Heavy Duty Trouble (The Brethren Trilogy) (2 page)

Police investigations into the fighting at the airport are continuing and further arrests are expected within the next few days.

Case number 36542 of 201
1

REGINA

–v–

CHARLIE GRAHAM, ANTHONY JOHN GRAHAM,

NIGEL PARVIS,
S
TEPHEN TERRANCE ROBINSON,

PETER MARTIN SHERBOURNE

EXHIBIT 1

DESCRIPTION:

Reporter’s notebook

I’m a dead man talking, I know that.
Realistically t
here’s no way I’m getting out of this alive. The only thing I have a choice about is when I stop writing.

And despite that, and despite the fact that whatever he says, I still think it was Wibble who really got me into all of this shit, the weird thing is, he’s also the only
slim
hope I have of ever getting out.

Saturday 1
3
th
February
2010

The fight
had been
all over the
Press
of course
,
TV, radio, papers, everything. So much so that even
here, hiding out in the back of beyond,
we
had heard about it during the week.

I had my coffee in the small
panelled
back bar as I read the story in the week’s
worth of
papers I had collected
that morning
, my shopping including the family fun pack of
Fl
u
o
x
e
tine
,
s
itting
on the chair beside me
. There were the usual slightly blocky and
pixelated
pictures from CCTV cameras
which
always made me wonder how much use they could ever be for really identifying anyone doing anything.

But then it was an airport, so if there was anywhere that was going to have a lot of CCTV coverage, that would be it.

On the other hand
,
as the Home Office spokesman had pointed out,
it was also a place crawling with armed police
. S
o if you were going to go at it
, I’d
have thought that there were
plenty of
other places you would choose. Not that
it
had put them off
,
obviously.

A fourth man had now died in hospital,
with another two
apparently
still on the critical list
and under
armed
guard,
so the toll could still rise
.

As I read, t
he latest
development
was the Home Secretary’s statement to the
H
ouse,
telling MPs
how all overseas members of The Brethren and any known associated clubs would be barred access to the country.
You could almost hear the sounds of
sanctimonious
cheering and see the order papers being waved in righteous indignation.
There was debate about how this could be enforced in pra
ctic
e against citizens of other EU countries
,
and worries about how the authorities would identify, or even what would constitute
,
being ‘
a known associate’ of
any of
the club
s to be named and shamed
.

As
if
!

It sounded like a policy heading straight towards a hearing at the European Court of Human rights
at some point
to me
, but
then
what did I care?

Frankly,
given
what getting messed up with them had done to me and my life so far, they could all kill
each other
to their hearts
’
content as far as I was concerned, just the sooner, the better.

Anyway, the end result at the moment was that Wibble et al were all currently in theory helping the police with their enquiries, although I could make a fairly shrewd guess how helpful they
were
actually being.

*

By about 11am I’d finished everything
I
’d intended to do and
it had stopped raining at last,
so I began the walk
back up the road
. Climbing the hill
out of town
eventually
I
turned
and picked my way between the muddy puddles
along
the
rutted dirt farm track
leading
to
wards
our
cottage.

It should have been the quiet that warned me.

As I reached the gate and turned the end of the hedge, I looked up the slight rise towards where the cottage was set back on the plot.

They might as well have hung a sign out.

Right
in front of
the front door sat a classic outlaw hog, a
ll
the current
bagger style with springer forks
, apehangers and chromed risers,
a set of
flame painted fatbobs, footboards, forward controls,
an open
belt drive, fat back tyre
in
a soft tail frame
, tombstone tail light,
and
slash cut exhausts
spattered in mud
.

Beyond it was a green Range Rover with tinted windows blackening out the interior. A real hood’s car if ever I’d seen one.

I stood stock still for a moment, wondering what to do
;
options and scenarios, and plans I’d been thinking about constantly for the last year or so came racing and tumbling through my mind.

With the car there was no way of knowing how many of them there were, or where they were for that matter; there’d be some in the cottage no doubt, but the others? There could be some behind me in the lane, ready to grab me if I tried to make a getaway.

