To Hell in a Handcart

by Richard Littlejohn

  ‘Could anyone do that?’

  ‘You’d need the approved access.’

  ‘Who would have that?’ Colin pressed him.

  ‘Systems guys probably, but there’s tight security safeguards,’ said Billy.

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘Maybe top brass in the Branch, I’m not sure.’

  ‘Outside of the Branch?’

  ‘You’re looking at DAC and above,’ said Billy.

  DAC and above, Marsden registered.

  ‘Thanks, bruv, maybe the DC just fucked up and is telling porkies to cover himself,’ Colin speculated convincingly, not wanting to involve his brother more than he had to.

  ‘Sounds favourite,’ agreed Billy.

  ‘Thanks. Oh, by the way, can you access the Interpol computer at drugs squad?’ Colin inquired.

  ‘Not me, personally,’ said Billy. ‘But I know a man who can.’

  Seventy

  ‘Holy shit, I’ve been burgled,’ exclaimed Ricky.

  ‘How can you tell?’ asked Andi, surveying the devastation, papers and cassettes strewn everywhere, drawers half-open.

  ‘Looks pretty much like it did when I left this morning,’ remarked Mickey.

  ‘Stop fucking about. I’ve been turned over. The video’s gone, look. And the DVD, and that new MP3 player I bought a coupla weeks ago. It was still in its box. I haven’t fathomed the instructions yet,’ said Ricky, picking his way across the sitting room.

  They’d skipped lunch and driven straight to Ricky’s flat from the radio station as soon as Ricky had come off-air. Andi wanted to get changed and showered.

  The plan had been to go on to Spider’s for a reunion piss-up and a cheese sandwich.

  That had been the plan.

  Wayne Sutton had watched first Mickey, then Ricky, leave the flat, let himself in with accomplished ease and done what Justin Fromby had instructed.

  He hadn’t hurried. Fromby had told him he’d have several hours. The flat owner was on the radio all morning, that Ricky Sparke.

  For a grin, Wayne had even rung the show, just to check it wasn’t a recording. He’d even got on-air. Wayne on line three.

  ‘Morning, Wayne, what can we do for you?’

  ‘It’s about all this burglary what you’ve been talking about.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I mean, there’s probably I dunno how many burglaries going on right now,’

  ‘You’re right, Wayne. There’s an epidemic out there.’

  ‘I ain’t talking about illness, I’m talking about burglaries.’

  ‘Yeah, right, Wayne.’

  ‘That bloke, that Mickey, what shot that burglar, I reckon he done us all a favour.’

  ‘Glad you agree, Wayne.’

  ‘Yeah, there’s a lot of it about. For all you know, someone could be burgling your gaff while you‘re talking to me.’

  Wayne had to cut himself off. He fell about laughing. If only the stupid old git knew.

  He went about his work in exactly the way Justin Fromby had told him, scooping up anything which looked like an official document and emptying all the cassettes into a sports bag. Mr Fromby had told him to concentrate on the home-made tapes, the blank tapes. He didn’t bother with the pre-recorded stuff. Wayne would have nicked them, too, but there wasn’t anyone he’d ever heard of, just groups called things like Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, whatever the fuck an Asbury Juke was. The Neville Brothers, they were footballers not pop stars, Wayne thought. Creedence Clearwater Revival, what kind of a fucking stupid name was that? Wayne slung them on the floor.

  He helped himself to the video, the DVD and the MP3. Reckoned he deserved a drink, while he was at it, like.

  Wayne let himself out, unnoticed, sauntered back to Victoria and caught the tube north to present his haul to Mr Fromby.

  He was home and dry before Ricky Sparke walked back in.

  ‘Anything else gone?’ asked Mickey, as Andi immediately busied herself tidying up.

  ‘Looks like they stole all the dishcloths and cleaning materials, too,’ she remarked, retrieving a bone-dry, tea-stained tea-towel from the cupboard under the sink, where the wine was kept.

  ‘Fuck it, look at my cassette collection. There was some rare stuff here. I’d taped all my old Stax, Volt and Atlantic singles off the old 45s. All fucking gone. It was priceless. They’ve had the lot. And been through all my drawers. At least there wasn’t any money here.’

  ‘Have they had all the tapes away?’ asked Mickey.

