Twist Read online

  For it was Red who reeled them in and so felt the most guilt when trouble found the boys. Red who had hooked Dodge and Batesy and Harry, in turn, leading them back, dazzled by her beauty and her skill only to be met by a skinny old, hook-nosed gypsy with a straggly red beard.

  Nor would it do to simply fill it with an exact replica of Harry either. A traceur who was as quick-witted and nimble as Harry would answer only part of this job’s description but not the part that Fagin now saw as vital to the mission’s success, a role that in spite of Snark’s protestations might very well prove impossible to fill.

  For the person Fagin sought was refined and by their nature private. An individual who, if they continued to exist outside fairy tales and films, must by the nature of their crime move unnoticed in elevated circles, attend parties at galleries and museums, and stand on the sidelines at the glittering auction houses before returning to their garrets and outhouses to exercise their spectacular gift for emulation.

  Quick-witted, gymnastic two-bit vandals might be ten a penny on Snark’s streets but Fagin very much doubted if the toerag could bring him what the big score demanded; a master-forger who could not only break, enter, run and hide with the best of them but also skew auction prices and blight the walls of galleries.

  And the clock was ticking. If Snark could not bring the talent then Fagin would have to look elsewhere and how would he hook such a catch without the girl? Half mother, half sister to all the boys in the gang who might be the only way to draw such a talent into their company and so, staring in horror at his grizzled appearance in the window of the train as the struts of the tunnel flashed by, he asked himself the hard questions again.

  Why had he left Harry out in the cold for fourteen days after the White Cube? Why hadn’t he gone himself rather than sending Sikes?

  He recalled his hands palms up on his desk as Dodge had appeared in the doorway and joined Red, putting his arm round her to comfort her and how, in that moment, he’d seen something like weakness in her for the first time. That when he’d risen, wringing his hands together, asking for her forgiveness, he’d seen a shadow fall across her eyes.

  Did she want to tear the gang apart now? To throw it all away after they had worked so hard to get a score like the one that Sikes had brought them?

  And before she’d walked out on him she’d turned and looked back at him from the doorway. Although there was still fire in her eyes there had also been fear and Fagin had realised at once that it was not just her guilt over Harry that was troubling her.

  Looking up from a double page Metro spread on celebrity handbags he thought again about his friend Grigoi’s surprise reappearance three years ago. So many years had passed since he’d last seen the thickset boy with the mono-brow standing in a snowdrift looking back at their village as Ceauşescu’s police had corralled their friends and families into coaches and open lorries like sheep.

  It had never occurred to Fagin that he would see him again or be in a position to offer him such lucrative contract work, supplying one of the cartels that in turn supplied a closed online black art market that fed the appetites of the global elites.

  He stepped off the Tube at Bank station and switched back through an exit tunnel to beat the crowd as he changed from the Docklands Light Railway to the Central Line. He looked down the platform at the city workers who were elbowing their way to the front. Sleek was the word he would have chosen to describe them in a police line-up. Neat in their pinstripes as he visited each of their faces in turn, assessing their net worth with far more acuity than their regulators. Then, as the train screeched to a halt, something gold caught the light beaming from inside the carriage and his eyes alighted on the wrist of a tall man with a dome-shaped bald head. It was a gold Rolex. Older than its owner, Fagin guessed, as he stepped up onto the train, careful not to lose sight of the man’s shining skull.

  The air grew fetid as the train entered the darkness of the tunnels and he squirmed his way between the heaving, stinking bodies, feeling wallets and purses protruding from back pockets crying out to be taken.

  ‘I can’t breathe … excuse me, sir, I’m choking,’ he gasped, moving forwards with his head down as people moved apart until he’d reached the middle of the carriage where he found himself trapped and held fast where the commuters stood thickest and could not budge to let a sick man through.

