Circus of Thieves and the Raffle of Doom (10 page)

Billy treated the audience to one final burst of on-camel knife juggling, then leapt to the ground and gave his final bow. Before turning to leave the stage, he looked upwards towards Hannah.
She was on her feet, clapping and cheering. He gave a special bow just for her, then added a private nod, with a knowing glance, that Hannah understood instantly.

It was time.

A
S BILLY BACKFLIPPED
and cartwheeled off stage, Hannah looked to her right and was pleased to see that despite the
cacophony
²⁵
of cheering, clapping, stamping, whistling and whooping, Granny was fast asleep. She was smiling to herself – enjoying the show in her
own special way – but was in no condition to notice her granddaughter slip past her, down the aisle, and out of the Big Top. It wasn’t exactly the most stealthy of departures, either
since Hannah had a lump of half-melted candy floss stuck to the sole of her shoe, which squelched and squerched with every step, but Granny was such a heavy sleeper that a church bell, a smoke
alarm and a police siren set off under her chair probably would have made no difference. Granny snored on, dreaming of candy floss clouds perched on telegraph pole sticks, and Hannah sneaked
away.

She made straight for Narcissus’s living quarters (woe betide
²⁶
anyone who Narcissus heard calling it a cage), and greeted Billy with a big hug.
She didn’t even know she was going to hug him – it just happened – but Billy didn’t seem to mind. Among circus folk, this kind of behaviour was probably perfectly normal.
Perhaps this was why it had happened. Hannah was definitely feeling distinctly circussy, as if she somehow belonged out here, among the performers, rather than in there, with the audience. This
felt like
her
place, in a way that her actual place – the town where she lived, the home she shared with her parents – never did.

You know that feeling when you’ve had an itchy foot for hours, and you haven’t been able to get to it, then you finally take off your shoe and sock and give it a good old scratch,
and a wave of hot velvety gorgeousness just bursts out and rampages through your whole body? Well, imagine this happening to a centipede, and it’s scratching all one hundred feet at once.
That’s how Hannah felt.
²⁷

From where, you may wonder, did an ordinary girl born into a humdrum family (no offence), in a humdrum little town in a humdrum part of a rather humdrum little country (no offence), get this
strong feeling that she belonged among circus artistes? Coincidence? Happenstance? Freak event in the tumbling together of squillions of strands of genetic material? Wonder on, bonnet-lifters.
Wonder on . . .

‘Ready?’ said Hannah.

‘Ready,’ replied Billy.

While Hannah and Billy settled Narcissus, Fingers O’Boyle took to the stage. Close-up work was Fingers’ true speciality, but that’s not to say he didn’t know how to
command a Big Top. He always liked to kick off with one of the classics, so he began by striding around the ring (Fingers never pranced, and was vehemently opposed to prancing, prancers, prancists,
pranotomy and prancification) carrying three metal rings which he tossed, rolled, twirled and balanced. Sometimes the rings clanged together, sometimes they passed through one another. That was
all. But everyone in the auditorium was somehow mesmerised, as if he had made water flow upwards, or gravity do a loop-the-loop, which in a way he had, because it seemed to be up to Fingers
O’Boyle, rather than the laws of physics, whether the rings behaved like metal or air.

It wasn’t magic, of course. It was just dexterity and skill, but the dexterity was so dextrous, the skill so skilful, that the effect was, quite simply, magical.

Hank and Frank, meanwhile, had wiped off the worst of the custard and paint and sawdust and charred wig and make-up and sweat, and dressed themselves in black tracksuits. No, they weren’t
going to a jogger’s funeral, they were going burglarising, to Privet Place. They used pretty much the same technique as their colleagues, except that they liked to start with a conversation
along the lines of the following:

‘You go upstairs, I’ll do the downstairs.’

‘No, you go upstairs and I’ll do the downstairs.’

‘Why should I go upstairs?’

‘Why should
I
go upstairs?’

‘You always go upstairs.’

‘No I don’t.’

‘Yes you do.’

‘No I don’t, and why should you choose anyway.’

‘Why should
you
choose?’

‘Because you always choose.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Yes, you do.’

‘Says who?’

‘Me.’

‘Me who?’

‘What? What do you mean?’

‘You, that’s who.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’m talking about your attitude.’

‘What attitude?’

‘Oh, all right.
I’ll
go upstairs.’

‘I thought you wanted to go upstairs.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Yes, you do.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Just go upstairs!’

‘You go upstairs.’

