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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2019
Published in this ebook edition in 2019
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
HarperCollins Publishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is
www.harpercollins.co.uk
Text copyright © Tom Mitchell 2019
Cover design copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Cover illustration copyright © Euan Cook
Tom Mitchell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008276508
Ebook Edition © March 2019 ISBN: 9780008276515
Version: 2019-01-03
To Jacob, Dylan and Nicky
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Part 1
Chapter 1: Identify Your Justification: Why Bother?
Chapter 2: Exercise Caution Around Naked Flames
Chapter 3: Remember: There’s No ‘I’ in ‘Team’ But There is in ‘Win’
Chapter 4: Does Robbing a Bank Suit Your Needs?
Chapter 5: There’s Such a Thing as Being Over-prepared
Chapter 6: Ensure Your Target Ticks All the Boxes
Chapter 7: Anything That Can Go Wrong, Will Go Wrong
Chapter 8: Be Prepared to Use Your Imagination
Chapter 9: ‘Ever Tried. Ever Failed. No Matter. Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better.’ Samuel Beckett
Chapter 10: Use Technology to Your Advantage
Chapter 11: Do Your Best to Avoid Violence
Chapter 12: Get Your Hands Dirty
Chapter 13: Robbing a Bank is Like Riding a Horse
Chapter 14: Trust Nobody
Part 2
Chapter 15: Remain Focused, No Matter What
Chapter 16: Do Your Homework (Scout the Location)
Chapter 17: Short-term Pain for Long-term Gain
Chapter 18: Nothing is Free, Not Even Stolen Money
Chapter 19: A Good Thief is a Good Actor
Chapter 20: Take Care of the Present and the Future Will Look After Itself
Chapter 21: Remember: Everybody Makes Mistakes
Chapter 22: Breaking the Law Isn’t Fun
Chapter 23: Avoid Mixing Business with Pleasure
Chapter 24: Don’t Cry Over Spilt Milk
Chapter 25: Nobody Said Robbing a Bank was Easy
Chapter 26: It’s Better to Fail Before, Rather Than During, a Crime
Chapter 27: You Don’t Want to End Up Locked Away
Chapter 28: Never Be Too Proud to Ask for Help
Chapter 29: Expect to Fail and You Won’t Be Disappointed
Chapter 30: The Darkest Point of the Night Comes Before Sunrise (or something like that)
Chapter 31: Take Advantage of Unexpected Opportunities
Chapter 32: Flexibility Can Be as Important as Detailed Planning
Chapter 33: A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with a Single Step
Chapter 34: Don’t Let Your Ego Blind You to Your Plan’s Faults
Chapter 35: The Running Track of Life is Littered with Potholes
Part 3
Chapter 36: Operation RHC (Retrieve History Coursework)
Chapter 37: Fail to Prepare, Prepare to Fail
Chapter 38: Don’t Forget the Importance of Good Timing
Chapter 39: Never Underestimate your own Potential for Stupidity
Chapter 40: Don’t Try to Rob a Bank on Your Own
Chapter 41: Robbing a Bank is a Matter of Holding Your Nerve
Chapter 42: Take Inspiration from Everywhere and Everything
Chapter 43: There’s Nothing More Important Than Your Getaway Plan
Chapter 44: Don’t Forget to Eat
Chapter 45: The End
About the Author
About the Publisher
Identify Your Justification: Why Bother?
Ask yourself – do I need the money? Robbing a bank isn’t something to do to pass the time, like kicking footballs over the neighbour’s fence or reading. Some people rob banks because they’re greedy. Those people are usually caught after buying muscle cars or diamond-encrusted baseball caps. Others enjoy the adrenalin rush of thrusting sawn-off shotguns into the faces of middle-aged women. Those are typically twenty-somethings with troubled childhoods.
Me? I robbed a bank because of guilt. Specifically: guilt and a Nepalese scented candle.
Let me explain.
