Twist Page 8

  The lights changed. She pulled back the throttle and turned left inland away from the river to the estate where the red dot had disappeared, hoping that the new boy would be easy to spot and would have no aversion to accepting a ride on the back of a V2 rocket.

  14

  She slowed down to look up at the police helicopter as it crossed the road in front of her and banked steeply up above the buildings to her right. Away from the last place she’d seen the red dot blinking on the satnav.

  She dropped to thirty-five as a police car turned out of a side road and came slowly towards her without give a medical supplies courier on a beat-up Honda a second glance. She turned into the cul-de-sac the police had emerged from and pulled the bike into a U-turn, coming to rest alongside an alleyway that led into the estate. Locking the bike, she stepped off it, and untaped the satnav. She pulled off her helmet but kept on a thin, red balaclava as much to keep out the cold as to shield her from prying eyes.

  She walked to the corner of the block where a white plywood map provided the visitor with a guide to the estate. The blocks faced inwards into a landscaped area where trees grew on raised brick-lined banks. Matching the blocks to the shapes on her satnav she started into the estate, reading Casterbridge, Tolchurch and Weatherbury, the names of each block on a white Newham Council sign on the corner of each building.

  A curtain twitched and she saw an eye peer out at her and retreat quickly back into the darkness of the flat. She couldn’t see any more police and she consoled herself that even if they did come they would think twice about getting out of their cars.

  She glanced down at her mobile, hit speed dial then waited. Ten seconds, twenty seconds and then she heard the siren. It was coming from the far side of the estate. She started to run, making a beeline to the furthest block, then slowed beneath a covered walkway and a wire fence that prevented children from running out onto the railway line. On the far side of this was a row of semi-detached suburban houses and beyond that the crenellated roof of what looked like an old factory.

  Hot-stepping across the railway tracks she scrambled up a stack of rotting wooden piles and tore up a trail through brambles on the far side of the railway embankment. When she reached the top she looked further up the tracks and saw a pedestrian tunnel a couple of hundred yards along. The tunnel they must have stopped in.

  She looked down at the satnav and was pleased to see them again, close now, perhaps three hundred yards from here, but moving slowly, which could spell trouble. She sprinted along the litter-strewn path, glancing at the fence until she found a rear gate and ran through a tiny back yard, avoiding washing on the line and a geriatric Labrador which lay prostrate on a flagstone patio.

  Out on the road the siren was louder, coming from behind the houses on the far side of the road. The dot was closer now, the flashes more frequent and when she turned at the corner of the street she saw an unmarked grey police car parked up diagonally in front of the gate which opened into an industrial estate.

  There was movement in the guardhouse to the left of the barrier and she accelerated to a flat sprint.

  ‘Oi!’ a voice called but she ignored it, turning left into a long avenue lined on both sides with square single-storey warehouses along which two plain-clothes cops were running, checking right and left until they slowed and turned right into one of the yards.

  She sprinted after them and took a right turn into the yard before the one they had taken. Climbing wasn’t easy. There was a drainpipe attached to the wall but it was fixed into ageing concrete and the bolts shifted as she pulled herself up it.

  Once on the roof she saw a whitewashed perimeter wall and although it was narrow, maybe half a foot, she found she could balance well enough to jog slowly along it behind the policemen’s backs as they looked up at the roof of the warehouse furthest from them where Dodge and Batesy were lying on the furthest side.

  They had both put on black balaclavas but she could tell them apart by their movements as they crabbed backwards out of sight. She wolf-whistled across and Dodge looked up, raised his hand and pointed at the wall of the warehouse facing him, the one whose roof she was now standing on. Careful to keep out of sight, she began to crawl on the edge furthest from the cops until she had reached the wall above them and could peek out and look down it.

