Twist Page 10

  ‘How do you like it?’ he asked.

  ‘Builders,’ Twist replied, watching Dodge skulk towards the door as Fagin waved him to sit in one of the two cracked leather armchairs facing his desk.

  The tea was very strong with a metallic aftertaste. It seemed to have triggered a buzzing sensation that rose up his spine and fizzed in the base of his skull.

  ‘Gunpowder,’ Fagin said. ‘Admiral Nelson swore by it.’

  Apart from feeling slightly more awake Twist had to admit that the pain from his bruises did seem to have subsided, and when Fagin picked up the teapot and rounded the desk to pour him a second cup he could not refuse.

  ‘Tea is a way of life here, no?’ Fagin asked.

  Twist turned to look at Dodge who was observing him over the rim of his teacup before turning to answer Fagin, only to find him already sat back behind his desk. The old man reached down and emerged with a poster-sized sheet of plywood, turning it to reveal a mediocre-quality print of Banksy’s infamous kissing policemen.

  ‘Disgusting!’ Fagin said. ‘But you cannot hide talent. Sometimes it leaps up at you like a viper from a mountain path.’

  Twist watched as Fagin mimed a snake rising up and slithering across the desk, poised to strike.

  ‘And so when Dodger says he’s been bitten I sit up and listen.’

  ‘Why did you have me followed?’ Twist asked, watching as Fagin stared into his teacup as his paint-stained fingertip left a thin grey line around its rim.

  ‘Because I don’t like to see talent go to waste,’ he said.

  Twist looked at the clock on the wall. The hands had not moved for some time but this pantomime-like day had gone on long enough. He was tired and he knew that once the tea wore off he would crash. It was time to go and he stood, turning to the door to see that Dodge had anticipated him and was stood with his hands crossed in front of him.

  ‘Listen, thanks for looking out for me today,’ Twist began, ‘and it’s really flattering that you like my work but now I’ve really got to go,’ he said, turning back to face Fagin.

  The old man was smiling, his thin lips drawn back to reveal a set of broken yellow teeth. Twist caught his breath, asking himself why he had come here to this madhouse in the first place. But that was just hindsight talking. He could have broken away from Dodge on the far side of the bridge but he would not have escaped without him.

  And then there was his natural curiosity with this peculiar art collector who employed roughnecks who climbed walls and jumped between buildings, and who forged signatures and served tea spiked with God knows what.

  Twist could hear the blood pumping in his ears, as the pressure built inside him. He stared at Dodge who unlocked his hands and shifted his stance like he was getting ready to tackle him if he made a move for the door.

  ‘Don’t get carried away now, mate,’ Dodge said.

  Don’t get carried away … mate?

  Twist dug his fingernails into the palms of his hands and walked towards the door.

  ‘First off, I’m not your mate.’ he said, ‘and second,’ he went on, turning back to Fagin, ‘I’m not an artist so don’t even pretend it’s my work you’re interested in.’

  Twist watched Dodge take a step back but he knew he wasn’t going to fight his way out. There appeared to be only one way out and that involved crossing a ballroom full of gymnastic sociopaths resting up like chimps after a raid.

  ‘You know the problem with graffiti?’ Fagin began again, breaking the silence. ‘You can’t move it around. What’s the point of art if you can’t shift it?’

  Twist stopped walking and turned back to Fagin.

  ‘That is the point,’ he said, ‘it belongs to everyone.’

  Twist watched Fagin shrug then reach into his drawer and pull out a thick wad of fifty pound notes, peeling off ten of them and offering them to him.

  ‘Call it an advance,’ Fagin said.

  ‘An advance for what?’ Twist replied as Dodge stepped past him, leapfrogged an antique rocking horse and swiped the wad from Fagin’s hand.

  Twist watched Dodge’s face as he counted the money, then looked back to Fagin who was counting the same amount again, his mouth twitching as he palmed each note, before laying them down on the desk where Twist could easily reach them. But Twist didn’t budge.

  ‘Think you’re getting more, do you?’ Fagin asked.

