Heavy Duty People: The Brethren MC Trilogy book 1 (2 page)

But as clubs gradually became more disciplined
these slowly disappeared so that the front of your cut off became more club focused while the club became ever more all involving and defining.

Flash
nowadays was almost always just club business; you would only wear tabs awarded to you by the club. And since tabs were club business, no outsider to a club should ever ask a club member what a particular badge meant. After all, if it was club business, it was club business. But guys within affiliated or friendly clubs were always expected to just know as though by a process of osmosis. The
Totenkopf
tab on the front of Dazza’s cut off declared, without saying anything, his membership of the feared Bonesmen.

And then it was time
and the bar emptied as the crowd of guys filed dutifully and noisily upstairs to the meeting room, leaving Wibble in the lobby on the cameras and Spud outside in the cold.

As
one of the club’s officers, by tradition I was always one of the last in. Standing at the bottom of the stairs waiting for him, I heard Tiny say something to Dazza about roll call.

‘
No problem mate. We in The Brethren of all people respect other clubs’ traditions. Just give me a shout when you’re ready.’

*

Upstairs a few moments later the guys were packed around the edges of the room. There were about three dozen of us all told. As the biggest of the founding clubs, we ex-Reivers made up the largest contingent with about a dozen of us as the Borders cohort from the valley and the dales. There were ten of Gut’s Westmorland cohort from over the border into Cumbria, another eight or so from Popeye’s Northumberland cohort from up along the North Sea coast, and finally the half dozen of Butcher’s feared Wearside cohort, universally known as the cleaver crew from Sunderland. Some were perched on a selection of battered chairs, some were standing. Billy Whizz was sprawled on the floor rolling a smoke. We could be raided at any time by the plod so the general rule was you could bring anything you wanted to the club, but only if you could swallow it if needed.

Butcher
as Sergeant at Arms pulled the doors shut and the hubbub of voices died to a hush as he strode to join me, Gut the VP, and Popeye the secretary-treasurer, in flanking Tiny, standing behind two tables facing the assembled brothers.

Prayers,
our weekly club meetings, were compulsory and unless you were down or incapacitated, if you missed more than one in a row, you could be fined. Miss more than two and you had better have a bloody good explanation or you could be looking at your patch. But since the empire covered such a wide area, each of the cohorts had their own weekly prayers. We only got together for High Church at the beginning, middle and end of the riding season, or on special occasions.

This was a special occasion,
High Church, a full dress club meeting. Attendance was compulsory for all patches. That meant everyone had to be there, unless you physically couldn’t make it like Prof laid up in hospital with a broken leg and Little Matt and Scottie, both on remand charged with GBH after a run in with The Hangmen last week.

Whether weekly prayers or
High Church, every meeting started the same way, with the roll call as Tiny as President read the register in alphabetical order and we answered.

‘
Andy?’

‘
Here,’ came a voice from the back.

‘
Damage?’

‘
Here,’ I said.

Tiny continued to ask as he worked his way slowly and regularly through the list
with replies returned from around the room until at last he got to, ‘Gyppo?’

‘
On the road,’ I intoned.

As Road Captain it was my responsibility to answer for each of the fallen brothers whos
e pictures adorned the far wall of the club room, in the same way that Butcher as Sergeant at Arms answered ‘Down but not broken’ for the guys that were inside, who were also always with us in spirit.

It was just s
trange that Gyppo was the first, in both ways.

With the
register finished and the roll call taken, we waited in silence as Tiny closed the book on the desk. I and the other officers pulled out our chairs from under the tables and sat down.

Tiny
remained standing, and seemed to take a moment to gather his thoughts before leaning forwards, knuckles planted on the table he announced, ‘I’ve got something to say.’

This was it at last. The reason for the
urgently called High Church meeting. You could feel the expectation in the air.

‘
You’ve all seen that Dazza from The Brethren is downstairs so you’ll have guessed why we’re here tonight as a club. Dazza called me last week and asked if he could speak to us. So according to our rules I need to ask you for your permission to invite a stranger to address a club meeting.’

*

A few moments later, Butcher escorted Dazza up. In silence, Gut ushered him to a space that had been made for him to stand beside Tiny who nodded in greeting, while Butcher closed and locked the doors from the inside.

Tiny waited for Gut and Butcher to resume their seats before speaking again.

‘You all know Dazza here. So I guess I’ll just let him say what he has to say.’ He turned to Dazza and with a gesture gave him the floor as he pulled out his own chair to sit down.

Dazza
nodded to him and looked out across the room, calmly meeting the guys’ eyes as they stared at him.

Dazza
had a presence. You could never deny that. And it was a very calmly delivered speech, very businesslike, almost a formal diplomatic address delivered to a hushed hall.

‘
Well firstly I’d like to start by thanking you guys for the opportunity to talk to you here tonight at your club meeting. I know you like to keep club meetings private, so do we in The Brethren, so I appreciate being invited in.’

Very polite.
Very correct. We waited.

‘
We in The Brethren have known you guys now for many years, we know that you are stand up guys that we can respect and we’ve always had good relations.’

It was like hearing the a
mbassador from a powerful country address the parliament of a smaller, but fiercely proud, friendly power. He obviously had a message to deliver and would do so courteously but firmly, and despite being alone in this room, he was calm, protected by the knowledge of what an assault on him would mean.

