Bringing Down the Krays (15 page)

Ronnie said: ‘We need to have a talk, all right?’ So Alfie, David and I said, ‘Yeah, all right, Ron.’

He said he had some money, ten thousand pounds, which he wanted David to look after – to ‘put it away somewhere safe’. David told Ron that he’d bury it under his caravan. We knew Ronnie had guns, too, buried all round the place. One way or another my brothers were being drawn more and more into Ron’s criminal plans, whether they liked it or not.

Even David was realising by now that we just had to get out of this situation. He told me he knew he should have done this straight away after Moresby Road. I just agreed with him, longing to tell him what I was trying to do to help get us out of the Krays’ grip, but scared of getting us into even more trouble if I said anything.

Alfie and David were just ordinary market traders – not career criminals. They both had young families to look after. And unlike me, they weren’t going to abandon them. They’d been in trouble with the law as kids but they had always got their own money, not taken the Firm’s handouts. That was the difference. The Firm, some of them had wives, but they were
invisible. Reggie’s bid for married bliss lasted two months. Mine hadn’t lasted very much longer. Ronnie, well, you know what he was.

After no one got him for Cornell, Ronnie started getting his confidence back. You could see it. Everyone knew what he’d done but no one was saying anything. It made him feel even more in command. He really was untouchable. In the meantime his madness seemed to be getting worse.

He’d started talking to himself, just muttering: ‘Yeah, right,’ all the time as if he was in conversation with someone else. Or else he was constantly reminding everyone: ‘I’m the governor round here. I’m the Colonel. Fuck the police, fuck the government.’

The only authority was his mum, Violet, whose disapproval did bother him. As for me, David and Alfie, the twins had no respect for us whatsoever. We were all just errand boys.

I could see my brothers wanted to get away from the madness and violence of the Krays. As much as I was trying to, perhaps – but I was on a different track. And by this time they knew so much and were so far in, they really didn’t know how to escape.

Alfie and David knew that if they went missing for a few days and they went into a pub on our own manor, a car could pull up at any second and the Colonel himself could jump out. It didn’t matter where you were – he’d find you. Even on the night of the World Cup final later that summer when we were watching it on TV round a friend’s house – when practically everyone in Britain was glued to the telly – there was a knocking at the door with a message that he wanted to see us.

There was no hiding place from Ronnie. And I was in as deep as anyone. What I did not know then was just how much Ronnie was preying on my family. For many years I had no idea what had happened to David that spring, when he was back in London after they’d come back from Steeple Bay. One day, several decades later, he found the courage to tell me. This is his story, in his own words:

We were down the Astor Bar at about two or three o’clock one morning when Ronnie asked me if I was going home and would I give him a lift. I was tired and half-pissed myself and said I would. We were driving along when I began to realise how dangerous it was to drive after so much to drink. So I started saying to Ron: ‘This looks bad, Ron. If we get pulled I’m going to be done.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Ron answered.

By some miracle we managed to get to Vallance Road without being spotted. Ron said, ‘You might as well stay here. You were all over the place driving back here. You’ll get nicked if you don’t.’

I didn’t want to, but had to agree that Ron was right. I told him I was going to kip on the couch. But Ron insisted I sleep upstairs in his bed to avoid disturbing his parents Violet and Charlie, who were sleeping downstairs, next to the kitchen. The toilet was out in the backyard so you had to make sure you used it before you went to bed or you’d wake everyone else in the house.

Knowing Ron was a pouf, I told him: ‘No, I’m not like that, Ron. I don’t want any of that.’ Ron said, ‘No, I know you’re not. I promise I won’t touch you. It will all be OK.’

I crept downstairs to use the toilet. I then went back up to Ron’s bedroom, and climbed into his very small bed on the side next to the window. I put my head down on the pillow and went spark out.

