Lee Raven, Boy Thief Read online

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  is the not-so-secret-identity of Louisa Young and Isabel Adomakoh Young, who have been writing together since Isabel was seven. They have previously written three books together: the LIONBOY trilogy. They wander the world in a large blue canoe, and have 17 pet ducks as well as the lizard and the dead tortoise.

  Books by Zizou Corder

  LEE RAVEN, BOY THIEF

  LIONBOY

  LIONBOY: THE CHASE

  LIONBOY: THE TRUTH

  ZIZOU CORDER

  PUFFIN

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

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  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

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  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  puffinbooks.com

  First published 2008

  1

  Text copyright © Zizou Corder, 2008

  The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted

  All rights reserved

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not,

  by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s

  prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a

  similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  978-0-14-191361-2

  For everyone who has ever found reading hard

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Jack Fairbarn for inspiration, Ryan Lansley for encouragement, Ed Maggs for being so exceptionally gracious, the British Library, Derek Johns, and the usual, very much appreciated mob.

  CHAPTER 1

  The Story According to Lee Raven, the Boy Thief

  Earlier this year I got myself embroiled in an adventure so extremely peculiar and weird that if any other bloke had come up and told me it had happened to him I would’ve not believed him in fact I probably would’ve decked him for his cheek. However here I am sitting in the place to which this adventure brought me, with the purpose, prize and hero of the adventure in the hands of my friend beside me, so it must be true, and if you don’t believe it I don’t care because it don’t matter, but don’t try and deck me because if you do you’ll be sorry.

  I’ll start at the beginning because I know that’s where you ought to start a story. The beginning was, really, all that palaver in Greek Street, Soho, London, Great Britain, the UK, 20 April 2046, after the petrol ran out and the lowlands were drowned but before the Martians invaded (they still ain’t yet, for your information, but you never know).

  I, Lee Raven, useless git, pointless specimen, little oik, bliddy hoodie, thievin’ ratbag (I’m merely quoting my fans – well, my dad), thought what with it being Friday night, and a sunny warm evening all orange with the dusk, there’d be a load of guys the worse for booze out on the streets in Soho and I’d go and pick their pockets for them, get me a bit of tosh and they’d never even know, probably go home thinking they’d spent it all on booze. If they was good blokes they’d have given it to charity for poor lost homeless boys like me anyway, so I was just helping myself direct. Plus I was saving them the ill-healthful effects of drinking that much extra that they would’ve drunk if they’d’ve had the money I’d nicked. I was in fact performing a public service of redistributing wealth and preventing public drunkenness.

  So late in the evening I was waiting for them to start falling out of the pubs and clubs when I noticed a dyed blonde bird in a fur coat and a very swanky handbag which made me think she’d likely have a quite nice fat purse inside it, waiting outside that club with the duck on it. I watched her for a moment. She was on her own, and when she turned I saw she had one of those faces covered in make-up to look young but underneath it was a face like boiled meat. Probably she was waiting for someone to come out of the club. Move fast, Lee-o, I thought, so I swung by her and gave her the old brush and dip and ‘Sorry, Mrs!’ as I passed. Only she only grabs my arm while I’m inside her bag, and holds it up in the air so’s I’m on my toes, and she’s yelling blue murder and anyone would’ve thought I’d been trying to slit her throat not lift her caio – so then all these people are looking at us and some security come lurching out of the club and young Lee thinks, All right, mate, enough of this, so I kick her in the shins, extremely hard if I may say so, and she goes ‘Eyurgh’ and lets go of me to grab her leg, and I make off as quick as I can down the nearest revolting dark alleyway, which turned out to be the one where my aunt Jobisca lives since she had to leave Norfolk. Well, I wasn’t going to stick around down there, so I roared off towards Piccadilly, looking for noise and crowds to hide in, only there was all the theatre and nightclub security along Shaftesbury Avenue, and I didn’t fancy fighting my way past them, so I took a way towards Regent Street, and just kept on, feet thumping, heart thumping, keep going, and I crossed Regent Street all right and kept going and before long I was out of my territory, so I kept on going just in case and after a while there was a big garden square so I pitched myself over the railings (One-handed! Legs flying!) and flung myself down under a big old bush and lay there, and my heart was beating so hard I could feel it juddering the hard earth beneath me.

  Otherwise it was quiet except for a bird singing away.

  No one had followed me. I thought I’d keep my head down anyway. No more running around tonight, that’s for sure.

  It was a good enough place to sleep. I tucked myself inside under the branches and the drooping leaves, and I pulled my jacket round me. The earth was hard and dry and crumbling against my cheek. London wormcasts. I’d wake up covered in little grey squiggles.

  And I’d got her purse too, safe in the deep pocket my mum had sewed in the back of my jacket lining for just such a purpose.

