Mummy Madness (4 page)

‘No
chance,' smirked The Knowledge. ‘This is Hurtmore Ultra. If you do get
out, they bring you straight back,' he said, eyeing the only-ever escapee
nervously. ‘Nobody ever leaves permanently. Unless it's in a
coffin.'

Mr Big nodded silently and looked at his
frail cellmate, an evil idea forming in his genius mind.

 

Mr Big returned to his cell. Crazy Dez
was scribbling on the wall. Big sidled up to him. ‘Tell me again,' he
said, this time with genuine interest, ‘about this Qua'a bloke. And the
ruby.'

‘I was a young man back
then,' Crazy Dez began, his eyes as wild as his hair. ‘In the empty
desert, far from the pyramids. We found the tomb,' he smiled, his eyes dancing
in their wrinkles. ‘But the mummy is cursed. It took my father's
life.'

‘And the Nile Ruby?' growled
Mr Big. ‘What is it? And, more importantly, where is it?'

The old man's eyes darted left and
then right. He lowered his voice as if someone might be listening. ‘Can I
trust you?'

A huge smile lit up Mr Big's
mouth. ‘Man of my word,' he lied.

‘The book
was right,' whispered the old man. ‘Qua'a
was
buried with
the world's biggest ruby. I made a terrible mistake.'

‘We've all made those, Dr
Dez,' agreed Mr Big. ‘My mistake was getting caught. And not killing
that Spy Dog when I had the chance.'

‘I found the tomb. Qua'a was
there. He'd been hidden for thousands of years …'

‘And no jewel,' interrupted
Mr Big, trying not to lose his temper. ‘Skip the detail, old man. Get to the
bit where you tell me where the jewel is.'

‘It's written in the
stars,' whispered the old man, sweeping his hand round the cell.

‘Yeah, well, I can't read
the bloomin' stars,' complained Mr Big. ‘It's a load of old
graffiti.'

‘Hieroglyphics,' said the
old man.

‘Hiero-whatics?'

‘The mummy and the ruby are
one,' said the old man. ‘If you get out of here, you must find the
mummy's final resting place. The museum. And it is there that you will find
the ruby.'

Silence fell on the cell. Mr Big lay in
the top bunk, his brain whirring. His crazy cellmate lay in the bunk below,
jabbering away to himself. ‘Mad as a box of frogs,' Mr Big
murmured under his breath. ‘And if
he doesn't stop chattering he'll be sending me round the bend
too!' The master-criminal looked up at the ceiling. It was covered in strange
signs and weird language, scribblings made by his cellmate.
Men with dogs'
heads. Pyramids. Caves. Stars.
Until that moment Mr Big had assumed it was
just the graffiti of a madman.

 

 

‘Stars,' he remembered aloud. ‘He said it was written in the
stars.'

He looked around at the walls. His
cellmate's scribblings were mostly in black felt-tip. In each corner of the
cell was a star, coloured in gold. ‘Written in the stars,' repeated Mr
Big, sitting up with a jolt. He scanned the walls and ceiling again. ‘The
legend of the Nile Ruby. Useless ramblings of a mad old man. What if they're
not?'

‘En-
taaar
,' yelled
the prison governor.

The door opened and Mr Big was escorted
in. His hands were cuffed and he was accompanied by three prison guards. The
governor clearly wasn't taking any chances. He was proud to have been promoted
to Hurtmore and, while the previous governor was considered a soft touch, he was
determined to be the opposite.

‘Welcome, Big,' he barked.
‘It must be a pleasure for you to make my acquaintance.'

‘Yes, sir,' replied Mr Big,
faking his best smile. ‘I've heard a lot about you.'

‘And me you,' snapped the
governor. ‘And seeing you locked in a cell twenty-three hours
a day gives me great pleasure. Not so
“
big
” now, are we?' he scoffed.

Mr Big scanned the governor's
face, forming an instant dislike.
Tall, grey and serious
, he thought.
Maybe prison governors look like their prisons.
‘I'm a
reformed character,' smiled Mr Big, seething on the inside, but remaining calm
on
the outside. If he was to get his
favour granted then there was no room for error. Killing the governor for real would
have to wait. For now Mr Big planned to kill him with kindness.

‘And to what do I owe this little
visit?' asked the governor.