It was an endless summer and I was fifteen and fed up with playing Call of Duty and FIFA. There are only so many times you can get sniped in the chin or spanked five–nil before you start questioning the meaning of it all. Mum and Dad’s moaning meant I’d applied for part-time jobs. But even McDonald’s had turned me down. Dad said this was evidence of Broken Britain. Mum said I shouldn’t stop trying.
It was a Saturday afternoon, one of those boring summer Saturdays without Premier League football and with lasagne planned for dinner. Dad was on the sofa, Mum was on the wine, and Rita was on the phone. And all my friends, apart from Beth, were on exotic holidays with never-ending beaches and azure oceans.
‘What do you know about Watergate and Richard Nixon?’ asked Dad. His question, like most of his questions, was a run-up to convincing me to watch a film. This time, it was All the President’s Men, which he’d first shown me when I was in primary school and I’d thought boring and confusing.
I told him I was off to see a girl. That shut him up.
‘Good for you,’ said Mum, who was at the dining table, holding a dog-eared magazine in one hand and a chipped wine glass in the other.
‘Yes,’ said Dad, waving a hand to silence Mum. ‘Live a little.’
Dad was being ironic. It was something else he did – watching films and being ironic. That was Dad. Also – snoring.
I went to my room, closed the door, and ignored the smell of sweat that rose like shimmering heat waves from my stained duvet. I fell to my knees and ran my hands underneath the bed. My fingers passed over crisp packets and sticky patches that I’d worry about later. Finally I found the package I’d been searching for. It had been hiding here since Monday when Brian, our seven-foot-tall German postman, had stood at our front door and had said:
‘Parcel for you. Ist party time?’
And he’d smiled a smile so bright that to look directly into his mouth would blind you.
TBH, I wasn’t 100 per cent convinced a Nepalese scented candle would impress my friend Beth. But I’d cornered myself when Harry, a drippy guy in the year below, had asked what I’d got Beth for her birthday.
Beth lets Harry follow her around because their mums are members of the same yoga club or something. He thinks they’re best friends but they’re so not.
I didn’t even know she had a birthday. I mean, I know everyone has a birthday but …
‘I’m a teenager,’ I said. ‘I don’t buy friends birthday presents. I don’t even write on their Facebook walls.’
‘I bought her a necklace,’ said Harry. ‘It’s silver.’
Round Beth’s neck was this pretty thing with tiny dolphins that I’d not noticed until now.
‘Honestly,’ said Beth, ‘I don’t care about presents.’
I confess: I panicked.
‘A Nepalese scented candle,’ I said. ‘That’s what I got you.’
And I said this because only the day before, Dad had watched me order Mum a Nepalese scented candle on the internet. It was her birthday soon and he thought it would be good for me to get her something that smelt nice.
‘A Nepalese scented candle?’ Beth said on the swings in the rec, swinging as only teenage girls can swing. ‘That sounds cool.’
‘It sounds lame,’ said Harry.
I didn’t take any notice of Harry because he said everything was lame.
So, days later, in my room, kneeling at my bed like I was praying to the god of smelly things you buy the women in your life, I thought, Yeah, Dad, I will take a risk. I’ll give Beth a Nepalese scented candle.
Beth lived in a home built by her angry builder dad to resemble a miniature version of the White House and she looked exactly like Emma Stone. Like exactly. Like getting stopped in the street by old men exactly like Emma Stone. Google Emma Stone. That’s what Beth looked like. Really.
Even though her home was a baby version of the White House, it was actually massive compared to everyone else’s and especially mine. It even had its own cinema room, although the screen had yet to be installed. Her mum used the space to hang washing and it smelt of damp and regret.
I’d not told Dad about the cinema room. It might send him into a spiral of depression, whatever that means.
