Heavy Duty Trouble (The Brethren Trilogy) (5 page)

It was a shot of two men, taken from a camera high up in the roof of the building, and facing towards the immigration doors by the looks of it, so it had only caught them from the back as they stood over one of the bodies.
Both their faces were obscured by the camera angle but all the same I
had
kn
o
w
n
with a lurch in my gut who they were the instant I
had seen
the photo.

But what I didn’t understand as I stared at the
pixelated
image, was why Wibble and Charlie had each come to a riot armed only with a medium sized stuffy bag.

*

As the split had come about over the last few months it had made me reassess everything I had seen so far in my dealings with Damage, Wibble and The Brethren, and made me question my understanding of what I had seen.

It was a moot point now I guessed
,
but it had made me wonder. The big mystery in my mind was still who had killed Damage and why.
Knowing now
about
where
the club politics had been heading I asked myself if it had actually been
Thommo
who’d moved against
D
amage
in a bid
to
become national
P
rez
?

I
had always dismissed the thought before as i
t
seemed to me that it
would have been a very
,
very risky plan without some serious back up given D
amage
’s position, contacts,
and
importance to the club’s business.

But
the present situation cast it all in a new light. W
hat
,
I wondered to myself
,
if the roots of this went back further? What
i
f Thommo had
believed he actually
did have
back up?
Serious back up?
What if the
Yank
s had put him up to it? To stop Damage who had been planning
t
he
split
that Wibble had then gone on to execute
?

Did that also explain the decision about succession?
T
hat Thommo had t
ried to become P
rez
but
had been held off
by the D
amage
loyalists
led by Wibble? If so, that could explain
why it was so sudden
, and why it had been
a triumvirate
, as a way of balancing, at least temporarily,
the
potentially warring factions
.

It would also explain the beef between Wibble and Thommo which
had always
seemed to
me to
have had a real personal edge to it.

*

But back at the here and now, t
hey
had worked out the
practicalities
,
I’d give them that.

When I’d got out last time it had been in a hurry and I’d had to
make my own arrangements. ‘We ain’t no fucking travel agents
,
’
Wibble had growled at me when I’d started to ask about where I should go. And to be honest, once I’d got my head around the fact I was still alive at all and started thinking straight, I realized of course that The Brethren were the last people in the world I wanted knowing
about
where I was intending to hole up.

This time it seemed was going to be different.

Bung
and the
striker
were here to collect me
, but
I had time to pack some things
.

‘Oh don’t worry too much, we won’t be that long,’ said Bung vaguely, when I asked how much to take. The plan was they would
d
r
ive
me
back over the border and across
to Belfast
airport. Bung and I were to
fly back
,
and he would sort me out with a hotel room once we got there, the striker got the
balls ache
of the ferry and then slogging it down from Stranraer to get the car back.

The striker wasn’t saying a word, but then I didn’t expect him to. Strikers very much lived a speak when spoken to sort of life. Training
,
Damage had called it. While a full patch was around, a striker would always defer to let them do the talking. The hierarchy and etiquette was ferociously strict. A striker had to give respect to a patch, not only of his own club, but of any other friendly club, since as the logic went, even as part of another club,
the
man had earned his patch, whereas the striker hadn’t. A striker couldn’t even call a club member ‘brother’; he hadn’t yet earned the right.

‘
So Bung’s your sponsor huh?
’ I asked.

The guy stayed dumb until a shrug from Bung let him know he could respond
,
but even then he just
nodded
warily
.

‘
You want to ask him what happened to the last guy
.’

‘
I don’t give a shit what happened to the last guy
,’ he said
.

OK
,
so he had to hold his end up. I got that.

Frankly, after the crap talking to a striker had gotten me into last time, he was on his own. What the hell. If he’d chosen to get involved with this mob, it was his look out, not mine.

‘So what am I supposed to
use
to pay for t
his trip of yours
?’
I asked
turning back to
Bung
.

‘You shouldn’t need much
cos
you’ll be with me
.’

‘And you’re picking up the tab are you?’

