Free Heavy Duty Trouble (The Brethren Trilogy) by Iain Parke

arrangements that he disappeared off one afternoon and returned having fetched his bike which he parked up in the back yard. He had to go and get it himself of course. It was another one of those unwritten rules, no one in the club would ride another guy’s bike. But the fact he felt comfortable enough to leave Bung and me alone at Scampi’s for the couple of hours it took, told me everything I needed to know about where Scampi’s loyalties lay in the club. And they weren’t with Wibble.
    ‘Thank fuck for that,’ muttered Bung looking out of the window as he rode up the track towards the house and disappeared out of sight round the side, ‘he should be easier to live with now he’s over his PMS.’
    ‘PMS?’
    ‘Parked Motorcycle Syndrome.’
    Bikes were expensive toys to buy, Harleys especially. Out of interest, and delayed teenage ambition if I was honest, while I’d been working with Damage I’d taken a trip into my local dealer to check out the current ranges, and been shocked at the prices. There was obviously good money to be made in catering to m iddle class men’s mid life crise s.
    So how on earth did a group of working guys afford them , I wondered ?
    ‘ I took out a home improvement loan to get mine ,’ Bung told me when I asked him .
    ‘ So how the hell did that work? ’ I laughed.
    ‘ Well I thought my home was improved a lot by having a Harley parked in it .’
    I could see why he would think that , I’d admit . I just wasn’t so sure his bank manager would have felt quite the same.
    Anyway, I had to resign myself to the fact that for the fores e eable future, Scampi’s fleapit was going to be home sweet home .
    Meanwhile I’d be stuck between a pair of bikers belonging to differing factions within the club . As I listened over that evening, and then the days to come, to Bung and Scroat bickering while we were cooped up , it was obvious that allied against a common enemy or not, bad blood was building with the club between the two factions.
    I was going to be lucky indeed if it wasn’t going to be my blood that ended up being spilt.
    *
    Tuesday 1 6 th February 2010
    Day two in the Big Brother house and it was something of a re prise of the first. A trip out to the M40 only this time we headed towards Aylesbury for my visit. And once again to my great initial relief, having been dropped off in the car park by the chuckle brothers, no one inside the prison seemed to question my papers or identification at all , and so I was soon following a guard who escorted me to the door of a yet another visiting room.
    ‘ Well, well, well, ’ a familiar voice sneered as I walked into the room , ‘ look who’s back from the dead then?’
    ‘Hello Charlie,’ I said , pulling up a chair .
    Charlie was much the same as I remembered him.
    Having been with Bung again for a while he brought me up with an abrupt shock.
    With Scroat it was easy. He was such an openly hostile, aggressive bastard that you couldn’t help but treat him like a living, breathing, and above all ticking, walking bomb just looking for an excuse to go off.
    The trouble with Bung was that he was amiable, so I sometimes forg o t.
    With Bung, once you got past his monosyllabic front and got him into conversation, you felt you could talk, joke even, and that was dangerous. Behind the scary exterior once you got to know him he was a genuinely nice guy, friendly, funny, loyal to his mates. But then you always had to remember that this was a guy who was a senior club member, and that meant that his loyalty to his mates went way beyond the point that most people would draw the line. He had his Bonesman tab. And as I knew from bitter experience, he hadn’t got that by being Mr Fozzy Bear 24/7 . When it came to taking care of club business Bung would do whatever it took, up to and including cold blooded murder.
    People on the outside who’d never met them often made the mistake of assuming that everyone in the club would be the same. That