  ‘All except the pre-recorded stuff.’

  ‘I think we can guess what they were looking for. Thank God I gave you that other copy, Andi,’ Mickey said.

  ‘Ah, yeah, I meant to tell you about that,’ said Andi, sheepishly, walking out of the kitchen as Ricky scrambled around on the floor, muttering to himself.

  ‘About what?’ asked Mickey.

  ‘The tape. I don’t know how to, er …’ Andi hesitated.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I’m sorry, love. But Katie, well, she taped over it, some pop group.’

  ‘She did what?’ Mickey spluttered, clasping his hands to his face.

  ‘Don’t be angry with her. It was my fault. I left it lying around. She wasn’t to know. There was nothing written on it.’

  ‘That’s it, then, we’re fucked,’ said Mickey, with an air of defeatist desperation.

  ‘BRILLIANT. FUCKING ACE!’ hollered Ricky, still down on his hands and knees, surrounded by Wilson Pickett and Booker T tapes.

  ‘Brilliant, just brilliant!’ he repeated.

  ‘I dunno what you’re so jubilant about, Sparke. Haven’t you heard what Andi just said about Katie recording over the only other copy? We’re fucked.’

  ‘Not quite,’ beamed Ricky. ‘You should have a little more faith in your Uncle Ricky.’

  He tapped Mickey on the cheek with a cassette case. The tape rattled inside.

  ‘I’m not a complete cunt. Sorry, Andi. Don’t you think I worked out that if they’d turned your drum over they’d get round to me eventually?’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Mickey.

  ‘Well, that’s why I took precautions.’

  Ricky opened the cassette box, labelled ‘HOLD ON I’M COMING. Their Greatest Hits.’

  He took out a blank tape, marked in felt-tip.

  Mickey, it said.

  ‘There you are, mate. Safe and sound. I’d make a couple more copies, but as you may have noticed, they’ve half-inched the old Nakamichi.’

  ‘You mean?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘You switched the tapes?’

  ‘Obviously.’

  Andi threw her arms round him. ‘Oh, Ricky, I could …’

  ‘Steady on,’ laughed Mickey.

  Andi kissed Ricky on the cheek. Then snuggled up to her husband.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Mickey. ‘What made you choose this particular cassette box?’

  ‘It sort of sums up the difference between them and us. Between you and me, old son. And Roberta Peel and Fromby. What mattered when we were younger. What matters now.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘They got Marx and Engels. We got Sam and Dave.’

  Seventy-one

  Justin sorted through the papers. Wayne had cleaned out Ricky’s files.

  Credit card receipts, gas bills, council tax reminders, income tax forms, phone bills, but nothing which looked like a Metropolitan Police juvenile bureau arrest sheet.

  Roberta shuffled the tapes, meticulously taking each one and playing it on Justin’s old Technics cassette deck, fast forwarding, rewinding, both sides.

  Clarence Carter, Solomon Burke, Arthur Conley, Eddie Floyd, the Mar-Keys, the Bar-Kays.

  Soulfinger.

  Da-da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da, da-da, da-da.

  Soulfinger.

  ‘Turn that down,’ barked Justin. ‘Where do you think you are, Radio Luxembourg?’

  ‘Patience,’ urged Roberta. ‘If it’s here, I’ll find it.’


  There were dozens of tapes, all catalogued on the cases in Ricky’s handwriting.

  Stax/Volt tour. King & Queen, Otis and Carla. Rufus Thomas.

  Roberta emptied the contents of the sports bag onto the sofa.

  ‘There’s nothing here,’ said Justin. ‘Just the usual domestic detritus. No joy?’

  ‘This is the last one,’ said Roberta.

  A tape, label peeled off both sides of the cassette itself, nothing written on the box.

  This might be it.

  She took the tape out of the box, slotted it into the cassette deck, and pressed PLAY.

  Justin and Roberta held hands and crossed fingers.

  I want everybody to get up off their seat.

  And put your arms together and your hands together

  And give me some of that OLD SOUL clapping.

  And I thank you.

  ‘I’m sure that’s Sam and Dave,’ said Roberta.

  ‘I’ve always been more of a Hawkwind man, myself,’ Justin remarked.

  ‘Well, that was the last one.’

  ‘What do you reckon?’ Justin asked.

