Heavy Duty Attitude (13 page)

‘That’s about the size of it,’ he agreed as the Zippo flame flared in front of his face and he snapped the cover shut.

‘Fucking fantastic!’ I muttered.
‘Great, isn’t it?’ he said in a perfectly friendly way.
‘So then,’ he continued, ‘Let’s do it. I’ve got some time.’
‘Do what?’ I asked in confusion.

He shrugged. ‘You tell me. You’re the one with all the questions Mr Hot Shot Hold-The-Frontpage Journalist. So what do you want to know?’ And so began what I have to say looking back was one of the strangest interviews of my entire professional life.

*
I was unprepared, so I improvised.

‘Well,’ I floundered, wondering where to start, ‘So I was talking to the young lad in there. He was one of the tagalongs on Saturday, him and a striker. They seemed very young to be running with your crew, is that unusual?’

‘Who, Danny and Charlie?’ he asked.
‘Yes, but they seem very different,’ I ventured.

He considered this for a moment. ‘Well Danny’s an outsider,’ he concluded as if it explained everything, ‘Charlie’s an insider so I guess that’s a part of it.’

‘An insider?’

 

‘He’s Damage’s kid,’ Wibble said offhandedly, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

 

‘What?’ I squawked in surprise.

 

‘Yeah,’ he shrugged, ‘naming him Charlie was one of Damage’s little jokes. So he’s like family. It’s like natural for him to be on his way in.’ So that was what he had meant by it being in the kid’s blood I realised.

‘But Sharon…’ I started to say. I have to say I was just shocked at this revelation. I had known Damage, I had interviewed him many, many times, I’d written his bloody life story for Christ’s sake, based on what he’d told me in hour after hour of taped sessions sitting there time after time in a visiting room at Long Lartin gaol. And he’d never, not once, breathed a word about anything like this.

‘Yeah, sure she was his old lady,’ said Wibble wreathed in smoke, ‘but it’s not like he didn’t screw around occasionally when he felt like it.’

‘Does she know?’ I asked.
‘I don’t think so,’ he shrugged, ‘why should she? It was never a big deal.’

But by then I was feeling like an idiot. So Damage hadn’t told me all about it, so what? Would I really have expected him to? Why the hell should I have expected that he would tell me about it of all people; a journalist who he knew was going to be writing a book about him? If he’d cared anything for Sharon, and I was still convinced that he had, then I wouldn’t expect him to have mentioned anything about having had another kid. Or even kids, I now wondered to myself.

And who was I fooling? How well had I really known Damage? I’d just seen the face that he’d wanted me to see, and in this at least I’d fallen for it hook line and sinker.

We talked for probably about an hour, as Wibble gradually filled the ashtray.

But there was one thing that was still bothering me, niggling away at the back of my mind. Irritatingly it was the one thing that I realised from our previous conversation Wibble did not want to discuss, perhaps I guess because of the implications it might have for his club. So I kept pushing it to the back of my mind. But even as I thought desperately of other things to ask, it kept on shoving its way back to the front again, like a sore tooth which you just can’t leave alone.

How had The Mohawks known about the event, I wanted to know? If you assumed that the attack had deliberately targeted both clubs, and that was my gut feel, as otherwise it was just way too much of a coincidence, then someone had to have tipped them off. There was no other way round it as far as I could see, so the question simply came down to who had done it and why.

And the answer there seemed to clearly point towards some kind of dissidents having set up, or even to have actively co-operated with The Mohawks in setting up the attack in order to sabotage the deal between The Brethren and The Rebels.

It made sense in some ways. There was clearly an anti-rapprochement faction in The Brethren, which from what I’d seen so far looked as though it sat under Thommo, although whether his beef was with the principle as such, or just with Wibble as its public face, I couldn’t tell. And I guessed there would be an equally strong anti-Brethren section of The Rebels’ members.

So the question as I saw it simply boiled down to which club’s ultras were responsible and how they had arranged things.
And of course, what, if anything, Wibble and Stu could or would do about it?

And so, inevitably, our discussions kept on circling around and coming back to the events of Sunday, the spinning black hole which had formed itself at the centre of this particular universe.

‘All that hostility at the run on Saturday, I asked, ‘what was that all about? Was it connected to the guy they’d lost?’

‘What, Thommo you mean?’ Wibble just looked amused at the thought, ‘No, it was nothing to do with Chugger. He was a new patch, he’d only had his vote a month or so ago and he was working his way in. Story I heard was that he was up there to collect in a debt…’

‘A drug debt?’ I asked, thinking well that wouldn’t be such great PR so no wonder Wibble wasn’t pushing it.

 

He shrugged, ‘Could be, I didn’t ask and I don’t know.

‘Anyway, he heads up to Leeds which is way off turf with a striker in tow, but whoever it was he’d gone to lean on had organised themselves some local back up, so he has a stand up run in with a local mob. There’s nothing doing about getting his cash then and there so they go back to their car with a plan to come back with reinforcements. But someone has followed them to it and that’s when they get popped.

‘No, with Thommo it’s about letting off steam. There’s some big egos, and even bigger eyes, sometimes in this outfit. Not everyone voted for me you know.’

No I thought, I didn’t know that.
‘You mean someone wants your job?’ I asked.

‘Hey, no surprise in that is there? There’s always someone who’s ambitious in any outfit. It’s just the law of the jungle.’

‘And you’re not worried?’ I asked.
He just shook his head.

‘But why did you let him diss you like that at the run? Wasn’t that a challenge to your authority? I was surprised the way you seemed to let it go.’

‘Nah, sticks and stones mate. I just let him rant on and it winds him up all the more that I don’t let it get to me.’
‘But doesn’t it build him up in the eyes of anyone who’s against you, and diminish your authority with the others?’ I pressed, genuinely surprised.

‘Don’t worry about it. It’s all under control.’

I was still unconvinced, I had to say. As an outsider, being anywhere around The Brethren felt like a bit swimming with sharks. There was a feeling that you were seeing a fascinating and almost elemental power, mixed up with a constant lurking terror that at any moment explosive bloody hell would be unleashed for no apparent reason. So the idea of Wibble being relaxed about what seemed tantamount to insubordination from a local charter member seemed incredible. I would have thought he would have lost face, whatever his reasons for doing so, but I left it at that, as it seemed something that he didn’t want to discuss.

Besides which, despite the fact I couldn’t fathom why, Wibble seemed supremely relaxed about it.

 

‘Naw, better to know who it is and keep an eye on them than not know who’s plotting. Besides which, we’ve all got bigger fish to fry now.’

But even as we were speaking, there was now another separate train of thought that was running in parallel, and no matter how much I tried to concentrated on what Wibble was saying, it refused to go away. It kept on bothering me. What else had I fallen for in the story Damage had told me? What else had he or hadn’t he told me, that I might need to know.

I was startled back to the present again by something Wibble said. ‘Greedy? Well yeah I suppose so, but it’s like the banker said, greedy in a long term way, that’s the smart way.’

 

‘Do you want to be top dog, be independent of everyone else, is that it?’ I asked trying to gather back my end of the conversation.

 

‘Shit no, who would want the grief that comes with that?’ He seemed surprised I’d even suggested it.

‘No, make yourself too independent at the top of the tree and all you do is make an enemy of everyone else below you and paint a big target on your arse for everyone who wants to take a pot shot at knocking you out of the tree.

‘No, Damage understood that mutual dependence was best, if everyone is indispensable to everyone else then he could maintain stability…’ ‘…and the status quo that was then maintained was that Damage was in charge?’ I suggested.

‘You got it. Just like he told you,’ Wibble smiled.
*

As I left the clubhouse and headed up the road towards where I’d abandoned my car earlier, I was thinking about Wibble’s agenda here. He had told me he was looking to improve the club’s public image, but there was more to it than that, there just had to be.

Was it personal, I wondered? Was Wibble looking to boost his own image, did Wibble want to become some kind of celeb? Now I smiled to myself, that was an interesting thought. It even made some kind of weird sense. If Wibble became more of a public face for the club, might that make it more dangerous or difficult for someone to unseat him?

Possibly, I thought, although I guess there was also a danger of pissing off that tendency in the club which didn’t like the idea of publicity, that was suspicious of infiltration by poseurs and show offs. I toyed with the idea of Wibble a ‘New Brethren’ moderniser for a moment. It had a bit of a ring to it I had to say.

