Circus of Thieves on the Rampage (14 page)

‘Bmmmmmlmmmmmmmmm!’ yelled Hannah, whose mouth was too full for any successful attempt at speech.

‘Hannah!’ said Billy. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere!’

‘I’ve been looking for
you
everywhere,’ replied Hannah. ‘I never thought I’d find you here. Inside my snack. How did you do that?’

‘Magic,’ said Billy, modestly. (Every skilled performer develops an instinct for making mistakes look like part of the show.)

‘I’m so pleased we found each other,’ gabbled Hannah. ‘I’ve got amazing things to tell you. It turns out you’re my brother! Or my half-brother! Depending on
who my father is! Which I don’t know just yet, but both of the men who might be are going to be here tonight which means I might be about to find out. And one of them’s your father.
He’s on his way! He’s coming to find you! And either way we’re definitely siblings. Isn’t that just the best thing ever!’

‘It really is! I can’t believe it!’ said Billy, who was so delighted by this news that he completely forgot he was hanging by the ankles from a string of bunting.

Nature, however, has a way of curing people of this kind of forgetfulness. Billy’s reminder of the unusual circumstances surrounding his reunion with his sister came about only a second or
two later, at the moment when the bunting tore, releasing him to the unforgiving mercies of gravity.

Gravity, like other laws of physics, has little truck with sentiment.

Billy crashed downwards, landing on top of Hannah, giving her that hug he’d been meaning to give only a short while earlier, though as it turned out this wasn’t so much an
I’m-so-pleased-to-see-you hug as the more unusual terribly-sorry-but-I-seem-to-be-using-you-as-a-landing-mat variety.

Hannah didn’t mind. She was far too happy to let a small matter like being knocked over and landed on bother her.

When they’d finally untangled themselves from one another, Hannah suddenly spoke in a sharp whisper. ‘Quick! We have to hide!’

‘From who?’

‘Armitage! We’ve made plan! Me and Queenie and Granny! Actually, Granny isn’t a huge part of it since she keeps dozing off, but there is a plan! Armitage can’t see us
together! Because tonight he’s finally going to meet his
dooooooooooooom!’

A
RMITAGE SHANK WAS IN A BAD MOOD.

Yeah, yeah, what else is new? Armitage was always in a bad mood.

These things are relative, so when I said Armitage was in a bad mood, I meant he was in a mood measured on his special scale of badness, on which good is bad, and bad is just appallingly,
atrociously, unimaginably, stinkily grumpy. That’s the mood we were talking about. Imagine if you had one foot stuck in a mousetrap, the other in a box of snakes, were wearing clothes made of
sandpaper, had just accidentally dyed your hair luminous purple, and a bag of rotten haddock had just been tied to your nose by someone who was also tickling the back of your neck with soggy
pondweed. Imagine what kind of mood that would put you in. That’s how Armitage felt. Not because he was in the unpleasant situation I have just described, but because he had lost his phone,
and he hated losing his phone.

The thing is – and Armitage didn’t know this – he hadn’t lost his phone. His phone had been stolen (or, rather, borrowed) by Billy. If Armitage had known this, Billy
would have been in a whole huge bucket of trouble, but – IRONY ALERT – Billy had learned exceptionally good thieving skills from Armitage, so had little trouble taking his phone without
raising the alarm.

‘I need to send out a jeet on Jitter saying that I’ve lost my phone, but I can’t because I’VE LOST MY PHONE!’ yelled Armitage, who, having searched everywhere in
vain, was now lying on the floor, sobbing, beating the ground with his fists. Armitage suffered from a really rather undignified tendency to indulge his moods.
⁴⁴

‘I’m sure it will turn up,’ replied Billy, who at that moment realised he had forgotten to turn the phone off and, since it was in his pocket, an incoming phone call would give
him away. Armitage had no friends, so this was unlikely, but nonetheless, Billy decided he had to get out of there fast.

‘I have to get out of here fast,’ said Billy.

‘Why?’ sobbed Armitage, who was now beating his chest with one hand and pulling a fistful of hair with the other, while glancing at himself in the mirror to gauge which action had a
more tragic appearance.

‘I . . . er . . . fancy a bit of candy floss.’

‘Good idea. Get me one, too,’ said Armitage, suddenly leaping towards Billy and eyeballing him with an intense stare. ‘You mustn’t be too discouraged by what has happened
today. I know it’s hard. I know our rampage may seem doomed and cursed right now, but we have to remember what is within reach. After tonight, we can use Queenie’s money to buy whatever
phone we want. I might even get you one. In fact, if our plan comes off, tomorrow I was going to go out first thing and buy THIS!’

Armitage reached into a pocket of his safari suit, and was annoyed to find the climax to his masterpiece of motivational speaking ruined by the fact that the ‘THIS!’ in question was
not there.

