To Hell in a Handcart

by Richard Littlejohn

  ‘You’re forgetting I’m a deputy assistant commissioner in the Metropolitan Police.’

  Justin grabbed her by the shoulders and stared deep into her eyes. ‘And if you want to be Commissioner – and my God, you do – then you will listen to me. If we don’t do this and French goes public it’s all over. Not only will you not be Commissioner, you won’t even be a copper. You will be finished. I will be finished.’

  ‘But I can’t get involved in a criminal conspiracy. And that’s what this is.’

  ‘You should have thought about that twenty-five years ago, back at Tyburn Row. That was a criminal conspiracy, too.’

  Roberta slumped onto a corduroy sofa.

  Justin settled beside her and slid his arm around her. He pulled her close. ‘Darling, this is for us. For you. We have no alternative.’

  Roberta sat forward and took a deep breath. ‘Right, let’s think this through.’

  ‘OK, that’s better.’

  ‘For a start, what makes you think our, er, Romanian friend will go along with it?’

  ‘What choice has he?’

  ‘He could simply do a runner.’

  ‘Where would he go? He’s got the German police and, very probably, the Russian mafia out looking for him. He’s gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal his identity. We’re the only friends he’s got in the world,’ said Justin.

  Roberta laughed. ‘How do we convince him?’

  ‘You’re the one in the uniform. Does he want the Met on his case too? We hold all the cards, especially since we now know his true identity.’

  ‘All right, but burglary?’

  ‘French must be keeping the evidence in the house. I’ve got his address, from that incident at Goblin’s.’

  ‘But how can we be sure our man will find it? He doesn’t know what he’s looking for,’ said Roberta.

  ‘You’ve got a point, There is another way. At least then we could be fairly certain the evidence would be destroyed,’ mused Justin.

  ‘Out with it.’

  ‘Arson.’

  ‘ARSON? You are mad.’

  ‘It’s a damn sight easier than burglary.’

  ‘Justin, I don’t know. I really don’t know. I am a police officer. Whatever I went into the Job for, this wasn’t it. Bending the rules is one thing, commissioning arson is quite another.’

  ‘So what’s your suggestion?’

  Roberta stared at the floor.

  ‘There you go. Are we going to do this thing, or what?’

  Roberta stood up and finished her drink. She straightened her skirt, buttoned her jacket, fixed her neckerchief, smoothed her hair and said:

  ‘Come on then. You’d better introduce me.’

  Justin and Roberta crossed the corridor. Wayne was walking from the kitchen carrying a tray of bacon sandwiches.

  ‘I’ll take those, Wayne,’ said Justin. ‘Here’s twenty pounds,’ he said, handing Wayne a note. ‘Why don’t you go to the movies or something? Make yourself busy. And stay out of trouble.’

  Wayne took the cash and disappeared.

  Justin unlocked the door.

  ‘It’s OK. Don’t be frightened,’ Justin said as the young Romanian leapt to his feet in a blind panic at the sight of the formidable lady police officer.

  Ilie’s mind was racing, his eyes searching for an exit. What the fuck was all this about? Had they come to take him back to prison?

  ‘Bacon sandwich?’ offered Justin. ‘Oh, I’d like you to meet a friend of mine. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Roberta Peel, from New Scotland Yard. She’s a very important lady. Very high up in the police force.’

  Roberta looked the young man up and down. She approached him, hand outstretched in greeting.

  ‘That’s right, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peel. Pleased to meet you, Ilie Popescu.’

  Thirty-six

  ‘It’s ten o’clock. You’re listening to Rocktalk 99FM. I’m Ricky Sparke and these are the latest headlines.

  ‘It was revealed today that asylum-seekers are receiving free artificial insemination treatment on the NHS.

  ‘Hang on a minute. Let me run that by you again. Asylum-seekers are receiving artificial insemination treatment on the NHS?

  ‘Someone in the newsroom must be pulling my plonker. Who wrote this?’

  ‘Ricky, just get on with it. Read the fucking news,’ his producer yelled in his earpiece.

  ‘That’s all right. Let him go,’ said a familiar voice. Charlie Lawrence had entered the control room.

  Mickey looked up from the script to see his Antipodean boss grinning from ear to ear and giving him the thumbs-up.

