Twist Read online

  Twist studied him as he walked on. Sipping from his coffee as the camera zoomed in on a sign held up by a homeless man who was shivering beneath a tartan blanket under a fire escape at the corner of Burlington Gardens.

  Twist heard Red laugh as she read the sign in the tramp’s hand and was the first to clock Batesy winking up at the camera.

  Family kidnapped by ninjas. Need 2 quid for karate lessons.

  Fagin clicked twice with the mouse and the camera angle changed to a CCTV camera overlooking a covered arcade. There was a shop selling vintage prints of old sailing boats that Losberne glanced at as he walked, face forwards into shot.

  ‘The arcade, you klutz … get out of the arcade!’ Fagin barked, clicking back onto Dodge-cam as he sped up, jogging to cross New Bond Street before the lights turned green, catching Losberne just as he turned into Savile Row and his gallery, one street down on the corner.

  ‘Keep tight,’ Fagin spat into the microphone on his desk and nodded as Dodge raised the thumb of his right hand as he upped the pace to something approaching a slow jog, as white columns appeared ten deep each side of the gallery door’s thick glass, through which blue lights danced on and off inside, offering brief glimpses of the art Losberne had chosen to display.

  ‘All front,’ Fagin said. ‘The real gems never see the light of day … like the three painted ladies our source tells us he’s keeping in his storeroom … hello … what’s this …?’

  They watched as Dodge’s hand appeared at the right of the screen, pulling a hood down over his head, partially obscuring their peripheral vision until he pulled what had to be spectacles from his face to hold them at waist height, picking up a natural blonde in her early twenties who stared blankly at Losberne as he fumbled with the front door’s several keys.

  Then Dodge was moving again, fast towards the corner, pitching forwards, appearing to fall flat on his face but still managing to keep the specs in his hand as he went down. He caught the look of concern on the girl’s face as she knelt down to help him to his feet and then came in and out of shot as the camera jerked towards her, forcing her to retreat, his hand visible on her left shoulder then panning perfectly over Losberne’s left shoulder to zoom in on his fat fingers as they punched the code to the gallery’s front door on a small metal keyboard.

  Twist stared at the screen in disbelief as Losberne turned angrily on Dodge who continued to film what looked like a portcullis rising up from the ground and Losberne turning his back on Dodge to push the gallery door open and disappear inside.

  Twist looked across at Red and Cribb and the man who still hadn’t introduced himself, then back at Fagin who was smiling, stroking his beard as his right hand worked the mouse, rewinding the footage then hitting pause, all eyes on the screen as he clicked play then pause, revealing one frame at a time.

  ‘1 … 6 … 9 … 1 …’

  ‘Bingo!’ Fagin said, turning his gaze on the hard man in the doorway as if to say:

  I told you, I told you they could do it.

  24

  ‘Sorry, Mr Fagin,’ Twist began, cutting in mid-sentence as Fagin continued to vent his spleen against Losberne, ‘but I’ve really got to go.’

  ‘I’ll be right back,’ he added, stepping into the corridor in time to catch Red, who had slipped out almost unnoticed, as she turned to open the door to her bedroom. Hers was two doors down from the room that he’d been sharing with Cribb since he’d agreed to his work trial.

  ‘What are you up to later?’ he asked, leaving the question hanging as she reached into the pockets of her track top, her hand movements quick and deliberate, as if she was in a hurry to find her key, unlock her door and disappear inside.

  Twist waited, watching her face as the door to the surveillance room opened and closed and she turned, forcing a smile, her eyes looking right through him at whoever now stood in the corridor behind him.

  ‘You out tonight?’ he asked again.

  ‘You’d better watch it,’ she replied.

  ‘Watch what?’

  She stared at him, raising her eyebrows, trying to tell him something without actually having to spell it out. And then it clicked. He got the message. He’s behind you!

  And when he turned he saw that the man Fagin had addressed as Bill was standing directly behind him, smiling at him, not friendly but mocking him in some way. Twist saw the scar again in the spotlight and thought twice about asking him what he was looking at.

