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Heavy Duty People

(Brethren Trilogy #1)

Iain Parke

Nov 21^st - Nov 28^th

Damage’s club has had an offer it can’t refuse, to patch over to join The Brethren.

But what does this mean for Damage and his brothers?

What choices will they have to make?

What history might it reawaken?

And why is The Brethren making this offer?

Loyalty to his club and his brothers has been Damage’s life and route to wealth, but what happens when business becomes serious and brother starts killing brother?

Told from a club member’s viewpoint it looks at what happens when ‘business’ runs up against friendship. When your club and your ‘brothers’ are your life, how far will you go for your brothers? And when does loyalty and freedom become exploitation?

“Your club and your brothers are your life” – Damage

The only reason for doing this is to tell people what I’ve learnt over the years. So keep it simple, don’t exaggerate it with the sort of crap that people always write about us. I want it told straight, just the way I’ve told you. People can either take it for what it is and like it, or they won’t, in which case they can fuck off. Damage 2008

PART 1

Monday 25 April 1994

All clubs that have ever existed are either dictatorships, run by a top guy until someone comes along and knocks them off their perch, or democracies, run on the basis of consensus. They always have been, and always will be.

Damage 2008

1 THE OFFER

I killed the engine and instinctively let the big machine sink underneath me, the long side stand sliding across the cobbles of the courtyard until it found its stable resting place. Still sitting I pushed my goggles up onto the brow of my lid, pulled off my leather riding gloves and reached under my chin to release the strap of my helmet and pull my faded chequered scarf from across my nose and mouth. Then I swung the handlebars hard to the left, feeling the bike settle again in a sort of aftershock as its centre of gravity shifted, and turned the key in the ignition to lock the steering.

Only then dismounting, I turned to face the club house, squinting against the harsh light of the security lamp above the door which threw the bikes filling the yard into a jumbled network of black shadows.

Gloves stuffed into my lid, I pulled my scarf loose around my neck as I walked across the yard towards the warmer yellow light spilling out from where the steel security door was ajar, semi- silhouetting in a cloud of cigarette smoke Spud the striker (1), who was on yard duty tonight. He stood aside as I walked up and nodded a greeting as I reached him that I didn’t bother to return. He was wrapped in a thick fleece jacket under his cut off. He would need it, he would be there all night until the meeting broke up, keeping an eye on the bikes outside and acting as security.

Strikers always had to work their passage, demonstrate their commitment to the club by taking on all the crap jobs that came their way until after a year or sometimes two, they had a chance to be voted up to full patch status, if they ever made it.

1 Across all 1%er clubs there are distinct classes of association that can lead ultimately to full membership. Potential recruits go through a period of association with the club (usually known as being a ‘hang around’ or something similar) before, if they seem suitable, a member may put them forward for consideration. They will then go through a period of trial or apprenticeship which lasts for at least one and sometimes more years before their membership is voted on. The Legion used the description striker for guys at this stage (a term also used in Australia and some US clubs) as the equivalent of a Hells Angels’ ‘Prospect’, or a ‘Probationary Outlaw’. NB: All foonotes by Iain Parke.

I import industrial quantities of Class A drugs, kill people and lie (a lot) for a living, being a British based crime fiction writer.

I became obsessed with motorcycles at an early age, taking a six hundred mile cross-country tour to Cornwall as soon as I bought a moped at the tender age of sixteen and after working as a London dispatch rider, I built my first chopper in my bedroom at university, undeterred by the fact that my workshop was upstairs.

Armed with a MBA degree, I worked in insolvency and business restructuring in the UK and Africa which inspired my first novel The Liquidator a conspiracy thriller set in East Africa. Whatever you do, don’t take it on holiday as your safari reading!.

This was then followed by my ‘Biker Lit’ crime thriller Heavy Duty People, set amongst UK outlaw bikers in the North East and Borders; which turned into a trilogy, now optioned for TV, with Heavy Duty Attitude and Heavy Duty Trouble after two of the characters unexpectedly met up again in my head and demanded I write it.

I have now found that biker books are a bit like zombies, whenever you think you have them dead and buried but they just keep lurching back to life, only dirtier, bloodier and more violent than before as a further three books have followed, Operation Bourbon, Lord of the Isles and DILLIGAF.

Today I live off the grid, high up on the North Pennines in Northumberland with my wife, dogs, and a garage full of motorcycle restoration projects, whereas explained in How To Win The Lottery, I’m working on a number of book projects.