Heavy Duty Trouble (The Brethren Trilogy) (4 page)

‘
Negotiate
,
’
h
e said simply.

‘
Negotiate?
’ I asked,
‘
Negotiate what?
With who
m
?’

‘
A deal
,’ he shrugged as if it was a daft question,
‘
What else do you negotiate?
’

I still didn’t get it, what sort of a deal I wondered, about what?

Then Eamur
chipped in for the fi
r
s
t time, ‘
t
hey need someone to act as a broker
between them
,
that’s it isn’t it?
’

Bung nodded
.

‘They want someone they
both
know to sort out a deal between them,
’ she continued,
‘
that’s what this is all about isn’t it?’

‘
You see, your bird here’s smart, s
he gets it
,’
he said
approvingly
. O
ut of the corner of my eye I could see Eamur bristling at him
although Bung seemed completely oblivious
,
‘
They need to sort out a deal and they want you to help them do it.
’

Christ
,
so that was it, s
huttle diplomacy?
I’m Henry
sodd
ing
Kissinger now
,
I thought.

‘
Why me?
’ I asked
.
‘
To what do I owe this honour?
’

He counted the reasons off on
his
fingers
,
and as he did so they had a heavy inevitability about them.

‘
Well first off it can’t be someone in the club, it has to be someone who has a bit of independence of either side and so can be seen to be neutral.

‘
But at the same time it
’s got
to be someone who knows enough about the club and how we work to be able to talk sense.

‘
And finally of course, it has to be someone who
’ll keep their mouth shut about it and that we know
won’t go blabbing to the cops.
’

And on the last point of course I
couldn’t
,
courtesy
of Wibble.
‘
So
you’ve got a fairly short list of candidates
then?
’ I asked.

‘
You’ve
got
it.
’

It was taking my mind a while for this development to sink in.

‘So
indulge me on one question then
, j
ust out of interest,’ I
said
, ‘What if I don’t want to come?’

Bung
was having a good day, I could tell he was enjoying himself now as he
just grinned at that. ‘Well, it’s up to you mate isn’t it? After all, it’s your funeral.
’

Turning down Charlie and Wibble? Yes I guess it would be. These guys had an absolute knack of making th
e
sorts of offers that you really couldn’t refuse.

‘But if you don’t, well I think I’d invest in some portable protection, if you know what I mean.
’

‘Oh, a
nd watch out for bikes drawing up beside you at traffic lights
,
’
chipped in the Irish guy helpfully.

They surprised me with that.
‘A drive by? I didn’t think that was your guys’ style? I thought you were more a little something under the car of a morning?’

‘You know your trouble don’t you?’
Bung asked, putting down his tea, the smile suddenly gone from his face as the level of tension in the room shot up in a heartbeat.

‘No,
’ I replied.
‘
G
o on then, surprise me
. W
hat’s that then?’

‘You believe too much of what you read in the papers.’

‘You forget,
’ I said, putting my mug down on the table as well and
speaking
slowly and deliberately.
There was no way I wanted him to misunderstand what I was getting at, as underneath
one half of my
mind was screaming at me, we had a deal
, I’d disappear and they’d leave me alone; while the other half was frantically trying to work out what had
changed
to make Bung turn up now and drive a coach and horses through the
arrangement
.

‘
I used to write what you read in the papers.’

‘Oh no we hadn’t
,
’
he replied, equally carefully.

*

‘
So how am I meant to see them?
’
I asked.

‘What d’you mean?’ he seemed
puzzled
at the question
.

‘
I mean practically.
They’re both inside.’

‘Yes, and that’s where they want to see you.’

‘So how do I get to see them?’

‘Same way as you
saw Damage of course,’ he said.
‘
Y
ou visit.’

Oh that was just great. I’m the bod
they
c
ould
use as a negotiator si
nce I’m the one who can’t go to
the cops
since
Wibble had
set
me
up
as number one suspect
for
the
murder
of a copper
that
he’d
carried out, and now he
and Charlie
want
ed
me to go waltzing into prison to see them? What were they on
,
I wondered?

