Twist

by Tom Grass

  ‘Straight to our gallery in W1,’ Dodge said, Twist watching as the guard checked his itinerary.

  ‘Should be there in twenty,’ he said, adding, ‘Just the one pick up on the way’ as he slammed the doors shut, sliding a hinged metal plate across them which he padlocked, before returning to the front, climbing in and signalling to the driver to start the engine.

  Dodge waved as the van pulled away, watching it until it had disappeared round the corner before pulling down the steel shutters and climbing up a stepladder to rip down the St Pancras Fine Arts sign.

  Ten minutes later Twist was stepping up the same ladder to put the finishing touches on a painted sign above a rented garage door in a mews behind New Burlington Gardens. This time the sign read St Pancras West. He looked down nervously as he heard the door being unlocked from the inside, watching it open slowly, then breathing a sigh of relief as Fagin’s nose emerged from within. Twist craned his neck and stared down into the empty space. There were bare concrete walls where there should have been paintings.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Fagin said, ‘they’re here to pick up a bronze statue of the Trojan horse. Not buy the Mona Lisa.’

  39

  Less than a quarter of a mile away, the Securicor van was parked outside the Losberne Gallery where men in overalls and white gloves were carefully removing the three Hogarths from the wall, supervised by an anxious-looking Losberne as they were placed, one at a time, into a padded packing crate which was then slid onto a trolley and wheeled out to the vehicle.

  ‘Little bitch,’ Losberne muttered to the guard, ‘she was up to something. I tell you that’s the last time I interview an intern who hasn’t come personally recommended.’

  He winced as Brittles and the Securicor guard lifted the crate marked ‘H’ into the back of the armoured van then reached out to hold the arm of the guard just as he was about to close and lock the rear doors.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said, staring in at the other crate, ‘I thought you were just taking ours?’

  ‘We had another drop-off nearby,’ the guard said, checking his clipboard, ‘St Pancras West ring a bell?’

  Losberne shook his head.

  ‘Never heard of it,’ he said, as he took the guard’s clipboard and signed the paperwork, watching as the guard locked the rear doors, climbed into the cab and told the driver to get under way.

  He watched as the van pulled slowly out into the middle of the road and shook his head as he walked back into his gallery, pausing by force of habit to check his reflection in the mirror, then pausing again by his receptionist’s desk to ask her to check his schedule. It was a daily request that gave him just long enough to stare down her cleavage as she clicked onto his weekly calendar.

  ‘You ever heard of St Pancras Fine Arts, Rosie?’ he asked when she looked up.

  ‘I’ll Google it,’ she said.

  It was the first time he’d sat in the armchair facing her desk and he turned, feeling strangely vacant, looking out in the direction the van disappeared in, wondering how many small-time dealers there were in London, like St Pancras Fine Arts, struggling to make an honest living.

  He watched as she scanned down the results, then turned and looked back at the road as a black BMW 5 series pulled out from where it had been parked across the street. He felt a sharp pain in his chest as he saw the girl in the passenger seat. She was sat next to a late-twenties male with a livid scar that ran down from his hairline to his right cheekbone.

  Then he was up but unsteady on his feet, running for the door as the colour drained from his cheeks.

  ‘Get me Securicor on the phone. Now!’ he shouted, startling his receptionist as the BMW disappeared out of sight.

  ‘Sir! They’re on the line,’ she said, holding up the phone and watching as he put it up to his ear.

  ‘Hello, yes, yes, this is Dr Losberne … Yes, your men just picked it up. No, everything is not fucking OK,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I think I’m being robbed.’

  40

  There were pinpricks of light in the darkness. Tiny holes drilled deliberately in the top right-hand corner of each side of the crate. They were about three millimetres in diameter. Not enough to see in or out through, but wide enough for Batesy to suck fresh air into his mouth as he fumbled with his mask. It wasn’t easy. His palms were clammy and the sweat ran down his fingertips which he was running across the mask face, like a blind man getting acquainted with a stranger.

