Heavy Duty Trouble (The Brethren Trilogy) (30 page)

‘Halleluiah,’ snorted Bung, ‘at last.’

Shit
,
yes
,
I understood
. When Damage had talked about the quantities he had brought in of course I’d realised that this would involve serious money. But in all honesty I’d had no idea how enormous the sums were that we were talking. Of course Damage would have costs and wouldn’t see the full street value of his shipment. There would be distributors and dealers to take their cuts too, even if these were organized through him telling a Brethren
patch,
to arrange for a striker
,
to order an associate to actually move the stuff on, so as to keep Damage’s hands clean.

But even so, how much profit
had
he
been
making on each load?

‘There’s too much money at stake for people, and the younger guys are hungry,’ said
Wibble
, ‘That’s what Charlie’s been recruiting them in for, that’s why they’ve been joining, because they want to earn, not just because they want to be part of the club.

‘I don’t like it either,’ he said turning back to
Bung
, ‘but face it mate, it’s gone too far down that road. We won’t take the club back again with us. Some of the older guys, maybe. But the new generation? Charlie’s mob? Forget it.’

Bung
didn’t say anything, but just turned away and looked out of the window again as if lost in thought.

‘It’s not like we’re leaving the club, it’s the club that’s left us.’

As I watched
them
working out what this meant for them and their lives,
I wondered whether the truth was that Wibble actually wanted to retire. Was he in fact now looking for a way out?

Because
Wibble
was clearly right, the reality was that this wasn’t just a fight about who wanted to have the P flash on his colours. It was about more than that. It was a generational conflict about the soul of the club and where it was going to go from here on in. Which road they were all going to ride down together.

The old style outlaws, like Wibble and Bung, to the extent that they had each wanted to, they had all probably made their money. Wibble and his guys were want
ing
to kick
off the traces
and
go back to having fun. To them the youngsters in the club were too much
just
about business.

But it was more than that. They had seen how the cancer of drugs and cash had corroded the club’s culture, and
the
sense of what it meant to be a member. For them the club was about brotherhood not business
,
and what counted first and foremost was a man’s attitude, not his ability to earn. They had looked on as new members had been recruited into the club
by first Scroat, and then Charlie,
purely on their ability to deal or, like Scampi, to cook, not ride, and they hadn’t liked what they
’d seen
.

Because Charlie, with his new rules, was actively bringing in a new generation. They were younger guys, who were more aggressive and obviously in it for the criminal gain.

Charlie had been dismissive about the older guys when he’d spoken to me in jail. They were sloppy he’d told me; more gear went up their noses than out on the streets
,
he’d said.

‘
How the fuck
have we allowed the club to get hijacked like this?
’ asked Bung bitterly.

‘
You know the why,
’ Wibble told him quietly, ‘
we all do. It was the money, the easy money.
’

And it was difficult to argue with that.

*

‘So what do we do now?’ asked Bung.

‘We talk of course.’

‘Who to? Charlie?’

‘Who else?’

‘We can’t talk to him!’ Bung protested

‘Why not, we talked to The Rebels?’ Wibble pointed out reasonably enough
,
I thought.

Bung wasn’t buying it. ‘That was different, we had business to discuss.’

‘We’ve got business to discuss with Charlie.’

‘Wasn’t it risky,’ I asked,
‘
talking to The Rebels about making peace? They were your enemies after all.’

‘Well who the fuck else were we going to make peace with?’ Wibble said sounding exasperated, ‘Like the man said, you don’t make peace with your friends do you?’

He had a point there
,
I had to admit. But there was one thing that was bothering me.

‘So we talk, do we?’ I asked warily, thinking I knew what was coming next.

‘Well now you mention it…’ said Wibble grinning.

I was right.

So I made the call.

‘Now what do we do?’ I asked as I hung up.

‘Now? Now we wait,’ he said standing up to head outside and pulling out a box of fags.

‘Again? Christ how much longer?’ I asked.

‘Until it’s done,’ he said.

*

Bung was off up at the bar again, attempting to drown his sorrows in the ample charms of the barmaid and Wibble was back at the table with his latest pint in front of him.

‘You know the thing that’s hardest to swallow?’
he
asked
casually
.

‘No?’

‘When I look back, it’s partly my fault.’

‘Your fault? I asked, surprised, ‘How d’you work that one out?’

‘I helped Damage with his business all those years,’ he shrugged, ‘business that was Damage’s business to start with; but with the size of it, pretty soon if it wasn’t exactly club business,
it
had so many of the club in it that
it
was hard to tell the difference sometimes.

