Having made the call, he knew he could expect the police within the hour. Bricko removed the battery and sim card from the phone and threw them deep into the undergrowth; not that there was anything on the card that could lead the police to him. Then, quite deliberately he placed the phone under the wheel of the bike and climbed back on. The engine roared into life; there was no need for quiet now. He rode over the mobile phone and into the camp.
***
UK biker gangs had proliferated in the craziness of the 1960s when their reputation for violence and disorder preceded them. Each successive summer their standing had been enhanced as they were blamed for terrorising seaside towns and quiet villages across the country. But like most worries and concerns the fear of biker gangs was largely unnecessary, fuelled as it was by anecdote more than by fact. The truth was that the bulk of the violence associated with bikers was internecine, one gang targeting another. Only rarely did this tribal conflict spill over and trouble the general population.
By the end of the millennium the majority of Hell’s Angels weren’t dissimilar to the aging hippies who were conceived at around the same time. The bikers tended to be jaded, middle aged men and women who just refused to move on and who insisted on clinging to old habits and outmoded ideals. By 2010 most gangs or chapters of the British Hell’s Angels consisted of part time members with homes, jobs and families who rode together only at weekends. After years of roaming the UK in gangs most bikers had succumbed to the luxuries of Middle England and were more likely to be found raising money for disadvantaged children, or some other charity, than raising hell. Some disillusioned Angels broke away into smaller, more extreme factions, continued to live the biker ideals and considered their ex comrades to be sell outs. That was a view held by Jonty Adams.
Jonty, christened Jonathan Derek Latimer, was raised in a bungalow in a leafy suburb of Oxford and had been a pillar of middle class young adult society until his final year at university. Celebrating the completion of his final exam and his last edition of the OSH “Oxford Student Herald” as editor, he had spent the night participating in a student drinking game and had drunk so much it was a wonder he could stand up, let alone walk home.
Jonathan was close to the digs he shared with fellow students when he spotted a young girl sitting on the kerb, crying. It turned out that it was her birthday, and she had got drunk and become immobile so her friends had abandoned her. She sat forlorn in torn tights and a black dress that concealed little. The new graduate helped her to her feet and together they stumbled towards his lodgings.
Even now, fifteen years later, he couldn’t remember the details of what happened that night. He recalled, inasmuch as he could recall anything, that they had consensual sex and that he treated her well, but the bruises on her thin body and the invisible tears to her young organs told a different story. By the time he had sobered up, the girl had been interviewed by the police and admitted to a hospital, where she had been subjected to a rape test whilst her mother and father waited outside, bemused and confused.
“She was supposed to be at a friend’s house…… we didn’t even know she owned a dress like that,” they were later quoted as saying.
Jonathan had fully recovered from his hangover by the time he picked up the local evening newspaper. He had even managed to attend his final tutorial. The lead story shook him to the core and he knew at that moment that his life was over.
Even through his drunken stupor he had appreciated that the girl was slightly built, not yet a fully developed woman, and somehow he had liked that about her, but never in his wildest imaginings had he thought that she was a virgin and had just turned 14 years old. As he read the article he swore out loud, to the consternation of a crowd of tourists walking by. He forced himself to read on. The police had his fingerprints on her handbag and the girl, Olivia, recalled that she had been raped on a college campus with historic buildings but was confused as to which one it might have been. Any scintilla of hope about evading justice that Jonathan might have held onto evaporated when he turned to the inside pages.
The sketch was masterful. His mother would have loved it on her living room wall. It might just as well have had his name written underneath. The girl had obviously spent the wee small hours awake and staring at his sleeping face before making her escape. If there had been any doubt about who the sketch portrayed it was removed by the description of his tattooed shoulders, a colourful eagle whose wingspan reached from shoulder to shoulder with the words “Freedom from Tyranny, Freedom from Government” written below. It was only a matter of time before the police spoke to Inky the tattooist and came knocking at his door. When they did, he couldn’t be there.
Since then, and for the intervening fifteen years, Jonty had stayed one step ahead of the authorities. He changed his appearance, he made money where he could and now he led an ever decreasing band of hapless bikers who lacked the imagination to break free from the “Warriors” and its less than charismatic leader.
But today all that was to change; today Jonty was about to rejoin civilised society, today Jonathan Derek Latimer would emerge from the shadows and face the music.
***
Bricko propped up his Harley and walked purposefully over to the trailer that housed Jonty and his latest girlfriend. He tried the door. It was locked, but he pressed his shoulder to centre of the door and pushed until the thin metal bowed and sprang open. The door crashed against the trailer wall and Bricko stepped into the bedroom.
