Twist

  For everyone who could do better.

  PROLOGUE

  FBoss said you made your own luck but that was just a lie. You could be on top of your game and still have bad shit happen like a fat gallery owner called Maurice bum rushing you and emptying half a can of mace in your face.

  Two weeks. I’ll come to get you myself.

  Two weeks had crawled by. He still couldn’t figure it out. Why leave him half blind, out in the cold, when they could just as easily have stuck him in a lock-up somewhere? In Harry’s mind it was all too much nonsense.

  Now at least the waiting was over as he walked up the incline to where the overpass rose up about fifty metres at the peak of its parabola. He was exposed. It wasn’t the kind of place where you walked but the only vehicles were trade vehicles, their drivers too busy sucking in super-heated coffee and hitting their deadlines to clock a skinny boy standing out in the wind on the hard shoulder.

  Harry brought his hand up to his face. The swelling had gone down but his eyes were still itchy. Red enough that the bums in the park were still hitting him up for a blunt.

  Ninja thief maced in art house raid.

  He wondered if FBoss had seen the funny side. Probably not. The CCTV footage on the evening news would have strangled any sense of humour he’d had left. Now, fourteen days on, Harry had seen the footage so many times that it had become his memory. When he tried to remember the moments that preceded the ambush he couldn’t. All he could picture were the grainy black and white images of a black-suited male figure groping his way out of the gallery entrance then stopping, tearing off a black balaclava and throwing up.

  He’d been tempted to go back and set fire to the place but he’d remembered something Dodge had told him. Something about revenge being a cold dish and he’d thought better of it. All that mattered was staying out of the can. The thing would run out of steam before too long and, when it did, FBoss would pull him out of whichever cellar or attic they were going to stick him in and drive him to the docks and onto a ship bound for a faraway shore.

  He consoled himself that the worst part was almost over. Climbing hoardings and drainpipes at night to nest where the crazies couldn’t reach him. Avoiding direct contact with people until he felt like a leper, a deformed creature, creeping in the shadows, sleeping beneath bushes at night in public gardens and the City’s parks.

  One night, probably the seventh, he’d broken into a workman’s hut in a railway cutting and slept inside black bin bags. It was cold in the hut when he’d woken up. The door had opened in the night and was banging in the wind. He’d felt a presence then, something that had been coming for a long time, and he’d felt a pressure in his chest and wondered when he would feel safe again.

  A dull red glow was rising in the fog bank to the east. It blanketed most of the City in a sulphurous mist. Harry’s eyes were naturally drawn to where the Shard sliced up through the murk and he remembered Dodge, the bug-eyed stoner, telling him there was a giant camera on the top that the spooks called ‘The Eye of Sauron’. Harry was looking forward to seeing Dodge most of all.

  During the recce he had counted nine streetlights up the incline to the drop-off. He tried hard to picture the stack of tyres beneath him in the whiteness, but could not. Forcing himself to swallow his fear, he stepped up to the hard edge. It was now or never. FBoss wouldn’t hang about and there would be no second encounter.

  He hit the top tier hard and the momentum pitched him forwards. He cartwheeled out into thin air and felt himself turn a complete circle before his shoulder made impact with the stack. It punched the air from his lungs but he managed to roll, turning his body so that he hit the next tier flat on his back. The loss of downward velocity allowed him to reach out a hand and snatch the rim of a tyre and pivot himself into an upright position and land, like a gymnast coming off the bars.

  The fog was thicker on the ground. Car wrecks were stacked six or seven high, crushed and broken like rows of bad teeth. FBoss had said they were laid out like a wheel. Seven spokes that led to a hub at the centre. The hub where he would be waiting now.

  Police hunt Boy Ninja …

  A metallic clang rang out and Harry started as a fox burst from the stack to his right. He watched it bolt then skid as it saw him then skitter to a stop on the wet tarmac two metres in front of him. It looked up at him nonplussed then turned tail and slipped silently back into the fog.

