Heavy Duty People

by Iain Parke

  But in reality, it was inevitable, I knew. I had seen it ever since the outset. And so ironically had Billy, although he had always assumed that he would be on the inside rather than out in the cold. But with too much cash available to the top guys in the club from escalating into serious business, it was no wonder that the old solidarity had rotted out of the club. What we were about had been perverted. Loyalty was no longer a two-way street, but something that a ruthless inner clique could exploit for their own profit.

  Dazza had needed to clean house alright. But it hadn’t been for the good of the club. It had been for the good of his deal, it had been to ensure the coast was clear for his big scheme, whatever it was.

  I had reached the low opening of the mine entrance. Right then, I thought, now we’ll see.

  The hills round here were riddled with holes from lead mining that had gone back hundreds of years. There were shafts hundreds of feet deep which had generally been capped off with concrete for safety to stop sheep and people falling in. Then there were the old drift mines, levels going straight into the hillsides. The more public ones were generally fenced off or had metal grilles across them to keep wandering Joe Public out. But there were still plenty of unblocked openings to underground tunnels if you knew where to look. And we knew that one of these was in the woods.

  Billy and I had joked with Dazza that this was one of the reasons that The Brethren had been interested in our territory. Holes could be useful.

  We were right, but for the wrong reasons.

  Torch on, I splashed into the entrance. These mines were always dug running slightly upwards into the hillside so that water would naturally drain out and even today a continual stream of cold water flowed out of the dark entrance and cut its way down the hillside to join the river below.

  The crates were there as I had expected, piled up about forty or fifty feet in from the entrance. They were at the first junction where the tunnel divided into two at right angles where the old timers had started to follow two separate veins through the surrounding bedrock limestone and had left a little raised platform at the junction that was therefore dryer than the floor.

  I gave a sigh of relief.

  I knew there had been a chance that Dazza would have had them moved, but I hadn’t thought it had been a big one. After all, if it was Billy talking that Dazza was concerned about, then as far as Dazza was aware, Billy didn’t know where they were and getting guys together to move them somewhere else would have seemed more risky than leaving them where they were.

  They were safe enough, no one ever came here. There were nutty guys who liked exploring these old holes but this was on private property and there’s no way that the club would have ever given anyone permission to explore the woods, Dazza or no Dazza.

  As I suspected, the crates had all already been opened once to check the contents, so no one would notice my jemmy marks if they came back to look at them.

  I fitted my wrecking bar under the lid of the first one and prised it up.

  ‘Oh shit!’ I said out loud. And then I prised the lid off another, and then another, not quite believing at first what I was seeing.

  By the time I’d finished, it was quite a haul.

  The first and second crate I had opened were AK47s. But there was more.

  A crate of longer barrelled rifles with telescopic sights.

  A couple of boxes of handguns with matching silencers.

  Ammunition.

  Military style walkie talkies.

  What I assumed was a supply of plastic explosives.

  But the pièce de résistance had to be the two RPG7s with a supply of rockets.

  So that’s what the dosh to Sergei’s accounts had bought.

  As I stood and stared around me at what I’d uncovered I gave a low whistle, ‘What’s he planning? To start his own fucking war?’

  I toyed with the idea of helping myself to a gun but decided it was better to leave it be.

  But then, I asked myself, as I started to carefully replace all the lids so that no one could tell I’d been there, if he’s dealing with The Brethren’s main enemies The Rebels, then who the hell’s it going to be against?

  Chapter 9 – THE TURN

  Billy wasn’t at Prayers on Monday. I assumed he was following Dazza’s instructions and just laying low.

  Early on Wednesday afternoon Dazza picked me up from home in a black BMW.

  ‘Get in, we’re going for a drive.’

  ‘New car?’

  ‘Hired for the day.’

  He clearly wasn’t in a chatty mood.

  We only went across town, climbing up the back road. Uneasily I realised we were heading towards Billy’s place, a feeling confirmed when Dazza turned off into the estate of detached executive homes high on a hill overlooking the town where Billy had bought himself a four bedroomed house with the cash from his dealing. We parked up a little way before we got to the house but from where we could see the front door and Dazza killed the engine. Stay there he said, hopping out of the driver’s door and into the back seat.

  A moment later Butcher appeared from out of a footpath on the other side of the road and came strolling along the pavement to slide in behind the wheel beside me.

  ‘OK?’ asked Dazza.

  ‘OK,’ said Butcher, without looking round.

  ‘Now what?’ I asked, wondering why Butcher hadn’t taken off the pair of thin black leather riding gloves he was wearing.

  ‘Now we wait,’ said Dazza

  ‘Are we watching Billy?’

  ‘What the fuck does it look like we’re doing? Now shut up will you?’

  ‘That’s him,’ said Butcher about an hour later reaching for the car keys, as a hundred yards or so down the road Billy came out of his house and walked across the road to where his car was parked.

  We edged out into the road behind his car as he headed off round the corner and slipped out into the light traffic on the main road, taking up station a couple of cars behind him as he headed down the hill into town. Dazza and Butcher obviously wanted to keep close enough to see which way he was going but far enough back not to be spotted which was why I realised that he, or more likely someone on Dazza’s behalf, had hired, a car that Billy wouldn’t know.