  ‘Sorry about that, ladies and gentlemen. I am reliably informed by my producer that this item is not a complete wind-up. It is absolutely true. I give up. No doubt plenty of you will have a view on that, especially if you’re among those couples who have been waiting years for fertility treatment. Call me now on the usual number.

  ‘It’s not often I’m left speechless, but this is one of those rare occasions. Frankly, I don’t think I’ll bother with the rest of the news. How do you top that? Who gives a monkey’s what’s going on in Sierra Leone, anyway. I’ll get back to your calls just as soon as we’ve heard from Elvis Costello.’

  While Elvis was presenting a reasonable case for giving Chelsea a wide berth, the Rocktalk 99FM switchboard went into meltdown. For the next two hours Charlie Lawrence rolled up the sleeves of his Ralph Lauren cotton Oxford button-down and helped man the phones.

  At the end of the show, Ricky, Charlie and the rest of the team were exhausted.

  ‘Fucking brilliant, mate,’ declared Lawrence. ‘Top stuff. I only came in to give you the latest figures. Look at this.’

  He handed Ricky a sheet of A4 containing a jumble of numbers.

  ‘Leave off, Charlie. I do words, not numbers. What does it all mean?’

  ‘Ricky, mate, you are now doing numbers. We’re up thirty per cent over the past week. Shit, if it carries on like this we might even make a profit before we’re very much older. You’ve really struck a chord lately. You should get mugged more often, mate.’

  ‘I dunno,’ said Ricky, with a sardonic shrug.

  ‘Listen, mate, you’ve really struck a fucking chord with all this asylum kick. This is hot-button, heart of the nation. A Number One, top of the fucking heap.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  ‘Ricky, this is sensational. Look on it as doing a public service. You don’t get anything like this on any other station. You’re telling it like it is. The public loves it.’

  ‘I know, but the public would love public executions, too.’

  ‘So what’s your point?’

  ‘Some of the fucking idiots we get on the phone, that’s what.’

  ‘They’re our customers, Ricky. They pay your fucking wages.’

  ‘I know, Charlie, but there are degrees.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘You ever heard of the Duke of Wellington?’

  ‘Young’s pub, nice barmaid.’

  ‘Not the Duke of Wellington, the Duke of fucking Wellington. A person not a pub.’

  ‘Never met the bloke. I don’t get invited to those kind of posh Pom parties.’

  ‘Hardly surprising. Anyway, he died a couple of hundred years ago.’

  ‘Where’s this going?’

  ‘During the Napoleonic wars the Duke was commanding the English forces at Waterloo. No, not the station, before you say it. Anyway, he took one look at our troops and said something to the effect that he didn’t know what effect they had on the enemy, but they scared the shit out of him.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘That’s how I feel about some of our listeners. Sometimes the show sounds like a fucking National Front rally.’

  ‘That’s not your fault.’

  ‘I’m the fucking host. I choose the topics.’

  ‘Right, mate. And you keep hitting the bullseye. You might choose the topics but you don’t choose the reaction. That comes
from the listeners themselves.’

  Ricky rubbed his eyes and sighed. ‘Yeah. I guess you can pick your enemies but you can’t always pick your friends.’

  ‘Fuck me, mate, philosophy, too. You are on a roll.’

  ‘That’s all you give a toss about, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s my job, mate. And your job is to drive audiences. Right now you’re doing it brilliantly. The Ricky Sparke show is the hottest, most talked-about show in town. So what if the fuckwit liberals hate it? The listeners love you. Just keep on doing what you’re doing.’

  ‘And what do I do next – invade Poland?’

  ‘You’re tired, mate. Piss off and relax. You’ve earned a few tinnies.’

  ‘Something tells me I am about to be taken unexpectedly drunk.’

  ‘Just make sure you’re sober in the morning,’ Charlie reminded him.

  ‘Will anyone notice the difference?’

  Outside the Rocktalk 99FM studios, Mickey French was waiting in the car. Ricky opened the passenger door and leaned inside.

  ‘Dump the motor in the underground car park. We’ve got an appointment with Dr Smirnoff.’

  Mickey needed no persuasion. Andi and the kids had arrived safely in Florida and he’d never been much of a one for his own company.