  One of the cops was stood in the middle of the avenue. He was pointing what looked like a yellow toy gun up at a spot on the wall below her. She followed his line of sight and saw two figures directly below her, both climbing the drainpipe. The figure at the bottom was gaining on the figure at the top. He was using his feet to push up easily off the brackets that fastened the drainpipe to the wall at three-foot intervals but the one at the top was struggling, groping with his right foot at a point on the pipe where there simply was no bracket.

  ‘Woohoo!’ she cried.

  But her voice was cut short when she saw the cop flicking the safety off the yellow gun and taking aim at the boy she was supposed to be rescuing.

  15

  There were a couple of rusty masonry nails where there should have been a bracket. His arms were burning, holding his weight as he looked down and saw the cop below him gaining ground. But what worried him more was the one on the ground, the one aiming the taser pistol at his back.

  He turned and looked at the kid called Dodge who was pulling the little one called Batesy up onto the opposite roof.

  ‘Tie yourself on,’ Dodge shouted. ‘He’s going to tase you.’

  Twist looked down and saw the cop on the ground priming the taser. It looked like he was figuring out how to use it which meant it was probably one of the new ones that the Met had got skanked on, shelling out fifty per cent more for them than their counterparts in the US. So the upside was that the cop was slow, but the downside was that this new kind had an effective range just short of sixteen feet.

  ‘Tie yourself on,’ Dodge shouted again. ‘Do it now!’

  Twist felt something touch his shoe and he looked down to see the cop straining to reach up and snatch his shoelaces. He kicked out viciously but didn’t connect. Then he looked down and saw the cop sliding down the pipe. There was, after all, a first time for everything.

  Twist looked down at his belt. It was the only thing strong enough to hold his weight so, wedging his feet and left hand as far as he could into the gap between the drainpipe and the wall, he undid the buckle, pulled the belt then slid it behind the pipe to fasten it to the other end.

  Then he heard a crackling sound and a couple of sharp pinpricks, one in his lower back and the other in his right buttock, followed by a pain so intense that when he opened his mouth to scream, no sound came out. It felt like someone was tearing his muscles apart with a blunt fork. His knees jerked convulsively against the brick wall as superheated pins and needles shredded every nerve ending in his body.

  It finished as suddenly as it had begun. The belt had held him perfectly, tightening its grip as he’d jerked ninety degrees to the left down the wall leaving his arms and legs bruised and hanging limp beneath him. He looked down and saw the cop lying flat on his back clutching his right arm. He was surrounded by pieces of terracotta red tile and the yellow taser gun was lying a couple of feet away from his right hand. For a moment Twist couldn’t put the pieces together, then there was shouting. It was Dodge.

  ‘Hold on. Help is coming,’ he yelled as the little one took aim, frisbeeing a tile at the cop who was still conscious and who was starting to climb the drainpipe.

  Twist blinked the tears from his eyes. The pain had been intense but he wasn’t in shock and, apart from the bruises and the grazed knuckles on his right hand, he was in no worse a situation than before with the climber still coming up at him, trying to grab his ankle.

  Righting himself, he wedged his grazed hand into the gap between the drainpipe and the wall again. It hurt like hell but he had no choice: the belt round his waist didn’t have enough slack in it to use it as a climbing harness. He undid the belt and began to c
limb but felt a searing pain in his lower back and right buttock. He looked down and the bastard cop smiled up at him. He had taken hold of the wires attached to the barbs from the taser and he was yanking on them hard like a maniacal puppeteer.

  ‘Let go and the pain will stop,’ the cop said.

  Twist felt the blood running down his back and his legs and his head began to swim, the bricks in front of him beginning to distend. But just as he was opening his mouth to surrender he felt something hit his face and fall away to his right. The impact was not hard but enough to draw his attention to the rope which was dangling about a foot from his face and a Mexican wrestler in a red mask who was climbing down it towards him.

