To Hell in a Handcart
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Copyright
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by Harper 2001
Copyright © Richard Littlejohn
Richard Littlejohn asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008209094
Ebook Edition © November 2016 ISBN: 9780007387991
Version: 2016-11-17
Praise for Richard Littlejohn:
‘Irascible, irreverent and totally compulsive’
Daily Mail
‘Wounding, funny, mocking, unfair and a tonic … I admire Littlejohn, love his writing and am amazed that 1990s Britain has only produced one such satirist.’
Matthew Parris, The Times
‘The only serious competitor P. J. O’Rourke has.’
Independent
Dedication
For Wendy
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Praise
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter Fifty-four
Chapter Fifty-five
Chapter Fifty-six
Chapter Fifty-seven
Chapter Fifty-eight
Chapter Fifty-nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-one
Chapter Sixty-two
Chapter Sixty-three
Chapter Sixty-four
Chapter Sixty-five
Chapter Sixty-six
Chapter Sixty-seven
Chapter Sixty-eight
Chapter Sixty-nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-one
Chapter Seventy-two
Chapter Seventy-three
Chapter Seventy-four
Chapter Seventy-five
Chapter Seventy-six
Chapter Seventy-seven
Chapter Seventy-eight
Chapter Seventy-nine
Chapter Eighty
Chapter Eighty-one
Chapter Eighty-two
Chapter Eighty-three
Chapter Eighty-four
Chapter Eighty-five
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About the Publisher
One
The Tigani, Romania
The Tigani doesn’t feature on many maps. It isn’t sign–posted. The Tigani doesn’t advertise. Strangers are rare in these parts.
The Tigani – Gypsyland. Bandit country, home to six hundred close-knit families.
The police never ventured here. There had been no official law enforcement since the fall of Communism and the death of the dictator Ceausüescu. When the men in the black Mercedes S500 had stopped en route to ask directions, the non-gypsy locals questioned their sanity.
Their $100,000 limousine passed silently along the dust road, its computer-assisted air suspension soaking up the potholes like a sponge absorbing spilt milk. The trademark double-glazed smoked glass of the Daimler-Benz company concealed the faces of the driver and his three passengers.
It had cost the men in the Merc $100 and a carton of Marlboro to persuade a taxi driver from a town thirty miles away to lead them to the turning for Gypsyland. They followed his rotting Romanian-built Renault saloon for over an hour before he pulled off the single carriageway, pointed them towards their destination and wished them good luck. Then he was off in the opposite direction in a cloud of dust.
It had taken them just over three hours to cover the ninety miles from the Romanian capital of Bucharest, the final leg of a journey begun in Moscow.
As the car made its stately progress along the unmetalled lane, it was surrounded by raggedy, bare-footed, snot-nosed children and their semi-feral pets. Further back stood a gaggle of women aged from fifteen to seventy-five, wearing traditional Romanian peasant costume, long skirts, woollen jackets and headscarves. The younger women clutched babies in swaddling clothes.
They passed a group of men, all dressed in the familiar Eastern European uniform of denims, sweatshirts bearing the names and logos of provincial English football clubs, trainers on their feet. They pulled on untipped cigarettes and watched, warily.
Behind them loomed a derelict cement factory, which had closed eleven years earlier, a monument to the futility of central planning. There was real poverty here. Families of seven and eight sharing two rooms, with bare floors and a few sticks of furniture, heated inadequately by a simple log fire.
Yet at one end of the village stood a few new houses, red and white brick-built, with one or two cars in the driveway. These were home to the Popescu clan, the town’s ruling Roma gypsy family.
The Mercedes approached the biggest house in the street, a neat two-storey construction, with uPVC windows, a bright red front door and a paved driveway, upon which stood a Toyota pickup truck, with heavy-duty towing attachment, and an old-model BMW 525i. There were flowers in the garden, in stark contrast to the barren patches of yard elsewhere in the town.
This was the home of Marin Popescu, leader of the Roma clan, the self-styled Bullybasa, whose word was what passed for law in the Tigani.
The driver pulled into the paved driveway and brought the Mercedes to a halt behind the BMW. He popped the central locking.
