Brigands M. C. (8 page)

Many of Dante’s best memories were of going on runs. You got muddy and didn’t wash for a week, you slept in tents, ate food cooked on a fire or drove to the nearest town for takeaway. The adults got drunk and let kids roam free between motorbikes, beer cans and bonfires.

The pictures made him sad, because he’d become what bikers hated most: a snitch. Many of the bikers posed for the surveillance photos, flexing muscles, grimacing and mooning the camera.

Dante welled up when he recognised a small blond girl hanging off a man’s leg. Dante and Joe had made friends with her a few years earlier. They’d been four years old and both lads were fascinated by the way she had to pull her jeans down and squat when she needed to pee.

Holly was at the age where she wanted whatever Dante had and with so much attention on the photo album she made a grab.

‘Not for you,’ Dante said gently. ‘I’ll play with you later.’

Holly squealed in protest until Donald came over and scooped her up.

‘What I don’t understand is how they could have found Dante here,’ Linda said. ‘I mean, this Doods was a big fellow. He could have come in with a gun or a knife and there’s nothing Donald or I could have done to stop him.’

‘Information leaks,’ Ross said bitterly. ‘The Brigands might only have sixteen full-patch members in South Devon, but there are four times that number of hangers-on, the Dogs of War and the Monster Bunch are basically Brigands puppet gangs with another fifty members, and they all have wives, girlfriends and other relatives. That’s between a hundred and fifty to two hundred biker associates in South Devon. Somewhere amongst that lot there’s bound to be someone who works as a cleaner in the police station, or a secretary at Dante’s old school who saw where his school record was sent, or someone whose brother-in-law is a cop.’

Dante looked alarmed. ‘You’re saying I can
never
be completely safe?’

Ross shrugged uneasily. ‘Dante, something has gone badly wrong and we underestimated the threat from the Führer and the Brigands organisation. We’ll have to be more thorough and give you a complete new identity. That will take a while to put together and while you’re waiting I’m going to suggest to social services that you move in with me.’

‘Presumably he’ll be much safer once the Führer is behind bars,’ Donald added. ‘I mean, they might hold a grudge, but nothing will get the Führer out of prison once he’s convicted.’

‘That’s him!’ Dante said, as he saw Doods standing in a crowd of full-patch bikers. They held beers and stared without interest at a stripper on stage in the background. ‘Photograph number eight-one-four. This guy, third from the right.’

Ross grabbed a stapled paper index from his case before shuffling over the carpet on his knees so that he could see who Dante was looking at.

‘Are you sure?’ Ross asked as he looked up the index. ‘It says here that his nickname is Bolts. Real name Jonas Haarden.’

Dante nodded. ‘My dad saved him after some bike crash. He’s got metal bolts in his legs.’

Linda was impressed that Dante had kept his head together through a very upsetting morning. ‘So, Dante,’ she smiled. ‘These biker nicknames can change?’

‘Only if something big happens,’ Dante nodded. ‘Like if you were in a bad accident or you’re involved in some famous punch-up where you gouge out an eyeball or something.’

While Dante explained, Holly headbutted a pile of wooden bricks and Ross had his telephone at his ear, asking a police colleague to e-mail him a copy of any information on Jonas Haarden and get a warning put out to customs and traffic police to try and arrest him.

‘He tipped us off though,’ Donald pointed out, when Ross ended his call. ‘He must have been trying to warn us.’

‘Maybe,’ Ross said, ‘but I still want him in for questioning. He’s our best link to whoever leaked Dante and Holly’s whereabouts. And if he just wanted to tip you off, why ride all the way out here? Why not pick up the phone?’

‘My dad saved his life,’ Dante said. ‘He wanted to buy me a present and make me feel nice.’

‘I hope that’s true,’ Ross said. ‘But I’m sensing something under the surface.’

As Ross said this his mobile rang. Dante, Donald and Linda only heard Ross’ half of the conversation.

‘You’re kidding … No, wait. It’s sealed I think …
Shit!
OK, OK, I’ll call you right back.’