  ‘Twist’s been eating too many hot dogs,’ Red said.

  Twist lowered his head and looked at the floor. Red’s comment made no sense. It was a cover for her earlier warning but, more than that, it was a get-out. A way for him to stand down, accept his place in the pecking order and avoid a confrontation with the alpha dog who had appeared silently behind him.

  He watched as she pushed the door open and stepped into her room then felt the draught on his face as the man called Bill walked past him, leading with his right leg because his left leg was set rigid in a brace, until he was standing facing Red who was holding the door open for him.

  And when the man turned and looked back at him, Twist felt the scorn in his look as he reached down to tap the metallic frame on his left leg.

  ‘You know how I got this?’ he said.

  Twist looked down at the leg then back up at his face.

  ‘I slipped up,’ Bill said, ‘watch you don’t do the same.’

  25

  Pulling the bike across the road, Twist watched Losberne use the crossing just as he’d seen the portly dealer do on Dodge’s spectacles cam the day before. Listening through the crackle of static in his headset for Fagin’s voice, he ducked beneath a plyboard tunnel built to shelter passers-by from the builders working on the scaffolding above, out of the glare of the morning sun which had just topped the grey slate tiles of Mayfair’s rooftops.

  He was under no illusions about where he was at or what he was doing. He was a young offender who had broken parole and fallen in with a gang of professional art thieves who’d sent him pedalling out into an arctic headwind to track Losberne disguised as a lycra-clad cycle courier, as the mark stepped out from Carluccio’s sipping a steaming hot latte, trussed up against the biting wind in a full-length navy blue cashmere overcoat.

  Hastily pulling the tracksuit from his rucksack he picked up Losberne and his latte as he strolled on his way to his gallery.

  ‘Hot coffee,’ Twist spoke into the mouthpiece.

  ‘Roger that,’ Red replied, stepping out from the café in a pair of DM’s, adjusting the horn-rimmed spectacles on her face and zipping up the biker jacket against the biting wind.

  Twist watched as she half ran, half walked, drawing level with him on the pavement on the far side of the road. ‘Sexually liberated St Martins’ had been Fagin’s advice to Red when she’d been picking her outfit.

  Twist followed her to the corner then watched her turn and scan the street ahead. Jet-black eyeliner and thick-rimmed spectacles framed her emerald-green eyes which stared diagonally across the adjacent street corner. Dodge was there in a blue puffar jacket, jeans and a pair of Nike basketball boots. He beckoned them with a flick of two fingers against his thigh and, as they drew level, Twist saw Batesy crouched beside him, his hands hidden, rifling inside an old attaché case.

  ‘Right pocket,’ Twist said to Dodge as he passed him without looking back, knowing that Red and Dodge would already be on the move, walking then running when they were out of sight so that they could get into the covered arcade, the CCTV black spot, before Losberne.

  It surprised Twist how all three of them appeared to be improvising, taking liberties with Fagin’s script which they had rehearsed into the early hours of the morning, and he wondered if this was how they always did things and if it was only because he was new to the game that he was sticking doggedly to the role he’d been asked to play.

  But Fagin had been very clear. Twist wasn’t the leading man. He was there to learn, to tag along and sure, play his part when
the time came, but most of all to watch the others, not act too soon, and on no account try and be a hero if something went awry.

  So Twist pulled up the hood of his track top and cycled fast around the corner to the far end of the arcade where he clocked Dodge, standing, staring into a estate agent’s window, both hands cupped over his eyes as Red whispered something into his ear as Losberne passed behind them.

  And although he’d been specifically instructed not to gawp, Twist could do nothing else, as Dodge stepped back, exclaiming wildly, and hit Losberne’s right hand, sending a geyser of hot coffee shooting up into the air above him to land bang on target down the front of his thousand-pound cashmere coat.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ Losberne shrieked, stepping back, hand on chest like he’d just been shot, his voice audible on the far side of the road. This was the cue for Twist, who started out towards them as Red began dabbing at his coat with a clean handkerchief, Losberne’s rage fading to a whimper of protest as Red looked up at him and smiled.

