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

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.
    The y always admitted that individual members might deal drugs, they could hardly do otherwise really as again, that was true enough. But they always maintained the distinction for public consumption, that individual members dealing drugs wasn’t club business.
    But what was really left unsaid was that , just the way it had been for us when we’d first patched up all those years ago, it was the club’s reputation, the club’s patch, which enabled those people to deal drugs. The Brethren patch was a brand that members could use to make money. As Gyppo had explained to me all those years ago when he first took me to meet Dazza, for anyone who wanted to buy stuff it was safe to approach a member with a Brethren patch because you knew their reputation, that no plod had ever infiltrated them, so you knew they were safe to deal with.
    So for the guys at the top of the tree, or anyone entrepreneurial who wanted to try, membership of the club could be a route to making serious money, with a willing pool of bodies amongst the lower ranking patches and support club members after some easy money, together with