‘
Hang on a
sodd
ing minute, l
et me get this straight
,
’
I demanded
. ‘
You want me to act as a bloody
go-between
? To visit them and shuttle between two guys
on
the inside and negotiate a deal? While I’m still a wanted man?
How the hell do you think I’m going to get away with doing that?’

‘Easy,’ he said pulling out an
envelope
from inside his leather vest and dropping it on the table in front of him, ‘with these.’

‘So what’s that?’ I asked
. A
lthough
with
a heavy heart
, even as he’d
produced the envelope
I
immediately
worked out what it had to be.

‘
Fa
ke
ID
,
’
he said as though it was the most obvious and normal thing in the world.

‘
But w
hat excuse
would I have for
visiting
them?
’
I asked in
increasing
desperation.

‘
Oh that’s OK,’ he said,
‘
it’s all taken care of.
You’re
going to be a guy
from their s
olicitor’s
office
.’

I shook my head in disbelief
,
even as I started to realize this was really going to happen to me and that I had absolutely sod all choice about it, ‘
You have got to be fucking kidding me.
’

*

Of course t
hey were inside, after the fight
.

There had been a message in the
U
nion Jack tabs that Wibble and his crew had adopted
along with Stu and his lads
. It was just that I’d been too dim to see it. The clue was in the names.

Union, the union of the two UK clubs
, The Rebels and The Brethren
.

And Jac
k, as in jacking in the old
allegiance
to the Yanks.

Listening to Bung explain what had been happening
,
it was clear that Wibble, Stu and Charlie between them had teamed up to pull off a
n MBO
. Only in this case it was a
bit more of
a management bust out.

‘
Hadn’t the
Y
anks suspected something was up
? O
nce you’d got together with The Rebels and all
?
’

There had been bad blood between The Brethren and The Rebels
clubs
in the
States
for longer than any of the current participants in the eternal bush war could ever remember. It had become
almost
a Hatfield and
McCoy’s
thing, a hillbilly style blood feud stretching down through the generations
years
after the original reasons and offenders we
re long dead and forgotten.

So t
he two clubs
’
British arms joining up in an outbreak of, if not outlaw biker peace and love, then at least mutual respect and working arrangements, wasn’t something that would have gone unnoticed on the other side of the Atlantic, by either mother club.
God knows what they would then have thought about a formal cessation of hostilities such as had happened at The Brethren’s August 2009 Toy Run,
never mind
that latest development.

‘
Sure they did,
’
Bung
said,
‘
but what could they do? And anyway, by the time they did work it out, it was too late, we’d done it.
’

And
‘
it
’
was what the patch on the back of his cut represented
;
the one I’d seen in the
Press
, on the websites and now grinning over the back of the chair as I’d walked into the room. The one with the
Union Jack
coloured skull in the centre, the words Great Britain underneath across the bottom rocker, and
across the top rocker
the new
club
name
;
one that had never been seen before, until
this New Year’s day
when the two clubs finally came together to put on their new patches,
and declare themselves a new club, one that answered to no one in the USA and which called itself
The Rebel Brethren
MC
.

Strategically, for the clubs in the UK, I could see that the merger made perfect sense. It was Wibble
it seemed
, who else, who had named it
P
roject Union Jack
. Uni
te and jack it in,
u
nify and
declare
UDI
, combine the clubs together and take over the UK.

It was simple, it was brilliant, it was unprecedented, and it was impossible to say how very, very dangerous and challenging
a step
it was
to the accepted international order of things
.

In a club like either The Brethren or The Rebels it was a simple equation. You died, or, if you lived long enough and you were a member of sufficiently good standing, you might sometimes
,
with the club’s permission retire, or y
ou got chucked out
in bad standing. Those were the
only three
ways you exited a club.

No one, but no one, just upped and left. Not as an individual, and certainly not as a club
. N
ever had, never
could, never
would
–
until now.

It was, I knew, the reason for the fight at the airport, th
e logic of each side’s position
was inexorable.
The
Yank
s wouldn’t stand for
it
, and had come over to take care of business.
It was just that when they landed, the club was waiting for them in arrivals
, resulting in the stills from the CCTV images that I’d seen splashed across the paper, bodies grappling, weapons raised, casualties on the floor
;
and then right at the end, a strange and so far unexplained image.