To Hell in a Handcart

by Richard Littlejohn

  As they walked out of the front door, Mickey was mobbed, autograph books pressed in his hand, punters pleading for photographs.

  Ricky hailed a cab from the rank over the road, Mickey jumped in and barked: ‘Soho.’

  ‘Ere, you’re that Mickey French,’ said the cabbie. ‘We’re all with you in the cab trade, you know.’ Ricky’s previous had been completely forgotten.

  ‘Yeah, ta,’ said Mickey.

  ‘They all mean well,’ Ricky said over the first drink in Spider’s, on the house.

  ‘I’m not comfortable with this,’ Mickey complained. ‘I’m not Robin Hood.’

  ‘See it from their point of view. You’ve struck a blow for the ordinary guy. They’ve had fucking political correctness, and asylum-seekers and burglary and fucking everything else, the whole justice system skewed in favour of the scum, terrorists back on the streets with a cellar full of Semtex and a pound from the poor box, foreign thieves and beggars and illegal immigrants jumping straight to the top of the housing queue. They’ve been robbed, shat on from a great height, seen toerags laughing their way out of court. Mickey, they’ve had it up to here. To them, you’re the bloke who fought back.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything for them. I did what I had to. For me and my family. What I was trained to do, for Chrissakes. That’s all. Fuck it, Ricky, I don’t know what’s happening to my life. In a couple of weeks, ambushed at the roadside in my own car, my daughter attacked in her room at Goblin’s, burgled, turned over, the fucking cat topped. I’ve seen the inside of two police stations, spent the night at Nonce Central on Fraggle Rock and I’m still facing a fucking murder charge.’

  ‘But you’re free.’

  ‘Yeah, for how long? It’s all gone to shit, Ricky, all of it. None of it my doing. I’ve only ever wanted to do the right thing. I’m not perfect, but I put my neck out there, twenty-five years in the Job. Asked for nothing that wasn’t my due. And now I’m the criminal. When did that happen? How did that happen? Who voted for that?’

  ‘And you wonder why all those people, our listeners, the cabbie, whoever, you wonder why they think you’re some kind of hero? Why they identify with you? You’ve just answered your own question. Because the system has turned us all into criminals, one form or another.’

  ‘That’s just it,’ said Mickey. ‘I may not be a villain, but I’m no hero, either. Let them find another knight with a shiny helmet.’

  ‘Don’t you mean shining armour?’

  ‘Speak for yourself, ducky.’

  ‘Let’s have another drink.’

  Dillon brought over another bottle.

  ‘Anyway,’ Mickey said, ‘where am I staying tonight? I’m not allowed within five miles of the house.’

  ‘You’re staying with me.’

  ‘If I’ve got to sleep in that tip, I’m gonna need another drink.’

  ‘Take it easy,’ said Ricky. ‘I forgot to tell you. You’ve got an early start in the morning.’

  Sixty-six

  ‘So who was the judge, in chambers?’ demanded Justin Fromby, pacing his study.

  ‘Roberts,’ said Roberta.

  ‘Mister Justice Andrew Roberts. I should have known. He should have been pensioned off years ago. He’s senile. Talk about forces of Conservatism, the man’s a fucking fascist. Pro-hunting, anti-abortion, anti-union. How the hell did he get the French bail appeal?’

  ‘Just lucky, I guess.’

  ‘I don’t know how you can make light of this.’

  ‘I am not making light of this. Roberts was the only judge on duty. He stays here all summer, never misses a Test match. Everyone we can rely on is swanning around Tuscany on the New Labour circuit. Anyway the CPS fucked up spectacularly. Most of them were off at a seminar in Majorca, boning up on the new European Human Rights legislation. They sent along some rookie lawyer, fresh out of law school.’

  ‘Roberts would have eaten him for elevenses and washed him down with a bottle of claret. When this case comes to trial we’ll have to make sure Roberts is kept well clear of it, otherwise French will walk. I’ll talk to the Lord Chancellor. He’ll fix it.’

  ‘Need I remind you,’ said Roberta, ‘we have more pressing considerations.’

  ‘It’s in hand,’ Justin snapped.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I said, it’s in hand.’