  He felt a karabiner snap tight on his belt as the person in the mask’s hands explored his lower back and found the barb, cutting the wire that held it, then moved lower to cut him free of the wire attached to his buttock. His head was swimming now and he fell backwards and felt himself hanging, suspended from the rope as the cop caught hold of his ankle and the Mexican Wrestler worked fast, upside down to tie a makeshift harness beneath his shoulders then reach down and with a single slash of the knife cut through the belt and buttons that held his trousers on.

  The Mexican Wrestler had only said two things the whole time they’d been together and they’d both been commands.

  ‘Swallow this,’ had been the first command, offering him a yellow pill which he’d struggled to swallow and then: ‘Don’t move.’

  Which he hadn’t despite the excruciating pain, as the wrestler had dug out the barbs with the point of a very sharp-looking knife as Twist thought about the injured cop and the helicopter which must be circling back to find them.

  And as the yellow pill kicked in and the pain in his ribs, back and ankle had subsided, the game had begun again, trying to keep up with the person in the mask in an acrobatic version of Simon Says that had led them across the roof, along the top of a narrow white washed wall then down a drainpipe and out into the maze of warehouses, zigzagging and doubling back until they were across the railway tracks, through the council estate and sat astride a beat-up motorbike that had made good their escape.

  The ride had been uneventful. Twist strapped to the courier box on the back of the bike behind the wrestler as day had passed into night. People, cars and buildings rushed past in a blur as the bike topped the ton, heading east towards the badlands of the Essex borders. And if he hadn’t dreamed it then it must have been real – the sensation of assisted flight, clutching to the back of a flaming meteor which banked to the left and then to the right, threatening to tip you off, roaring when it accelerated, low-pitched at its maximum velocity and high-pitched when it slowed and turned.

  And how long they had ridden he could not tell, just that they had arrived in a wasteland with the stars above them and points of light closer to the ground illuminating giant steel balls that hung suspended by chains as thick as a man’s neck and houses reduced to rubble and swept up into giant conical piles at the feet of the monstrous machines.

  And Twist, slumped forwards, his head lolling on his chest, was now appreciating the ride and the rider who handled the bike with great skill, navigating through the wreckage and climbing a steep, muddy escarpment then dropping off the far side, standing in the saddle and balancing the bike perfectly as the back wheel slid down onto the flat and a dirt road compacted by the ten-ton diggers and thirty-ton lorries that used it.

  Until at last the wrestler had pulled to a stop atop a rise and pointed down at headlights flicking on and off about half a mile away in the dusk. A signal answered by the dust exploding up off the rear wheel of the bike as they tore down onto the plain and across it to meet the lights.

  And despite the numbness and the exhaustion Twist felt something like fear. Fear of this gang who were not like any gang he had encountered before and the answer they would give when he asked them why they did it. Jumping off buildings and outrunning Feds might be enough for them but Twist had his doubts. So what was their angle? Because they weren’t just doing it for fun and if this was the case, what could possibly explain the effort and risk they had made to help him?

  A white van accelerated towards them and swung into a tight handbrake turn, spewing up gravel and dust. He watched as the side door slid open and Batesy leaned out, holding on with one hand and beckoning him with the other as the motorcycle skidded to a stop alongside. And there was Dodge, his head round the door frame, grinning like a loon.

  ‘You’ve met Batesy, haven’t you?’ Dodge said. ‘And in case you were wondering, you can walk away now if you want to. It’s your call entirely.’

  Twist stood for a moment, feeling the cold wind on his hands and his face. He was exhausted and hungry and he had no money, no family and nowhere to go now that his hideout in the tower had been compromised. So he did the only thing he could do. He staggered forwards and half fell into the strong hands that reached out from the back of the van and laid him down on the side that didn’t hurt across the row of seats inside.

  And as Batesy slid the door shut behind them, Dodge knelt beside him and turned his head sideways so that they were face to face.

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ he said. ‘We’re definitely not kidnappers but would you mind wearing this?’

  Twist looked at the black pillow case in Dodge’s hand and shook his head.

  ‘I didn’t think so,’ Dodge replied.

