Heavy Duty Attitude (26 page)

…and causing what, a couple of hundred pounds or so, of the tightly packed explosives packed into the bomb to erupt…

But here inside the room, for a second, there was nothing, before a roar of approval went up and suddenly the bikers were crowding round Charlie in a celebratory scrum as though he’d just scored a winning goal, rather than having cold bloodedly murdered at least two people, let alone whatever other casualties he’d caused on the estate.

…instantaneously blowing the small three bedroomed house, and everyone in it at the time, to smithereens…

Instead all around me there was an ongoing eruption of cheering and clapping from within the room as they fell on Charlie. I swear that if the ceiling hadn’t been so low they’d have carried him on their shoulders on a victory lap round the flat.

…no burning debris falling to the ground, no car alarms wailing, no shattered glass scattered across the street…

Meanwhile, with one hand pressed against his free ear against the noise, Wibble was calling back his local observer for an immediate situation report and then his face broke into a broad grin of pure delight.

‘Excellent…’ I heard above the celebrations, ‘now get the fuck out of there and I’ll see you when you get back.’

 

Like Danny, Mikey and the Cambridge crew before them, Noddy and Leeds Kev had never stood a chance, never known what was about to hit them.

In one fell swoop The Brethren had just decapitated The Mohawks. *

The guys had gone again, as quickly as they had arrived once the news was in.

It seemed from what he was saying that he and I had more time to kill as we waited for Bung to return to the flat with his cleaning gear, whatever that was.

If he had been the one with the keys to park the van inside the somewhat ironically named safe house, I guessed Bung had to have then stayed on to be Wibble’s point man in Luton. The spotter, the observer on the ground checking the squaws into the house and passing word back for the hit. If I was right, I guessed he’d be a while. The road works on the M1 would be an absolute bastard.

It’s a funny thing about knowing you are a dead man anyway. You end up being free to say whatever shit you want and eventually it was me that broke the silence this time.

‘So Charlie’s getting his colours I see,’ I said, ‘that’s why you brought him up here tonight?’

‘Yeah.’
‘He’s a bit young for it isn’t he?’
‘Well you know how it is, kids today…’
‘But seriously…’

‘No, seriously, have you seen some of the street gangs these days? DNS? OC? SMN?’

As a crime writer I knew of the likes of Don’t Say Nothing, the Organised Criminals, Shine My Nine of course. The rise in street and young gang crime in London and elsewhere across the country was one of the scare stories of the moment. There were kids of twelve or so carrying guns around down in Croydon.

‘But you guys are older…’

‘Yeah we’ve always had an age bar at twenty-one but sometimes you’ve got to move with the times. It’s all very well having all the old guys together but you can’t stand still, you have to be thinking about the future of the club, the next generation.

‘Besides which, it’s good to get some new blood in. You’ve got to have young blood around, guys who are hungry to keep the club strong and looking after business.

‘If we carried on like we are without bringing on new guys we’d just end up as a bunch of fat old bastards sat around on our lardy arses whinging on to each other about our cholesterol levels with a bunch of street kids running rings around us.

‘This way there’ll be new guys coming up through the ranks to keep the patch strong.

‘Besides which, Charlie’s special. He’s a legacy. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not going to throw open the gates so any fucker can join, we’ve gotta maintain standards. People are still going to have to prove they’ve got what it takes to wear our flash, but we’ve gotta be realistic. We have to look at fresh talent and where it’s merited give it a chance.’

‘And Charlie’s got that chance?’

‘Well, like I said, Charlie’s special. He’s really got his old man’s blood in his veins. Hey, you of all people ought to know that. He’s the guy who put you here isn’t he.’

I had to admit he was right.
‘But Danny never had it did he? A chance I mean? You guys saw to that.’

‘Well that’s the way it goes sometimes. He knew what he was getting into.

And we didn’t do it to him, he did it to himself…’
‘What d’ya mean you didn’t do it to him? You’re the ones that got him to drive the fucking van! You’re the ones that got him to call the number, to send the signal to blow up the fucking van he was sitting in for Christ’s sake!’

‘He did it to himself when we heard he had called you. The moment he did that he was out.’

That chilled me instantly. It was simple confirmation that I’d been right, that Bob had been intercepting my calls and feeding them to The Brethren. What else did they know I wondered?