No
. T
here was no point running I decided. I doubted there ever had been. And so
, dreading what I might find inside,
I walked up the drive and
stepping round the bike,
opened the door which le
d
directly into the kitchen.

She was sitting there at the
wooden
table facing the door, looking directly into my eyes as I came in, quietly terrified, but just about keeping it together.

Sitting opposite her, with his back to the door so his Union Jack patch was clearly visible
,
was one of the outlaws. Another biker with long blond hair tied in two Viking style pigtails was lounging off to the
left hand
side of the room, perched on the edge of the thick windowsill, his
blue, white and black
colours reflecting in the cottage window behind him.

What was he
,
and where did he fit into the picture I wondered? Escort? Ally? Observer?

The third biker
in the room
was a striker who also had his back to me as he was at the worktop pouring water from the
freshly
boiled kettle into the teapot.

‘Hi there Bung
,
’ I said to the seated figure as he
swung his head around at the sound of the
door
opening
.
‘How are you doing? I’ve been wondering whether you would show up one day.’

*

He grinned as he saw me, ‘
Oh really? And
here
I wa
s wa
nt
ing
to give you a s
urprise!’

‘
Well that’s one word for it
,’
I said
,
as I pushed the door
closed
behind me.

‘Are y
ou OK?
’
I asked
Eamur
urgently
,
but as calmly as I could, locking her eyes with mine.

She
didn’t say anything,
just nodded
and then her eyes fell away
.

‘
Fancy a cuppa?
We’re having a brew
,
’
Bung
asked
,
as though nothing had happened
and shouted over to the striker at the worktop, ‘
Stick another one o
ut
will you?
’

I
knew
t
he
Irish biker
’s
colours
. He was with the club that was
top dog
locally
, the
Fir Bolg
.
Their
bottom rocker claimed
the old kingdom of
Connacht
,
but given the border they weren’t restricting themselves unnecessarily and so had also added the old Ulster county of Donegal to their turf.

‘
So are you here to look after them? Or me?’ I asked
him
.

He looked supremely relaxed. ‘It’s nothing to do with me fella. I’m just here to keep an eye on things while
yer man there
do
es
whatever the fuck it is
he’s
here to do, and
to
then
make sure
he
fuck
s
off home again.’

‘
But
I thought you
guys
were part of the confederation. Pledged to remain independents and to stay out of this international type of shit?

‘
So w
ho’s getting involved?
’
H
e shrugged as the striker passed him a steaming mug,
‘
They just wanted a visit so they asked nicely
if they could come
and you can’t very well refuse when they do that
,
now can you? It wouldn’t be polite would it?
S
o like I said, I’m just here to show them where they wanted to go and then show them on their way.’

‘You’re their chaperone?’

‘Escort is more
what
I’d
say now
,
but something like that.’

‘I couldn’t have put it better myself
,
’
added Bung
,
as the striker plonked
a steaming mug of
tea on the table
i
n front of him
,
and then
another
one in front of an empty place across the table.

Bung motioned for me to sit and so, reluctantly, I slid into the chair opposite him. There didn’t seem to be anything else to do.

*

Despite myself I had to give a wary smile.
Bung was exactly as I remembered him
,
a huge scruffy bear of a man. His jacket with his colours over it was draped across the back of his chair, and he was wearing a black hoodie with the words
Gangland,
F
ilm this!
s
urrounding a graphic of a hand ‘flipping the bird’ American style
.

‘Nice,’ I said, nodding at the logo as I sat down.

‘D’you like it?’ he
asked
, glancing down, ‘I
picked it up at a bash in the S
tates last time we were over.’

‘Would you get me one next time you go?’

‘Ah well, I don’t think that’ll be for a while now,’ he batted it back to me with a conspiratorial smile.
‘So how’s life been treating you then?’

‘Not bad I suppose up until a few minutes ago, I was quite getting to like a sort of normal life again.’

Bung s
hook his head
dismissively, ‘
Over rated that mate, if you ask me.
I tried to be normal once, it was the most boring two minutes of my life.’