CHAPTER 41
That didn’t last long, of course. While the seeming pause in hostilities held, we buckled down once again to pick up the cases we had been dealing with before the morgues started to fill with dissected bikers. Our out-of-area role meant an increasing number of cases being referred to us, so much so that Bev had insisted we appoint what he called a triage officer, a role that dropped neatly into Ellen’s lap. Sammy, feral for once in the sense of blackly humorous, gave his own definition of ‘triage’.

“Mates, it’s what they do at Casualty, isn’t it? Can wait; need to be seen soon; need to be seen at once. I don’t want that; I want it done army-style. Their categories are: need to be seen immediately, need to be seen soon and not worth trying cause they’ll be dead soon. You will find cases that need attacking right away, and some that will repay a steady investigation, but I want you to bin all the fishing expeditions and the ones that really won’t run. Put your hand down, Jonny Boy. This isn’t junior school”

“Fishing expeditions, Sammy?”

The ferality went up a notch or ten.

“Politics, son. We are going to get some snide schemers who want Joe Celebrity looked at, or Fred Politician, on the off-chance they dropped a bollock some time in the past. Digging for dirt that might be there, rather than dealing with real stuff. Witch hunts, in short, and I want shit like that binned as soon as it comes in. Pass it to me, and I will draft the sod-off letters. Ellen, you’ve got the right sort of mind for that—you do detail-to-overview well. Candice?”

Office Blonde’s head jerked.

“Yeah?”

“You’re the devious one. I want a list of excuses for me to use. Sensible ones, aye?”

He waited for the sniggers to die, his voice much softer when he spoke again.

“Yeah, yeah. Just one thing, mates: the war is not over. It may have calmed down for a while, but I do not believe it is in any sense over. It is going to flare up again, so I want things compartmentalised. No running three things at once. Stick to one, so if we get another sod on a slab we can start from the front foot”

I saw his point, but then my own work just then was revolving about free association and wall charts. I was also working on a pub and club list, and in many ways I was reminded of my work listing the gay bars in Cardiff before we took out the Evans clan and their friends.

There were a number of reasons the LGBT community chose their socialising and partying places, and there were parallels in the biker scene. Gay men drank in pubs that other gay men used because they felt safe, or because they might meet someone, or simply because the entertainment on offer was to their taste, but there was also exclusivity.

When I had spent weeks visiting gay venues seeking witnesses, I had come across more than a few where I was initially looked on with open hostility, and the reasons were linked. I was a woman in a men’s place, or I was a straight woman in a lesbian bar, or I was simply heterosexual, a breeder, not one of Them. The bikers, in their way, were the same.

They had their pubs, and the clientele was a mixture of bikers and wannabes, with the odd older drinker tolerated and indulged as a sort of mascot. The juke boxes played their music, the décor was to their style, the drinks were beer and Jack Daniel’s rather than white wine and cocktails, and Joe Straight was none-too-subtly discouraged from entering. Each in their own way, the two groups created and policed their own little worlds.

The first of the saner rallies was starting just then, after the masochistic lunacy of the Dragon up in the North. Ride your bike to a venue, in February, pitch your tent in a muddy field, in February, and then drink large quantities of alcohol before trying to sleep in said tent and then riding home the next day. In February.

Bugger that for a game of bikers was my view. What I was learning to call the Rally Scene is apparently quite a large subculture, with its own rules and traditions, and somehow carries on in parallel with the rest of the world. Some ‘rallyists’, if there is such a word, are dilettantes, dropping in and out of the scene, whereas others are fully into the whole thing as a lifestyle. The rallies are mostly run by MCCs as opposed to the sort of club we were investigating, but the MCs like to show their faces and remind the ‘lesser beings’ who is top dog. The major worry for us was that both clubs involved in the killings would pick an event to play OK Corral games at, which would drag families and ‘civilians’ into the mess in much the same way as the arson games were doing. I spent quite a while with the LIO and a terminal logged onto the rally website, which went by the depressingly obvious title of ‘Big Bollards’, collating local events and plotting them on the chart of partisan clubs. I was looking for flashpoints, hopefully before they caught a spark.

