my Spider-Man watch, was only ten minutes.

And then there we were at floor thirteen.

I opened the door from the stairway to the corridor. I counted ten more doors in front of us, five on each side, all painted green.

‘Here at last,’ I panted. ‘We’re at the top now.’

‘Yeah,’ said The Moan. ‘It’s all downhill from here.’

‘How do we know which one is King Arthur’s flat?’ Noah asked.

‘Mmmmm . . . All he said was that it was on the top floor. I suppose we’ll just have to check them all.’

‘Won’t they be locked?’

‘Some might be, but not King Arthur’s.’

How did I know that? I just did. Call it Leader’s Intuition. Or maybe it was just obvious that poor old tramps don’t usually have front door keys.

The others left it to me to try the doors. The first one was number 131. I turned the handle but it was locked.

‘I could bash it down, if you want,’ said Jamie.

I think all the tension had got to him, and he was desperate to do some bashing, and it didn’t really matter what got bashed.

‘Nah,’ I said, and moved on to flat 132.

The door handle turned, and Jenny gasped as I pushed the door open. We slowly entered. But I knew straight away that it wasn’t the
one
we were looking for. The rooms were completely empty, and looked almost as if nobody had ever lived there.

‘This is spooky,’ said Jamie.

‘Yeah,’ said The Moan, ‘let’s get out of here.’

Flat 133 and flat 134 were locked.

‘I really don’t like it here,’ said Noah. ‘Can’t we just go home?’

‘Don’t lose it now,’ I replied. ‘We’re almost there, almost there. I can feel it.’

‘But what if there’s someone else up here? I mean, someone who isn’t harmless like King Arthur. My mum says there are bad people around, and I have to be careful.’

I hadn’t thought about that. It was true. There were bad people in the world.

But then I looked at the gang. Noah, who may always have been on the verge of tears, but who was clever and kind and my oldest, most loyal friend. There was Jamie, tough, brave, strong. He may have been about as sharp as a marble, but if
there
was trouble you wanted him on your side. There was Jenny, sporty, fast as a cheetah, the best cartwheeler in the universe, lethal at every martial art. All that more than made up for the fact that she was a girl and had silly hair. Then there was The Moan. Not very fast, not very brave, not very loyal, but my friend.

Together, we were a match for whatever came our way. Apart from, maybe, a full-blown alien invasion fleet, armed with ionic disrupter beams and photon torpedoes. Or an army of robot velociraptors, made out of titanium by an insane scientific genius. But it would almost be worth getting defeated by titanium velociraptors just so I could see them.

It was time for a speech.

‘You’ve all read about the three hundred Spartans who stood up to the millions of Persians at that battle in Greece, the one with the name I can’t pronounce. And you know about Captain Scott on his mission
to
conquer the South Pole. And remember in school when we did Geronimo, the brave Indian chief who fought the might of the American army for years. And then there’s the good old Charge of the Light Brigade. Well, that’s like us now. We stick together and we can do anything. Now let’s find this treasure.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Noah. ‘Didn’t all the Spartans end up, er, massacred?’

‘Well, yes, but—’

‘And Scott and his team froze to death in their tent, didn’t they?’ added The Moan.

‘Yeah, but you’re missing the—’

‘And Miss Bridges said Geronimo lost in
the
end,’ said Jenny. ‘And the Indians got sent to rubbish reservations where lots of them died of measles, mumps and rubella.’

‘Ah, but not before he’d—’

‘And I thought the Charge of the Light Brigade was a disaster. They all got blown to bits by cannonballs.’

That was Jamie. Trust that to be the only fact he’d ever learned at school.

‘OK, so they all died. But they live on in memory, and so will we, probably.’

And with that I turned the doorknob of flat 135.

Chapter Twelve

A SURPRISE

I KNEW STRAIGHT
away from the smell. This was where a tramp lived. A tramp like King Arthur.

‘This is the one, isn’t it?’ said Noah quietly.

In fact the whole world seemed strangely silent. Up here there was no traffic noise, no sounds of children playing, no sounds of life at all.

