by Iain Parke
‘Yeah, I think so,’ said Dazza dropping his fag on the ground.
‘Right then. We’ll give you the escort into town as arranged. Once we’re rolling I’ll radio ahead so the hearse can pull out to let you form up behind when we get to the undertakers and then we can all roll on to the cemetery. OK by you?’
‘Fine by us,’ said Polly, pulling on his lid and turning to lead us back to our bikes, ‘Gentlemen, start your engines.’
We felt rather than saw the wave of attention as the guys from further down the line saw us move but to make it official I raised my arm in the air and rapidly waved my hand twice round in a circle to indicate ‘mount up’ even as I saw cigarettes being dropped, conversations breaking up and lids being pulled on. As I started my own bike, without turning round I could hear a ripple of noise as starter motors whirred and engines burst into life with a roar, each adding to the suddenly growing cacophony of sound from the pack behind me as riders flicked off chokes and blipped their throttles to warm their bikes up.
I pulled my goggles down over my eyes against the rain and wiped across the front of them with a gloved finger. Better, but the oncoming headlights of the cars still starred crazily together with the flashing blue lights of the cop bikes and their bright brake lights.
I could see the lead copper, the one who’d come over to speak to us, he was sat on his bike, half turned, waiting in his seat for us to be off. Well fuck it, I thought. Let him wait till we are good and ready. This was our show, not his.
And Dazza and Polly were waiting beside me as well, Dazza looking straight ahead, Polly glancing down at his dials for some reason. They were both just waiting, waiting for me and my signal. Because I was road captain, this was down to me. Taking the weight on my left leg and bracing my bike upright I stood up in my seat and looked round over my shoulder, back down the line of bikes. It looked as though everyone was up and started, a solid line of lids stretching back as far as I could see, and right at the back the flickering lights of the police beemers where they had moved out into the road to hold the traffic and let us out. Well sod them, they could wait too, I thought.
I raised my arm and felt hundreds of pairs of eyes on it. I held it there for a moment and then waved it forward and down, hearing the increase in noise as reflexively, everyone edged up their revs in anticipation of the off.
‘OK, let’s go.’ I nodded to Dazza and he and Polly nodded back and slipping their clutches, they eased off and out into the road without looking behind or glancing at the coppers. We’d go at our own speed. They could form up on us. I slipped in next to Butcher as sergeant at arms behind them and behind us first the club and then the others slowly started to roll in disciplined pairs.
There had been words in a sort of chapel of rest at the entrance to the graveyard. The crowd was too big, so only The Brethren and family made it inside. It wasn’t too much. Just some words about Tiny and what a great bloke he was and then we, his brothers, carried him to the graveside.
We had shovelled the earth in over Tiny and the guys were starting to break up into bunches for the ride back. Polly, Dazza and I stood by the graveside waiting. As the national and local charter Ps and as the road captain we were still in charge, this was still our event. So we stood there as the rain continued to softly fall, insinuating its way into every sodden crevice and chink in our armour, while engines started outside the gates and the crowd thinned.
Dazza and I lit up, me cupping my lighter against the wet. Polly didn’t smoke.
‘Well now, what the fuck’s going on here?’ Polly asked conversationally as we reappeared in a puff of smoke, ‘Did I need to pack my tin fucking helmet or what? There’s way too much action going on round here for my liking, given what’s going down. I thought you were going to keep things nice and peaceful like, Dazza, up here amongst the sheep?’
‘Yeah, well I was. Only trouble is we’ve got a black one.’
‘Sheep?’
Dazza nodded.
‘Who?’
‘It’s Butcher.’
‘Butcher? Why? What for?’
Dazza sucked on his fag and looked around to ensure that there was no one else close enough to overhear.
‘Personal beefs, as far as I can make out.’
‘Tiny?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So what happened?’
Dazza shrugged. ‘I left him in charge and he just seems to have lost the plot and went too far while we were away,’ he said indicating me with a dip of his head, ‘I asked him to clear up and it looks like he’s just used it as an excuse to settle his own accounts as well.’
Yeah right, I thought to myself as I stood there in silence listening to him as the rain drenched us, that’s complete bollocks. What about Billy? What were the chances of Billy really being just one of Butcher’s personal beefs that you really hadn’t known about when you got out of the car. And what about ‘before’ I wondered, what about Gyppo? What really happened that night?
‘Anyone else involved?’ Polly asked.
‘No.’
‘What you going to do?’
‘The necessary.’
‘You’ll take care of it?’
‘I’ll take care of it.’
‘Going to tell people?’
‘What’s there to tell?’
Polly nodded. ‘I suppose you’re right. They’ll get the message anyway though will they?’
‘Sure they will.’
Wibble was coming over and Dazza and Polly left off as he reached us. There was a muffled conversation and Dazza left us with a ‘Be back in a mo’ to go with him to sort something out, although to be truthful, with everyone having now made it back to their vehicles there really wasn’t much to do other than make our way back to the clubhouse ourselves.
But Polly still remained standing beside me, we were the only two left in the graveyard now. I had the impression that it wasn’t just by chance.