  Twist watched wide-eyed in admiration as Dodge moved in close, aiming at Losberne’s right pocket with a few targeted jabs, giving a quick nod as Losberne pushed past him and Red; the good doctor was hot, bothered and completely oblivious to Dodge’s fingers in his pocket as the young thief stepped out into the flood of commuters filing through the arcade and hit Twist square in the chest with Losberne’s iPhone.

  Twist looked back just once as Red’s performance began again and then he was free of the crowd and running for the plywood tunnel he’d come from, and Batesy, who was waiting on the first-floor scaffolding still rifling inside the leather attaché case.

  * * *

  Jack! Get a bottle of water. Just do it!’ Red barked at Dodge.

  ‘No, really,’ Losberne stammered, showing every sign that he was beginning to enjoy the young nubile patting at his chest with her frilly handkerchief insisting that it was ‘the least she could do.’

  Oblivious to the fact that behind the green eyes she was counting every second, calculating how long it would take Twist to reach Batesy and his new scanner that he claimed could hack a password and clone iOS 7 in under sixty seconds.

  ‘We were just on the way to the Royal Academy. To see the Gainsborough exhibition,’ she rambled on, breathless, dizzy but watching a flicker of something like interest appear in Losberne’s eyes.

  ‘Oh have you been?’ she asked, watching the smug satisfaction spread across his face as he leant forwards and said:

  ‘As a matter of fact I curated it …’

  * * *

  Twist was running full tilt but he was still thinking. That he had never had an iPhone or a PlayStation 3, which had made him stand out in Beltham as maybe the only boy who hadn’t spent every waking hour of every day sat in front of a console waggling his joystick or scrolling mindlessly through Facebook trying to convince girls that he wasn’t a complete loser.

  But then he reached the end of the tunnel and the thinking stopped as he pushed up off the base of the wall the way Red showed him, caught the planks of the scaffolding and pulled himself up until he was level with the first floor of the empty building looking along the covered gallery at Batesy.

  ‘You got it?’

  Twist nodded and pulled the phone from his pocket and was just about to slide it along the planks when Batesy raised his hand, indicating he should chill and bring it to him in person because they had a ninety-second window to get it back to Losberne. So why hurry?

  Twist watched him work, connecting the iPhone to a brick of a laptop, two fingers tapping away, humming something to himself as Twist played Red’s script in his head and pictured her telling Losberne that Dodge wasn’t her boyfriend.

  Then he heard the slap of Batesy’s hand hitting a wooden plank and the sound of him swearing.

  ‘Shit! Shit! Shit! It’s not working!’

  * * *

  Red had him now. She’d delayed Losberne for over three minutes with her inane chat about street art and watched with satisfaction as his hand searched inside his calfskin wallet for his business card which he handed to her with a smile, the finger and thumb of his right hand making the ‘call me’ sign then reaching out to hail a black cab as it turned the corner.

  ‘So I should call you?’ she asked, feigning surprise that so great a man should be interested in her, as he got into the cab.

  * * *

  ‘The cab went that way!’ Red screeched, pointing Twist to the corner of New Bond Street.

  ‘Rush-hour traffic,’ Dodge shouted after him as he took off in pursuit, ‘he can’t’ve got very far.’

  Pedestrians, cyclists and cars cluttered the street, breaking his pace down to a shuffle with every fifth step a half jump to get the height needed to locate the sixteen black cabs caught in rush-hour traffic. He zigzagged between them, ducking to peer inside and discount the Filipino with the recalcitrant toddler, two boys with a pug, and assorted suits clutching their coffees and handheld devices of their own.

  Until he saw the lights beginning to change and he knew he was never going to find Losberne by staring at the backs of people’s heads. He had to get in front and clock them as they drove past, so he turned, dived past a courier coming fast down the middle of the road and started sprinting down the middle of the road to the traffic lights.