  Two more clangs followed and Harry felt a wave of excitement as he walked faster, deeper into the stacks. It felt like coming home. The prodigal son walking back up a long driveway to the only family he had ever known. Everything would be forgiven and forgotten in a single smile. No words would be needed. There would be more work. Not here maybe but somewhere …

  He smelt the smoke before he saw the colour of the fog change to a dark grey that shrouded the figure of a man who stood warming his hands by a fire.

  ‘FBoss?’

  The wood smoke surprised him. He smelt it before he saw it, black against the fog. It hid the figure more completely, like a cloak, so that the body beneath was ill-defined. A hunched man who stood, silhouetted by the flames that leapt from a rusty steel drum.

  ‘FBoss?’

  Harry smiled. To think he’d doubted him. FBoss was here. True to his word. Bang on time. Even as Harry had run, hounded by the police sirens approaching the gallery, he’d felt the buzz in his pocket. He’d prised open his eyes to read the text. That was two weeks ago and now here he was, just like he’d promised. Harry was getting out. On a boat or on a plane, it hardly mattered. In a few days he’d be somewhere hot with a fat wad in his pocket watching the Premiership on TV and dipping into the pot that FBoss kept safe for a rainy day.

  ‘FBoss, it’s me. H-Bomb. Harry.’

  Steam was rising from the hunchback’s coat. Harry rubbed his eyes and squinted. The smoke was black. He edged closer towards the fire. It looked inviting after so many nights sleeping rough. The wind lifted the fog and Harry’s heart skipped a beat. It was FBoss’s green coat but he wasn’t in it.

  Where the coat’s collar met the shoulders the wool was drawn tight. The arms rode up an inch too short so that the man’s wrists and black leather gloves were visible. Harry fought against blind panic, the voice in his ear again as fear writhed like a snake in his stomach. Then the voice started screaming and Harry fought to block out a truth he could not accept.

  They had decided to kill him.

  He took a few steps back, reeling as his senses quickened, his ears picking up the crackling of the flames and the sap squealing and fizzing in the blazing wood and a steady sound, like an animal, panting. Harry turned to see it trot out of the fog towards him. It was sleek, squat and muscled. Dog and man, the betrayal was now complete. He exploded off his quads and reached the bonnet of a wreck as the dog lunged. He snatched a ledge of crushed metal above him and looked down as the dog lurched up, baring its fangs.

  There was a muffled crack. A dead sound and a concussion in the metal close to his head. He scrabbled up to the top of the stack and lay flat. The fog obscured the shooter. He rolled and dropped off the far edge and ran towards the gates and heard the dog tracking him on the far side.

  He reached the gates, slipped through and slammed the bolt shut behind him. He took off up the track at a sprint towards the dual carriageway. The man would have a car. He had to get off the road.

  He crossed the scrubby verge and hurled himself at the fence. The barbed wire on the top caught his jacket and it tore as he jumped, grabbed the branch of a tree, and dropped into stinging nettles that were taller than he was. They stung his face and his hands as he rushed through them towards the low rumble of a large diesel engine.

  He slowed to a walk as he entered the lay-by where a tall man wearing a turban was taking a piss against the
front wheel of a lorry.

  ‘It’s all right. It’s mine,’ the man said. Then, without turning to look at Harry, added, ‘Do you need a lift?’

  * * *

  The lorry pulled off the North Circular three quarters of an hour later in Neasden. Rush hour was a first for Harry. He got off to the north of the road and watched the commuters crossing a footbridge. He dropped his jacket in a bin and made for the crowd. He noticed a short, bald man eating a bacon sandwich as he walked to join a bus queue that had become a ruck. Harry caught a flash of a girl in a red hood in the queue ahead of him and his heart froze but when she turned he saw that she had a round, plain face and a fake handbag.

  Harry took a sharp angle for the bus and his hand darted into the bin by the stand and pulled out a plastic bag. He let the girl with the fake handbag get on the bus first and smiled at her as he disembowelled it with his craft knife, catching its contents neatly in the plastic bag as they fell.

