Circus of Thieves and the Raffle of Doom (8 page)

Every year, every car in the country goes to a garage to be serviced. A mechanic lifts the bonnet, rummages around in the engine, checks everything is OK, then gives you a certificate to
carry on driving for another year without worrying about what is making the car go. I am now going to lift the bonnet of this book for a moment, and point something out that you may or may not have
noticed, depending on whether you are a bonnet-lifting kind of person. Whoever you are, you cannot fail to have realised that Hannah and Armitage were, essentially, opposites.

Hannah, you will recall, took questions of right and wrong very seriously. Armitage, by contrast, liked to shove right and wrong into a liquidiser, make soup out of them, then tip the whole
lot into his gob without giving two hoots, or even one hoot, about which was which.

Hannah was kind; Armitage was mean.

Hannah was modest; Armitage was arrogant.

Hannah was generous; Armitage was greedy.

Hannah liked apples; Armitage liked pears.

But when it came to this one word – impossible – they were the same. For both of them ‘impossible’ was just a challenge. They couldn’t hear those four syllables
without trying to figure out a plan for how to get rid of the ‘im’.

This connection may just be a coincidence. On the other hand, it may not be. But going back to that first hand again, it might be. Or not.

That’s all. Bonnet down. Off you go.

H
ANNAH ARRIVED AT THE CIRCUS
early, partly to have time to scope out the Big Top, partly to give herself a chance to get through
the mound of candy floss she knew Granny would buy her. It’s important to have at least half an hour between getting a candy floss from Granny and trying to watch a show, because when you are
given something to hold that is roughly the size of a family car, you need to eat a large chunk before you will be able to see past it. There was a rumour that Granny once nearly suffocated herself
at the cinema, when she dozed off during a matinee showing of
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
, underneath an XXX-large bucket of sweet popcorn. When those things tip, it’s pretty
much like an avalanche. And as everyone knows, you can’t outrun an avalanche, especially when you’re asleep.

‘Well, isn’t this a treat?’ said Granny, going at her candy floss with the speed and power of a garden strimmer.

‘Mmm,’ said Hannah, craning her neck to look around the Big Top, searching for the best exit route, hoping all the while that she might catch a glimpse of Billy.

Billy, meanwhile, was having a crisis of conscience. He knew that going along with Hannah’s plan was the right thing to do, but he’d spent most of his life being taught that the
wrong thing was the right thing, and vice versa, which left him scared, skewered, skittled, scuttled and skedaddled by the idea of standing up to Armitage Shank.

Even now, minutes before the curtain was due to go up on the show, Billy wasn’t sure he could really go through with it.

He needed to talk to someone. So he went to visit Narcissus. Camels, in Billy’s experience, were always good listeners. Narcissus would understand, and perhaps even dispense some
advice.

Narcissus’s advice, in the end, was a burp so stinky you could have used it to melt a post box. Then Billy heard the music start, and he knew the show was about to begin. Very soon he had
to decide one way or the other. Was he in or was he out?

By the time the lights went down, Granny had already finished her candy floss and was enthusiastically licking the stick, fearless of splinters. After seventy-odd years of scorching hot tea,
there wasn’t much a mere splinter could do to hurt her well-seasoned tongue. And the candy-flossy stick just tasted sooooooo good, almost better than the floss itself, the woody notes and
rough texture adding an ineffable
²¹
earthiness to that delicious sweetness.

Hannah had finished roughly a quarter of hers, but with darkness now filling the auditorium, she decided she could drop it under her seat without hurting Granny’s feelings or seeming
ungrateful.

After a rumble and blare of drum rolls and trumpets, a circle of light popped up in the middle of the ring. Hannah leaned forward in her seat. She didn’t know why, but there was something
exciting about a dark space, filled with silent people, staring at an empty circle of light. Everyone was looking at the same thing, and even though the thing they were looking at was nothing more
than a disc of sawdust, the wait for something to happen filled the tent with an electricity of anticipation.

The music stopped. Hannah waited for someone to appear in the light. Everyone waited. Everyone waited just that little bit longer than they all thought they’d have to wait, leaning further
and further forward in their seats, until the light suddenly flicked off, for one-and-a-half blinks, before flicking on again to reveal Armitage Shank. He was wearing his billowy white shirt and
tighter-than-tight trousers, sporting
²²
shoes that were pointy enough to dip in ink and use as a pen. He stood motionless, his body facing forwards, his
head sideways. Both arms were above his head, clutching a whip.

Slowly, Armitage straightened his neck to face the audience.