Three men in Armani suits and Gucci loafers got out. They were all wearing immaculate black, collar-less shirts and sunglasses. The humidity stuck to them like warm glue, in stark contrast to the filtered, constant sixty-eight-degree, humidified air in the Mercedes. A small crowd of peasants watched from a distance as two of the three Russians approached the front door. There was no movement from within the house.
The biggest of the group pulled the wrought-iron handle of a bell hooked up to the door and waited for a reply.
He stepped back and surveyed the front aspect. Not a curtain twitched.
‘Marin Popescu,’ he called.
Nothing.
The smallest of the three men returned to the car and rapped his knuckles on the driver’s window. The boot lid eased open with a gentle clunk. He walked to the back of the car, bent over the boot, reached inside, removed a tarpaulin and retrieved a Soviet Army-issue, hand-held, anti-tank grenade launcher.
‘Marin Popescu,’ the big man called out again.
Silence.
The big man and his other companion strolled around to the back of the Mercedes. The small man moved to one side and took up position on one knee about thirty feet from the front door.
The crowd withdrew and scattered for cover. The other two men climbed back in the Mercedes and the driver reversed slowly.
The small man squeezed the trigger, propelling an armour-piercing grenade in the direction of the front door. It hit the target, shattering the reinforced steel behind the wooden façade, passing along the hall and exiting via a kitchen window. It slammed into a tractor parked at the rear and exploded, igniting the tractor’s fuel tank, sending it thirty feet into the air in a spectacular, incandescent fireball, shattering every window at the back of the house, melting the uPVC frames like putty.
The small man put the grenade launcher back in the boot of the Mercedes and replaced the protective tarpaulin, like a mother covering her precious, newborn baby.
The other two men got out of the car, clutching Kalashnikovs. The small Russian took a machine pistol from a holster under his left armpit. They waited for the smoke to clear, then walked towards the house.
As the smoke parted, they could see the figure of a man, 5ft 9ins, medium build, greasy, greying hair, walking towards them, his arms outstretched towards the heavens.
The Bullybasa was a less impressive figure than they had expected, even though he was immaculately dressed in designer trousers and silk shirt, with an expensive watch on the wrist of his extended left arm.
He was in his late forties, with a weathered complexion, typical of the Roma people. His nervous smile revealed a gold front tooth.
He had already been humiliated in front of the town. Even if he came out of this alive, he might never be able again to command fear and respect in the Tigani. It was time to negotiate.
‘Gentlemen. I am Marin Popescu,’ he said in the pidgin Russian he had picked up as a result of his involvement in the car-smuggling racket. ‘No more, please. Not in front of my people. Follow me into the house. We can resolve this. Come.’
He backed into the smouldering hallway, past the remnants of some expensively embroidered wall hangings.
Marin Popescu led his three visitors from Moscow into a large sitting room, furnished with plush Persian rugs, upholstered leather and mahogany sofas and matching footstools. A 46-inch back-projection Sony home cinema TV stood in one corner, its cable leading outside to a large satellite dish, like a giant wok, now containing one molten tractor.
The big man spoke.
‘Where is he?’
‘Gentlemen, we should talk.’
‘We have nothing to discuss.’
‘Where is he? Where is your son, Ilie?’
‘I am not able to tell you that. I do not know.’
The big man levelled the muzzle of his Kalashnikov at Marin’s head.
‘No, please,’ Marin pleaded.
The big man swivelled left and unloaded ten rounds into a wall hanging hunting scene above the fireplace.
‘For the last time. Where is he?’
‘He is not here.’
‘We know that.’
‘He has not been here.’
The big man raised the Kalashnikov and smashed Marin round the temple. The Bullybasa collapsed in a heap on the marble tiled floor.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Enough. He has been here. He was here three weeks ago. But he is not here now. He is very afraid. He has run. He has gone. But he told me to say you will get your money. He is very sorry, it was not his fault.’
‘Where is he?’
‘He has gone to England, to get your money.’
‘Where in England?’
‘London, maybe. I’m not sure. But he will be back with your money. He will steal cars, ship them to me. I will sell them, give money to you.’
‘Not good enough.’
The big man put the Kalashnikov to Marin’s head. He pressed his Gucci loafer into his throat.
The second Russian reached into the pocket of his Armani linen suit, took out a chamois leather pouch and removed a pair of silver-plated pliers.
‘You know what they say about Russian dentistry?’ The big man smiled for the first time. ‘It’s all true.’
