Circus of Thieves and the Raffle of Doom Read Online Free

the circus.
    Hannah sprinted out of the house in her best (oldest) jeans and favourite (dirtiest) T-shirt, as soon as she heard the
ooohs
(of people watching Maurice’s backflips), the
aaaahs
(as Jesse weightlifted a passer-by in each hand), the occasional
hmmmngg
(from people who were unaccountably distracted by Irrrrrena) and a long, bubbling rise and fall of
laughter (as Hank and Frank battered, bundled, beat, bruised, bonked, bashed and bamboozled one another with a variety of amusingly shaped implements).
    The minute Hannah saw the parade, she understood. This was what Billy had been trying to explain. Shank’s Impossible Circus didn’t need to publicise their shows in advance, because
they’d perfected a way of selling tickets on the day.
    The leaping and weightlifting and whip-cracking and circular-clapping-in-a-tiny-bikini and bashy bamboozling soon drew a crowd that formed itself into a circle around a patch of previously
unspectacular pavement space in the town square, which now realised with some excitement that it had become a stage. 10 Irrrrena did a few laps of the
pavement-stage, pulling some people forward, nudging others back, until she had a neat circle. Then she clapped one last time, and all the performers slipped rapidly away, leaving a large crowd of
people staring at a circle of empty pavement.
    Just at the exact, precise and specific moment when anticipation started to dip, and people began to ask themselves why they were all staring interestedly at nothing whatsoever, like a regional
conference of pavement-appreciators, Fingers O’Boyle leapt onto the stage.
    Nobody knew where he had sprung from, since he hadn’t been visible during the parade, and Fingers O’Boyle was clearly not the kind of person who could blend into a crowd. Why?
Because he was dressed like a cross between a tramp and The Emperor of the Empire of Lurid Show-offy Clothes. Allow me to explain. I shall start at the bottom of his outfit. Yellow patent leather
(i.e shiny shiny shiny) shoes with stack heels made of transparent plastic, containing a ring of bright green frozen-in-time beetles. Knee socks, yellow with red polka dots. White plus fours (i.e.
long shorts) so baggy and extravagant they should have been called plus sixty-eights. Above this, a flowing ankle-length coat which was halfway between a spectacular festive gown designed to honour
the Goddess of Rainbows and a bunch of lurid rags held together with dodgy sewing, bits of glue and smears of dirt. The coat had actually started life in a production of
Joseph and his
Technicolour Panopoly of Drippy Songs
, which was so bad Fingers had decided to spare the world any further performances by stealing the costumes. Since then, whenever Fingers found a scrap of
interesting fabric, he’d snip a bit off and add it to the coat using whatever thread, glue or dirt came to hand.

    Fingers’ idea of ‘finding’ things was slightly unusual. The concept of ownership was not one he strongly believed in. He once ‘found’ a piece of delightful purple
paisley on the shirt of a woman standing in front of him in a bus queue. Being unusually dextrous, and handy with a pair of sharp scissors, Fingers had snipped out a square and skipped away before
the woman had time to say ‘What’s that breeze on my back?’ This is basically a long way of saying Fingers was a thief. Not your bog-standard grab-it-off-the-shelves-and-run-for-it
thief, but a true magician in the art of making things disappear in front of your very eyes before you even notice they are gone.
    It was this skill he used to hold the attention of the crowd assembled around him. His act, in short, went something like this: choose a volunteer from the crowd, chat to them, charm them, make
them laugh, make everyone else laugh at them, do a couple of card tricks, then, just before you send them back to their place, casually say, ‘Don’t you want these?’ before handing
back watches, wallets, credit