Twist

by Tom Grass

  Twist stared at her, bracing himself for the slap which he knew was coming but which stung nonetheless.

  ‘To be honest, Oliver,’ Brownlow began, ‘a bit of graffiti doesn’t really concern us in the Art and Antiquities Squad. Except when someone walks off with a chunk of Banksy. Your run-in with Warden Bumbola was just a happy accident that brought you to our attention. What we really want to talk to you about is this gentleman.’

  Twist looked down as Bedwin opened her matt grey folder and pulled out a mugshot, turning it so that there could be absolutely no mistaking Fagin’s face, twenty years younger, his hair in a ponytail, a skinny, gypsy thief.

  ‘Almost a cliché, isn’t he?’ Brownlow began. ‘Cornelius Faginesc, FBoss, Fagin …? He started out running gangs of London dippers on the underground – kids he found at Simon shelters, on the streets. He moved up a gear in August 2011, using his gang to orchestrate large-scale looting. But the weird thing about him and the reason he’s come up on my radar is that during these raids on warehouses, high-ticket luxury goods and boutiques in the last two years, he’s developed a taste for art … So far he’s avoided what we call “headache art”, stuff above the hundred thousand mark that he can’t fence quickly, but we have it on good authority that he’s aiming a little higher now. Possibly stealing to order …’

  Twist didn’t flinch.

  ‘Now, how about this chap?’

  Twist looked down. It was a surveillance shot taken on the street. It showed Sikes with another man.

  ‘William Sikes, alias Bulldog, born Peckham 1984. An orphan, like you. Graduate of the Fagin academy. Now also moving in higher circles including …’

  Twist watched the lady cop’s finger slide across the glossy surface of the photograph to a man with a bowling ball for a head. A bull of a man in a black puffar jacket.

  ‘Archangel, born Arkhangelsk, 1972.’

  He rubbed his eyes and tried to look bored but it was a struggle. It was the Russian. From the penthouse, the one Red called Rodchenko with the paintings on his wall.

  ‘How am I supposed to know these guys?’ he asked, watching as Bedwin pulled a third photograph from her folder and turned it as she pushed it over towards him.

  He bit his lip. It was a CCTV grab of him and Red going into the Tate. He was fiddling with his iPad as she strode ahead confidently.

  ‘Nancy Lee, alias Red. Known associate of Sikes and Fagin …’

  Twist gulped. Brownlow clocked it.

  ‘Pretty girl, isn’t she?’ he went on.

  Twist looked up at him. He had wrinkles around his eyes which were brown. There was real concern in them.

  ‘I could get you out of this, you know. If you gave me something to go on,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t have anything.’ Twist shrugged.

  He knew in situations like this it was better to say nothing. Not act up. Dumb insolence would get you nowhere. Just act like you weren’t bothered. That you were on top of it, had done nothing wrong and so had nothing to account for.

  ‘That’s not what I was hoping you were going to tell me. You see, when someone’s been used by Sikes, they’ve got a nasty habit of ending up like this …’

  Twist looked down at the next photograph that came spiralling out of the file. There was a boy on it. He was lying facing the sky. His legs one side of a fence, his arms the other so that his body formed an inverted U, bent against the natural curve of his spine had been broken by the spike which had punched up through his back emerging from his sternum.

  ‘His name was Harry. Harry O’Neill, born 1996. Died last month,’ Bedwin said. ‘Red’s last running partner. Take a good look.’

  She held up the photograph for him to take but Twist did not take it. He was afraid his hands would shake uncontrollably if he lifted them up off the table top.

  ‘So you don’t know Sikes?’ Brownlow said.

  ‘No,’ Twist replied.

  ‘I’ll trust you on that.’

  Bedwin glanced across at Brownlow. Twist could see that she didn’t trust it at all.

  ‘So there’s no reason you wouldn’t want to help us catch him,’ Brownlow said.

  Twist squirmed in his seat. They must know they had him now.

  ‘He wouldn’t do that to Red. She’s his girlfriend,’ he said, listening to Bedwin who had begun to chuckle darkly to herself.

