‘QUICK!’ said Billy. ‘It’s 8:52!’
‘Is it?’ said Hannah.
‘Yes! Run!’
She ran. They both ran. Through the line of caravans, around the Big Top, jumping over the guy ropes they had hammered in earlier that day, and up the hillside towards Armitage’s lorry. Billy climbed the metal step to the high door, shoved in the key, and wrenched at the handle.
Nothing happened.
He yanked and pulled and twisted and tugged and heaved and hauled and wonked and wiggled. Still nothing.
‘Try giving the key another turn,’ suggested Hannah.
Billy gave the key a firm jiggle. The hinges of the door creaked. Bingo!30
He dived in, reached out an arm, and hauled Hannah upwards. She slammed the door shut behind them.
‘Right,’ said Billy. ‘We’re not tall enough to do this the usual way, so what do you want to be in charge of? Steering or pedals?’
‘Er . . . steering,’ she said.
‘OK.’ Billy jumped down into the footwell and handed Hannah the key. ‘Now put this in the ignition. When I say go, turn it and I’ll pump the accelerator.’
‘Got it.’
Hannah put the key in. She gripped it tight. She waited. But Billy said nothing.
‘What’s the hold-up?’ she asked.
‘We have to mask the noise. When this thing starts it sounds like 60,000 ducks having their ducklings stolen.’
‘What does 60,000 ducks having their ducklings stolen sound like?’
‘You’re going to find out in one minute. Just wait till I say go.’
Billy, Hannah noticed, was staring at his watch, whose second hand was ticking closer and closer to 8:55.
Jesse’s act was reaching its highlight. He had already smashed a plank of wood with his bare hands, ripped in half a telephone directory and lifted up four members of the audience at once. Now he was climbing into his cannon, aided by a glistening, grinning, gleaming, girning Irrrena.
Jesse’s mouth was smiling, but his eyes were saying, ‘Oh, no! Not this! Not again! Not the cannon! Oh, why me? Why aren’t I a fisherman?’ It’s amazing what you can say with just your eyes if you really try.31
Irrrrrena walked to the side of the stage and returned with a flaming torch.32 She looked at her watch. 8:54 and thirty seconds.
Hannah stared down at Billy, who was still crouching under her feet. He glanced up from his watch. ‘Nearly,’ he said.
Fluffypants McBain sensed that there was no time to waste. This was it, the moment to make his move. He began to enact his plan, which consisted of six phases:
1. Yawn again.
2. Stretch again.
3. Wash that troublesome left ear one last time.
4. Hop down from the safe.
5. Amble over to the window.
6. Settle down in the cosy nook under the leaflet dispenser for a nap.
All six steps, I am pleased to report, were flawlessly executed. In this way, Fluffypants McBain did little to save the post office, but he did, at least, save his own life.
Irrrrena looked at her watch one last time. 8:54 and forty-five seconds. She walked towards the fuse at the base of the cannon, which took precisely five seconds, and began the countdown. ‘10 . . . 9 . . . 8 . . .7 . . .’
‘6 . . . 5 . . . 4 . . . ’ shouted the audience.
‘ . . . 3 . . . ’ whispered Billy.
‘ . . . 2 . . . ’ muttered Armitage.
‘ . . . 1 . . . ’ cried the audience.
‘GO!’ said Irrrrena, as she lit the fuse.
‘Go!’ said Billy.
‘Go!’ said Armitage.
‘Zzzzzzzzz,’ said Fluffpants McBain.
‘I want a new job,’ said Jesse.
An enormous BOOOOOM! filled the Big Top. Jesse flew out through the air across the ring, somersaulting slowly as he headed in the vague direction of his alarmingly small catching net. Nobody noticed that the boom of the cannon was in fact two booms, precisely synchronised with the drowned-out sound of a large and crotchety diesel engine spluttering (and quacking, weirdly) into action.
This was Armitage’s burglarising masterstroke. Just as a skilful magician directs the audience’s attention away from the hand which is tricking them, so the sound of Jesse’s cannon was used in every town to mask the blowing up of a safe. Two bangs sound much like one bang, if they happen at the same time, and this human cannonball/safe-blasting double whammy was a technique that Armitage had invented and mastered. He was so proud of this ingenious method that it required all his self-control to stop himself showing off about it to everyone he met.
Even in his most modest moments, Armitage couldn’t help but think of himself as a genius: as the Austen of audacity, the Beethoven of break-ins, the Columbus of crime, the Darwin of deviousness, the Einstein of expropriation, the Freud of fiendishness, the Galileo of gall, the Homer of house-breaking, the Isambard Kingdom Brunel of ingeniously kitted burglaries, the Jobs of jobs, the Kafka of kleptomania, the Lennon and McCartney of the light-fingered and mischievous, the Nietzsche of nicking, the Ozu of “Oh, no!”, the Pele of pinching, the Queen Cleopatra of the quietly clandestine, the Rodin of robbery, the Shakespeare of shake-downs, the Tolstoy of turnovers, the Uccello of the underworld, the Vermeer of venality, the Wilde (or Wilder) of wildness, the X-ray inventor (Wilhelm Röntgen) of extraordinarily exciting extra-legal extraction, the Yeats of yobbishness, the Zola of zero-hour zip-aways.33
Fluffypants McBain woke up. Something was different. No, everything was different.
