Bringing Down the Krays (16 page)

I told them where Ronnie was, over in the bungalow with Charlie Clark and the cat lady. Ronnie liked pets but wasn’t keen
on cats. Weekends he might be at Steeple Bay. I also told them more about what had happened the night of the drive from Madge’s. But it was pointed out to me that whatever I might have to say about the Cornell killing and the aftermath wasn’t going to be enough to nick them. Butler’s got absolutely no one telling him what happened that night, except me. But I wasn’t in the Blind Beggar. I only heard them talking about it afterwards. That wasn’t enough to get anyone put away.

And what about what had happened at David’s place? What was that – kidnapping? A hostage situation? If it came to court, they would just say it was all a big family party – which in fact is exactly what the Kray’s defence would say later. Butler wanted more and put the squeeze on me to get it.

Joe Pogue was Butler’s man. He was my controller – everything that happened after the initial meeting with Butler was going to be through Pogue and his men. And every time I met them they wanted more. And now Reggie himself tells me he’s getting word about an informer within the Firm from inside the police. So now it’s really a question of how long it is before I’m exposed.

Then there came the moment I thought I had been. I was sitting next to Ronnie, who starts going on about this supposed informer. He’s even got a name: ‘Phillips.’

How the hell did he get hold of that? It must have come from the police. I realised at that point, if I hadn’t done so already, the information I’d given to Pogue was coming right back to the Krays. Perhaps I was being incredibly naïve. The twins were always boasting about their information service. But
I had thought it was just that, boasting – propaganda to keep people frightened. I hadn’t been around when there had been all those meets with coppers and envelopes of cash passed at the 66 Club.

In April sometime we went to Saffron Walden in Essex, to see Geoff Allen, Ronnie’s old friend who’d got him out of trouble plenty of times before. He had a big sixteenth-century house called Hempstead Hall and seemed very wealthy. The house had a library and was full of antiques, and I remember his wife had just given birth. For the twins it was a way of getting out of London for a while. After that we stayed at some big hotel. It was supposed to be a kind of holiday.

Albert Donoghue was there, Scotch Ian Barrie, and Scotch Jack Dickson. They all scrawled false names in the register. I put my real name. I was so scared of something happening to me, I wanted people to know I had been there.

I got a message out to Pogue to say where we all were. Soon after that I could sense we were being watched. You get to know these things.

We were all at some country pub when Ronnie started going on about ‘fucking Phillips’ and glaring at each of us in turn. I was so terrified, I remember feeling the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

So I did what I always did when I wanted to get a read on Ronnie – made my eyes go a little dozy as if I was drunk, and then wait for his eyes to flick over me, dismissing me as too dumb to be a threat. At that moment I glanced out of the window and saw a copper in uniform on the street. Telling Reggie I was going
out to get a breath of fresh air, I slipped out and went over to the policeman, telling him quickly, ‘I need you to get a message to Joe Pogue in the Yard. Tell him it is from Phillips and that information received is coming back.’ All this time, I didn’t know if the others in the pub had noticed me missing, let alone seen me talking to a copper. So when I got back in the pub I said to Reggie, ‘A copper outside pulled me and asked me what we were doing here, and I said we were on a holiday.’ Ronnie overheard and said he thought it was a good answer.

I got back to London and received a message by phoning in to the contact number. It said that I had to come to another meeting with Pogue. He was angry. ‘Don’t you ever, ever do that again!’ he said. ‘Don’t ever try to contact us through that low level again.’ He was mad that I had spoken to a copper in uniform.

Then I was warned again by Pogue that I was going be fished out of the Thames if I didn’t take more care.

I asked the detectives whether, if they could not identify the Kray informers inside the Yard, they could not at least use them to pass misinformation to cover my back. I told them that, right now, I believed Scotland Yard was the biggest threat to my life out of any of them. It felt like no one there could care less about my safety. One of Pogue’s men replied: ‘Now Bobby, that’s not true, we are doing everything we can to keep you safe.’

‘It don’t look like it to me,’ I said. And it didn’t.

And so it went on. Ronnie was sinking into one of his manic periods, drinking for days on end, leaving Reggie in charge. Now it was Reggie’s turn to show what he was made of.