  Sixty-seven

  ‘Taxi, miss?’

  Andi looked up from her trolley.

  ‘MICKEE! Oh, Mickey, oh, thank God.’

  Mickey wrapped her in his arms.

  ‘But how? I mean, I thought. When I spoke to Ricky,’ she spluttered.

  ‘It’s OK, everything’s going to be fine. I’ll explain on the way back. How are the kids?’ he asked.

  ‘They’re lovely, they’re fine,’ Andi said.

  ‘They don’t know, do they?

  ‘No, no. Nothing, nothing at all.’

  ‘Then how did you, er, you know, explain this, you coming home suddenly?’

  ‘I said I had some papers to sign. They think we’re moving, because of the, you know, the cat business and all that.’

  ‘They may well be right. I never want to see the place again. Which is just as well. I’m not allowed within a five-mile radius, bail conditions.’

  They started to make their way across the concourse at Gatwick.

  ‘Where are you staying? Where are we staying?’

  ‘Ricky’s putting us up.’

  Mickey went over to the pre-pay parking machines and fumbled for a coin.

  He could feel the man at the next machine staring at him.

  ‘Oi, excuse me, you’re that Ricky French geezer, topped that gyppo, aren’t you? I signed your petition, rang the radio hotline ten times.’

  ‘It’s Mickey, actually.’

  ‘Hey, everybody,’ the man shouted, turning to the rest of the queue. ‘It’s Ricky French, you know, RICKY FRENCH, shot that scumbag, in all the papers.’

  Mickey was surrounded.

  ‘Sign this, Mickey, please, Mickey,’ begged a young woman waving a copy of the Sun with Mickey’s picture on page one.

  ‘This way, Mickey, come on, smile, mate,’ urged a man with a Nikon.

  Soon there were about thirty people, pushing and shoving, poking and prodding, patting his back, forcing him into involuntary handshakes. A blowsy woman with a 46-inch bust planted a kiss on him, bang on his lips.

  ‘MICKEE! MICKEE!’ screamed Andi. ‘What’s going on? Let’s get out of here.’

  Mickey grabbed his ticket from the machine and barged his way through the mêlée. He seized the trolley, took hold of Andi’s hand and began to run towards the car park, with the crowd in hot pursuit.

  Mickey and Andi were cornered by the lifts.

  ‘Come on, Mickey, just one picture. Is this the wife?’

  Mickey shoved the luggage trolley towards the throng, catching a young woman on her ankle, gashing her leg. She let out a yelp of pain.

  ‘Look, I know you mean well, but please, please,’ Mickey clenched his fists by his sides and drew breath. ‘Look, my wife’s had a long flight, please won’t you just FUCK OFF and LEAVE US ALONE!’

  The crowd fell silent and began to disperse, mumbling to themselves.

  The man who’d spotted Mickey at the parking machine turned to his wife and said: ‘Well, that’s bloody charming, isn’t it? A bit of bloody fame and it always goes to their head. Who does he think he is? After all we’ve done for him.’

  Sixty-eight

  ‘Protests have been springing up all over Britain about the flood of bogus asylum-seekers arriving daily in Britain. Fighting broke out at a march in Birmingham, there was further trouble in Worthing outside a hotel taken over by the local council to house immigrants and reports are just coming in overnight of an attempted arson at the government immigration centre in Croydon. Shots were fired during clashes between travellers and members of the Reclaim Essex Alliance on official gypsy facilities on the outskirts of Ilford. All police leav
e has been cancelled.

  ‘The opposition home affairs spokesman said the situation had been inflamed by the Home Secretary’s refusal to cut short his Tuscan holiday and return to Britain to take personal charge of the crisis. He said the recent, ongoing Mickey French case had focused public opinion on the way in which the law is now heavily biased in favour of criminals and against decent, law-abiding, home-owning taxpayers. He called for an immediate end to all immigration, for the armed forces to be mobilized to repel asylum-seekers at ports and for those involved in smuggling human cargo into Britain to be jailed for life.