‘It was a bad business that car bomb,’ he said quietly and matter of factly, as if carrying on a conversation which in reality we had never started, ‘That mate of yours, Billy. Bad for business.’
‘Everyone’s getting on just nicely now,’ he continued, ‘so why would anyone want to stir up shit like that? Why start a war when no one needs it? We need to get rid of whoever did that, whoever it was.’
What did Polly mean I wondered? What did he know, or simply suspect?
‘Well taking out a Rebel’s not going to help keep the peace is it?’ I proffered cautiously.
He shrugged, ‘True, but like I said, whoever it was, we don’t want the heat on us, particularly not just at the moment, if you know what I mean.’
I got his drift of course.
‘If he who rules a state cannot recognise evils until they are upon him…’ Polly started.
‘…then he is not a truly wise man,’ I finished for him.
Polly looked across at me appraisingly, ‘Oh, so you know it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Have you read it?’ he asked, and I nodded.
‘Is it good?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, shutting my face down to cover my utter astonishment at the question, ‘haven’t you?’
‘Nah,’ he said dismissively, looking away, ‘it’s just something I picked up somewhere that rang true. Heard it’s good though.’
He hadn’t read the fucking P! I couldn’t believe it. You twat, going round quoting crap that you don’t really understand, as he turned back to face me.
‘Yeah. He had some smart stuff to say.’
‘Like what?’
‘Oh loads of things,’ I said looking him straight in the eye, ‘like the only proper study is war.
Polly nodded, ‘Hey I like that, what was it, the only proper study is war? That’s good. That makes sense to me. Go on then, I’m listening, what else does he have to say then?’
‘Well,’ I said thinking furiously, ‘how about the unarmed man is never safe from armed servants. How do you like that?’
He just looked at me for that one, his face a mask.
‘Or you can be hated just as much for good deeds as bad ones.’
‘Well now they’re all true enough,’ he said slowly, gazing back squarely at me, before his eyes slid across to look towards where Dazza was standing at the gates talking to Butcher. ‘You know, I think I might have to get round to reading it one day after all.’
Bad for business I thought, as he turned to go, and I flicked the butt of my fag off into a muddy puddle. Was business really all it was about now? We used to be about something different.
Looking at Polly and listening to him it was true enough I decided, a good man soon comes to ruin amongst the bad. So if you want to remain in charge, you have to learn how not to be good. But that was not one to tell Polly.
It was just life.
Men see what you appear to be, very few see you for what you really are. Now I saw what Polly was.
Dazza caught me, grabbing me by my elbow just as I was getting ready to leave and leaning forward to speak quietly into my ear so he couldn’t be overheard.
‘Look Damage, normally I wouldn’t involve you in this but Sprog’s lunched his bike, Bagpuss ain’t around, I used Wibble last time and I need to ring the changes a bit but there ain’t too many guys I can trust to do this shit and get it right.’
‘Sure, what d’ya need?’ I asked as I pulled on my cold sodden gloves.
‘Post some stuff for me will ya? Wibble’ll have the parcels tomorrow in his motor and can meet up with you to hand over the stuff. I want you to take it out and do it somewhere your way. It’s the usual deal.’
I nodded and swung my leg over the bike.
I got the gear off Wibble later the next day in a lay-by to make sure we weren’t being watched and stuffed them into a bag slung across the back seat of the car I’d borrowed, before heading out across country to some out of the way sub-post offices. There were three parcels, two to Glasgow addresses and one in South Wales. They were brick sized and I sent them first class, but not recorded, no one in their right mind would want to sign for something like that the other end. The posties asked if the contents were worth more than thirty-nine pounds as I handed them over to be weighed and I shook my head, if only they knew. Dazza was definitely in business.
They’ll give you a proof of postage Dazza had said. Bring it back to me, he had instructed.
I suppose it was his way of checking that I’d actually sent something. He could then let his contacts know to expect it so that they would have someone at the address who could take a parcel when it arrived. After all, they really wouldn’t want to have to go down to the sorting office to ID themselves and pick it up would they?
It also meant he could check it had gone to the right place since they wrote the post code and house number on it, and it meant he could check that I was actually mixing it up, using different post offices and not getting lazy and just banging them all through the same one.
He was smart was Dazza.
Of course he wouldn’t know that I’d actually sent what he’d given me, but again once his guys the other end took delivery I guess he’d hear soon enough if I’d interfered with the parcel or tried to pull a fast one.
The other thing I guess he couldn’t know was whether I had copied down the addresses on the parcels although since they could always have been a test I in turn could not know for sure that they were the real deal. They could be dummies that would wing anything that came in back down to him so he would soon see if I tried anything on with them, or he could be getting word back about what had arrived. That was part of the trouble that we were now getting into. How could anyone trust anything that anyone else ever did? The stakes were getting too high and the possibility of and consequences of any mistake or betrayal were so serious that you had to think through every step very carefully.
But then you also couldn’t be seen to be thinking through things too carefully. Because that in itself might arouse suspicions. What are you thinking? Why are you thinking it? What are you planning? Why are you being so careful?