‘Something the matter?’ Donald asked, as Ross slid his phone shut.

‘Where are the toy cars Doods bought?’ Ross said urgently.

‘In the hallway,’ Dante said. ‘I was gonna open them, but the policeman told me to leave them in the box because you might want them dusted for fingerprints.’

‘We’ve got to leave the house, right
now
,’ Ross said.

Linda was first to work out what was going on. ‘Are you saying there’s a bomb in my house?’

‘There’s a chance,’ Ross said, standing up. ‘Maybe only a slim one, but I’m not risking it.’

Donald scooped up Holly as Linda led the way out on to the front doorstep. Always a mum, she made sure the two kids had warm coats as they skirted around Dante’s gift and walked between the two cars down the front driveway.

‘My colleague will call the local cops,’ Ross explained. ‘They’ll cordon off the road and bring in a bomb disposal team. They should be here within twenty minutes.’

‘Why do we think it’s a bomb all of a sudden?’ Dante asked.

Ross explained. ‘Doods, Bolts, or whatever you choose to call him was a member of the Brigands’ Rotterdam chapter. They had a nasty little turf war with two other gangs, which ended when a clubhouse blew up and fourteen members of the rival gangs got blasted. Doods was implicated in the bombing. He’s on the Dutch police’s most wanted list and nobody’s seen or heard from him in over a year.’

‘But why go to the bother of a bomb?’ Donald asked, as Holly yanked his ear.

‘A bomb gives the killer time to put space between himself and the victim,’ Ross explained. ‘You can trigger a bomb by text message from the other side of the world.’

*

Donald and Linda Graves’ six-bedroom house was in one of the best streets in Guildford. The neighbours were mostly wealthy, with two nice cars on the driveway, two or three brats and breadwinners who paid their mortgages with well-paid jobs in London.

This comfortable lifestyle jarred with the experience of most kids fostered by Donald and Linda. Over the years kids in their care had been blamed – usually correctly – for everything from vandalising street signs to lobbing fireworks at a show-winning chihuahua.

However, in more than thirty years of fostering Dante was the first kid who’d led to the entire street being cordoned off pending the arrival of a four-man bomb disposal team. They came with sirens and orange lights. Two soldiers drove an army-green Land Rover, followed by a truck with riot mesh over the windscreen.

Ross explained the situation, out of earshot of the gaggle of surprised pensioners evacuated from neighbouring homes and two sweaty women who’d arrived back from tennis. It was school time, so Dante was the only kid around.

The driver of the Land Rover took his time strapping on an armoured suit and approaching the Graves’ home with a microphone-like probe held in a gloved hand.

Dante had spent more time with the package than anyone else, so a female corporal kept him on hand and asked questions about whether he’d moved the package roughly since receiving it, whether it seemed heavier or lighter than he thought it ought to be and if the packaging around the cars looked like it had been tampered with.

She seemed relaxed and let Dante ask questions back. ‘What does the thingy your friend’s holding do?’

‘Ricardo’s approaching the bomb with a sniffer,’ the woman explained. ‘It detects microscopic traces of explosives, rather like an airport security scanner. There’s also a video camera built into the tip. The lieutenant and sergeant are watching the video feed and telling him what to do.’

Whilst Dante was captivated by the technology, Linda and Donald were staggered that they’d spent ninety minutes sitting within a few metres of a package that was now being approached by a soldier wearing titanium anti-blast armour.

Ricardo moved slowly up the driveway. After two steps into the hallway, the soldier backed out as quickly as forty kilos of metal armour would allow. The sergeant came out the back of the van and yelled out: ‘Positive reading. Some kind of bonded plastic explosive. From the chemical signature I’d say C-4. We’ll need Mabel.’

Dante had hoped the present had been a gesture of loyalty from a friend of his father. Only now did he believe that Doods had been trying to kill him.