  Twist shook his head and Fagin looked skyward, clasping his hands together as if asking for deliverance. Then Dodge coughed and Fagin looked past Twist and spoke to him.

  ‘What am I gonna do with a kid like this?’ he said, speaking now as if Twist wasn’t there.

  Dodge rolled up his notes and stuffed them in his pocket before answering his boss.

  ‘He’s fast. Left the Feds for dust. I thought maybe we could train him up. Seeing as how we have a vacancy.’

  ‘I’m not a thief,’ said Twist.

  ‘You said you’re on the streets! What, you never stole a sarnie from Tesco’s?’ Dodge countered.

  ‘Don’t need to. They chuck out enough, if you know where to look,’ Twist said, watching Fagin wince.

  ‘Skip-diver,’ said Dodge, as if he had just confirmed an earlier hypothesis about Twist’s true standing in life.

  But Fagin waved down his insult.

  ‘We’ve all got to start somewhere,’ he said, ‘so tell me, Twist. You need a place to stay?’

  ‘No thanks, I’m cool,’ said Twist, thinking to himself that he was going to be way more than cool if he slept rough tonight.

  ‘I think you’ve been misinformed, Dodger,’ Fagin started again, changing tack. ‘You see, your friend has other plans. Maybe a place at art school next autumn? I mean, even if we offered him five hundred a week … to come and train with us, it’d still be an insult to a gentleman of his prospects.’

  Twist looked back and saw that Fagin was stroking his beard, staring at the boy, eyes alert but hands occupied like a man holding a conversation while petting a wet dog in front of a fire. The old man and Dodge were an unusual pair and he could not imagine how they had ever met.

  Had a scene like the one that was playing out now occurred between these two in the past? Had the boy called Dodge wanted something as badly as he, the tagger formerly known as Twist, now wanted to learn? To escape the prison his life had become, to develop the only real talent he had? And had the peculiar old man looked inside Dodge’s head and spoken aloud his innermost desire on their first meeting? And if he had and Dodge had accepted the offer that must have followed, had that wish been granted?

  Twist thought not.

  ‘No, er, actually … I’m off. Thanks for the tea,’ he said, putting the cup down on a stack of hardback books and walking past Dodge towards the door.

  ‘I’m cooking tonight, Dodge. You want spaghetti again, or I could do that goulash I did last week …?’

  ‘Yeah, make it spicy,’ Dodge replied.

  Twist’s hand gripped the door handle but he found himself struggling to turn it. He hadn’t eaten in thirty-six hours, during which time he had outrun a Nigerian crime syndicate, a small army of cops and a police helicopter.

  ‘So tell me … Master Twist,’ Fagin said, addressing Twist’s back with an almost perfect facsimile of genuine concern, ‘what exactly is it in this life that you want?’

  18

  She let out the throttle on the bike and tried not to look at Newham. Riding kept her focused. There was no time for regret when she was riding fast like this, the lines and the cat’s eyes a blur as they rushed up to meet her, putting the past behind her while the future lay waiting, somewhere in the darkness ahead.

  When the satnav blinked she pulled into the slip road and took a look at the entrance to the new boy’s estate. It would have been so much easier if this ‘genius’, as Fagin had described him, had decided to stay last night as well, but try as they might, he’d refused their clean sheets and mattress springs and returned instead to his bolthole in the condemned estate he cal
led home. Saving his arse from electrocution clearly wasn’t going to be enough, she thought. FBoss was going to make her go the whole nine yards and reel him in just like she had Harry before him. So she wasn’t feeling proud of herself as she turned into the slip road that led into the rubble and broken buildings that were much as FBoss had described them.

  ‘Picture the Siege of Grozny …’

  She’d had to Google the Chechen capital of Grozny, the place the UN had called ‘the most destroyed city on Earth’. It was strange finding such devastation here in London. At least the ruined tower blocks wouldn’t be booby-trapped, she thought, as she saw the entrance guarded as Fagin had said it would be, by a fat man in a traffic warden’s uniform.

