THE CONCEPT OF IRONY can be hard to define, but most of us know it when we see it. Here’s a good example. Armitage’s caravan was equipped with a burglar alarm, which he always switched on when he went out burglarising. This wasn’t any old alarm, but a home-made device that played ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ at top volume from a loud-hailer on the roof if anyone other than Armitage opened the door.
Thanks to Armitage, Billy had been given an education that was atrocious in all subjects except two: camel riding and theft. Sadly for Billy, there were no GCSEs on either of these topics. While many children imagine themselves running off to join the circus and having wild adventures, Billy dreamed of going to school and sitting exams. This is irony of a different kind. We all want what we haven’t got. It’s human nature.
Camel nature is different. Camels want what they have got, assuming what they’ve got is a bucket of taramasalata and room to doze. Most of us would be far happier if we could take a more camelistic approach to life. But enough philosophosophising.29 We have a set of keys to steal.
Billy was a bright lad and a keen student. This had made him an exceptionally good thief. He’d brought with him one simple tool for the task at hand: a coat hanger. He bent and twisted it into a new shape, a long, stretched-out question mark, and said to Hannah, ‘I need another bunk-up. Do you mind if I step on your head?’
In truth, she did mind, but something about Billy made it almost impossible to say no. She cupped her hands, and he instantly zipped upwards, alternating footholds between parts of her body and bits of the caravan’s window frame. As it turned out, Billy managed to get up on the roof without resorting to a head-step, and gave Hannah a big grin and a thumbs-up from his high perch.
Hannah smiled back, trying not to look too obviously relieved. Billy took a penknife from his back pocket, opened a box on the roof and snipped the wires that powered the ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ alarm. The same knife then slipped neatly under the catch of the caravan’s sky-light, allowing Billy to reach in with one arm – an arm that was now holding the stretched-out coat hanger.
The keys were hanging from a hook just inside the door. At first it seemed too far to reach, but with an extra-long stretch, holding his home-made grabber with the very tips of his fingers . . .
[If this was a film, there’d be a whole long drawn-out bit here where our hero almost gets the keys, then he doesn’t, then he does get them, then he slips and drops them, and he seems to despair, then he thinks of some amazing new idea, and stretches a bit further, and gets them off the floor just as someone scary comes into view and almost catches him, and the clock is ticking, and the person is getting closer, and Hannah is saying, ‘Now! Now! We have to leave now!’ and Billy’s saying, ‘But I’ve almost got it,’ and Hannah’s saying ‘You’re crazy, we have to run for it!’ and Billy’s saying ‘I’ve almost got it. You run and save yourself!’, and Hannah’s saying, ‘No, we’re a team. We’re in this together!’, and Billy’s saying, ‘Just five more seconds!’, and Hannah’s saying, ‘We haven’t got five more seconds!’ then Billy slips, and drops the keys again!!! So Hannah steps out of the shadows and distracts the random scary intervening person with a clever trick that makes him not notice the clattering, grunting, thieving that is going on RIGHT ABOVE HIS HEAD AND WE CAN HEAR IT BUT THE SCARY PERSON HASN’T NOTICED YET! The tension is unbearable. NOW HE’S HEARD THE NOISE ABOVE! Disaster is inevitable! They are DONE FOR! But Hannah convinces random scary stranger that the noise is something else coming from somewhere else and he should run off and investigate without delay. And he falls for it! And Billy gets the key! Incredible! Amazing! Spectacular! And to a soundtrack of soaring brass and sawing violins the two of them run off hand in hand with beautiful smiles on their beautiful faces showing beautiful rows of beautiful teeth. But films can be kind of cheesy, so we’re not going to do that. Besides, (between you and me) Billy’s teeth were not his strong point. While he was very good at shooting a bow and arrow from the back of trotting camels, he was not so good at tooth-brushing. Or hair-brushing. Brushing of any kind, in fact, was just not one of his interests.]
. . . where were we, again? Oh, yes. Billy, with an extra-long stretch, had just managed to lift the keys off their hook, towards the sky-light, and out.
Phase one of Hannah and Billy’s plan was complete. The burglar had been burgled.
Just as Billy was breaking into Armitage’s caravan, Armitage was picking the lock at the post office. This took a rather more sophisticated method than Billy’s penknife, but there weren’t many locks that Armitage couldn’t get through, and this one took him little more than a couple of minutes. He then tiptoed in – not that anyone was likely to hear him, but he was in character, and felt that burglars ought to tiptoe – and made his way towards the safe.
As this was happening, Jesse strode onto the Big Top stage, accompanied by Irrrrrena, who (freed from the demands of trapeze artistry) was now oiled from head to toe in a way that made her so shiny you could have plonked her on a clifftop and used her as a lighthouse. Behind them, pulled into the ring by a bored-looking elephant, was Jesse’s enormous bright red cannon.
Armitage was clearing a work space in front of the safe when Fingers arrived, with a simple cape over the top of his magician’s costume, carrying a black holdall. They greeted one another with a quick nod, and Fingers unzipped his bag.
Inside were two lumps of grey goo. Two lumps of very important and expensive and dangerous grey goo.
Experts in goo and experts in explosives will know what this was. Doh! I’ve given it away. Yes, these were two lumps of safe-cracker’s explosive, which Fingers proceeded to attach very carefully to the hinges of the safe. Armitage then set up a fuse, which he connected to a wire, which was carefully unravelled as they retreated behind the nearest supporting wall. The identification of sturdy walls is an important, and often overlooked, aspect of the safe-cracker’s art. Blowing up a safe is not particularly hard. Blowing up a safe without also blowing up yourself presents more of a challenge.
A watchdog, at this point, would have been barking loud enough to alert anyone within earshot. The post office, however, did not have a watchdog. It had a watchcat, Fluffypants McBain, who had dozed through the entire break-in, napping in his favourite spot, on top of the safe. Now, however, the smell of explosives woke him up. He knew immediately that something was amiss. He understood straight away that these were bad people engaged in bad things, and that it was up to him, Fluffypants McBain, to defend his territory.
On the other hand, he really was still very tired, not to mention peckish.
He looked across at the two men dressed in black, clutching a detonator linked by a wire to two lumps of goo stuck onto his bed, and concluded that prompt action was needed.
He yawned. He stretched. He washed his left ear. Then he made a plan. A cat’s got to do what a cat’s got to do. He was going to step up and take care of business.
Neither Armitage nor Fingers noticed the awakening of Fluffypants McBain. With the explosives primed, the fuse prepared and the detonator ready, the two of them crouched behind their carefully chosen wall and waited.
For quite some time, they did nothing.
Or what looked like nothing.
But if you followed the path of their eyes, you might have noticed that both of them were staring with intense concentration at their watches, which were perfectly synchronised, the two second hands ticking closer and closer to 8:55.