‘War or no war, you guys are going to have quite a party tomorrow aren’t you? You’ve got plenty to celebrate, what with topping the squaws and Charlie getting made up.’

‘Yeah I guess we are at that.’

 

‘So what was all that about with Toad? Why’s it such a bigger thing for him than anyone else?’

 

‘Oh, once he’s patched, Charlie’s going to take over as P up North.’ ‘Charlie?’ I was shocked. ‘But he can’t just walk into that as soon as he’s patched, can he?’

 

‘It was part of the deal. Everybody knows that,’ Wibble shrugged as if it explained everything.

‘So I heard from Toad, but seriously Wibble, what is this all about? Is Charlie coming into his inheritance? Did Damage leave him the Northern charter in his will or something?’

He didn’t want to answer that one.

 

‘Anyway, whatever he says in public, Toad won’t be happy about it,’ I challenged.

 

‘Toad? What d’you mean? About what?’ he asked.

 

‘About Charlie of course. Damage’s son. The young pretender to the throne.’

 

‘Oh that,’ he said, ‘Toad’s fine with it, like I said, it was all arranged years ago. It’s all part of the deal.’

So it wasn’t just about getting his patch early. Once he was made up, Charlie was clearly being fast tracked within The Brethren for some reason, and taking over as Northern charter P was no joke. After all, part of Damage’s lasting legacy had been the entrenchment of the power of the Northern charter within the national club through its control of the business end of the club’s affairs.

So what had been happening here? Could Toad really have just been holding the charter as a regent pending Charlie’s vote?

And if so, would he really just step aside now that it was time, let go of the reins and hand it over to some kid, whoever’s kid he was? How happy would he be to do that? And if he did, where would he stand? Even if he was completely loyal it could be a dangerous place, being a power behind the throne. Because to whoever was on the throne, anyone with power, with respect, however they acted, would always have to be seen as a potential threat.

In some ways, as Damage had pointed out to me long before, a healthy dose of paranoia was a necessary survival trait as a Brethren P. But as he had also acknowledged, it was a fine balance to maintain, since an obvious lack of trust in those around you alienated your potential supporters and corroded the strength of feeling that made up the bonds of LLH&R that wove them together; whilst obvious paranoia made you a threat to everyone else with any standing in your charter or club and the natural reaction to any threat was for the threatened to seek to destroy it utterly.

‘It’ll be OK,’ Wibble said, as if reading my mind, ‘Charlie knows he needs Toad’s local cred with the guys so he’ll be working hard at keeping him onside.’

‘Maybe,’ I said, unconvinced. ‘So what if that was the deal? That was then, this is now. Times change, people change.’

‘Besides which, Toad’s his uncle anyway.’
I must have looked surprised.
‘On his mum’s side, not Damage’s. So it’s all in the family.’

‘Yeah, like that’s a guarantee,’ I sneered. ‘You ever watch The Sopranos? Yes OK, Damage was respected but he’s been gone a while now. How do you know that Toad hasn’t settled into his role? And what about the other guys in the north, how d’you know they’re going to be cool about some freshly made up kid coming in as new head honcho?’

‘Well that’s true enough, but I guess Charlie will just have to persuade them won’t he?’

‘Persuade them? What’s he going to say to do that then?’
Wibble grinned at that.

‘Say? Nothing. You have to show people in this game, not tell them. Words are just empty bags of air. Who’s going to believe them?’

 

‘But you can’t be serious about putting a kid like that in charge of a charter can you? Particularly not now?’

‘Why not now?’
I was lost for words for a second or two.

‘Because you’re at war aren’t you? And what, your cunning plan is to put a twenty-one year old who’s been made up the day before, in charge of your key powerbase? Is it just me or does that sound nuts?’

His grin just got wider as he I spoke.
‘Not really, not anymore,’ he replied.
I was confused.
‘Why not? What do you mean?’ I asked.
He shrugged.
‘That’s it, we’ve won.’

‘What d’you mean you’ve won? You’ve just taken out two of their guys that’s all. They’ll be back at you soon enough.’

 

‘No, we’ve not just taken out two of their guys. We’ve taken out their top two guys. There’s a difference.