  She pulled the bike to a stop in front of the gate and watched the man look up at her. He had a face like a Rottweiler, folds of black flesh and dark rings around his eyes that turned to take in the girl on a motorcycle who had just materialised in front of him.

  ‘Most girls walk in,’ he said, peering at her face as she lifted the visor of her helmet.

  ‘I’m not most girls,’ she replied, forcing a smile as he walked past her and put his hand on the handlebars of the motorcycle, his bulbous eyes searching for a way inside her one-piece red leather race suit.

  ‘Whatever turns them on,’ he said, lifting his hand palm open to receive her crumpled twenty pound note.

  The estate was even worse than she had imagined. The towers closest to the gate looked like a giant fist had punched them flat. The steel girders that had once held them together had twisted inwards and the concrete walls had collapsed, carpeting the areas around them with a fine white dust.

  She cut off the tarmac and into the overgrown grass of the parkland to the north of the estate, counting the towers as she went until she reached the fifth. Pulling the bike to the left she killed the engine and let it glide silently down towards the rendezvous.

  Concealing the bike behind a giant steel rubbish bin she walked round to the eastern wall where she quickly found the mark that Dodge had made to the left of the door. It was a red cross. As if the building had been visited by the plague and she imagined its inhabitants boarded up alive inside.

  She moved to the window on the right of the door and prised back the board that covered it. Its screws were loose, just as FBoss had said they would be, and she quickly found herself on the stairs, taking them two at a time, feeling the burn in her thighs and wondering why they were going to so much trouble for a graffiti artist. He was scrawny and he couldn’t run. They would have to train him – correction, she would have to train him – if, and it was a big if, they could first persuade or coerce him into joining them at all. Last night he’d said nothing when Dodge had told him the old man had plans for him. Plans that would not only give him a free pass on borstal, but also set him up with an easel and oils for life. But for all Dodge’s words this strange boy had offered none. He’d just shaken his head and walked out. And half of her, in spite of her own situation, hoped he’d keep shaking it now.

  She flicked on the light on her phone and lit up the landing. There were three closed doors and just one of them was slightly ajar. She walked towards it and pushed it open. There was a rope hanging there which went up through a broken skylight in the ceiling. She took hold of it, gripped her lower legs and shoes around it and began to climb up onto the roof.

  Dodge and FBoss were crouched low on the far side, FBoss peering through a pair of binoculars. She dropped to a crouch and moved silently round behind them.

  ‘How am I supposed to shift it?’ she heard FBoss ask, making eye contact with Dodge who was shaking his head.

  ‘You’re not seeing the whole picture boss. It’s like the estate agents say. Location, location, location.’

  ‘Do you think you can get up there?’ FBoss said, taking her by surprise.

  She watched him lower the binoculars and turn to smile at her.

  ‘Come,’ he said. ‘Come and take a look at this boy. Isn’t he magnificent?’

  He offered his hand and she took it, just as she had the first day they had met when he had come to visit her in the home.

  ‘Why don’t we ask him for dinner,’ he said, ‘… or whatever it is you kids do together these days?’

  19

  He stood with his headphones on, lost in his own private world. It was music that Martin said would help him get ‘in the zone’, wherever that was.

  He’d risen with the sun at close to nine and tipped half a jar of Nescafe into a hot mug of water he’d boiled on his meths stove. It was like a refrigerator in the steel engine room and he couldn’t help thinking about the previous night he’d spent, comfortably numb from the tea, beneath a sixteen-tog duvet in the old hotel.

  He shoved half a dozen Nurofen in his mouth and bit into a stale sandwich he’d salvaged from the back of Pret A Manger. The back of the paper bag said that French women ate whatever they wanted but stayed slim by eating only half of the food on their plates. It didn’t say what they did with the other half but it had got Twist wondering if he wouldn’t be better off in a café in Arles, sipping a pastis opposite a beautiful, slim French girl who kept giving her half his food.

  He pushed up with his legs, gripping the rope, hand over hand, until he was back up on the roof of the block. Almost forty-eight hours had passed since he’d been tased and he had no desire to repeat the experience. He knew it wasn’t safe here any more but he wanted to finish ‘The Matador’ so he could photograph it and use it as his calling card.

