Twist
Page 26
She leant into him, her hand reaching into the space between his thighs, ducking beneath his left arm to occupy the space between his arms.
‘The tale of the three Hogarths stolen last week in an audacious raid on Sotheby’s first auction in the Shard took a bizarre twist yesterday when a tip-off led detectives from Scotland Yard’s Art and Antiquities Squad to St Pancras Station, where three paintings were recovered.’
The BBC reporter was different to the ones who had reported on the thefts before. He was older and had been investigating the possibility of links between the gang and organised crime. She reached to her right and pushed up his arm a couple of inches, intensifying the shadow on the screen so there was just enough contrast to see the paintings on the wall of the café as the camera panned across them to alight on the old detective called Brownlow whose warning Twist had ignored.
‘The surprise was, these turned out to be three different Hogarths, not those taken from the auction but ones stolen in an earlier heist from the Losberne Gallery in London’s Mayfair. Paintings that had been missing since they were first stolen over two hundred and fifty years ago …’
They watched as the camera cut to Brownlow. He looked comfortable answering the questions he was taking from the ladies and gentlemen of the press with his younger partner standing tight-lipped by his side.
‘Well, I suppose the message this sends out to criminals is very simple: stolen artworks will be recovered,’ he was saying, ‘no matter how long it takes.’
She laughed and the sound rang out across the café like a bell. It was on the Oderstrasse in a down-at-heel neighbourhood called Friedrichshain in Berlin which they had chosen because it had no police station and they would not be conspicuous amongst the other artists and bohemians huddling for warmth inside the café.
The reporter appeared once again on the screen and Red put her ear to the speaker, straining to hear him above the coffee grinder. She caught only snatches of what he was saying, fighting to keep her position as Twist’s wire-like fingers bored into her side trying to prise her away from the speaker so he could hear too.
So she only caught snatches of the reporter’s speculation about the whereabouts of the three Sotheby’s Hogarths which were still missing after their theft from the Shard and which, given the rumoured involvement of a major Russian crime syndicate, looked likely to remain a mystery for a good time to come.
58
He’d forgotten how dangerous geese were. Vicious fowl with recidivist reptilian brains that dated back to the nightmare late Jurassic Age. He’d also forgotten how cold the Fagaras mountains became in winter as he trudged the frozen rutted track back up to his half-constructed villa where work on the pool had been delayed until the spring when the ground would thaw out enough to dig once again.
Fagin pushed the door and it creaked open. Then he lit a candle with great solemnity, shielding its flickering flame from the draughts as he strolled through a maze of crates, most still unopened, until he reached the snug he had dug out of the haystack at the far end of the barn. Then he stopped, surveyed his surroundings and pulled the cord that turned on the fan heater that hung suspended from the rafters above him.
The blast of hot air was glorious and he raised his frozen fingers, let out a satisfied groan and slumped back into a battered armchair to stare at the mud-caked wall of his palace and feast his eyes, once again, on Moll, the love of his life.
There had been a time when he thought he’d never find someone he’d want to be with always, and who would always be there for him, his match and his equal. Inconstant, avaricious and vain, they could almost have been brother and sister had she not been conceived over two hundred and fifty years before him.
He was still grateful that Twist had confided in him when he had and that he had been able to give him timely counsel. There was no doubt in Fagin’s mind now that stealing back the paintings from Rodchenko had been the trump card without which Sikes would most likely have killed them all.
He lifted the receiver and dialled the black Bakelite phone from memory. Ring. Ring. Ring. But Dodge didn’t answer. He spoke to Twist from time to time but he was keen to hear Dodge’s news. To find out if his and Cribb’s beach bar was working or if they had burnt through the money Twist had sent them and were back to their old tricks.
He smiled to himself, drawing his hand through his beard. It was only to be expected, he supposed. For after all, boys will be boys and he hated to think of them changing. But at times he missed them terribly. So much so that once he had even climbed the narrow track up the mountain side to kneel at the shrine of St Nicholas of Myra who had worked tirelessly during his lifetime to convert thieves into honest men.
But he had not prayed for that. Only that they were happy, fending for themselves and developing their innate talents to their utmost in a life that afforded them scope.
About the Author
Tom Grass was responsible for creative development at TV production company Pure Grass Films when he first began work on Twist, his first novel.
Tom believes in the power of storytelling to bring about change and has co-created interactive stories with young people in Haiti and Africa that encourage them to think for themselves and challenge social norms.
TWIST
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Copyright © 2021 Tom Grass
First Pegasus Books cloth edition February 2021
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ISBN: 978-1-64313-661-5
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