Circus of Thieves on the Rampage (2 page)

Queenie often dropped her phone in the bath, so she kept it in a waterproof ziplock bag. She submerged her head and fumbled for the handset in the soapy water, listening for the faint, gurgly
sound of Reginald saying, ‘Hegluglugllo? Quebubbabubbabeenie? Are you stibubba-bubbabible there?’

It wasn’t too long before she fished out the wet, angry-sounding bag.

‘Reginald? Hello?’

‘It’s a very bad line. You sound like you’re underwater.’

‘Listen – I’ve made a decision. There’s only one thing for it. I’m ready for a comeback. It’s time to put on a show.’

‘T
HIS IS AN EXTREMELY IMPORTANT
birthday,’ announced Hannah’s father.

Hannah looked down at the kitchen table, which was neatly laid out for her birthday breakfast, with three birthday paper plates, three carefully folded birthday napkins, three balloons and a
cake in the shape of a ‘12’. It was Hannah’s father’s job to make her birthday cake, and the family tradition was to bake a cake in the shape of the number of Hannah’s
age.

Hannah’s father was kind and decent and loyal, but he was also a very literal man with a very small imagination.

‘All birthdays are important,’ said Hannah, who wasn’t exactly disappointed by the cake, but you couldn’t say she was excited, either. The cake was always the same
flavour, carrot cake, which her parents considered to be the healthiest and safest option,
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and though the shape was different each year, the change was
never what you would call an exciting surprise.

‘But this one is particularly important,’ said her dad, ‘because the digits of your age form a perfect sequence. That won’t happen again until you are twenty-three. And
it won’t happen with the perfection of starting at the number one unless you live to be one hundred and twenty-three, which at current estimates has a likelihood of less than a quarter of a
per cent. So this is almost certainly your only chance.’

‘Wow,’ said Hannah. This was the only response she could think of.

‘And it’s important for another reason,’ said her mum, whose sombre and serious face at this moment looked even more sombre and serious than usual. Birthday celebration was not
Hannah’s mother’s strong point. ‘We’ve decided that you’re old enough to hear some Big News. You were too young to understand what it meant until now. We did some
calculations a few years ago, and concluded with as much statistical confidence as one could hope for that 12 is the correct age for us to tell you.’

‘Tell me what?’

‘Would you like to open your birthday presents first? We’ve bought you twenty per cent more gifts than the national average, which we think is the right quantity to make you feel
special, but not spoilt.’

‘I want to hear the news first.’

‘You may find it upsetting,’ continued her mum, ‘so we’ve taken the precaution of purchasing a different brand of tissues. These ones don’t contain the
antibacterial agent that may cause irritation to the eyes, and are without the aloe vera that assists nostril healing in the event of a cold. I’ve decided this is the best kind for the
eventuality of weeping.’ She handed Hannah a box of tissues. ‘If you’d prefer a hanky, that’s fine. I’m happy to run a boil wash just this once.’

‘I just want you to tell me the news,’ said Hannah.

‘You may be upset,’ warned her mother. ‘And it can be very unhealthy to be upset. It’s also a leading cause of accidents, so please take extra care in the wake of what
I’m about to tell you.’

‘I will.’

‘Stairs and bathrooms are among the top ten causes of accidental death, so you must take particular care around the home.’

‘You’ve told me that before. Please – I want to know the news.’

‘It’s this,’ said her father. ‘You’re adopted.’

Hannah’s mother plucked out a tissue and put it in Hannah’s hand.

‘Woooooooohoooooooo!’
said Hannah.
‘Yipppppeeeeeeeee! Hooooooooodle woooooooooooodle toooooooooooo! I knew it!
Wooopidy toooooopidy looooooooooooo! Iknewit Iknewit Iknewit!’
Hannah wasn’t aware of having got up from her chair, but, when she looked down, she saw that her legs were
doing a jig and she appeared to be dancing around the kitchen.

She looked across at her parents and saw that they seemed a little dismayed by her reaction, which Hannah – who had impeccable manners – suddenly realised might have been a little
rude. She quickly raised the tissue to her eyes and pretended to mop away a tear.

‘Oh, gosh!’ she said, sitting back down. ‘I’m so confused. I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s just . . . so upsetting.’

‘There, there, dear,’ said her mum. ‘You just let it all out and have a weep. But not so much that you get dehydrated.’

‘I thought you might want to take ownership of this,’ said her dad, handing over an important-looking document headed by the words, ‘Birth Certificate’ in red ink.

‘I never knew you got a certificate just for being born,’ said Hannah. ‘Why didn’t you give it to me before?’

‘Because of this.’

Hannah’s dad was pointing to the words ‘Mother’s Name’, under which was not Hannah’s mother’s name, but another name entirely: Wendy Bunn.

‘Who’s Wendy Bunn?’ asked Hannah.

‘Your birth mother,’ said Hannah’s mum.

‘But that’s Granny’s surname! That’s your maiden name!’

Suddenly, the room filled with an astonishing sound, something like a baying wolf combined with a depressed donkey, a police siren, a Viking war cry and sixty thousand angry mice. Hannah knew
the sound well. This was the noise of her mother bursting into tears.

A chair clattered to the floor and Hannah’s mum ran out of the room.