  ‘What are we looking for?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s heading towards the cop shop isn’t he?’

  ‘Oh come, on he’s just heading into town. He could be going anywhere.’ I said, although yes, he could be, I thought as he turned right at the junction at the bottom of the hill onto the main shopping street; or out to Enderdale.

  We turned right as well, still keeping our distance, but up ahead he was still just in sight, caught as the traffic bunched up again at the traffic lights. The cop shop was dead ahead across the lights, while left was out towards Enderdale and the clubhouse.

  From where I was sitting in the stationary car I couldn’t see whether he had any indicators going, although knowing Billy and how he drove a lack of them could mean anything or nothing. The lights changed to amber and then flicked to green. The car at the front of the queue pulled away straight ahead. Billy was second in line. I held my breath. Billy’s car moved forwards and then to my relief he pulled left and disappeared round the corner.

  Most of the traffic headed straight over with only a couple following Billy. Butcher ran the lights just as they switched to red. The road wound round a couple of snaking bends as it worked its way slightly uphill so at first we couldn’t see Billy ahead of us but Butcher gunned the car through the twists to catch up with the car ahead and as we eased round the last bend and onto the long first straight up out of the valley we could see Billy’s car about quarter of a mile ahead.

  ‘OK, next one,’ said Dazza cryptically to Butcher who just nodded and then about a mile further on Butcher braked suddenly and pulled into a lay-by. Dazza was out of the car before we stopped and Butcher pulled straight back out onto the road without a word, accelerating hard to make up the seconds he had lost o
n Billy’s car which was out of sight around the next bend. Glancing back I saw Dazza pulling open the door of a car parked facing back into town and sliding inside before we disappeared around the corner. It was just Butcher and me on Billy’s trail now as his car came back into sight up ahead in the distance.

  We hung back maintaining station for a few minutes with two cars between us and Billy. Then, as he drove, Butcher reached into his jacket pocket and I heard the familiar tune of a mobile phone being turned on and then a couple of beeps as Butcher picked a number that he’d preset.

  ‘Here take this,’ he said handing me the phone.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘What’s the reception like?’ he asked.

  ‘OK at the moment,’ I told him, it could be quite patchy out this way but at the moment I had five bars showing.

  ‘Dial when I say so,’ said Butcher, watching as Billy’s car disappeared round a tight bend ahead and headed out into the open countryside along a lengthy straight.

  Butcher pulled over again, this time into a field entrance as Billy’s car pulled away into the distance. There were no other cars parked around that I could see so I guessed Butcher wasn’t going to play the same car changing trick as Dazza had pulled.

  ‘Aren’t you going to follow him?’

  ‘No need. I know exactly where he’s going. Dial the number.’

  I pressed the call key.

  From about a mile in front of us I suddenly saw a ball of orange black flame billowing into the sky, followed a second or so later by a boom that seemed to echo across the rolling open fields from where a pillar of black smoke started to form.

  ‘Beautiful,’ said Butcher reaching over to pick the phone out of my hand. You know the really cool thing is he continued conversationally, ‘you don’t even need to pay for the call!’

  I couldn’t say anything.

  ‘Told you I knew where he was going,’ said Butcher, smiling at me as he pulled the car round in the entrance to a field, and headed back towards town.

  ‘Damn those fucking Rebels.’ He shook his head.

  ‘Wha…?’ I started to ask distractedly.

  ‘The Rebels. That’s the sort of thing that happens when you start treading on their turf.’

  We drove quietly back towards town, turning off the main road on the outskirts just as the blue flashing lights of the cops, ambulance and Trumpton sped past us, all heading the other way. Butcher spent an hour or so working our way cross-country through back lanes to across the other side of the dual carriageway and then he headed east towards the city along roads where there was no chance of cameras.

  He dropped me off in the outskirts and I caught the Metro to the central station and then the train back to town.

  Butcher kept the phone. He said he’d get rid of it.

  But of course it would have had my fingerprints on it.10

  *

  The cops had kept Tiny’s body for almost a month now. They’d done two post mortems like they couldn’t work out what had killed him, and then finally they’d released it to his wife Sally.

  As a club we’d taken over the funeral arrangements. It would be a full dress affair with Brethren riding in from all over the country, and some reps coming from overseas chapters. It was a solidarity thing, as well as a chance to catch up with old contacts, have a bit of time for face to faces where guys wanted them. I wondered whether Dazza had taken the opportunity to ask Sergei or Luis over.

  The funeral was on the Saturday so we had a few guys arrive the Thursday, but most made it up during the day on Friday, first stop being the clubhouse to check in, say hi, and grab details of plans for the day, or to hang around to see who else was turning up or just kill some time.