  ‘I think you were right. French was bluffing.’

  Seventy-two

  ‘Thought it was a bit odd, gyppo driving a black cab,’ the young West Indian petrol station attendant told Colin Marsden.

  ‘He only came in for a can of petrol. I can remember saying to him didn’t he want diesel? I mean, that’s what black cabs run on, isn’t it? He just ignored me. Slapped the money down and buggered off. I was only trying to be helpful.’

  ‘Is this him?’ asked Marsden, showing the attendant the picture of Ilie Popescu taken at the immigration centre in Croydon.

  ‘Could be. They all look alike to me. But I can do better than that. What day d’you say it was?’

  Marsden reminded him.

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ said the attendant, wandering into the office. ‘Follow me.’

  He went over to a steel filing cabinet containing a box of video tapes.

  ‘Here we are. This is the one. We keep them all for a week, just in case a cheque bounces or a credit card turns out to be stolen.’

  He slid a tape into a combined TV/video player. ‘Quite late, wasn’t it?’ he said, fast-forwarding through the time-coded recording. ‘There you go. Here he comes now.’

  Marsden watched, fascinated, as the security cameras caught Ilie Popescu driving the stolen cab onto the forecourt, filling the can with four-star, paying and driving off.

  ‘What’s he done, anyway?’ the attendant asked.

  ‘Oh, nothing, just routine,’ Marsden said, shrugging off the inquiry.

  He rewound the tape and re-viewed the action.

  This time he noticed a second car pull into the kerb, twenty yards short of the filling station, dim its lights, then move off again as the black cab swung back out onto the main road.

  A black S-class Mercedes.

  Colin Marsden found the nearest available parking space, about forty yards from the hostel.

  He reversed in between a 1987 3-series BMW and an untaxed Bedford van with a flat tyre.

  Checking the address again, he got out of the car, pressed the remote and armed the alarm system.

  Blip-blip.

  The street was full of bags of rubbish and overflowing skips. Front gardens were cluttered up with old bikes, discarded prams with missing wheels, communal dustbins, fried chicken and pizza boxes, picked at by cats by day and urban foxes by night.

  Honest Edwardian villas were decaying all around, the product of decades of neglect and ill-advised, botched ‘improvements’.

  Some of the houses still had the original wooden sash windows, now peeling and rotting. Others had nasty aluminium replacements, totally out of keeping with the character of the properties.

  A few houses were boarded up. There were a couple of surviving, elegant Edwardian front doors, complete with stained glass. They were outnumbered by DIY-chainstore Mock Georgian, manufactured in ubiquitous uPVC and containing brass handles and inappropriate bullseye windows.

  One property had windows clumsily obscured with black emulsion and an all-steel front door. Probably the local crack house, Colin figured.

  This had been an expansive thoroughfare when it was first built, warranting its elevated ‘Avenue’ status, lined with London plane trees, now wilting under the pollution.

  Some trees had wreaked a terrible revenge on their violators, spreading their roots through the soft clay, causing widespread subsidence to the surrounding terraces, some of which now leaned like a fairground Haunted House, propped up with makeshift buttresses.

  As Marsden went to cross the road opposite the hostel, between a double-parked builder’s lorry and an abandoned Fiat 124, the force of the explosion lifted him off his feet, propelling him backwards over a crumbling garden wall and hurling him down a flight of steps leading to a pokey basement flat, carved out of an old coal cellar.

  He wasn’t sure how long he blacked out, but he came round under a larch-lap garden fence panel and the bonnet of the Fiat, which had been ripped off in the blast.

  He had been showered with glass, his chin was cut, blood seeping down the front of his shirt, trousers torn, knees grazed, shaken, but otherwise, remarkably, in good shape.

  Plumes of smoke hung over the street, car alarms pierced the air. Marsden scrambled free and hauled himself up the steps.

  The hostel was ablaze, flames leaping from the roof and windows, water gushing from shattered bathroom pipes.

  Cars were tipped on their side, like Dinky toys. Men, women and children wandered aimlessly, dazed and confused.

  A Somali man dragged himself along the path from the hostel, clawing at the ground. His right foot had been severed, the stump leaving a dark red slipstream. Wailing uncontrollably next to him, his wife, clutching a limp bundle, a baby girl, killed instantly, dangling like a rag doll.

