Heavy Duty Attitude
| Heavy Duty Attitude | |
| The Brethren Trilogy [2] | |
| Iain Parke | |
| bad-press.co.uk (2011) | |
| Rating: | **** |
| Tags: | Suspense |
Iain had written a book about The Brethren MC and how powerful they could be. He knew it was a dangerous thing to have done, whether they liked it or not, and one that had taken him part way into their world. And now it was his turn. Now a new President, with big boots to fill, was going to make him an offer he was going to find difficult to refuse, and once in the outlaw biker's world, would he ever be able to get out again? And as an outsider on the inside, with serious trouble looming, who, if anyone, can he trust?
Iain Parke
bad-press.co.uk
Also by Iain Parke
Copyright Iain Parke 2011
I, Iain Parke, hereby assert and give notice of my rights under section 77 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted at any time by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher
Front cover photograph © Alex Pascual Guardia 2011 used by kind permission
Back cover photograph © Iain Parke 2011
The Guardian
Friday 15 May 2009 – page 11
Security guard stabbing
Police are seeking witnesses after nightclub bouncer Sean Norman (42) was fatally stabbed last night outside the Aurora nightclub in Lincoln. Initial police reports suggest that Mr Norman, who was alone at the time as his colleagues had gone inside the club to deal with a disturbance, was rushed just before midnight by a group of three men wearing balaclavas and immediately set upon. Inspector James Allen of Lincolnshire police said, ‘This appears to have been a deliberate and planned attack on an unarmed man and we are appealing for anyone who saw anything that can help us identify these men to come forward and talk to us.’
A ruler must guard against two kinds of danger: one internal coming from his own people; the other external, coming from foreign powers. To defend yourself against foreign powers you need a good army and good allies. And if you have a good army you’ll always have good allies, and when you’re secure against foreign powers you’ll always be secure internally too, assuming there wasn’t already a conspiracy underway. Then, even when a foreign power does move against you, you have only to keep your nerve and you’ll survive any and every attack.
, Niccolo Machiavelli 1469–1527 From the Tim Parks translation 2009 (Penguin Books)
The Guardian
Monday 8 June 2009
Fight night clubbing
In what police fear may be an act of retaliation between rival biker gangs for the killing of Sean Norman last month, the Xanadu nightclub in King’s Lynn was burnt down last night in a petrol bomb attack.
Mr Norman was attacked by a group of men and stabbed last month outside the Aurora nightclub where he worked as a doorman and died on his way to hospital. Known by his club nickname of ‘Boom-Boom’, he was also the vice president of the Lincolnshire chapter of the Yorkshire based regional ‘outlaw’ motorcycle club Dead Men Riding MC.
The nightclub destroyed in last night’s attack however is believed by police to have links to local outlaw rivals Capricorn MC who are based in East Anglia and who have previously clashed with the neighbouring club in disputes over territory in Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire, both areas where the two clubs are believed to have competing interests.
‘We are concerned that these incidents may be linked and may indicate an upsurge in violence between the two groups,’ said Inspector James Allen who is leading the investigation into the death of Mr Norman. ‘This is certainly a line of enquiry we will be pursuing and we are already in contact with our colleagues in SOCA [the Serious and Organised Crime Agency] for information and assistance in this regard.’
Police sources have however conceded that they are disappointed in the lack of information received to date about Mr Norman’s murder. ‘It doesn’t surprise me at all as the biker gangs operate under a code of silence,’ a spokesman for SOCA said, on condition of strict anonymity. ‘Even when there is a serious attack on one of their own they will refuse to talk to the police or co-operate with us in any way, and we suspect they have put the word out amongst all their associates that no potential witnesses are to be allowed to come forward. It also doesn’t surprise me that this is centred around nightclubs. Both gangs are actively involved in providing clubs with security as control of who can enter a club means control of who can deal drugs inside.’
Speculating about where this might lead, he said, ‘The danger is that the clubs will want to deal with this direct themselves which could lead to a prolonged period of tit-for-tat violence between the two, as well as potentially incidents at which innocent members of the public get hurt. After all, it was only fortunate that no one was left in the club that was attacked last night.’
Tuesday 28 July 2009
‘I liked your book,’ he said, as we shook hands across the table.
‘Well thanks,’ I answered guardedly, as I slid onto the bench seat opposite him and sat down. It was around three months since it had come out and so just coming up to about a year since his election.
So I had my work cut out to persuade myself that it would be safe to go, but eventually and possibly foolishly, I had managed to convince my inner coward.
He would also have to assume that I would probably take some elementary safety measures. I would tell someone who I was meeting and where so they could call the cops if I didn’t get back in a reasonable time.
I might even, if I wanted to, have arranged for someone to come along to keep a watchful eye on me and raise the alarm if it looked as though things were getting ugly.
