Buzzing with fear and shock, James kneed the fat Vengeful in the stomach. The blow doubled him up, enabling Dirty Dave to break loose and punch him in the face. James finished him off by bashing his head against the inside of the fridge so that it buckled a metal shelf.
James looked outside and saw injured men strewn across the tiles. The Brigands and their puppets seemed to have won the battle, but the cost had been heavy and with so many knives and weapons flying about a lot of men would be on their way to hospital, or dead.
Teeth, the Führer and several Brigands from other chapters stood in the doorway shouting orders. The floor around James was covered in blood, the shelves were shattered and there was hardly a piece of stock left on the shelves.
‘You did great,’ Dirty Dave said, giving James a massive grin and slapping him on the back. ‘Saved my arse.’
James knew his fingerprints were all over the hammer, so he took it with him and carefully avoided stepping in any blood as he left the shop. He followed Dirty Dave outside, where the Führer and the Cardiff president had taken charge.
‘I want our bikes riding out of here in formation,’ the Führer shouted. ‘If anyone gets arrested, don’t say a word unless our lawyers tell you to.’
‘What about injuries?’ Teeth asked.
‘If they can walk, stick ’em on a coach. If they look bad leave ’em for the ambulance.’
As the Führer said this a Vengeful stepped through the shattered glass in the automatic doors clutching his stomach. Teeth backed up and knocked him cold with an explosive kick to the head, as two Monster Bunch members arrived carrying an armful of VHS tapes.
‘Good work,’ the Führer grinned.
‘Found the manager and gave him a kicking,’ one of the Monsters explained. ‘He says this is all the surveillance footage. Do you want me to burn them up?’
‘No,’ the Führer said. ‘They might be useful. Take off your colours and ride to the nearest post office. Send those tapes by Special Delivery to Burnham, Smith and Greaves Solicitors, one-three-three Salcombe High Street. Don’t let the cops grab the tapes or I’ll slit your throat.’
‘Gotcha,’ the two Monsters said, before jogging off towards their bikes.
As James heard all this he looked around the car park. There were a few scuffles and a lot of Brigands smashing up Vengeful Bastard bikes.
‘Roll, roll, roll,’ road captain Vomit shouted as he came out of the doors with nearly thirty bikers in front of him.
James looked at Dirty Dave. ‘What about the formation?’
‘Just ride,’ Dirty Dave said urgently as he followed the Führer and the rest of the bikes over to where all the Brigands had parked. ‘We have to get out of the county before the police get their act together.’
James unwrapped the bloody chain from his riding glove and stuffed it inside his jacket as he ran. Quite a few bikes had been tipped over or vandalised and several Brigands’ Harleys had been mashed into a wall by a tow truck, so James was mightily relieved to find his bike intact. He grabbed his helmet from the storage box behind his seat and saddled up.
James rolled forward, then gave way to let Vomit, the Führer and several other Brigands through, but Dirty Dave stopped and waved James’ bike in out of respect for what he’d done inside.
Some bikes had already fled, but the majority had waited for the Führer and James found himself riding in the sixth row, boxed in by Brigands on their Harleys, with sixty bikes lined up behind him.
James had only managed a few mouthfuls to drink and his knuckles throbbed from the fight. He looked at the torn leather glove over his right hand and worried about the bloody length of chain and the hammer stashed under his seat. If the police pulled him over and found that, he’d have a lot of explaining to do.
30. FISH
As Julian and Nigel drove back to Salcombe, McEwen let the surveillance drop and turned towards the seafront village of Kingswear. By the time they arrived Neil had spoken to the control room on CHERUB campus, where they’d established that the boat Brixton Riots was owned and insured by a Bulgarian front company.
The BMW cruised the shore until they spotted the rusting trawler, painted in motorway-sign blue. McEwen parked up behind a line of bollards eighty metres from the boat and took a set of compact Nikon binoculars from under his seat.
‘Nobody out there by the looks of things,’ McEwen said, as his magnified view scanned the length of the boat and some rotting strands of fishing net on the shore. Then he saw a notice stencilled on the boat’s superstructure: This vessel can be hired by the day or half day for expert guided fishing expeditions call …
McEwen read the mobile number to Neil, who tapped it into his laptop.