As he pressed his foot into Marin’s Adam’s apple, the second Russian knelt beside him and squeezed the Bullybasa’s streaming nostrils. Marin gasped for breath.
The second Russian clamped the pliers onto Marin’s golden front tooth and yanked. Marin let out an agonized, terrified screech and his tooth was wrenched from its roots, ripping his gum and top lip in the process. He writhed in agony on the floor as the big man released his grip. His mouth was a claret gash. The blood poured through his fingers. The pain was excruciating.
‘We’ll call that a down payment,’ said the big man.
Marin cried out in pain, like a wounded fox caught in a snare.
‘London?’ mused the big man, wiping his forehead with a silk handkerchief.
‘He will get your money,’ Marin tried to reassure the Russian, even though he was gagging on his own blood.
‘Money?’ laughed the big man. ‘It’s gone beyond money.’
He lowered the Kalashnikov and pumped two bullets into Marin’s skull, one in each eye, putting the Bullybasa out of his misery.
The three Russians walked out of the house and settled back into the Mercedes.
The driver reversed, engaged Drive and motored slowly out of town. There was no reason to hurry. The Bullybasa was dead. The car was bulletproof. And the police never come within twenty-five miles of the Tigani.
As they drew onto the road to Bucharest, the big man picked a satellite phone from the centre console and punched in a number.
Seconds later, a voice in Moscow answered.
‘Sacha, it’s me,’ said the big man. ‘Who do we know in London?’
Two
London
Mickey French handed over two £50 notes and trousered his £2 change. Petrol had hit a tenner a gallon during the last fuel blockade and what went up never seemed to come down again.
He walked back to the car, turned the key in the ignition and pressed the pre-set button on the radio.
‘You’re listening to Rocktalk 99FM. I’m Ricky Sparke and these are the latest headlines. In Kent, another thirty-five Romanian nationals were found wandering along the hard shoulder of the A2. Police officers gave them meal vouchers and rail tickets to Croydon, where they will be able to register for free housing and social benefits. It brings to over 150,000 the number of asylum-seekers currently waiting for their applications to be processed.
‘Fighting broke out on the Chiswick flyover in west London as motorists abandoned their vehicles to escape a five-hour, ten-mile traffic jam caused by the new 25 mph speed limit on the M4, which is being rigorously enforced by cameras and satellite technology.
‘Police made more than two hundred arrests, three for assault, two for threatening behaviour and the rest for exceeding the temporary 15 mph speed limit on the elevated contraflow section.
‘The trouble was witnessed from above by the Deputy Prime Minister who was flying by helicopter to Norwood, where an RAF jet was waiting to transport him to Acapulco for a seventeen-day fact-finding conference on the future of the lesser-spotted Venezuelan swamp vole.
‘More news later. This is Madness.’
You can say that again, old son. Complete madness. Mickey French shook his head, smiled a resigned smile and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as his old drinking mate, Ricky Sparke, fired up the opening bars of ‘House of Fun’.
‘Thank Christ I’m out of it,’ he said to his wife Andi, perched beside him on the passenger seat of his pearl-white M-reg Scorpio Ghia.
‘How many times have I heard that? I’m still not sure you really mean it,’ she said, as he pulled off the forecourt and forced his way into the right-turn-only lane to avoid the half-mile queue for the pumps in either direction.
‘Honest, love. I do mean it. Cross my heart, on our babies’ eyes.’
The babies in question were sitting in the back seat, oblivious to their parents, to each other, to the outside world.
Katie was now fifteen and had a portable stereo permanently glued to her head. Occasionally she paused to change her chewing gum or call a friend on her pay-as-you-go mobile.
Her semi-permanent pout could not, however, obscure her looks. Katie was destined to break a few hearts. She was a pretty girl, dark-haired, olive complexion, slight, boyish figure, pert nose, just like her mum, who was of Greek Cypriot extraction, maiden name Androula Kleanthous, known to all as Andi.
Katie would sometimes complain that she wasn’t as full-hipped or ample-breasted as her classmates, but Andi reassured her that she’d be grateful for that in twenty or thirty years’ time.
Andi herself could still squeeze into a size ten at forty-plus and compared to some of the grotesque, lard-arsed old boilers outside the school gate, looked like a movie star. That’s what Mickey told her, at any rate.
And he meant it.
Young Terry, just coming up thirteen, was built like Mickey. He was already 5ft 9ins, just four inches short of his dad, and weighed in at eleven stone. He adopted the same cropped haircut as his father, but unlike his dad not out of necessity.
Mickey’s fighting weight was fifteen stone, but he’d gone to flab since he left the Job. Not so as you’d notice, mind. He came from a long line of dockers, brick-shithouses of men who could carry a few extra pounds. But Mickey knew.
Terry pulled down the peak of his baseball cap to obscure the light shining on the screen on his Gameboy.
They were driving from their home in the village of Heffer’s Bottom on the Essex borders to Goblin’s Holiday World on the south coast for a long weekend.
Driving would perhaps be overdoing it. Inching forward in a southerly direction might be more accurate, that’s if you didn’t count the regular periods of complete standstill.
Despite Katie’s initial protestations, she was looking forward to the holiday. She doted on her dad and vice versa. They didn’t see much of each other, never had really, what with Mickey’s work when she was growing up. He was always there, though, when it mattered, and she appreciated that.
Her friends had parents who were always going on about spending ‘quality time’ with their children, but Katie could tell they only ever thought of themselves.
Who needs quality time when you’ve got quality parents?
Apart from the metallic leakage from Katie’s Walkman, the occasional ‘cool’ from Terry as his micro-electronic alter ego slayed some more aliens and the Rocktalk 99FM soundtrack on the radio, all was peaceful and cordial.
‘You still don’t believe me, do you?’ Mickey said.
‘If you say so.’
‘No, love, this is important to me. I don’t want you to think that I’m still pining for the police.’
‘Yeah, yeah.’
‘What’s with the yeah, yeah?’
‘Mickey, you were married to the Job for as long as you’ve been married to me. You were like a bear with a sore head for months after you put your papers in.’
‘Not any more. The game’s not worth the candle.’
‘I never thought I’d hear you say that.’
‘Me, neither. It’s just, well, you know.’
‘What?’
‘For instance, take that last news bulletin.’
‘I thought your mate read it very well. For once. He didn’t stumble. Or swear.’
‘Come on, Andi. Be fair. Ricky’s cleaned up his act.’
‘About time.’
‘Case of having to. Anyway, it’s not how he read it, it’s what he read.’
‘What about it?’
‘Two news items, right? Between them they just about sum it all up. On one hand, we’ve got waves of so-called asylum-seekers pouring into Britain, scrounging, thieving …’
‘You can’t lump them all together as crooks and scroungers,’ Andi interrupted. ‘My family are immigrants. We came here to make a better life, too, just like some of these people. You don’t think we’re all scroungers and crooks.’
‘I know that, love. But there’s a world of difference between your people and what we’ve got now. Your family came prepared to support themselves, brought skills, started businesses. Look at your dad. Asked for nothing, built a chain of restaurants from scratch.’
‘So what’s your point? How do you know we won’t have a Romanian or a Kosovan restaurant on every High Street in ten years’ time?’
Mickey laughed. ‘Don’t hold your breath. OK, so some are genuine, I’m not denying that. But there’s a fair share who have just come to take, not give. Beggars, pickpockets, all sorts. We’re talking organized criminal gangs from Eastern Europe. Interpol know who they are. The Branch know who they are. And what does Old Bill do about it?’
‘What are they supposed to do, Mickey? It’s the government letting them in.’
‘Yeah, OK. But the chief constables bleat about lack of resources, yet they’re never short of money – or “ree-sorsis” as they always call it – when it comes to those poor sods on the M4, just trying to get to work, visit their gran in hospital, who knows? They crawl for ever at about 5 mph, then the moment they find themselves out of the woods they’re nicked for doing more than 15 mph, pulled over, random breath-tested, tyres checked. How much does all that cost?’
‘Oh, I forgot to tell you,’ Andi interrupted. ‘Mum got a ticket the other day. A foot over a zigzag line, outside the chemist’s, picking up her prescription.’
‘Bastards. There you go,’ said Mickey. ‘Yet at the same time, there’s gangs of bandits heading for the West End with rail tickets paid for by the good old British taxpayer. And even if they are caught, they get a slap on the wrist and a pound from the poor box.’