by Mick Norman
Phil Kennedy: ‘Of course, they will have to be tried first, won’t they?’
Stout: ‘Oh, yes. Of course. That’s what I meant. But, we think that these are the same group that went on that run up the motorways, killing and raping as they went. We also suspect that their numbers have been swelled by local hoodlums. If they are in uniforms or have any sort of paramilitary organisation we’ll have them ... I mean we will be forced to take action against them under sub-section seventeen, sorry, as you were, eighteen, of Home Secretary Hayes’ Act on the subject!
Phil Kennedy: The operation is scheduled to begin just before dawn. Squads of police will shortly be moving into their planned positions. Mr. Stout; I’m sure that all the viewers will join with me in wishing you the very best of luck in stamping out this gang.’
Stout: Thank you, Phil. As long as everyone remembers that the law is for the protection of the people. We only do our job.’
Phil Kennedy: ‘Assistant Chief Constable Stout, thank you.’
Fifteen – A Dark And Lonely Place
Rat was dozing about a quarter of a mile away from the main band of Angels in the quarry, near to the concealed turning off the road. He had enjoyed the violence, and found the killing of Donn Simon as the real high-spot of the run, so far. Though the blowing up of the truck driver and his load of lavatories had also been fairly kicksie.
He thought back with a satisfied smile to the events of the previous evening. His hand crept inside his jeans and grasped his shrunk organ, stroking it as he remembered the fun of cutting at the body of Tarquin. The fun of threatening the petrol-soaked director with a box of matches. The hot blood drying and cracking on his knuckles, staining his arms rusty-brown. His hand moved more violently as he thought back to the fun with Nancy. Fun that he had been a little too late to share, but he had, at least, been able to watch the ending and gloat over the exposed thighs of the woman he had often desired from the thinly-populated stalls of his local cinema. Faster!
Suddenly, Rat woke back to full alert. Where he lay in thick bushes, he could see the main entrance to the quarry. And someone was there. He had heard a stone shift. He rose quietly to his feet and peered through the darkness. Yes, someone was there. He scuttled off silently to tell Vincent.
The first member of the invading police contingent to realise that they had been spotted far, far earlier than they had ever thought, was Police Constable Simon Glazer. Ironically, he had fought with Gerry in Ireland, but had opted for the Military Police as a safe line for his hobby. (His hobby was beating other men into unconsciousness with a large truncheon.) Now, he was in civvy street, but still able to practice. He was the first of the police to encounter the Angels, because he was in the lead.
Before describing this encounter, and everything that followed, it should be noted, gentle reader, that Gerry was not taken by surprise. In fact, he rarely ever was. You may recall that Brenda showed him a note from Ruin. The fallen Angel had changed his mind and had been driven by a conscience to warn his ex-brothers of his treachery. In any case, Gerry had known that the fuzz would not take their defeat, in the eyes of all Britain, during the run, without making every effort to come out on top. That meant a lot of killing. So Gerry had sussed out all the angles as to where and when they might strike.
He figured that they still wouldn’t expect to be expected, so they would take the easy path from the road. Just in case, he had set sentries at other points in a circle round the quarry. But, it was the onanistic Rat, never one to let pleasure interfere with business, who had spotted them. Things moved so fast and in so many areas after that, that any attempt to give a coherent account is impossible. So, we’ll go back to Simon Glazer and then dart around for some random impressions. Right?
Simon Glazer was a married man with three children, one more than the socially-accepted norm. He liked the police force, but was terrified of guns. That fear was the result of facing an armed boy of thirteen in the Springfield Road when the Vanguard movement took to the streets. The boy had pointed a snub-nose automatic at him from a range of about twelve feet Three times the boy had pulled the trigger, and three times the pistol had misfired. Glazer had stopped shaking just long enough to realise that he wasn’t necessarily going to die on that wet street He had leapt at the boy and beaten his head into a bloody pulp. On a day when three hundred and forty-seven people were known to have died, the death of one boy went generally unnoticed. But ever since that day, he had not liked guns.
