Heavy Duty Trouble (The Brethren Trilogy) (41 page)

Ye
ah
,
I do
.

On the tape of the phone call that the
Prosecution
played, do you recognise either of the voices on the tape?

It’s difficult to be sure, they’ve tried to disguise them, but ye
ah
, I think so.

So, can you tell the
C
ourt who you think is speaking in that recording? Who is the caller and who is the recipient?

I think i
t’s Bung and Parkie.

Monday 13
th
June 2011

It’s the
six
th day of the biker murder
trial
in Newcastle Crown Court and to tell us about developments we
’re
go
ing live
to
Eamon
Reynolds, our legal correspondent in our Newcastle studio.

Another extraordinary day in this trial I understand
,
Eamon
. Can you tell us what has happened?

Yes indeed Trevor. The Crown having finished the
Prosecution
evidence
on Friday of last week,
today
it
has been
the turn of
the
D
efence
to begin to present their case
.

Firstly, they have attacked the police version of events and interpretation of the evidence
at the scene of the ambush
. For example they have pointed to the lack of any actual bodies being found at the scene, which has then led
on to
perhaps one of the most astonishing claims made so far in this trial, which is that there were in fact no murders committed at all.

The
D
efence
have suggested that instead, the alleged victims were in fact the kingpins of a substantial drug smuggling ring
,
which two of the supposed victims had been using their senior positions in the club to operate; that the defendants in this case had arranged to expel these individuals from the club; and that the supposed victims have in fact faked their own deaths in order to cover up their disappearance with the proceeds of this smuggling operation
,
whilst also pointing the finger of suspicion at their opponents in the club.

The
D
efence
has opened by playing quite a clever line in this trial. They are concentrating on attacking the credibility of the account set out in
Mr
Iain Parke’s journal,
and
by pointing out that Mr
Parke is not there to be cross-
examined about the veracity of the material.

Absolutely extraordinary
,
Eamon
. So what happens now?

Well Trevor,
it has always been anticipated that this would be a relatively swift trial and I understand that the
Defence
case is
only
expected to take another day to complete
.

So do we know when a verdict is expected
,
Eamon
?

Well
on Wednesday we
should
hear the
closing statements from
C
ounsel for each side before the
J
udge
, Mr
Justice Oldman
QC
’s summing up
,
which together are likely to take another da
y in total, a
fter which he will ask the jury to retire to consider their verdict.

O
bviously
,
it then
depends on the jury and how their deliberations go
. W
e will simply have to wait and see how quickly they
are able to reach a decision
,
as well as how the
D
efence
arguments will play with the jury
.

Eamon
Reynolds, handing back to you in the studio
,
Trevor.

Well thank you then
,
Eamon
.

Eamon
Reynolds there
,
reporting from the ongoing trial at
Newcastle
.

IN THE CROWN COURT AT NEWCASTLE

Case number 36542 of 201
1

REGINA

–v–

CHARLIE GRAHAM, ANTHONY JOHN GRAHAM,

NIGEL PARVIS,
S
TEPHEN TERRANCE ROBINSON,

PETER MARTIN SHERBOURNE

Court Transcript
– Extract

14
th
June 2011

Mr
A Whiteley
QC, Counsel for the
D
efence

Cross-exam
ination of Mr Charlie Graham (
cont
)

We have
apparently
heard a lot from Mr Parke during this tria
l, or at least from the journal
which he is alleged to have kept and then conveniently sent to the police at the last possible point before
travelling
to the meeting at the Enderdale clubhouse.

But we have actually heard very little about Mr Parke himself. Who he was, what he did, what agenda he
might have had
, and why you might, or might not, want to trust anything that he wrote.

So l
et
u
s
take the time to
look at Mr Parke
, the author of so much of the material you have been presented with in this trial,
in a bit more detail shall we?

In earlier evidence from files held by the Serious and
Organized
Crime Agency you have seen copies of police reports stating that Mr Parke was a close associate of The Brethren MC and
of the club’s effective president,
Wibble
,
in particular. You have also seen a wealth of photographic evidence taken from police surveillance of the club and its contacts showing his attendance at club events, visiting club premises and even wearing Wibble’s personal support patch. There can be no doubt from this material that Mr Parke was a close associate of the club at the time when Wibble was President of
i
t.