  So the next day, I was just entirely minding my own business. I’d woken quite late considering I was outdoors, and thanks to Mrs Wallet – she had a bunch of cash, but I hadn’t been through it properly yet – I’d bought my coffee and a chocolate croissong and a cheese and ham toastie and a big raspberry sherbet. I took them all back under my bush in the square, and it was a bit sunny and some leaves and blossoms like soapsuds were out on the trees and the buildings were all tall and white and handsome, so I sat there feeling completely happy, as it happens, munching and feeling the sun on my nose. If the sun’s out, I’m happy. It’s that simple.

  For about ten minutes.

  Then a bloke came and sat on a bench along the way. I thought about dipping him but decided not – I’d enough for the moment, and it was too quiet and light, and I didn’t feel like any more running away yet, not after last night. So I just ignored him.

  He had a coffee and a sandwich, and looked like an officeguy on his break. He was having a shufti at the paper – checking the results by the look of it.

  I’d f
inished my food, so being a good citizen up I got and strolled over to the bin, which was behind him, to dump my wrappings.

  And as I passed, I took a look at his paper. And got a bit of a shock. There on the front page was a picture – big picture – of me. You wouldn’t necessarily see it was me as my face was half hidden but I recognized myself – I’ve got this pretty weirdly pale hair – and I recognized the bird in the fur all right and there was my hand and it was pretty blatant what was going on. There was a big old headline and a load of writing to the side.

  The officeguy noticed me standing there like a lemon because he looked up and smiled at me and looked down at the story, and said, ‘Yeah! Romana Asteriosy got mugged last night! Amazing, isn’t it? The amount of security she’d have and she got mugged by a kid! Pity that kid…’

  Well that was enough. I tried to sort of grin and nod to cover up my dropped jaw, and moved on, and dumped my wrapping, and kept on moving.

  Romana Asteriosy! Well that explains the amount of security that jumped out on me.

  Romana Asteriosy is only one of the richest of the Rich Russians in London. I don’t think she’s actually Russian though. She owns half the shops and half the football teams and crike knows what. Extremely rich and dodgy as all crike. You can’t blame me for not recognizing her though – she’s never photographed, except sometimes in shades. She’s too mysterious for photographs. ‘A shadowy figure’, they call her on the TV.

  But I never mugged her! I dipped her. It’s different. I didn’t threaten her. I didn’t hit her. I don’t carry – I don’t like it. I just nicked her bliddy purse.

  I felt the weight of it in my jacket.

  I had to get rid of it, certes.

  I looked round for a private place. Bogs in the cafe would do.

  I went back there, ordered another sherbet and went into the toilet. Locked in the stall, I took out the purse and checked through the tosh properly.

  It was the fold-out wallet kind. Full of caio, as I said. Three hundred dirhams! More than I’d seen – in my life, actually. The richness of some people – my mum could’ve fed us all for a month on that. Well, I was keeping it. I took it out and stuffed it in my inside pocket.

  Cards: five, cash and debit and credit and all that. I wasn’t interested in cards. Too much technology and no way you can use them and stay safe. I know some people sell them on and stuff but it’s too complicated for me. I ain’t mixing with that kind of people – once you’ve done business with them they think they own you and the next thing you know you’re sharing a room with a dozen kids brought in a box from god knows where, none of them talk English, they’re crying all night and you’re all getting beat up. No thank you. I only want clean anonymous stuff I can use – cash caio.

  Photos: an old one of a guy in glasses – twentieth-century-looking. Probably her husband or her dad or something. Well, for sure I didn’t need anybody else’s family.

  ID card, driving licence, some other stuff. None of it was anything to me. She was welcome to it. I’d jump a tube train out to Clapham or somewhere and leave it somewhere, and it could do what it wanted.

  That’s what I was doing. I came out of the cafe and walked down the square towards the tube station at Green Park. And walking up towards me was a bunch of security. I don’t know whose, or where they were from, but they had that look of importance like they were Doing Something, and in a split second my mind went off on one and I knew for a fact that they were Asteriosy’s security, and what they were doing was looking for me, and here I was with the wallet in my pocket, just walking up to them like a dork…

  The houses in that section are very grand, tall and old with the blue plaques on their fronts about all the grand blokes who used to live there.

  I ducked up the nearest set of steps leading up to a front door.

  I didn’t even know who lived here or what. There was a big brass sign, and glass windows in the door. Very grand. Inside I could see a wide hall, and bookshelves.

  Behind me, the security glanced up at me, semi-interested, from the other side of the street. One of them slowed down. He stopped to tie his shoe. The others stood around, with nothing better to do than stare at me.

  There was a smaller brass plate by the doorbell. I stared at it. It might well say on it ‘Deliveries to the basement door please’. I put a look on my face as if that had been what I just read, and then strolled down the stairs, innocent as you like, and down the much smaller and less glam set of stairs into the area where the basement door was. Out of their view so I wouldn’t have to a) stand there like a lemon or b) ring! Clever, eh?

