Heavy Duty People: The Brethren MC Trilogy book 1 (16 page)

It was clear now at least why
Dazza had wanted me along and why he’d brought me into the meeting. He and Sergei had obviously concluded their business and reached some kind of agreement whatever it was about. Now they needed to set up how payments were going to be made, which was my department.

Over the next
half an hour or so, with a great swapping of marker pens back and forth between the three of us we worked out in more or less silence how we would organise it until Sergei eventually said, ‘Is OK now?’

I stood back and looked at what we had written, arms folded, tapping the top of the pen against my chin as I thought it through. I knew we had to get this right now. You never knew how difficult meeting up to change it or deal with any
subsequent fuck-ups could be. It was quite straightforward I decided, I couldn’t see any reason why any of it would be a problem.

‘
OK, it works,’ I pronounced.

‘
Sure?’ asked Dazza.

‘
Yeah, I’m sure.’

‘
Great,’ he said, clapping me on the back. ‘That’s good to hear. OK Sergei?’

‘
OK,’ said Sergei, staring at the board with a cloth in his hand, as if to make sure he took it all in before he erased it.

Dazza
wasn’t here to socialise. Sergei didn’t join us for dinner.

We ate out again, different place, table in the open. It felt pretty secure.
‘How d’you know the Ruski? They’re not Brethren are they?’ I asked quietly.

For once
Dazza seemed quite talkative. ‘No. An outfit called The Wolfpack. Sergei was at the European run last year tagging along as one of their reps with the Krauts who are sponsoring them. They’re trying out, looking for the charter for Russia and Trans-Dneiper, they know how the game’s played. They need to show some class, need to get to know all the other charters and they need to show that they’ve got something to bring to the party.’

‘
So that’s what’s in it for them. Fair enough.’

‘
And the dosh of course.’

‘
Of course.’

‘
That’s something I need to talk to you about. How we organise it our end.’

The next day was in many ways a repeat of the last.

As far as I was concerned it was the same deal. Dazza booked a room, a different one this time but still just off the lobby and I stayed out in the bar having a morning coffee and reading the previous day’s paper as Dazza’s next contact arrived.

Again
Dazza waved me in after about an hour to meet a guy he introduced as ‘Luis’.

Luis
, if that was his name, was quite a contrast to Sergei. Short and slight with round glasses, wavy hair and a friendly grin, dressed in his civvies you wouldn’t look at him twice. You certainly wouldn’t have him pegged as the Pres of the local Brethren charter. But once you began to speak to him you quite quickly changed your mind. Luis was sharp, very sharp, and beneath that friendly tone, every so often a harder edge showed through.

They were talking as I reached the door
so I overhead a snatch of the conversation before Dazza turned to make the introductions.

‘
Will it work?’

‘
It should do, my contact’s very confident. He says that the guys he will be using were the ones that used to drop for the
spetsnaz
. Anyway what do you care? The first is a test with his gear, not yours. It’s only the real thing after that.’

‘
At your risk,’ Luis noted quickly.

‘
Sure, at my risk.’

‘
OK. As you say, it’s at your risk,’ said Luis, turning to greet me, ‘I have my money, why should I worry?’

As before it was whiteboard work. But having gone through the process with Sergei yesterday it was quicker this time
, even though whatever Dazza was going to be up to with Luis seemed as though it was going to be a bit more complicated than whatever deal he had going with Sergei.

Luis was talking about arranging s
chedules of payments. He wanted to know how quickly I could get access to and move sizable sums of cash. ‘After all,’ he said writing
we appreciate it takes time to move cash
on the board in not only excellent English but almost copperplate penmanship to finish his thought, ‘we have to be realistic and practical.’

‘
Agreed,’ growled Dazza.

I proposed that we set the payments up as trading between companies. All the normal stuff
of importing and exporting, invoices, remittance advices, all that sort of straight up paperwork. At our end we could use a series of companies registered in the ever willing names of my clients at our rented addresses. From what Dazza and Luis were saying there wouldn’t be that many transactions a year so if we spread them around the patch and broke the payments down into a variety of transactions they ought to pass largely unnoticed. What’s more I’d arrange to have the companies liquidated every so often, solvently, so there was no fuss, no investigation, they would simply shut up shop and disappear so by the time anyone came looking they would be long gone, dead and buried, the trail gone cold.

That
worked for Luis. He had trading companies he could use as fronts as well and it seemed that whatever plan Dazza and he had cooked up would involve some real trade as well which would help cover their tracks.

A
s with Sergei, this was obviously intended as far as possible to be a one-off meeting so again we sorted out communications as well.

D
amage here is going to act as my front man on this. He handles all the money side of things
, Dazza wrote.
You contact him or me direct on that but no one else
.

‘
That’s OK, we understand.’

And operations?
wrote Luis.

‘
Me.’

At first it was by telephone.
Dazza had brought a list of phone box numbers. Of course we had phone lines in all of the flats but we didn’t want to compromise them, so I had also arranged to rent a flat specifically to give us a phone to use just for this with no bank accounts attached to it. There was an answering machine that Luis could leave a message on when he wanted to talk to us, just a time and a code word to indicate which phone he was going to call us on. He would set up something similar his end.

