Heavy Duty People

5 THE TAKEOVER

The guys had some group photos done with their new patches. I wasn't in it of course, I was still laid up in hospital, but I've still got my copies.

It was a happy, sunny day by the look of it and they are all drawn up in the clubhouse courtyard, arms across each others' shoulders. From the upstairs windows someone had hung a huge Brethren club flag to act as a backdrop, a blood red rectangle with a white circle in the centre emblazoned with a stylised version of the club logo in stark black. There's two versions of the pictures, one from the front showing the grinning faces of the scurviest gang of thugs you wouldn't ever want to meet, and a back view, with so many guys that to get them all in there are two ranks of colours proudly showing, one standing, one kneeling.

So many faces, with, in the centre, flanked by Tiny and Butcher, Dazza and Polly, current president of The Freebooters and so de facto head of The Brethren in the country. Polly was short and stocky, his face all straight lines, planes and angles, with not a curve to be seen, and wiry short silver-grey hair like a fresh brillo pad. He was there to welcome the new guys to the firm, and to take a good look over what The Brethren had just acquired.

So many faces, and so many that wouldn't make it.

It was like any other takeover I guess. Even while we were getting our new club tattoos, The Brethren, but in reality Dazza, were clearly both talent spotting and cleaning house right from the start.

By the time I got out of hospital Butcher's boys, the hatchet crew from Wearside, had been appointed Dazza's unofficial hit squad and personal bodyguard. There had been a couple of objections from some of the older fashioned die-hard Geordies in Newcastle but Dazza had soon used his new crew to silence dissent within the existing Brethren members. There had always been a difference between Dazza and the others. They were all Brethren of course, but Dazza always seemed part of an inner circle, almost a club within the club, I guess that was partly because he was coming close to joining The Freebooters, but partly it was his air of self-control, his self-assurance, his watchfulness. Even at a party he was always serious, maintaining a distance.

Then it had been the ex-Legion's turn.

Dazza had been happy to take in the club and thereby to obtain the territory, but he clearly didn't have any personal loyalty to the club's individual members. We may have all come into The Brethren, but we certainly weren't all going to stay. If your face didn't fit, or if Dazza as judge and jury decided that you weren't going to make The Brethren grade, then you were soon going to be out. And you'd have one chance to remove your club tattoos before Butcher and his crew did it for you with a hatchet if you left in good standing. If you left in poor standing you didn't get the option.

I didn't like Butcher. I respected him, but I didn't like him, or his crew. He had the dangerous brittle intensity that seemed to mark the coke head, and Christ he was a miserable fucking hardnosed prickly bastard. I remember we were riding once and there were some kids coming the other way. Bikers wave to each other, or nod or do something to acknowledge each other, it's us against the car drivers after all.

So I remember the first of these kids on their two-fifties or whatever they were, he lifted his arm in greeting as we approached.

And Butcher just looked straight ahead, blanked them completely from behind his wrap round shades. Apart, of course, for the one finger salute. It was so fucking funny to watch. What a complete and utter arsehole he was.

But I just thought, why the fuck did you have to do that? It had been a respectful enough greeting. If it hadn't been I'd have been with Butcher like a shot in pulling round, catching them up and giving the little wankers a good kicking. But it hadn't been. It hadn't been presumptuous, it had been civil, so what was the problem?