Exercise Caution Around Naked Flames
Forty minutes after retrieving the package, I was sitting on Beth’s bed and telling her to shut the door. If I acted assertively, I might forget I was in a girl’s bedroom and all the associated confusing feelings like wanting to run but also to stay here forever. The curtains were still drawn from the night, but this was good. I nodded at the poster of Andrew Garfield. He was looking at a horse. I wondered how it would feel to fall asleep looking at Andrew Garfield looking at a horse. I wouldn’t like it.
‘I’d have tidied if I’d known you were coming,’ she said, kicking clothes out of the way. I think I saw knickers.
Before anything, I asked, ‘Where’s Harry?’
‘Coming,’ she said. ‘You know … he’s either here or … he’s coming here.’
I pulled the package out of my jeans. The padded envelope was bent and twisted. Lionel Messi looked down from alongside Andrew Garfield and I couldn’t help thinking he stared at me as if I were an idiot. Still, he wasn’t as good as he used to be.
‘Happy birthday,’ I said.
Beth joined me. The mattress sighed. I could feel her body radiating warmth. I handed over the package.
‘Nice wrapping,’ she said, studying the battered envelope.
She pulled the top off. Inside were strips of newspaper. She shook these out.
(What if there was nothing else inside and I ended up looking like an idiot? Again.)
The candle plopped to the floor like a calf from a cow. It was squat and circular like a stack of digestive biscuits. There was a shiny metal rim round the soapy-looking wax. In the centre, a black wick drooped.
‘Thanks,’ said Beth, her Emma Stone lips forming a smile.
Was it an impressed smile or a laughing-at-Dylan smile?
‘A candle,’ I said, picking it up.
‘Nepalese scented?’ she replied. ‘You know, Mum sometimes runs a bath and lights these when she’s had enough of Dad.’
‘They’re supposed to be therapeutic,’ I said, guessing.
‘You saying I’m stressed?’
‘We’re all stressed,’ I said in a quiet voice.
I hoped she couldn’t see my tell-tale heart quaking beneath the Crystal Palace replica shirt.
‘Let’s light it!’ she said, bouncing up from the bed.
She crossed to her desk and pulled open the top drawer. There was a rush of pens and paper. Finally she found what she’d been looking for – a lighter. Did she smoke? She didn’t smoke. She was Beth.
The lighter, cheap and plastic, turned cartwheels as it flew through the air and hit me squarely on the forehead. Beth laughed. I rubbed my head and asked if we were lighting it.
‘Why not?’
‘Your mum?’
‘What about my mum?’
‘She might think, you know, that we’ve been smoking or something?’
Now it wasn’t only Messi who looked at me as if I were an idiot. I held the lighter and inspected the candle. What if it smelt horrible? What if the scent had hallucinogenic properties and made us go crazy? People jump out of windows and all sorts.
I took the candle to Beth’s desk and pushed away a pile of revision workbooks to make space. I flicked the lighter. It didn’t catch. I flicked again. An orange flame erupted. I held it to the wick. It caught. A smell blossomed. A combination of wet dog and herbs.
I coughed, my shoulders jumping. The scent of the Nepalese scented candle was a real throat-tickler.
And, at this point, the heavy feet of Beth’s mum began pounding towards us from the corridor.
‘Mum!’ hissed Beth. ‘It stinks! Put it out! Get rid of it! It’s not Nepalese!’
Now coughing too, she forced her back against the door and pointed desperately to the wastebin overflowing with Coke cans and crisps that sat under the window.
I licked my fingers and pinched at the flame. I felt needle-sharp pain and, despite myself, let out a tiny yelp.
Beth’s eyes almost exploded from their sockets.
I grabbed the still-smoking candle and threw it at the bin. Such was the horror of monster mother’s footsteps getting louder, I didn’t register the amazing shot. Bull’s-eye. Next to go was the lighter. This hit the brim of the bin and fell behind, unseen. By now Beth’s mum was knocking at the door. I yanked open the window and flapped my hands while scanning the room for deodorant to spray to cover the stink.
‘Just a second,’ shouted Beth. ‘I’m not decent.’
There! Under the desk! A pink aerosol can!
