To Hell in a Handcart

by Richard Littlejohn

  ‘Goodbye, Mr French,’ said Fromby.

  ‘Be lucky, Trotsky. Oh, and give my love to your girlfriend.’

  Twenty-two

  The Bose Wave clock/radio woke Ricky Sparke at noon. As Ricky came round, Michael Parkinson was reminiscing about Fred Astaire and Skinner Normanton and cueing Ella Fitzgerald.

  Ricky always had his wireless tuned to BBC Radio 2 at the weekends. It was bad enough having to work for Rocktalk 99FM. Ricky was buggered if he was going to listen to it on his day off.

  As Ella took Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island, too, Ricky took a couple of Nurofen.

  He’d also recently discovered Milk Thistle herbal supplement tablets, an antioxidant supposed to flush the livers of those whose alcohol intake exceeded the government’s recommended weekly limit. Ricky’s daily intake exceeded the government’s weekly limit.

  He kept a bottle of Milk Thistle next to the bed. The label said take between one and three tablets with meals. Ricky took half a dozen and washed them down with a Bloody Mary.

  He showered, thought about shaving, thought about it again, dried himself off and dressed.

  It was too late for breakfast and too early for lunch. Ricky decided to go for a pint and take a view.

  Sunday was his favourite day in London. The commuters were back in the suburbs, cutting their lawns, cleaning their cars, lighting their barbecues, patching up their marriages.

  If you kept out of Covent Garden, the pubs were reasonably empty and the traffic was light.

  Ricky decided to stroll to his favourite pub, the Passport, in Pimlico, for a little light refreshment. There were always a few locals to talk to, middle-aged men like him, with nothing better to do on a Sunday, a couple of dowagers toying with a small sherry.

  First he had to stop at a hole-in-the-wall bank machine and collect some cash and a set of Sunday papers.

  Tourists and day-trippers spilled out of the park in search of sustenance. Pizzas, burgers, hot dogs peddled from illegal barrows run by illegal immigrants with links to Turkish terror groups.

  Ricky walked over to a cashpoint next to the Army & Navy stores, where, from a steel trolley stained with pigeon shit, a Kosovan asylum-seeker was selling botulism on a bap to a Japanese tourist for £2.50.

  Ricky stepped up to the machine, took his cash card from his wallet and inserted it.

  As he punched in his PIN number, he was aware of a young woman at his side.

  ‘You press, give money,’ she said, excitedly, in a thick, Eastern European accent.

  ‘Oi, leave it out, will you?’

  Another girl joined in. ‘Hungry, me. Give.’

  ‘Just piss off,’ said Ricky.

  ‘Give money, you press,’ said the first girl.

  ‘I said, piss off.’

  Ricky felt a kick in his kidneys. He doubled up and, as he fell, a young man stamped on his right hand.

  Ricky looked up and saw the girl punch the keyboard again. A boot caught him under the chin. Ricky felt the blood well up in his mouth as his teeth punctured his tongue.

  He rolled over to see a young man and two women running off in the direction of Victoria Station. One of the young women broke away and ran towards St James’s Park. The other two vanished into the plaza at the side of McDonald’s which opens on to Westminster Cathedral.

  Ricky picked himself up and lurched towards the cash machine. He hit the Eject Card button. Miraculously, it was still there.

  Ricky pushed it back into the slot and punched in his PIN for the second time.

  The screen came to life. It asked him what service he would like. The police would be nice, thought Ricky, but what was the point?

  He pressed withdrawal.

  The machine asked him how much?

  He pressed in a 2, a 5, and a 0: £250, his daily limit. That should keep him going until pay day.

  The machine replied: Current balance £3.47.

  Eh?

  Ricky fumbled in his pocket and pulled out his last withdrawal slip, from Friday night. It read: £250 withdrawn, balance remaining £253.47.

  He hadn’t been near a cash machine since Friday. He hadn’t written a cheque in Spider’s. Even if he had, and was too pissed to remember, it wouldn’t have cleared yet.

  Ricky re-entered his PIN and again asked for £250.