The post office had been blown up.
Two men were stuffing the contents of the safe into a huge bag, then running out of the door. And worst of all, despite his extensive efforts, Fluffypants McBain’s left ear was dirtier than ever.
He yawned. He stretched. And he began to wash.
‘First gear!’ said Billy.
‘I thought I was just doing the steering,’ said Hannah, more than a little panicked. She’d never used a gearstick before.
‘I can’t reach! Just put it into gear.’
‘Which one?’
‘First!’
‘Er . . .’
‘Up and to the left.’
‘OK. I’ll try.’ Hannah grabbed the long wobbly stick, moved it to the left, then shoved it upwards. Something crunched.
‘I’m letting the clutch out now. Have you got the wheel?’
‘The wheel? Yes, the wheel.’
Billy released the clutch with his left hand and pressed the accelerator with his right. The engine spluttered, growled, and lurched.
‘OH, MY GOD!’ yelled Hannah. ‘WE’RE MOVING!’
‘That’s the whole idea,’ said Billy.
Of course it was. Of course it was. Hannah had chosen the steering mainly because it sounded like the easier of the two options (and also because she had no idea which pedal was which, and what they were used for), but now, sitting in the driver’s seat of an enormous articulated lorry which was moving forwards with alarming purposefulness, she realised something that ought to have been obvious to her some time ago. Steering a lorry is serious. If you get it wrong, you crash. If you get it very wrong, you knock down a house.
Hannah gripped the wheel as tightly as she could. It shuddered in her hands. She could feel the power of the engine pulsing through her entire body.
There was a tree in front of her. If she didn’t turn the wheel at the right time, in the right direction, the lorry and tree would have a noisy, dangerous and expensive meeting. With every second she thought about it, the tree got closer.
‘Are you OK?’ said Billy.
‘No!’ replied Hannah.
‘Are you going where we agreed?’
‘I think so.’
‘Are you steering?’
‘I think so.’
‘Are we going to crash?’
‘I’m not sure. There’s a tree!’
‘Go round it.’
‘Round it. OK. Yes. Good idea.’
She wrenched the wheel. The lorry changed direction. It worked!
The tree glided soundlessly past the passenger window, unaware of how close it had come to being next year’s firewood.
‘We did it!’ Hannah whooped.
‘You mean we’re there?’
‘No, but I missed the tree.’
‘Great. Well done,’ said Billy, trying to sound encouraging, though his confidence in Hannah’s driving had begun to waver. “Do you want second gear?”
‘No! No. First is good. When I say brake, brake.’
‘OK. Was that you saying it?’
‘No. That was me saying what it would sound like when I do say it.’
‘Oh.’
‘BRAKE!’
‘Now?’
‘YES! BRAKEBRAKEBRAKE!’
Wedging his back against the seat, Billy jammed both feet into the brake pedal. With a loud, disapproving sigh, the truck jerked to a stop. Hannah momentarily floated into the air, until her legs thumped into the steering wheel, and she flopped back down again.
‘Are we there?’ said Billy.
‘Yup. Mission accomplished.’
Billy stood up and looked out of the windscreen. They were in the right place, directly in front of the big top. His face was glistening with sweat.
‘I quite enjoyed that,’ said Hannah.
‘Well, I’m glad one of us did,’ replied Billy. ‘Now follow me.’
Billy opened the driver door and jumped down.
It was a long drop, but Hannah didn’t want to look feeble, so she ignored the step and jumped too. While she was in mid-air, her stomach rose up, said hello to her throat, then plunged back down again as she landed. She tried to act as if the three somersaults she did after landing were deliberate, but Billy wasn’t even looking. He had rushed to the back of the lorry, where he was climbing a row of curved metal rungs up onto the roof. Hannah took a moment to undizzy herself after the accidental triple somersault, then followed behind.
As soon as she was on top of the lorry, Billy beckoned her over and pointed at a large rusty clip. ‘When I say, “Go!” lift this lever, and the side of the lorry will drop down. OK?’
‘OK. But can it be my turn to say go?’
‘Do you know when to do it?’
‘Of course I do. It was my plan, remember?’
‘Oh, yeah. Sorry, boss.’
‘And don’t call me boss.’
‘Sorry not-boss.’
‘And stop saying sorry.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Here they come!’
Billy crawled as fast as he could to a similar looking clip at the other end of the roof. They both crouched, hiding from view, gripping the metal levers. In that position, silent and still, they waited.