  He turned and took a cut away from the street down a cul-de-sac and ducked into a covered walkway to count his take. There were three twenties in the purse: a good feed and his ticket back to Gravesend. He still had friends there. One or two of his old mates worked down the docks. They might be able to hook him up. Get him working passage on a ship out of there.

  He went further down the alleyway, making for the light at its far end. It was dark and there was broken glass on the floor. It was pooled at intervals where someone had systematically smashed all the lights, one after another.

  ‘Hello, H-Bomb.’

  Harry froze and turned to look back the way he had come. He saw a red dot light up against one wall and illuminate the gimlet eyes he had hoped to avoid. He shrank back towards the entrance fingering his mobile in his pocket. Jason Bourne always used a pay-as-you-go. There was a reason for that. He pulled it out of his pocket and stared down at it.

  ‘It was a test,’ the voice added. ‘We needed to know. I hope you understand.’

  ‘Fuck off!’ Harry said.

  ‘You run away, Bullseye thinks you’re a deer. I fired the shot to stop him. It’s all he understands.’

  Harry watched Sikes step away from the wall.

  ‘Why are you wearing his coat?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Ask him yourself. He’s waiting for you. If you want to see him, that is.’

  Harry froze. He didn’t know how he felt about FBoss now, or the rest of the crew. They were the only family he’d ever known. He’d trusted them and now they wanted him dead.

  ‘The Feds are onto you, Harry. We had to know,’ Sikes went on.

  ‘Fuck off!’ Harry bawled at him then smashed the phone against the wall. It fell to the floor and as he ground it into the concrete he took his knife in his hand, watching the dog as it closed on him. He turned. There was only one way out.

  There was a litter bin in the corner and on the wall above it was a satellite dish. He lengthened his stride, picking up his knees like a triple jumper. He pushed up off the top of the bin and caught the antennae with his right hand, following with his left, and pulled himself up as the dog turned tight circles beneath him. A wolf whistle sounded shrill behind him as he reached the stairwell and began to climb.

  A fire door opened onto the roof. The fog had lifted and he could see there was a ladder at the far end of the roof. He slid down it to a platform some ten feet long. It led nowhere. There was a fifty-foot drop on all sides. When he turned he saw that the dog had reached the top of the ladder. It was peering down at him, touching the top rung with its paw.

  Harry jogged to the far edge and dropped down flat to look over. There was no drainpipe. No easy way down. He got up to his knees and then the next conscious thought he had, that something like a brick had hit him between the shoulder blades, seemed dislocated, like he’d missed a bit. Then he tasted blood in his mouth and he saw that some of it was spattered down the front of his T-shirt.

  He pushed himself back up onto all fours and coughed flecks of blood onto the concrete. Then he saw the brick lying a couple of feet to his right and he heard a rasping sound and became scared when he realised it was coming from inside him, and then a sensation arose that felt like air was being blown into a burst balloon.

  The wind was moving faster now. Wisps of fog were lifting, spiralling into columns rising hundreds of feet into the air. Looking west he could see the towers of Wembley Stadium and he remembered the bet. Dodge’s wager when he’d put up a grand for the runner who would go from one tower to the next along the giant twisting white tube that connected them.

  Harry struggled to get up. He could hear footsteps coming down the steel rungs of the ladder. He wasn’t going to take it on his knees. Not like a dog on his knees. He focused and managed to get up onto his feet. The effort made him cough and he put his hand to his mouth, staring at the blood that ran down the lines of his palms and dripped down onto the concrete floor.

  He could see now that it could be done. That there was a way to take Dodge’s money because there was no single white tube but many tubes all woven in together like threads in a piece of rope. Once you got up there then you could walk on one and use the next one up as a handrail. Nothing simpler. He spat the blood from his mouth and pushed himself forwards. He was going to take Dodge for a grand and use the money to get out and start again. Somewhere they didn’t know his name.