  ‘You have already withdrawn your daily limit,’ the machine told him.

  A small white withdrawal slip was poking out of the front of the machine.

  Ricky pulled it out and held it up to the light.

  Withdrawal, £250, balance remaining £3.47. It was timed 1.03 pm. Three minutes earlier.

  The girl had waited until he punched in his PIN and then, when her young accomplice kicked him to the ground, she had entered £250 and had it away with the cash.

  Round the corner, out of sight, in a doorway at the back of the Cardinal’s House, Ilie Popescu and Maria counted out Ricky’s money.

  Twenty-three

  In a penthouse flat in Highgate, a black digital telephone rang on a marble coffee table.

  Boban Popescu picked it up.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Boban, that you?’

  ‘I told you last time. Don’t call me.’

  When Ilie rang from the hostel, Boban had put the phone down instantly.

  ‘Wait, please wait,’ pleaded Ilie.

  ‘This is not safe.’

  ‘It’s OK. I’m on a mobile. It has been re-programmed. No one can trace it.’

  ‘They can trace me.’

  ‘Have they visited you yet?’

  ‘No, but they will.’

  ‘They don’t even know I’m in London. I was careful to cover my tracks.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it.’

  ‘If they knew I was here they would have come to you, looking for me.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘You worry too much, Boban.’

  ‘And you don’t worry enough, little brother.’

  ‘I need to see you.’

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘I need money.’

  ‘Don’t we all?’

  ‘I’m riding my luck out here.’

  ‘I thought your luck ran out in Germany.’

  ‘Just a temporary setback.’

  ‘There are some men in Moscow who would like to make it permanent.’

  ‘So, I need to put things right. I need to raise some money to pay them back. I can’t go on living on petty thefts. Let me work for you.’

  ‘Impossible. You’re trouble.’

  ‘I’m your brother. Your father’s son.’

  ‘You haven’t heard?’

  ‘Heard what?’

  ‘Father’s dead.’

  There was a stunned silence. Ilie slumped backwards against a wall, the phone in his right hand, dangling by his side.

  After a few moments, he raised it.

  ‘Boban?’

  Boban told him the story.

  Ilie wept.

  ‘I’m so, so, sorry.’

  ‘You should be. You killed him.’

  ‘NO!’

  ‘He died defending you.’

  ‘I didn’t want that. I didn’t think …’

  ‘That’s your trouble, little brother. You don’t think. You never think.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘You might just as well have pulled the trigger yourself.’

  ‘Boban, please. He was my father, too. I must see you.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I must. You are my brother.’

  ‘OK, but you can’t come here.’

  ‘Where then?’

  ‘You know Highgate village?’

  ‘I’ll find it.’

  ‘It’s on the Underground. Northern Line.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘Go out of the station, cross the main road and turn left towards the village at the traffic lights. Walk up the hill. At the top there’s a pub called the Prince of Wales. It’s straight opposite. Meet me ther
e.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m near Victoria Station.’

  ‘Take the Underground, change at Euston. Make sure you get the High Barnet train. I’ll be there in a hour.’

  ‘I’ve got someone with me.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A friend. A girl.’

  ‘No friends. Just you.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘One hour. Be there.’

  ‘I will.’

  Ilie gave Maria a £20 note from the money they’d stolen from Ricky Sparke and told her to make her way back to the hostel at Tottenham. The man at the cashpoint may have called the police. They had to split up. He’d catch her later.

  Forty-five minutes later, Ilie emerged from Highgate tube station and followed his brother’s directions.

  The Prince of Wales was where Boban had said it would be.

  Ilie stepped through the doorway into a low-ceilinged room, yellowing walls, bare wooden floorboards. The place had a Dickensian feel. The lunchtime crowd had headed home. There were a handful of drunken stragglers hanging round the cramped bar, laughing theatrically at jokes they’d told each other a hundred times before.

  In the left-hand corner, by the Ladies, he spotted Boban, nursing a large Jameson’s.

  It was a while since he had seen his brother. Boban looked prosperous, as befitted a high-class car thief. He was four years older than Ilie, plumper, an inch shorter.

