Read Online Circus of Thieves and the Raffle of Doom by William Sutcliffe - Free Book Online

chair, smiling the most wonderful smile he had ever seen. Their eyes met, Hannah gave a huge two-armed wave, and at that moment Thought Three crashed in,
smashing Thoughts One and Two to pieces.
    Billy had decided. Whatever the consequences, wherever Hannah’s plan led him, he was in. Tonight was the night.
    At this very moment, Maurice and Irrrrena finished scaling the drainpipe at Houghton Mansions and clambered onto a narrow concrete ledge. Maurice somersaulted over a railing and pranced across
the terrace (some habits are hard to break), then, with little difficulty, jimmied open the glass doors of the penthouse, the poshest apartment in the whole town.

    But back to Billy. Everyone knows you can’t train a camel. Well, maybe not everyone, but people who know anything about camel training know it can’t be done. Narcissus, however, was
unique, and not only for the accuracy with which he could spit camel goo.
    Narcissus did two circuits of the ring with an expression on his face somewhere between aloof and patronising, as if to let the audience know that entertaining humans was beneath him, and only
worth doing in exchange for a pre-negotiated quantity of pellets. Then, prompted by a secret signal from Billy, Narcissus pirouetted (as much as a half-ton animal with four legs, two humps and a
boy on its back can be said to pirouette) and ran in the opposite direction, while Billy did a similar pirouette (as much as it is possible to pirouette while wedged between a pair of jouncing
camel humps), so he was now riding backwards, going in a different direction, but facing the same way as before. This generated a ripple of applause.
    Maurice and Irrrrena were meanwhile emptying the Houghton Mansions penthouse of everything valuable and portable, without even pausing to look for sardines. By the time they got back to the Big
Top, carrying two huge bags of loot, Billy was at the climax of his act, standing on Narcissus, facing sideways into the ring, being trotted round in circles while firing a bow and arrow with
unerring accuracy into a pile of balloons, which he was bursting one by one.

    Narcissus got extremely cross if he ever heard anyone saying he’d been tamed, because he hadn’t. He simply chose to co-operate, of his own free will. He was still very much his own
camel, and if anyone other than Billy ever asked him to do anything, he took great pride in his unshakeable determination to remain resolutely unhelpful, independent, obstinate and, frankly,
downright rude. I shall leave it up to your imagination as to what happened to anyone who tried to force Narcissus to do anything against his will. Let’s just say that camel goo is involved,
and nobody had ever crossed him twice.
    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.

We trust no-one
    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