Heavy Duty Attitude (30 page)

 

It was a complete fucking ambush! The squaws must have known we were coming…

He hadn’t known it when he had said it but I now knew that he had been absolutely right. The Mohawks had been tipped off about the planned raiding party and were able to ambush it and beat it back.

Because of course, someone knew someone who had an open channel through which to pass messages to the Mohawks, didn’t they Wibble?

Then Wibble and his Freemen contingent, the old Damage loyalists I guessed, could come in as the cavalry. They could liquidate the troublemakers who had stirred up all this shit and then couldn’t deal with it, without anyone else in the club doing anything other than applaud; and then defeat the Mohawks and win the war, new territory and new business, and come out with a consolidated powerbase.

There’d been a snitch alright I thought, but it wasn’t in Thommo’s crew. Thommo and his boys hadn’t just been snitched on, they’d been stitched up good and proper.

*

‘You did it didn’t you?’ I asked eventually. Whether it threatened our deal or not, and frankly given what had gone down so far I doubted it would, I had to ask the question.

‘You set Thommo up for all of it, right from the start.

 

‘You knew there would be a war and you manoeuvred Thommo into having to take it on alone didn’t you?’

 

‘Yes,’ he said calmly.

 

‘Having The Mohawks form on your watch would be bad for your rep as P for having allowed it to happen.

 

‘But using Bob and me you had Thommo and the Cambridge crew take the fall for allowing that to happen as well didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
There was a silence.

‘It wasn’t just that he was a rival was it? It was more personal than that. There was some history there, some agenda wasn’t there? Whatever it was, there was more to it than that wasn’t there?’ I pressed.

He looked at me for a moment in silence and I held my breath as I waited for him to speak.

Then at last it came in a flat dead tone.
One word.
‘Damage.’
‘Are you saying Thommo had Damage killed?’

I got his best blank stare. Did that mean there was no answer to that, or was it his version of you might very well ask that but I couldn’t possibly comment?

‘Is that all you’re going to say?’ I asked.

He shook his head, ‘Look chum, it’s over, finito, got it? We have a deal and Bung’s on his way back. You’re going to walk in a few minutes so I wouldn’t push it if I were you.’
But he wasn’t me. And even now I just didn’t know when to shut the fuck up for my own good.

‘But before I go, there’s just one question.’

He seemed genuinely amused at this turn of events, ‘A question Mr Journalist? Now? After all we’ve just been talking about and what I’ve just said? Do you really think that’s wise?’

To tell the truth, well no I didn’t, but having gone through all this shit I was probably feeling a bit light-headed.

 

‘It’s just one question and I… I… have to know.’

 

‘Know what?’ he asked calmly, although I guess he suspected what was coming.

 

‘Did you kill him? I mean not you personally. Just, was it you? Did you organise it? Or was it someone else?’

‘Who? Damage?’
I nodded and locked my gaze on his face.

He stood looking down at me quietly for a moment as our eyes bored into one another.

 

‘You really, really don’t know when to quit when you’re ahead do you?’ he said in an undertone.

‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t. And now there’s no reason not to tell me is there? I mean you know it’s not going to go anywhere. No one else is ever going to know. Not with where we are now.’

He stayed silent.

 

‘This is just for me,’ I said, ‘this isn’t for anyone else; this is just me wanting to know.’

 

‘You know,’ he said at last, ‘I don’t think I’m going to answer that.’ He turned on his heel and headed across the room to where he had left his mobile phone.

 

It looked as though I was never going to be any the wiser as to whether Wibble had done it or not.

 

And if not Wibble, who then?

 

Someone obviously had done it. I was right back where I had started in many ways.

Was it someone in the club? A rival, a challenger?
Was it someone outside the club? If so who? And why?

The Rebels,
pax Damage
or no
pax Damage
? Another club? Or someone entirely unconnected?

 

And if it wasn’t him, did Wibble actually know who had done it? Or did he just have suspicions?

But the way things were, I had run out of chances to ask.
*

‘Well, that’s it then isn’t it?’ he said brightly looking back at me, and then picking up a vicious looking sheath knife that had been lying out of my sight on the kitchen table, he turned and advanced on where I sat trussed into my chair.

