Twist Read online

  Twist had heard the rumble of the generator on the roof of the tower block nearest the gate that housed ‘Bumbola Self Storage’ unit. Word was there was a mattress in every unit except one which had been done up as a bar. Each night he’d seen a low red glow shine through the cracks at the edges of the windows that shone off the patent leather shoes of Bumbola’s guards who ensured the season ticket holders’ cars didn’t get scratched while they enjoyed what Bumbola called ‘complete self-security’ inside.

  Twist turned towards the tower, but the nightmare was just beginning. If the Fat Man was coming for him he would find him in no time because as he could now see, there was a chain of tags leading like a paper chase from each corner of the estate to his tower.

  ‘Stop! I will beat you!’

  Twist froze for a second then ran, clocking Bumbola’s giant head leaning out of the window of his white van, screaming at him as the driver swerved left and right avoiding the detritus strewn between his tower and the next to reach him.

  Twist raced across the open space trying to make it to his lift shaft but the driver cut him off. There was a screeching sound and he watched as the white van skidded then spun one hundred and eighty degrees, blocking his path and revealing his tag sprayed up its left side.

  The rear doors burst open releasing a pair of men in black and gold striped Adidas tracksuits who wasted no time separating to either side of the doorway to the tower trying to encircle him. Bumbola hobbled out of the van, pointing his finger at Twist as he advanced across the broken paving stones towards him.

  ‘Catch him! Beat him!’

  Then the van started to reverse. The rear doors were still open and Twist turned and ran for the north face of the towers where the first of the high rises had been demolished and where the mounds of twisted girders and rubble might give him an advantage.

  He jumped down into the clay trenches where the JCBs had clawed up the foundations of the broken buildings and ran along into the maze using his hands as well as his feet to clamber out onto terra firma before running up a scree slope, white concrete dust billowing up around him, stinging his eyes but obscuring his location to the men below.

  He didn’t pause to look when the mound dropped off to nothing, where it had been clawed away by a digger to form a vertical twelve-foot cliff. But he landed well then jumped and caught hold of a twisted girder, the first in a tangled web of rusting metal, bent pipes and broken walls.

  He looked back at the mound behind him and saw one of the thugs searching for him from the top. He was covered from head to toe in fine white powder which lit up blue as Twist heard the signature double whoop of a police car that must be closing fast following the figures of the men behind him.

  He scrambled across the last of the rubble into the tall weeds that had sprung up on its far side and sprinted through the vegetation, feeling the fibres snatch the fabric of his jeans as a grey unmarked police car drew level to his right, then skidded to a stop.

  He turned but could not see the Nigerians. Perhaps they had retreated at the first sign of the police. Perhaps they had called the police. It was pointless speculating. He had to reach the canal and to do that he had to get out of the estate. He saw a string of girders spiralling up over the rubble and wreckage of the next tower block in the row. He jumped and caught it with his hands, pulled himself up, ran monkey-like along it until he had cleared the rubble and was close enough to the ground to let go.

  It had given him a lead of maybe fifty yards and he used it to cut hard right towards the underpass that was his best chance of crossing the canal if the cops hadn’t got there first. Garage doors flew past him then he hurdled the low fence weaving through a playground on the south side of the canal as he saw Bumbola’s van cut down off the road towards the entrance to the underpass.

  He was too preoccupied at first by the plain-clothes cop with the telescopic cosh in the tunnel mouth to see the kid on the BMX cut down the steep incline to his right. But BMX boy struggled to follow him as he ran back up to street level, under a railing and dropped off a ledge to the towpath below, heading for the red railway bridge in the darkness ahead.

  The rivets were hard through the soles of his trainers and the metal was cold to the touch as he gripped the diagonal that rose up to the flat top of the bridge. He looked back at the towpath and saw the first of the two policemen looking up, shaking his head as he watched him climb.