  ‘Don’t mind DS Bedwin. Used to work in Domestic Violence,’ Brownlow went on.

  ‘I could tell you some stories,’ she said, daring Twist to ask her.

  ‘You all right, son?’ Brownlow asked, pulling his hand from his pocket and placing some loose change on the table. ‘Go and get yourself a drink from the machine out there. I’ll have a coffee, black, one sugar and Bedwin here likes tea, milk, no sugar.’

  Twist stood up. His head was spinning. He reached down for the coins and saw that Bedwin was putting the photographs back in the file as Brownlow studied the space between his thumbs which were lying flat on the table either side of Harry’s corpse.

  Outside the room the world began again. Saturday morning and Newham’s underclass were beginning to lay siege to the station. There was a drunk outside the revolving security doors banging on them, crying to be let in.

  Twist put a one pound coin into the slot and found the code for black coffee with sugar. There was a whirring sound as the cup was rotated into place and he stood up and glanced back inside the room where he could see Brownlow and Bedwin locked in a heated discussion.

  Then he glanced up at the clock which read nine a.m., the second hand ticking away, and he realised that he needed to get out. He looked over at the heavy security door locking him and the police inside the station. They had the same kind of doors in Beltham, the kind that could only be opened with a key fob from the outside or from the security staff behind bullet-proof glass inside the station itself.

  He pulled the coffee from the machine and put in the money for the tea, watching the clock tick round. Then he walked round the partition so he could look out into the street. There was a woman wearing a blanket out there. She had wild scarecrow hair and she was clutching a two litre bottle of White Lightning cider. Twist stuck his middle finger up at her through the glass.

  It took her a second to focus, then her chin jutted out and she freaked. The cider bottle exploded against the security door and she followed quickly after it, snatching at it, bending at the hips, sweeping the floor with her hands until she had it clutched tight to her chest but the other drunk, the guy with the nose, had seen it too. He grabbed her face and she started screaming. A light went on above the door and Twist saw two policemen leave their plexiglass cage and run across the space he was in to break up the ruckus.

  He watched as the security door opened and they stepped out to deal with the fracas and Twist smiled, watching the door slowly close behind them, two feet, one foot then slow as the piston on the hinge filled with compressed air.

  * * *

  ‘You are planning on letting him go, right?’ Bedwin asked Brownlow, whose back was still to the small window in the door to the interview room.

  ‘I want to give him another chance. There’s something about him …’ Brownlow replied, nodding to himself.

  ‘That’s lucky …’ Bedwin replied, pointing out through the glass.

  Brownlow stood and turned round, following Bedwin’s finger out across reception in time to see Twist vault the partition and catch hold of the top right-hand corner of the security door.

  36

  He ran from the police station with the theme of an old film playing in his head. It took him about ten seconds and eighty yards before he realised it wasn’t in his head but in his pocket. And the theme music was from The Godfather. It had sounded way better coming out of the speakers in the Prince Charles cinema off Leicester Square than it did coming out of the mobile phone he now had in his hand.

  ‘Who is this?’ he asked.

  ‘DS Brownlow. Nice stunt back there, Oliver. I just wanted to make
sure you’ve got my number. In case you remember anything about our Mr Sikes.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Twist replied, and hung up.

  He walked across the road to an open storm drain that would take Brownlow’s concern down into the sewers of Newham just as he was about to drop the phone.

  ‘Oliver!’

  Twist looked up and saw Red jogging down the street towards him. He slipped the mobile phone back in his pocket as she approached him, looking surprised.

  ‘They let you out?’ she asked, hands on her knees, regaining her breath.

  ‘I escaped,’ Twist replied, burying his face inside his hood, trying to figure out where they stood now and why she had returned.

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘Seven care homes. Beltham Young Offenders Institute. I can get out of anywhere.’

  Red started laughing. Then he looked up at her and she caught sight of his two black eyes and the strip holding his nose together.