  After half a dozen large ones and a couple of Cumberland sausage sandwiches in the nondescript drinking barn, a former car showroom, over the road, they took a cab to Soho.

  The door of Spider’s was locked.

  ‘Where the fuck’s Dillon got to?’ asked Mickey.

  ‘I’m right behind you boys,’ a soft Irish brogue answered.

  ‘You’re late. You’re supposed to open at three.’

  ‘It’s my club. I’ll open when I like. I didn’t get away until five-thirty this morning. Why don’t you go and have one in the French? I haven’t even cleaned up yet.’

  ‘We’ll give you a hand,’ said Mickey.

  ‘OK, come on then.’ Dillon unlocked the door and the three of them abandoned the broad daylight of central London and descended into an Orphean cellar, full of glasses, empty, half-empty and broken, scattered everywhere. A couple of stray coats and a lost handbag but no casualties.

  ‘I’ll tell you what, boys,’ said Dillon. ‘You missed a great night.’

  ‘Give us a livener, then,’ said Ricky. ‘Oh, and stick some music on, too.’

  Dillon poured three generous measures of Stolichnaya and selected a Louis Jordan CD.

  What’s the use of getting sober, they all sang along, if you’re gonna get drunk again?

  Mickey and Ricky collected the glasses, righted the tables and chairs while Dillon sluiced the floor, fumigated the khazi, washed up the empties and replenished the optics.

  When some semblance of order had been restored, they took their respective places on either side of the bar. Dillon pulled the cork from a bottle of Chilean Chardonnay and plonked it in front of Ricky and Mickey.

  ‘On the house, boys. Thanks.’

  ‘Gawd bless yer, guv. You’re a toff and no mistake.’ Mickey tugged his forelock.

  ‘Ever think you’re getting old?’ Ricky asked of no one in particular.

  ‘We’re all getting old,’ said Dillon.

  ‘It’s just that sometimes I look round me and think to myself, this does not compute. The older I get the more I hanker for the past. I miss the old days.’

  ‘Such as?’ said Mickey.

  ‘You know, when the pubs shut at three and didn’t open again until five-thirty. That’s when I first started coming here.’

  ‘But you campaigned for all-day opening,’ Mickey reminded him.

  ‘Yeah, I know, but it’s not the same. I hate pubs. That’s something I never thought I’d hear myself say.’

  ‘Me neither,’ said Mickey. ‘Considering how you spend half your life in boozers.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean. It’s not pubs, it’s what they’ve become. Laser karaoke discos with stupid names like the Ferret and Sea Slug, full of kids drinking alcopops from the bottle and foreign tourists in garish anoraks ordering halves of warm beer they don’t like and then wondering why the barman won’t bring it to their table.’

  ‘You’re not wrong, Ricky,’ nodded Dillon. ‘That’s why this place has survived. I thought all-day opening would be the death of me. Quite the opposite.’

  ‘This is what drinking should be about. Dank, subterranean, full of like-minded people.’

  ‘Oi, less of the dank,’ chided Dillon.

  ‘You know what I mean. And it’s not just pubs, it’s everything.’

  ‘Here we go,’ said Mickey. ‘This is going to get deep and it’s not four o’clock yet. Better open another bottle.’

  ‘Take today. I’ve just done a couple of hours on artificial insemination for asylum-seekers on the NHS. I must have sounded like Dr Goebbels. But I’m not the one who moved the goalposts.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ve never been against immigration. Or genuine refugees. My own gran was a Russian Jew who fled here after the first war. Take your missus, Mickey, and her family. All genuine refugees from Cyprus. Good as gold. And your lot, Dillon. I guess they came to, what, work the railways, dig the roads, stuff like that.’

  ‘Correct. My family practically built the A40 single-handed,’ confirmed Dillon.

  ‘Well, there you go.’

  ‘But that’s not what we’re dealing with here. There’s a full-scale international smuggling racket, gangs of fucking criminals from Eastern Europe and Kurdistan and the government is rolling out the red carpet. Yet raise the question and you get shouted down as some kind of racist.’

  ‘Change the subject, someone. This is getting depressing,’ said Mickey.

  ‘Oh, by the way, your bird was in the other night,’ said Dillon.