‘And it won’t just be them will it?’ he continued, ‘this is wartime don’t forget, neither of those two will have gone anywhere without at least one, maybe two bodyguards each, possibly more.

‘So if we’re lucky we’ll have taken out maybe half a dozen of them including some of their toughest guys.’

‘Even so…’
‘Don’t you get it?’

He held up his hand to count on his fingers for my education, ‘Number one, we’ve decapitated them. No one will be in charge and whoever’s left in either club will need to sort out between them who’s going to take over.

‘Chances are they’ll fall apart again if they can’t agree between them sharpish who it’s going to be.’

‘Divide and conquer?’
‘Something like that.

‘Number two, we’ve done it to both sides and they won’t know how we knew to do it. They’ll be running scared, wondering what went wrong. A grass is the obvious explanation and each side’ll be suspicious it was someone in the other club.’

‘So it’s divide and rule?’

‘Absolutely. Number three, we’ve taken out some key members. You know how the clubs work, and the goat fuckers and zombies were no different. They’ve got to have about half a dozen or so full patches to have a charter otherwise you can’t control your turf. Get too much bigger than that and you start to have infighting so you split some off into a new charter to take new turf.’

He made it sound a bit like amoebas. I had a silent mental vision of a culture multiplying and spreading across the face of a petri dish.

‘And between them they had five charters which means they’ve probably only got around thirty, maybe forty or so full patches. And if we’ve taken out half a dozen then they’re down by what, fifteen percent or so in one hit?

‘And in a war where they’re fighting against two clubs with a combined strength of about a hundred and fifty between us, that’s serious.’

‘Number four, the war will be hurting their trade. We’re national, our business is still going on around the country. They’re regional, all their shit is concentrated in one area and while this war is on they’ll all be in full lock down.’

‘It’ll be hurting.’

 

‘So they’ll soon need to come out to keep their business going, and that’s when we’ll be out there, hunting them down, one by one.’

*
There was a knock at the door.

Wibble peered at a small CCTV set hanging on the wall just above the light switch before throwing the bolts to open up. Even so, he kept his gun in his hand as he did so.

‘Ah good, he’s here!’

 

Bung had arrived back.

 

‘So, shall we do it now?’ Bung asked once he was inside with the bag he was carrying.

 

‘Might as well,’ said Wibble, ‘everyone’s gone and they won’t be coming back.’

 

‘OK then, I’ll get set up.’

Bung plonked the bag on the table and unzipping it brought out an ordinary desktop electric fan, an extension lead and a part filled black plastic bin bag while Wibble resecured the door behind him.

Plugging the lead into a socket just behind the door he trailed the flex to the middle of the room, connected up the fan and then untied the top of the plastic bag.

‘I hate this,’ said Wibble conversationally, ‘it always makes me sneeze.’ Bung switched the fan on, turned it up to maximum and lifted it up in his right hand.

As it whirred dementedly, he plunged his other hand into the open bin bag. Lifting out a cupped handful of dust and crap, he thrust in front of the fan’s wire guard and then, blasting the dust into the air as he did so, began to work his way methodically around the room.

‘We get it from a car vacuuming service down at Tesco’s,’ Wibble told me conversationally as Bung tugged at the trailing extension cable so that he could pull the fan and his bag of fluff down the corridor and towards the room they had used as my cell. ‘It’s run by some Polish guy. He’s got a connection with the club back home so he saves it for us when we want some.

A minute or so later the noise of the fan cut out and Bung reappeared with an empty bag.

You didn’t have to be a genius to work out what he’d just done. With the dust from out of tens, if not hundreds, of cars now silently and gently settling throughout the flat across every available surface, the scene was now completely contaminated as far as any DNA trace evidence was concerned.

‘Well, what do you know?’ said Wibble sounding pleasantly surprised, ‘This time it hasn’t got to me.’

 

‘Yet,’ said Bung with a smirk.

 

‘Well that’s true,’ said Wibble playing the martyr.

There was just too much of it to be any use in picking out any individuals and hoping to tie them to the flat. So as and when they found this place, assuming for a moment they ever did, the cops would be reliant on more old fashioned technologies. They would be looking for fingerprints, but of course The Brethren had all been wearing gloves all the time. I thought again about the objects that were forced into my hands, including the gun. Anything I had touched like that would have my fingerprints all over it.