  The sun was at its apex now, somewhere above a layer of fine white clouds which had no discernible edges and did not appear to be moving. It had to be about two or three degrees above zero. The lack of wind was some kind of bonus, he thought, as he unzipped his fly and leaned back, admiring the arc of his piss as gravity took it.

  ‘I’m glad I climbed up the other side,’ a voice spoke behind him.

  He looked around and saw the Wrestler standing behind him wearing the same mask he’d worn the day before. It was crimson red with gold diagonal lines around the eyes but the wrestler had replaced the full red silk body stocking of yesterday with technical climbing gear, black cargo pants and a figure-hugging black ripstop Gore-tex jacket.

  It was a sinister get-up. The kind of thing that a motorcycle hit man might wear in Cartagena, but what disturbed Twist more was the timbre of the Wrestler’s voice. He sounded like a girl.

  ‘Sorry, no toilets up here,’ he said, turning, careful not to expose himself.

  ‘Home sweet home,’ the Wrestler said, taking in the litter and junk around him.

  ‘I like the picture,’ he went on. ‘Not so keen on your pad though.’

  Twist shook himself dry, pulled up his zip then turned to face the freak behind him.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You saved my arse.’

  He watched as the Wrestler pulled off the red mask and felt the blood boil in his cheeks. She had green eyes and auburn hair tied in a knot at the back and she was about twenty years old. He held up his hands, desperately trying to unscramble his thoughts.

  ‘You got anything to eat?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t get many visitors,’ he replied. ‘I’ve got some cream crackers … and cooking chocolate.’

  ‘Hmm. Carbs and chocolate – the athlete’s diet.’

  ‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ Twist said, walking back towards the engine room and the cardboard box that doubled as a fridge-freezer.

  ‘I’m sorry if I scared you,’ she said, shaking the mask at her side. ‘The cameras, you see.’

  ‘I thought you were a guy.’

  ‘You say the sweetest things,’ the girl said, smiling as he handed her a cream cracker with a lump of chocolate-flavoured fat on top of it.

  ‘I meant the way you move …’ he said.

  ‘What, so girls can’t be fast?’ she replied, clearly offended. ‘Fuck off!’

  Twist didn’t have enough experience of girls who ran down walls dressed as Mex
ican wrestlers to draw any hard and fast conclusions. So he bit his lip, then just went for it.

  ‘This is always what happens,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ she replied, watching him as he disappeared into the engine room.

  ‘What always happens?’ she said again, watching him as he emerged clutching his meths stove.

  ‘I see a girl I like and shit just starts pouring out of my mouth,’ he said, busying himself with the blue fuel, spilling most of it on his hands.

  ‘Better stick to the drawing then,’ she said smiling, ‘you’re good at that.’

  Twist pulled a packet of safety matches from his pocket. He opened the box and found it was empty.

  ‘Here,’ she said, offering him a lighter then laughing as a blue flame shot up his arm and he danced in a circle slapping his hand against his jeans trying to put it out.

  ‘So what do you want?’ she asked when he’d successfully lit the burner.

  ‘Me, paint, a wall,’ he said. ‘The rest of the world down there. Suits me.’

  ‘You can’t stay up here forever, you know,’ she said, staring at him as he examined the small hole he’d burnt in his new tracksuit top.

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ he countered. ‘When I was younger I used to climb trees. They moved me around a lot when I was a kid. Foster parents, care homes, social workers with padlocks on their handbags talking about me behind closed doors. The only way I ever got any head space was climbing things that were really, really tall where nobody could reach me.’

  ‘Except me,’ the girl said.

  ‘Yes,’ Twist was forced to admit, handing her the less dirty mug, ‘except you.’

  ‘Thank you …’ she said, looking at him from the corner of her eye, sly or coy, he couldn’t tell which.

  ‘Actually, I came to ask you out,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ Twist spat.

  ‘To a party,’ she said. ‘You know, food, drink, dancing … a PAR … TEE?’

  Twist recovered himself and fished something unspeakable out of his mug.