Heavy Duty People: The Brethren MC Trilogy book 1 Read Free Page A

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