‘And then after he snuffed it, I kept the business going didn’t I?’

I nodded. There didn’t really seem to be too much to say.

‘But it was all done as a means to an end
,
’
h
e wanted to stress.

‘The road to hell…’ I observed.

‘Yeah
, yeah,
I know. But it wasn’t for us personally, it was for the club really. To do what Damage, what we wanted to do
. W
e had to get The Rebels on side, and we had to build up our strength. The only way
for us
to get off the merry-go-round was to get to the point where
we
actually controlled it all.

‘Once we had it all, then we could stop, and no one, not the
Yank
s, not other clubs, could
prevent
us going back to what we wanted to be. It was the only way
,
’
h
e said.

‘But Charlie doesn’t want to get
down
does he?’ I asked, ‘Charlie likes the ride and now the brakes are off, he wants to see how fast he can spin it doesn’t he?’

‘Yeah
,
Charlie sees it differently,’ he said sadly, ‘For him, the business is the end, not the club. Not that he’d ever admit it to you or anyone
else
.’

So that was why Charlie and Wibble
had been
working together
to start with
,
I thought. Because they
had
both
been
pushing through Damage’s plans. But then it was also why they came into conflict. Even if they were both pursuing Damage’s legacy, they each wanted very different parts of it, with very different aims.

But to start with, it was
all
about getting out from under the
Yank
s.

The
Yank
s were the blockers.
No one
could
f
orget they’d been at war with The Rebels over there for the best part of thirty years. Just doing business with The Rebels would have been a major problem as far as the
Yank
s were concerned, let alone peace, never mind some kind of merger.

For Wibble, it was about wanting to get out from under the
Yank
s and their pressure to just be about business. Sure he knew they couldn’t get out of business altogether, it paid too many guys too well, it funded the legals when needed
. M
ost of all, if they didn’t do it, someone else would
,
and since the dosh that came from it fundamentally translated into power, what you were really giving up by exiting the business high ground was sooner or later, one simple thing, power. And everybody in the club would understand that sort of logic.

And
whatever he said,
I
had my
doubt
s whether
he’d even want to
shut up shop completely. It and the cash it could make was too useful to the club for that. B
ut he
wanted it controlled. He wanted it to serve the club, not the other way round
,
so that business wasn’t
the be all and end all. No, what Wibble wanted fundamentally
was
to get the club back to being about a brotherhood.

And Charlie wanted independence from the
Yank
s
too
. He also wanted the freedom to do the same deal with The Rebels as Wibble did. But he wanted it and the independence for a very different reason. He wanted to get rid of being taxed by the
Yank
s. If
he
dump
ed
their franchise, why
would he have to carry on
pay
ing
them a royalty? Sure he wanted to keep the club brotherhood strong, but basically
,
as far as he was concerned it was more about keeping more of the cash
. He
wanted t
he club to stay strong, but he wanted that so it could
support a top performing business machine.

But that still left questions about Wibble
.

By contrast with Charlie, Wibble said he wanted out of the business. He wanted peace, and a return to the club’s origins.

But did he want it for its own sake?

Did he just want it because he’d made his pile and now he wanted to be free to enjoy what he’d got?

Did it matter
,
I asked myself, if the end result was peace, an end to the violence. Didn’t that matter more than anything else?

Or did it?

If it came down to a choice, which would be more important
– p
eace or justice?

But really
,
there was no point speculating. It had always, I acknowledged to myself, been a bit of an academic question.

After all,
out of a punch up between someone who
determinedly
want
s
to push the cash and business side, and someone who
says he
wants to push brotherhood and partying, who the hell
had I ever thought was
going to win?

It was no contest really was it?

*

The barmaid had managed to fend Bung off for the moment. He seemed to think resistance was starting to weaken
. From wh
at I could see
I wasn’t so sure but anyway,
he was temporarily back
sat
with us
while he
regroup
ed
and plot
ted
his next move.
It was going to be a
while so
I decided I
might as well make use of the time
.

‘So who did kill Damage?’ I asked to get the conversation going.

‘Oh fuck
,
not that old chestnut
!’ objected Bung,
‘
Don’t you ever give up?’

‘Who do you think?’
asked Wibble warily.

‘I don’t know. My problem is I’ve got too many suspects.’

‘Have you? So tell me then. Who’s on your list?’

‘Are you kidding?’ I asked, ‘
I
t’s not the sort of guessing game that I would have thought you’d go in for?’

‘Well we
don’t know how much time we might ha
ve to kill
while we wait for Charlie, s
o we might as well talk about something I give a shit about
for a bit
.’