At this point, Princess and her prized pack of panicky puppies began to woof, yap, howl, growl, yowl, snarl and bark.

Hank and Frank went silent.

Briefly.

‘You’ve set the dogs off!’ said Hank.

‘
You’ve
set them off!’ replied Frank.

‘
You
have.’

‘
You
have.’

Etc.

Hank and Frank were not very good burglars. On stage, they made a precise and carefully controlled routine look like total chaos; off stage, in their criminal chores, they turned what ought to
have been a carefully controlled routine into something that approached total chaos. In short, they clowned like burglars, but they burgled like clowns.

Meanwhile, back at the Big Top, Hannah and Billy were just beginning phase one of their plan.

‘First things first,’ said Billy. ‘We need the key.’

‘What key?’

‘To the truck. Follow me. You’re the look out.’

‘Brilliant! I’ve always wanted to be a look out!’

Billy dashed off between a row of caravans, and Hannah sprinted behind.

‘Wait!’ she whisper-shouted.

‘What? We have to hurry.’

‘It’s just . . . what am I looking out for?’

‘Armitage!’

‘Oh. Right.’

‘Or any of the others. We trust no one.’

‘OK.’

‘Except each other.’

‘Of course.’

‘Now let’s go.’

They soon arrived at a caravan that was larger, glitzier, sleeker and generally superior in every way to all the other caravans. Apart from anything else, it was silver, like a bullet, not
white, like a fridge. (Which isn’t to say that bullets are better than fridges, just that silver is a much cooler colour for a caravan.) This was Armitage’s caravan. Inside, a light was
on.

Billy stood on tiptoes to look in through the window, but there was a problem. He wasn’t tall enough. He jumped, but there was a similar problem. He couldn’t jump high enough.

Hannah cupped her hands together. ‘Bunk up,’ she said.

‘Are you strong enough?’ Billy asked.

‘Of course I am. I bunk people up all the time.’

He put a hand on Hannah’s shoulder and raised himself up into her hand-stirrup. It was then that Hannah realised they had a third problem. Billy was heavier than Hannah’s usual
bunking companions, and she wasn’t strong enough after all. Her fingers were slipping. Billy, meanwhile, glancing swiftly through the window, realised that there was also a fourth problem.
Armitage was inside, which wasn’t good, and he was COMING OUT, which was worse.

As luck would have it, problems number three and four combined to produce their own solution.

Before Billy could indicate that he had to get down, Hannah’s hands gave way. Billy fell, landing on Hannah. Hannah fell. Billy rolled under the caravan, and just as the door above him
began to swing open, he reached out and pulled Hannah in after him.

They held their breath as a pair of black suede trainers descended the steps that were just inches from their noses.
²⁸
Armitage paused, his feet
holding still for a moment as if he was looking all around, then, with a strange toes-landing-first run, he dashed off into the darkness.

Billy recognised the outfit: head-to-foot skin-tight black Lycra, black leather gloves, black eye mask. This was Armitage’s burglarising kit. Theatrical? Perhaps. Subtle? No. Practical?
No. But Armitage was a performer through and through, and he simply couldn’t undertake any task without the proper costume.

Armitage considered his attire to be a masterpiece of camouflage. He thought it made him almost invisible.

It didn’t. Whenever he walked down the street wearing his black Lycra onesie, everyone noticed him, everyone stared, and many people actually burst out laughing. However, it did still work
as a cunning disguise, since all the people staring at him simply thought, ‘Oh, look. There’s a man going to a fancy dress party dressed as a burglar.’ It never occurred to
anybody that he actually
was
a burglar. See? Cunning.

The sound of three hundred gasps, followed by a drum-roll, a few seconds of silence, then one or two screams, immediately drowned out by a tumultuous round of applause, burst from the Big Top,
indicating that Fingers had not been eaten alive in a tank of piranhas, but had miraculously popped out of an exploding box on the other side of the stage. In other words, he’d finished his
act. Billy knew Fingers would be going straight off stage, round the back, covering himself in a cape, and rushing to join Armitage at the post office. There was no time to waste.

T
HE CONCEPT OF IRONY
can be hard to define, but most of us know it when we see it. Here’s a good example. Armitage’s
caravan was equipped with a burglar alarm, which he always switched on when he went out burglarising. This wasn’t any old alarm, but a home-made device that played ‘Yankee Doodle
Dandy’ at top volume from a loud-hailer on the roof if anyone other than Armitage opened the door.