Heavy Duty People: The Brethren MC Trilogy book 1 (35 page)

MR
              Listen, the guys I knocked off, they were all in the game you know? They all knew what they were into, what the risks were. No civilians. They were all guys that would have done it to me if it had suited them, so no, I don’t regret any of them.

IP
              Did you hate Dazza?

MR
              Hate Dazza? No.

IP
              But he had killed your friends.

MR
              Yes he had. And I resented that. But really it was business.

I didn’t have to like it, but I could understand why he’d done it.

I could respect it.

IP
              And Polly?

MR
              He was different. I was glad he got done.

IP
              Why?

MR
              He was just a cunt.

IP
              So you don’t regret any of the deaths?

MR
              Well there is one.

IP
              Which?

MR
              The dog, Wolf. [Pause]

He was great. I really liked him y’know?[Shakes his head]

I remember him looking up at me as I aimed.

Pulling the trigger. That was the hardest thing to do.

I still regret that I guess.

IP
              But that’s it?

MR
              Yeah, I guess that’s it.

*

Martin ‘Damage’ Robertson was found stabbed to death on 17 July 2008. He had just celebrated his 45th birthday in jail and left behind his wife Sharon and their daughter Lucy, aged seven, a pretty little girl that I met once on a prison visit, dressed in a black and red stripped T shirt with the words ‘
My Daddy’s a Menace’
across the front.

Despite his reputation and the acts that he confirmed to me he had taken part in
during our meetings and discussions, I have to say that right from the outset I came to respect him as a person and to a degree I think he wrote his own epitaph in the excerpt quoted above,
No bullshit from us.
While I will never now know why he decided to speak in 2008 as he gave no clue that anything was up, in many ways I guess this book is his last will and testament.

But if it is, one question has to be, so is it true? It
’s a question I have had to face as I have edited these pages for publication. And on balance I think it is, but that equally it’s not a complete truth.

It
’s striking, for example, that not only did he really only want to talk about the crimes for which he had already been convicted, on looking back through my notes, the only people he ever mentioned in connection with any crime, from Adrian ‘Gyppo’ Leverton and Peter ‘Tiny’ Gresham or William ‘Billy Whizz’ White, through to Darren ‘Dazza’ Henderson were all dead (even Stuart ‘Popeye’ Shaw who died of a heart attack while running an ‘Iron Man’ marathon in South Africa in 2005). So nothing that he ever said to me ever implicated anyone living in any crime other potentially than Steve ‘Wibble’ Nelson.

Even though I now think that he had only asked to see me, and was only speaking to me because he must have discovered that other
s were moving against him, and he would have known who they were and how that was going to end, he never once spoke about it. Instead in the end he kept to the code of silence that he believed in, never once implying that anything was wrong.

*

He was buried in August 2008 in Enderdale.

It was
a full dress, full turnout Brethren funeral. Amongst a large but restrained police presence every Brethren member in the country that was not inside or in hospital made it, and charters from around the world sent representatives to pay their respects, many anonymous behind their scarves and skull printed bandannas. So, together with contingents from other friendly clubs, on the Saturday morning of the funeral the village was completely overrun with parked bikes, the small central market square filled with serried ranks of The Brethren’s parked up Harleys, guarded as always by the strikers working their way towards their colours, and leaving only a thin driveway for the flower decked hearse.

After the service the
huge convoy of bikes roared off through the village, a thunderous torrent of noise tearing up through the country lanes and out across the moors to the clubhouse where the surrounding field had become an impromptu tented camp, to kick off a party and wake that lasted until dawn the next day.

At around about
midnight Police reported that the revellers blocked off the road below the clubhouse for an impromptu set of races. Petrol was poured over the bikes’ back wheels and set on fire as the riders gunned the engine, front brakes locked on and span the back wheels in a roar of flame, exhaust noise and choking tyre smoke. It’s an old drag racing technique used to get the tyre good and hot and sticky for maximum grip, to launch away from the line when the Christmas tree lights turn and you dump the clutch and the brakes and hang on for dear life against the savage gut wrenching acceleration of a big bike at full power. But of course for show, the more petrol that’s used, the more spectacular it is and local witnesses reported the sight of the flaming back wheels spinning crazily into the darkness.

A
t some point during the night, police sources later learnt that The Freemen met to elect a new President. Based on the northern powerbase that Martin had established within The Brethren in the UK and the apparent control of the main organised element of drugs trafficking carried out by some of the club’s key members, Martin was then succeeded as leader of The Brethren in the UK by Steve ‘Wibble’ Nelson.

*

No one has ever been charged in connection with Martin’s death.

The police say that no one has been prepared to cooperate with their enquiries.

I think that’s the way he would have wanted it.

When men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition called war, and such a war is of everyman against everyman.

For
… the nature of war consists not [only] in actual fighting; but in the known disposition thereto during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary.

Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes
(modernised spelling)

Iain Parke,
London, 2009

A
uthor’s note: fiction and respect

All characters, events and in particular the clubs named in this book are fictional and any resemblance to actual places, events, clubs or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. None of the views expressed are those of the author.

I have had to ascribe certain territories and names to my fictional club charters, for which I apologise to both the 1%ers in those areas and any clubs with similar names.

While I
’m a biker, I’m not, and never have been, a member of any 1%er club. To the extent that over the years I have met and talked to 1%er club members, I have found them to be intelligent guys who have lived by the motto which is repeated by the central character in this book, ‘if you show respect, you will be treated with respect.’

So I hope that any 1%er who reads this book will feel that
, while this is obviously a work of crime fiction which therefore has to involve some crime, it treats them and the lifestyle seriously and with respect
.

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