Heavy Duty People: The Brethren MC Trilogy book 1 (22 page)

‘
OK, next one,’ said Dazza cryptically to Butcher who just nodded and then about a mile further on Butcher braked suddenly and pulled into a lay-by. Dazza was out of the car before we stopped and Butcher pulled straight back out onto the road without a word, accelerating hard to make up the seconds he had lost on Billy’s car which was out of sight around the next bend. Glancing back I saw Dazza pulling open the door of a car parked facing back into town and sliding inside before we disappeared around the corner. It was just Butcher and me on Billy’s trail now as his car came back into sight up ahead in the distance.

W
e hung back maintaining station for a few minutes with two cars between us and Billy. Then, as he drove, Butcher reached into his jacket pocket and I heard the familiar tune of a mobile phone being turned on and then a couple of beeps as Butcher picked a number that he’d preset.

‘
Here take this,’ he said handing me the phone.

‘
OK.’

‘
What’s the reception like?’ he asked.

‘
OK at the moment,’ I told him, it could be quite patchy out this way but at the moment I had five bars showing.

‘
Dial when I say so,’ said Butcher, watching as Billy’s car disappeared round a tight bend ahead and headed out into the open countryside along a lengthy straight.

Butcher pulled over again, this time into a field entrance as Billy
’s car pulled away into the distance. There were no other cars parked around that I could see so I guessed Butcher wasn’t going to play the same car changing trick as Dazza had pulled.

‘
Aren’t you going to follow him?’

‘
No need. I know exactly where he’s going. Dial the number.’

I pressed the call key.

From about a mile in front of us I suddenly saw a ball of orange black flame billowing into the sky, followed a second or so later by a boom that seemed to echo across the rolling open fields from where a pillar of black smoke started to form.

‘
Beautiful,’ said Butcher reaching over to pick the phone out of my hand. You know the really cool thing is he continued conversationally, ‘you don’t even need to pay for the call!’

I couldn
’t say anything.

‘
Told you I knew where he was going,’ said Butcher, smiling at me as he pulled the car round in the entrance to a field, and headed back towards town.

‘
Damn those fucking Rebels.’ He shook his head.

‘
Wha…?’ I started to ask distractedly.

‘
The Rebels. That’s the sort of thing that happens when you start treading on their turf.’

We
drove quietly back towards town, turning off the main road on the outskirts just as the blue flashing lights of the cops, ambulance and Trumpton sped past us, all heading the other way. Butcher spent an hour or so working our way cross-country through back lanes to across the other side of the dual carriageway and then he headed east towards the city along roads where there was no chance of cameras.

He dropped me off in
the outskirts and I caught the Metro to the central station and then the train back to town.

Butcher kept the phone. He said he
’d get rid of it.

But of course it would have had my fingerprints on it.
[10]

*

The c
ops had kept Tiny’s body for almost a month now. They’d done two post mortems like they couldn’t work out what had killed him, and then finally they’d released it to his wife Sally.

As a club we
’d taken over the funeral arrangements. It would be a full dress affair with Brethren riding in from all over the country, and some reps coming from overseas chapters. It was a solidarity thing, as well as a chance to catch up with old contacts, have a bit of time for face to faces where guys wanted them. I wondered whether Dazza had taken the opportunity to ask Sergei or Luis over.

The funeral was on the Saturday so we had a few guys arrive the Thursday
, but most made it up during the day on Friday, first stop being the clubhouse to check in, say hi, and grab details of plans for the day, or to hang around to see who else was turning up or just kill some time.

By
Friday evening the clubhouse was full, fuller than I’d ever seen it, with guys squeezed in everywhere, in the bar, in the poolroom, sat on the stairs sharing joints, upstairs in the meeting room. The scrum around the bar was half a dozen deep and the strikers behind it had their work cut out keeping the booze flowing until the party started to break up in the early hours but it was a strange kind of party, solemn like, a quieter mood than usual. This was a serious run, a paying of respects, not a party event, so most guys had turned up riding solo, even those that would normally double pack, so there weren’t many chicks around which I guess made a bit of a difference. By the time I left at two or so some guys were crashed in the bunk rooms at the clubhouse, others had arranged to crash with members around the region. It turned out that a few guys spent the night on mattresses on the floor in the back of the Charter’s crew bus. The Freemen had booked out a country club hotel for themselves of course which must have given the place a shock when their booking had rolled up mid-afternoon on Friday in a twin column of rumbling menace Harleys.

I opened my eyes at eight or so on the Satur
day morning and then closed them again.

Outside I could hear the rain pelting against the windows and see the leaden dark sky that told me it was set in for the whole day.
It was going to be a miserable fucking day, just pissing it down continuously, for a miserable fucking event.

‘
Christ!’ I said eventually, with a reluctant resolve pushing away the covers before swinging my legs out onto the floor and padding my way across the landing to the bathroom for a good long piss. I stood in the shower, swaying and turning so the hot jets of water sprayed across my skin, defrosting me and washing away the cold of sleep.

I rested my forehead against the tiles and closed my eyes as the hot water cascaded down my back, before after an age
, with one hand I finally popped the top off the hanging bottle of shower gel, squeezed a dollop onto my hand and began to wash.

I wasn
’t looking forward to today. I really wasn’t.

Showered, dressed and a quick cup of strong black coffee with two sugars later I started to feel a bit more able to face the world
, although my mood hadn’t improved much.

Sharon
repeated her offer to come with me to pay her respects but again I turned her down. It wasn’t that I didn’t want her there, or even that I didn’t appreciate her concern or desire to be there. I knew she had liked Tiny as well. It was just that it wouldn’t be right. This was going to be a club funeral, a serious club full dress event, we were burying one of our brothers, and so it was really club business, so from that sense she and any of the other old ladies just didn’t belong there.

