Heavy Duty People: The Brethren MC Trilogy book 1 (8 page)

‘
He’s just fucking lost it,’ I said, irritated now, my head was starting to bloody well hurt. ‘The only fucking problem between him and Sharon is that he’s behaving like an arsehole.’

I
washed the blood off in the café’s toilets.

When I got back, Gyppo was gone.

The Brethren had brought their crew bus to carry their gear and so he had been bundled into the back, trussed and gagged, as Dazza and Butcher volunteered to take him home to sleep it off.

And that was the last time we ever saw him alive.

*

Sharon
found him two days later when she went back to the flat.

He
’d died of an overdose; downers, and he’d shot some smack, the coroner said, so I reckoned I had been right after all.
[7]

And so our first full dress run as a new club was for Gyppo’s funeral.

We assembled in the
Golden Lion car park again.

There is always a strong turnout for funerals. Not just from our club, we were a
ll there of course, a slow cortège, riding two abreast behind the hearse, silent, solemn and grim as we rolled through the town, a police escort ahead and behind. People on the pavement stopped to watch as we passed but it was a very different feeling from that first time, some seven or so years before.

But also from other friendly, and even not so friendly clubs.
The Brethren were there in force, Dazza leading them with their wreath strapped to the pillion pad of his Harley. Down the pecking order there were members of local sidepatch clubs and MCCs, some of them customers, some of them just friends or acquaintances. Gyppo had been a popular and well known guy.

There were even wreaths from clubs like
The Hangmen and Dead Men Riding. We might be enemies but we were still bikers who could respect each other.

His family hadn
’t wanted a church service so there was a memorial event in a hall just at the cemetery gates. He had an open casket so we could all see he was being buried in his colours, colours that he had worn for less than a day.

Sharon
had chosen the music. So the coffin left the hall for his final trip to the graveside to
Bat out of Hell
.

I gave her a lift back afterwards.

*

I
t was Gyppo’s death that shocked me out of what had become a downward spiral.

Gyppo. My friend, my brother. Was gone.

Sharon and I held each other and cried for I don’t know how long.

We n
ever actually really said anything, but we stayed together.

She moved out of t
heir flat. It had too many memories, so she moved her art and herself into mine, temporary at first but then it became permanent.

We married.

I met up with Dazza again a few weeks after the funeral. I told him that I had decided to get out of dealing. That I didn’t want to end up the way Gyppo had. I thought it was going to be a problem, telling Dazza that I wanted to quit, that it would mean trouble. But much to my surprise, he seemed quite relaxed about it.

I collected in the last of the dosh that was due to me, sold
Billy the last of my stash and he took over the connection to become Dazza’s distributor in the region. By this time I suppose it didn’t matter to Dazza if I wanted to lay off as he had plenty of other customers in the club to cover the region, Sprog for one.

I got a job
. I had good A levels that had got me into Uni and so I got work in an estate agents as a mortgage advisor of all things. I had to take out my earrings when I went to work and long sleeved shirts covered my tattoos, but then after a few years I qualified as an IFA and went self-employed. It suited me; I had a range of clients who I organised mortgages for along with insurance and some investment advice; I could work when I wanted so I could take time off for runs and club business. My job meant that I had to keep myself clean but then I got voted to Road Captain which helped.

Sharon and I used the last of m
y and Gyppo’s dealing profits as the deposit to buy a little terraced house in the west end of town. I had the money from my business to buy bikes.

I s
till saw Dazza regularly enough as we met and partied with The Brethren. In fact I noticed he’d got his Bonesman badge the next time I met him.

So
by this time, into my late twenties and then past thirty and turned thirty-one I was drifting again, only this time I was drifting out of the life, into being a part time outlaw.

The o
nly problem with that now, five years after the merger, ten years after we had first patched up, was that there was no such thing as a part time member of The Brethren.

The Brethren
wasn’t a lifestyle. The Brethren was a one hundred percent, twenty-four seven life.

The other guys and I were going to have to make a serious choice.

PART 3

26 April 1994
to 8 August 1994

N
ew clubs are either completely new, or they’re an extension of an existing club.

Damage 2008

4
              THE CHOICE

A split in a club, pitching brother against brother, is the worst thing in the world.

The following night, we, Tiny, Gut, Butcher, Popeye and me, as the officers, gathered at the club house for a council of war.

As President, Tiny led the discussion.

‘I know everyone will have their own views on this, both here in this room and across the club.’ There were nods around the table. ‘So we need to find out what these are and how we are going to deal with them, as a club,’ he said with emphasis, looking around the table at us, ‘so that, as a club, we can decide what we are going to do.’

Like most clubs we were
very democratic in our own way. We voted on new members. For anything else, in the normal course of things, Tiny would consult, take the temperature, see how the guys felt, until after a time some form of consensus emerged as to what we would do.

The trouble was that this time
, we didn’t have time. Dazza had made that clear. But still we were a club and we would need to work out how we were going to take a decision.