‘It’s an emotional subject,’ said her dad, after a long, weird silence. ‘Emotions are a valid expression of inner turmoil. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Why does my birth mother have the same surname as Granny? And why is there a blank where it should say my father’s name? Everybody has a father. Who’s mine?’

‘Would you like to open a present now?’ said her father, making the world’s most obvious bid to change the subject. ‘I’ll tell you what it is before you unwrap it
if you like, since surprises can put undue pressure on the muscles of the heart.’

‘Who’s my father?’

‘It’s a filing cabinet.’

‘My father’s a filing cabinet?’

‘Your present’s a filing cabinet. I’ve decided you’re old enough now to keep your own paperwork. It will stand you in good stead for the rest of your life if you start
off with a well-alphabetised system. I’ll help you set it up.’

‘WHO ARE MY REAL PARENTS!?’

A curious choking sound, like a car failing to start, emanated from her father’s mouth. ‘Oh, my goodness!’ he said. ‘I’m having an emotion! Oh, gosh. It’s
quite sickening. I don’t think I’ve had one of these before. I feel dizzy! Is it normal to feel dizzy when you have an emotion? This is horrible! I need an aspirin!’

‘Tell me!’ snapped Hannah.

‘You’ll have to ask Granny. I can’t speak any more.’

With that, he dashed out of the room, leaving Hannah staring down at her birth certificate and her ‘12’ cake, with only a wrapped filing cabinet for company.

Hannah’s birthdays were always disappointing. Every year she told herself not to have high hopes, but every year she ended up disappointed. This year, however, was special. This was deeply
weird. She had no idea if she should be whooping or weeping.

Hannah stood up. She didn’t unwrap her gift or even taste her cake. There was something far more important to do. She was off to Granny’s for an explanation.

At the door, she turned back for the birth certificate, folded it and put it in her pocket. But, as she did so, her eye was caught by one single word scrawled in pencil on the back. This word
struck at her heart like a bolt of lightning. Not a full-size bolt of lightning, because that would kill you sure as eggs is eggs,
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but a small and jolty
one.

The word had a question mark after it, but this didn’t make its presence any less shocking, surprising or confusing.

The word was . . . ‘SHANK?’

A
RMITAGE SHANK WAS IN A BAD MOOD.
Obviously. He was always in a bad mood. He was that kind of person. Bad. And moody.

Two things were bothering him. The first was that he was still brooding over the disaster of his last show, when a mysterious, devious and malicious girl had popped up out of nowhere, tricked
his son Billy, and given all Armitage’s carefully stolen possessions back to their rightful owners.

(Anyone who has read
Circus of Thieves and the
Raffle of Doom
will know that this devious and malicious girl wasn’t in fact devious and malicious at all. She was Hannah,
who was about as undevious and unmalicious as it is possible to be; but she was clever and resourceful, and when she’d joined forces with Billy, Armitage’s plot to rob Hannah’s
town had fallen apart like a doll in the mouth of a Rottweiler.)

You may remember that Armitage had run away, thinking a sack of his loot was safely stashed in a cunning hiding place. (A bush.) OK, not that cunning. But when he went back, disguised as a
travelling fishmonger, to look under his top-secret bush, the loot was gone.

Yes, gone!

He had been diddled, and if there was one thing Armitage didn’t like
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it was being diddled.

He needed that money back. And he needed revenge!
⁷

But revenge on who? Because that girl was just a girl and people who are just girls – and civilian girls at that – are in no way powerful or clever enough to diddle the great
criminal mastermind, Armitage Shank. Not on your Nellie!

On whose Nellie?

Your Nellie.

Whose?

You! Out there! Holding this book!

But I don’t have a Nellie.

That’s not important right now.

Who is Nellie, anyway?

I don’t know.

Is she an elephant?

Stop arguing. We’re wasting time.

Where were we? Oh, yes. Shank was thinking about that meddling, bothersome girl who had robbed him of his robbings. Somebody somewhere must have trained her and sent her to GET HIM! One of his
enemies. The question was, which one?

Armitage wasn’t sure.

Some people collect coins, some people collect football stickers, some people collect vintage cars. Armitage collected enemies. So, in circumstances such as this, it was hard for him to figure
out who had plotted against him.

On his list of suspects, one name was at the top.
⁸

But, before I tell you who that was, I should explain the other thing that was bothering Armitage. It was a jeet he had read that morning.

‘A jeet?’ I hear you ask. ‘What is a jeet?’

Ah, technophobes, the lot of you. All right, I’ll explain. Armitage loved gadgets, which was why he stole as many of them as he could. His favourite gadget was his mobile phone, and his
favourite thing to do on his phone was to use an antisocial networking service called Jitter. Armitage’s phone buzzed and vibrated every time a new message – or jeet – was put up
on his Jitter account. Each jeet told him what somebody he knew (or somebody he wanted to know) was either doing, or was about to do, or had just done, or what they thought, or what they thought
other people thought, or what they thought of what other people thought about what they thought (are you still with me?). Every time Armitage’s phone buzzed, he read the jeet, usually tutted
about how boring it was, then put the phone back in his pocket. He did this about seventy-nine times a minute. It was an unhealthy addiction.