‘Not decent? Haven’t you got Dylan in there, young lady?’ her mum asked.
Beth stepped forward and the door opened, striking the back of her head.
‘Ow!’
I sprayed a feeble burst of aerosol as Beth rubbed her head. And Beth’s mum took in the full vision of the darkened room and she wasn’t impressed.
My cheeks burnt red.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked, eyeing the strange pile of newspaper strips. ‘And why does it smell of yoga in here?’
‘Hello, Mrs Fraser,’ I said. ‘How are you?’
My voice wavered. Beth’s mum looked like Emma Stone in her mid-forties. Emma Stone in her mid-forties narrowing her eyes.
‘Dylan Thomas,’ she said. ‘Are you writing any poetry yet?’
‘Not yet,’ I said.
She nodded.
‘Why are you holding Beth’s deodorant?’
I had nothing to say. I looked to Beth. She looked at me.
‘Muuuum,’ she said after a while.
‘I was sweaty?’ I offered.
Her mum’s eyes narrowed further, a slit of iris remaining, until –
‘You two! I’m not angry! I understand.’ She grinned. ‘I was young once … if you can believe that.’
My cheeks exploded in embarrassment. Beth mumbled something unintelligible and I couldn’t help noticing how she scrunched up her nose in disgust.
‘I’ve got Pringles downstairs,’ Mrs Fraser said.
With her hand on the doorknob, she stood back to allow us through. Neither of us looked at the bin as we passed.
We were sitting at the dining table, eating Pringles, drinking Coke and listening to Mrs Fraser tell us how important getting a good set of GCSEs is when we first saw the dark mass of smoke spread its tendrils down from the staircase to the carpet. Mrs Fraser, with her back to the stairs, thought Beth was joking when she stood and pointed and shouted ‘Look!’
‘Never mind all that,’ Mrs Fraser said. ‘I want to know how you plan to pass English when you never do any reading.’
Like someone had started a bonfire on the stairs, the same thick, earthy clouds of smoke blossomed towards us.
‘Oh my days,’ I said when I saw what Beth was pointing at.
The dark smoke moved silently and stealthily like dry ice at a school musical. There was something unreal and uncanny about the way it thickened into the space.
When Mrs Fraser saw it she screamed, ‘Don’t panic!’
She ushered us from the room and out of the house, panicking and shouting, ‘The White House is on fire! The White House is on fire! Don’t panic! Don’t panic!’
Outside, stood Harry. We rushed past as he pointed at the smoke spilling from the front door and whispered in awe, ‘So not lame.’
In 1814, British soldiers burnt down the White House. It must have looked like this. But bigger. And with fewer Nissan Qashqais parked outside.
That very afternoon, Beth’s house, Pringles, scented candle, posters of Andrew Garfield, Lionel Messi and all, burnt away to nothing but ashes and twisted metal. The destruction was complete.
And my thumb and forefinger hurt for days.
Remember: There’s No ‘I’ in ‘Team’ But There is in ‘Win’
A few days after the fire, I saw Beth walking through the rec with a thick black sports bag over her shoulder. Harry trailed close behind, pulling a grey wheeled suitcase. It bounced across the uneven turf. He raised two fingers at me. I didn’t know where they were going or where they’d been.
I’d called out. ‘Do you want a hand?’
I wanted to say more, to apologise to Beth, but didn’t know which words to use. They all seemed wrong. And I had no idea how much Harry knew. I didn’t want to mug myself off.
‘Sorry for burning down your house, yo!’ would be a stupid thing to shout, however much I wanted to.
Beth stopped. She smiled as if a dentist had asked her to show off her gums, i.e. not very convincingly.
‘Really?’ I called, jogging to catch up.
‘It’s all good,’ she said. ‘We’re in a sweet flat with views across London.’
Harry stood at her shoulder, nodding like a broken doll.
Her home, the burnt one, had gone viral. Images of the tiny, fiery White House had swept through Twitter, with jokes about Trump and everything.
