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Kitabı oku: «To Hell in a Handcart», sayfa 6
Eleven
Ricky Sparke stumbled upstairs and, by placing one hand over his left eye, managed to locate the keyhole in the front door to his flat. He stepped over the pile of unopened mail on the doormat, threw his coat on the sofa and reached for the vodka bottle.
He unscrewed the cap and turned it upside down. It was empty. He wrung the neck, like a man strangling a chicken, but the bottle was spent.
Ricky retrieved another from the washing machine.
Since he had a laundry service, he had no need of the Indesit combined washer/drier. So he used it as storage space. Every other surface was covered with old newspapers, magazines, CD cases and LP covers with coffee mug stains on them.
Ricky picked up a dirty glass, wiped it on his shirt tail, poured a large slug of Smirnoff into it and topped it up with half a bottle of flat slimline tonic.
By drinking slimline tonic, Ricky had convinced himself that it wasn’t really drinking at all.
It was his concession to fitness. He was always trying fad diets, none of which worked, largely on account of the fact that he would insist on supplementing them with vodka and Guinness.
He once went on a white wine only diet, after reading that Garry Glitter had lost three stone on it.
Ricky lost three days.
He devised his own version of the F-Plan diet. He called it the C-Plan. Ricky thought that if it worked he would market it and make his fortune.
The principle was fairly simple. You could eat anything you wanted, provided it began with C.
The diet started well on day one, Ricky eating nothing but cottage cheese and cabbage.
On day two, he dined on corn on the cob and cucumber.
Encouraged by the results, he extended the diet to his drinking habits. Two bottles of Chablis later, he moved onto Chartreuse and, eventually, Carlsberg Special Brew.
Then came champagne, chicken tikka masala, chips, cheese and onion crisps and cognac. He had completely forgotten about the chicken tikka massala until he brought it up on the platform of Upminster tube station.
Ricky had fallen asleep on the District Line, passed his stop at Westminster, slept all the way to Ealing Broadway, turned round and slept all the way back, past Westminster once more and onto Upminster at the eastern end of the line.
He was woken by a guard, turfed off the train, threw up, slipped in his own sick, smashed his head on a bench and passed out.
Ricky discovered a previously unidentified side effect of the C-Plan diet.
Concussion.
He slept the night on Upminster station and made his way back the following morning, breaking his journey at Aldgate East for an extremely painful and deeply unpleasant shit.
Since then he’d stuck to vodka and the occasional can of Nigerian lager, which had been his first news editor’s pet name for Guinness.
Ricky took a slug of his vodka and slim and retrieved a can of Guinness from the fridge to chase it down with.
He made a mental note to go shopping the following morning, Saturday. He was down to his last bottle of vodka and five cans of Guinness. Oh, and some milk might come in handy, too.
Ricky slumped back on the sofa and hunted for the remote. He located it under a pile of soft-porn magazines. He didn’t know why he bothered buying them any more. Half the time he was too pissed to toss himself off.
Ricky laughed. It was true. He was the one sad bastard who really did buy Penthouse for the articles.
Ricky hit the remote and the 33-inch Loewe TV in the corner came alive. Along with his Linn hi-fi, the state-of-the-art television was his pride and joy.
He loved his home entertainment. He was a cable junkie. And his collection of CDs and LPs, which he still played on a 20-year-old Linn Sondek LP12 turntable, was larger and more comprehensive than the record library at Rocktalk 99FM. Ricky often took his music in with him.
Charlie Lawrence didn’t believe in wasting money on immaterial software, such as records. He relied on freebies. And since all the popular stuff disappeared overnight, Ricky reckoned that the only way he’d get a decent show on the air was by supplying his own CDs. Otherwise he’d be reduced to playing Lena Zavarone, Kenneth McKellar and the crass soft rock no one even wanted to steal.
Ricky flicked through the channels, hoping to stumble across some hard-core German channel.
It was always more in hope than expectation. The only porn he ever found late at night seemed to have been made in the 1970s. Before they got their kit off, all the players looked like Abba, during their ‘Waterloo’ period.
Ricky paused when he saw what looked like a game show come on. The spangled host grinned insincerely and introduced the programme.
‘Good evening and welcome to a brand-new edition of ASYLUM!’
‘Today’s programme features another chance to take part in our exciting competition: Hijack an airliner and win a council house.
‘We’ve already given away hundreds of millions of pounds and thousands of dream homes, courtesy of our sponsor, the British taxpayer.
