Run: 2026-09-23-01M37Q4CCF1GFHQ92PTDENJAN4

Molly spread the floor plan across the caravan table, pinning its corners with a mug, a stapler, and the ceramic frog Bill refused to throw away. The plan had been drawn in green crayon, because their only informant on the Pemberton residence was a seven-year-old named Otis, who had charged four packets of sherbet and a solemn promise never to tell his mother. "Right," Molly said, tapping a wobbly rectangle labelled GIFT TABL. "Tomorrow at two, Tabitha Pemberton turns six. Forty guests, forty presents." Bill squinted. "What's this blob with teeth?" "Bouncy castle. Otis added the teeth for drama." Bill nodded slowly, the way he nodded at most things, as though agreeing with a weather forecast he did not trust. He was a large man with the soft, anxious face of a bloodhound who had once been told off and never recovered. In eleven years of partnership, he had never successfully lied to anyone, including a parrot. Molly, by contrast, could lie to a polygraph and leave it apologising. She pulled a battered suitcase from under the bench and flipped it open. Inside, folded with military precision, lay a pair of enormous yellow trousers, a rainbow wig, and a red nose the size of a snooker ball. "No," said Bill. "You haven't heard the plan." "I've seen the trousers. The trousers are the plan." "The trousers are a disguise. The plan is genius. There's a difference." The real entertainer, Mr. Giggles, had been booked through an agency. At that very moment, Mr. Giggles was driving toward a village hall in Little Snoring, where a woman who sounded remarkably like Molly had assured him the party had been moved. The village hall was hosting a bowls tournament. The median age was seventy-four. "You do the magic show," Molly explained. "Everyone watches you. I slip round the back, load the gift sacks into the van, and we're gone before the cake." "I can't do magic." "Nobody expects a clown to do magic properly. That's the whole genre." "What about the parents?" "Parents at a six-year-old's party don't watch anything but the wine." Bill picked up the red nose and turned it over miserably. Molly produced a laminated schedule, because Molly laminated everything, including, once, a ransom note, which police had praised for its legibility. "Two-fifteen, balloon animals. Two-thirty, the disappearing handkerchief. Two-forty, I'm out the gate." "And if a kid asks me to make a giraffe?" "Make a snake. Tell them it's a giraffe lying down." Bill considered this, then placed the nose on his face with the grim dignity of a knight lowering his visor. It squeaked. They both looked at it. "Otis never mentioned it squeaked," he said. "Otis is seven, Bill. Otis doesn't know everything." Outside, the wind shifted, and neither of them noticed the small figure crouched beneath the caravan window, clutching an empty sherbet packet and a notebook of his own. On its first page, in green crayon, was a drawing of a clown and a lady, both behind bars, both with teeth.