The female corporal who’d been speaking to Dante opened the back of the Land Rover and dragged out a ramp. Mabel was a compact bomb-disposal robot. She ran on four rubber tracks, each of which could pivot to enable the robot to climb stairs. Above the tracks were chemical sensors, a multiple jointed arm and a hose linked to four hundred litres of highly pressurised water.

Mabel sped down the empty street as the female corporal helped Ricardo out of his armour. The bony sergeant working in the van noticed Dante hovering like a lost sheep and called him inside.

Dante stepped warily into the van. It was filled with computer screens and keyboards. A handsome lieutenant sat in a padded chair manipulating the joystick that controlled Mabel’s tracks. Even with the back of the van open the heat from the electronics sucked all the moisture out of Dante’s mouth.

‘What do you think of our toy box then?’ the sergeant asked.

‘Aren’t you scared that the bomb will blow up?’ Dante replied.

‘If it does Mabel’s the only one that’ll get hurt,’ the sergeant explained casually. ‘I get nervous when I’m on a London building site, with some rusty old World War Two bomb in the middle of a waterlogged hole that’s too deep for Mabel. Or when I was in the desert, scratching at a piece of wire sticking out of the dirt and wondering if it was going to trigger a bomb, or if some Iraqi was going to shoot me up the arse when I bent over to take a look.’

‘So this is an easy bomb?’ Dante asked.

The lieutenant answered: ‘Nothing makes us happier than finding a bomb in a dry, easily accessible space.’

Dante managed to smile as he watched Mabel’s progress on the largest screen. The lieutenant positioned Mabel’s spindly arm above the handles of the shopping bag and looked at the nine-year-old.

‘Did you move this bag around much after you received it?’ the lieutenant asked.

‘Not that much,’ Dante explained. ‘My friend Ed wanted me to put them on charge so that we could race the cars as soon as we got home from school. So I took them into the play room at the front of the house, but before I got the box open the police came in and told me not to pull it about because Inspector Johnson might want to have it checked for fingerprints.’

‘In that case we’ll try to save Mrs Graves’ carpet,’ the Lieutenant said.

Dante looked confused and the sergeant explained for him. ‘Mabel has eight nozzles, like a shower head, except if you stood under those nozzles when the water came out the water would cut through your body like a knife. When we open the tank, four hundred litres will be blown out in a quarter second. The water flushes the bomb, literally blowing the components apart before there’s any chance of detonation.’

As the sergeant spoke, Mabel’s claw grasped the handles on the Toys R Us bag. She picked it up and wheeled it backwards, down the driveway and into the middle of the street.

‘Arming,’ the sergeant said, before lifting the safety catch over a large red button with red and black hazard stripes all around it and flipping two switches marked
danger
. Dante thought it was exactly the kind of button he’d wanted to press his whole life.

Outside the female corporal told the dozen or so folks standing near the cordon to turn away in case of flying debris or in case the flushing operation went wrong.

On the lieutenant’s nod, Dante squished his thumb against the button. There was a deep thud, and the sound of rattling plastic and rain. The accompanying shockwave set off whoops, shrieks and neh-nahs from car and burglar alarms.

As Dante jumped out of the van to see the damage, Ricardo and the female corporal ran up the damp street and stood in the gutters trying to prevent valuable evidence from going down the drain. Inside the van, the lieutenant used Mabel’s cameras to survey the shattered pieces of plastic and metal. As he swivelled the camera he noticed the shattered faceplate of the cars’ radio control unit. It lay face down with a piece of plasticine-like explosive taped to the back.

After zooming in to make sure that the water blast had imploded the detonator he waved to the sergeant.

‘There’s your explosive,’ he explained.

The sergeant squinted. ‘That’s not even enough to blow the wheel of a car.’

‘Yeah but think how Dante would have been holding that thing when he was driving the car,’ the lieutenant said. ‘It was probably rigged to trigger after the unit had been used for a few minutes. The full force of the blast would have hit him in the face and chest.’

‘Pretty clever,’ the sergeant said, nodding reluctantly. ‘Someone sure wants the little guy dead.’