Jonty was awoken by the crashing door and assumed the worst, which would have been that the Angels or the Predators were mounting a revenge attack. He flung back the covers and made a grab for the old gun he kept by the bed. Bricko yelled at him.
“Put it down, Jonty, its only me, you prat.” Jonty was standing naked beside the bed, holding his chest.
“Bricko, Dog, what are you doing? Couldn’t you have knocked?” Jonty pulled the covers from the bed and covered the bottom half of his slack, pallid torso and in so doing left Dani, his girlfriend, naked on the bed. Bricko looked at the girl and snorted with disgust. Her pubescent body was thin, almost emaciated and undeveloped. Bricko wondered whether the girl was even a teenager.
“This,” spat Bricko, “is what is going to send us all to prison.” He looked purposefully at the young girl, who looked terrified. He walked over to Jonty and slapped the newspaper into his bare chest. Jonty took the paper and looked at the front page before dropping the covers and abandoning all thoughts of modesty.
“Not again,” he wailed to nobody in particular. “Not again!”
***
Ten minutes later Dani and Jonty were partially clothed. The girl was sobbing pitifully and Jonty sat ashen faced on the bed, looking at photos of himself and the other Warriors selling dope, getting stoned and partying with very young semi naked girls.
Bricko had been sitting on the edge of the bed trying to comfort the distraught girl, while Jonty watched his future unravel in newsprint before his eyes for the second time in his life. Bricko stood up and walked towards the trailer door.
“You know, Jonty, you are a moron. We had a good thing going here and you’ve blown it with your appetite for girls barely in their teens. You must have seen this coming.” He shook his head and pushed his way through the crowd of confused bikers who had gathered in the doorway to see what the commotion was all about.
Bricko was in his trailer throwing a few personal objects into a scruffy holdall when Jonty appeared in the doorway.
“Bricko, mate, don’t let it all end like this.” Bricko continued packing without answering or even looking up. Jonty covered his face with his hands and asked “What are we going to do now?”
The other biker zipped up his case and moved towards the door. “Well, Jonty, I don’t know about you but I’m leaving. If the newspaper and that Max Richmond bloke have told the old Bill where we’re living, we can expect a visit tomorrow at the latest.”
“I guess it’s time to move on, the
n.” Jonty looked around the camp; it wasn’t much, but he had lived here for almost five years, off and on. “I’ll have the Warriors out of here by morning.”
Bricko knew it was already too late for the rest of them but he smiled a mirthless smile and squeezed Jonty’s shoulder as he passed. Jonty placed his hand over Bricko’s and asked solemnly, “Brothers?” Bricko, looked into Jonty’s eyes and replied with a conviction he didn’t feel, “Always, Dog, Always!”
The customised black Harley was heading away from the camp on a rutted farm track when Bricko heard the sirens a mile or so away. He looked at his watch.
“Forty five minutes,” he said to himself. “That has to be some kind of record.” Two minutes later he was on the A34 and heading towards a lock up workshop on the outskirts of Newbury.
***
Bricko pulled the Harley into the lock up workshop and closed the door. There was a lot to do if he wanted to keep one step ahead of the police, who by now would have Jonty and his gang in custody.
The biker took off his jacket, pushed it into a large cloth laundry bag and sat on an old easy chair. He unfastened his boots, slipped them off and stood up. He was a good two inches shorter without the steps in the boots. Slipping out of his leather trousers and grubby black tee shirt, he revealed the webbing that held the bulky latex body suit in place. Relieved to be free of the constricting latex, he stuffed that, too, into the bag.
Standing in front of the stainless steel sink the shorter, thinner biker adjusted the shaving mirror before reaching for a set of Wahl hairdressing shears. Setting the guard at number four, Bricko pushed the shears across his scalp from front to back until his long greasy hair lay on the black plastic sheet on the floor beneath his feet. With his hair sticking up in an impromptu crew cut no more than three quarters of an inch long, Bricko was beginning to disappear.
The beard followed the long hair, and when he was clean shaven Bricko filled the sink with hot water and scrubbed every inch of exposed skin. It wasn’t as good as a shower but nonetheless it felt good to be clean. Looking into the mirror, he expected to see a different person, but he had forgotten something. The transformed biker leaned over the sink and popped out his contact lenses one at a time, and the ice blue eyes were back to their original green. Satisfied at the transformation, he smiled at his reflection and said out loud,
“Welcome home, Max”.
Chameleon - A City of London Thriller Page 35