  He imagined Harry in a similar situation. Most likely he would be operating alone, preferring not to trust finding his way wherever people congregated and were distracted by sex or drugs or movement. Getting more confident, less inhibited as his success grew until one day he would overstep the mark or form an alliance and they would catch him and match him to the boy last seen clawing at his burning eyes outside the White Cube.

  He slid the fingers of his right hand from the pocket of his jacket and imagined them as eels slithering through the solid mass of bodies which swayed off-centre as the train banked, exerting pressure on his target’s back so that he never felt the sharpened fingernail slice through the cotton holding the button of his trousers in place.

  The wallet was heavy as he rifled the notes and the cards from it then dropped it in the forest of legs behind him, catching a glimpse of the Rolex still on the man’s wrist as he gripped the handrail above him. The train slowed, screeching to a stop in the next station and Fagin held himself back as the people shuffled around him, recalling a time when such an opportunity would have seen him snatch it and run. A time when he was as cocksure and fleet-footed as his boys were now, disappearing into the crowd leaving the man floundering shouting ‘thief’ as the watch switched hands before reaching the street above.

  Youth versus experience, short versus long cons, opportunism versus well-laid plans, the lessons of a lifetime tumbling over one another as the train doors opened and he stepped off, lowering his head and disappearing into the crowd, scurrying up the tunnel marked exit to an elevator which opened into the bitter cold of the street outside.

  Too cold to steal a gold watch, to dig a grave or run through the forest at night while the vampire Ceauşescu corralled your people like cattle in barren state farms hundreds of miles from their ancestral homes. He thrust his hands deep into his pockets and recalled those nights alone on the mountain after the secret police came. Emerging from whichever snow hole or abandoned barn he’d lain up in during the day to watch the sun set, remembering which peak or which point on which ridge it had sunk behind and beginning his run.

  Bitter memories flooded his mind and disorientated him as he made his way along the grey, frozen street past a Chicken Cottage and a Costcutter, seeing the faces of the peasants who had betrayed his family and his father’s blazing eyes as the police held him, shouting at him to run and never look back. Westwards with the wind in his face with the ghosts of his friends and family at his back, calling him still, their voices shrill from open drains and alleys, whispering that he was Roma not Romanian and that he must trust no one and learn to spot the false friends who would turn him over to the Securitate.

  He crossed the road at the traffic lights and stepped into what remained of a landscaped area, thick privet bushes growing in a children’s playground at the edge of the condemned estate.

  ‘Cornelius?’ A boy’s voice, nasal and almost hoarse, came from behind him.

  He turned and saw a squat figure in a black hooded parka raise his right hand and press his index finger down on the nozzle of a can of glossy black paint and make his mark on a green metal circuit box.

  ‘SN … ARK?’ Fagin read aloud.

  The boy grinned at the recognition and revealed stained teeth shunted into place by metal braces.

  ‘Which tower is it?’ Fagin asked, watching as the boy swung the can and nodded with his head.

  ‘Show me.’

  The boy set off at a brisk pace towards the point where the wire fence protecting the site met a six-foot wall which backed onto the high street. He watched him reach his hand inside a hole in the fence and unhook the
wire to open a gap wide enough to step through and low enough to be sheltered from the street above.

  He felt his chest constrict as he followed Snark, who broke into a slow jog several times until he reached the penultimate tower in the row where he stopped, locked his palms together and offered Fagin a leg-up so he could get a better view.

  ‘Tell me he ain’t heading for a fall,’ Snark sniggered.

  Fagin planted his foot on Snark’s hands and reached the top of the wall, pulling himself up until he could see the nearest tower block and the image of the giant man plunging to his death down its nearest face.

  Fagin stroked his beard and wondered if it was possible to go bald on your chin then he looked down at Snark whose sharp features were hidden by his parka’s faux-fur fringe.

  ‘Are you sure it’s him?’ Fagin asked.

  ‘Yeh,’ said Snark. ‘It’s him.’