While the team carried on vetting, triaging (is there such a word?) and coming up with the occasional extra card to put up on our wall, I sat with our remarkably pallid LIO (“Call me Justin”) working through Big Bollards. The lifestyle depicted in the multitude of photos looked a happy one, if somewhat repetitive. The participants always looked well-rounded physically, usually wearing woolly hats and rather a lot of layers, even in the height of Summer. There were endless shots of odd motorcycles, tables of distances travelled and times taken to eat odd concoctions or perform arcane tasks, but the people in the pictures all seemed to be smiling. There were an awful lot of pewter tankards on view, and all in all it seemed very different to the barely-restrained violence I had felt in Pig and his ‘brothers’

Someone had been using the word ‘civilians’ about possible bystander victims of the MC’s war, and here it fitted. The closest sort of event I could remember attending, at least in terms of mood, was a real ale festival. There were the same slightly dippy grins and prominently displayed drinking vessels. Most definitely ‘civilians’.

“Diane?”

“Yes, Justin?”

“What about this one?”

He had a listing for the Gwydr Gwag MCC, based near Castell Coch. There were the usual attractions listed, including a hog roast and a smoking annex to the nearby pub, but no site map or any indication at all as to where the rally might take place. There was an address, though, and I resolved to excavate the sideboard drawer when I got back and try and find my cheque book.

Who the hell still uses cheques?

There was another rally on the same weekend, run by the Dragon Drinkers MCC, and that one said ‘usual site’. Five minutes on the net found the place, a field off the A48 to the West of Cowbridge. That brought back a couple of memories involving a Ford Transit, but I wrestled them down. I couldn’t see why Justin had gone for the Empty Glass lot rather than the Reptile Suppers, so of course I asked.

Well, I couldn’t say Alun hadn’t given me plenty of bloody warning! I got what felt like six hours’ worth of information crammed into what felt ‘only’ like three hours of lecture that, according to my watch, actually took no more than twenty minutes, all concerning MCs, ‘Black and Whites’ and their respective zones of control.

“So you see that the smaller patch clubs around Cowbridge are all tied in with the Culhwch while the area round Castell Coch is where they follow either the local Angels or the Brawdoliaeth. From what we know, the Culhwch have more muscle, so if something is going to get violent, I would guess it will be at the Castell Coch one, if at all. And at the moment the body count is two to one against them, so they will be the ones to be looking to settle a score”

I couldn’t fault his logic, and when we got a tip through the Prison Service grapevine that Plans Were Afoot, we were put on alert. I had received my ticket and directions to the other rally only the day before.

Sammy was as direct as ever in the briefing.

“Two weeks from now there will be two motorcycle parties, or rallies as they call them. Di has nailed the sites for us, and the LIO has done some Intel-woo that says it will be a higher possibility that any open warfare will be at this place… here”

We were back to the wall map I had helped cut and paste together what seemed like a century before, with an extra flap added to cover the extra area we needed.

“Mates, this is Efail Isaf, just down from Llantwit Fardre. This field here… There is a passing place immediately outside what we suspect will be the site entrance, but the access road is really, really tight. If we want to get in sharpish, it will be difficult. If we HAVE to get in sharpish, it will be a nightmare. Now, I want a package for the Brass. Intel is now on file from multiple humint sources that something is most definitely cooking for that weekend. We also have reliable reports that firearms have been delivered from at least one major English MC. That is for this room only, mates, and sorry to all of you for sitting on this one. Here is the kicker.

“This is not our job, OK? By that, I mean that we are not the SAS, nor even a firearms team. We are a research and referral team. That said, some of you have the necessary skill set, and if this goes the way indications say it is likely to, we will need as many hands as we can manage. Participation will be entirely voluntary in such an event”

He paused, looking directly at me.

“Di, rest assured my mate Brad has been put on alert. The access to the field is shitty enough he may well insist on using an airlift, but that means they will have to be parked some distance away. If it kicks off hard and fast, they will not be set up for instant support. Got me? In which case, our troops will have to be ready to get out sharpish”

He looked round the room.

“Sharpish, mates. No heroics. No pissing about. No pressure from anyone here for you to volunteer for this one. I will leave you to think about it”