Free Outlaws: Inside the Violent World of Biker Gangs by Tony Thompson

Link was taken out to see Snoopy who lived in a static mobile home out on the moors. The Scorpio president could immediately see just how stressed he was and came up with a novel solution to help him relax. He handed Link two pump-action shotguns and a bag of ammo and told him to go out and enjoy himself.
    ‘We’re in the middle of nowhere out here but there are loads of old abandoned cars and fridges and other bits that people have dumped. Go out and de-stress yourself. Just don’t shoot anything that has a face.’
    Link went out with the two guns at his hips and shot everything and anything he could see. He had a whale of a time and before he knew it had already gone through half a box of shells. By the time he returned to the caravan, he felt much more relaxed for having had the experience.
    For Link and the rest of the Pagans, one of the best things about the Scorpio gang was the widespread availability of top-quality drugs among virtually all its members. All bikers love to party and drugs that give you a lift and allow you to party harder for longer are firm favourites. Because of this, virtually every one percenter MC has a member or two with the ability to ‘sort out’ any one who needs a few party favours.
    When deals take place among club members, they are done as close to cost price as possible. Although some trading might go on with outsiders, this is usually just a way of subsidising the cost of drug use within the club. But the Scorpio had taken things to the next level. The Pagans knew the Scorpio were increasingly selling speed and cannabis to people outside the club and doing a brisk business in LSD and cocaine, but none of the Warwickshire gang could ever have imagined the true scale of the operation that the Cornwall gang had put in place.
    In less than a year, the Scorpio had managed to corner the entire market for cannabis, amphetamines and LSD in the West Country, particularly Plymouth, using strong-arm tactics to drive other suppliers out of business, and earning themselves more than £1million in the process. The gang made casual use of extreme violence both to ‘persuade’ those who failed to pay their drug debts and also those who dared to purchase their supplies from elsewhere. Potentialwitnesses were intimidated into keeping quiet. Way beyond occasional party favours, the gang had moved into the drug trade on a transcontinental scale.
    Under the guidance of Snoopy and vice-president Gary Mills, gang associates purchased large quantities of amphetamine powder and cannabis resin in Amsterdam, paying for them using money orders from Thomas Cook. Packets of the drug were then concealed in false compartments in a fleet of specially adapted Ford cars and driven through customs.
    From a safe house in Rainham, Essex (far away from the gang’s home territory), the drugs were then parcelled up in brown paper, labelled ‘motorcycle parts’, and shipped around the country using British Rail’s Red Star service. Although the Scorpios were running the entire scheme, the gang employed a number of non-members to run the safe house and courier the drugs around – thus distancing themselves from potential prosecution.
    The network had been operating successfully for almost eighteen months and would have carried on, had it not been for a single incident that finally brought it to the attention of the police. Shortly before Christmas 1985, Snoopy, former Royal Marine Commando Michael Harley, who was the club’s sergeant-at-arms, and club associate William Burgess smashed their way into a flat in Stonehouse, Plymouth, in order to carry out a vicious assault on a certain Stephen Graddon who they believed had attempted to rip them off.
    All three were dressed in full combat gear and wore masks, but they had failed to do their homework properly – Graddon was out. More to the point, the man they found,Andrew Rotton, knew nothing of their drugs empire. When what Rotton would later describe as ‘three masked