Even so, it had taken me quite a while to screw my nerves up to actually come. After all, fear of legal consequences wasn’t something that ranked very highly in his world. And the trouble with the all elementary safety precautions I could take was that they still wouldn’t mean I was safe.
I knew, absolutely and without question, that these were people who wouldn’t think twice about killing me, whatever the situation, if that’s what they had decided they wanted to do. It might only take a moment to take me out, and a moment might be too quick for anyone to intervene, while afterwards they would have all the time in the world to persuade witnesses that they might not actually remember what had happened.
So I knew I was taking a risk, perhaps even sticking my life on the line. But in the end I had decided I would go. The urge to know was too strong, and we’d agreed to meet at a motorway services, so it was about as public a place as I was going to get. Although, as I was on my way I suddenly regretted my choice as I realised that Heathrow might have been even better. The knowledge that armed police would be expected to be on patrol in the terminals might have given me even more comfort.
It was a summer Saturday afternoon, the road was busy with holiday traffic, and the car park was full as I pulled in and parked up. Families were milling around open cars feeding kids ice creams, and camped out eating sandwiches and slurping cokes at the wooden trestle tables on the grass beside the main block, to the background noise of traffic roaring by. Welcome to staycationland I thought, as I headed inside, the automatic doors swishing open in front of me as two large women in low cut tops that clashed with their orange-glow skin came out past me sucking at straws from Styrofoam cups, brown paper burger and chips bags grasped in their other hands.
I walked through to the eating in area, my eyes adjusting quickly to the relative dimness of the cool interior from the bright glare of outside. As the doors hissed shut for a moment behind me, the noise of traffic faded away to be overtaken by the noise of people echoing against the concrete cave as children ran about and a murmuring susurrus of the noise of people talking and eating competed with the piped musak and clattering cutlery.
Well, here goes, I thought, steeling my nerves.
He was easy to spot.
The restaurant area was crowded as I walked in, the noise level reaching a pitch and all the tables filled, except for across by the window on the far side where a series of booths lined the wall.
He was sat in the middle of the row, a coffee in front of him at the otherwise empty table. The neighbouring booths on either side of him were each also occupied by a single full patched Brethren with a drink in front of them, and despite the jam packed tables elsewhere, obviously no one had asked them to move, or had even decided that they wanted to sit in the adjoining booths.
He had seen me as I arrived and gave me a quick nod of acknowledgement as I walked across to him, while I could feel eyes following me across the room as people realised I was approaching his table. Was this what it was like I wondered? For them I mean. To always be on show, to always be the centre of surreptitious attention wherever you went?
We paused while he asked me what I wanted and one of the guys went off to get it, joining the queue to pay like any other law abiding citizen. He wasn’t in much of a rush and I guess he was safe enough that no one was going to nick his table while he was gone.
Wibble looked much as I remembered him from the few times we had met. The guys’ lids were all with the bikers’ Harleys parked up outside the entrance and were being guarded as always by a striker serving his time. Wibble was wearing his summer riding gear, a padded check work shirt which was now open to reveal the black and red hooped T-shirt underneath, with part of The Brethren logo showing just above the left breast. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, and over the top of the shirt was his black leather biker’s vest which I knew would have his colours on the back.
He looked a bit older that when I’d met him before but then it was what, four or five years ago now? His sharp featured face was a bit more lined than I remembered, his shoulder length mass of wild hair and short cavalier style beard was showing grey amongst the black, but he still looked wiry, whip-hard and very, very dangerous.
But then when you looked at the front of his cut, when you took in the grinning ∫∫ style skull and crossbones tottenkopf flash on his left breast that was his Bonesmen tab, and the simple red and black embroidered
Freemen
and
President
flashes ranked above it; then that would have told you he was a Menace, in every sense of the word, and needed to be treated as such, whatever he looked like.
Despite what people assume, few of the bikers actually wear any Nazi insignia these days, not because of any objection to it of course, much the reverse in fact as many of them often admire the triumph of the will image of the Nazis. An aura of disciplined ranks, marching as a body and a strength through joy reliance on violence has an atavistic and strong gut appeal. But in practice any of the clubs which has a presence in Germany has dropped anything with a swastika from its flash as their German charters simply can’t wear it without going straight to jail. The Brethren’s bonesman patch with its ∫∫ style skull and crossbones was unusual in that in its red dyed variation, so far, they had managed to get away with it.
In memory, Damage. RIP
and underneath
, LLH&R
. So why the hell I went and blurted out what I said next, I’ll never work out. Did I have some kind of death wish?
‘Well,’ I said, ‘now I’m here, do you mind if I ask you a question?’ ‘Naw, feel free mate,’ he said, lounging back, ‘What do you want to know?’
His smile seemed to stay fixed, but he leaned forward, resting his heavily tattooed arms on the table and bringing his face closer to mine as though he was going to say something in confidence and I couldn’t help but tense, wondering with a sudden mix of what – terror or regret? – if I’d just blown it with the first remark out of my mouth?