Circus of Thieves on the Rampage

by William Sutcliffe

  Also by William Sutcliffe

  Circus of Thieves and the Raffle of Doom

  First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Simon and Schuster UK Ltd

  A CBS COMPANY

  Text copyright © 2015 William Sutcliffe

  Illustrations copyright © 2015 David Tazzyman

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission. All rights reserved.

  The right of William Sutcliffe and David Tazzyman to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  1st Floor, 222 Gray’s Inn Road

  London

  WC1X 8HB

  Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney

  Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  PB ISBN 978-1-47112-025-1

  eBook ISBN 978-1-47112-026-8

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  www.simonandschuster.com.au

  For my three rampagers:

  Saul, Iris and Juno – WS

  For Daisy & Theo – DT

  Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  Just one more bath

  LET US BEGIN WITH A LEAF. Not a green leaf, but a brown one, curling up at the edges, clinging on by a feeble, sad little dried-up stalk. Yes, folks, it was autumn – the time of year when leaves have had enough of being leafy and pretty and green, and decide all at once to shrivel up and dive-bomb into the mud. We all get the urge to dive-bomb into mud from time to time, but leaves are very good at waiting until mud is at its soggiest and squelchiest, probably because they know they only get one dive.

  This particular leaf – let’s call him Kevin – had his eye on a deep, pungent, cow-patty puddle directly beneath the branch where he’d been hanging all summer. He’d been watching this puddle ripen for more than two weeks. When he decided it was time to take the plunge, he yelled out, ‘GERONIMOOOOOOOO!’ and went for it, shrugging himself free of Old Branchy and fluttering downwards.

  This was the high point of his year.

  ‘Bye-bye, Branchy,’ he hollered. ‘To be honest, I never really liked you anyway!’

  Sadly for Kevin, a gust of wind came up at that exact moment and blew him off course. This may have been divine punishment for his ingratitude and rudeness, or perhaps it was just a coincidence. It didn’t blow him far, but this was no ordinary field, and Kevin was dismayed to find himself landing not in a lovely, cold, murky, composty, dank puddle, but in a hot, soapy, clean-as-a-just-cleaned-whistle, lavender-scented bubble bath. Yes, he fell from his tree, as leaves always do in autumn, and he landed in a bath, as leaves, on the whole, don’t.

  How on earth could a disaster of this kind befall an innocent, filth-loving leaf such as Kevin?

  How is that even possible?

  I’ve never heard such nonsense in all my life! What a load of absolute tripe!

  Take a deep breath. Calm down. And allow me to explain.

  The cause of Kevin’s soapy demise was an outdoor bath belonging to the internationally renowned, semi-retired and deeply fragrant trapeze artist, Queenie Bombazine.

  Queenie loved to bathe. It was her favourite activity. She also loved fresh air. Most people with two incompatible enthusiasms of this sort would have been happy to bathe, then go for a walk, or vice versa, but Queenie Bombazine was not most people. She was Queenie Bombazine, circus legend, aerialiste supreme, Mermaid of the Skies (but we’ll come to that later).

  So – and it’s not that strange; in fact, it’s surprising more people don’t do it – Queenie Bombazine had hired a plumber to run some water pipes into the field behind her house and connect them to a cast-iron, claw-footed Victorian bath. In this way, Queenie Bombazine put herself in the lovely position of being able to enjoy hot baths and fresh air at the same time.

  Queenie’s bath-in-a-field was her favourite possession. Whenever Queenie was in this bath, she was happy. Except today.

  Today, even an open-air bath couldn’t cheer her up, because that morning she had received a troubling phone call from her accountant, Fiscal Cliff.

  Fiscal Cliff had rung with Bad News. His news was on, the one hand, very simple and, on the other, rather complicated and difficult to digest. The news was this: Queenie Bombazine had run out of money. She was skint.

  Now Queenie wasn’t the kind of person who was particularly interested in money. Not long ago, she had been extremely wealthy, but that hadn’t really excited her, and she didn’t have much idea where all the money had gone (beyond the occasional plumbing extravagance). But skint, she knew, was a problem. A big problem. Skint meant the gas would be cut off. Skint meant cold baths.

  In fact, she definitely remembered having borrowed a large sum of money to buy her large house with its large number of bathing options. Skint, now she thought about it, meant getting kicked out of her home. It meant moving somewhere smaller – somewhere where she might have to use a . . . a . . . and she could hardly allow this word into her brain, it revolted her so much . . . a . . . brace yourselves . . . a . . . are you ready? . . . a . . . shower!

  Hideous! Water spraying at you in horrible, jittery-jabby jets! While you stand up! Unspeakable!

  Something had to be done. But what?

  Queenie had been in the bath for two hours, struggling to think of a plan for how to save her home, when Kevin fell out of the sky and landed on her freshly-washed knee. In a fit of uncharacteristic anger, she tore Kevin into tiny little shreds which she then threw onto the ground. Or tried to, but she couldn’t, because the shreds of Kevin stuck to her wet hands.

  I’m finished! she thought to herself, scraping half-dissolved Kevin-goo onto the edge of her bath.1

  Queenie, however, wasn’t a sulker. She was Queenie Bombazine, circus legend, aerialiste supreme, Mermaid of the Skies (but we’ll come to that later). And after her short moment of Kevin-destroying dejection, after her brief little pity-party, a plan pinged into her head. It was the sight of all those other leaves falling from the sky – Kevin’s friends2 – that did it. The way they fluttered to the ground, floating, almost weightless, drifting hither and thither and then hither again reminded her of something.

  Queenie reached out and picked up the phone, which she kept on the all-weather cabinet next to her bath, and called her Business Manager, Stage Manager, Tour Manager and Man Manager, Reginald Clench.

  ‘Reginald?’ said Queenie. ‘I’m calling you with some awful news.’

  ‘Pip pip, Queenie! How are you, what what? I haven’t heard from you for ages – not since the last time you ran out of money.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘You heard, duckie.’
<
br />   ‘How did you know I’d run out of money?’

  ‘Why else would you call me?’

  Reginald was a civilian,3 and not just an ordinary civilian, but a very civilianny civilian. He was, in fact, a retired army major – strict and disciplined in all matters, punctiliously punctual, precisely precise and rigorously rigorous. He had served in the British Army for thirty years, until his career was cut short by an unfortunate incident involving a tuba, some goats, a Maharaja’s ornamental garden and a runaway steamroller. The details were murky, but, to this day, he still blanched at the sight of a goat. Or a steamroller. Though he did still play the tuba.

  Reginald was very much not your usual circus type, but Queenie was strangely fond of him. He was the invisible yet essential element at the heart of all her shows, which starred a large cast of performers, all of whom were eccentric, unpredictable, flighty, flippant and flouncy. The circus needed him in the way a tent needs a tent pole, because without Clench’s military discipline, the cast was just thirty people with thirty different ideas, all arguing and bickering and pulling in different directions, the upshot of which would have been thirty very short shows in thirty different places, which is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a circus.

  ‘OK, so you’ve guessed the awful news,’ said Queenie, squeezing the phone in frustration, which caused it to fly out of her soapy hand and plop into the bath.

  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.’

  The birthday surprise

  ‘THIS 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,4 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 re
st 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,5 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?’

  The rampage begins!

  ARMITAGE 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.