  16

  They must have crossed a river at some point. A gentle incline had been followed by a descent that had exactly mirrored it but he couldn’t list more than ten London bridges so the exercise had been futile in all but one respect. It had momentarily distracted him from the fact that he was being driven blindfold in the back of a locked van by a gang of wall-climbing anarchists who had clearly been stalking him for some time.

  ‘You can take it off now.’

  It was Dodge’s voice and it was followed by the sound of the van door sliding open. It surprised Twist when he pulled off his hood how dark it now was and how surreal everything had become. It was as if the day had been condensed and accelerated into an alternative, more intense version of reality. He felt disorientated and confused and now with the adrenalin wearing off, exhausted.

  He’d rerun the sequence of events several times in the half-hour journey in the van and try as he might, he couldn’t help reaching the same conclusion. He’d been set up. The tags had been put there to signpost where he was hiding in his squat in the tower, but more perniciously still, to provoke Bumbola into all-out war. He could never go back.

  And the fact that two strangers had showed up at the exact same time his tag had appeared all over the estate made them the prime suspects, but he still didn’t know why they had chosen to fuck his shit up and not someone else’s. It felt like they’d singled him out, but why and for what purpose?

  It had been a strange day. Like he’d woken up and everything had been upside down, from the tags to the chase to the wrestler running down the wall. It was as if he had stepped through the looking glass and there was no turning back. His world had changed the moment he’d laid eyes on the two jokers in the skate bowl and he began to wonder if anything was going to be the same again.

  He opened his eyes wide then squinted, looking out at his surroundings. It was a technique he’d learned off a burglar in Beltham. A way of getting your eyes to adjust faster to the darkness and he’d often used it at night when he’d been out tagging in places where a light would have drawn attention to himself.

  It was true what they said, that blind men must feel more acutely with their other senses, but it didn’t take extra sensory perception to figure out that he was stepping out of the van into a shin-deep pool of ice-cold mud.

  ‘I don’t think we were properly introduced,’ Dodge said, holding out his hand to pull Twist out of the muddy trough. Twist found his hand in the darkness and allowed himself to be pulled out of the water-filled rut he’d just stepped into, watching as the van’s white door slammed shut and it
sped off, its wheels spinning in the slurry.

  ‘How’s your ankle?’ Dodge asked, noticing that Twist was favouring his right foot.

  Twist just shrugged. The left one was worse but the shock of the impacts had left him aching all over, in the joints of his knees, hips and shoulders, to say nothing of the bruises when he had slipped and fallen during the chase.

  ‘I’ve never seen anyone get tased before,’ Dodge went on. ‘It was well funny.’

  ‘Ha ha,’ Twist replied with all the sarcasm he could muster as they moved off together over the mud on a pathway made out of wooden pallets that wound between mounds of bricks and hastily erected awnings.

  Twist felt the bruising in his back and buttocks. The pain was muted. They had given him some kind of pill called Vicodin in the van and it had taken the edge off it. There was just a dull ache remaining and although he didn’t feel as spooked now they were away from the Feds, his mind looped back to one question: who was his rescuer, the mysterious Mexican Wrestler who’d turned up in the nick of time?

  ‘Who was the man in the mask?’ he asked, as Dodge belly-rolled over a large section of piping.

  ‘Wild outfit right?’ Dodge replied, keeping moving so that Twist had to run to catch the rest of his response.

  ‘I think you’ll be surprised,’ Dodge went on. ‘He looks like a real macho guy but I think you’re going to like him.’

  As the ground rose beneath them up a gentle incline, Twist became aware of a white halo of light from a lantern swinging on a pole in the distance, its light diffused by the rain and the darkness. It was like their beacon, their North Star, and he followed Dodge as he used it to navigate through the mess of what must be a massive building site, through a hole where the wire fence had been cut into an overgrown garden, chest-high with weeds and stinging nettles, and along a beaten-down path towards a derelict old house at the top of a two hundred metre incline which had once been a lawn.