I nodded.

‘Smells of wee,’ said Jamie.

Do you think King Arthur always lived here?’ Jenny asked.

‘No,’ I replied, ‘I think he moved in when everyone else moved out. Or maybe he lived here years ago before they built the tower, when they had proper houses. That’s probably it. I bet he wanted to end his days here, back where he began, just up a bit higher.’

We moved slowly through the flat. From the hall I stuck my head into the kitchen. It was a wreck, with old pots and pans, and broken plates, and cups without handles. It was just the useless stuff that the people left behind when they moved out. I didn’t think King Arthur had done much cooking in there.

The living room was bare except for a sofa with the foam padding bursting out, as if it had been blasted with a shotgun. There was a huge stain on the carpet in almost exactly the shape of Africa, which was interesting, as usually big stains on the carpet are in the shape of Australia.

Then we went into the bedroom. This
was
obviously King Arthur’s Centre of Operations. In fact it looked as though he basically lived in this one room. The walls were plastered with newspapers. I tried to work out if there was something important in the stories, but they seemed to be completely random. Car crashes, foreign wars, petrol prices, silly stories about famous people I’d never heard of. There were more newspapers in stacks in all four corners. There was a bookcase made out of planks and bricks against one wall. It was full of old library books. I opened one. It was stamped to be returned on 9 June 1984.

‘He’s going to have a very big fine to pay when he gets out of hospital,’ I said, more to myself than anyone else.

In the middle of the room there was a kind of nest, made out of blankets, sheets and duvets all piled up together.

‘I don’t see any treasure here,’ said The Moan. ‘Let’s get out of here before we catch the plague or leprosy or something.’

‘Wait,’ said Jenny. ‘What’s this?’

Next to King Arthur’s nest there was what looked like a small table with an old tea towel draped over it. The tea towel had a picture of the Queen on it from the olden days when she didn’t look like a granny. Jenny lifted up the tea towel. Underneath it there was not a table but a box. The box was made from a dark wood, worn smooth and shiny with time. The lid of the box had a swirly pattern on it made out of the shiny white stuff you find on the inside of seashells.

‘Pretty,’ said Jenny.

We were all crowded round now, fascinated by the box and what it might contain.

‘Open it up, then,’ said The Moan.

‘Not me,’ Jenny said. ‘This is your adventure, Ludo, and you should be the one to do it.’

I leaned over and held the lid. It fitted tightly over the bottom part of the box, and the wood was heavy. But despite that it came away smoothly. I put it down gently on the
floor
and looked inside. The box was lined with thick red velvet. I touched it with my finger. It was soft and somehow sad.

There were two things inside the box.

One was a book and the other was a big glass pickle jar. I picked up the jar. It was as heavy as a bowling ball. It was heavy because it was full of coins.

‘TREASURE!’ yelled The Moan, taking it from my hands.

But the smile soon fell from his face as he shook the jar and looked closely at its contents.

‘It’s all one and two pees,’ he said. ‘There’s probably only a few quid in here altogether.’

‘It must be his life savings,’ said Noah. ‘That’s why he wanted it so badly. Poor guy.’

Before I had a chance to say anything, something very strange happened. Rude Word appeared at the door. He had one of those dog biscuits shaped like a bone in his mouth, and his tail was wagging as if he was in a tail-wagging contest.

‘What are you doing here?’ I said, puzzled. I stroked his nose. ‘You’re supposed to be keeping guard, you naughty boy. And where did you get that biscuit?’

‘Oh, he’s not naughty. He’s a good boy. Led us straight to you.’

I looked up into the eyes of my mortal enemy.

Dockery.

He filled the doorway, big as an ogre. Then he stepped forward, and the rest of
his
gang followed him into the room, all of them big and ugly. We were so shocked it was as if we’d been zapped by a paralysing ray, and Dockery reached down and took the money jar from The Moan’s hands.

‘We’ll have that, thanks very much,’ he said, passing it back to Larkin.

Then he leaned forward again and yanked my U-boat Captain’s binoculars from around my neck.