Heavy Duty People: The Brethren MC Trilogy book 1 (23 page)

There had been words in a sort of chapel of rest at the entrance to the graveyard. The crowd was to
o big, so only The Brethren and family made it inside. It wasn’t too much. Just some words about Tiny and what a great bloke he was and then we, his brothers, carried him to the graveside.

We had shovelled the earth in over Tiny and the guys were starting to break up into bunches for the ride back. Polly,
Dazza and I stood by the graveside waiting. As the national and local charter Ps and as the road captain we were still in charge, this was still our event. So we stood there as the rain continued to softly fall, insinuating its way into every sodden crevice and chink in our armour, while engines started outside the gates and the crowd thinned.

Dazza
and I lit up, me cupping my lighter against the wet. Polly didn’t smoke.

‘
Well now, what the fuck’s going on here?’ Polly asked conversationally as we reappeared in a puff of smoke, ‘Did I need to pack my tin fucking helmet or what? There’s way too much action going on round here for my liking, given what’s going down. I thought you were going to keep things nice and peaceful like, Dazza, up here amongst the sheep?’

‘
Yeah, well I was. Only trouble is we’ve got a black one.’

‘
Sheep?’

Dazza
nodded.

‘
Who?’

‘
It’s Butcher.’

‘
Butcher? Why? What for?’

Dazza
sucked on his fag and looked around to ensure that there was no one else close enough to overhear.

‘
Personal beefs, as far as I can make out.’

‘
Tiny?’

‘
Yeah.’

‘
So what happened?’

Dazza
shrugged. ‘I left him in charge and he just seems to have lost the plot and went too far while we were away,’ he said indicating me with a dip of his head, ‘I asked him to clear up and it looks like he’s just used it as an excuse to settle his own accounts as well.’

Yeah right
, I thought to myself as I stood there in silence listening to him as the rain drenched us, that’s complete bollocks. What about Billy? What were the chances of Billy really being just one of Butcher’s personal beefs that you really hadn’t known about when you got out of the car. And what about ‘before’ I wondered, what about Gyppo? What really happened that night?

‘
Anyone else involved?’ Polly asked.

‘
No.’

‘
What you going to do?’

‘
The necessary.’

‘
You’ll take care of it?’

‘
I’ll take care of it.’

‘
Going to tell people?’

‘
What’s there to tell?’

Polly nod
ded. ‘I suppose you’re right. They’ll get the message anyway though will they?’

‘
Sure they will.’

Wibble was coming over and
Dazza and Polly left off as he reached us. There was a muffled conversation and Dazza left us with a ‘Be back in a mo’ to go with him to sort something out, although to be truthful, with everyone having now made it back to their vehicles there really wasn’t much to do other than make our way back to the clubhouse ourselves.

But
Polly still remained standing beside me, we were the only two left in the graveyard now. I had the impression that it wasn’t just by chance.

‘
It was a bad business that car bomb,’ he said quietly and matter of factly, as if carrying on a conversation which in reality we had never started, ‘That mate of yours, Billy. Bad for business.’

‘
Everyone’s getting on just nicely now,’ he continued, ‘so why would anyone want to stir up shit like that? Why start a war when no one needs it? We need to get rid of whoever did that, whoever it was.’

What did Polly mean I wondered? What did he know, or simply suspect?

‘Well taking out a Rebel’s not going to help keep the peace is it?’ I proffered cautiously.

He shrugged,
‘True, but like I said, whoever it was, we don’t want the heat on us, particularly not just at the moment, if you know what I mean.’

I got his drift of course.

‘
If
he who rules a state cannot recognise evils until they are upon him
…’ Polly started.

‘
…
then he is not a truly wise man
,’ I finished for him.

Polly looked across at me appraisingly,
‘Oh, so you know it?’

‘
Yeah.’

‘
Have you read it?’ he asked, and I nodded.

‘
Is it good?’

‘
Yeah,’ I said, shutting my face down to cover my utter astonishment at the question, ‘haven’t you?’

‘
Nah,’ he said dismissively, looking away, ‘it’s just something I picked up somewhere that rang true. Heard it’s good though.’

He hadn’t read the fucking P! I couldn’t believe it. Y
ou twat, going round quoting crap that you don’t really understand, as he turned back to face me.

‘
Yeah. He had some smart stuff to say.’

‘
Like what?’

‘
Oh loads of things,’ I said looking him straight in the eye, ‘like
the only proper study is war
.

Polly nodded,
‘Hey I like that, what was it,
the only proper study is war?
That’s good. That makes sense to me. Go on then, I’m listening, what else does he have to say then?’

‘
Well,’ I said thinking furiously, ‘how about
the unarmed man is never safe from armed servants.
How do you like that?’

He just looked at me
for that one, his face a mask.

‘
Or
you can be hated just as much for good deeds as bad ones
.’

‘
Well now they’re all true enough,’ he said slowly, gazing back squarely at me, before his eyes slid across to look towards where Dazza was standing at the gates talking to Butcher. ‘You know, I think I might have to get round to reading it one day after all.’

Bad for business
I thought, as he turned to go, and I flicked the butt of my fag off into a muddy puddle. Was business really all it was about now? We used to be about something different.