  The cast iron plates were about a foot wide and covered in frost. He slid his foot on the icy surface, pulling his feet to the metal with his hands as he made his slow ascent. The canal ice was already some twenty feet below him and he wondered if it would break if he fell. He looked back at the cops but to his surprise they were looking beyond him to the bridge strut that ran parallel to the one he was on and the boy on the BMX who was cycling along its flat top as the Runt scrambled down the far side.

  They were running across the flat roof of an apartment block some three storeys up. His companions refused to relinquish the pace. Their movements were precise, controlled bursts of power more like machines than men.

  ‘What are you doing? It’s me they want!’ he shouted after them, watching as they dropped out of sight onto a lower roof.

  It was obvious they didn’t need to be there, just as they hadn’t needed to be in the estate alerting him to the fact that his tag had been sprayed in deliberate snaking lines that all converged on his bolthole in the tower. And perversely, even though they would be charged with aiding and abetting him, he could see that they were enjoying themselves. Like running along the precipitous ridges of rooftops was a big game to them.

  ‘Jump!’

  It was the one in the hat, the one who had been riding the BMX across the bridge. He must have sensed that Twist was not with them. His voice was loud and urgent from the roof below as Twist stepped back and jumped, losing his footing and landing on his coccyx and winding himself.

  ‘Get up,’ the boy shouted, pointing skyward. ‘We’ve got company.’

  A steady thrum of rotor blades was clearly audible now, coming low across the rooftops up from the estuary. He watched as the boys sprinted towards the far edge of the roof then skidded to a stop. There was a gap between the roof they were on and the next roof. It was about fifteen foot lower but some twenty feet away. He scanned the roof for another way down, feeling vibrations in his feet and knees then looked back and saw the pair of them sprint for the edge and jump.

  He jogged back on the balls of his feet. Beltham had been full of joyriders who’d tried to escape from thermal cameras in fast cars but he’d never met anyone who’d outrun a chopper on foot. He took a step forward then rocked back twice on his lead foot then ran, lifting his head and pumping his arms, building speed, hitting the two-brick-deep wall which rose up to mark the edge of the roof.

  The scream died in his mouth as the ground disappeared beneath his feet which pedalled in the air in front of him. The far roof rushed up at him, then came the impact as his legs slid out from under him and he skidded to a stop feeling the asphalt bite.

  ‘Son of a bitch!’ he screamed as much from the pain as the adrenalin, as the one in the hat appeared by his side offering him his hand.

  ‘It’s Dodge actually,’ he said, as Twist took it and felt himself being dragged across the roof to a ventilation shaft where the little one was sat panting.

  ‘Meet Batesy,’ Dodge shouted, trying to make himself heard over the sound of the helicopter which was banking after its first pass and coming back to look again. Twist winced with the pain. His back felt like it had been flayed and his ankle was swelling but Dodge didn’t care. He was pointing to a circular yellow tube, three feet in diameter, that was bolted to steel scaffolding about thirty feet to their right.

  He shook his head but they weren’t going to take no for an answer. The little one had got round the back of him again and he felt Batesy’s arms pinning his own to his sides as Dodge reached out and grabbed both his feet.

  ‘Get the fuck
off me!’ he screamed at them, twisting and trying to kick out as they slid him head first into the mouth of the tube.

  It reminded him of a water slide at a leisure centre except that it was almost vertical and there would be a skip full of rubble at the bottom to break his fall not a pool full of warm, chlorinated water.

  ‘Don’t worry about the helicopter,’ said Dodge. ‘The fall will probably kill you.’

  Twist felt Batesy’s hands release him and the acceleration seize him immediately. There was no point fighting gravity as he dropped vertically for thirty feet, arms at his sides, then feeling his shoulders touch the sides, then his back until he was sliding down the tube at an angle of forty-five degrees at a speed somewhat in excess of one hundred and twenty miles an hour. Then the incline flattened and the tube kinked to the right then corkscrewed a half turn then flattened again as the bright dot at the end grew bigger. Now he was flying through the air above a skip filled with cardboard to bounce, slide, spin then tumble across a grass verge before juddering to a complete stop, face down in a flower bed. He lay for a moment, stunned, listening for the helicopter but hearing nothing but shrieks and thuds as Dodge, then Batesy, bounced then tumbled across the grass like sacks of potatoes.