  From out of the smoking doorway, Marsden could see a pretty young woman, aged around twenty maybe, dark hair, stumbling blindly towards the street.

  As he crossed the road to go to her aid, a second explosion forced him back. The girl was battered to the ground, her face hitting the pavement like a flipped pancake, forcing the bridge of her nose up into her brain, delivering the coup de grace.

  In the distance, Marsden could detect the sirens of the first emergency vehicles alerted, now heading for the scene of devastation.

  He waited one, two, three minutes, perhaps, crouching behind a skip, for fear of further explosions.

  Satisfying himself that the immediate danger had passed, he picked his way through the carnage and approached the body of the young girl, lying face down on the path.

  He knelt and stroked her hair, but didn’t have the stomach to turn her over.

  Marsden removed his jacket and draped it over her head and shoulders.

  He heard movement behind him and looked up to see a swarthy, Eastern European man, mid- to late twenties, he thought, staring at the body, tears welling in his eyes.

  ‘Maria,’ the man said. ‘They called her Maria.’

  Seventy-three

  Everton Gibbs held his arms in the air, palms facing the audience, and called for order.

  There was genuine, boiling anger in the hall.

  Gibbs, a distinguished black man, lean, early sixties, greying at the temples, immaculately turned out, dark, tailored suit, white shirt, navy, spotted tie, buffed black loafers, had travelled far since his days as a community activist on the Parkgate Estate.

  He had risen to lead Tyburn council, clashing constantly with the privileged young white Trots, favouring stealth, persuasion and evolution over confrontation and revolution.

  His work had brought him to the attention of the Home Office and he had graduated to a position of great influence in the Commission for Racial Equality.

  The Prime Minister was said to admire Everton’s robust Christianity and his cool-headed, inclusive approach.

  Everton Gib
bs had been happily married for forty years. He and his wife had moved out of the Parkgate and into a rambling Victorian villa in Muswell Hill, which they had lovingly restored, and had raised four children.

  The eldest son was now a doctor, the daughter a rising star in marketing and the youngest son doing a postgraduate degree in law.

  Then there was Trevor. They didn’t talk about Trevor much, other than to ask themselves where they had gone wrong. Like the rest of the Gibbs children he was brought up to fear God, know right from wrong, respect his elders and instilled with the work ethic.

  But Trevor had fallen in with a bad crowd, brushes with the law early on, experimenting with ganja and then harder drugs. Everton didn’t dwell on the thought, but it was rumoured that Trevor was now heavily involved with the Yardies, running drugs and guns out of Kingston, Jamaica.

  Everyone reassured Everton that Trevor was no reflection on him, he had done his best and look at the way the other three kids had turned out.

  But Everton still grieved for his middle son and felt guilty.

  On the platform in the hall alongside him were Justin Fromby, whom Everton had known since the Parkgate; Roberta Peel – she, too, had come a long way since Tyburn Row – and, alongside her, the radical journalist, Georgia Claye, whom Everton thought looked a little flushed.

  ‘Friends,’ Everton addressed the three hundred people assembled before him. ‘Thank you for coming. The tragic event at Tottenham this afternoon has given this meeting new impetus, reminding us all how we must be ever vigilant against the tide of racism engulfing our society. To open proceedings tonight, I call on an old friend and tireless campaigner, Justin Fromby.’

  There was wild applause and cheering. Fromby was almost like a film star to the serried ranks of forty-something Clarion-readers comprising the bulk of the audience.

  ‘Comrades, colleagues,’ Justin began, running his fingers through his sleek mane. ‘Before we continue, will you all please join with me in observing a minute’s silence in respect of all our brothers and sisters who have perished at the hands of racists and Romaphobes, particularly the victims of today’s cowardly atrocity in Tottenham. Let us, too, remember, poor Gica Dinantu, a guest in our country, a refugee from terror and oppression, gunned down in cold blood. His only crime was looking for work. We must congratulate the fearless Mizz Georgia Claye for her campaigning work in this area and also thank Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peel, Scotland Yard’s head of diversity, for taking personal command of this case, emphasizing the seriousness which the Metropolitan Police and, indeed, society, places on eradicating this type of dreadful smear on our national reputation.’