Heavy Duty Trouble (The Brethren Trilogy) (16 page)

‘So why did you get fingered?’

He shrugged,
‘Well it was my dabs on the bottle weren’t it?’

‘And they made you for the killer?’

‘Tried to,’ he agreed, ‘But my brief was fucking good, I’ll give him that.
He stood up and s
aid just
cos
my dabs were on the bottle didn’t mean I was the one who’d stuck him with it did it?’

‘And that worked?’

‘Well there weren’t any witnesses worth shit, and my guys all swore blind it wasn’t me, so in the end they had to let it go and that was that, back out of the nick.

‘But it was enough for the firm. They decided it was time to go and so out I went. Didn’t know what the fuck I was going to do until I got involved with the club. And then it was just like coming home.’

‘So why did you get involved, with the club I mean?’ I asked. It was
unusual
for Bung to be this talkative.

‘Coming out of the forces, t
he hardest thing to let go of is the sense of belonging, you know? There wasn’t anything like it in civvie life, or anything that would give you the buzz of anything like action. And I just missed both of them you know?

‘
And birds like the bikes and the colours as well
,
so that was an attraction sure
,
’
h
e added.

It was no coincidence
,
I thought
,
that the word colours cropped up in both the military and in talking about the clubs. As Bung said, it seemed that for members the pride in the unit, the sense of being part of something separate from the rest of the world, that was almost family like, was very real.

‘And now
,
’
I asked
,
‘
with all this shit going on? Does it still feel like home?’

Bung was quiet for a moment, and then he shook his head.
‘I guess not, not in the same way. Charlie’s
looking to
chang
e
the club.’

‘How?’

‘Well the way it’s always worked, it used to be that everybody had their say you know. Fair enough, you know somebody’s got to make a decision at the end of the day, so somebody’s gotta be P and once the decision’s made, you’ve all got to stick to it, that’s what being in a club’s all about. But whenever anything needed to be decided, we’d all chip in our bit. Even if you don’t always get your way, you knew at least you’d been liste
ne
d to.’

‘And Charlie doesn’t strike
you
as the listening type?’

Bung grunted a snort of amusement, ‘No, not really.’

He was quiet for a moment and then he asked me
‘Did you know Charlie’s brought in a new rule for his charter? He reckons it’s a sure fire way to avoid any coppers getting in and that nobody talks.’

‘What’s that then?’

‘Oh it’s simple mate. Every striker has to make his bones before he gets in.’

I just looked at him as it took me a couple of seconds for the chilling implications of that to sink in.

‘Everyone?’

‘Everyone,’ he nodded emphatically,
‘No Bonesman badge, no patch for new strikers. It’s that simple.’

Christ
, I thought to myself, k
eep that up and sooner or later everyone in the club w
ould
by definition be a stone cold killer.

‘
And that’s not what the club’s supposed to be about.’

I had a strange feeling that Bung had come about as close as I guess he ever would to telling a civilian that he wasn’t happy about a bit of club business.

But
by
then Scroat was coming back up the stairs with the boxes so we left it as he entered the room.

*

By about ni
ne o’clock that evening,
Bung and Scroat were going at it hammer and tongs
again
.

‘Anybody can kill
for the club if they have to,
but that don’t make them right for being a P. Being a P is about more than that. And being P is what we’re talking about here,’ Bung insisted
.

‘P or not,
Charlie’s
acting like the P. He’s seen what needs to happen and has stepped up to the plate to do it.’

‘So what, he’s not been elected…’

‘Don’t matter. That’s what makes you a P, doing the job the P has to do.’

So Charlie could worry about getting elected afterwards
,
I decided. And if he had purged the membership and ran the election then the result was never going to be in very much doubt was it?
As that nice Mr Stalin had so accurately observed once,
P
eople who vote decide nothing, those who count the votes decide everything
.

But Bung wasn’t about to be disenfranchised like that.

‘No fucking way. At church we’re all equal. It don’t matter how high up you are or what you do or don’t earn. Behind those doors you’re all equal members of the club, with responsibilities to each other. And that fucking matters because without it we’re over.’

Then t
here was a hiss from downstairs that froze us instantly. ‘Hey cool it you two, looks like we’ve got company.’

‘
Is it them?
’
whisp
ered Bung as he headed towards the door
.

‘
It’s gotta be hasn’t it?
’
s
narled Scroat from where he was
peering
out
through a slot in the steel
shuttering
covering
the window
,
while gently easing
the glass inside
off the catch
,
and sliding it minimally open
.