In place of the old absolute bonds of trust, brother amongst brother, something new was growing. Something that I didn’t like and didn’t want to be part of.
A sort of inevitable institutionalised paranoia.
In a situation where someone like Dazza would want to err on the side of caution no one could ever be completely safe. In fact the higher up the tree you got, the more you knew, the more risk you represented, the more exposed you probably were.
No, you would have to be pretty fucking stupid to punt anything off to them to suggest a bit of private enterprise. Still, you never knew when any bit of knowledge might come in handy did you?
*
Sharon noticed when I picked up the slim book from the bedside.
‘Hey you aren’t reading that again? Don’t you ever get bored with it? You must know it off by heart by now!’ she joked.
‘Yeah, just about,’ I grunted, reaching for the pair of reading glasses I had taken to leaving on the cabinet and settling them down on the end of my nose as I started to leaf through the well thumbed pages to find the short section I was after, no more than a paragraph long early in the book, my eyesight was starting to give me problems with reading the small print by the dim light of the bedside lamp. ‘There’s just something in here I want to find,’ I said, flicking through the pages. ‘It’s something that’s been bugging me and I just want to look it up.’
‘Bugging you?’ she said sharply, catching the tone of my voice, swivelling round in bed to look at me with concern, the duvet slipping down to expose her shoulders as she reached out her arm to lay her hand on my shoulder. ‘Hey now, what’s up? What’s the matter?’
My hands fell into my lap taking the opened book with them as I rolled my eyes up towards the ceiling and stared vacantly at a cobweb that was waving gently in the updraft of warm air from the reading light.
What’s the matter? I thought. What’s the matter?
What a fucking question.
What a whole set of fucking questions.
Where do you start?
What do they want?
What the fuck am I involved with?
Who the hell could I talk to about it?
It was club business.
I believed in brothers loving each other but when did it cross the line? When did your love and loyalty to your brother mean that you are just being exploited by him?
‘I’ve never seen you like this love,’ I heard her say as if from a distant planet and my mind wheeled round in a vicious circle of conflicting emotions. Where did my loyalties lie? Who really were my club and my brothers? What did I owe them and what did I owe myself? Where was the freedom that being part of a freebooting club had always meant to me?
She just waited silently, a look of concern on her face. I lifted my left arm to give her a space and reached across with my right to take her hand from where it rested on my shoulder and pull her gently across towards me. Without a word she moved over to nestle up against me, her arm stretched across my chest, her head resting on my shoulder as she waited for an answer if one was going to come. She knew that it was up to me what I wanted to say. That there was nothing she could say which would make me talk. She could just wait and hope and see what I felt I could tell her, when I felt I could say it.
‘It’s Dazza,’ I said at last. It felt as though the words were being wrenched out of me with pliers.
‘Of course it is,’ she said gently, ‘I knew that. But what about him?’
‘He’s using the guys.’
‘Using them? How?’
‘He’s using their loyalty to the club and to each other to exploit them.’
‘But he’s not used you to do anything you don’t want to do has he?’
‘No.’
‘Then what’s your problem?’ she challenged, ‘It’s up to all the guys to decide for themselves what they will or won’t do isn’t it? You all ma
ke your own choices and live by them don’t you? That’s what you always do.’
She was right.
‘I don’t understand. You’re an outlaw biker. You’ve always been about being free and not taking any shit from anyone. So what’s all this crap with Dazza?’
The crap wasn’t with Dazza, that’s what she didn’t get yet. The trouble was Dazza. Dazza and what he was capable of. What he was capable of and what it meant for us.
And by us I didn’t mean the club. I meant Sharon, and me.
I meant Gyppo, admitting to myself for the first time what had really been festering away, growing like a tumour in the dark of my mind.
Like Gyppo, the whacked out, paranoid, raving speed freak that I had last seen losing it that night where Dazza, his supplier, could see it.
Deep down I had to admit to myself, I had never completely believed Gyppo’s death was an accident.
But now it was all happening again. Like last time, the copper’s voice came back to me.
‘Listen, I knew Gyppo sure did downers but did he ever really do smack?’
‘Not while I was with him. Why’d you ask? Why bring that up now?’
But you weren’t at the end were you, I thought? But for once in my life I did think before I opened my mouth, and having thought, I bit my tongue and kept it shut.
‘Nothing. Just thinking about Tiny that’s all.’
Even now, four or five years later, the wounds were too fresh and too painful for hurtful words.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said as I turned out the light and we lapsed into silence.
*
I was later than usual for prayers on Monday. Fat Mick was on duty indoors when I got there, the others had obviously already all gone up. ‘Hey, have you heard the news?’ he asked as he buzzed me in through the steel door.
‘No? What news?’
‘It’s Butcher.’
‘What about him?’
‘He’s been topped.’
‘Topped? Christ, how? When?’
‘Shot sounds like. Somebody took him out round the back of his shop. Execution style it sounds like.’11
‘Bloody hell, do we know who?’