I pulled on my gear at about nine or so and stepped out of the house and into the grey gloom of the
insistent, persistent rain. I had pulled on my scuffed black waterproof trousers but was resigned to the fact that I was going to be soaked through all day. I’d get Sharon to drop me some dry stuff off at the clubhouse later I decided as I slipped the key in the bike and felt the rain soak into my scarf.

We were meeting
out of town to form the cortège. As road captain I’d been heavily involved in the organisation. With Dazza’s blessing I’d even set foot inside the cop shop to let the plod know the plans as we didn’t want any hassle from them, not that we’d have got it, they would have known better than to try and dick around the whole of The Brethren in the mood we were going to be in at a funeral of someone like Tiny; but also so that they could get organised to direct traffic and arrange escorts and stuff. With all the bikes that we were expecting and the speed that we would be travelling at behind the hearse the cortège would take quite a while to pass through any given point so the plod would need to arrange to hold up traffic at junctions for us and wave the stream of bikes through traffic lights so as not to interfere with the convoy. It just made sense, and in a weird way it was something the cops understood. I guess it’s that sense of loyalty to your own, the thing that comes from a sense of being something set apart from the ordinary civilians. It’s one thing that we on our side and the plod on theirs sort of have in common.

We
’d told them to expect a few hundred bikes so we’d agreed a rendezvous point where we could form up out of town. When I got there, it was a surreal sight. The plod had coned a lane about a hundred yards long off one of the wider stretches of road and bikes were already arriving to form up, with The Brethren strikers standing silently towards the front of the lane, reserving without a word space for the club’s turnout whilst further back the other clubs sorted themselves out in order of relative status. To keep traffic flowing there were a pair of jam sarni striped boxers on their stands at either end of the coned off lane, blue lights flashing and their riders in fluorescent yellow rain gear marshalling arriving bikers into the coned off lane while waving on citizens in cars who were slowing down to a crawl as they rubbernecked at the sight as they came past.

I wheeled across the road in a U turn and slid my bike into station
at the front of the line. As road captain I, and Dazza as P, beside me, would normally be lead bikes, but today we had Polly as UK P with us as well, so Dazza and he would take the honours up front and this once I’d set us off and then slip in behind them to follow in second place. Leaving the bike slumped on its side stand I joined some of the other early arrivals huddled under the trees at the side of the road for a shared smoke and to watch the show as over the next half hour or so the column filled up and the rain came down.

‘Are our friends coming to show their respects?’ I asked
Dazza quietly.

‘Nah,’ he said, ‘thought about it but decided there’s no need.’

I nodded. The cops would be watching us. No sense in giving them anything to see unnecessarily.

‘
Aye, aye, something’s up,’ said Dazza glancing towards where one of the coppers had leant into the fairing of his bike, and appeared to be in conversation although from where we were all we could hear was the crackle of his radio but nothing intelligible.

‘
Roger that,’ we heard him say and then he turned to walk over to where we were standing.

‘
OK guys,’ he said, ‘I’ve just had word. The hearse and family cars are ready to go so it’s all on if you’re ready?’

‘
Yeah, I think so,’ said Dazza dropping his fag on the ground.

‘
Right then. We’ll give you the escort into town as arranged. Once we’re rolling I’ll radio ahead so the hearse can pull out to let you form up behind when we get to the undertakers and then we can all roll on to the cemetery. OK by you?’

‘
Fine by us,’ said Polly, pulling on his lid and turning to lead us back to our bikes, ‘Gentlemen, start your engines.’

We felt rather than saw the wave of attention as the guys from further down the line saw us move but to make it official I raised my arm in the air and rapidly waved my hand twice round in a circle to indicate
‘mount up’ even as I saw cigarettes being dropped, conversations breaking up and lids being pulled on. As I started my own bike, without turning round I could hear a ripple of noise as starter motors whirred and engines burst into life with a roar, each adding to the suddenly growing cacophony of sound from the pack behind me as riders flicked off chokes and blipped their throttles to warm their bikes up.

I pulled my goggles down over my eyes against
the rain and wiped across the front of them with a gloved finger. Better, but the oncoming headlights of the cars still starred crazily together with the flashing blue lights of the cop bikes and their bright brake lights.

I could see the lead copper,
the one who’d come over to speak to us, he was sat on his bike, half turned, waiting in his seat for us to be off. Well fuck it, I thought. Let him wait till we are good and ready. This was our show, not his.

And
Dazza and Polly were waiting beside me as well, Dazza looking straight ahead, Polly glancing down at his dials for some reason. They were both just waiting, waiting for me and my signal. Because I was road captain, this was down to me. Taking the weight on my left leg and bracing my bike upright I stood up in my seat and looked round over my shoulder, back down the line of bikes. It looked as though everyone was up and started, a solid line of lids stretching back as far as I could see, and right at the back the flickering lights of the police beemers where they had moved out into the road to hold the traffic and let us out. Well sod them, they could wait too, I thought.

I raised my arm and felt hundreds of pairs of eyes on it. I held it there for a moment and then
waved it forward and down, hearing the increase in noise as reflexively, everyone edged up their revs in anticipation of the off.

‘
OK, let’s go.’ I nodded to Dazza and he and Polly nodded back and slipping their clutches, they eased off and out into the road without looking behind or glancing at the coppers. We’d go at our own speed. They could form up on us. I slipped in next to Butcher as sergeant at arms behind them and behind us first the club and then the others slowly started to roll in disciplined pairs.