  Fagin twisted his beard in his right hand and motioned Snark to lead him to the boy’s bolthole with his left. He had already played through what he would say to the boy if they ran into him. It was taxing always having to be the brains of the outfit. Having to think two steps ahead. So this time he hadn’t bothered, reassuring himself instead that there was always a deal to be done.

  Snark stopped and fixed his ferrety eyes on Fagin.

  ‘You need him, don’t you?’ he said. ‘You want me to help you persuade him?’

  Fagin stopped tugging his beard and stared blankly at Snark without compassion, watching as the youth took a step back half clenching his fists as Fagin drew his long thin hands from the deep pockets of his coat and extended them palms down towards Snark, like a magician dispelling any suspicion of foul play.

  He watched Snark’s eyes follow his right hand as he slipped it inside the left breast pocket of his dirty green overcoat.

  ‘Who sent you?’ Fagin asked.

  ‘Dodge,’ Snark replied. ‘We used to run together. He said you was a man down and did I still tag with the boy that did real art. I always look out for my old mates …’

  Fagin watched Snark flinch as he withdrew his hand swiftly from his jacket pocket and hit him between the eyes with a crumpled fifty pound note.

  ‘Of course you do, Master Snark,’ Fagin replied, as Snark crouched down and unravelled the note and held it up to the light. ‘Now, do exactly as I tell you.’

  12

  He woke up to the sound of hammering on the quarter-inch steel roof. He knew it wasn’t rain because it was louder and more percussive, but he didn’t click that it was hail again until he had belayed down the elevator shaft and stepped outside. Hands deep inside the pockets of his overcoat he started walking across a carpet of frost, enjoying the crunching the marble-sized frost balls made beneath his feet.

  It was well below zero and there were patches of ice where the ground water had frozen in the night. It was no weather to be out working or smashing your BMX on the estate’s overgrown concrete half-pipe. He’d heard the yell before he saw them there. A boy in a cock hat screaming as he shot fifteen feet up off the near end of the tube followed by his short-arse mate who was on foot aping his friend’s manoeuvres like he was on a bike too.

  Twist wanted to get closer to get a better look at them but he was nervous. Maybe he was just being paranoid after the shit at the gallery but something about them didn’t feel right. He kept low as he skirted the allotment and came up slowly behind the grassy knoll that abutted the skate park. He could see them both clearly now. The one on the BMX was wearing an old-fashioned hat, crushed and raffish, at an angle shading his face. He was balancing on the pedals of his BMX as the other ran up and down the half-pipe using his speed to push off the tops and kick his imaginary back wheel in the air.

  Twist stood up and walked towards them, keen to get a better look at the show, but as he approached the one on the BMX seemed to sense him and he turned, doffed his hat then hopped the bike about face and dropped silently off the edge.

  ‘You’re Twist, innit?’ a voice started behind him. ‘Fierce.’

  Twist spun round, surprised that the runty one had somehow got round behind him.

  ‘What is?’ Twist asked, guessing he meant the BMX bandit’s moves.

  But the boy shook his head and pointed at the concrete floor of the kidney-shaped tube, forcing Twist to take a few steps forwards, squinting in the darkness to make out anything as the one in the hat exploded up the near edge of the pipe, turned a complete corkscrew in the air and landed the bike perfectly, the mags spinning down into the bowl, his right hand trailing low to the right side of the bike, his index finger outstretched, pointing at a series of jet black tags on the concrete floor.

  ‘You been busy, innit?’ the runty one said as Twist reached the edge of the bowl and looked down at a string of over twenty of his own tags that curved like a daisy chain around the smooth surface of the bowl.

  His head was a blizzard of questions that needed answers, because the tags were nothing to do with him. He’d given all that up. He’d been told he had talent. Not just for climbing places other taggers were too scared to hit, but real talent. So he’d gone straight and taught himself as much as he could, read as many art books as he could find in the library. But there was a lot that he couldn’t learn without being taught. Art school. That was his dream, and now someone was fucking with it. Putting up his old tags like a sign around his neck that read: Twist. Sociopath. Parole breaker. Beat him. Lock him up. Eat him alive.

