Heavy Duty Trouble (The Brethren Trilogy) (42 page)

Let me
also
quote from Mr Parke’s blog on his website bad-press.co.uk.

I
’m a fiction writer. I lie for a living. That’s what I do.

So the only person whose word we’ve got for any of this is Mr Iain Parke, a
self-
confessed writer of fiction.
Let me quote
to you
from his blog again
where he talks about writing
.

You lead them all the way down the garden path until just at the last moment you step smartly sideways as they step straight off the edge of the cliff.

And then again later on he says,
I like to toy with my victims, sorry, readers
,
and mess with their heads.

Those are the words, ladies and gentlemen, of the person the
C
rown is asking you to believe in order to convict the five men in front of you in the dock for murder, for which they undoubtedly risk life sentences.

C
harlie, c
an I
go
back to
ask you about
Mr Parke
and his relationship with your father
for a moment. As we’ve already touched on
a number of times,
you are aware that Mr Parke ha
d
written a book about his dealings with your club, The Brethren, and members of it including Wib
ble, and indeed your own father,
Mr Robertson.

Ye
ah
, of course I am.

And it’s fair to say, isn’t it from what you
have
told us
already in Court
, that you don’t have a very high opinion of this book do you?

No.

Have you read this book?

Ye
ah
.

In the book Mr Parke gives the impression of being an outsider. Someone with limited contact with the club, an observer and reporter of its activities and not an active participant. Is that correct?

I know that’s what he says.

But it’s not true?

No, it’s not. We’ve already talked about this earlier on. Just because he wrote them in a book, doesn’t mean they’re true. You could write anything in a book. It’s not like he took an oath or anything when he sat down at his computer.

Within the book and within the journal seen in this trial and alleged to have been written by Mr Parke, there is extensive commentary on the death of your father and speculation about who might have been responsible, and why, isn’t there?

Ye
ah
.

Has your father’s killer ever been caught?

No,
they haven’t.

Earlier on in your testimony you indicated that you believed that Wibble and Bung were responsible for your father’s death didn’t you?

Yes, that’s what I think.

But the only person who saw Damage, Mr Robertson
,
consistently in the months before he died was Mr Parke? Is that correct?

Ye
ah
.

And Mr Parke in his capacity as a crime journalist would have had intimate dealings and contacts with a wide variety of players across the crime scene. Is that the case?

Yeah
.

So what exactly was the nature of Mr Parke’s relationship with Mr Robertson?

I don’t know, you would have to ask him that wouldn’t you?

Was it simply that of an interviewer? Meeting up with him to discuss Mr Robertson’s life story for the purposes of producing a book? Or was there more to it than that?

Like I said, I wouldn’t know.

Well yes
,
quite, but of course that leads us back to the central problem doesn’t it, that he isn’t here to ask is he?

No
,
I guess not.

The reality is however
,
that what we actually
do
know about the death of Mr Robertson is very limited isn’t it? We know that he was stabbed
while in
prison, but by who
m
has never been established, and so the motive for the killing remains purely within the realm of speculation. That’s correct isn’t it?

Ye
ah
.

But while we can only speculate, there are some things we can speculate about with a reasonable degree of probability. Mr Robertson was stabbed
in prison, presumably
by another prisoner, so this could have been the result of some disagreement within the prison, a prison beef as I think Mr Parke referred to it. Alternatively, it could have been a killing
organized
by someone on the outside, for reasons unconnected with events inside the jail.

As we have seen within the notebook presented at this trial, Mr Parke it seems
,
has speculated at length on who
might have arranged such a killing and why.

The lists of potential culprits and reasons he provides are long and complicated. According to Mr Parke’s notes these could range from the personal, to gang rivalries, to a struggle for power over a criminal enterprise. And the truth is, until and unless the crime is ever solved, we will never know, and maybe, not even then for sure.

I want to turn for a moment to the discussion
which it is claimed he had with Wibble and Bung on
this subject on
the evening of
Thursday 4th March, the day before the so-called ambush
.

OK
.

It is noticeable isn’t it
that in the alleged
conversation
between
them,
there was no discussion of what would appear to be the most likely reason for someone to kill Damage
was there?

What do you mean?

Well Mr Parke seems to have gone through a whole list of reasons that might have led someone to want to have Damage killed, everything from personal rivalries
,
to fear he might be talking to
o
much
, to the direction he was potentially taking the club in
. Everything that is
I would suggest,
but the obvious one.

Which is?

