Gurriers (40 page)

“Fine. Of course, I’ll produce ..er.” ”On yer way, an’ don’ leh me see tha’ back tyre much more worn than ih already is!”

“No garda.” On with the helmet and off I scurried like the piece of vermin he was trained to make me feel like.

Glad as I was to get away from him, I was extremely troubled about this whole courier insurance episode. The only insurance I had was ordinary insurance. I wondered whether or not to produce it and hope that he doesn’t follow up on it. I needed advice and, having to drop one from Blackrock that was going west into the base, I was going to the right place to get it.

Vinno and John were sitting at the table when I came into the base and Seven Mick was at the hatch. I waved the west bound package over my head. “Who’s for west?”

“Abou’ fuckin’ time,” Mick made his way over to me from the hatch. “Wha’ d’ya do? Fuckin’ walk in with i’ or wot?”

I had more things to worry about than grumpy Mick.

“Shove it up your hole!” came out of my mouth before I could think twice.

I froze in horror at what I had just said

Mick shoved his face menacingly close to mine and snarled, “I’ll rip your fuckin’ head off and shove it down your fuckin’ neck, dipshit!” He then stomped out of the building.

That wasn’t too bad at all! I thought to myself with a little grin. If Mick had snarled at me like that eight days ago I would have shit myself and then fainted.

“How’s it goin’, lads?” I asked as I sat down.

“Alrie.” They answered in a half hearted reply.

“A cop just asked me for courier insurance. Is there much difference?”

“There’s a whole world of a difference, my good man and it’s all bad for us,” John sat forward with his elbows on the table as if he had a lot to say. “There are very few insurance companies that insure bikes and only one that insures couriers. This means we have a financial institution in a monopoly situation. Bad shit. We are at their mercy and they fleece us more and more, being the heartless “profits before people” monsters that they are.”

“But aren’t couriers more likely to crash?”

“Caused by other people - yes!” Vinno joined the discussion. “But we don’t actually cause crashes, or more to the point, we’re rarely at fault in a crash situation. Look at Charlie last week, for example. He’s a courier so he’s on the road all the time, yeah?

Okay, so he was driving along the side of that bitch’s car when she opened the door, rie? Now he should have had an insurance claim in against her an’ go’ a couple a grand ou’ of i’. He went bananas an’ kicked the shi’e ou’ of her car instead an’ cost himself the money but let’s say he did ih rie. He would have claimed off her insurance an’ nothing would have happened to his; he’s not at fault, is ‘e? It wouldn’t have cost his insurance company a penny.”

“If he had one,” John added.

“Okay, Okay, Charlie’s a chancer bu’ if he wasn’t, i’ wouldn’a cost them a penny, rie? Well, courier insurance is the bastard’s sayin’, ‘Look, couriers put in more claims than anyone else so let’s charge them more for their insurance.’”

“Surely that’s illegal!”

“It fuckin’ should be but the bastards ge’ away wi’ it cos they’re the only ones tha’ insure couriers”

“Well, why don’t the competition start to insure couriers at a reasonable rate and take all the business off them?”

“Because nobody gives a shite! You’re a courier now, Sean, and there’s a whole hell of a lot of dickheads ou’ there who think of you as a public enemy.”

“Don’t forget the porno faggots, Vincent.”

“Oh don’t worry, John, I was just comin’ to them. The porno faggots are like henchmen to these gangsters in the insurance industry. They always ask have ye goh courier insurance and they always check it up. Y’know if ye asked any of them why they’re gards they’d say tha’ they want to make the country safer an’ save lives an‘ all sorts of noble shite but see the porno faggots on their fuckin’ sanitary towel eleven hundreds; all they’re doin’ is linin’ the pockets of a stinkin’ financial institution by helpin’ them to rob us!”

“Sanitary towels?”

“Tha’s wha’ them Pan Europeans are – ST1100s, sanitary towels.”

“Are they really that bad?”