‘Phone number belongs to a man named Johnny Riggs,’ Neil said, as he used the intelligence service central database to bring up more details on Riggs. ‘Lives around here. Credit history says he went bankrupt seven years ago to the tune of three hundred grand. No criminal record, three points on his driving licence for doing fifty-eight in a forty zone. Divorced, court order to pay maintenance through the Child Support Agency for a son and two daughters.’
‘Sounds like a straight man to me,’ McEwen said, as he continued to study the Brixton Riots. ‘Most likely a bankrupt fisherman, running a boat owned by one of the Führer’s front companies.’
‘What are you seeing?’ Neil asked.
‘I know squat about fishing boats,’ McEwen said. ‘But there’s eight boats out there. Brixton Riots is the tattiest, but the radar dish is the biggest and newest. I can see a couple of LCD screens inside the bridge and there’s a yellow thing on the back of the deck that looks like a missile or something. It’s got the name Towmaster on it and a company name, something like ANT.’
Neil tapped ANT Towmaster into his laptop. Google asked if he meant AMS Towmaster. He clicked yes and the first link on the answers page took him to a page with a picture of a yellow torpedo-like tube.
‘Advanced Marine Systems, Towmaster six-sixty,’ Neil said, reading from the screen. ‘Sensitive sonar system for marine survey. Number one for marine salvage, nautical archaeology and the oil industry.’
‘So that’s how they’re working it,’ McEwen breathed as he lowered the binoculars. ‘Big boat sails into shallow water and drops off a package of drugs, guns or whatever. Then Brixton Riots goes out, picks it off the sea bed and brings it back to shore.’
‘How do you think we should play it?’ Neil asked.
‘Miniature cameras and microphones on the boat,’ McEwen said. ‘I can sneak on board and stick them somewhere. If anyone asks, we’re a couple of tourists interested in a fishing trip. We’ll put more cameras on shore to film them leaving and arriving. We’ll watch from the car and follow them wherever they take the cargo when they land.’
‘That should cover all the bases,’ Neil said. ‘I reckon we could do with some backup from my department and some crews on standby in case of a lengthy pursuit.’
‘Can never have too much manpower on an op like this,’ McEwen agreed. ‘Speak to Ross Johnson. If he can’t do it I’ll try getting someone flown down from CHERUB campus.’
‘What about surveillance equipment?’
‘I’ve got nothing in the car,’ McEwen said, ‘but Chloe will have a suitcase filled with surveillance equipment back at the house in Salcombe.’
Neil looked at his watch. ‘One o’clock,’ he said. ‘It’s tight, but we should be able to get this sorted.’
*
Just after 1 p.m. Dante, Joe, Lauren and Anna approached the fortified entrance of the Brigands clubhouse, each dragging a shopping trolley or a wheeled suitcase behind them. Joe looked left and right before swiping a magnetic card through the entry point and giving the door a shove.
The hall inside was ghostly. Their breathing echoed across a high-ceilinged expanse tinged with cigarette smoke. The only light came from sunbeams piercing three skylights in the roof.
‘Anybody home?’ Anna shouted.
/> The four teens had made it across to the self-service bar area when a hungover man hobbled down from the bunkhouse upstairs wearing boxers and a pizza-stained vest. The quartet had no business in the clubhouse and Joe decided that attack was the best form of defence.
‘Aussie Mike,’ Joe said. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be working security? What if I’d been a crack team of enemy bikers come to burn down the clubhouse?’
Aussie Mike ran his hands through a long tangle of hair. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘I’m Joe, the Führer’s son. He told me to check up on you.’
The Führer’s name made Aussie Mike stand bolt upright and point up the stairs. ‘Ahh yeah,’ he said in his Aussie drawl. ‘Saw you coming in, didn’t I? I mean, didn’t know exactly who you were, but I’ve seen you about. Got the old shotguns up there if anyone had come looking for trouble.’
‘Cool,’ Joe said, raising his hands. ‘We’re having a little get together at my parents’ place tonight. My dad said it was OK to come by and pick up some snacks and fizzy drinks.’