  ‘Everton Gibbs, from the Commission for Racial Equality, will tonight chair an emergency conference, which is due to be addressed by the top lawyer Justin Fromby and Scotland Yard’s head of diversity, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Roberta Peel, who is leading the French inquiry and is tipped as the next Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. You’re listening to Rocktalk 99FM. Those were the headlines. Ricky Sparke will be here to take your calls after this, “Tommy Gun”, from the Clash.’

  Andi reached over and turned down the volume. ‘I never could stand the Clash,’ she grumbled.

  Mickey had filled her in on the events of the past few days, sparing her a few of the gorier details.

  ‘You can’t turn your back for five minutes.’ She tried to make a joke of it. ‘What happens now?’

  ‘What happens now,’ Mickey said, as they crawled through south London, past boarded-up shop fronts and drug dealers openly plying their trade on street corners, ‘is that we head for the radio station, pick up Ricky, get some lunch, then make for the flat.’

  ‘Can’t we go straight to the flat?’ asked Andi. ‘Ricky’s not off the air for a couple of hours.’

  ‘I haven’t got a key. Ricky said he’d get one, a couple cut, one each.’

  ‘Pity,’ she said, running the fingers of her right hand along the inside of Mickey’s leg.

  Using both hands, she reached over and unzipped his flies. Mickey was already straining inside his Y-fronts.

  ‘Not here, not in traffic,’ he said, while offering no resistance.

  ‘You just think of that song we used to sing when we were kids,’ Andi whispered, ‘about the little girls in the back seat kissing and a-hugging with Fred.

  ‘Keep your mind on your driving, keep your hands on the wheel, and keep your beady eyes on the road ahead,’ she sang, as she moistened her lips and lowered her head into Mickey’s lap.

  Sixty-nine

  Colin Marsden slept uneasily that night, random thoughts nagging his mind, a drip, drip, drip of doubts and contradictions, falling from the darkness like Chinese water torture.

  He was back at his desk at seven, picking up his messages. The lab had confirmed the corpse’s fingerprints were on the petrol can. And an e-mail was waiting for him from the overnight duty CID man at Tottenham.

  Marsden had searched the Met computer system and discovered that a black taxi had been stolen from a street near Spurs’ football ground some time on the night of the shooting. It was the only cab stolen throughout the whole of the Metropolitan Police area that week.

  The e-mail told him the cab was still missing and that a petrol station attendant may have seen the thief.

  Marsden decided he’d take a trip to Tottenham, after all. Talk to the petrol pump attendant, call in on the girl, Maria.

  There was another e-mail message. Call a DS Collins, out at J-Division, the old Tyburn Row beat his dad had pounded. Wonder what he wants?

  The canteen opened at 8.30 am. Marsden bought a bacon sandwich and a tea, three sugars, and settled down to read his newspaper.

  Mickey’s release on bail had been relegated to a single column on page one. There was a brief report of the inquest.

  Marsden checked some of the other papers lying around the canteen. Mickey’s release and the inquest had been relegated throughout Fleet Street, most of which was leading on the overnight violence in Birmingham and Ilford and the arson attack on the immigration centre at Croydon.

  None of the reporters at the inquest had picked up on the significance of the two questions Mickey had put to the pathologist, so excited had they been at the dramatic news of his release on bail.

  On the front of the Clarion there was a beaming picture of DAC Peel. YARD RACE CHIEF WRITES EXCLUSIVELY FOR CLARION. See page 28.

  Marsden saw page 28.

  Roberta was writing in much the same vein as Fromby the previous day. While she was prevented from going into too much detail about the Mickey French shooting, she emphasized that nothing could be read into Judge Roberts’s decision to free him on bail, that the case was still being treated as a racist murder and was being given the highest priority. She deplored the violence targeted at vulnerable refugees and peace-loving members of the travelling community and hoped that the courts would hand out exemplary sentences to those convicted of hate crimes.

  Marsden polished off his bacon banjo, stopped off for a stiff shit and was back at his desk by nine.

  He called the J-Division number given on the e-mail.

  ‘Collins,’ said the voice at the other end.

  ‘This is acting Detective Chief Inspector Marsden, Angel Hill.’

  ‘Good morning, sir. Thanks for calling back. I’m sorry to bother you, but I think I might have something for you.’