  The only problem was, they were also out of my view so I had no idea whether they had finished tying their shoes yet and gone on about their business, or whether they were looking at their photo and discussing how the pale-headed kid in it looked exactly like the pale-headed kid they’d just seen going down the stairs looking dodgy.

  So I had to stay down there for a bit.

  So I did.

  Then it started raining.

  It was all right because there was a kind of arch under the stairs up to the front door, so I went in under there, where the coal hole was in Victorian times.

  I’d been there a while, leaning against the whitewash and congratulating myself on a lucky escape, when a face stuck itself up against the wire glass in the basement door, and a great rattling began, and the door shot open.

  It was an old geezer – tall, stooping, in a dark suit and a big thick moustache. He was already talking: ‘… because if you’d rung someone should’ve come, I’d have thought, rather than leave you out in the rain, poor blighter, come in, come in. I was upstairs and didn’t hear, lucky I came down actually. I was looking at the letters of David Docherty… I don’t suppose you know him – very highly thought of in the late twentieth but hardly known now, still terribly funny though I don’t know what I’m going to do with them…’

  I took one look at him and saw something to be turned to my advantage.

  ‘David Docherty who wrote The Cannibal Death, sir?’ I chirped up in my best polite voice.

  He’d been ushering me but now he stopped and turned to me. ‘Yes!’ he cried. ‘Have you read him?’

  Yeah. Well. That’s the question that floors me. Have you read…?

  I didn’t answer him.

  I didn’t say the truth, which was, No, I bliddy haven’t because I can’t bliddy read.

  I can catch a rat by the tail just by sneaking up on it, I can pick pockets like the Dodger and filch off market stalls and run like a cat, I can swear in several languages and add things up in my head and I remember everything that I ever hear or see, but I can’t read.

  That’s why the teacher told Dad I was DYS LEX IC and needed help. That’s why I wouldn’t go to school. My dad thought it meant I was STU PID PRAT and should be thwacked till I saw sense.

  That’s why I left home.

  I didn’t run away, mind. I’m not some little coward. I escaped.

  Anyway, so I said, ‘Yeah. Brilliant. Really scary, ain’t it, that bit when…’

  I knew all about it because my brothers used to watch the old film. They wouldn’t let me watch because they said I was too little but then they’d scare me with stories about how this guy was going to eat me up and all of that. Ciaran was the worst. He’d go on and on: ‘He’ll slice out your liver and fry it with onions, he’ll get chips from the chippy and a big bottle of beer, he’ll deep-fry your fingers and put mustard on you and ketchup…’ and Finn would grab me from behind, going, ‘YUM-YUMYUM’, and Billy and Squidge would laugh at us and tell us to shut up and in the end Dad would come in and yell.

  The old geezer was saying, ‘I never read The Cannibal Death. Do you know, I found it simply too frightening. Had to put it down. I don’t find that kind of thing amusing any more, at my age… So – do come on in.’

  Come on in? All right. Don’t mind if I do.

  ‘Yeah – ta,’ I said. Bye-bye, blokeys outside. Lee’s
been admitted, and by that fact is proved an innocent Lee, going about innocent business. Bye.

  The building smelt funny. Dusty and leathery and old. Not quite damp. Chilly and warm at the same time. The floor was big old stone slabs, like we were in a garden or on the pavement still, and there were all these bookcases everywhere, and books just piled all over the place: really old-looking ones mostly. I don’t like books. They’ve got everything in them, and I can’t get at it.

  On one set of shelves they were all a kind of ghostly white, like pearl. He caught me looking at them and said, ‘Ah, our vellum collection.’ I nodded wisely as if I knew all about it, and stored the word away for when I could find out.

  ‘You’ll like this,’ he said suddenly, and grabbed me and pulled me towards what looked like a big, thin, tightly rolled leather carpet.

  ‘Eighteenth-century deerskin,’ he said. ‘Shipwrecked!’

  ‘Yer what?’ I replied.

  ‘This is a roll of deerskin from the eighteenth century,’ he said. ‘It was on a ship going from Spain to New York, and the ship was wrecked.’

  ‘Why ain’t it all rotted away?’ I asked.

  ‘The right question!’ he said, gleaming. ‘It was so tightly rolled, and so tightly packed in, that the water never got to it. It was salvaged in the early 2000s and found to be in perfect condition. Sniff it.’

  I sniffed it. Leather, age – and salt.

  ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ he said.

  He had a funny face – great big curving nostrils and eyes like under-cooked poached eggs and a moustache like someone had parked a broom up his nose – but I was quite liking him. Not that it was going to be able to last long – I knew that.

  He took me into, of all things, a kitchen, tucked away among more rooms full of books. It had no windows, an old pale green table and lino on the floor. There was a hot pot of tea on the table and a packet of HobNobs.