‘Not me mate, the club. Anyway, you can u
se what’s in there,’ he said,
pushing across
the envelop
e
he’d put on the table, ‘
I
t’s part of the
deal.’

I opened it.

It was a complete package, a new identity. A new life almost
.
if I wanted it, but one supplied by, and therefore completely in the hands of, the club; so probably not.

There w
as
a passport and a
driver’s
licen
c
e
, in the name of
Michael Adams
but each with my photo inside and a passable imitation of how I would write
the name
as a signature.

I was impressed. ‘A bit of work’s gone into these hasn’t it?’

‘Money, it gets shit done,’
he shrugged dismissively,
‘They’re real,
it just costs a bit to set up that’s all. There’s people who can organize getting it
arranged
for you if you need it.’ It seemed it wasn’t a big deal as far as he was concerned, just a service you bought when you needed it.

Apparently
,
I saw, I lived in Reading and worked at a solicitors
’ firm
in town since I had a company photo
ID
tag on a lanyard as well.

‘That’s real as well,’ he said as I held it up, ‘and you’re on their personnel records
too
. They’re Wibble and Charlie’s solicitors so that’s your ticket inside.’

That was what was worrying me.

‘As far as the screws are concerned there’s going to be nothing to see. You’re just going to be a bloke from their lawyers coming to see them about getting ready for the hearing. Nothing to it, no sweat.’

He seemed completely relaxed about it, but then he wasn’t going to be the one trying to pull this off
.

Then for access to dosh, there was also a debit card and PIN.

‘
Like I said, you’re going to be with me so it’s not like you’ll need much but w
e’ll keep an eye on it and make sure
the
account
is kept
topped up, so you’ll have enough to pay for what you need to get around
as and when
, f
ood, booze,
that sort of shit. But not too much access, you know what I mean? So keep it budget eh?’

Sure enough
,
when I checked later at a machine
,
there was a balance of a gra
nd to keep
me going.

But the underlying message was clear, the club weren’t trusting me to pick up my bags and go trotting
back
over
the water just
because they had called. Bung was
n’t just
here to
invite
me back,
he was here to
escort me as well. However much he didn’t say it
,
we both knew he was
a
tour guard, not
a
tour guide.

*

We stayed overnight in Belfast and o
n
Sunday
w
e
took the
early afternoon
flight
out of the City airport
down
to
Gatwick
.
Sitting shoved in together
in row fourteen
we ignored the stewardess doing her
fixed grin, arm swinging
synchronised
exit signing and useless lifejacket training
. W
e were j
ust another anonymous
pair of
travellers
in
a hundred seater turboprop
powered
steel
smarties tube with wings
about to hurl itself into the
air
, I though
t
she looked a bit like Eamur.

But of course Eamur wasn’t with us. No, s
he was going to stay behind.

As i
nsurance.

Case number 36542 of 201
1

REGINA

–v–

CHARLIE GRAHAM, ANTHONY JOHN GRAHAM,

NIGEL PARVIS,
S
TEPHEN TERRANCE ROBINSON,

PETER MARTIN SHERBOURNE

Court
t
ranscript

Monday 6
th
June 2011

Mr
S
Kirtley
QC,
Counsel for the P
rosecution

Ladies and gentleman of the jury
,
you have just heard an extract from notebooks kept contemporaneously by Mr Iain Parke; the contents of which the Crown will demonstrate
throughout this case
are clearly confirmed and corroborated by independent supporting evidence at crucial points.

Th
ese
document
s are
important to
understanding
the case as in many ways t
hey
provide a running commentary on the circumstances and even
ts leading up to the matters
be
ing
tried here today.

You will therefore hear and see further extracts as we proceed
with
this trial.
In reading
them, the Crown will
take you through the build up to the
crimes
that were committed and they therefore provide a narrative which will help to show you who did what
,
and when
.

But they are also cr
itical
in helping you to understand the why.

Through these notebooks, which in
truth
are more than just notebooks, they are a diary, a record of what Mr Parke saw and heard during those critical weeks last year
; through these diaries the Crown
believes
that you will come to understand what motivated the men
before you in the dock
to do what they did.

Monday
6th
June 2011