“Roger, Sean, don’t ever expect anything but bad from those cunts. Sure, they won’t even take gards who like bikes or who have ever even owned a bike into their squad in case they go a bih soft on motorbikes, an’ in particular, us!”

“Have you ever had anyone claim off you, Vinno?”

He straightened himself up proudly to belt out his answer. “Never - not once in twelve years as a courier. No insurance company has ever had to pay out a penny because of me. Still, every year the cost of it goes up an’ fuckin’ up. Bastards!”

“Have you had any claims against other people?”

“Six. No, seven. An’ twice I took money off people a’ the side of the road.”

“The insurance company would probably argue that they’re only getting their money back.”

I was trying to make light of the situation but I struck a nerve.

“An’ is tha’ rie? Fuckin’ sure ih isn’t - the robbin’ bastards. People hear about claims an’ snigger up their sleeves as if yer a chancer bu’ not in our fuckin’ cases. Claims are to compensate for loss, injury and hardships an’ let me fuckin’ tell you I suffered all three in every fuckin’ crash tha’ I ever go’ a claim ow of. Every fuckin’ one!”

“Sorry, Vinno. I wasn’t takin’ their side.”

“Ah, don’t worry abou’ i’.”

“So what should I do about producing ordinary insurance instead of courier insurance?” I noticed a glance across the table between the other two. Vinno went to speak but John got there first.

“You have to produce something, Sean, show what you have where you said you’d produce and just wait and see where it goes from there.”

“Or...” Vinno left hanging in the air. He held John’s gaze in what struck me as a pleading demeanour. There was definitely an undercurrent of some sort here.

“Or nothing, Vincent. If we tell the world our secrets they will soon cease to be effective.”

I realised immediately that there was a possible solution. “There’s some way around this, isn’t there?” I said, looking from one to the other like a tennis spectator.

“He’s one of us and we can tell him not to tell anybody,” Vinno pleaded

“I won’t, I won’t, I’m great at keeping secrets. I’ll never tell anybody, John. Please!”

“I’ll tell him and take full responsibility for him not telling anybody.”

“Okay, tell him, open Pandora’s Box up for the whole world to experience – just remember that I hold you responsible, Number One.”

Vinno turned to me like a jubilant kid. “Okay, Sean, here’s how it works.”

I sat and listened intently as Vinno explained the way around paying for courier insurance and how to go about producing when you didn’t have it. The scam wasn’t a 100 per cent foolproof but it had never failed him or John or any of the lads who used it. Secrecy was indeed the key because if too many people knew, the bubble would burst for all.

I never told a soul about it, true to my word, and got away with my producing of non-courier insurance that time and every other time I had to produce. I never got courier insurance and a
big fuck you to all in the motorcycle section of Norwich Union, and all those in other insurance companies, as they go about their evil duties of ripping off motorcyclists and in particular, couriers.

Working as a motorbike courier meant a wealth of widely ranging experiences on a daily basis. You never knew what you were going to bring where or what was going to happen to you on the way. As I became more accustomed to the job, I found myself observing more and more of the events happening around me, thriving on the hustle and bustle of the city as if I was gradually becoming a part of it, a drop in its bloodstream flowing along the roads that were its veins and arteries.

That was the great thing about the city - the activity. Every time I stopped the bike there was something to look at, something going on, something to mention later maybe as I told tales in the evening of my day’s adventures. There were so many situations with so many characters and many stories, and not all high speed, high-octane stories either. You just never knew what you were going to see in the city provided, of course, you took the time to look.

It was a hot and hazy late August Tuesday afternoon. I wore no gloves on my bronzed hands and had my jacket cuffs pushed as far up my stark white forearms as the body armour would allow. I was on the Finglas Road heading for Manhattan Peanuts
on St Margaret’s Road, having come through Dublin Industrial Estate, two drops and one pick-up in there, onto the Ballyboggan road to bring me back towards Finglas.

The traffic light at the Tolka Valley Road went red when I was barely out of “go like fuck” range, condemning me to the maximum delay for this desolate, empty junction.