So, when he was given a sawn-off shotgun and told that he might well have to use it that morning, you can understand that he wasn’t happy. In fact, as he paused for a brief rest before crawling on, he laid the gun at his side and leaned his back against a hawthorn bush.
Gerry, his colours and his face and arms smeared with mud to help him in the near-dark, was just the other side of the bush. The drive-chain of an old Norton, heavily-greased, was in his hand. He whipped it round the bush, digging into Police Constable Glazer’s throat caught the other end, and pulled. Simon Glazer was too shocked by the gross suddenness of the attack to even try to scream. He made one desperate effort to get his fingers between the bite of the chain and his torn neck, but he was too late. The cold wood of the hawthorn pressed into the back of his head as Gerry threw his weight back on the chain. It dug deeper and deeper into skin, into flesh and into bloody muscle. It crushed the larynx and the windpipe. In a very few seconds, Glazer could not even breathe, let alone try and cry. His feet scrabbled in the leaf mould, his hands tore at the steel chain, then his wife became a widow. She was already deep in an affair with a driving instructor and didn’t really regret his passing. But, he didn’t know that.
Gerry picked up the shotgun and eased a shell into the breech, thumbing off the safety catch as he did so. About a dozen feet to his left, one of the other police had been disturbed by the brief scuffle and whispered urgently to Glazer. Since his mouth was full of his engorged tongue, and blocked with blood, there was no reply.
Knowing that whoever it was in the bushes would soon become suspicious enough to want to move over and see what the hell was going on, Gerry didn’t waste time. He took the dead policeman’s handgun, and all the ammunition he could cram into the pockets of his colours. A quick glance at his luminous watch – six minutes to four, everyone who was sober enough should be more-or-less ready in position – then he swung to his left and fired into the darkness.
The flash from the shotgun lit up the area for a second, the heavy charge tearing through the bushes and smashing into the body of the next policeman in line. Simultaneously, Gerry screamed at the top of his voice: ‘Now! Let the fuckers have it!!’
Riddler dropped from a sycamore onto the back of a sergeant, his Finnish flensing knife hacking at the man’s jugular. Before the blood had finished spouting high, he had a gun and ammunition.
Rat used his favourite length of piano wire, with wooden toggles at each end. Looped round a man’s neck, it could come close to cutting off the head. His first trophy was a Belgian rifle, with a special night sniper scope. He soon began to employ it usefully.
Cochise jumped from a tree onto the back of a police superintendent. His weight snapped ribs and caved the man’s chest in. Broken bone penetrated the heart and the man died, conscious only of a great weight and a faint feeling of surprise.
Brenda fought alongside her man, the only one of the old ladies to do this. The rest huddled by the bikes and waited. All they could hear was screaming and the occasional shot. While Gerry fought silently and viciously, for the first time in his life at peak efficiency, Brenda was just behind him. None of the policemen had a chance against his explosive violence. In the dark, there was no chance to see your enemy, and by the time Gerry was close enough to reach you, he was too close for you to have any chance at all of stopping him. There was no wasted energy. Every blow told. As he moved on, never bothering to look behind at the men he had put down, Brenda tidied up. If the copper fell on his face she would kick hard and accuratel
y for the base of the skull. If he lay on his back she would simply jump high, landing with her heels on the unprotected groin. Either technique generally proved fatal.
Of course, it wasn’t all one way. One of the younger brothers, Crasher, was wrestling with a sergeant for possession of one of the shotguns. Sadly, he didn’t have the brain to keep his stomach out of the way of the barrel. So, as he tugged, the sergeant simply placed his finger on the trigger. Crasher’s own muscles did the rest. The charge of shot ripped through his colours and tore his guts apart. As he fell to the soft, green earth, his fingers clawing at his bloody intestines, vainly trying to push them back, he looked up at the horrified face of the policeman, seeing death for the first time. ‘You know, I always wanted to look through my uncle’s microscope’, he said conversationally, and then died.