  When the mask was on it became even harder to breathe and he groped in each corner until he found the catch and gently pushed the lid to one side, feeling the cold air on his face as his in-breath drew it through the mouth of the mask. He could hear sounds now. Bryan Adams’ ‘Summer of ’69’ playing on the radio in the cab. He climbed out of the crate as they banked into a corner, and he cursed as he felt himself slip, fall and knock the lid against the quarter-inch-thick steel wall of the van.

  BAM!

  It sounded like a bass drum. He froze momentarily, thinking that if he could hear the radio in the cab then odds on the security guards in there could hear large bangs coming from the rear of the van. So he didn’t have time to waste. The van appeared to be slowing down but that had to be because they were in traffic. Any moment now they’d take the next exit, slow down and stick a shotgun in his face.

  The crowbar felt reassuring in his hand as he prised open the six foot by four foot crate containing the Hogarths. Pulling the three paintings from the box he pushed out the blade of his craft knife and sliced each carefully where it met its frame then rolled them up together until all three fitted snugly inside his silver art tube. It was almost too easy. Like taking art from the walls of a kindergarten … until the van braked at the worst moment imaginable.

  He was half in the crate fishing for the smoke bombs as the van lurched off the road and he was thrown forwards against the cab wall, forcing him to use his hands to protect himself from the impact. Hands which contained two smoke bombs which he heard smack the rear wall, then feeling the cold outrush of CO2 a millisecond before a toxic cloud of purple gas hit him in the face, stinging his eyes and forcing him to the floor, choking, trying to catch his breath.

  * * *

  Red clocked the van first. Pulling into the slow lane before braking hard and sideswiping off the road into a police observation lay-by.

  ‘They’ve stopped, shit, they’re getting out,’ she said, watching as the cab doors opened and steel toecapped boots hit the tarmac. The two big men, who looked to be former military, stepped out of the van brandishing a pair of pump-action twelve-gauge shotguns. She looked across at Sikes who was sizing them up. The one six four and broad, the other touching five ten but with a kind of compressed energy and a look in his eyes, like he was enjoying himself, willing there to be a robbery so he could hurt someone.

  Sikes slowed to almost a crawl, a car horn blasting behind him as he pulled into the slow lane, buying more time to figure out his next move as purple smoke spilled out of the back of the van, engulfing the guards who had their shotguns at their hips, taking no chances, unable to see Batesy. Red just hoped, for his sake, he’d made it out of the crate, knowing full well that if the smoke bombs had gone off then the chances were he was most likely choking to death.

  She looked across at Sikes. His eyes had turned black. She could see his knuckles through his leather driving gloves where he was gripping the steering wheel, pulling the car in now, tight behind the van, the guards too busy waiting for the smoke to clear to see what was going on behind them – then backing up a couple of paces as a figure in a Prince Harry mask stumbled out of the back and collapsed face down at their feet.

  ‘Bollocks to this!’

  She felt Sikes’s arm brush past her knees as he reached for the glove compartment, pulling out his own mask and cocking his Beretta.

  ‘Tell him I’m going in. Plan B,’ he said.

  ‘Bill, no …’ she managed, but it was too late. He was already out of the car, a black shadow disappe
aring into the purple haze.

  The tall guard didn’t know what hit him. The pistol caught him hard round the right side of his face and knocked him cold. Sikes didn’t wait to see him hit the floor but stepped over to the second guard who had just torn off Batesy’s mask and was trying to drag him by the hair back into the van to lock him up.

  Red was out of the car now, running towards Sikes as he stabbed the barrel of the Beretta into the side of the second guard’s face, holding it there, angling down into his body through his skull so the bullet couldn’t miss. She watched as the guard let go of Batesy’s hair and dropped his shotgun and Sikes turned him around, forcing him to his knees while reaching down to pick up Batesy’s mask, shouting at him to ‘man the fuck up’ and put it back on.

  She saw all this because of the wind which was blowing in gusts, lifting the purple smoke just long enough for her to see Sikes, turning towards her, pointing to his face and shouting at her too.

  ‘Get your fucking mask on!’

