Heavy Duty Trouble (The Brethren Trilogy) (12 page)

Charlie was behind bars. There were prison guards about who’d come running if there was any disturbance
. A
nyway, I was betting that having gone to all the trouble between them to get me here, for whatever reason they’d really done so, Charlie, no less than Wibble
,
would want my visit to go off relatively smoothly. So I reckoned I had a chance, a chance to ask something I would never dare to
raise
outside when I would feel more exposed.

‘You don’t like me do you Charlie?’ I asked eventually.
It was an odd way, dangerous even, to open the conversation
,
but the way I felt about being dragged back into this scene, for a moment, I just sort of didn’t care.

‘Well no shit Sherlock,’ he sneered, ‘there’s no flies on you are there? How
on
e
arth
did you
manage to
work that one out?’

‘Just call it a hunch, I said, ‘
B
ut what I don’t get is why? Oh I know I’m a journalist and you and the guys don’t like us much, but I get the feeling that it’s more than that isn’t it? It feels personal to me which makes me want to know why? What’s it all about? What did I ever do to you?’

He
continued to
look at me coldly. For a moment I wondered whether he was just going to launch at me, guards and consequences, or not.

But he had a
n icy
self-
control about him as well.

At last he said
.

‘You wrote a book about my dad.’

‘Yes, yes I did
,
’
I said quietly.

‘And I wasn’t in it. Not a mention. Not once. Nothing.’

He was sat perfectly still as he spoke. Emotionless
,
as he said it.

What had happened to him as a kid I suddenly wondered?
In all the time since I’d known him and learnt about his background from Wibble, I’d never
once
stopped to think about what had made him become the way he was. I’d never asked myself, not
even for a moment
, w
hat
it
must
have
been like
for him
,
first
as
a child and then
as
a youngster
growing up as Damage’s girlfriend’s
son
?

H
e
ha
d
to have
grown up around the club and its members and I couldn’t
even begin to
imagine what that
would
really
have been like as an extended family.
When it was good, it must have been great, like
being
a member of a fiercely loyal clan, surrounded by powerful role models, with a clear path laid out to becoming a man, what would be expected of you to prove yourself worthy of being initiated, of making the grade and becoming a brother warrior.

But
Charlie
’s
dad
hadn’t
really ever
been around
for him
of course.
Damage had
been on remand or in jail
on and off
for years,
and of course he’d had his wife and daughter at home
,
so I wondered how much
Charlie had
ever actually had to do with him as a kid
.

Toad, the club’s reputed go to killer, had been his uncle, but he’d been living up North throughout his childhood, while Charlie had grown up down South, with his mum hanging around the club and eventually shacking up with a
nother
bloke who was to have a key role in Charlie’s life from then on.

Scroat.

S
o Charlie had found himself wi
th Scroat as his effective step
dad, a thought that made me shudder.

And then S
croat had
also
been his sponsor
as soon as
Charlie
was old enough to strike, very much a role as
his
surrogate father within the club family
as well
, responsible for training him until he was ready and then inducting him into the club
as
his counsel, his mentor, his protector,
his judge and his
leader
; his master
.

But Christ, strip away the outlaw romance and what must it have really been like for
Charlie as he grew up? What chance had he ever
actually
had? He’d been a
youngster exposed to a world of drugs and at times wildly wired guys, booze
,
and the ever present threat of potential casual and absolute violence for a word in the wrong place, a perceived slight, or sign of disrespect.

If Scroat was your mentor
and example
in how to successfully make your way in this world
, what lessons would you learn?
God, h
ow would you expect him
, or anyone
else
if it came to it,
to turn out?

‘No, that’s true,’ I said
taking a deep breath and deciding to say what I was going to say anyway, despite my reservations about how he would take it
, ‘Look Charlie…’

‘What?’

‘Charlie, well it’s hardly my fault is it? You’re not in the book for one simple reason. Because your dad didn’t tell me about you.
’

No reaction. He was still just eyefucking me as he sat there.

‘Charlie, is your beef really with me?
’
I asked
at last
,
‘Or is it with your dad?’

‘What the fuck is it to you? Why don’t you just shut the fuck up and get on with it.’

Which was a bit of a challenge
in fact,
as I still wasn’t too sure what ‘it’
actually
was.

*

‘Well,’ I started,
‘
Wibble told me
…’

‘T
old
you?’ Charlie demanded suddenly, ‘
W
hat did Wibble tell you?’