C
old
,
hard cash
.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, as you have heard, in his j
ournal
Mr Parke
claims that
Damage was likely to have
amassed
a huge fortune
. If Mr Parke is to be believed, as Charlie here suggests is correct, Damage was
actively
involve
d
in the importation, on an industrial scale, of cocaine and other drugs over a decade long career
whilst
he wa
s the effective leader of The Brethren MC in the UK.

Now isn’t follow the money always one of the journalist’s stock in trade techniques?

If so, why didn’t Mr Parke apply it in this case? If it was good enough for Woodward and Bernstein to take on Nixon with, why not use the same technique with Damage?

So
I would ask the simple question, why not
ask this question
?

It seems somewhat unusual in the circumstances doesn’t it? Particularly when you reflect that the money, assuming i
t
ever existed of course, was according to Mr Parke’s version of events, not only missing, but being actively sought by two branches of the club?

Following the money would seem to be the obvious thing to do if you were starting to look for a suspect
wouldn’t it? Y
et it’s the one thing Mr Parke signally fails to do.
He never, ever
,
raises the question of control of the money as a potential motive for the killing. Now, given all we’ve heard about this case, d
oesn’t that strike you as rather odd?

So let’s talk about money for a moment then.

To be precise, let’s talk about drugs money. Again from Mr Parke’s description, we have heard earlier of the siz
e
able sums, staggering even, that could be involved in the scale of trade he suggests was taking place.

But the very magnitude of the cash involved would present a criminal with a significant problem
,
would it not?

The authorities here
and elsewhere around the reputable financial world
are on the lookout for suspicious transactions since they want to spot criminals with large amounts of hot money to move. Strict money laundering rules exist to ensure financial institutions can identify who they are dealing with
,
and where their funds are coming from. In short, things are made as difficult as possible for criminals to hide their loot.

So if you do have huge amounts of ill gotten gains to hide, what do you do? Well, you have to arrange to put it places where controls are looser, where people
are
not going to ask too many questions. But then you have another problem. In places where controls are loose, where people are willing to take your cash without asking too many questions, how safe is your money going to be?

You need someone who knows their way around those nooks and crannies of the world financial system.

But if that someone then steals or loses your unaccountable money, if it vanishes accidentally or deliberately in those nooks and crannies, how then do you go about getting it back?

Particularly if your money man himself has disappeared?

But then
rather inconveniently,
Mr Parke isn’t here to answer questions about
any of
this so
-
called evidence is he?

Members of the jury, I suggest to you that w
ithout having Mr Parke here to
cross-exam
ine
,
you should disregard all of
this so
-
called evidence as completely unreliable.

Without the ability to challenge what he has written
,
this journal is
really
no more than hearsay and cannot provide the level of evidence that you need to decide these very serious charges against my clients have been proven beyond all reasonable doubt.

And the reason he’s not here, according to the Crown
,
is that he is dead, the victim of a murder organized by my client and his co-accused.

But what evidence, real substantiated, testable evidence have they produced to back this up?

We have no bodies.

And to cap it all, Mr Parke, is by the Crown’s own admission, in this very piece of evidence
presented to you
, a man who has arranged to successfully disappear before and hide out
. In fact he is someone who managed to completely
evad
e
the authorities
,
who were searching for him let’s not forget in connection with the suspected murder of a policeman, for well over
six months
.

So why does the Crown expect us to believe that this time, it’s for real?

But let’s return to the death of your father
,
Charlie. I
f speculating about the motives is a hopeless task, what about other aspects of the killing?

How do you mean?

Let’s go back then to what we do know. Mr Robertson was killed by another prisoner. He was in jail, in his cell, so unless the attacker was a prison officer this only leaves another prisoner does it not?

I suppose so.

If it was just as a result of some local little difficulty, a simple prison beef, then there is no great mystery to be solved, other than the normal police task of trying to track down the culprit.

However, if it was connected to events outside the prison, either gang related or crime related, then this leads to questions not just about who wanted it, but also about how it was
organized
. This would need to have been carefully arranged wouldn’t it?

I
do
n’t know.

Well, let’s just look at what would have needed to happen to achieve it shall we?

Someone within the prison would have to have been recruited to do the job, possibly with others brought in to act as lookouts. The killer would have to have been armed so there was the question of them securing a weapon, either within the prison, or by having it brought in and delivered to them. And they would have to have a reason for taking on the task, some favour or payment made or promised as a reward for taking on and doing away with Mr Robertson. That’s a fair bit of
organization
isn’t it?