The Tolka Valley road cut through a vast area of wasteland before meeting the Finglas Road at a T. The only building near the junction was an abattoir at the top of a steep slope of waste-land to my left. Only the roof with its single large chimney was visible from the road but the gruesome stink was recognisable for miles. Cursing the traffic lights for making me wait in this stink, I turned to my left to shoot a venomous look at what I could see of the stinking factory. To my surprise I saw a dog at the corner of the wasteland that levelled out after sloping down from the factory. The thing that struck me most about the dog was that it was totally motionless; just standing there looking at me, not in the least bit curious or with ears perked up for listening but more as if it was just because he happened to be pointing that way. No twitching tail or cock of the head or any paw movement at all, just standing there looking. I would almost have thought him to be stuffed had I not looked into his deep dark eyes.

He was a greying black, big eyebrowed, expressive, hairy mongrel a little smaller than labrador size with features that reflected a strong trace of terrier in the lineage, contrasting the floppy Labradorish ears in terms of pedigree but complimenting them perfectly in terms of the sad dog image. The hairy, grey speckled eyebrows arched together in the middle in the perfect motionless expression of gloom over those dark eyes that yearned so much for something gone, lost or missing.

I was mesmerised by the animal. It had to be lost or abandoned to be so sad and lifeless. I could see that it was wearing a collar of some description through the shaggy fur.

“Hey fella!” I lifted my visor as far as it would go. “You lost, boy?”

The line of vision changed slightly to follow my leaning at
tempt at friendliness, causing the barest realignment of the now even sadder looking eyebrows.

“Come on, fella! There’s a motorbike engine less than six feet away from ye! Give us a growl or something!”

There was nothing. I gave a rev on the engine to get some sort of reaction that just barely made the head move.

“Cheer up, boy, it’s not that bad!”

A lump suddenly appeared in my throat from out of nowhere, as I was hit with a huge wave of loss over her, bigger than I had experienced in a long while, brought on by empathy of association with the dog’s apparent misery. Tears welled up unchallenged so taken by surprise was I

“You’ll be found before I will, lost dog!” I reassured him, making it that little bit harder to blink away the liquid that had built up.

The beep of a car waiting to turn left brought me back from my distractions, encouraging me to join him in kinetic celebration of the changing of the lights and thereby get the fuck out of his way. I complied with a little wave of apology but no eye contact, still blinking furiously.

The optimist in me finished off the dog’s story in my head with it being found by the kind family that loved it so much and made bits of themselves making it such a happy dog as it truly was because it had so mastered that sad dog look.

Between believing the happy ending and being bombarded by the usual barrage of information involved in the job, the dog was soon forgotten about. Until the next morning that is, when I happened to be screaming along the same stretch of road on my first run of the day carrying a direct job that had to be dropped in Ashbourne in the next 15 minutes. I also had a Swords and an airport on board, which I had strict and clear instructions to drop on the rebound.

I had come up behind a bus in the bus lane at silly speed, chasing a closing gap between him and a van in the slow lane to swing in front of the van, overtake the bus and then swing back into the bus lane with some clear road in front of me. The bus was moving along fairly quickly but I had the measure of
the situation. Then - whether or not to scupper my plans I’ll never know - the van accelerated at the worst possible moment, narrowing the gap that I was aiming for. I had glimpsed the green light around the gradual left hand bend, as I had come behind the bus. Even if I hadn’t, I knew that the bus would have been braking a long time previous had they been otherwise and with so much pressure on, there was no way that I wasn’t going through that gap!

As I passed the lights that I had seen the dog at I was already front wheel in front of the van with the rest of me behind the bus, which would have been doing about 50 with the van doing 55 and me a little over 70. It was hairy but not scary and it was executed well and behind me in an instant. An instant that I had been in the zone- full and total concentration. An instant in which, despite all that had been going on around me, I had still managed to identify the shape of the same dog in the same place as the previous day!