All of a sudden I woke up and Ronnie’s playing me, sucking my cock. I couldn’t believe it. I thought I was dreaming. But there he was crouched over me – more and more insistent, wrestling with me in the bed, and using his weight to force me down, telling me, ‘Just try it.’

I kept saying, ‘No, no, Ron, get off me,’ struggling against him for all I was worth, and shouting and screaming for Violet and Charlie to come and help. No one came. Ron kept telling me: ‘Shut up, me mother’s downstairs!’ In the meantime he seemed to be becoming stronger than ever.

I knew he fancied me, but I never dreamt he would do something like this. He held me down, and forced my legs apart. At one point he put his arm round my neck in an attempt to strangle me. In the end he overpowered me. To my lasting shame, Ronnie Kray raped me.

After it was all over I sat on the bottom of the bed all night, shaking with cold and shock, while Ron slept, oblivious to everything, in a drunken stupor.

I managed to get away and ran down to the khazi to throw up. I felt sick and ill, and just wanted to be out of there. Ronnie woke up and came after me, whispering: ‘Be quiet, be quiet!’ I went back up to the bedroom but was awake all night after this. If I tried to leave, Ronnie would physically stop me. After two or three attempts, I gave up.

About six in the morning I had to go downstairs to use the toilet. Ron stirred then and told me: ‘Don’t say nothing’ (to his mum and dad). They must’ve heard. I’m sure of it. I was screaming and shouting loud enough to wake the dead. I then threatened not just to wake his mother but also to tell her what he’d just done.

Ron said, ‘You open your mouth one word about this and you know what to expect. You won’t have a family any more.’

He still wouldn’t let me go. So we all had tea, like nothing had happened, with Mrs Kray fussing round in the frontroom.

Ronnie was blustering, but I could see in his face that he might be remorseful – embarrassed even. He looked like he was thinking: ‘What the hell did I do that for?’

Inside I was so angry I wanted to kill Ron then and there. I’d never felt like this about anybody. I knew I couldn’t fight him as he was physically much larger than me, but I felt I had to get my revenge somehow. Forgetting all my fear of him, I told him I was going to go straight to the police and ‘get him nicked for this’. Even though that was ridiculous, Ron looked worried and started insisting that he’d been drunk.

‘Ron, you weren’t that drunk,’ I told him. ‘You knew exactly what you were doing. I’m going to tell your mother, and make sure everyone, all the chaps and all the villains, get to hear about this.’

He got up and, with his face very close to mine, said: ‘Don’t you ever say a fucking word!’

If I ever said anything, I was dead, he told me. And my wife and kids. ‘I will know, you see.’

And I didn’t say a word. For a very long time. I didn’t tell my brothers. Nor my wife. I felt too frightened and too humiliated. The first time I ever spoke about it was when I told Alfie. And that would be more than forty years after it happened.

We weren’t like the rest of the Firm. We never thought we were. We were like family to the Krays. And now he’d done this, an act that changed everything. After this I avoided Ronnie as much as possible. I kept away, hiding from embarrassment and shame.

CHAPTER 13

A CLOSE SHAVE

HOWEVER MUCH THEY
were being abused, David and Alfie found it impossible to break away. As for me, I was an informer. I had to stay on the inside. I had expected it all to be over once I’d told Tommy Butler who’d done Cornell. I’d assumed that the police would do something immediately, that the cavalry would arrive at David’s flat and rescue everyone. But it didn’t happen like that.

I never seriously thought for a moment to tell my brothers what I had done, what I was doing – either before I’d made that first call to Scotland Yard or afterwards. I didn’t think there was going to be an afterwards.

I believed I could just about handle the strain and fear of turning informer – but if I’d told Alfie and David and they had panicked, we would all have been lost.

There was one little survival technique I had. Ronnie was always telling me I was dozy, and thought I was a bit slow. I played on it, thinking quite rightly that it might protect me. But for how long was that going to work?

