Heavy Duty People: The Brethren MC Trilogy book 1 by Iain Parke Page A

So what’s up with it now?’
    Was this p ayback time after all these years I wondered? Had he just used me to help achieve the deal, but now he wanted me out of the club as I wasn’t into his stuff?
    ‘ Well, I’ve got news for you,’ he said, ‘Your going straight. I guess normally you’d be right. Normally no one walks out on me. But that one time it wasn’t a problem. I had Billy and Sprog to take up your end, I knew you would keep your mouth shut. And hey, you’d decided what you wanted to do and you came right in to me at the pub and said it to my face with all my guys just next door. That took balls, you could have got well fucked over that day and you knew it, but you didn’t give a fuck. You just came right in and did it and you didn’t take any shit from anyone. Tell the truth, I wasn’t keen on it at the time, but I can respect your decision and I respected the way you did it.’
    ‘ In fact now, it’s not an issue at all. Now it’s useful.’
    ‘ In a club like ours, we’ve got a lot of guys that are good with their fists. But not enough that are good with their heads the way you are. To really make it work we need both.’
    ‘ Because,’ he said, relaxing back comfortably in his chair, ‘once you’re back on your feet I want you to do something for me.’
    That had been a long speech for Dazza.
    ‘ What sort of something?’ I asked. He must know that I didn’t want to go back into the business again I thought. Not after all these years.
    He settled even further back into his chair with a grin and folded his arms. What came next was an even greater surprise.
    ‘ I want you to be my financial advisor.’
    ‘ Your what?’
    ‘ My banker. It’s what you do right isn’t it? Look after peoples’ investments for ’em?’
    I just nodded.
    ‘Well then mate, you’ve just got yerself a new client. I want you to look after my dosh for me.’
    Why did the expression ‘Oh Fuck’ keep coming to me whenever Dazza appeared on the scene, I asked myself once he’d gone.
     
    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 Freemen 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 s o 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