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

There were prison guards about who’d come running if there was any disturbance . A nyway, I was betting that having gone to all the trouble between them to get me here, for whatever reason they’d really done so, Charlie, no less than Wibble , would want my visit to go off relatively smoothly. So I reckoned I had a chance, a chance to ask something I would never dare to raise outside when I would feel more exposed.
    ‘You don’t like me do you Charlie?’ I asked eventually. It was an odd way, dangerous even, to open the conversation , but the way I felt about being dragged back into this scene, for a moment, I just sort of didn’t care.
    ‘Well no shit Sherlock,’ he sneered, ‘there’s no flies on you are there? How on e arth did you manage to work that one out?’
    ‘Just call it a hunch, I said, ‘ B ut what I don’t get is why? Oh I know I’m a journalist and you and the guys don’t like us much, but I get the feeling that it’s more than that isn’t it? It feels personal to me which makes me want to know why? What’s it all about? What did I ever do to you?’
    He continued to look at me coldly. For a moment I wondered whether he was just going to launch at me, guards and consequences, or not.
    But he had a n icy self- control about him as well.
    At last he said .
    ‘You wrote a book about my dad.’
    ‘Yes, yes I did , ’ I said quietly.
    ‘And I wasn’t in it. Not a mention. Not once. Nothing.’
    He was sat perfectly still as he spoke. Emotionless , as he said it.
    What had happened to him as a kid I suddenly wondered? In all the time since I’d known him and learnt about his background from Wibble, I’d never once stopped to think about what had made him become the way he was. I’d never asked myself, not even for a moment , w hat it must have been like for him , first as a child and then as a youngster growing up as Damage’s girlfriend’s son ?
    H e ha d to have grown up around the club and its members and I couldn’t even begin to imagine what that would really have been like as an extended family. When it was good, it must have been great, like being a member of a fiercely loyal clan, surrounded by powerful role models, with a clear path laid out to becoming a man, what would be expected of you to prove yourself worthy of being initiated, of making the grade and becoming a brother warrior.
    But Charlie ’s dad hadn’t really ever been around for him of course. Damage had been on remand or in jail on and off for years, and of course he’d had his wife and daughter at home , so I wondered how much Charlie had ever actually had to do with him as a kid .
    Toad, the club’s reputed go to killer, had been his uncle, but he’d been living up North throughout his childhood, while Charlie had grown up down South, with his mum hanging around the club and eventually shacking up with a nother bloke who was to have a key role in Charlie’s life from then on.
    Scroat.
    S o Charlie had found himself wi th Scroat as his effective step dad, a thought that made me shudder.
    And then S croat had also been his sponsor as soon as Charlie was old enough to strike, very much a role as his surrogate father within the club family as well , responsible for training him until he was ready and then inducting him into the club as his counsel, his mentor, his protector, his judge and his leader ; his master .
    But Christ, strip away the outlaw romance and what must it have really been like for Charlie as he grew up? What chance had he ever actually had? He’d been a youngster exposed to a world of drugs and at times wildly wired guys, booze , and the ever present threat of potential casual and absolute violence for a word in the wrong place, a perceived slight, or sign of disrespect.
    If Scroat was your mentor and example in how to successfully make your way in this world , what lessons would you learn? God, h ow would you expect him , or anyone else if it came to it, to turn out?
    ‘No, that’s true,’