  He took two steps towards the edge. Two steps closer to the white tubes until he could imagine he was there. With the paintwork shining beneath his feet. It was a good day to climb and he could almost hear the Dutch fans chanting something van Oranje. He could see the orange and white players on the pitch and the guards looking nervously up and he wondered if anyone was going to risk it by climbing up the railings to the tower and following him out here.

  There was always one, he thought. Some guy that wanted to be a hero. He could hear the commentators down below. It would be on national TV once they got the cameras focused in on him. They’d be asking if he was a jumper. Or just an exhibitionist, some kind of streaker perhaps that no one sane would want to tackle by following up the vertical ladder

  But, rest assured, they would be waiting at the far end. Watching and hoping you lost your nerve, but he wouldn’t. He’d walk out to the middle, bold as brass, pull his cacks down and moony the crowd. The players would stop when they realised the cheering wasn’t for them. They’d look up and watch him open-mouthed as he took off again, moving through the white tubes like a chimpanzee swinging through the trees. The same one the papers would say the next day. The same Boy Ninja from the White Cube heist.

  But then there was a click behind him and he turned. He was not alone. He had never been alone. As the clouds broke he watched sunlight dance on a short steel blade, swallowed a mouthful of blood then stepped out towards the towers, determined to take Dodge’s money.

  1

  She tried to avoid the past if she could help it, returning only when the present required it, to help calibrate the severity of a current crisis or to understand if what happened back then was making her overreact or behave weirdly now. Of course, she knew it didn’t do to dwell. The past was gone. She preferred to believe in the future. To train hard and do what she was told and place faith in the gang and the idea that this life was finite. That there would be a jackpot and it would put an end to this insanity and wipe the slate clean so she could begin again.

  But she was back in the past now. Searching for an answer to a question she had been asked after the first time, which she knew held the key to understanding her present predicament. Events that had begun on the floor of the room she shared with three other girls in the foster home the day two strangers had come to meet her, the manager standing in the doorway as she watched the faces of the other girls, hoping they would not hate her because she had been chosen and they had not.

  She skirted the fence line behind the old hotel then crossed the parkland and jogged through the underpass that led to the Tube station. There were trees in the park, their natural co
lours still visible in the half light. They smelt nothing like the ‘magic tree’ which had been hanging from the rear-view mirror of her foster parents’ Volvo estate the day they had come to collect her. She could still see the eyes of the man in the mirror as he’d driven back to the red-bricked semi-detached house in Highgate for the first time.

  The woman said her favourite aunt had had red hair like hers, but the man, who was older and had a strange lump on his nose, had just smiled and told her that they had visited her school and spoken to her teachers. Who had told them the same thing, that she was a natural athlete and terribly clever and could be anything she wanted to be if she got over her ‘little chaos’.

  She hadn’t actively disliked the woman, just the man who lied all the time. But she hadn’t hated him all that much. Not as much as the one who was paid to care for her but who only visited once a month, spoke to her like she should be grateful to have foster parents and always left without saying if or when he would come back.

  She sat on the underground looking at all the worn-out winter faces and told herself things were better now. That nothing could be worse than those first three weeks. Like actors rehearsing their roles for a play called ‘family’. Knowing at once that she could not love them and creeping downstairs to listen at the kitchen door as the woman cried to the man that they were not ‘bonding’ and listening to him reply as if he were reading from a text book that she had problems trusting adults and that it would take time.

  About an hour had passed since rush hour and people were still making their way home. She stepped out of the underground station and realised she hadn’t registered a single face during the journey. She was like that when she was upset. She went foraging in the past. Looking for clues, rerunning every path she had taken, following them as they branched, asking herself if it was always inevitable that she would end up in the mess she was in today.

  And the woman’s face was here with her now, standing over her shoulder as her trainers touched lightly on the frozen pavement, telling her that she had to ‘sit’ a test which was a practice for the exam she had to take so that she could get a scholarship. And so too was the psychologist who came once a week for what she called ‘socialisation’, providing her with the skills that would allow her to fit into her special school, not once suggesting that it might be a good idea if she actually just played with other children her own age.