Heavy Duty Attitude (15 page)
‘But it was quiet in the top clubs’ world,’ he insisted, ‘they were getting along, they each had their territories. Sure there was the odd bit of friction but everyone was making money. And right up until Boom-Boom got his, that included the bigger regionals like Capricorn and Dead Men Riding. And if there was one thing that the existing senior big clubs could agree on, it would be that they wouldn’t want a new hustling crew like The Mohawks setting up on UK turf.’
‘So if they were taking each other out why did Capricorn and Dead Men Riding bury the hatchet and join up to rock the boat?’ I asked out loud.
‘Even without that weekend, just the patch over itself would guarantee trouble. Capricorn and Dead Men Riding knew that, knew that they would be attacked just for changing the scene, so why do it?’ he continued, dragging it out.
‘Well, we’ve been doing some fast digging since then, playing catch up on these shits, and now, like I said, we think it was because they were provoked.’
‘Peterborough, Grantham, Lincoln; anywhere there’s a town big enough to support a club or two, and both Capricorn and Dead Men Riding had interests in it.’
‘Interests?’ I asked out loud.
‘Security, doors, clubs, raves, all the usual crap.’
It made sense. Controlling the doors was one of the key ways to move gear anywhere in the country. If you had the bouncers, then you were in charge of who came in, which if you were dirty would naturally include your dealers, and who stayed out which would mean anyone else. With Capricorn being into E and acid, the dance scene was a natural fit for them.
‘No, not really. The two clubs have rubbed along together alright generally. Sure there’s been a bit of grief between them occasionally, but for the most part they had it divvied up nicely between them and we reckon that in any event Capricorn were Dead Men Riding’s main wholesalers.’
‘So Dead Men Riding wouldn’t want to tackle Capricorn because they would lose their main source of stuff…’ I said.
‘And Capricorn were happy to leave Dead Men Riding be as it gave them a route over into Leeds for their gear,’ he replied.
‘A marriage made in Heaven.’
‘Whatever.’
‘So then,’ I asked, ‘if they were both so chummy then who…’ ‘Stuck Boom-Boom?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m coming to that.’
‘And the nightclub bomb?’
‘That too.’
Cambridge, I thought, so that would have been Thommo and his boys. Had Thommo decided to make a bid to expand his territory, his influence, and his income? That could make sense from what I had seen of him. I guessed that the triumphant conquest of a new producing territory, for the club, and everything which would come with it, was a prize that he would be keen on, one that would help him raise his profile and his standing within the club.
To the victor the spoils, I thought.
‘So what happened?’
‘It was just low level stuff to start with. Punch ups, beatings. The Brethren told them how it was going to be from then on, after which they just tried to enforce it and anyone who didn’t toe the line, didn’t want to fit in with the new arrangements, well they were fair game as far as The Brethren were concerned.’
‘Boom-boom?’
‘Boom-boom and then bang.’
So it hadn’t been a beef between the clubs, Bob was saying. Instead it had been The Brethren putting the squeeze on both clubs with the hit and the arson. And if you put enough pressure on something, occasionally what you got was fusion, and a bloody great bang.
‘I’ll tell you something I have found out that your lot haven’t picked up.’ ‘Oh, what’s that then?’ he asked.
‘You know that shooting in Leeds, the one a couple of days before the run?’ ‘Yes.’
‘It’s connected.’
‘Connected? How?’
‘The bloke that was killed, Jeremy Arnold…’
‘What about him?’
‘He was a new Cambridge patch, went by the name of Chugger. He’d only just been made up which I guess is the reason no one’s made the link so far at your end.’
‘Christ, so that was the answer then!’
I was confused by that.
‘Answer? Answer to what?’ I demanded.
‘DMR and Capricorn were putting out feelers after the squeeze started. They were trying to speak to the powers that be in The Brethren, they sent at least one, maybe more messages asking The Brethren to call the dogs off, and get Cambridge back in check before it got too late…’
‘Before it came to war you mean?’
‘Yes. And that last week they were waiting for a response.’
‘But the Brethren didn’t make it? And then Chugger from Cambridge pitches up in Leeds looking to put the squeeze on someone over a drug debt and Dead Men Riding and Capricorn take that as their answer?’
‘Looks like it doesn’t it?’ he agreed.
‘Jesus! So then what?’
‘Well Capricorn and Dead Men Riding are regional clubs, big in their areas but they would have known they would be no match for The Brethren with their national and international network and resources if it came to all out war.’
‘Got it in one. If you find yourself getting into a fight with The Brethren and you haven’t got the numbers or the access to the hardware they have, what are you going to do? You’re going to look to team up with some big hitters yourselves aren’t you, someone who you know wants an in to the country and someone who has access to the heavy gear that you don’t have, but are going to need to take on The Brethren.’
The Guardian
Tuesday 18 August 2009
Takeover Attempt Backfires
Iain Parke, Crime Correspondent
Police sources believe a dispute over territory lies behind Sunday the 2nd’s attack during which six people were killed as well as a fatal shooting in Leeds the week before.
Senior officials within SOCA point to an apparent attempt over the last few months by The Brethren charter in Cambridge to muscle in on the security and door trade in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire as being the spark which lit the fuse leading directly to the violence at the Brethren’s event.
