Read Online Charlie and the War Against the Grannies by Alan Brough - Free Book Online Page A

really did look like a maggoty, stinky, sick-covered donut. Only worse.
    â€˜You’ll find your fee in the usual place,’ said Hils.
    The Lurker nodded.
    Hils smiled.
    The Lurker blushed.
    I felt sick.
    The Lurker left.

    â€˜You like him,’ I said.
    â€˜Negative,’ said Hils. ‘What I am doing is called “manipulating an intelligence asset”.’
    â€˜You do like him. Stop liking him. He’s creepy. Stop manipulating him. He’s not even a very good asset. He didn’t even tell us where the Stinkly Wrinklys’ HQ was. I don’t think he even knows.’
    â€˜He knows. He also knows that you never reveal important intelligence if there is a chance someone might overhear it. He’ll leave the pertinent information at our secret drop-off.’
    Hils and The Lurker have a secret drop-off.
    She does like him.
    â€˜You do like him.’
    â€˜Negative. It’s just business.’
    Simon Bolivar walked past. His nose was bleeding.
    I wished The Lurker’s nose was bleeding.
    I wished I had been the one who made it bleed.
    I know that’s not a nice thing to think. Even so, I kept on thinking it.
    All day.

25
THE MAP
    â€˜I found it!’ I shouted to Hils. ‘It’s definitely an old barbecue.’
    I was kind of lying when I said what I had found looked ‘definitely’ like an old barbecue. What I had found didn’t look ‘definitely’ like anything at all.
    It was definitely rusty.
    It was definitely dented.
    It was definitely charred.
    It was definitely rotten.
    It was definitely something.
    Something that looked enough like a barbecue to make it okay to tell Hils it was ‘definitely’ an old barbecue.

    Â 
    â€˜I’ve found the possum skeleton,’ shouted Hils from behind a heavily graffitied recycling bin.
    â€˜What’s next?’ I said.
    â€˜A wig,’ said Hils. ‘We have to find a wig.’

    The Lurker had given Hils a map of how to find the Stinkly Wrinklys’ HQ. The first thing we had to find was a secret door. A secret door down an alley, behind a café, east of an old barbecue, just near a possum skeleton and behind a wig.
    We found the café. We found the behind-the-café. We found the barbecue. (I think.) We found the possum skeleton.
    Now all we had to find was the wig and the secret door.
    I had never looked for a secret door before.
    I had always wanted to look for a secret door.
    At night – when I’m lying in bed, getting ready to go to sleep – I like to plan what I am going to dream about that night. Lots of nights I plan to dream about finding a secret door and all the dangers I have to avoid and puzzles I have to solve before I can open it.
    I should have been really, very, super happy that I was looking for a secret door. With my best friend. Who had a secret map to help us find the secret door. (A secret map to find a secret door makes it a double-secret situation. Not many people get to be in a double-secret situation. There is no such thing as a triple-secret situation. There just isn’t.)
    But I wasn’t happy that I was with my best friend in a double-secret situation. I wasn’t happy because we were in a double-secret situation because of The Lurker.
    The Lurker had wrecked my-best-friend-double-secret situation.
    Even when The Lurker wasn’t around he was around.
    Wrecking everything.

    I joined Hils behind the recycling bin.
    She was standing next to the possum skeleton.
    We started to look around for the wig.
    â€˜I bet there’s no wig,’ I said. ‘I bet The Lurker’s got it wrong. I bet there’s not even really a secret door.’
    â€˜There
is
a wig and there
is
a secret door,’ said Hils. ‘You might not like him but The Lurker is the best at finding things.’
    I bet he isn’t the
best
. There are a lot of billions of people in the world and I bet one of them is the
actual
best at