‘And, don’t forget, we’re now the fastest-growing game on the planet.
‘Anyone can play, provided they don’t already hold a valid British passport. You only need one word of English:
‘ASYLUM!
‘Prizes include all-expenses-paid accommodation, cash benefits starting at £180 a week and the chance to earn thousands more begging, mugging and accosting drivers at traffic lights.
‘The competition is open to everyone buying a ticket or stowing away on one of our partner airlines, ferry companies or Eurostar.
‘No application ever refused, reasonable or unreasonable.
‘All you have to do is destroy all your papers and remember the magic password:
‘ASYLUM!
‘Only this week one hundred and fifty members of the Taliban family from Afghanistan were flown Goat Class 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.
At the hospital, they insisted on giving Ilie a powerful tetanus jab. Now his arse was sore, as well as his arm.
And for what? Nothing. They’d come away empty-handed.
Fuck it. If only he’d stuck to stealing cars. Why the hell did he have to get greedy?
Ilie made a mental note to steal a new knife. He picked up the cellphone he’d taken from a parked car in Dalston and which had been reprogrammed by a computer engineer from Montenegro, claiming to be an ethnic Albanian from Kosovo fleeing Serbian oppression.
Ilie studied the keypad.
He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket and entered an eleven-figure number. Ilie pressed the green SEND button.
In a penthouse flat in Highgate, a stone’s throw from Karl Marx’s tomb, a phone rang.
Ilie’s brother’s phone.
Thirteen
Mickey woke with a start. The noise jolted him bolt upright.
‘Good morning, Goblin’s gang. It’s 7.30. Rise and shine. This is Radio Goblin’s reminding you that breakfast is now being served in Goblin’s Grille until 9 am sharp. Here’s some music to get you in the mood.’
‘What the …? What on earth …? Jesus,’ said Mickey, sitting up and rubbing his eyes, as the radio set in the bedhead tried to persuade him that everywhere he went, he always took the weather with him.
Mickey fumbled the light, located the radio and hit the off switch.
He walked to the window to see what kind of weather he had brought with him.
It was pissing down.
‘Where did that come from?’ Andi stirred from her slumbers.
Mickey picked up the Goblin’s guide from the MFI pine dressing table and turned to the section marked In-Room Entertainment.
Under Radio, he read: ‘Radio Goblin’s broadcasts from 7.30 am to 10.30 pm, when it switches off automatically. Guests who do not wish to be woken at 7.30 am should set the control from AUTO to OFF.’
‘Now they tell us,’ Mickey said.
It was well past 10.30 pm when they’d finally made it to bed.
‘You were otherwise engaged,’ Andi teased, running her tongue along her top lip.
Mickey smiled, remembering his nightcap. He walked round to Andi’s side of the bed, kissed her forehead, slid his hand under the cover and ran his fingers along the inside of her smooth left thigh.
‘Later, lover,’ she said. ‘I’m starving. Wake the kids and let’s get some breakfast.’
Mickey’s advancing erection beat a reluctant retreat. He dialled the bambinos, first Terry and then Katie.
They were already awake. Radio Goblin’s had beaten him to it.
‘Fifteen minutes, downstairs in the lobby,’ he told them both.
The rooms could not be described as generously proportioned, but they had made an effort.
The chainstore pine furniture was at least homely. There was a minibar and the usual tea-and coffee-making facilities and satellite TV. There was a proper power-shower and the plumbing actually worked.
Even so, the bathroom seemed to have been carved out of former cupboard space. If you were petite, like Andi, it was no problem.
If you were the size of Mickey, taking a dump meant assuming the natural childbirth position, with one leg draped over the side of the bath. But that didn’t stop the other leg getting scalded on the red-hot radiator/towel rail. The only solution was to swivel round and drape both legs over the bath, putting your arse at risk of third-degree burns.
It was the first time Mickey had ever taken a shit side-saddle.
The lobby looked different in daylight.
The main building had a 30ft-high, clear-glass conservatory tacked onto the front of it. But it couldn’t disguise its origins.
Goblin’s had started life shortly after the Second World War, one of dozens of utilitarian holiday camps which had sprung up around the coast of Britain.
The cheap package holiday boom of the late Sixties and early Seventies had pretty much wiped them out.
Goblin’s was a brave attempt to fight back, to bring the Disney experience to those reluctant to travel abroad and to compete with foreign invaders like CenterParcs.