‘What the fuck’s that for?’ I asked nervously, as he advanced towards me. In terror I wondered if he had suddenly changed his mind, had he heard something that had made him decide that he was better off with me dead after all? Had he just been toying with me all the time?

‘You’ve got something of mine,’ he said as he stopped in front of me, ‘and I want it back.’

Reaching down, he jabbed the point of the knife under the side seam of the support patch where I had sewn it on and slashed downwards, the razor sharp blade slicing through the threads that I had so painstakingly stitched sitting at my kitchen table a lifetime ago now.

With a few deft strokes, he had cut the support patch off my jacket and taken it back.

 

As he walked away with it I was surprised about how naked and yes, rejected, I suddenly felt.

 

I was out. And not in good standing.

 

And I was upset at how that made me feel.
15 LLH&R

‘And this LLH&R stuff?’ she asked, ‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a motto, to those on the inside it’s what they’re all about.’

‘So what does it stand for? And why did some have it and not others? Was it significant?’

‘It’s a biker saying. It stands for Love, Loyalty, Honour and Respect,’ I told her quietly, thinking about the words, ‘and I don’t know but it had something to do with Damage. It was on all the RIP tabs that Wibble and his crew were wearing, so something only the Damage loyalists wore in his honour perhaps?’

‘Or a badge to show whose side they were on?’

‘Could be I suppose. You know looking back I don’t remember ever seeing any of the Cambridge crew with them. I think at the time I just assumed it was only those who had known Damage personally or been in the Freemen with him who wore them but now I’m not so sure.’

So are they all, all honourable men
.
‘Anyway, it’s what they live by.’
‘Christ.’
‘Or at least say they do.’

*

 

‘Is that it?’ she demanded quietly from where she was curled up against me under the covers on the bed.

 

‘Just about.’

 

‘But I still don’t understand,’ she said sounding puzzled. ‘If you knew so much, why did he let you go?’

That was something I had thought about a lot myself ever since that day when I had walked out of the flat with looped gaffa tape still stuck to the cuffs of my jacket and around my ankles. It had taken a while to come to terms with it, with everything that had happened, and with what it would mean for the rest of my life. But when it came down to it I had to face up to a simple truth, and one that had determined whether I was going to live or die that day.

I was more dangerous to him dead, because of what might come out from stuff I’d left behind, than alive and silent. It was that simple. ‘And that’s it?’ she gasped as I said it out loud, ‘Mutual blackmail? That’s all that’s keeping you, us, safe?’

‘Just about,’ I admitted.
‘Jesus!’ she exhaled, ‘so what happens if he changes his mind?’

There was no way of sugar coating this. It wasn’t fair. I’d had enough in my life now of leading people into places, dangers that they weren’t aware of. I couldn’t do it to someone else.

‘Then I’m not as safe.’
‘And how do you know he hasn’t?’ she asked.

‘I don’t, and what’s more, I won’t, not unless and until someone has a go at me. And by then it might be too late.’

 

‘Christ!’ came a low whistle out of the darkness. ‘And that’s why you are hiding.’

‘And that’s why I’m in hiding,’ I agreed.
There was silence for a while which it wasn’t my place to break.

Then eventually she spoke again, ‘So why are you telling me this? If you need to keep yourself a secret I mean. Why tell anyone this?’

‘Because I have to. It’s not fair not to and I won’t, can’t, put anyone else in unwitting danger. I did it once, and it got him killed, and I just couldn’t do it again.’

She snorted in derision, ‘Don’t be so fucking wet. If you mean your man Danny then you’re just soft in the head. You didn’t get him killed; he did that himself when he decided to get mixed up with these guys.’

‘And as for your man the polis. What kind of a fuckwit do you have to be to set up a patsy for your own murder anyway?’

Well, I thought to myself in the darkness, it was a point of view. *
‘So are we safe here?’ she asked quietly, ‘now, I mean.’

I was pleased she had said the ‘we’. That meant a lot to me now that she had heard what she had heard.

‘I think so,’ I told her after a moment’s contemplation about what I could really tell her, ‘at least as safe as we’ll ever be. I covered my tracks getting here, and I deliberately chose Ireland not the mainland, as it should be safer.’

‘Why’s that?’ she wanted to know.