‘No worries,’ Aussie Mike said, as he turned around and started sauntering back upstairs to the bunkhouse. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’
The four kids all smiled at each other once Aussie Mike was out of sight.
‘Sucker,’ Joe grinned as he swiped his dad’s security pass in a door marked no admittance and led the quartet into a sizeable stock room. One end was dominated by the silver doors of a giant fridge and freezer where the Brigands stored meat for their barbecues, but the kids were more interested in the pallets of beer cans on the floor and the spirit and wine bottles lined up on chipboard shelves.
Dante looked at the beer. ‘You said about twenty kids, so if we have four beers each we’ll need a hundred cans.’
‘More than that,’ Joe said. ‘I’ll probably drink twelve or fifteen cans just myself.’
Lauren burst out laughing. ‘What are you, a professional darts player?’
Dante laughed as well. ‘I’d love to see you drink ten beers, Joe. You’d pass out after three.’
‘Three lemonade shandies,’ Anna said, as Lauren’s eyes fixed on a line of green bottles.
‘Pink champagne,’ Lauren grinned. ‘We’ve gotta get some of that.’
‘No you won’t,’ Joe said. ‘There’s only six bottles and it’s expensive. We need to mix and match, a few trays of beer, a few bottles of this, few bottles of that. There’s so much booze here nobody will notice as long as we don’t take too much of one thing.’
Anna opened the top of her gran’s shopping trolley and slid in two pallets of beer, then began topping it off with bottles of vodka, gin and bourbon. Across the room, the boys filled their cases with as much beer as they could cram in while Lauren went into the fridge and got lots of fruit juices and bottles of Coke to use as mixers.
‘Drunken sex orgy here we come!’ Joe grinned as he zipped his case and gave it a tug that almost wrenched his arm off. ‘Jesus that’s heavy.’
Anna and Lauren had reached the same conclusion about their haul.
‘We’ll never get this lot on to the bus,’ Dante said.
‘I could steal my dad’s car,’ Joe said. ‘It’s an automatic, he let me drive it around our house a couple of times when he first got it.’
Lauren and Dante had both been trained to drive by CHERUB, but kids driving cars in daylight was dodgy and letting on would blow their cover.
‘How about I call a taxi?’ Dante suggested, as he pulled his mobile out of his jacket.
Anna giggled and gave Dante a kiss. ‘My clever boy,’ she grinned. ‘And so much less risky than stealing the Führer’s sixty-grand Mercedes.’
*
The battle at Stoke Gifford services had been horrifying, but the police didn’t have the guts or manpower to stop a hundred-strong convoy of outlaw bikers, so the slightly depleted band cruised on towards the Rebel Tea Party.
At Swindon, Vomit led everyone a couple of miles off the motorway for an unscheduled stop in a Tesco car park. The bikes queued for petrol, while women from one of the coaches headed into the supermarket and cleared the shelves of sandwiches, Scotch eggs and individual fruit pies.
James found himself the centre of attention during the impromptu car-park picnic that followed. Dirty Dave relayed the story to a circle of bikers, their women and a few kids.
‘Thought this spiked hammer was going through my skull,’ Dirty Dave explained. ‘But this hard little bastard comes in and floors him. Then we took out four more of those pansy-arsed girl-guide Vengefuls, didn’t we champ?’
Dave put his arm around James’ back and gave him a hug that sent his Mr Kipling’s cherry slice spilling out of its foil dish and spinning towards the tarmac. James couldn’t actually remember Dirty Dave doing any of the fighting, but he let this detail slide.
‘This kid’s gonna be a kick-ass Brigand some day,’ Dirty Dave said. ‘I’d bet my own cock on it.’
‘Small bet,’ one of the women shouted.
Everyone laughed, but James was surprised to find a serious looking Führer pulling him out of the circle.
‘What’s up?’ James asked nervously.
The Führer smiled. ‘Sounds like you showed class back there, but we don’t want you getting nicked. Have you got the chain and hammer?’
James pulled the chain out of his pocket. ‘The hammer’s stashed in my bike.’