  By Friday evening the clubhouse was full, fuller than I’d ever seen it, with guys squeezed in everywhere, in the bar, in the poolroom, sat on the stairs sharing joints, upstairs in the meeting room. The scrum around the bar was half a dozen deep and the strikers behind it had their work cut out keeping the booze flowing until the party started to break up in the early hours but it was a strange kind of party, solemn like, a quieter mood than usual. This was a serious run, a paying of respects, not a party event, so most guys had turned up riding solo, even those that would normally double pack, so there weren’t many chicks around which I guess made a bit of a difference. By the time I left at two or so some guys were crashed in the bunk rooms at the clubhouse, others had arranged to crash with members around the region. It turned out that a few guys spent the night on mattresses on the floor in the back of the Charter’s crew bus. The Freemen had booked out a country club hotel for themselves of course which must have given the place a shock when their booking had rolled up mid-afternoon on Friday in a twin column of rumbling menace Harleys.

  I opened my eyes at eight or so on the Saturday morning and then closed them again.

  Outside I could hear the rain pelting against the windows and see the leaden dark sky that told me it was set in for the whole day. It was going to be a miserable fucking day, just pissing it down continuously, for a miserable fucking event.

  ‘Christ!’ I said eventually, with a reluctant resolve pushing away the covers before swinging my legs out onto the floor and padding my way across the landing to the bathroom for a good long piss. I stood in the shower, swaying and turning so the hot jets of water sprayed across my skin, defrosting me and washing away the cold of sleep.

  I rested my forehead against the tiles and closed my eyes as the hot water cascaded down my back, before after an age, with one hand I finally popped the top off the hanging bottle of shower gel, squeezed a dollop onto my hand and began to wash.

  I wasn’t looking forward to today. I really wasn’t.

  Showered, dressed and a quick cup of strong black coffee with two sugars later I started to feel a bit more able to face the world, although my mood hadn’t improved much.

  Sharon repeated her offer to come with me to pay her respects but again I turned her down. It wasn’t that I didn’t want her there, or even that I didn’t appreciate her concern or desire to be there. I knew she had liked Tiny as well. It was just that it wouldn’t be right. This was going to be a club funeral, a serious club full dress event, we were burying one of our brothers, and so it was really club business, so from that sense she and any of the other old ladies just didn’t belong there.

  I pulled on my gear at about nine or so and stepped out of the house and into the grey gloom of the insistent, persistent rain. I had pulled on my scuffed black waterproof trousers but was resigned to the fact that I was going to be soaked through all day. I’d get Sharon to drop me some dry stuff off at the clubhouse later I decided as I slipped the key in the bike and felt the rain soak into my scarf.

  We were meeting out of town to form the cortège. As road captain I’d been heavily involved in the organisation. With Dazza’s blessing I’d even set foot inside the cop shop to let the plod know the plans as we didn’t want any hassle from them, not that we’d have got it, they would have known better than to try and dick around the whole of The Brethren in the mood we were going to be in at a funeral of someone like Tiny; but also so that they could get organised to direct traffic and arrange escorts and stuff. With all the bikes that we were expecting and the speed that we would be travelling at behind the hearse the cortège would take quite a while to pass through any given point so the plod would need to arrange to hold up traffic at junctions for us and wave the stream of bikes through traffic lights so as not to interfere with the convoy. It just made sense, and in a weird way it was something the cops understood. I guess it’s that sense of loyalty to your own, the thing that comes from a sense of being something set apart from the ordinary civilians. It’s one thing that we on our side and the plod on theirs sort of have in common.

  We’d told them to expect a few hundred bikes so we’d agreed a rendezvous point where we could form up out of town. When I got there, it was a surreal sight. The plod had coned a lane about a hundred yards long off one
of the wider stretches of road and bikes were already arriving to form up, with The Brethren strikers standing silently towards the front of the lane, reserving without a word space for the club’s turnout whilst further back the other clubs sorted themselves out in order of relative status. To keep traffic flowing there were a pair of jam sarni striped boxers on their stands at either end of the coned off lane, blue lights flashing and their riders in fluorescent yellow rain gear marshalling arriving bikers into the coned off lane while waving on citizens in cars who were slowing down to a crawl as they rubbernecked at the sight as they came past.

  I wheeled across the road in a U turn and slid my bike into station at the front of the line. As road captain I, and Dazza as P, beside me, would normally be lead bikes, but today we had Polly as UK P with us as well, so Dazza and he would take the honours up front and this once I’d set us off and then slip in behind them to follow in second place. Leaving the bike slumped on its side stand I joined some of the other early arrivals huddled under the trees at the side of the road for a shared smoke and to watch the show as over the next half hour or so the column filled up and the rain came down.

  ‘Are our friends coming to show their respects?’ I asked Dazza quietly.

  ‘Nah,’ he said, ‘thought about it but decided there’s no need.’

  I nodded. The cops would be watching us. No sense in giving them anything to see unnecessarily.

  ‘Aye, aye, something’s up,’ said Dazza glancing towards where one of the coppers had leant into the fairing of his bike, and appeared to be in conversation although from where we were all we could hear was the crackle of his radio but nothing intelligible.

  ‘Roger that,’ we heard him say and then he turned to walk over to where we were standing.

  ‘OK guys,’ he said, ‘I’ve just had word. The hearse and family cars are ready to go so it’s all on if you’re ready?’