  And then she saw him take aim up at the red brick wall on the side of the road and open fire. Once, twice, three times, the bullets ricocheted up off the brick until there was a smash and the fourth bullet penetrated the lens of the CCTV camera. The volley lasting no more than two seconds from beginning to end. Just long enough for the big man on his knees to pivot on his right foot and slam his fist into Sike’s ribcage right over his heart.

  Red watched Sikes step sideways, reeling from the blow, then cock the pistol and shove it in the guard’s face, forcing him to lie flat on the floor as she heard a siren wailing behind her.

  ‘Police!’ she yelled, watching Sikes look beyond her then look back down and shift his aim from the base of the man’s skull to the back of his right knee.

  ‘Tube!’ Sikes yelled at Batesy, who was back on his feet, unsteady but holding out the artwork doing exactly what he was told.

  ‘Now run,’ Sikes said, gesturing with the gun, but as she turned, Red saw the first cop was already out of the car and taking up a firing position behind the passenger door, some fifty yards behind them.

  She watched as Batesy stared at Sikes through the mask in disbelief then put his hands up as Sikes lifted the gun and pointed it at his chest.

  ‘Bill no!’ she heard herself scream but the moment had passed and she stepped back as Batesy brushed past her, his arms still up in the air, jogging back to where the cops were standing, aiming at him, telling him to walk not run as he closed the gap between them.

  And then she heard the shot. It rang in her ears and she heard a man screaming in pain. She turned to see a pool of blood spreading out on the ground and the guard squirming in agony, blinking in disbelief at the fragments of his kneecap which were lying on the tarmac next to his face.

  She crouched, worried the cops were going to open fire but saw they were keeping their sights on Batesy. He streaked past them to their left but they held their fire, instead returning their aim to the chaos in the smoke that now blanketed the road, four feet deep from side to side.

  She looked at Sikes, his gimlet eyes shining through the slits in his mask, and she wondered if this was the moment when he felt his existence made sense.

  ‘You good? Watch what I do,’ he said, holding the tube parallel with his leg and letting it fall gently to the ground rolling towards her, then winking at her and stepping back into the van as the cop by the right door fired a volley of three warning shots and his friend started with the loud hailer.

  ‘Drop your weapons and raise your hands above your heads and you will not be harmed,’ he said, as she crawled out of sight, groping for the silver tube until she had it and pulled the strap over her shoulder.

  She heard a volley of fire behind her. The sharp percussion of the Beretta as Sikes fired a controlled burst at each door of the cop car, the bullets slamming home, silencing them as he rushed forwards into the smoke towards the BMW. There was only one way out and she watched him take it, gunning the engine then reversing at speed at the police car, the cop on the left getting off a single round before the BMW smashed into the front of the squad car and accelerated away.

  It was now, she thought, it was now or never as she crouched, keeping low, moving past the Securicor van in the opposite direction to the police, upping her speed to a comfortable fifteen hundred metre pace, wondering how in hell they were going to get away with it this time.

  * * *

  ‘He said twenty minutes. Where are they?’ Dodge shouted, skidding his BMX in a perfect left turn to a stop in front of Fagin and Twist. Fagin had his phone to his ear.

  ‘Nancy’s coming on foot,’ Fagin replied, clicking his mobile off.

  ‘Time for a diversion. Twist?’ Dodge said, meeting Twist’s eye.

  ‘Bill said the boy must stay where I can see him,’ Fagin replied.

  ‘He’s faster than me though,’ Dodge said, watching Fagin think about this, then nod and reach inside the folds of his green overcoat for two identical silver art tubes.

  ‘Go!’ he shouted, slapping them on the back as they pulled on their Prince Harry masks and snatched a tube each.

  41

  They had a call for a black 5 series and they came off Park Lane, sharp left at the BMW dealers, Bedwin accelerating east on Aldford Street then north on South Audley Street before taking a hard right on Mount Street as the controller on the radio told them that there were two suspects; one male in the car, armed and dangerous, and the other a male juvenile on foot heading south-east.