‘Are you ready?’ he said, in a voice so quiet that everybody heard, but thought they might not have. Bit by bit, the circle of light around him began to swell.

‘Are you ready?’ he repeated, a shade louder.

As the circle of light got bigger, Armitage began to pace around the edge of the illuminated space, staring at the audience. While he walked, it somehow seemed as if he caught the eye of every
single member of the audience, one by one, giving them an individual stare, as he asked them, once again, if they were ready.

‘Well,
are
you?’ he said, leaping into the air and landing with his legs apart, cracking his whip once, twice, three times to the left, the right, and up into the air.

‘Yes,’ said a couple of weak voices, somewhere in the darkness.

‘Ahh!’ said Armitage. ‘A couple of you seem to actually be awake. Is anyone else ready?’

A few more voices responded this time.

‘Perhaps I should ask one more time,’ said Armitage. ‘My question was, ARE . . .’ (
whipcrack!
) ‘. . . YOU . . .’ (
whipcrack, twirl, somersault,
double whipcrack!
) ‘. . . READY?’

‘YESSSSS!’ screamed Hannah, at the top of her voice, and Granny, and every single other person in the Big Top.

Armitage rested one hand on his hip, and slowly, critically, began to stroke his chin. ‘Mmmm,’ he said. ‘Sounds like we sold maybe half the tickets this evening. That’s a
shame. I do so hate a flat atmosphere. Maybe I should ask one last time. Are you . . . those of you who happen to be awake . . . and I do so hate to repeat myself . . . but would you mind terribly
if I just checked . . . are any of you . . . by any chance . . . ready?’

‘YEEEESSSSSS!!!!’

The sound was deafening. Hannah had never made so much noise in her life. Granny shouted so loud, her false teeth fell out of her mouth and onto her lap. Every single person in the tent had
given that ‘yes’ everything they had, and more, with cherries on top and whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles.

‘Oh,’ said Armitage, as if mildly surprised. ‘That’s good. But ready for what?’

Silence fell. Softly, a drum roll began.

‘Are you ready, by any chance, to be amazed?’

Armitage began to pace the perimeter of the ring, which was now fully illuminated, doing an unusual prancey walk of enormous strides with each step crossing over the path of the previous
one.

‘Are you ready to be thrilled? Are you ready to be astonished and astounded, stunned, startled, surprised, staggered and stupefied? Amused and confused? Are you ready to be delighted and
excited? Wooed and wowed? Titillated and titivated, teased and tricked? Are you? Well, are you?’

‘YEEEESSSSSS!!!!’

‘Good. Because that means we are all in the right place. And so . . . ’ (
whipcrack
) ‘ . . . with no further ado . . .’ (
whipcrack, cartwheel, somersault,
spin, whipcrack whipcrack whipcrack
) ‘ . . . I bring to you . . . the incredible . . . the devastating . . . the quite spectacularly splendiferous . . . Maaauuuurrrrrrrrrrrrice and
Irrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrena!’

A
RMITAGE PRANCED OFF STAGE,
and as he did so, Maurice pranced on, exhibiting such a prancey prance that everyone in the audience
immediately revised everything they thought they knew about prancing. Armitage’s prance, they now realised, was barely a prance at all.
This
was a prance.
²³

Irrrrena followed closely behind, her body rippling and swaying, glistening and twinkling with body oil. Her mouth was pulled into the kind of smile you might get if you attached opposite
corners of your top lip to clothes pegs, strung each peg on a piece of string, then pulled outwards as hard as you can. Irrrrena wasn’t very good at smiling. Her expression was the kind of
thing that went less well with a thought such as, ‘Hello, it’s lovely to be here,’ than with something along the lines of ‘Oh, my God, that shark’s about to bite my
leg off!’

However much she practiced in the mirror, Irrrrena’s smiles always just looked startled rather than happy. But at least she tried. Maurice didn’t approve of smiling, and never even
attempted it. The closest he came was a small curl to one corner of his mouth, which generally just meant, ‘Yes, I really am as amazing as I look.’

Maurice uber-pranced to a purple velvet rope that had now appeared in the middle of the ring, dangling down from the top of the Top. He climbed it quickly and easily, using just his arms. His
legs stuck out straight in front of him, and the left hand corner of his mouth curled slightly upward, meaning, ‘Yes, I really am climbing this rope without using my legs.’

Irrrrena followed, also without using her legs, but with a slightly different smile, which seemed to mean, ‘I’m trying to make this look easy but IT KILLS!’