A Kenyan entrepreneur who had made his fortune buying up and selling on former British Railways hotels had invested millions in an attempt to transform Goblin’s into a leisure experience fit for the 21st century.
He had been partly successful. The original swimming pool had been relined, heated and covered over to protect it from the elements.
The canteen had been redecorated and redesigned. It now looked like a shopping mall food court.
The concert hall had been turned into a state-of-the-art laser disco and karaoke venue.
But somehow, the DNA seeped through. The place still smelt of knobbly-knees contests, glamorous grannies, aye-aye-aye-aye conga, and risqué ‘Ooo, missus’ comedians.
Radio Goblin’s was a throwback to the days of tannoys, ‘wakey, wakey, campers’ and enforced jollity.
The old Greencoats had become Goblin’s Greeters and they clearly hated it. If you’re going to dress grown men and women as giant pixies you need to live in an irony-free society.
The Americans can get away with it. Your average aluminum-siding salesman from Idaho has no problem conversing with a six-foot gerbil. The six-foot drama student inside the six-foot gerbil costume thinks it’s his first step to Hollywood stardom. In the USA, everyone’s in showbiz.
At Goblin’s, the Greeters weren’t aspiring actors. They were out-of-work toolmakers, redundant fishermen, unemployed bank staff and otherwise unemployable youths. They didn’t see it as step one on the Yellow Brick Road.
If Disney is the Magic Kingdom, Goblin’s was Surly City.
The French family wandered into Goblin’s Grille, where the queues were already forming.
They’d eat first, then plan their day.
Andi might have been starving but she took one look at the full English breakfast buffet, poured herself a glass of grapefruit juice, tipped an individual packet of muesli into a bowl and topped it up with lukewarm milk.
‘Is that all you want, love?’ asked Mickey.
‘For now, yes. You know I’m not a big breakfast eater.’
‘But ten minutes ago, you were starving.’
‘I’ve changed my mind.’
‘Suit yourself. We’ll get a proper lunch later.’
Katie chose black coffee, a bottle of Sunny Delight and a pot of blueberry yoghurt. After watching the chef wipe his nose on the sleeve of his green Goblin’s jerkin, she decided she was watching her weight.
The congealed eggs, limp bacon, burned sausages, radio-active baked beans, cold toast and rancid butter substitute held no such horrors for Mickey. He was a veteran of police catering. Compared with the old Tyburn Row canteen, the Goblin’s Grille was four-star Michelin. Which might explain why everything smelt and tasted of burnt rubber.
Terry followed suit, loading his plate like his dad and piling half a dozen hash browns on a side plate. They looked like deep-fried Brillo pads.
Mickey and family carried their food to a large toadstool in the corner and took their places on plastic seats designed to look like tree stumps.
‘You can’t sit there,’ said a peroxide waitress, dressed in Goblin’s uniform, her bulbous thighs straining her laddered green leggings.
‘Pardon?’
‘This section is reserved.’
‘Who for?’
‘Guests.’
‘Guests? We’re guests,’ said Mickey, cutting into a sawdust sausage.
‘Other guests.’
‘What other guests? The place is half empty.’
‘Special guests.’
‘Special? Aren’t we special?’
‘All our guests are special, sir. It’s just some are, well …’
‘Don’t tell me. More special than others.’
‘Not exactly, sir, just different, like,’ said the waitress, who looked like a dog-rough version of Debbie Harry, Mickey thought.
‘Different? What, disabled or something?’
‘Or something, sir.’
‘What kind of something?’
‘You’ll find out, sooner or later, sir.’
‘Brilliant. Can I finish my breakfast?’
‘They’ll be down soon. They all come down together. Look, I’m not trying to be difficult, sir. Why don’t you sit at that table over there. It’s got a lovely view of Goblin’s Grotto. I’ll carry your meals.’
‘Mickey, let’s just do it,’ said Andi.
‘OK.’
‘Thank you, sir. If I can help you further, my name’s Debbee. I’m not actually a waitress. I’m a glamour model. I’m resting at the moment, though.’
And have been for the past twenty-five years, thought Mickey. Reminded him of an old Tom he’d pulled in at Tyburn Row. It could have been her, for all he knew. He wasn’t going to pursue it. She was never charged. She used to give relief to half the relief in exchange for immunity from prosecution, even if not immunity from anything else.