  ‘Your poor nose …’

  He saw her staring at him. Shock registering at his mess of a face and something else, something new that hadn’t been there before. Something she was quick to conceal. Twist knew that what had happened between them was over. In the past. And there could be no going back. But what upset him more was that he could now see that Red had taken him up there for a reason. And that, between the Godfather in his pocket and the Devil in the penthouse, he was stuck between a rock and a very hard place.

  ‘Better get back,’ Red said. ‘Bill’s been asking questions. I told him you went to the club with Dodge and Batesy.’

  ‘What d’you do that for?’

  ‘I can’t tell him I was coming home with you at six a.m.! He’d kill me …’

  Twist winced. He knew now it was true. It was what he feared most and he would do anything to stop it happening. He watched as Red turned to run back the way she had come. Back to her so-called family.

  ‘We don’t have to go back, Red. We could go anywhere in the world. Anywhere … Berlin …’

  It sounded dumb. Like a little boy telling a little girl that he was going to take her up in a hot air balloon to a place where there were no lessons, just playtime and beautiful happy children who never had to do any homework.

  ‘And what are we going to do for money?’ Red said.

  ‘You could get a job as a dancer …’

  ‘We’re this close to payday, Oliver. This close …’ she said, holding her finger and thumb close together and peering through the gap at him. ‘I’m not backing out now. You want out, I can’t make you come with me. But if you don’t come they’re going to know you peached.’

  It was a funny expression but he knew what it meant and it made his blood boil.

  ‘I didn’t!’

  ‘Only one way to prove it,’ Red said.

  It was her last word as she turned and walked, then broke into a slow run. Slow enough that he could catch her but fast enough to force him to make a decision. Go back and finish the job or walk away now and risk never seeing her again.

  37

  Fagin, Bill and Dodge turned as one when Red walked back in with Twist. Only Batesy stayed where he was, headphones on, staring into a single monitor, watching as Losberne appeared in shot in the cobbled mews behind his gallery and giving urgent hand signals to a van driver who was backing slowly into the loading bay.

  ‘You’ve got some explaining to do, boy,’ Sikes began.

  Twist didn’t like being called ‘boy’ any more than Dodge was going to enjoy being roped into his lie.

  ‘I went to a party. A club with Dodge and Batesy … ask them, go on.’

  ‘What club? What’s its name?’ Sikes asked.

  ‘Man, I was wasted. I dunno … it was a pop-up club, look, Dodge,’ he said, appealing to Dodge who had turned back towards the monitor, ‘help me out here … Batesy?’

  ‘They both got back hours ago. So what kept you? And what the fuck happened to your face?’ Sikes rammed his question home like a fist.

  Dodge and Batesy turned now to look at him. Fagin scrutinising him and Sikes staring, leading the case for the prosecution as Red stood back, knowing better than to say a word, staying well out of it.

  ‘I, er … got arrested.’

  Bill exchanged a look with Fagin who shook his head.

  ‘Been having a quiet word, have you?’ Sikes went on.

  ‘It wasn’t like that! It was this traffic warden, see? I wrote on his van, I mean, they say I wrote on his van but I didn’t. It was a set-up but anyway, he got a bit …’ Twist paused, picking his words carefully, ‘… vexed.’

  He watched as Sikes took the information in, Fagin wrinkling his beak, like he had smelt something bad.

  ‘You wrote on his van last night?’ Sikes asked.

  ‘Nah, last week. I just ran into him today when I was on my way back here wi—’

  Twist stopped himself just in time, risked a desperate glance at Red who mouthed ‘no’ imperceptibly.

  No! On no account can I say I was with you, that I knew you were at the police station …

  Sikes pushed back his chair. It made a short screeching noise as he pushed himself up on his good leg, then, with a single fluid action, gripped the chair back and hurled it across the room at Twist who was forced to put his arms up to prevent it smashing into his face.

  It gave Sikes the time he needed. To reach Twist and plant his hand across the span of his face, gripping his cheekbones, the flat of his palm just touching the hairline fracture on the bridge of his nose.

  ‘Cops give you this, did they?’ Sikes asked, eyeballing Twist through his outstretched fingers.

  ‘It was the traffic warden …’

  ‘You need a better story, man!’ Dodge spoke at last.

