Heavy Duty Trouble (The Brethren Trilogy) (7 page)

‘
Well I’m s
aying it now.
I’m
tell
ing
you, y
ou’re
leaving.’

‘
Why? Where
are we
goi
ng
then
?
’
I asked.

‘A s
afe house
.
’

‘
Oh shit, not another one
,
’
I said in an exasperated tone that Bung evidently found amusing.

‘
W
hy, w
hat’s wro
ng with a safe ho
us
e
?
’ he
asked looking round at me to see what the problem was.

‘
After
what happened last time
?
’
I demanded.

It took a second
or so
for
Bung
to work out what I meant, but then when he did, he let out a snort of laughter.

Well
I’m so glad you’re finding this entertaining
,
I thought to myself. It’s probably me,
I know,
but
I had to say that I was having a bit of difficulty in seeing the funny side of being tied to a chair and then sprayed with brains and blood as a copper had hi
s
head blown off in front of me. Something that Bung seemed to be finding a
tremendous joke
.

‘So why are we moving?’ I persisted.

‘Because we have to, because it’s not safe
,
’ said Bung.

‘
You’re b
etter off with us
,
’
Scroat added.

‘
Why what happens if I don’t
…’
I began
,
but then Scroat cut across me.

‘
Chances are
,
you’re dead.
’

‘
Why? Who’s going to hit
me? You two?
’

‘
Christ
,
doesn’t he ever shut up?’ Scroat demanded, looking daggers first at Bung who just gave him his best Buddha blank stare, then skewe
ring me with a cold eyed glare
in the mirror
.

‘
No
,
not us, much as I’d like to. Can’t you get
it into your thi
ck skull that we’re here to do a j
ob? We’re here to protect your fucking whiney arse so shut the fuck up and do what you’re told.
’

‘
Protect
me
?
Protect
me
from who
m
?
’

‘
Whoever the
Yank
s send after us
you dipstick
. And you
…’

Then as Scroat was temporarily distracted by the need to barge his way through a stream of citizen commuters and across a roundabout
,
Bung’s massive head swung round and he calmly told me, ‘
Scroat’s right.
Because with what’s coming down, if you wanna stay safe, then you’re better off staying with us
and out of sight
.’

Well that seemed to settle it. Safe
house
it was
going to be
then.

*

It wasn’t too bad a journey.

The bridge was the sod, it always was, but once
across
the river,
Scroat
quickly
hustled the car
through the twists and turns as the road snaked its way through leafy,
up market
residential areas, before
suddenly
leaving the town behind
as we crossed the county boundary.
A
few minutes later
we
crest
ed
a rise to see the rolling Oxfordshire countryside laid out below
us
, with away in the middle distance, the huge squat
slumped cooling towers of Didc
ot power station with the
permanently
rising plumes of white steam si
t
ting
slap bang in the
centre
of the view.

In the sunshine it was a pleasant run through the country villages and
out
across to the M40 for a short hop up to the turn
off at junction 9 and
on to
the A41
.

Getting in to see Wibble was much as I had expected. I knew the drill from long experience
in my other
,
now long distant life
,
from when I’d been to see other prisoners, Damage amongst them, but under my own name as a journalist on the paper
. T
he security checks, the searches, the signing i
n
. The only thing that was differ
ent this time was the knowledge that I was doing it using a false ID, one that had been supplied by the club, and that as far as I knew, the police still had me down as let
’
s just say someone they would like to have helping them with their enquiries into the suspected murder of Inspector
Bob
Cameron
just
six
months ago or so.

But obviously the club’s guys, w
h
oever they were, h
ad do
ne a good enough job. Bung had said the main stuff was all real and I had no reason to doubt it, certainly they all looked
kosher
enough to me
.

St
ill
,
I was relieved to find they looked
genuine
enough to the prison officers as well as they
processed
me
and passed me
through
, until
eventually
I was shown
into a
small
interview room
to wait
.

A couple of minutes later there was a rattling of the door lock on the other side of the room and with a nod of
a
guard’s head, Wibble was shown in.