He looked in another pocket, then another one. Then another one.

Armitage’s safari suit, designed for rampages of a long, complex and gadget-heavy nature, had seventy-three pockets. It was in the seventy-first pocket that Armitage eventually found what
he was looking for.

‘THIS!’ he repeated, triumphantly pulling out a tightly folded piece of paper, though even Armitage had to admit the gesture would have been more dramatic had he tried this pocket
seventy pockets earlier.

He handed the paper to Billy. It was a picture of a sock, torn from a magazine.

‘A sock?’

‘No, the other side.’

Billy turned over the paper. ‘A phone?’

‘No!’ replied Armitage. ‘A phablet. The pinnacle of human technological achievement. The ultimate communication device in the entire history of the human race. The perfect
union of smartphone and tablet computer. The iSung Gooseberry 7d special edition, with fingerprint recognition, iris recognition, recognition recognition and recognition recognition recognition.
The gadget of our dreams.’

Billy, who did not have gadgets in his dreams, looked a little nonplussed.
⁴⁵
‘What’s recognition recognition recognition?’ he
asked.

‘It’s like recognition recognition, but faster. It’s a whole new generation of recognition. I’ve been reading about it in
What Phablet?
for months. Jitter has
been alight with rumours, and now it’s on the market! We can be almost the first!’

‘Oh,’ said Billy. ‘That’s . . . great.’

Armitage held Billy firmly with one hand on each shoulder and gave him an encouraging squeeze. ‘There is hope, Billy. We just have to put adversity behind us and march on bravely,
undeterred by the curses that fate tosses into our path!’

‘OK,’ said Billy. ‘I’ll try.’

‘One day we’ll have every gadget a person could possibly want! I promise you! At least, I will, but I’ll let you borrow them sometimes, if you’re good, especially the
obsolete ones.’

‘Thanks. I can hardly wait.’

‘You don’t have to. The waiting’s almost over, Billy. The future is about to arrive.’

‘Isn’t the future always about to arrive?’

Armitage thought for a moment. ‘It is. You’re right. But not this future. Not a future as high-spec and brand new and gadgety as the one we’re going to have. Everything
we’ve been deprived of all these years is about to fall into our lap. It’s not easy being a thief. It’s a very uncertain career, with poor promotion prospects, a high drop-out
rate and no pension plan. We’ve waited a long time for our moment of triumph, Billy, but tonight’s the night!’

‘Great. I’m going to pop out for that candy floss.’

‘There seems to be an awful lot of candy floss stuck in your hair. Why can’t you just eat that?’

‘Er . . . it’s gone off. Look.’

Billy plucked a lump from out of his fringe and handed it to Armitage, who stared suspiciously at the pink dollop, which looked chewier and hairier than candy floss ought to. In fact, it looked
more like a skinned rodent than a fairground treat.

‘OK,’ said Armitage. ‘Off you go. But make sure you’re back in good time for our dastardly plan.’

‘I will be. Don’t worry,’ said Billy, though inside his inner cackle was having a secret, silent cackle-party. The future really was about to arrive and not the one Armitage
wanted.

I
CAN’T TELL YOU WHAT HAPPENS
in this chapter, I’m afraid.

Why not?

Because it’s a secret,
obviously.
If I told you, it would just be a normal rendezvous. All I can tell you is this. Billy snuck out. Or is it sneaked out? Or should that be snicked
out? Snucked? Snacked? Whatever – he left in a sly and secretive fashion and met up with Hannah in a secret place.

Where?

I can’t tell you. Obviously!

They had a short meeting, during which they perfected their plan to foil Armitage’s plan, hugged a little more, chatted about Important Things, and picked the last of the dried candy floss
out of Billy’s hair (which proved to be a much more enjoyable activity than you would have thought).
⁴⁶

Billy also handed over Armitage’s phone to Hannah, as arranged.

Hannah reminded Billy that his father could be arriving any minute, which wasn’t strictly necessary, since Billy had spent the last two days thinking about little else.

Billy reminded Hannah that the father who might be arriving any minute might also be her father. This was a pointless statement for exactly the same reason.

Parting is such sweet sorrow, wrote an old bloke in a puffy shirt many, many years ago, and he was right. He wasn’t talking about hairstyles, either. He was talking about saying goodbye to
someone you don’t want to say goodbye to, and that’s exactly what it was like for Billy and Hannah. But they had to separate one last time, in order to enact their fiendishly clever
plan.

Good old Billy and Hannah, eh? Aren’t they wonderful and brave and clever and resourceful and kind and good at picking stuff out of each other’s hair? One day, somebody should write
a book about them.

They have? Who? When? Where can I buy it? Does it have pictures?