After the Blind Beggar shooting, it all ran according to East End form. Everyone knew it was Ronnie who’d done it but no
one would say. The barmaid said she wouldn’t be able to recognise anybody. According to her, she’d run down into the cellar as soon as she saw a gun. There were people in the pub who’d talked to the police but they weren’t going to make a statement. The twins had put round the frighteners. They were doing that from the moment they’d set up in David’s flat.

When Cornell’s widow went round to Vallance Road throwing bricks at the windows and calling them murderers, she was the only one brave enough to say it. Ron and Reg didn’t do anything about it, even though it had upset their mum. No one got nicked.

So in spite of the Firm trashing David’s place, in spite of my run-in with Ronnie in the flat after his move on Paul, in spite of what, although I was unaware, had happened to David, we all of us went back to business as usual – being pals with the Krays. There wasn’t really a choice.

My marriage to Pat was over. Alfie and David had their wives and children, but what was I supposed to do? Well, the Firm had become my family.

After the two weeks in Moresby Road, Ronnie found a new gaff, a bungalow in Chingford into which he moved with Ian Barrie. I knew all about it. The place was owned by Charlie Clark, a bookmaker, and his wife who had twelve cats. I know they were terrified but what could they do?

And what do I do? There we are, Reggie Kray and me, both with our marriages over, both heterosexuals, both up for a party. Reggie’s got a ready-made place, a flat in Manor House rented off two Jewish birds. He’d once very briefly
lived there when he’d married Frances. It was about half a mile from Cedra Court.

So I moved in with Reggie.

The flat was done up very flashily and it was our party place. Reggie would tell me to go and get a couple of birds and the four of us would all sleep in the same bed. I never knew who was with whom.

Or we would get back to the flat at all different times and Reggie or I would go up the stairs like a cat, not making a sound. Most of the time it was me who would go up on my own with my gun at the ready and as soon as the coast was clear I would signal to Reggie and he would come up with the girls and so it went. I would always act like I was a lot more drunk than I really was. But in fact I generally had very little to drink. It was safer that way.

It was especially dangerous when Ronnie would come over with some of the Firm and his boy to stay the night. Ronnie would just glare straight at me. ‘Go on, go,’ he would say. ‘Get out of it and go home!’ I would find a way to ask Reggie if that’s what he wanted and he would just shrug and tell me to meet him at another place later. Or he would say: ‘You’d better leave and I’ll see you tomorrow.’ The next day Reggie would apologise for him, saying: ‘I’m sorry about what happened last night but Ronnie has a lot on his mind.’

They were always arguing. Ronnie would have screaming matches with Reggie over Reggie’s drinking or any trivial thing he could come up with, but it always came back to me. When Ronnie told me to drive Reggie on a meet, I knew Ronnie
wanted Reggie to kill me while we were alone. Ronnie wanted his twin to prove his love and loyalty. All of us in the Firm (and as far as they were concerned, I was now well in it) would hear Ronnie telling Reggie it was his turn to do one. In other words, kill someone. It would suit Ronnie perfectly if that someone was me; he had always been jealous of my friendship with his brother.

But alongside this type of behaviour, Ronnie was also perfectly capable of being a childlike clown again – if just for a few minutes. I was with Ronnie and Cornelius ‘Connie’ Whitehead (another member of the Firm) one time when one of us noticed a frog stuck at the bottom of a hole in the tarmac. As we went to walk on, Ronnie got down on his knees, insisting we had to rescue it, getting slime all over his hands in the process.

Connie Whitehead stared at Ronnie in amazement.

‘You’re trying to save a frog?’

Ronnie just replied: ‘Can you fuck off? The poor thing’s going to be run over!’

And all the while I’m living with Reg I’m having my little meets with Detective Sergeant Pogue. And he and his chums are hinting to me that it might be better all round, save a lot of trouble, if I pulled out a gun that they would supply (even though I already had a gun) and put a hole in Ronnie. Whether they were just playing with me I had no idea, as I’ve already said, but I must have been out of my mind to have even been having such conversations.