‘Well he was telling me about your project
Union
Jack
…’

‘
What the fuck did he do that for?
’ Charlie
interrupted
angrily, ‘
You a club member now or something? Did I miss the vote? That’
s club fucking business, it ain’t for the likes of you
,
and Wibble knows that, or he ought to.’

‘
Yeah
,
but it sounded
from what he was saying
as though it wasn’t going to be all
just
about business any more
…’

‘
That’s what he told you?
’ Charlie cut in again
,
sharply
.

‘
Yeah, that you
were going to be independent an
d that OK
,
there might still be business to be done
and people who wanted to do that sort of thing, but it wasn’t going to be club business anymore. T
hat it was
going to be
about getting back to being about what you really were again, the club, the brotherho…’

‘
Oh for fuck
’
s sake,
’ Charlie overrode me
exasperatedly
,
‘
not that crap again. Damage was always going on about that.
’

‘Was he?’ I asked.

Charlie sat back in his chair, his arms folded in front of him so I could see the tattoos, and stared levelly at me for a moment. Then he leant forwards, resting his arms on the table and began to speak.

‘
OK, so
Damage was
my dad yeah
?
But he was also fucking nuts in some ways
. He wanted to get back to being just a club.’

‘Rather than a business?’

‘Yeah, it was never going to happen, it just couldn’t.’

‘You wouldn’t be allowed to by the
Yank
s you mean?’

‘No, not that
,’ he waved that away as an irrelevance, a distraction even
.
‘
No, it just couldn’t. The way things have gone, well it’s a one way trip isn’t it? One club gears up, so do the others. They have to, it’s just a fact of life, if they
didn’t
then they’d go under. You’ve
seen
how it works. And then once that’s happened, there’s the other clubs to
think
about
. None of us operate in a
vacuum
. Once
everyone’s
upgunned, then
you can’t back off. If you even tried to step down it would be a sign of weakness. Someone else would just
seize
the opportunity to step up and take over and that’d be it, you’d be finished.’

I saw what he was getting at
all right
. I’d never really thought of it in those terms before but as Charlie explained how he saw the world, it made a kind of sense.

‘So no matter how much anyone in the club might want it, it just couldn’t happen?’

‘That’s what I’m telling you. It’s a
stupid
pipe dream, not without every other club wanting it at the same time.

‘And they won’t
,’
he added with emphasis.

‘So why make the break with The Brethren?’ I asked, ‘If it’s not all about taking the club back to what it was, what was the point? That’s what I don’t understand. What was in it for you?’

‘What was in it for us?
’
he seemed genuinely amused that I could even ask the question. ‘
Christ are you joking? You’ve
got
no
idea how much is in it for us.

‘Have you any fucking i
dea how much we were having to kick back up to the
Yank
s? Fucking millions that’s how much
. A
nd for what? It’s a fucking high price to
pay in cash for the use of a pa
tch, particularly when it’s to run your own franchise, your own business
, on your own turf,
t
hat you’ve set up with no input
from them. Why should they take a slice of it, what have they done to earn it?
’

‘So it’s just all about money as far as you’re concerned?’ I asked.

‘
Fuck yes, it’s all about money
,
and less of the just.
We’re talking serious dosh here now.’

He leant back again in his chair.

‘Remember it’s a business, so you need to think of it
just
like a business when you look at what we’ve done in the past few years over here. We’ve consolidat
ed. We’ve
group
ed
together into larger and larger firms with bigger and bigger shares of the market
. N
ow
,
with Stu’s boys we’ve got a virtual cartel almost everywhere that it matters
and a nationwide retail operation using all the local outfits who take the selling risk.
That gave us buying
power
.
We’
ve cut out the middlemen so
there’s no one leeching off us. W
e
buy direct
,
so
we’ve
secure
d
our lines of supply and
we buy in bulk so we get the best
prices
.

‘
Once you’ve got all that organized, then, so long as you keep it together, that’s when the money can really roll in. But just getting to be top of the heap isn’t enough.
’

‘
Isn’t it?
’ I asked.

He shook his head.

‘
No, because you’ve then got to stay there
,
haven’t you?
Anyone else who wants in at some point
is going to have
to challenge you
aren’t they?
We’
re controlling wholesale prices
so
we’re
keep
ing
them high
. So
someone somewhere is going to
spot an opportunity to try and come in and undercut us.