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

they were all biker outlaws first, and people second, a process probably not helped by most of them telling anyone who ever dared to ask that they were outlaws first, second and last. One-percenters forever, forever one-per centers .
    But the reality was that like any other bunch of guys, despite how much they had in common, which was a hell of a lot, they were all different. Because the truth was that they weren’t caricatures or archetypes, they were people. I’d met guys I thought were great and some that I thought were real shits, not I guess that any of them would care a toss what I thought about them.
    And from what I’d seen in my time with them, none of them seemed to be living the luxury lifestyle that you might have expected if they were the international drug smuggling mafia that the cops and some of the commentators would have you believe. The reality from those I’d met was they were a mix of ordinary working stiffs, with ordinary working jobs as mechanics, lorry drivers, brickies, chippies and labourers, mixed in with some more exotica, the nigh tclub bouncers and the odd semi- professional . Damage had been an IFA for Christ’s sake. Sure there were some within the club who were dealing drugs, from those wearing the ‘You can trust me, I’m a menace’ tab which was for many an invitation to customers to do street level business, through to Damage’s bulk importation service. But I seriously doubted that many big time drug kingpins were going to want to do business wearing either a tab or a patch. How much more visible could you make yourself?
    For all that he could turn on the charm when he wanted to, be damn charismatic at times even, I was always conscious that there was a side of him , behind those eyes, that was a coldly calculating and manipulative machine. It was his MO; it had successfully got him to where he was, so there was little reason for him to change at this late stage. He could have me killed without a moment’s hesitation I knew, he was probably one of the most dangerous men I had ever met, but even so I didn’t find him personally threatening. He wouldn’t do it on a whim and he wasn’t going to just tee off without provocation, or for some perceived slight, or even just for the hell of it the way I felt Scroat was always just itching to do. He might have me hit, but if he did, it felt as though there wouldn’t be anything personal about it, it would just be business.
    Which seems an odd thing to take comfort from , but I had to say that despite everything, I did. At least it made talking to him a less full on nerve wracking experience than dealing with Scroat, or worse, Charlie.
    Charlie , Charlie , Charlie , I thought , as I sat down .
    How would you describe Charlie? Of all the club members I’d met I had to say that he was the one who struck me simply as a cold blooded, and completely ruthless, psychopath.
    Wibble would kill you if you became a problem that needed to be dealt with.
    Charlie would kill you if he felt like it.
    But the irony was, the less overtly threatening Bung and Wibble were, the more I actually needed to watch my step with what I said sometimes, for fear of dropping myself in it or overstepping the mark.
    With Charlie, I didn’t know where to start.
    He was simply sitting there, staring silently at me as if deliberately psyching me out.
    The chill came off him in waves.
    He was in Grendon, and I now wondered whether that was actually just a coincidence. As a prison its main official claim to fame was that it had the leading psychiatric unit for prisoners with antisocial personality disorders. Unofficially, the incident when a jailed psychopath beat a middle aged paedophile to death in his cell, and only failed in his reported plan to use a spoon he was carrying to eat his victim’s brain because he hadn’t managed to break open the skull by repeatedly stamping and jumping on the dead man’s head, pretty much topped the list.
    Charlie was behind bars.