THE NEXT MORNING, Hannah woke up at dawn, not because she wasn’t tired, but because she was too angry to sleep. She’d been angry all night, thrashing around in bed, tormented by furious dreams about the dastardly devilry of Armitage Shank and the sad fate of Billy.
Hannah was not a wallower, a moaner or a sulker. There was no point in just lying there crossly, so she raised herself from bed, walked to the window, and looked down at her garden. Her boring garden, surrounded by a boring fence, boxed in by more boring gardens with their boring lawns and boring plants and boring patios and boring chairs. (Hannah was not a keen gardener.)
She knew she ought to just feel sorry for Billy, who right now was held captive by an evil man, stolen away from his real father, grieving for his lost mother and destined to roam the country robbing and circussing. But deep down some mad part of her couldn’t help being jealous. She wanted Billy’s life. Not the vanished father, dead mother, evil stepfather bit, but the rest. The circus bit. She wanted it more than she had ever wanted anything. She just had to have it.
Together, she and Billy had almost foiled Armitage and rescued Billy from his fate. Her plan had almost worked. And if a plan can almost work at the first try, then surely it ought to be worth tracking down the circus and trying again. ‘If at first you don’t succeed, hose yourself down, have a bite of chocolate, and give it another shot,’ as the old saying goes. Or, as Hannah preferred to put it, nothing is impossible.
The circus would be far away by now, she knew that. Nobody would know where, she knew that, too.
But then, nobody else had spent long summer evenings practising tracking in the woods with Fizzer and nobody else had memorised the shape of a certain camel’s footprint.
She just couldn’t stay in this dull place any longer. She’d suffocate.
And the more she thought about it, the more another plan began to take shape. This plan would need an adult, but Granny was always up for a trip. Sle loved travel. She loved the way each town you visited sold different sweets. Hannah was sure she’d be able to persuade her to go. Together they’d track down Shank’s Impossible Circus, and when they did, this time Hannah would come out on top. She’d free Billy and Armitage would meet his doooooom! All Hannah would need was some money to pay for the trip, because Granny was always as skint as a pocket of lint.
Hannah’s whole life could change, it could begin to follow the path she knew she was destined for, if only she had that little bit of money.
As you have probably noticed, Hannah’s town was a sleepy little place, populated with sleepy cats and sleepy people who didn’t pay much attention to their sleepy post office, so it wasn’t until the morning after the circus left that anyone realised the safe had been blown up and robbed. Everyone knew immediately who had done it, but Shank and his crew were long gone, and nobody knew how to find them.
However, just as the sleepy post office staff were walking down the high street pinning up sleepily-written posters advertising a reward for any information on the whereabouts of Armitage Shank, or of the stolen money, a certain alert and unsleepy dog, Fizzer,35 was taking his morning stroll.
Fizzer was in the park, checking his pee-mails, when from a distant and usually unremarkable thicket, he detected a curious waft. Something plasticky and acrid. A hint of smoke tinged with a waft of explosive. He went to investigate.
A bag is a bag is a bag, in general. Unless it is a suitcase. But this, Fizzer knew, was something special. He could tell by the smell of it. Up close, there was a faint aroma of Fluffypants McBain and a definite honk of cash. This bag was from the post office.
Fizzer now did something extremely unusual. He began to engage in an activity which in all other circumstances he considered beneath him. He raised his head and barked.
There were many people in the park, but nobody gave him a second glance. He was just a dog, barking. What could possibly be important or interesting about that?
Only one person noticed that something was up: a girl, an alert and unsleepy girl, who was at that moment gazing boredly out of her bedroom window. This girl – and I think you know who it was – recognised the bark, and understood that if Fizzer was barking, something was up which required immediate investigation.
So she ran downstairs in her pyjamas, slipped into her wellies, and off she went. She had no idea what she might be about to find, or of the reward that was attached to it; she was just following her instincts, which were to stay alert, keep her eyes open, and never to say no to adventure.
THE END