  He made eye contact with the driver of an oncoming lorry which braked, forcing the Vespa behind him to skid, swerve and come slewing up at him, forcing Twist to leapfrog a traffic bollard, then roll across the bonnet of a stationary Saab and hit the pavement on the far side, somehow on his feet. In one fluid movement he continued running again, hoping the cab that was indicating left was Losberne and that he was telling it to pull in – he’d walk as opposed to he’d lost his iPhone and he was going to call the police.

  Twist watched as the traffic began to move through the lights and the cab pulled left then accelerated, his heart sinking before seeing it pull in at the kerb and the rear passenger door open and Losberne step out.

  And as he slowed, watching as Losberne patted himself down, searching for a phone that wasn’t there, Twist heard Fagin’s voice in his ears, telling him not to try to be a hero if the shit hit the fan … He shoved the mobile into the elastic waistband of his track pants, reached for the handle on the roadside door of the cab, opened it and jumped inside.

  ‘Get out of my taxi!’

  Twist looked up. He could see that Losberne was furious so he pulled a leaf from Red’s book and grinned right back at him.

  ‘Sorry, mate. I thought it was free!’ he said, bowing out, pulling on his waistband and shaking the iPhone, feeling it slide down the inside of his left leg and watching the expression on Losberne’s face change from a scowl to a smile when he pointed down to it through the open door and asked:

  ‘Is that your iPhone, mate?’

  26

  Twist watched as Dodge made short work of the wiring, cradling the magnum of champagne in his crotch, pushing gently, turning the bottle in a wide arc, weighing up each target in turn as they presented themselves to him.

  ‘I’m telling you … If it wasn’t for Twist here …’

  The gang had returned to home base half an hour ago to jubilation from Fagin who had cracked open his private stash of tuică to protests from Dodge who’d walked out and returned five minutes later with a magnum of chilled champagne and two kilos of smoked salmon in a JJB Sports duffel bag.

  The five of them sat facing one another in a large horseshoe on the polished wood floor of the ballroom – Dodge, Batesy, Red, Cribb and Twist – each slumped on a giant beanbag running the champagne between them on a skateboard while Fagin moved amongst them, all smiles, clutching his bottle of poison.

  ‘We’d have been up shit creek without a paddle without him … you should have seen him move, FBoss,’ Dodge went on, turning the bottle on Batesy, whose failure had forced Twist to make his mad run.

  Fagin made a big play of the effort involved in dragging one of his knackered armcha
irs over to the group. ‘Don’t get up! No! Oh so kind of you but no!’ he muttered. They all laughed, but nobody lifted a finger to help him.

  Twist watched as Fagin slumped down on the armchair, leaning forward and taking a big swig of tuică from the bottle before giving out a sigh and sinking back into the collapsed springs of the seat, his eyes narrowing into slits so that it was impossible to tell if he was scheming or falling asleep.

  There was whispering and Twist turned to see Dodge reposition the bottle, compensating for gravity, as he gently squeezed the cork which shot fifteen feet across the room and hit Fagin between the eyes.

  ‘Du te’n pizda ma tii!’ Fagin shrieked, leaping up out of the chair, taking swipes at Dodge with the tuică bottle as he rolled backwards using the beanbag to fend off the blows.

  Probably just like old times, Twist thought, looking across at Red as her laughter rang out above the shrieks and the screams and he wondered, not for the first time, why there was one beanbag empty and nobody ever talked about the kid whose job he’d taken, the one called Harry.

  ‘Got a good appetite, I see,’ Fagin said, sitting back down in the armchair, his shirt wet with tuică.

  Twist turned away from Red to Fagin, who smiled and held up the empty bottle of tuică for Cribb to get up and replace.

  ‘Well done continued boyee,’ Fagin said, leaning forward nodding at Twist as the double doors to the ballroom opened and Bill Sikes stepped in to join the party.

  ‘That was the easy bit,’ Sikes said.

  It was hard to tell how long he had been listening or watching Twist ogling his girlfriend.

  ‘But I’ve never seen anyone move like that. Not even Harry,’ Dodge said, staring at Sikes.