  There were stars dancing above him as he felt himself being dragged to shelter beneath a tree at the edge of what he could now see was a football pitch. Twist wanted to punch out at his tormentors but he was in too much pain. His ribs hurt and the pain intensified when Dodge’s infectious laugh caught him and Batesy until all three of them were lying on their sides, cackling like hyenas.

  Twist felt the anger in him subside. Whoever these two clowns were they had led him to safety. What these two had done for him was so crazy that it didn’t stack up. Was it simply a coincidence that they’d been there, waiting for him back at the estate? Or had they planned it and if so to what end?

  He struggled to his feet following Dodge’s lead and took half a dozen tentative steps forwards. His legs still worked despite the swelling in his left ankle but his back was a mess, grazed on the roof then scraped as he’d slid down the tube and bounced across the half-frozen grass.

  He looked up and saw that Dodge was texting on his mobile phone.

  ‘Do you want to go to prison?’ Dodge asked, aware he was watching him.

  ‘No,’ Twist replied.

  ‘And you’ve got no home to go to now. Am I right?’

  Twist had to nod.

  ‘Glad we’re clear,’ Dodge said, looking up as he slotted the mobile back into a zip-up breast pocket. ‘Because someone will be here any minute to pick you up and then we’re going to take you somewhere safe. Fix up your cuts and bruises and give you some hot food.’

  ‘You set me up, didn’t you?’ Twist asked.

  ‘You believe what you want to believe,’ the boy replied. ‘But if I were you I’d take all the charity you can get.’

  And Twist knew that he was right. He was in no condition to start playing detective and if he walked now he might never know who they were or why they had helped him escape. But the simple fact remained: without them he would have been caught and spent his eighteenth birthday packing his bag for an extended stay in the big house.

  So even though he didn’t trust either of them as far as he could throw them, right now they were the only friends he had. He watched Dodge turn from where he had been leaning against the tree stretching out his calf muscle. He saw the boy’s eyes search the feeder road that led into the estate and widen in alarm.

  ‘Come on,’ Dodge said, ‘the Feds have come back.’

  13

  Where did you go?

  I was upset.

  You were fond of him.

  We all were.

  Like a big sister.

  You said you would go.

  How could I?

  What do you mean?

  It was hard to reach him there.

  But why send Bill?

  I trust Bill.

  Do you trust me?

  Of course I do.

  Prove it.

  How?

  Go and fetch the new boy.

  She’d seen the look of despair in Fagin’s eyes when Bill had come back alone. And while Bill had just stood there and shrugged and lit another cigarette, Fagin had stared at the floor unable to meet her gaze or answer the question that had been on all the boys’ lips.

  Why did you send Bill to fetch Harry when you promised him you would go yourself?

  Fagin, the man she had come to look upon as her father was sly, criminal and ruthless when he needed to be but he had always been straight with her. Even when he was economical with the truth he would look straight at you and smile, but not this time. There had been something about his manner and Bill’s studied indifference that had spooked her and she’d been close to screaming out and voicing her innermost fears – that Harry’s failure to return was no accident and that the ‘family’ that had been his whole world had turned him out, or worse, actively done away with him once his exposure had made him a risk and not an asset.

  But the chance of ever finding out what had happened to Harry was receding and she blamed herself for losing her cool that night. Not only had her rage pushed the truth even further from her but the events that had followed, her capture by the Russians, had bound not only her but all of them into a potentially lethal contract. And what scared her most was that Fagin didn’t know the half of it.

  Bill had been vague in describing to Fagin how he’d met Rodchenko through one of his associates, a man called Andre, at a cross-discipline martial arts title fight at Bethnal Green’s York Hall.