And of course, he had big shoes to fill, I could see that. Damage had to be a difficult act to follow, no question about it, when you looked at what he had achieved.

Even if it was just building on the foundations Dazza had laid, there was no denying Damage’s achievement in establishing The Brethren as a powerhouse in bringing in gear and creating a working relationship with their main rivals The Rebels on the distribution side. With a modus operandi operating between the clubs and a protocol for handling disputes, business had been good all round under what Bob described as the
pax Damage
it seemed.

So was that why Wibble was interested in PR? To help consolidate his own position? Possibly, I conceded, but it still didn’t seem enough, not for the grief he would be getting from the traditionalists within the club, and the risks he was running if anything was seen to go wrong with our little arrangement.

There had to be more to it than that.

I wondered again about one of the central mysteries in my relationship with Wibble, and the club itself for that matter. One to which I guessed I’d never now get a clear answer: whether Wibble was Damage’s killer or not? It was clear at least that, whatever he said, with a potential war like this, Wibble had some other agenda than PR in wanting me to hang around. My problem was that I couldn’t work out what it was.

And then it suddenly hit me as I thought back to that meeting last week, Christ, was it really only a week ago? The one in the motorway services. Of Wibble sitting there and asking me the question.

If I said I hadn’t, killed him, I mean. Well, would it make a difference? Would you really believe me?

Of us discussing it.
Well if you didn’t, who did?
Now that is a very good question.
And do you know the answer to it?

So, I was forced to ask myself. What if Wibble wasn’t, as I had assumed all along, Damage’s executioner? What if it had actually been someone else? And what if Wibble, genuinely, didn’t know who it had been? What would that mean for what I was getting myself involved with here?

I was lost in thought, trying to work out where this chain of speculation might lead me.

If Damage as Wibble’s predecessor had been murdered, and Wibble didn’t know who by, then surely Wibble would be very interested in trying to work out who had done it and why? Of course he would, because whoever had taken care of Damage might have similar reasons for wanting to take out Wibble mightn’t they?

Was that why he wanted to get me involved. Did he think I might know something? That there might be something in what Damage had told me that would give him a clue? Or that he thought he might use me to dig and find out?

Is that what he was after, I wondered, did he want to use my contacts in other clubs and even SOCA to try and work out who the real killer was? I got back to my car to find a clear plastic envelope stuck to the windscreen. Fuck it, the peril had been about. I’d got a parking ticket. Over two hours in a one hour waiting zone.

 

Monday 10 August 2009

 

‘Hi, it’s me,’ said the voice.

The weekend had been quiet as far as I could gather, so it was a surprise when I picked up to find him on the line at lunchtime. But it clearly showed I was now on the network.

It was Wibble calling with the funeral details.
‘The cops have released the bodies,’ he announced without preamble. ‘Oh yes?’
‘So the funerals are on for Saturday. The ride out starts here at ten. ‘Here being?’

‘The London clubhouse of course,’ he sounded surprised at the question. ‘Don’t be late.’

‘I won’t. Hey,’ I said quickly before he could get off the line. ‘Yeah?’
‘How’s it going?’
‘How’s what going?’
‘You know, the thing.’

‘And I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said sharply. It was obvious he wasn’t going to talk, even in the most general terms, on the phone. His working assumption was that any club phone line would be tapped and should be treated as such.

‘OK.’
‘OK.’

There was evidently going to be no update on the war from Wibble, at least without trying door stepping him at the clubhouse, and with the Brethren in their current mood I really didn’t much fancy my chances at that.

So I thought I would try my luck elsewhere.
I called Bob.
‘I assume you’ve heard?’ I asked.

He knew what I was talking about of course. He would have known the bodies were going to be released so he wouldn’t have needed a bug to work it out but it did make me think. Were they really tapping The Brethren’s phones, I wondered? It wouldn’t surprise me. The club was a SOCA target and with what was going down at the moment with The Mohawks if I was a copper I’d have been tripping down the courts for a warrant for sure. ‘Yes, it should be a big show we hear. All the jungle drums are working overtime on getting a good crowd of scum organised. Speaking of which, are you going?’ he asked.