Next week was the May
Day bank holiday, our first big run of the year and the one I’d been planning for the last few weeks which would mean there were no prayers next week. That evening we all agreed the run should go ahead as planned but we arranged that each cohort’s prayers over the following couple of weeks would be full patch meetings on their own turf. As the Presidents of their local cohorts; Tiny for the Borders, Gut for Westmoreland, Butcher for Wearside and Popeye for Northumberland, would ensure that every member who wanted to could have their say at these sessions. Then by the end of the month we could reassemble for High Church and a formal secret ballot before the Whitsun bank holiday run at the end of May.

‘
What about the strikers?’

‘
What about ’em?’

‘
Don’t they get a say?’

‘
No.’

‘
What if they get made up?’

‘
Yes then.’

‘
Any of ’em ready?’

‘
I’d put Wibble to a vote, but not the others.’

Tiny looked around the room.
‘OK then, Wibble gets voted on but otherwise that’s it?’

No one seemed to object.

‘Agreed?’

‘
Agreed,’ we said.

‘
OK, so let’s do it. Meanwhile we need to let The Brethren know what we are doing and when they can expect to hear our decision.’

‘
We also need to know exactly what they’re offering.’

‘
Yeah, so we need to keep talking to ’em. Damage?’

‘
OK, no problem, I’ll handle keeping Dazza in the loop.’

As the only officer without a cohort to look after and lead over the next few weeks, I was the obvious choice.
As secretary-treasurer Popeye would normally be responsible for handling the vote as well but we decided that since he would have the Northumberland cohort to look after, I would take this on as well.

Meeting
up with Dazza at a café on the outskirts of town a couple of days later I was surprised to run into Billy at his table already but then Billy was obviously still working for him.

Dazza
seemed to be expecting what I had to report. ‘OK, it sounds sensible. You need to make sure that you bring all the guys with you. Like I say, we respect other clubs’ ways of doing things and I guess it’s the way we would do it ourselves.’

‘
I still don’t understand why you need us.’ I said, ‘Why d’you need The Legion patched over? You know which side we’d be on if it ever came to it anyway so why take in more members in such a big hit? And it’s not like the territory’d be worth a lot to you. You’ll be getting most of the business out of it as it is through muggins here and the like,’ I said, gesturing at Billy who was lounging against the bar next to me.

‘
Hey don’t go looking on the bad side, and don’t go putting ’em off making the offer!’ objected Billy, ‘I for one can’t wait.’

‘
Ah but he’s got me,’ said Dazza, joking. Looking round for effect he leant forwards and whispered conspiratorially, ‘Want to know the real reason?’

‘
Go on then. Like you’d tell me of course!’

‘
Holes,’ he said in mock seriousness.

‘
Holes?’

‘
Yeah, it’s simple,’ he leant back against the bar, a broad smile on his face, ‘haven’t you ever seen Casino? You want to watch it mate, it’s good stuff. Very educational. Joe Pesci, he says “there’s a lot of holes in the desert.” Holes are useful, there’s a lot of holes in those hills of yours.’

‘
Yeah right, you want us ’cos you need a body dump. What’s the matter, your crew got too fat and lazy to dig their own? Well that explains it all then.’

‘
Well we have got loads’ve holes,’ chipped in Billy.

‘
Really?’ I was surprised to see that Dazza looked genuinely interested.

‘
Yeah, there’s one just down the hill from the clubhouse in the wood the other side of the road, an old drift mine. They’re great places, go in straight for miles some of them, they’re really something.’

‘
Aren’t they all blocked off?’

‘
Some of them are, the ones by the road that anyone can see and some of the ones on private land, but there’s still a lot that are open if you know where to find them. There’s so many of them around here that nobody bothers to block them all off, they were all over the place. We used to explore them as kids.’

I nodded in agreement. I knew the one he meant, it had been one of our favourites, hidden away amongst the scree and tailings, the entrance almost impossible to see
from the road, surrounded as it was by trees. Funny, I’d never taken Dazza for someone who would have an interest in that sort of thing but you never knew with people. I suppose he was a serious guy as well and had some serious interests outside of the club and business.

‘
So you can still go down the open ones?’

‘
Yeah, generally.’

‘
Wow,’ Dazza looked impressed. ‘Well, I was joking but maybe you boys really do have something here. Must get you to show me sometime.’

‘
Yeah, no problem. They’re full of shit but it’s quite interesting.’

‘
You have to watch what you’re doing down there though,’ I cautioned, ‘they can cave in if they get disturbed too much. Still he’s right though, they’re worth having a look at. Just shows what a fucker it must have been to have to work for a living in the old days.’

Dazza
laughed and picked up another bottle of beer. ‘I’ll drink to that.’

So would I. But I still couldn
’t work out what he was after.

*

Over the next few weeks the club was a mess of politics and politicking.

Some guys clearly had strong o
bjections. ‘They’re all about money these days!’ was something that a lot of the anti guys said. Which was code for those who were worried about the degree of ‘serious business’ that might be involved.

But
there was an equally strong attraction for others, like Billy.

We were all aware of
The Brethren’s reputation for involvement in crime, particularly drugs. But as a patch club ourselves, we had a bit of insight into how it worked, we knew that sort of activity was self-selecting, the degree to which any member might want involvement was largely voluntary.

The Brethren
was always very clear that the club didn’t deal drugs. That was true enough, the club as an organisation didn’t.