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