They shifted tables and resumed breakfast.
As they did, there was a kerfuffle at the entrance to Goblin’s Grille. An unruly gang of youths, all aged about fourteen, fifteen maybe, shuffled in, pushing and shoving and jeering, beneficiaries of what the probation service called ‘broadening the horizons’ of young offenders.
Goblin’s was where Tyburn juvenile panel had sent Wayne Sutton to ‘confront his criminality’.
Wayne had chosen to confront the staff, instead.
He whisked the hat off the head of a Goblin’s Greeter and threw it to one of his mates. A manic game of catch ensued, with the Goblin’s Greeter, an overweight, balding man in his late fifties, running around like a headless puppy in vain pursuit of his headgear.
The youths appeared to be in the charge of a man in his late thirties, about 5ft 8ins, denim shirt, cord trousers. He maintained an air of complete indifference, studying the vegetarian alternative menu.
The mêlée was broken up by Debbee, who dived in like a rugby wing threequarter and retrieved the hat.
She squared up to Wayne, quite obviously the ringleader, and grabbed him by his earring.
‘Oi, you can’t do that, you slag,’ Wayne squealed indignantly. He knew his rights.
‘Don’t you call me a slag, or I’ll rip your ears off, you little twat. Just behave, all right?’
‘You’re hurting me.’
‘Good. Now calm down, get your breakfast and sit over there and eat it.’
‘I’ll have you.’
‘Don’t make me laugh, Sunny Jim,’ said Debbee, throwing back her head. ‘Now just do as you’re told. And you,’ she said to the man nominally in charge. ‘Yes, you. I’m talking to you. Keep these hooligans in order or I’m calling the management.’
‘Don’t you take that tone of voice with me, mizz.’
‘And don’t you mizz me, either.’
‘There’s no need for violence. You could try reasoning with them.’
‘And you could try doing your job and controlling them.’
Debbee turned on the heels of her pixie boots and marched off. The youths made barking noises as she left.
‘Marvellous,’ said Mickey, watching from a distance.
‘What do you mean?’ said Andi.
‘That’s all we need.’
‘Oh, come on, Mickey. It was only high spirits. They’re just kids. Lighten up, we’re on holiday. So are they. You know what kids are like.’
‘Everything all right, folks?’ It was Debbee, back to clear away their plates.
‘Yeah, fine,’ said Mickey. ‘You’re a bit tasty in a ruck.’
‘So I’ve been told.’
Andi scowled. Debbee might be a dog, but she didn’t like Mickey flirting with another woman.
‘Who are that bunch?’ asked Mickey.
‘Oh, they’re, like, deprived kids or something. They’re here for a week on holiday. That bloke is a social worker, I think. He’s a bit of a wanker, if you’ll pardon my French. He can’t control them. Look at them now.’
The gang of youths was gathered around the table in the corner which the French family had recently vacated.
It was like feeding time at the zoo. They tore at their meals with their hands. They threw bits of food at each other.
‘That’s why I put them in the corner, well out of the way,’ Debbee explained. ‘You don’t want a face full of fried egg, do you?’
Terry thought it looked a bit of a grin. For two pins he’d have joined in.
Mickey was less than impressed.
At the centre of the group, Wayne Sutton held court. He had plans for the rest of the day. And they didn’t include water polo or crazy golf. He’d tell them later.
The food fight subsided. Wayne sat under a large, green and white No Smoking notice, and lit a cigarette.
Jez Toynbee, social worker, buried his head in the Guardian.
‘See?’ said Debbee. ‘Hopeless.’
‘That kid in the middle,’ said Mickey. ‘I’ve seen his type before. He’s a wrong ‘un. It’s written all over him.’
‘I dunno Dad,’ said Katie, polishing off her blueberry yoghurt. ‘He’s kinda cute.’
‘Yuk!’ spluttered Terry, mopping up the last of his break-fast with a cold piece of toast.
‘What?’ said Mickey.
‘That boy in the middle. He’s quite good-looking, don’t you think. Mum?’
‘Well, um.’ Andi knew what was coming.
Mickey put down his mug of tea, very slowly. Always a bad sign.
‘Now you listen to me, young lady.’ He looked his daughter straight in the eye. ‘He’s trouble. I don’t want you going anywhere near him. Understand?’
Katie averted her gaze.
‘I said, do you understand?’
She muttered something under her breath.
‘Hey, I’m talking to you. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Dad.’
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