  He wore a jet-black calfskin blouson, Armani jeans and an obvious Tag Heuer wristwatch.

  His clothes marked him out from the regulars, an assortment of actors, lawyers, teachers and broadsheet journalists, who favoured the studied scruffy look of the North London intellectual – cords, threadbare jumpers, suede footwear.

  Ilie’s shell-suit stuck out like a donkey’s dick.

  ‘Boban,’ he said, walking towards his brother with outstretched arms.

  ‘Sit down and shut up. Want a drink?’

  ‘Beer will do.’

  Boban stepped up to the bar and ordered a lager from the barman, a ‘resting’ Welsh thespian.

  ‘It’s good to see you,’ said Ilie. ‘I’m so sorry about Dad.’

  ‘He would still be here if you hadn’t fucked up in Hamburg.’

  ‘I know. I feel bad about it.’

  ‘So you should …’

  ‘I can’t undo what’s been done. But I can try to make it right. Let me work with you. I can steal cars. I’m good at it. I can get the money to repay them.’

  ‘It’s gone beyond that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘These Russians value honour more than money. They want you dead.’

  Ilie took a deep draught of his lager.

  Boban seized hold of his brother’s arm and gripped it tightly. ‘You are not even safe here in London. You must leave.’

  ‘I can’t. I have nowhere to go. Anyway, you can’t be sure they even know I’m in London. Dad wouldn’t have told them.’

  ‘He may have had no choice.’

  ‘But they haven’t contacted you. Surely you’re the first place they would have looked?’

  ‘They are not stupid.’

  ‘I’ve changed my identity. They can’t trace me.’

  ‘Don’t fool yourself.’

  ‘You must help me.’

  ‘Fuck you. You killed my father.’

  ‘Boban.’

  ‘You fucked everything.’

  ‘No. Help me, please.’

  ‘I can’t help you. No one can help you. Now go.’

  ‘But Boban.’

  ‘Drink up and go. And leave by the back door. I may have been followed.’

  Boban leaned over and kissed Ilie on the cheek.

  ‘Goodbye, little brother.’

  Ilie walked slowly towards the rear of the pub. He didn’t look back.

  If he had, he would have seen his brother take out his mobile phone and press the redial button.

  ‘He’s coming out now,’ Boban said quietly and deliberately into the mouthpiece.

  Across Pond Square, a black Mercedes with smoked windows was parked outside a mansion block.

  Ilie Popescu descended the steps at the back of the Prince of Wales, looked both ways and turned right, towards another pub, the Gatehouse. He walked down a narrow alley and retraced his steps to Highgate tube station.

  The big Russian in the front of the Mercedes turned to his companion in the back. ‘That’s him. Go. Moscow said just follow him for now. This isn’t Romania.’

  Inside the Prince of Wales, Boban Popescu swallowed his whiskey.

  ‘Fuck him, he killed my father,’ he said to himself. ‘And I’ve got to work with these people.’

  Twenty-four

  ‘Welcome to a brand-new week on Rocktalk 99FM. In Swindon, gangs of Kosovan asylum-seekers fought pitched battles in the town centre, using a variety of weapons, including swords, knives and baseball bats. Shoppers fled in terror. Three people were taken to hospital. The fighting is reported to be related to a turf war over drugs and valuable begging pitches.

  ‘The police should have turned the flamethrowers on them.’

  Ricky’s producer threw his head in his hands. ‘Stick to the script. Stick to the fucking script,’ he yelled. Ricky smiled and gave him the thumbs-up.

  ‘Elsewhere, a lorry driver has been arrested for eating a Yorkie bar on the M25. It is part of a nationwide zero-tolerance clampdown on drivers who consume confectionery on the move and has the support of road safety campaigners and the Department of Health, which is spending £200 million on a drive to cut the nation’s cholesterol.’

  Ricky’s producer relaxed. He really wasn’t making that one up.

  ‘Meanwhile, gangs of Eastern European criminals are free to roam central London, begging, mugging and robbing people at cashpoint machines of their last £250, which was all they had left for the week. Police were nowhere to be seen, naturally.’