  ‘Losberne said a girl …’ said Brownlow, staring through the windscreen at the redhead running in the opposite direction, past them, her face wrapped in a headscarf, making like she was out exercising, on her way to Hyde Park, as opposed to scarpering with $20 million of art strapped to her back.

  ‘Looter chic,’ Brownlow said, ‘slow down. Yes … yes! That’s her. Look at the tube. She’s got the art! Pull in! That’s got to be her!’

  Bedwin mounted the pavement fifty yards behind her as she headed west along Mount Street. Brownlow got out, keeping a respectful distance, breathing steadily, putting other pedestrians between her and him and slowing to a walk when she looked behind her, scanning the pavement to see if anyone had picked up her trail.

  ‘Suspect, female, heading west,’ he said, speaking into the radio in the front pocket of his herringbone tweed as two masked and hooded figures burst out of the street in front of him and accelerated towards the girl, one running, the other on a BMX, and both of them carrying identical silver art tubes.

  He started to run as the one on the BMX pulled what looked a red stick from his backpack, about ten inches long, smacked the base of it on the crossbars of his bike then tossed it behind him, red smoke billowing out behind. It sent the pedestrians in front of Brownlow into a panic and made it hard for him to maintain his pace, as the smoke blocked his line of sight with the boy who appeared to be taking the tube from the girl.

  He spoke urgently into his radio, telling Bedwin to loop back around in the car and hit them before they crossed Park Lane into Hyde Park where it would be much harder to reach them, particularly if they headed to the eight-exit subway beneath the roundabout in the park’s south-western corner.

  But then the second male, the runner, made it harder again, this time green smoke billowing up, shrouding the movement of the tubes which the little bastards were shuffling between them like cups in a shell game. It forced him to run faster, something he couldn’t recall having done in the last ten years.

  ‘Er, heading west …’ he said, watching as the runner and the BMX peeled away from the girl. ‘Er, heading west, south and …’

  He looked up as Bedwin sped past him and pulled hard left, and watched in disbelief as the kid on the BMX hopped up onto the bonnet, rode across it, and dropped off the far side, as the runner and the girl split, forcing him to play their game and pick one tube, hoping his colleagues recovered the other two.

  He watched as the runner slowed, crossed the road then doubled back on t
he pavement on the far side.

  ‘East,’ he coughed into the radio, checking back for cars then making his mind up and turning and sprinting after the boy coming at him fast and low from behind a row of parked four by fours, watching him sidestep a man in a blue overcoat and accelerate holding the tube under his left arm.

  The gap appeared from nowhere. Four feet between a Land Rover and a white van. And Browmlow launched himself horizontally at the boy as he reached it, finding himself clutching at air as the boy leapt, both feet in the air. He felt the top of his head graze the sole of the runner’s shoe, turning his head just before he hit the railings to see the kid use the impact to tuck into a ball then stretch out, his back arched and his feet outstretched to land back on the pavement, feet forward, soaking up the impact in his knees before springing back into his run without missing a beat.

  He was flat on his back now, staring up at the sky. Maybe he wasn’t concussed. Maybe there was a police helicopter above the park. There was only one thing he could say for sure.

  He was getting too old for this shit.

  42

  Twist was running south down the one-way street making for the maze of subterranean walkways beneath the roundabout. He looked across the four lanes to his right that fed the roundabout from the conurbation of Hyde Park Corner. It gave him a view of a giant bronze man in the park. A warrior of some kind about twenty feet tall holding a sword and a shield but otherwise naked. Twist could almost hear him, defiant, calm, saying, Come on, if you think you’re hard enough to whoever or whatever was coming at him, which as far as Twist could see was a crowd heading towards a Christmas-themed fairground about three weeks too late.

  It was called the Winter Wonderland but there wasn’t very much wonderful about it. The punters looked retarded, panning out like zombies looking to sink their teeth into something. They reminded him of the cow people he saw in the Newham retail park when he went to steal fresh cans, staring in through the windows of the superstores. Dull-eyed, bovine creatures, out grazing, looking for something to take home and chew on.