That was where Billy’s unique talents came into play. While the rest of his family were out robbing post offices, the young Billy had stayed at home and thought about monsters. Billy was different like that. Even as a child he’d had a connection to the paranormal realm. He could see invisible things and sometimes even talk with them too. There were ghosts in his street. And an angel at number twenty-two, and a demon, disguised as a very old man, living over the greengrocer’s. Billy couldn’t explain his skill, and he certainly couldn’t control it. But it was definitely a very useful ability if your job was solving supernatural crimes.
“So remind me,” said Billy, “what have we got so far?”
Charley pulled out her notebook and, licking the tip of her finger, she flipped through the pages. “Last year Sir Gordon funded an expedition led by…” She scanned her small neat writing, searching for the name. “Alan Quinn.”
Billy rubbed his chin. “He’s a bit of a lowlife from what I hear.”
“You know him?”
“I know of him,” said Billy. “I’ve got a cousin who runs a gambling den and I remember there was an Alan Quinn who played cards for high stakes and built up so much debt he had to leave the country. Last I heard he was out in Africa, organizing big-game hunting and safaris for wealthy nobility. Archaeology isn’t his usual line at all.”
“He did incredibly well for his first dig then,” said Charley, “considering the vast haul they brought home. Did he just get lucky?”
“More likely Quinn was just hired muscle. You know how these things work – the rich man says where he wants to dig, and the poor men do the digging.”
“Sir Gordon is the one with a passion for Egyptology, so I suppose it’s possible that he was the one who worked out where to find the tomb. He certainly takes all the credit.”
“He didn’t seem like a ‘mastermind’ to me,” said Billy.
“But if Sir Gordon didn’t discover the tomb,” said Charley, “then who did?”
“Probably one of the local Egyptians. Who would know where the treasure was buried better than them?”
“Who indeed?” said Charley, placing a big question mark at the foot of her page.
“So what about this rampaging mummy?” Billy leaned forward in his seat. “Any theories?”
Charley ticked them off. “It could be a hoax, someone trying to frighten Sir Gordon for some reason. An actor paid to play a gruesome role. Possibly Sir Gordon cheated Quinn out of his rightful share and this is his revenge.”
“Possibly. Or?”
“It might be a genuine mummy, risen from its centuries-long sleep and fulfilling its curse.”
Billy sat back, satisfied. “We’ve not done a mummy before.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” said Charley. “Remember that ‘mermaid’ we were called in to investigate?”
Billy nodded. “Where it turned out that the man who ran the Hall of Curiosities had sewn half a dead monkey to half a dead fish.” He pulled a face. “Disgusting, wasn’t it? And how about the werewolf woman of Hampstead Heath?”
“Or, as we came to call her, the unfortunately hairy old lady of Hampstead Heath.”
They both laughed.
“But the imp was real, wasn’t it?” said Billy. “Remember how it spat when we captured it.”
“Six inches tall and teeth like a piranha.”
“And what about that boggart?”
“Tough case,” said Charley. “I never thought we’d get it back in its hole.”
“But a real mummy,” said Billy wistfully. “That would be something special.”
“Fingers crossed,” said Charley. “Let’s open the file, see what else Luther has got for us.”
Billy couldn’t help but grin as he pulled out the scarlet file, sealed with wax. Normal police files were manila, boring old brown. Serious and gruesome crimes were in black folders. But S.C.R.E.A.M. files were red. Red for unknown, red for strange. Red for danger.
Billy cracked open the seal with his thumb, and excitedly leafed through the pages inside. “Lots of information on ancient Egypt…”
“Lovely light reading for the journey,” said Charley.
“Hello?” said Billy, pulling a document from the pack. “Luther has included some information from the Edinburgh police – he must think that it’s connected.”
“Let me see,” said Charley, scanning the page, eager to get to the juicy bits. “It’s a burglary report. Police were called to the home of Lady Marigold Tiffin to investigate reports that her necklace, the famous Dalton diamonds, had been stolen. Blah, blah, blah…” She paused. “Luther has put a note in the margin – apparently Lady M was a guest at the mummy unwrapping.”
“Coincidence?” said Billy.
“Doubt it,” said Charley. “Luther Sparkwell believes in a lot of things, but coincidence isn’t one of them.” She read on. “There’s a statement from a Mrs Whisker, housekeeper to the Tiffin family for nearly twenty years—”
“Let me guess,” Billy interrupted. “She didn’t see anything.”
Charley shook her head. “Oh ye of little faith,” she teased. “She actually said, ‘I didn’t see nuthin’.’”
“They never do,” Billy sighed.
“Inspector Diggins, who’s investigating the burglary, insists that he will ‘dig out the truth’.”
Billy sighed again, louder this time. “I bet he says that all the time.”
“You’ll like this though,” said Charley. “Traces of sand were found at the crime scene, which suggests our mummy really was involved.” Her face lit up. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“You’d kill for a bacon sandwich?”
Charley smiled. “I don’t think this mummy is working alone.”
“How do you make that out?”
“Imagine you are a five-thousand-year-old mummy, recently risen from the dead to walk the earth again… What could you possibly want with diamonds?”
“So if we find who wants the diamonds then we might find who is behind all this,” said Billy excitedly.
“Exactly! And who wants diamonds?”
“Everybody in the world,” said Billy. “Doesn’t really narrow it down much, does it?”
The ten-and-a-half hour journey up the Great Northern Line grew into a miserable and tiring fifteen-hour journey. Engineering works on the track held up the train for what felt like an eternity, and a further delay at York turned a half-hour lunch stop into two more wasted hours. As the Special Scotch Express dragged itself the last two hundred miles to Waverley station in Edinburgh, Billy and Charley were both flagging, the rocking of the carriage lulling them into the waiting arms of sleep.
Billy didn’t know how long he had been sleeping. The train compartment was chilly and the seat was so hard that Billy actually felt more tired now than he had done before he nodded off. His back ached, his mouth was dry and his eyes were crusty. Still half asleep, Billy poked his finger into the corner of his eye. “Sleepy dust”, his mother called it. But this felt different, wrong somehow.
There was so much of it. Not just a few specks near his tear duct, but dozens and dozens right across his eye. Billy rubbed more intently, feeling hundreds of grains; sharp and hard against his skin. He tried to open his eyes to blink the stuff away, but it felt as if his eyelids were glued shut. There were clumps of the foul grit gumming his eyelashes together, so much that he had to really strain before they pulled apart and he could see again. By now, Billy’s heart was punching against his ribcage, like a boxer in the fight of his career.
His mouth was as dry as a desert. Billy poked out his tongue to moisten his lips and instantly regretted it. His lips were coated with grains too and now the inside of his mouth was full of the stuff. Billy coughed and spat while his hands frantically brushed his hair, his shoulders, chest, arms, legs. Everywhere.