  ‘Whose bird?’ asked Mickey.

  ‘Georgia Claye.’

  ‘She is not my fucking bird.’

  ‘You brought her down here, introduced her to the club.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘She’s a fucking menace when she’s pissed.’

  ‘She’s always pissed.’

  ‘Practically fell down the stairs and started picking arguments with anyone who would listen. I had to put her in a cab. She’s barking.’

  ‘Dagenham East, more like,’ said Ricky.

  ‘Eh?’ said Dillon.

  ‘Four stops past Barking.’

  ‘I drove her home once, after I’d dropped you off, remember?’ Mickey reminded Ricky. ‘She made a pass at me.’

  ‘You didn’t give her one?’

  ‘Fuck off. Not with yours. I’ve smelt her breath, I hate to think what the rest of it smells like. Anyway, I’m a happily married man. And that reminds me, better make this the last. Andi’s ringing me from Florida at seven our time. I’d best get home. She’ll only worry if I’m not in.’

  ‘Fair enough, son,’ said Ricky. ‘I might just stay on.’

  The club was beginning to fill up with the usual suspects, out-of-work actors, unpublished authors, barmen on their afternoon breaks and a handful of Fleet Street’s finest. Ricky nodded acknowledgement as they walked in.

  ‘That’s it. The crew of the Starship Enterprise have just arrived. I’m off,’ said Mickey.

  ‘A toast before you go, my good man,’ announced Ricky.

  He emptied the dregs of the bottle, raised his glass and saluted his best mate.

  ‘To family.’

  ‘Family.’

  Thirty-seven

  As his cab weaved through the north London suburbs back to Tottenham, via Highgate, where his brother lived, down the hill to Crouch End, up again through Alexandra Palace and park, over the railway line, past the tube station at Wood Green, Ilie Popescu’s mind was racing. He couldn’t take it all in. His brain was churning, considering the angles, the options, the upside, the downside.

  Was he going to wake up back in his prison cell? This was beyond surreal. He ran it through the memo
ry bank again.

  The Fromby guy. Some kind of hot-shot lawyer. The woman cop. Assistant something or other. Big noise at Scotland Yard.

  He’d heard of Scotland Yard. Everyone had heard of Scotland Yard. The English, so incorruptible, so he thought.

  Ilie had come across bent cops before. He’d bought a few bent cops in his time. He thought back to that sap Freund, in Hamburg.

  Yet this big-time lawyer and seriously senior woman police officer had asked him to commit a crime. To torch someone’s house. This isn’t how things are done in England, Ilie thought. Is it? Romania, sure. All those freelance Securitat gorillas for hire. Russia? You bet. He could even believe it of the Germans, after his dealings with Freund.

  But senior police officers at Scotland Yard just don’t pick complete strangers off the street and ask them to commit arson. Do they?

  Weird. Fucking weird.

  Yet a few hours ago he was behind bars. Now he was free and on his way back to the hostel. And Maria. Christ, Maria. The thought of Maria sent the blood coursing through his dick, which began to strain against his designer denims. He put her to the back of his mind. Concentrate, Ilie. Concentrate. Pros, cons.

  How did it go again?

  Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peel. Pleased to meet you, Ilie Popescu.

  It was the first time he’d heard his own name since he fled Romania, apart from his brief encounter with his brother. He thought he’d covered his tracks.

  Ilie couldn’t read much of the file Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peel had handed him in the drawing room of Fromby’s house. But he understood enough. Interpol, for a start. Freund, for another.

  The pictures clinched it. Gica, poor, stupid Gica. Ilie almost felt a moment’s remorse, but he brushed it aside. Gica knew what he was getting into. That could have been Ilie dead instead.

  They knew everything. Fromby had summarized Ilie’s options. They weren’t attractive.

  Ilie thought about going to the authorities and throwing himself at their mercy. But these people were the fucking authorities. Even if he could find anyone to listen, who would believe him?

  Option one was to do as they wanted. Fromby would take care of the bag-snatching charge and Ilie would be free to resume his life. If he refused, he could be placed back under immediate arrest and Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peel would pick up the phone to Freund. Ilie would be deported back to Germany to face trial and almost certainly a sentence of life imprisonment.