As
my cover
story was that I
had come
from Wibble’s solicitors, I had a convincing set of legal papers laid out in front of me on the table. Again Bung had sourced these for me,
having them
deliver
ed
to the hotel the previous day.
The good thing about this pretence was that as a
prisoner
on remand, any of
his
conversations
with his legal representatives were
regarded
as
privileged
and so our conversations would be held in private.

God bless due process.

Other than his standard issue prison clothes of sweatshirt and jeans rather than riding gear
,
and the lack of his colours, Wibble looked much the same as the last time I had seen him, the same rangy frame, the same wolfish grin
,
and the same piercing direct gaze.

‘
Hi
,’
he said pulling out a chair to sit down opposite me at the Formica table,
‘G
ood to see ya again.
’

Is it
,
I wondered
?
‘Well it
wasn’t really my choice.
’

‘
Oh well, suppose it wasn’t
,
’ he said cheerfully, ’as it happens,
this place wasn’t really my idea either
. B
ut
here we are
though
all the same.
’

‘So how did you find me then?’ I asked.

‘Well that wasn’t so difficult. Were you surprised? I wouldn’t have thought you were that dumb to think
you’d actually got away with it.

‘Did you really think I’d just let you wander off and disappear with what you’ve got up there,’ he said
,
leaning over and miming a pistol with his fingers he prodded me twice at the temple.

Then smiling again, he leant back in his chair.

‘You can’t hide in the countryside you know
,’ he opined,
‘t
hat’s the mistake you made. You stand out in the countryside. Now it’s different in the
s
moke. You can hide in the cities. In town, you blend into the background
; and
speaking of smokes
, d
id ya
b
ring any fags
with you
?
’

Same old Wibble
I thought
, always the practicalities.

‘
So, what’s it like in here
?’
I asked
, passing over the packs that Bung had supplied me with.

He leaned back in his chair
.
‘
Here? Well i
t’s not too bad
I s’pose
.
I’ve s
een worse
.
’

I was a bit surprised at that. Bullingdon had a reputation for overcrowding. But then I
guess
that given Wibble’s reputation and the number of other club guys in the place at the moment he wasn’t going to be suffering to
o
much hassle from any of the other inmates. In f
a
ct in a place where the deput
y
governor had
once
been arrested for possession of not only coke but kiddie porn
,
you’d think that someone like Wibble could probably arrange to have as comfortable
a
time of it as he wanted
to
,
within reason.

‘How d’you get on with the other gangs in here. Any trouble?’

‘Nah. They all know who we are and not to fuck with us.
Most of the gangs you read about in the papers these days are just street gangs, local kids, no class. We’re different, we’re not about th
e street, we’re about the road.’

‘
So w
hat about Charlie?
’
I asked
.

‘
What about him? He’ll hate it where he is.
’

‘
Oh, why?
’

‘
Well it’s Grendon isn’t it?
’ he smiled,
‘
It
’s a n
ut house for nonces
isn’t it?
’

*

‘You know it’s interesting that when you ran, it was Ireland you chose to hide out in. Was that deliberate? Because of us I mean?’

I understood what he was getting at.

‘Yes, of course. I didn’t think I wanted to try hiding out anywhere that The Brethren had a charter
,
which rules out just about all the English speaking world bar Ireland.’

‘Ironic isn’t it?’

‘Is it?’
I asked cautiously,
unsure
what he meant.

‘Yeah
,
well the way the Micks had organized themselves was a bit of an eye-opener when we started to think about where we’d go with our merger. Let’s just say it was an interesting example when we were working out what to do.’

Given how things had developed, I could see how Wibble and Stu, and then Charlie as well
,
could have looked at Ireland and wondered about how the precedent that had been established there might play out over
on
this side of the water.

The reason I had picked
it
as my bolt hole was purely and simply because it was a Brethren free zone. And the reason for that was that
a number of years ago now,
the key local clubs had decided to keep it that way, banding together into a confederation under which they all agreed not to patch over to any of the senior worldwide franchises
. S
o
,
since the way into a territory was through absorbing a local club, the upshot was that none of the major internationals had ever got a sustained foothold, certainly
s
outh of the border.