I was still thinking about that
Totenkopf
skull and crossbones on his cut off and what Billy had said. Being a Bonesman didn’t automatically entitle him to membership of The Freemen, otherwise he’d have been in what, six or seven years ago? But it was widely understood as being a necessary qualifier.

‘
Obviously some of us have long standing business relations with some of you, and we don’t do that lightly.’

‘
Some of us’ was a bit of a generalisation on his side of the house. I knew full well that Dazza was the main guy in the north-east charter who dealt. Since Gyppo, I wasn’t involved in any of that any more but I knew he did deal with many of our guys as a way of moving his product into our club’s territory. Billy for one, but Sprog and a number of others who either dabbled for a bit of extra bread, or dealt more seriously, mainly in whizz or blow as their main lines, together with acid and E for the dance crowds, although rumour had it that supplies of snow were starting to become much more available as well.

So what was coming here I wondered?

‘I’m here to offer you guys a choice. The world is changing, you’ve seen that. The Duckies are organising in Scotland and now we hear that they have been talking to The Hangmen.’

There was a stirring amongst the guys.
The Duckies were The Rebels MC, The Brethren’s main rivals over here. In addition to Scotland, this side of the border they had charters that ran in a band across Liverpool, Salford and over the Pennines to Leeds where they ran into The Dead Men Riding, as well as down across most of Wales. Their patch featured a screaming eagles’ head that The Brethren insultingly dismissed as looking like a duck.

The Hangmen
however were very much our regional rivals and
bête noirs
. They had charters in Lancashire and South Cumbria so we regularly ran up against them in a border war that had been simmering and flaring up at odd intervals for the best part of ten years or so now. A link-up between The Hangmen and The Rebels could make us the meat in the sandwich and potentially lead to a serious escalation in hostilities.

But over and above our local beef with them, might it also mean that a wider
war was in the offing? The Brethren were currently the top dogs nationally and they would refuse to let that change. If The Rebels absorbed The Hangmen that would strengthen their presence significantly and might even make them numerically the largest club in the country. The Brethren want to prevent that happening which meant that they might either be looking to recruit extra troops to fight, or just to ensure they retained numerical superiority.

‘
The regional independents are being rolled up – you’ve all seen it happening. So guys like you sooner or later are going to have to choose whose side you want to be on.’

So
I could see what was coming. We and The Hangmen had in effect provided buffer states between Rebel and Brethren territory. If The Rebels made moves to absorb their buffer, then The Brethren would have no option but to respond in kind.

‘
You might say why do we need to choose? Why can’t we just stay out of it, stay independent? Well that’s a mistake. You can’t.’

He
certainly had balls coming in here and saying that to the guys’ faces. If he wasn’t who he was, he would probably have been stomped. And it wasn’t that we were scared of The Brethren that was stopping anyone. It’s difficult to describe to an outsider, but it was like I say, a respect thing. Almost as though he was here to parley under a white flag. He was an envoy. So it was like a tradition, his person was inviolable as he came here to speak. If we fought them later over this we would stomp him without question if we caught him. But here and now, we would hear him out and he would unquestionably walk out unharmed.

‘
If you try to stay neutral in a war, you will end up the losers. And the losing side in the war won’t be able to help you, while the winner won’t have needed you to win or have any reason to value you.

‘
But don’t get the wrong idea here. I’m not here to threaten you guys.

‘
We don’t recruit, we recognise.

‘
And I’m here to tell you, as guys we respect, we want you on our side.

‘
So as I say, I’m here to offer you all a choice.

‘
It’s time to step up to the big time. Time to join the international Brethren world.’

Oh fuck
, I thought, so that was what was coming.

‘
We want you to patch over. We want you to join us to expand the North-east charter across the region.’

Oh fuck. The what happens if you don
’t was unsaid. Once The Brethren had made an offer like this we were either in or against them. It was not a choice being offered but an ultimatum, however quietly and smilingly delivered. It was join us or disband.

And it was always a
one time offer.

Once
Dazza had finished, Tiny stood up to formally respond. He thanked Dazza for coming out to see us and for setting out what he had to say so clearly. Obviously there was a lot to take in and we as a club would need to consider what he had said; to consult; we would need to ask the brothers inside who weren’t here tonight what they thought; we would need to come to a view.

‘
Of course,’ said Dazza. ‘That’s only natural. Now I could hang around but I know that this is something you guys will want to discuss amongst yourselves so I suggest I leave you to it. Obviously you guys know where I am if there’s anything you want to talk to us about.’

Butcher stood up to escort him from the room.

‘But before I go, there is one thing I would like to say in conclusion.’

The room waited in silence.

‘Just don’t take too long.’

The storm of noise and voices broke
after he left the room.

It was a h
eated discussion, freewheeling was always the way in the club. But immediately, it was difficult to put a finger on it exactly, there was already a bit of a change in atmosphere. The discussion was perhaps just a shade less open than it would have been normally. I just got the feeling that some people were being more careful about what they said than they would normally be. That this was serious, that the wrong words here could have serious consequences later on, of interests being assessed, of positions being considered.

Irrespective of what
we thought of him or the message, as a representative he had clearly given a good impression for his club. As the evening wore on I heard a number of people say more or less the same thing: