To Hell in a Handcart. Richard Littlejohn

from Kabul to our international gateway at Stansted, where local law enforcement officers were on hand to fast-track them to their luxury £200-a-night rooms in the fabulous four-star Hilton hotel.

       ‘They join tens of thousands of other lucky winners already staying in hotels all over Britain.

       ‘Our most popular destinations include the White Cliffs of Dover, the world-famous Toddington Services Area in historic Bedfordshire and the Money Tree at Croydon.

       ‘If you still don’t understand the rules, don’t forget there’s no need to phone a friend or ask the audience, just apply for legal aid.

       ’Hundreds of lawyers, social workers and counsellors are waiting to help. It won’t cost you a penny.

       ‘So play today. It could change your life for ever.

       ‘Iraqi terrorists, Afghan dissidents, Albanian gangsters, pro-Pinochet activists, anti-Pinochet activists, Kosovan drug-smugglers, Tamil Tigers, bogus Bosnians, Rwandan mass murderers, Somali guerillas.

       ‘COME ON DOWN!

       ‘Get along to the airport. Get along to the lorry park. Get along to the ferry terminal. Don’t stop in Germany or France. Go straight to Britain.

       ’And you are guaranteed to be one of tens of thousands of lucky winners in the softest game on earth.

       ‘Roll up, roll up my friends, for the game that never ends. Everyone’s a winner, when they play:

       ‘ASYLUM!’

      Was he taking the piss, or what?

      Who could tell?

      Ricky switched off the TV, picked up the CD remote and pressed Play. Randy Newman. ‘Bad Love’.

      Ricky drained the can of Guinness and topped up his vodka. He reflected on his earlier encounter with Charlie Lawrence.

      Fuck him and his fucking job. Who needs it? Ricky’s inclination was to walk away from Rocktalk 99FM. But Charlie Lawrence was right.

      Actually, Ricky needed it. He’d never been out of work, he had an expensive flat and expensive tastes.

      Tonight, Dillon had handed him his bar bill at Spider’s. It came to £1,234.75. Ricky had to promise to pay him next week, when his salary cheque was paid into the bank.

      Ricky collected the mail from the doormat.

      Junk, bills, flyers, pizza menus, minicab cards.

      And one registered letter, marked URGENT.

      It was from the Tyburn Building Society.

       Dear Mr Sparke,

       We note from our records that you are now four months in arrears with your mortgage. As of today (see date above) …

      Ricky looked at the letter heading. It was dated two weeks ago.

       … you are deficient on your repayments to the tune of £7,240.70. Interest is accruing daily.

       Please contact us immediately and make arrangement for payment. Failure to make full restitution within twenty-one days will result in county court proceedings for recovery of the debt and repossession of the property.

      Shit.

       Twelve

      Ilie Popescu swallowed another handful of aspirins to dull the pain. It had taken fifteen stitches to treat the deep wound in his right arm.

      He had told the staff at North East London Memorial Hospital that he had impaled himself on a garden fork. His English was imperfect, but he could get by.

      Ilie had given them the name he had adopted, Gica Dinantu, the name of his partner in crime, now deceased.

      It had been accepted without question by the immigration officer at Croydon and since he had no papers, it was impossible to prove otherwise. He couldn’t risk being traced.

      Having registered at Croydon, he was issued with temporary papers and a berth in a hostel in Tottenham, which now housed almost a hundred asylum-seekers from Eastern Europe. It had been a dilapidated old people’s home, due for closure. The local council shipped out the last of the elderly residents and spent £400,000 refurbishing the building in the style to which the migrants intended to become accustomed.

      All rooms had satellite television and small refrigerators, like hotel minibars. There was a communal canteen offering a variety of food, no worse, Ilie thought, than his expensive hotel in Hamburg.

      There was a snooker room and, in the grounds, a brand-new tennis court and five-a-side football pitch.

      Ilie was amazed at the generosity of the British. He received free board and lodging, clothing coupons and £117.50 a week in cash, which he supplemented with the proceeds of begging and petty crime.

      Ilie had struck up a friendship with a pretty Kosovar Albanian girl, Maria. They’d been hustling passengers on the London Underground when they were spotted by a gang of skinheads, roaming the West End rolling foreign tourists, putting the boot into beggars and nicking collecting tins from the homeless.

      Ilie and Maria were chased up the escalators at Warren Street, through the Euston underpass and into the sidestreets at the back of the railway station.

      They lost their pursuers in an alleyway behind the Exmouth, a popular pub with railway porters and guards. Panting furiously, hearts pounding, they grasped each other frantically. He hardened instantly. She reached inside his tracksuit trousers, lifted her skirt, put her arms round his neck and raised herself, straddling him. He pulled aside the gusset of her knickers and she lowered herself around him, knotting her ankles behind his back. The sex was violent and brief. They came together.

      Since then they had spent every night together at the hostel. Their encounter with the shaven forces of English nationalism had not deterred their begging. Their expeditions became ever more ambitious.

      Soon Ilie, or Gica, as even Maria called him, was running street crime and begging out of the hostel. There was no shortage of willing volunteers.

      Using a stolen van, Ilie would transport his gang to various areas of London, where they would burgle, beg, snatch handbags, and hustle drivers, posing as squeegee merchants at traffic lights.

      It was Ilie’s idea to steal the temporary traffic lights from the High Street and set them up at various locations. Easier to sting a captive audience. It was a variation on the idea he had used to hijack the car transporter in Hamburg, which would have worked like a dream had it not been for Freund’s treachery. If he ever straightened things with the Russians, Ilie vowed, he would return to Hamburg one day and slit Freund’s throat.

      Ilie also came up with the idea of buying, or rather shoplifting, a doll to use as a prop. The English were mugs, he reckoned. Real suckers for a woman begging with a bay-bee.

      That day they’d set up their phoney roadworks on the main drag through north-east London at the point where three lanes funnel into one.

      Ilie’s gang surrounded the car and went into their usual routine, banging on the windows, sloshing dirty water on the windscreen.

      The driver was a big man, his wife much smaller. There were two children in the rear. A pretty little girl and a boy, younger, a scale model of his father.

      Ilie tried to grab the woman’s handbag, smashing the passenger window with a crowbar and reaching through with his knife to cut the straps.

      The driver had grabbed the knife and buried it deep into Ilie’s forearm, accelerated away, brushing Maria into the gutter.