‘This region was regarded as belonging to local independent clubs: Capricorn MC of East Anglia and The Dead Men Riding MC of Yorkshire,’ said a spokesman. ‘Initially it was feared that the recent upsurge in trouble, which started with the murder in May of Archie ‘Boom-Boom’ Norman, vice president of the Lincoln charter of the Dead Men Riding, outside the Aurora nightclub in Lincoln where he was in charge of security, followed by the firebombing of a Capricorn MC linked nightclub in King’s Lynn, was the result of a local power struggle between the two clubs.’
However according to police sources, it now seems that the attacks were actually conducted by members of The Brethren who had decided to move in and take over and there is speculation that the fatal shooting in Leeds on 28 July of Jeremy ‘Chugger’ Arnold, a recently made up member of the Cambridge charter of The Brethren may also be linked to the dispute.
‘But the local clubs chose to stand and fight rather than give up their ground,’ said a police spokesman, who believe that it is this action which then led local clubs to merge, and to form a UK charter of The Mohawks so as to gain access to the support of a rival internationally organised club in their struggle with The Brethren.
‘We think that’s where the weaponry used came from,’ said the spokesman, although as yet the police do not seem to have been able to identify any individual suspects in the assault, while a spokesman for The Mohawks MC charter denied the club had any involvement.
‘People talk about bikers like us having a war with other clubs but it’s not like that at all. Sure there’s rivalry and we are proud of our colours and occasionally there’s a bit of aggro or a punch up, but it’s nothing like it says in the papers. The people who write this crap, they do it to sell newspapers, they like to make out we’re some kind of mafia but it’s just not true. We’re just ordinary guys who like riding our bikes and our club, but people don’t write that since it doesn’t sell papers.’
Meanwhile, following the massive turnouts for the dead bikers’ funerals at the weekend, behind their steel shuttered clubhouse doors, the outlaw biker scene has returned to being eerily quiet.
Wednesday 19 August 2009
I was on the phone to Bob again.
‘So how’s the war going then?’ I asked.
‘Oh shit!’
‘What’s up?’ he asked.
‘It’s Bung,’ I told him, almost whispering as I continued to watch out the window to where Bung was sitting, one spider’s web tattooed elbow hanging out of the car’s open window in the sunshine, one burly hand in a fingerless black leather glove flat on the roof of the car, his black shades trained on my front door, ‘he’s turned up outside my house.’
The Brethren dropping by with no notice was not a development I was very comfortable with, particularly given what was happening at the moment. I didn’t want to become a casualty in their war.
‘Well go and see then.’
‘OK, but hang on will you?’
‘I’ll be here.’
Cautiously I stepped outside, darting looks either way along the street, just in case there was something wrong, and leaving the front door open behind me for a fast retreat.
Bung waiting in the car watching me expressionlessly as I came down the path and leaned down to talk to him through the open window.
‘You’re wanted,’ he said without preamble.
‘What for?’ I asked.
Behind the caveman beard he almost cracked a smile.
‘Witness for the prosecution,’ he said sardonically, ‘get in.’
‘Fair enough.’
And I went back inside to get my shit together first. Lock up and stuff. ‘OK, but don’t take long.’
‘You could put it that way,’ I said glancing away again as we headed out into the ordinary traffic, ‘So where are we going Bung? Is this another mystery tour?’
‘Nope,’ he said, ‘clubhouse.’
‘To see Wibble?’
‘All the guys. Wibble, Scroat, Toad.’
‘Toad?’ I’d heard of him but never met him.
‘From up north.’
‘Oh, OK.’
But then to my surprise twenty minutes or so later, instead of ducking off the North Circular towards Wembley, Bung kept going. I had a sudden sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach about where we were heading, it didn’t take a genius to work it out.
‘M11?’ I asked with a sinking heart.
‘Yep,’ he said.
*
I hate the M11. It’s one of the most boring bits of road in the country.
One of the weirder moments of my riding career was coming down it one weekend on my own back when I had a seven-fifty in the days before the Guzzi, travelling mile after straight mile of seemingly endless and deserted road. I don’t know whether it was just the boredom or whether I was still a bit stoned after the night before’s party but it seemed as though I was going nowhere. All sense of progress was just falling away and it felt as though I was going slower and slower, crawling almost to a halt, the tarmac unmoving beneath me until eventually I put my feet down off the pegs and flat onto the road so convinced was I that I was still.
Only to be jerked awake by the near tank-slapper that ensued as my boots got kicked from underneath me at nearly ninety miles an hour knocking the bike sideways with a shock as for a moment my balance was thrown all over the place. The bike was fishtailing wildly and with an instinctive and desperate twist of the throttle and a stamp down on the gearshift I gunned the already screaming engine, the tacho zooming into the red zone at nine, ten thousand rpm and threw myself down, zits to the tank and elbows tucked in, pushing my weight forward as I wrestled the bars back under control. With my heart in my mouth, the bike hung on the edge for a moment that felt like forever, and then the torque snapped in, lifting the bike’s head and trying to fling it to either side as the back hunched down and then shuddered back into line as I accelerated wildly, touching the ton before I wound it back down again and retired my shattered nerves to turn off at the next exit and go looking for the first lay-by burger van for a coffee, fag and bacon sarni.
I’d never been back on it since, in or on any form of transport.