The house was set up like a fortress. The front door was steel and all the windows were covered in the sort of slotted steel sheeting used to close up abandoned buildings and keep out the vandals and copper strippers. Out back the yard was surrounded by an eight foot high wall, topped with razor wire and broken glass and Scampi had grinned his wide gap toothed grin as he pointed out the sharpened steel spikes that stuck up three feet or so just inside the wall
ra
ther than immediately inside the blank steel gate, where anyone who did manage to jump over the wall would be impaled as they came down.

I risked
a quick glance out through
a slot
in the steel
next to where I was sitting.
It was dark outside but I thought I caught sight of a pair of shadowy figures at the top of the lane.

‘
Get the fuck down
!
’
ordered Scroat sharply
,
as he noticed me
looking
out.
‘
Don’t let yourself be seen.
’

It seemed sensible
advice, even coming from Scroat.
Despite the fact that
the steel mesh cladding covered
the windows, I guess from the outside with the lights on in the house you would still be able to see our
silhouettes
against the frame, certainly well enough to
make me
a target if someone outside wanted to take a chance on a
pot-shot
or two.

T
his wasn’t my war so
I decided
the best thing to do was to
listen to my inner coward and
try and keep
the
hell
out of it
as best I could
and to avoid as far as possible the risk of becoming
collateral
damage. So I slunk back down
on to
the mattress I was sitting on
.

Then it went dark as Scroat
stepped back to flick
the light switch
, then returned to the
slit he
had been looking out
through.

‘
Jesus Christ
!’
I exclaimed quietly
as Bung came back in through the door
, moving fast
at a crouch
and
bearing
under each arm
a
familiar
bull pup
shape, the
SA80, the army’s standard
automatic
rifle
. W
ithout a word
he handed one
to Scroat
and I heard the clicks as
they
each slid
the safety off while
they
took up firing positions
at the window
and waited.

‘
W
here the
hell
did you get those?’ I hissed.

Bung
just grinned at me
.

‘Oh it’s easy enough if you know guys who’re still serving, and don’t mind risking a charge for some decent dosh.
Now
if
I was you I’d shut up and keep your fucking head down, if you don’t want to get it shot off that is
,
’
h
e advised.

Great! Drugs, bikers and automatic weapons. What could possibly go wrong?

For a moment or two there was silence.

Since the house lights had been doused, I
assumed
that those outside, whoever they were,
must
have realized they’d been spotted
and s
o
there was now no chance of sneaking up and taking the place unawares.

The quiet break-
in option was gone, if it had ever really existed given the security systems Scampi had installed. Now they had a simple choice. They could try storming the building with a
full
frontal assault, or they could melt away into the night.

And for a moment I really thought that was the most likely result.

‘
What do you think they’re going to try to do? They can’t think that they can get in can they?
’
I asked.

‘
Don’t be daft
,’ said Bung,
‘t
hey don’t have to get in do they?
’

‘
Why not?
’

‘
Jesus Christ man, can’t you smell it in here anymore?
’

And then
as I sniffed the air around me,
I realised what he meant. The fumes from the chemicals, the solvents, the fuel, were everywhere; they seemed to have seeped into my skin, the clothes on my back, my hair even
.
I reeked of them all, acetone, petrol, methanol. The house itself was a bomb
. It was
just waiting for a naked flame
in the wrong place at the wrong moment, to go up like a torch.

With us inside it.

‘Christ almighty,’ I said as we peered out through the slit
towards
the bottom of the steel sheeting, ‘what the
hell
do we do?’

‘
We…’

But he never finished the sentence since just at that moment there was a movement outside and bodies began to rush down the path towards the front of the
building
. It was difficult to tell numbers but the
r
e could have been about a dozen of them I
estimated
, and of course, I could only see those who were coming
straight
towards us
from the front
. God alone knew how many more there might be around the back or
at
the other side
of the house. Even behind our modern castle walls I knew we were well outnumbered; and they had also obviously worked out what they intended to do. As they came towards the building I could see the
sudden flaring
light of what looked like flames starting up in the hands of some of them as lighters flicked to set Molotov cocktails going.

‘Incoming!’ murmured Bung as he and Scroat raised their rifles to their shoulders and with barrels poking out through the steel mesh, they sighted down
on to
the approaching targets who were now only a few metr
e
s from the house.

I swear he had a smile on his face. Bung the fucker was actually enjoying this.