 

 

‘Well, sir,' began the
world's most cunning villain, ‘I'm after a
favour …'

The governor's belly laugh cut him
off.

‘Not a favour for me,'
corrected Mr Big. ‘A favour for my cellmate, Dr Desmond Farquhar, sir. A
surprise actually, sir. He's a very old man and I want to do a scrapbook of
his life story. For his birthday, sir.' Big paused while this information sunk
in. ‘He's friends with the Queen, sir,' he reminded the
governor.

The governor nodded suspiciously.
‘He is indeed, Big. So what exactly is this
favour
?'

‘Well, sir, I'd like access
to the library. And maybe the computer in the library, sir? Supervised of course. To
do some research on my good friend, Dr Farquhar. He used to be a very famous
archaeologist. And I thought that I could research his life story and give him the
scrapbook for his birthday. A sort of “random act of kindness”,
sir.'

The governor
clasped his fingers together and pondered. Big was famous for doing random acts of
evil. ‘Why the sudden desire to do good?' he asked.

‘I figure that I'm stuck
here for the rest of my days,' said Mr Big. ‘No chance of escape,'
he lied. ‘It'd be stupid to even try,' he lied again. ‘So
I've turned over a new leaf, sir,' he beamed, delivering a triple-fib.
‘And I'd be doing you a good turn too,' he reminded the governor.
‘Because you'll get yourself an OBE. Or a knighthood, sir. For getting
me to change my ways.'

‘Rehabilitated,' said the
governor, rolling the ‘R'. There was some merit in what Big was saying.
Farquhar did indeed know the Queen. ‘Changing your ways? A knighthood, you
say?'

Mr Big was marched out of the
governor's office. Keeping Big locked up was the governor's basic
requirement. Getting him to change his ways would be a major bonus that would alert
the Home Secretary and Prime Minister.
Thirty minutes' Internet a day
couldn't do any harm
.

Big couldn't hide a grin as he was
accompanied back to his cell. His charm offensive had worked.

Mr Big booked
himself into the prison library. His Internet access was closely monitored. He
Googled ‘Egyptians' and cursed.
52 million references
. Even his
life sentence wasn't long enough to investigate all those. He tapped
‘Desmond Farquhar' into the search engine. Then narrowed it down to
‘Dr Desmond Farquhar, Egyptologist'. He clicked on the first few
references and started jotting down some notes.

Mr Big checked his watch. He was allowed
thirty minutes' Internet a day. ‘Doesn't time fly when
you're having fun?' he snarled to himself. He had two minutes left as he
entered his final Internet search: ‘The legend of the Nile Ruby'.

‘It can't be that time
already,' whined Ollie, as Mum helped him into his coat.

‘The professor's a very busy
man,' explained Mum. ‘And you've had a whole day with him.
I'm sure he's got better things to do than chatter to a bunch of kids
and dogs.'

The professor pondered Mrs Cook's
comment. There were nearly six hundred things on his ‘to do' list, but
he couldn't think of a single one that he'd rather do than spend time
with his beloved GM451. And, if that meant the children came as part of the package,
that was fine. He opened his mouth to explain this to Mrs Cook, but was cut off
before he had the chance to start.

‘So say thank you to Professor
Cortex and we'll be on our way.'

‘Thank
you,' mumbled Ollie, sad to be leaving.

Ben shook the old man's hand and
Sophie hugged him tightly.

‘Careful, young lady,'
gasped the scientist. ‘Oxygen and all that. Keeps me alive.'

Spud and Star saluted. ‘Our
hero,' woofed Star.

Lara sat and waited until everyone else
had turned to leave.
Why do I find goodbyes so difficult?
She knew the
professor's world was one of constant peril.
He's got the best brain
on the planet
,
she thought,
so there are bound to be enemy agents
eyeing him up
.

Lara sat and offered her paw. The
professor bent down and shook it politely. ‘Thank you for popping by to see
me,' he said. ‘You've made an old man
very … 
ahem
 …' He dabbed a tissue at his
eyes … ‘happy. It's so pleasing to see how you've
settled into family life.'

Family life's brill
,
nodded Lara.
I like being a pet. And I really appreciate you sharing your
gadgets with us.

‘You are my greatest achievement,
GM451,' croaked the professor, his voice breaking with emotion. ‘And
it's thanks to you that Mr Big
is
locked up somewhere safe and we can all sleep well at night.'