During the first five minutes, the Last Heroes had much the better of the exchanges. Surprise was on their side, and they had the tremendous advantage of being trained by Gerry for several months. He had taught them the terrible waste of killing unnecessarily. Even more important, he had taught them the value of total aggression when the chips were down. Then, it ceased to be a game and was, literally, a matter of life and death.
In those first five minutes, nearly fifty policemen were killed or critically injured. Vincent had got possession of a grenade launcher and wreaked dreadful, havoc. From his position near the main road, Stout quickly received reports of the reception his men had got from the Angels. But, it wasn’t till after that he believed the reports of the massive injuries and killings. Over his walkie-talkie he ordered his first wave back. Masks were put on and the gas went in.
Seeing the police pull back, Gerry shouted for the Angels to begin their withdrawal. But Vincent stood against him. With tear gas already ghosting through the trees, they shouted their arguments. Realising that this was futile, Gerry led a number of the brothers back to where the mamas and old ladies had the choppers ready to roll. Vincent led a charge against the withdrawing police, only to run into the gas and the second wave of attackers.
Now there were two fronts to the battle. Attacked by only a handful of police, Gerry was ready to make a run for it Straddling his hog, Brenda hanging on tight, he took one look through the lightening gloom at the scene around him. With him were about eight of the Angels, including Kafka, Cochise, Riddler and Dick the Hat Each with an old lady perched, Valkyrie-like, behind him. Two of the mamas had commandeered a chopper and were also ready for the off.
Back in the bushes, the Angels were losing both the fight and their lives. Legs and Morion died early in that abortive charge. Police reinforcements poured through the wood, firing indiscriminately at anything that moved in front of them. Suddenly, (the high throaty note of bike engines tore through the air above the bottle. The fuzz, hampered now by their greatly superior numbers, rushed around, shouting and countermanding orders at each other. Vincent, seeing the day was lost, deserted what was left of his chapter and ran. With him, came only one of the Angels, slinking along at the heels of his president, twisting rat-like among the shadowy bushes.
Screaming like demons from the seventh circle of Hell, the surviving Angels, led by Gerry, hurtled out of the quarry into the confused ranks of the police. Any attempt to check them was futile, though several shots were fired at them.
Assistant Chief Constable Stout stood cursing futilely as they sped passed him. His walkie-talkie squawked and cheeped at him as several of his senior officers all tried to communicate with him at once. Seconds leaped by, then two more Angels – one a large man and one very small – also made a successful bid for the open road and tore along after the main band.
It was some hours before the full story was discovered. It was a story that Home Secretary Hayes himself pushed under a Double-D Notice. Apart from the terrifying casualties the police had suffered, there was also the mutilated body of film star Tarquin Wells, a charred body that was subsequently identified by his dentist as being cult director Donn Simon, and a screaming and naked lady who claimed to be the beautiful Nancy Thompson – and was.
Worse, far worse, was the fact that both leaders of the Last Heroes had been in the group that had escaped and had been last seen beyond Shrewsbury. Many of the brothers lay dead or dying – surprisingly, not one Angel lived through that morning to appear in any court, though some were alive when Stout made his rounds of the disaster area.
Apart from the dead, the quarry also held many injured.
Even before these could be treated, Stout ordered a check into all guns and ammunition missing. There were five shotguns, two of the rifles, fourteen revolvers and three hand grenades. Plus a quantity of ammunition.
Despite his fear, the Angels vanished. All the efforts of the police were futile. It was as though they had never been. From Shrewsbury, the trail appeared to lead towards Wales. But, there it ended.
The Angels had gone underground.
For the time.
Sixteen – The Surprise Election – A First Appraisal
by Keith Styles (Ortyga Press – 197–)
‘It seems likely that the “Quarry Slaughter” – as it swiftly became known – had a cathartic effect upon the moral attitudes of the British people. An unprecedented expenditure of police life – killings on a scale unique since the last troubles in Ireland – and all for a few young men on motorcycles. Although that is a gross simplification, that is, none-the-less, the way that it seemed to the majority of folk.’