‘Tell him about your stuff,’ said Harry.
He’d swapped his nodding for a pulling-legs-off-a-spider grin.
‘It’s nothing,’ said Beth.
She dropped the sports bag. It wheezed as it hit the grass.
‘What about your stuff? Did you manage to save anything?’
Beth squinted but it may have been because of the sun. And the water in her eyes was probably due to hay fever too. Not that she ever got hay fever.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s all gone. My clothes. My books. My stuff. But, you know, someone said your possessions end up possessing you, so …’
Her voice tailed off. I felt that churning in my stomach, a Vindaloo guilt like I’d eaten a secret curry the night before.
‘At least you’ve got your phone,’ I said, because of all the things to lose, your phone’s got to be the worst.
‘Yeah,’ said Harry. ‘At least you’ve got your phone, Beth. Everything else is up in smoke, but you can still Instagram.’
Beth shushed Harry. Not only did it stop him talking but it also stopped him smiling.
‘It’ll be fine,’ I said because that’s what you say when bad things have happened. ‘Your mum and dad will work something out.’
(They had money, after all.)
‘Yeah,’ said Beth. ‘And it’s sunny out and the end of the summer is, like, weeks away and we’ve got sick views and I can always buy new clothes, so …’
But her heart wasn’t in her words.
I watched them fade from the rec, a panting Harry following like a squire to his knight. Why’d I mention her phone? How was that any help? The word on the street was that faulty wiring was the cause of the fire but my scented candle had so burnt down Beth’s house. I mean, the wick was still smoking when I’d thrown it in the bin. It was the cause of the fire, for sure. So sure that I’d spent the time between being picked up from the blazing home (a crowd had formed outside pointing at the flames licking up from the windows) and seeing Beth in the park expecting a knock at the door from the police or, worse, Beth’s angry dad. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t even focus on Football Manager.
I’d destroyed Beth’s house and everything in it.
(But if she’d lost all her possessions, what was in the bags? I bet Harry was sucking up and, like, offering to lend her towels and all sorts.)
Does Robbing a Bank Suit Your Needs?
On the way home from the rec I stopped at the corner shop to buy a Lion Bar in the desperate hope that sugar would make things better. I told myself the whole faulty wiring thing was reason to be happy, even if it weren’t true. It’s a post-fact world, I thought. I still felt supernova guilty, but at least I wasn’t going to prison. Prison would be bad for a boy of my imagination and size. And, anyway, houses have insurance, Mum said, and Beth’s family would be able to claim expensive things had been destroyed, so—
‘It’s not all bad,’ Mum had said last night, sipping wine. ‘Remember the time we were broken into and you claimed for a Blu-ray, Kay?’
Dad did not remember.
‘Must have been another husband,’ he’d said from the sofa.
Stepping from the corner shop, my world focused on unwrapping the Lion Bar, I heard a voice.
‘Buy us a …’ it began.
It was a voice wavering from high to low, a voice unsure whether to commit to adulthood. It was Dave’s voice. Dave Royston. The biggest melt in the neighbourhood. He hung about on the corner, smoking cigarettes and thinking he was a gangster. His cronies, Adam and Ben, like gophers on alert, stood at either shoulder. I don’t think I’d ever heard Adam or Ben speak, only their high-pitched laughter like hyenas on helium.
I took a bite from the Lion Bar. If I should die, it wouldn’t be on an empty stomach.
It tasted of heaven and caramel.
‘Dylan!’ he said. ‘You gay! What you doing? Buying poetry?’
I stepped to the side. He did the same to stop me passing.
‘No,’ I said quietly, chewing. ‘They don’t sell poetry here.’
‘Give us your Lion Bar. Nobody eats chocolate on this corner without my say.’
He snatched the Lion Bar from my hand. I couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it, only hoping there was a terrible disease in my saliva that would make his testicles fall off. He took a bite and chewed with his mouth open. His privates weren’t obviously affected.