There was a time when Reggie was in the Regency Club. Cornelius Whitehead, Big Albert Donoghue and Scotch Ian Barrie were with him. There was a small-time villain called Jimmy Field who either owed money or had said something out of order about the twins in Madge’s, I don’t really know. Reggie took Jimmy behind some curtains. Next thing I heard shots, four of them, and then the sound of this guy screaming. His foot was practically shot off. Donoghue and Whitehead dumped him outside Homerton Hospital.

The Firm were getting shooter-happy. Another time some drunken punter came up to Pat Connolly at the door of the Starlight Club, another Kray favourite in Highbury, and said: ‘You fat cunt. What do you think you are – a gangster?’ And Pat shot and wounded him. Cornelius Whitehead picked up the shells. The victim was dumped in the street. I heard Pat say: ‘I just shot some cunt…’

I was telling Pogue all of this. I was telling him how Reggie was the one getting a bit trigger-happy now. ‘Not enough to nick the twins, though, is it?’ he would say. ‘Get us more, Bobby, get us something that will stick.’ What the fuck did I think I was doing? It would be my turn to take a bullet next.

But if I needed any further proof that I was doing the right thing in turning informer, it was how Bobby Cannon nearly got done. Bobby was from Poplar and owed the Krays money. This particular time it was meant to be Reggie’s turn to kill. I remember Ronnie kept telling Reggie that he should kill someone to prove he was just as good as Ronnie. The words he used were: ‘Why don’t you do one? You don’t do fuck all, get something going.’

And Reggie would reply, ‘Don’t fucking tell me what to do.’ He would prove himself in time. As I had seen at David’s flat, there was a constantly updated list of people known as the ‘dreaded list’, containing the names of people that Ronnie wanted executing. It was Reggie’s turn to cross someone off.

In fact Ronnie wasn’t there that day to witness the events but several other members of the Firm were, including Albert Donoghue, Big Pat Connolly – and me. Jack the Hat McVitie and Connie Whitehead were sent out to find this face Cannon and bring him to a flat off the Hackney Road. It was on the first floor. I don’t know why we went there. I think it was just somewhere close by. I knew it as the place where a girl called Blonde Vicky lived.

So Reggie had sent Jack the Hat and Connie out to get Cannon. I don’t know what he’d done or what they thought he’d done. It was just as if the mood took one of the twins and the rest of the Firm followed.

When they found him they lifted him from the street. He had no choice but to come with them. He was told to sit down. Reggie, Albert and I went into the kitchen. Reggie had a little silver revolver like a cowboy’s gun.

Reggie put a handkerchief over the nozzle to act as a silencer. The handkerchief was tied very tight on the barrel. He put the gun in his pocket.

We went into the room – that is, Albert, Reggie and me. Jack the Hat, Connie, Pat Connolly and Cannon were already sitting there in the living room, waiting. Reggie started making some small talk with Cannon while gesturing to me to turn up
the radio but I only turned it up slightly. ‘Please Release Me’ came over the airwaves. Reggie kept on nodding – louder, louder – but I would not turn it up more.

Cannon sensed what was coming. He was shaking.

I decided something had to be done to stop Reggie killing him. I could not stand by and be a witness to the murder of this man. What had he really done? Not a thing, as far as I could tell. He may have said something about the Krays they didn’t like, but that’s not it, you see. When the Krays wanted to do something they would put out all sorts of stories to justify some trumped-up reason for a killing.

So I just turned to Albert and came out with this line that someone was outside and we should stop Reggie from doing this.

Albert looked over to the door and could see no one. He said to me, ‘Well, I’m not going to stop him because he will put me in the same chair.’

So I said, ‘Well, I
am
going to stop him.’

As I walked over to Reggie it was almost too late. His eyes had already started to glaze as I leaned over to whisper in his ear that someone was outside. That was as good a line as I could think of. I remembered he was a bit deaf in one ear. I was whispering in his left ear with his right one out of my range, hoping I had the good ear.

Reggie had just started to put his hand into his pocket to pull out the gun but when he heard me whispering he stopped. He stepped away to face me to listen to what I was saying.

‘Can I have a word with you?’ I said.

‘What for?’ said Reggie.

I asked him to go to the kitchen and I told him what I’d already whispered in his ear, that I thought there was someone outside in the street. I didn’t know who, just someone hanging around and not moving on. Could be the police, could be some friend of Cannon’s.