‘The real story of the Hell’s Angels, and particularly of the gang – or chapter – involved is, of course, far from being untarnished. They were certainly responsible for deaths and for crimes of violence. But, as Mr. John Citizen and his wife saw, that over fifty policemen had died, that not one single outlaw survived to face the majesty of the legal system, that shotguns and, even hand-grenades were employed, then they began to question the wisdom of their leaders. Words such as “overkill” and “credibility-gap” began to be bandied about.
‘Questions were asked on street-corners, in factories, shops, offices and homes. Most of all, in homes. Newspapers asked questions. Radio and television asked questions. In both Houses of Parliament, in open meeting and in secret cabal, and even on the very floor of the House of Commons, questions were asked. The only trouble was – there was no single person in authority who was able to answer them.’
‘Attempts were made to track down the survivors of the raid. George Hayes appeared personally on television and said publicly that the animals would be brought to justice. But, they were not. So he offered to resign. And his offer was accepted. But, people were still not satisfied. The Number One record that month was called “An eagle flying free, above a land of crows”. Everyone understood!’
‘The Prime Minister decided finally to go to the country over the moral issue that had been raised. Most opinion polls indicated that he would succeed. But they discounted one thing. A factor that one pundit – with the glib phraseology that can often come from hindsight – called the “Robin Hood Syndrome”. Meaning that a certain amount of public sympathy had been aroused for what seemed to them to be the underdogs. Wolf and his small band of brothers had vanished into the mountain fastness of Snowdonia. The whole forces of law and order, with all their most sophisticated equipment could not find them.’
‘Sympathy snowballed and the folk-heroes remained hidden. The victims were all buried (or cremated). In the grave (or up the chimney) with them plunged the British Labour Party, rending itself to the last. Socialism and Repression both died in that sandy quarry in the early hours of that July morning.’
Seventeen – In My End is my Beginning
In that early morning quiet, the remaining Last Heroes sped along the road westwards. Racing the sun. They left behind them a scene of confusion and death. The police forces were in total shambles. Firstly they had never expected to find themselves expected, nor greeted with such anarchistic savagery. Secondly, it had never entered their heads that, with such overwhelmin
g numerical advantage, any of the Hell’s Angels might be able to make their escape. They were wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong at every point. Although they had decimated the chapter, they had not destroyed it. Nor, were they in any position to try and pursue the fleeing Angels. Their own vehicles were tangled together in hopeless confusion. No attempt hail been made to put neighbouring forces on standby. So, that July morning, the Last Heroes had a clear road for their desperate run for freedom.
As soon as they hit the road, Gerry leading, they turned north, avoiding the feeder road to the Motorway, where any police might lie. Heading instead for the old A5. The traditional holiday road to Wales for the industrial Midlands. Vincent and Rat caught up with them quickly, and the tiny convoy of twelve bikes roared through the pink dawn. Away!
They made good time through to Shrewsbury, where one lone policeman made his bid for a Queen’s Medal. Riddler leading the run at that point had his old lady holding a shotgun trophy. Quick-thinking, she rested it on his shoulder and blasted the constable. His face literally exploded with the impact of the shot, and his body was thrown into the gutter, his blood streaming down a storm drain. They were seen leaving the outskirts of Shrewsbury and a double block was arranged for Oswestry and Whittington. But, they never got there.
Children cried out in their sleep in the village of Tudor houses, Knockin. Throughout the Welsh Marches, early rising farmers spoke later of the raggle-taggle convoy. Blue denims, long hair, and naked power.
Gerry now took the lead. Belting over the Berwyn Mountains, sweeping down through Bala. Angling round the end of the huge, dirty lake. Back again into the hills. Gerry slowed down just beyond the Llyn. Raised his hand. Shouted back: ‘We’d better stop’.