Looking at Polly and listening to him it was true enough I decided,
a good man soon comes to ruin amongst the bad. So if you want to remain in charge, you have to learn how not to be good
. But that was not one to tell Polly.

It was just life.

Men
see what you appear to be, very few see you for what you really are
. Now I saw what Polly was.

Dazza
caught me, grabbing me by my elbow just as I was getting ready to leave and leaning forward to speak quietly into my ear so he couldn’t be overheard.

‘
Look Damage, normally I wouldn’t involve you in this but Sprog’s lunched his bike, Bagpuss ain’t around, I used Wibble last time and I need to ring the changes a bit but there ain’t too many guys I can trust to do this shit and get it right.’

‘
Sure, what d’ya need?’ I asked as I pulled on my cold sodden gloves.

‘
Post some stuff for me will ya? Wibble’ll have the parcels tomorrow in his motor and can meet up with you to hand over the stuff. I want you to take it out and do it somewhere your way. It’s the usual deal.’

I nodded and swung my leg over the bike.

I got the gear off Wibble later the next day in a lay-by to make sure we weren’t being watched and stuffed them into a bag slung across the back seat of the car I’d borrowed, before heading out across country to some out of the way sub-post offices. There were three parcels, two to Glasgow addresses and one in South Wales. They were brick sized and I sent them first class, but not recorded, no one in their right mind would want to sign for something like that the other end. The posties asked if the contents were worth more than thirty-nine pounds as I handed them over to be weighed and I shook my head, if only they knew. Dazza was definitely in business.

They
’ll give you a proof of postage Dazza had said. Bring it back to me, he had instructed.

I suppose it was his way of checking that I
’d actually sent something. He could then let his contacts know to expect it so that they would have someone at the address who could take a parcel when it arrived. After all, they really wouldn’t want to have to go down to the sorting office to ID themselves and pick it up would they?

It also meant he could check it had gone to the right place since they wrote the post code and house number on it, and it meant he could check that I was actually mixing it up, using different post offices and not getting lazy and just banging them all through the same one.

He was smart was Dazza.

Of course he wouldn
’t know that I’d actually sent what he’d given me, but again once his guys the other end took delivery I guess he’d hear soon enough if I’d interfered with the parcel or tried to pull a fast one.

The other thing I guess he couldn
’t know was whether I had copied down the addresses on the parcels although since they could always have been a test I in turn could not know for sure that they were the real deal. They could be dummies that would wing anything that came in back down to him so he would soon see if I tried anything on with them, or he could be getting word back about what had arrived. That was part of the trouble that we were now getting into. How could anyone trust anything that anyone else ever did? The stakes were getting too high and the possibility of and consequences of any mistake or betrayal were so serious that you had to think through every step very carefully.

But then you also couldn
’t be seen to be thinking through things too carefully. Because that in itself might arouse suspicions. What are you thinking? Why are you thinking it? What are you planning? Why are you being so careful?

In place of the old absolute bonds of trust, brother amongst brother, something new was growing. Something that I didn
’t like and didn’t want to be part of.

A sort of inevitable institutionalised paranoia.

In a situation where someone like Dazza would want to err on the side of caution no one could ever be completely safe. In fact the higher up the tree you got, the more you knew, the more risk you represented, the more exposed you probably were.

No, y
ou would have to be pretty fucking stupid to punt anything off to them to suggest a bit of private enterprise. Still, you never knew when any bit of knowledge might come in handy did you?

*

Sharon noticed when I picked up the slim book from the bedside.

‘
Hey you aren’t reading that again? Don’t you ever get bored with it? You must know it off by heart by now!’ she joked.

‘
Yeah, just about,’ I grunted, reaching for the pair of reading glasses I had taken to leaving on the cabinet and settling them down on the end of my nose as I started to leaf through the well thumbed pages to find the short section I was after, no more than a paragraph long early in the book, my eyesight was starting to give me problems with reading the small print by the dim light of the bedside lamp. ‘There’s just something in here I want to find,’ I said, flicking through the pages. ‘It’s something that’s been bugging me and I just want to look it up.’

‘
Bugging you?’ she said sharply, catching the tone of my voice, swivelling round in bed to look at me with concern, the duvet slipping down to expose her shoulders as she reached out her arm to lay her hand on my shoulder. ‘Hey now, what’s up? What’s the matter?’

My hands fell into my lap taking the opened book with them as I rolled my eyes up towards the ceiling and stared
vacantly at a cobweb that was waving gently in the updraft of warm air from the reading light.

What
’s the matter? I thought. What’s the matter?

What a fucking question
.

What a whole set of fucking questions.

Where do you start?

What do they want?

What the fuck am I involved with?

Who the hell could
I talk to about it?

It was club business.

I believed in brothers loving each other but when did it cross the line? When did your love and loyalty to your brother mean that you are just being exploited by him?

‘
I’ve never seen you like this love,’ I heard her say as if from a distant planet and my mind wheeled round in a vicious circle of conflicting emotions. Where did my loyalties lie? Who really were my club and my brothers? What did I owe them and what did I owe myself? Where was the freedom that being part of a freebooting club had always meant to me?