‘So you’re smart and tough,’ the Führer nodded. ‘Never leave a weapon at a crime scene. It’ll have fingerprints and DNA all over it. I want you to hand them over to me.’
‘What for?’ James asked.
‘The breakdown truck’s gonna take a little detour. Friend of a friend runs a scrap yard not far from here. He’s gonna burn up or melt anything incriminating.’
‘Right,’ James said. ‘I’ll go get them.’
‘You need your riding gloves but they might have blood on them, so throw ’em on the fire when we get to the Tea Party. There’s stalls there selling all kinds of biker kit. I’ll sort you out if you’re short of money.’
‘Right,’ James said. The Führer was evil, but he couldn’t help admiring the man’s leadership. While other bikers bragged and ate pork pies, the Führer was like a machine, working out the police’s strategy, tracking down and destroying evidence and making calls to his legal team, back in Salcombe.
‘Most importantly, kid,’ the Führer said, wagging a finger in James’ face, ‘if the cops pull you over, keep your mouth shut and wait for our lawyer. They’ll never prove you didn’t act in self defence unless you let something stupid out of your mouth.’
‘I did act in self defence,’ James pointed out.
The Führer made a crooked smile. ‘Well I won’t hold it against you, just this once.’
31. CONTESTANT
James had sweat-soaked clothes stuck to his skin and an aching arse from six hours in the saddle as they closed in on the Rebel Tea Party. An AC/DC tribute band belted out from a stage several hundred metres away as bikes snaked down a country lane, with the surrounding fields enclosed by an aluminium fence.
Fluorescent-jacketed cops filmed with video cameras at the roadside. Vomit had warned everyone to expect a stop-and-search on arrival, but it takes a lot of officers to confront a hundred-strong motorbike gang and the Cambridgeshire police were more interested in having the Rebel Tea Party go off smoothly than in questioning a volatile group about an incident in another force’s jurisdiction.
The Tea Party was an annual event organised by four London-based motorcycle gangs. What had started twenty years earlier with a few hundred bikers in a London dance hall was now Europe’s largest motorcycle festival, held on a disused RAF airfield. It was spread over two days and attended by more than twenty-five thousand riders and enthusiasts.
Like everything else in the world of outlaw motorbike gangs, entering the Tea Party was a hierarchical affair. While the public parked cars and bikes outside, threw away all food and drink and t
hen queued obediently for a security search, the Führer led his party through a specially opened side gate on their bikes.
The area nearest the entrance was a broad strip of tarmac lined with food stands and fairground rides. The Brigands pulled off their helmets and put on a show, gunning throttles and blasting horns as the crowds parted to let them through.
A greasy Rotterdam Brigand came out of the crowd and handed the Führer a Nazi flag, which he took with great enthusiasm. Cameras popped and camcorders swung towards them as an announcement boomed over the PA system:
‘Ladies and gentlemen, let’s give a warm Tea Party welcome to Brigands M.C., South Devon, Bristol, Cardiff, Monster Bunch M.C., Dogs of War M.C. and the Branding Irons!’
Eighty per cent of the crowd comprised ordinary motorcycle fans and their families, but among them were outlaws from all the major national and international gangs. Friendly outlaws waved fists and clapped, members of weaker gangs crossed arms and nodded respectfully, while enemies gave the finger, thrust crotches and screamed abuse.
After parading the three-hundred-metre strip, the Brigands and their associates peeled off and gathered speed as they followed the signs to Outlaw Hill. This huge expanse of baked grass was divided into campgrounds for all the different gangs. The higher your status the higher the ground you camped on. The Brigands deferred only to one mighty international gang, who marked the top of the hill with a line of two hundred Harleys and an air-conditioned mobile clubhouse.
The Brigands’ spot was already well populated, with members from London, the north and various foreign chapters, plus several hundred guests from their respective puppet gangs. A prospect handed James a necklace with a laminated badge reading Brigands M.C. – Guest and he rolled his Kawasaki into a row of bikes belonging to friends and hangers-on.
The Brigands’ Harleys lined up to form a perimeter wall as well as an exhibition for any civilians brave enough to venture up Outlaw Hill.