Mr Big hadn't slept well. He sat
in the canteen, watching the prisoners queuing for their slop. He knew that Cannibal
Joe had been a chef on the outside, but he questioned the decision to put him in
charge of the cooking. The name alone was unnerving, but just one look at Joe told
you that hygiene wasn't his top priority. Mr Big played with his porridge as
he watched Joe scratching his sweat patches. Cannibal Joe stopped serving for a
second as he squeezed a spot, the yellow pus squirting into the porridge. Joe
cheerfully mixed it in.

Mr Big felt some sick rise in the back
of his throat. He pushed his bowl away and turned to a greasy plate of sausage and
scrambled egg.
Cannibal Joe?
He imagined the sausages might be fingers. He
wasn't sure he could face them so he peered out of the window and watched as a
hearse pulled into the grounds of the prison. Four prison guards emerged and heaved
a cheap-looking coffin into the back of the vehicle.

One of the prison kitchen team
approached Mr Big. ‘You've not finished your special
porridge,' he said, a note of disappointment in his
voice.

‘No appetite,' growled Mr
Big. ‘This place is beginning to get to me. I need out.'

The prisoner followed Big's gaze
and they watched as the coffin was loaded into the hearse. The prison gates opened
and the car drove solemnly away.

‘Another one gone,' laughed
the prisoner. ‘That's the only way you're ever going to get out of
here, Big. In your coffin.'

Mr Big's heart was pounding. All
of a sudden he felt hungry. He sawed off a chunk of gristly sausage and looked up at
his fellow prisoner. ‘What an excellent idea.'

Mr Big possessed the two most important
characteristics for a master-criminal: ‘evil' and ‘genius'.
And, although he was behind bars, he still had power. He knew one of the inmates who
worked in the pharmacy and managed to get hold of the pills by the next day.

‘For your nerves, old man,'
he said, offering Dr Desmond two pills. He held a cup of water in the other hand.
‘Get yourself a good night's sleep.'

The old man looked
grateful. Allowing the Nile Ruby to slip through his hands was a mistake that had
haunted him for a lifetime. He shoved the pills into his mouth and swigged the
water. ‘Sweet Egyptian dreams,' growled Mr Big.

Dr Desmond lay down silently in the
bottom bunk. His breathing stopped almost immediately.

Mr Big hardly slept a wink. His brain
whirred with ideas and he knew that morning would be a big test. At first light he
rose from his bed and took pictures of the cell wall on a stolen mobile phone. He
emailed the pictures to himself and flushed the phone down the toilet. Then, just
before 8 a.m., the hatch slid open and the guard's face leered in.

Mr Big fixed the guard with his saddest
eyes. ‘The old man has died.'

 

It was early afternoon when Big's
chance came. The empty coffin had arrived and Dr Desmond's stiff body had been
loaded in. Mr Big pretended to be distraught. ‘My cellmate,' he
whimpered. ‘We'd become very close. The old man was like a father to me.
May I have a minute alone?'

The guard shifted
uneasily. His orders were clear. ‘Never take your eyes off Big,' the
governor had warned. ‘And don't trust a thing he
says.' Mr Big had bribed one of the prisoners to
hit the fire alarm at 2 p.m. precisely. He managed to stay sad on the outside, but
his heart was thumping as he eyed the clock ticking towards the allotted second.
Yes!
His heart leapt with joy.
Right on time!

‘That's the fire
alarm,' yelled one of the guards. Both guards backed out of Mr Big's
cell and ran down the corridor.

Mr Big was calm. He lifted the coffin
lid and pulled the old man out by his arms. He hauled him into the top bunk and
pulled the blankets over. Then he climbed inside the coffin and made himself
comfortable before closing the lid. Mr Big looked at his luminous watch and grinned
in the dark. ‘I'll be out in an hour,' he whispered.

The alarm was switched off and the
guards returned. Mr Big was a tough cookie so neither wanted to wake him. The coffin
was carried down several flights of stairs and Mr Big spent an hour in the prison
chapel while the chaplain muttered a few prayers. The coffin was then hauled into
the back of a hearse and driven away from Hurtmore Prison.

Mr Big lay in the darkness, grinning the
grin
of an evil genius. ‘I am now
the only person ever to have escaped from ultra-security prison.
Twice!
'