Reggie was livid and started swearing. Just then Cannon twisted out of the chair and I saw his face pale as he saw the sheet someone had placed behind him to soak up his blood. Suddenly, he jumped up, burst through the rear door and ran out into the street. Reggie was cursing everyone for allowing Cannon to escape. But he was more concerned about how Ronnie was going to react. ‘What the fuck will Ronnie say now?’

Jack the Hat said, ‘He was so quick, we couldn’t stop him.’ That was a bit feeble.

I said I had heard a car revving up outside as Cannon escaped. That was a lie. Anyway it sounded good.

After that, Reggie and I and one of the others went to the Regency Club in Amhurst Road and got drunk. It was just another day on the Firm.

Not too much later, I was in a club in Soho with Alfie and his friend. There was Bobby Cannon, standing at the other end of the bar. All of a sudden the place was empty and the doors were locked, and Alfie, Micky and I were trapped inside with Bobby Cannon and some of his people, about six or eight of them.

Cannon came over and said in his hoarse, low voice: ‘Go back to the twins and tell them to fucking do a better job next time.’ Alfie said something like, ‘No, Bobby.
You
go back and tell them.’

I wasn’t so brave. I just said I didn’t know what he was talking about – better job than what? What time with Reggie? I said I was not there. I’d been out of London. He told me to tell the Krays that he didn’t give ‘a monkey’s about them’, and he let us go. He didn’t have a clue that in fact I had saved his life.

By now it’s midsummer. The streets are hot, the city air is stuffy. It never seems to get dark. On 30 July it’s the World Cup final at Wembley and everyone’s going mad for it. But I’ve got other things on my mind. Life with Reggie in Manor House has long ago stopped being quite the non-stop party it used to be.

Ronnie’s got the hump and is getting crazier by the day. When he’s not telling Reggie it’s his turn to kill someone – anyone – he’s specifically telling Reggie to get rid of me.

So Ronnie and Reggie move together into a flat in the Lea Bridge Road. Somewhere anonymous, somewhere to lie low – the word’s round that the Old Bill are still going for Ronnie over Cornell. It was a small place, just a couple of rooms on one floor above a barber’s shop.

I’d been over there a few times. I’d even hidden my passport there (without telling Reggie) as a kind of place of last resort should I have to get out of the country in a hurry. That time might be coming. It would be the last place anyone would think of to find it. Now I get another summons.

I took a cab over from Mum’s place. We pulled around the back alley and I told the cab driver to keep the cab running and if I didn’t come out in ten minutes to get on the phone to Scotland Yard and tell Mr Tommy Butler to get here straight away.

It’s funny but the cab driver seemed to know what was going on, because he said, ‘I will.’ I hadn’t even paid him, but he seemed to totally understand. I then went up the stairs and knocked on the door. Reggie opened it and I went inside and said, ‘How’s things?’ He mumbled something and I walked up the passageway and went to a picture hanging on the wall. I pulled it a little and my own passport slipped out from behind it. Reggie was surprised and he said: ‘When did you put that there?’

‘Oh, the other day – for safe-keeping,’ I replied.

I then said to Reggie, ‘I’ve got to go. I’ve got a cab waiting for me outside.’

He said, ‘Don’t go yet. Ronnie wants to see you.’

So he takes me to a little room, and I mean a room the size of a small bathroom, and inside are about six of the Firm, including Ronnie. Big Albert Donoghue closed the door behind me and stood in front so I could not move. Now Ronnie is about ten inches in front, looking straight at me.

‘How is everything?’ he said.

‘Great,’ I replied.

We’re ridiculously squashed in this room, and the atmosphere is tense and charged. Someone squeezed their way out, then someone else knocked on the door and looked in and said, ‘Phillips has been in touch again.’ That’s when everyone started to look at me. I know that the cab saved my life that day because I just said, as casually as I could manage, ‘I have to go. I’ve got a cab waiting for me downstairs.’

I went to go past Big Albert and he didn’t move, but just kept looking at Ronnie. Then Ronnie, after the longest time, nodded at him and Albert moved aside and let me out. Feeling almost lightheaded with fear, I managed to stumble up the passage, out the door, down the stairs and into the taxi and the cab driver, whoever he was, said: ‘I was just ready to call the Yard.’