  ‘And what did you give them, eh? To make them let you out?’ Sikes whispered in Twist’s ear.

  ‘Nothing.’

  A silence descended, broken only by a growl from beneath the desks that held the bank of monitors.

  ‘If he’d peached, Bill, why would he come back here?’ Red finally asked, stepping forwards towards them.

  ‘Who asked you?’ Sikes spat back at her.

  ‘I’m just saying,’ Red replied, stepping back again.

  ‘Shhhhh!’

  It was Batesy. He was craning forwards, both hands on his headset, trying to hear what Losberne was saying into his mobile phone.

  ‘He’s on the phone to Securicor. Confirming the pick-up …’ Batesy said.

  In an instant, the mood changed. Fagin began to rub his hands together and Sikes let go of Twist’s face.

  ‘Round three,’ Fagin said, as Sikes turned back from the monitor and gave Twist a lethal stare.

  ‘You better pray this one goes like clockwork, Twist,’ he said.

  38

  The lock-up was behind King’s Cross Station. It wasn’t the wasteland it used to be. There were tidy warehouses and shops and cafés backing off from the old red brick arches where solitary car mechanics and storage facilities still existed, throwbacks to the post-industrial decay that Fagin told Twist he’d hidden in after he’d escaped from the holding camp on Bexley Hill and made his raggedy arsed way across country, sleeping in barns, sometimes in ditches, in the summer of 1983.

  There was a yard around the entrance to the lock-up and a tall wooden fence that sheltered them from prying eyes but Twist could tell Fagin was on edge. He watched him stroke his beard as he stared down at the wooden crate beneath the half-closed shutters of the lock-up. The plywood box was plastered in labels now, the paint not yet dry that read, Artworks. This Way Up.

  Twist had sprayed the labels using cans and stencils which he’d pre-cut back at the hotel. He reckoned he’d done a bang-up job but nobody else seemed too impressed. He stood up and took a step back to admire his handiwork, then looked up at Batesy who was stood on the far side of the box looking sour-faced.

  ‘Why’s it always gotta be me?’ Batesy asked, glowering at Fagin.

  ‘You’re the
lightest. We could put Bill in there, but we’d need a forklift,’ Fagin replied.

  Dodge started to laugh. He sounded like a hyena, circling behind Batesy who was gripping the edge of the box straight-armed, refusing to climb in. Twist couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. If anything went wrong he would be trapped in the back of a sealed high-security van. He was staring into the crate with an expression on his face like it was full of rats.

  ‘Stop whingeing, Batesy!’ Fagin snapped, motioning to Dodge to use force if necessary.

  Twist watched as Batesy sidestepped Dodge and took the silver art tube which Fagin had somehow concealed inside his three-quarter-length green coat. As he ducked his head down into the box Dodge stepped forwards and knocked three times.

  ‘Anyone tries to open the crate without doing that first, you set off one of these in their face,’ he said, holding up what looked like sticks of dynamite.

  ‘And keep this on at all times,’ he added, passing Batesy a bunched up latex mask. Batesy looked up at them out of the box like a dog that sensed it was about to be abandoned.

  Fagin stepped forwards and pushed his head down, taking the lid from Twist and sliding it closed, holding it down with one hand while motioning for Twist to fetch the hammer from the lock-up and nail it shut.

  ‘Losberne’s arranged the pick-up for eleven thirty,’ Fagin said, turning to Twist. ‘How’s that sign coming on?’

  Twist stopped hammering and walked into the lock-up. He picked up a plywood sign about ten foot by two foot. It read St Pancras Fine Arts.

  Then they waited. About twenty minutes later an armoured Securicor van backed up towards the steel shutter of the lock-up above which Twist’s sign, St Pancras Fine Arts, now hung.

  Twist walked to the steel shutter and banged on it twice. It rolled up, revealing Dodge in overalls and the crate on a cart which he wheeled over to the rear doors of the van as they were being opened by one of the van’s guards.

  Together, Dodge, Twist and the guard slid the crate down a steel ramp into the back of the van. Then the guard went back to the cab and came back with a clipboard which he held up for Dodge to sign.