‘Because The Brethren like the other big six clubs aren’t here south of the border. The main Irish 1%er clubs came together a while ago because they wanted to keep their independence. They wanted to keep the Irish bike scene out of the international politics of the big clubs.’

‘
Ireland her own, from the earth to the sky,
’ she murmured.

 

Yeah, well that’s the romantic way of putting it I thought. Either that or it just keeps the local market for the local guys.

Whatever the reason though, what it meant was that there wasn’t either a Brethren charter or a beholden support or striker club on the ground that might be actively looking for me. Which was about as much as I could hope for. While it lasted.

But still I reflected as I lay there staring up at the darkened ceiling, despite the beard I had grown and the careful way I had kept myself to myself the last twelve months, I couldn’t help but still be jumpy. I still felt a chill run down my spine if I ever heard the rumble of big bikes in the village.

‘But it doesn’t make sense,’ she said eventually.
‘What doesn’t?’

‘So what is it that you could know and could have squirreled away about them before they caught you, that yer man Wibble would be so concerned about?’

‘That’s the funny thing, I had to admit, ‘in some ways I’m not sure…’

‘Because the bombs, the killings, the really heavy stuff,’ she interrupted, ‘from what you’re saying, you only found out about once they already had you. If that was what he was thinking about, then from his point of view wouldn’t killing you have been the easiest and most certain thing to do?’

She was right, it was something which had been gnawing away at the back of my mind for a while but which I’d been doing my studious best to try not to think about. But now she’d put it to me so bluntly, there was no escaping it. She was right and it was a real worry.

‘I can only guess that Wibble thinks I know something…’ I ventured. ‘Or that you have something else he wants,’ she countered.
‘Then why let me disappear?’

‘Who says you really have?’ she challenged, ‘Listen, they couldn’t have got that you would be at the yard that evening from Danny’s call could they, even if Bob had intercepted it? Because Danny didn’t say anything about the place on the phone did he?’

‘No he didn’t. He just sent me the text asking me to be at the call box.’ ‘So how did Charlie know that you were going to be at the yard? He was waiting for you for feck’s sake wasn’t he?’

‘Well yes…’
‘Then someone must have known,’ she concluded.
‘Well Danny…’

‘Ach no,’ she scoffed. ‘You said yourself he wouldn’t, he was too scared. He’d got himself into something too deep and was just looking for his out wasn’t he. Do you still think that?’

‘Well yes…’
‘Then it must have been someone else mustn’t it?’
She was right, ‘But who?’
‘The kids in the café,’ she said, ‘it’s got to be.’
‘Who?’

‘Look, you know Bob was having the bikers’ phones tapped don’t you? And that would go for Danny as well as the others.’

 

‘Yes.’

 

‘And the one thing Bob could have got from intercepting Danny’s text was to find out that he was making contact with you?’

 

‘Yes, the…’

‘Well your boyos knew that all they had to do was put the tabs on you or him. Have you followed to work out where you were going and send someone in to have a listen in.’

‘The café. Right?’

I thought back to that brief exchange in the phone box between me and Danny. I had never asked him where he had called from I realised. It had really only been a few words. ‘Well yes, I suppose…’
‘And you said that when you got there to meet Danny, the place was empty wasn’t it?’

‘Except…’

‘Except for a couple of street kids who came in just after you, and had enough time and cash to stand there in the corner of the room playing the fruit machine.’

‘They weren’t there all the time…’ I protested.

 

‘Most of it? Enough to have overheard what he was telling you if they’d been listening?’

When had they left? I hadn’t really noticed at the time, it hadn’t seemed important. All I really remembered was glancing up at the ring of the bell on the door as they headed out into the dark shortly before Danny and I broke up. Could they have heard enough to know what Danny had been telling me?

I had to acknowledge to myself that the answer was yes.

‘Because if they could use street kids there to spy on you over in London without you ever realising, who’s to say there isn’t someone over here keeping an eye on you now?’

It was a chilling thought that was going to fester.
It was stupid really not to have thought of it.

Like Wibble had said, there were so many ways they could come at me if they wanted to. Turning up on bikes would just be too obvious. That was the thing. I would never know. And if they did it right, I would never have known.