  He looked up at the two clowns who were still hard at it. But how had they found him and how did they know his name was Twist? It was just too much of a coincidence. Two strangers materialise out of nowhere then match you to your tag.

  He glanced around. There was no visible surface that didn’t have his name on it. The walls, the litter bins, even on one of the burnt-out cars that littered the weed-ridden border where the estate met the wall.

  He took a deep breath and held his left wrist in his right hand then counted one thousand, two thousand, three thousand, reciting the words calmly until the fire in his head died down. It was a trick they taught all young offenders at Beltham. They called it impulse control. And it worked because he was ‘responding’ not ‘reacting’ to the runty one who was goading him by staring open-mouthed at him while the other one pedalled in circles around him giving him lip.

  ‘Twist?’ the one on the BMX said. ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘Oh?’ replied the runt, picking up the double act. ‘Isn’t he the one that broke parole, the one what Bumbola, the Fat Man, is looking for in connection with the vandalising of his ve-hicle?’

  Twist turned, watching the one on the BMX. It was clear he was the alpha dog. Not big or physically menacing but there was something behind his eyes that scared Twist, an intelligence, a low cunning that had set alarm bells ringing.

  ‘Dunno,’ Twist said. ‘I’m not from round here.’

  He watched the one on the BMX balance this statement then sit down in the saddle and turn and pedal furiously back to the tube, his knees rising up above chest height like he was riding a kid’s bike.

  Twist made eye contact with the runt as he backed away from him. The cheeky little shit was still staring at him mouth open. He wanted to go over and shove his fist down his throat but he knew a fight would get him nowhere. It would be two on one and they would be armed. Responding not reacting, he turned and started to wrestle with the doom they’d just laid on him. Roughnecks on BMXs he could handle but six foot four, three hundred pound Nigerian career criminals were best left well alone.

  He knew the Fat Man on sight. His real name, the one printed on the ID he wore on the front of his ribbed commando jumper, was Ake Bumbola. Twist saw him talking into his mobile each night, parked up by the only entrance of the estate. With his peaked black-and-white cap and his gut he resembled Idi Amin.

  When the estate had been condemned Bumbola had volunteered to patrol it. He had forged documents stamped by a friend who worked as a cleaner in the Nigerian High Commis
sion. They showed that he’d been one of thirty police officers in Abuja trained by an NGO who had employed retired members of London City Police’s Serious Fraud Unit before sectarian violence had broken out and forced him to seek asylum in the UK. His papers had stacked up with Newham’s Council. They had been hard-pressed finding anyone willing to police the abandoned estate after dark.

  With the contract signed he had wasted no time. His business model was like a Venus flytrap. When he’d first arrived on the estate, Twist had been wary. He’d watched from his roof as Bumbola had opened the eastern gate at sundown each night, watching the girls appear in ones or twos, taking up their positions beneath the shadow of the plywood hoardings that shielded them from the main road above.

  The hookers paid protection but the real revenue came from their johns who arrived in their cars after work. Bumbola’s security waited until a car started rocking before they went over. A tap on the window from a man in a white peaked hat followed by a camera flash were normally enough to get a john’s attention. Then the fun really began. The charge was trespassing but the inference was clear. If they didn’t pay the two hundred quid on-the-spot fine then the car licence plate would be reported to the police.

  The security officer would then hand them a receipt with a code on it and the address of an encrypted local authority website. By visiting the website they could delete their licence plate number from the database before it was sent to the police on the last day of each month.

  But the fun really began when the john got home and inputted his code as instructed. Sure enough, his name would appear alongside their licence plate but clicking delete would not remove it. Instead it would bring up the photograph of them caught in flagrante along with an offer of a four hundred pound ‘season ticket’ for ‘Bumbola Night Car Park’ and ‘Bumbola Self Storage’.