But it’s important to remember
as Charlie here mentioned,
that Mr Parke’s links to the club
predate this by quite some time
.

Prior to his involvement with Wibble, Mr Parke clearly had a relationship with the previous club leader Damage. By his own admission in the
afterword to the
b
iography
he wrote
about him entitled
Heavy Duty People
,
these links went back
many years
.
I’ll quote to you from this book:

I first met Martin ‘Damage’ Robertson in 1999, just after he had become President of The Freemen and therefore in practice the national leader of The Brethren’s UK charters at the age of thirty-six.

At the time, I was researching an article on bikers for the national newspaper on which I was working. Like many outlaw bikers he was wary of journalists as a profession and so it took quite a while and an introduction through mutual contacts before he would agree to firstly a meeting, and then subsequently to being interviewed. Given his and The Brethren’s fearsome reputation, I was nervous about our initial encounter, but I soon found that whilst guarded and reserved in some ways, he was very personable to talk to, and within limits, and only to the degree that he obviously felt it within his and the club’s interests to do so, he was prepared to talk to me.

As a journalist I naturally sought to stay in touch and I spoke to him on a number of occasions over the next few years.

So, as you hear, Mr
Parke quite clearly had contact
with Damage that he was
very
open about. And of course, given his work as a crime journalist, no one would necessarily question these. After all, in that line of work, it was only to be expected, it would be entirely normal for someone in Mr Parke’s job to have contacts with a wide range of criminals and suspected criminals
and to be knowledgeable about the
criminal
underworld and how it worked in general
.
That was
,
after all
,
what the newspaper was paying him for.

This contact even continued once Damage was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2003 for a series of murders relating to his takeover of the club’s northern charter and its fledgling drugs smuggling operation, although
in his book,
Mr Parke downplays th
is aspect
:

I spoke to Robertson once while he was in prison after his conviction but he didn’t have much to say
.

In 20
08
however
these
contacts
then became more extensive
.
Again I will quote from M
r
P
arke’s own
description given in the book:

Then in early 2008, Robertson asked me to visit him in the Long Lartin maximum security prison in Worcestershire as soon as I could. There then followed a series of meetings at his request over the following three months during which I interviewed him at length and collected the information that makes up this book. During these sessions he seemed to want to be completely open with me and to answer all my questions about the events he wanted to discuss. In fact looking back through my notes and the transcripts of our conversations, it is striking that other than on one solitary occasion, I do not remember any question that he did not answer.

Sadly the book doesn’t say whether Mr Parke asked where the money was
,
or if he did, what the answer was. Perhaps if it had
,
we would not be here today.

So wh
at are we to make of these connection
s and contacts
?

On the
face of it of course,
Mr Parke gives a
very
straightforward explanation. He’s a journalist. Damage is a person of interest to him professionally in terms of writing about crime
,
and so he
firstly
establishes and then maintains a level of contact.

And then in
early
2008, for reasons that are not entirely clear but in retrospect Mr Parke suggests may have been as a result of knowledge Damage had about a threat to his life, Damage and Mr Parke are involved in a period of extensive dialogue, ending with Damage’s death.

As a result of this contact, M
r
Parke
then
produce
d
a book.
That’s correct so far isn’t it Charlie?

Yeah, well he had to didn’t he
really?

Had to? Sorry Charlie, what do you mean by that?

His b
ook
, he
had to produce that didn’t he
? O
therwise everybody was going to be wondering what he was doing in
there
seeing Damage all that time
weren’t they?

So producing the book was
what,
cover
?

Yeah, if you want to put it that way.

I see. Well leaving that to one side for a moment, i
n add
ition to being a working journalist, Mr Parke also had claims to being some kind of a novelist.

Prior to bringing out
Heavy Duty People
,
he h
ad published a thriller set in Africa called
The Liquidator
and is understood to have completed a number of other manuscripts, some of which I understand are in the process of being edited for publication
.

So let’s look at what Mr Parke has to say about himself shall we? Let’s start with
the
profile
he used on Facebook, Twitter,
LinkedIn
and other social networking sites
shall we?

I import industrial quantities of class A drugs, kill people, and I lie; a lot. In other words, I’m a crime writer.