  ‘What might that be, constable?’

  ‘It may be something, or it may be nothing.’

  ‘Let me be the judge of that,’ said Marsden.

  ‘It’s about your body, sir, the shooting at Heffer’s Bottom.’

  ‘When you say my “body”, do you mean the deceased or the accused, Mickey French?’

  ‘The, er, dead man, sir.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘I gave him a tug, a week or so back.’

  ‘What?’ Marsden sat bolt upright.’ Say that again.’

  ‘I thought you might like to know.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘We were on a joint op with the dip squad from the British Transport Police. He tried to snatch a handbag from an undercover woman officer.’

  ‘Are you certain it was him?’

  ‘Yeah, I think so.’

  ‘Only think so?’

  ‘No, sir, I’m pretty certain.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this only now? Why didn’t you get in touch straight away?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I only caught up with it all yesterday. I’ve been away on leave, took the missus for a short break in Ibiza. Very nice this time of year, have you been?’

  ‘Cut the fucking travelogue, detective. Get on with it.’

  ‘Well, I saw the picture of the deceased and he looked like the same guy. And I remembered the name, Dinantu, specifically, because I checked the spelling when we booked him in at Tyburn Row and I had to type it into the computer twice.’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Marsden. ‘You entered the arrest on the Met computer?’

  ‘Yes, sir. And here’s the funny thing, when I went to check yesterday it was gone. Maybe I wiped it by mistake. But I do remember him and his bloody lawyer.’

  ‘Lawyer? He had a lawyer?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Collins. ‘And that struck me as odd.’

  ‘What, that he had a lawyer?’

  ‘No, sir, who his lawyer was. He’s quite well known. He’s just been on breakfast telly, he’s never off the telly, talking about this case, banging on about racial crimes and immigration and such.’

  ‘Justin Fromby?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Justin fucking Fromby.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘The usual, sir. Fromby claimed his client had been fitted up, started making noises about entrapment and complaints, going to the media, that sort of thing. The station sergeant took fright and bailed him to report back in fourteen days. He didn’t want the rubber heels and the reptiles crawling all over the place.’

  ‘Own recognizance?’ asked Marsden.

&
nbsp; ‘No, that was the other funny thing. Fromby said he’d stand surety. They left together.’

  ‘Isn’t there a record of that at the station?’

  ‘No, sir. I’ve checked the computer on that, too. Nothing. It’s as if he was never here, never existed.’

  Marsden sucked on his pencil and dialled his brother, Billy.

  ‘Drug squad, DS Marsden.’

  ‘Billy, it’s me.’

  ‘My brother, the DCI,’ laughed Billy.

  ‘Acting DCI,’ Colin corrected him, for once emphasizing the acting, not the chief bit.

  ‘DCI’s in the bag after this one, the French case,’ Billy teased. ‘You’re in all the papers.’

  ‘If you can find me lurking in the shadows behind DAC Peel,’ Colin said.

  ‘What can I do for you, bruv?’ asked Billy.

  ‘Coupla things.’

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘You know all about computers, don’t you?’

  ‘More than you, at any rate. If knowing less than you is technically possible. Worked out how to programme the video yet?’

  ‘Stop fucking about. I get by. I can just about fathom the Yard system,’ Colin said.

  ‘Then what can I do for you?’

  ‘Something that should be there, isn’t there.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘An arrest which was entered isn’t there. The DC who tapped it in insists he entered it. But now it’s gone. He thinks he could have wiped it.’

  ‘Not possible. He might have wiped his own machine’s memory, but a record is automatically entered on the central system at the Yard. He couldn’t wipe that,’ said Billy, confidently.

  ‘I’ve searched the system, but I keep getting “file not found”. Why?’ asked Colin.

  ‘Simple. Either this DC never did enter it, or someone else has wiped it.’

  ‘Is that easy?’ Colin inquired.

  ‘Far from it. The whole system is designed to stop sausage-fingered Plods erasing stuff by mistake. Hence the automatic copy to central records,’ Billy explained.

  ‘But it’s not there.’

  ‘So if your DC mate is telling the truth, someone else has been into the system and wiped it off.’