Later
, when we got tecchie, we moved to dummy Hotmail accounts which were great. Once you both had the password you didn’t even need to send an email and run the risk of it getting intercepted by the plod. You just opened up the account, typed in a draft and left it for the other guy to read and reply to with his own draft. With the number of internet cafés around, not to mention the wonderful facilities provided to me as a resident by our local library service, I could ring the changes on where I accessed it from as well just to keep secure.

‘
Now what?’ I asked as we sat in the bar later that evening having said our goodbyes to Luis.

‘
Now? Nothing. That’s it, all done.’

‘
So what do we do now?’

‘
Kick back, relax, have some beers by the pool, chase some skirt if you want to. What am I? Your holiday rep? What the fuck do I care what you do? Just enjoy the rest of your holiday. We’ve got to do the rest of the week so just get into it. Tell you what, d’ya fancy doing the shotgun thing again tomorrow? It was a blast!’

It was weak but I still laughed.

And so we did. Christ Dazza even insisted we played a round of fucking golf on the Friday. I don’t think it was completely for cover either. He could actually hit the fucking ball which was more than I could.

Dazza
said I ought to learn. It would come in handy if I ever retired to Spain.

7              THE DROP

We got back to a crisis
. Tiny was dead. And that was hard to take.

It hadn
’t been easy for me to make a choice when it had come to the vote, so I knew it would have been much harder for Tiny. OK, so we had partied with The Brethren over the years, gone on runs with them, hosted them at our clubhouse and at our bike show. But still Tiny didn’t really know them, and Dazza in particular, the way that I did. After all, I knew Dazza from before, not only as someone to party with but as someone to do business with from my days of dealing with Gyppo, in a way that Tiny didn’t.

And then
again I didn’t really have any position to lose in what would obviously be a new regime. OK, so I was road captain, but to be frank, given the hassle and the need to stay clean it wasn’t a job that many guys wanted. Me, I could take it or leave it, so I wasn’t too fussed either way.

But Tiny,
like I said before, back then Tiny had been the P. If we went into The Brethren Tiny knew there would be only one P of the charter, and that would be Dazza. Tiny would be giving up a lot to go in.

But fuck it. He had taken a view and he had gone for it. Leaving aside his own personal position and interests he had voted the way a l
eader should, he had voted in what he saw as the best interests of the club. You had to respect the man for that.

And now he
’d left behind a family; his wife, two kids and Jane, his righteous girlfriend.

*

I arranged to meet Billy at the clubhouse and leave my bike there. Billy had bought himself a big fuck off four-by-four, a top of the range Landcruiser and gave me a lift over to Tiny’s place to see Sally and the kids. I got the impression that he hadn’t wanted to run the risk of visiting alone. I didn’t know why.

I soon found out.

I had wanted to go round, to offer some comfort, to let her know that we, the club, would look after her.

But she was distraught. She wouldn
’t listen. Kept cursing out the club and all it had done. It was as though she blamed us for what had happened. She screamed at us to get out, that she didn’t want our dirty money. And that set the kids off too. Her folks arrived and we just didn’t need the noise or the grief.

‘
Fuck it,’ I said to Billy, ‘Let’s go.’

We sat largely in silence
in the car on the way back. We couldn’t say too much there obviously. Unlike the clubhouse which only people we knew visited, and which we swept for bugs regularly, you never knew whether somewhere like the car was secure. So I only spoke once he’d parked up again out front of the clubhouse and we were out of the car. It didn’t seem like a conversation for inside either.

‘
So,’ I demanded, ‘something’s up, isn’t it?’

Billy looked away nervously.

‘What’s going on?’ I insisted.

‘
I don’t know, but I’m worried.’

‘
About what?’

Billy just shrugged.

‘OK then, if you don’t want to tell me you don’t. Just don’t come crying to me whenever it gets to be a problem.’

‘
I won’t.’

‘
You fucking will, you always do. You know you do.’

‘
Yeah, suppose so,’ he said sheepishly.

‘
Still, I always was the brains of the outfit,’ I smiled. Another little victory. They all mounted up over the years.

‘
Yeah, but don’t forget I’m the good looking one.’

‘
If you say so!’ I laughed, changing the subject, ‘So I’ve been meaning to ask, how are you getting on?’

‘
With what?’

‘
With the Dazza shit.’

‘
OK, but fuck it’s some heavy stuff.’

‘
What stuff?’

‘
I can’t tell anyone. Not even you man.’

*

We had a drink back at the club and Billy did a line. He offered me one and I shook my head, ‘Not now mate, want to keep my head clear.’

‘
Well want a wrap to go for later then?’

‘
Yeah, that would be good, thanks,’ I said taking the proffered small square of folded paper.

I left the question lingering unasked in the air between us as I tucked the tiny package into the pocket of my
cut off until Billy waved his hand and said, ‘Hey no charge mate, on the house.’

I nodded in
acknowledgement. ‘Thanks mate, I’ll be getting back now, Shaz’ll have dinner on the go. Fancy some?’

‘
Nah, I’m OK, I’m gonna call in on that new bird of mine in town. We’ll probably hit the Chinky.’

‘
OK then, look after yourself.’

‘
And you.’

*

They were waiting for me as I rode through the village. The car parked down a side road, a dead end that slanted up from down by the river so that they could pull out behind me easily. As I sped past, leaning into the bend by the village green and setting myself up for the acceleration up onto the dark straight out and into the countryside again I clocked the headlights coming on in my mirror, followed a few seconds later by the flash of blues.