  Where the hell did that one come from?

  ‘That’s all for this bulletin. Call me with your comments now on the usual number. First caller today is Del, from Collier St James. Morning, Del. You’re on the Ricky Sparke show.’

  ‘All right, Ricky? It’s what you were saying, like about them gyppoes.’

  ‘What in particular?’

  ‘Well, Ricky. It’s like this, see. Me and the missus were sitting at home the other night when there’s this knock at the door. I get up and there’s this woman, gyppo, like, demanding money. She’s got this baby and she keeps saying she’s hungry. Any road, I’m telling her to push off and try to shut the door and she shoves her baby in the way. If I shut the door I’m going to hurt the baby and she’s screaming at me in some foreign language. The missus comes to see what all the fuss is about when we hear a crash at the back of the house. This bloke has kicked in the kitchen door, he’s grabbed the wife’s handbag, I’ve run towards him, but I’m not as young as I was. I go to grab him, but he gives me a right-hander and he’s away on his toes, like. The bird with the baby spits in my wife’s face and they’re off.’

  ‘Did you call the police?’

  ‘Course I did. Straight off. Anyway I gets through to this machine which tells me I’m being held in a queue. I’m hanging on for, what, I dunno, five, ten minutes, then this voice gives me a range of options, press star for this, hash for that, whatever the hell a hash is.’

  ‘Some sort of drug, Del.’

  ‘Might just as well have been. Any road, about fifteen minutes later this woman comes on and I start to tell her what’s happened. So I gives her the address and she’s never heard of it. Turns out she’s in a call centre forty miles away and hasn’t got the faintest where Collier St James is. I finally get put through to a sergeant who says there isn’t enough to go on and would I like to go to my nearest police station in the morning and they’d give me a crime number for the insurance.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘I would have done, but our local polic
e station closed five years ago and the nearest one in the next town only opens between 10.30 am and 4.00 pm alternate Tuesdays.’

  ‘There’s never a cop around when you need one. How many times have we heard that on this programme?’

  ‘Unless you happen to be driving at 32 mph on your way home from the boozer, Ricky. But I’ll tell you what, mate, if the Old Bill won’t do anything about it, I’m getting a gun and if it happens again, I’ll blow the bastard’s head off. You have to protect yourself these days.’

  ‘Give ’em both barrels for me, Del.’

  ‘Bloody right, Ricky, great show, mate.’

  ‘Thanks, Del. This is Rocktalk 99FM. I’m Ricky Sparke. We’ll take some more calls after we’ve heard from the Jam.’

  Outside the studio, the switchboard was going mental.

  Ricky sipped a Diet Coke. Through the glass he could see the figure of Charlie Lawrence, beaming from ear to ear.

  ‘Great show, mate,’ said Lawrence through the talkback.

  Ricky acknowledged his boss but didn’t have time to speak. The last chords of ‘That’s Entertainment’ were fading.

  ‘Welcome back. This is Rocktalk 99FM. Who’s next? Let’s go to Dave, from Tyburn Row, on line two. Hi, Dave.’

  ‘Ricky?’

  ‘Yes mate.’

  ‘We’ve been burgled eight times in the past eleven months. The police know who’s responsible, it’s not just us, everyone’s been turned over. It’s that Monkey Boy what was in the papers a while back, one-man crime wave here at Tyburn Row. He should be behind bars, but I’ve heard, from a bloke in the boozer, like, that he’s been taken away on holiday by his social workers.’

  ‘Typical, Dave. Thinking about that last call, Del, wasn’t it? Here’s an idea. Let’s have a competition of our own. Shoot a Burglar and Win a Million. My boss is in the control room. Morning, Charlie. How ‘bout it?’

  Charlie Lawrence clapped his hands in glee. He hadn’t been so excited since he shifted a van-load of dodgy did-geridoos to a party of Japanese tourists.

  ‘Dave, I think he likes Shoot a Burglar, it’s the Win a Million bit he’s not so keen on.’

  ‘Forget the million, Ricky. I’ll do it for nothing.’

  Twenty-five