  Red didn’t know how Sikes had linked Andre to Rodchenko, but Fagin was always meticulous and had done his research on the Russian known as Arkady ‘The Archangel’ Rodchenko with his friend Grigoi who had, up until that point, brought them all their jobs.

  Fagin had come back from the meeting smiling. Rodchenko was the real deal and, according to Grigoi, would most likely be looking to secure the paintings for his patron, a man Grigoi knew only by the moniker of Nevsky, which he used to bid in the double-blind private auctions.

  Known in certain criminal circles only as ‘The Prince’, Rodchenko’s only master must have chosen his pseudonym in reference to Alexander Nevsky, the Slav Prince and Russian nationalist hero who had saved Russia, leading the Knights of Novgorod to victory over foreign scum in the Battle on the Ice in the mid-thirteenth century. It was an obscure reference but a meaningful one. According to Grigoi, ‘The Prince’ was well known for his nationalism and for sending three high-ranking triad bosses back to Beijing frozen in blocks of ice.

  Red kicked her bike into life and pulled away from the hotel headquarters. As the traffic cleared she bit her lip and ducked into the racing position to escape the drag, feeling her mobile bunch up in her jacket against the bruises on her abdominal wall, the pain bringing back a vivid memory of the Bear crouching by her side, touching her face tenderly seconds after he had driven his fist hard into her solar plexus.

  Bill had said nothing of her ordeal to Fagin. How that night, which had begun with Bill returning alone without Harry, had led her out onto the streets losing herself in the adrenalin that came with picking pockets until she’d found herself staring through the clear plastic card that had opened a door into the second circle of hell and bound her as collateral in the deal that Bill had done with Rodchenko to steal the six paintings for the Russian crime syndicate.

  She lifted her left foot and felt the third gear bite as the road opened up and the Tower of London receded behind her. She looked down at the speedometer as it topped eighty on the dual carriageway towards the Isle of Dogs and she knew that if she maintained this speed she would be with them in fifteen minutes. Although whether she would find them was now a moot point because the red dot on the satnav taped to her dashboard had stopped flashing.

  He who forms a tie is lost …

  She remembered being led out of Rodchenko’s room by the Bear and l
ooking back to see Bill step towards the Russian vor who was smiling at him, his arms spread wide like a father welcoming home a prodigal son. There was something about the white chamber and the light dancing on the marble tiles from the water in the glass tubes that had reminded her of a church in which a baptism might be performed. But then strong hands gripped her and she was pulled from the room; Bill had never told her what had followed and she had always been afraid to ask. All she really knew was that she owed Bill everything.

  She shivered, then squeezed gently with her right hand and took a racing line across the roundabout and down into the tunnel that led to the HSBC tower. The orange lights in the tunnel flashed on the clear visor of her helmet, recalling the hellish strobe lights as the Russians had led her through the black room to meet Rodchenko.

  She thought about Bill. Before meeting Rodchenko she would never have gone with him. But now she had no choice. She was grateful to him. For coming when she had needed him most. For making her debt to Rodchenko his own. She would play at being Bill’s girl for as long as it took to pay Rodchenko off. But she knew she would not stay with him. They called him Bulldog and he was violent and unpredictable. He came back withdrawn from each meeting with Rodchenko and had begun to view Fagin and the boys with a cold detachment, as if they were just tools to be used, not the surrogate family that had once saved him from the streets.

  * * *

  The bike burst out of the tunnel and up the ramp to the T-junction and she wondered if the stories about the vor code were true. That a man had to be prepared to kill his own family if the vory prince asked it of him. She braked hard and felt the pressure in her arms as the chassis of the Honda with the 1000cc Fireblade engine groaned to a stop at the traffic lights. They were red, giving her enough time to lift her visor and gasp in cold air and try to shut down the images flashing in her brain – of the puppet master with the long face and the black eyes who sat behind the desk in his bunker controlling the machine that would rape, traffic and sell her if Fagin’s gang failed him.