Bringing Down the Krays (24 page)

CHAPTER 20

MUM AND CHRISTINE’S STORIES

WHEN WE’D FIRST
been told our mother had been arrested we all thought it was a trick. Well, it wasn’t. She’d got out of the club business after the 66 folded. Alfie had set her up in that pie and mash shop. Then there was a bit of a changearound. Around Christmas 1967, with us three in prison, she’d got a job as housekeeper to a society figure, Lady Violet Hamilton. She lived in a mews close to St James’s Palace at 8 Russell Court SW1. It couldn’t be any posher. Lady Violet’s husband was ‘extra equerry to Queen Elizabeth II’. He was an elderly chap. It was all a long way from a pie shop in Upper Clapton.

Mum’s references, it would turn out, had come from Lord Boothby. We’d find out later that the go-between was the former Cedra Court resident, cat-burglar and rent boy Leslie Holt. Boothby was an acquaintance of the Hamiltons and, as Mum had no qualifications for the post – all she had ever done was bring up seven children and run drinking clubs – she could hardly have got the job otherwise.

Mum and Dad had been arrested around 14 March 1968. The charges were ‘housebreaking’ and ‘conspiracy to steal with persons unknown between 28 February and 2 March a quantity of jade, jewellery, candlesticks, china, enamel, crystal, clocks, boxes, ornaments and three paintings to the value of £25,000.’ It was an enormous sum. I mean Dad, he was nearly seventy. It was ridiculous. They dropped charges against him and Mum was granted bail. The trial was scheduled for 24 July.

Mum told us afterwards all she could remember of what happened the night of the burglary. On that particular evening, Leslie Holt rang the doorbell while Charlie Kray, she found out later, was waiting outside in the street. The Hamiltons were out for the evening at some society do.

Without giving Mum a chance to say or do anything, Holt pushed past her and started stuffing a large holdall with all he could lay his hands on – silver and jade and as much jewellery as he could find. When Mum began to protest, Holt told her to: ‘Shut up, sit down on the sofa, and don’t say a word.’

After Leslie Holt had left, Mum contacted the Hamiltons by phone. They immediately called the police. Mum knew Holt by sight from Cedra Court and by seeing him in clubs with the Krays but was too scared to name him to the police when they turned up. She just said that she opened the door to someone, she didn’t know who it was, and he had come in and ransacked the place.

Then they arrested her. They accused her of being an accomplice, of letting the burglars in willingly. She wanted to tell the truth but she was frightened both for herself and for our safety
in prison if she should give any kind of a statement. Meeting Charlie Kray in a club a few weeks later, she asked him, ‘What am I going to do?’

Charlie had said to her: ‘Don’t say nothing to no one. Reggie and Ronnie will look after the boys. They’ll buy them a nice little pub when they come out of prison. They’ll be well set up, don’t worry. Just don’t you say anything and it will all be taken care of.’

But it wasn’t taken care of. When the Hamiltons’ stuff was fenced, the Krays got the money. Yet still she wouldn’t give evidence against them.

It got even stranger after that. On the date her trial was due, 24 July 1968, three weeks after we’d given our statements to Nipper Read, her court appearance was suddenly postponed until November to be heard at the Central Court at the Old Bailey. Why do you think that was?

On that very same day that the trial had been due, she gave a statement that had nothing to do with Lady Violet Hamilton’s ornaments. And guess who she’s giving it to? Nipper Read. I’ve got a copy of it from the archives.

Read wanted to know all about our relationship with the Krays (who she calls ‘the Craigs’ – that’s Mum, all right). Well, they didn’t get much from her. Charlie, Ronnie and Reggie Kray had all been members of the 66 Club and had been ‘extremely well-behaved’. There was ‘never any trouble’. They liked her three sons, Alf, Dave and Bobby, and ‘promised that they would look after them’.

She and her husband had moved to 30 Cedra Court, Cazenove Road, Mum said. All three Kray brothers had visited Cedra
Court and when Reggie took a liking to the flats, our dad had introduced him to the letting agent. Reggie had moved into a flat in the block. She and our dad had never visited David’s flat at Moresby Road, even though it was nearby, she said, and they had no knowledge of who was there.

Not long after our arrest in autumn 1966, Mum said, one of us had said he expected the Krays would help financially with our legal defence but they had not. According to her, I had said: ‘They must take us for right mugs. We’ve never had anything off them,’ or words to that effect. On subsequent visits to see us in prison, we had said that when we came out, we ‘didn’t want anything to do with the Krays’. She was right about that.

Mum told Read that Alfie had said, after learning of the Krays’ arrest: ‘If I’m asked about them I shall tell the truth.’ When she had told me about Alfie on a visit to prison, I also said: ‘I will make a clean breast of it and tell the truth.’

But David, when told in turn of my decision, said: ‘You can’t believe all these things being said about them [the Krays], Mum.’ Mum said: ‘But you can only tell the truth.’ David replied: ‘All right, Mum, I will, I was only kidding.’

As all this was going on with Mum behind the scenes, her sons were all still in prison, coming to the end of our sentences – and fearing what would happen once word got round we’d been giving evidence against the Krays. Alfie remembers what happened to him:

When Mum was telling Read all this, I’m in Lewes. Just before lights out at nine, we were all engulfed in choking black smoke. Someone had set light to the prison. The fire was so serious that Jim Callaghan, the Home Secretary at the time, had to come down to oversee the transfer of over three hundred prisoners.

I was safe because I was in the remand centre, which wasn’t touched. But I couldn’t help worrying that perhaps the twins had got word that I was working with the police and had planned the fire deliberately.

Two days before my release date I was told to get ready for a transfer. When I went down to the reception they told me to put my own clothes on. I asked, ‘Why? Am I going home early?’ The prison officers said they didn’t know. I was taken in what looked like a minicab with two prison officers and a driver. Again I asked, ‘Excuse me, can you tell me where we’re going?’ And again I was just told, ‘Sorry, we can’t say anything.’

Then all of a sudden we pulled up outside what looked like a castle – it was Canterbury Prison. I wasn’t there long. After two days an officer came into my cell and I was told, ‘You’re being released.’

I knew it was coming. I remember the night before hanging my proper clothes, my jacket and trousers, on a hanger I borrowed from a screw, just so that I wouldn’t look too down-at-heel as I walked out. I was freezing that night as I then had only a blanket to curl up in, but rather that than looking like a tramp on my release.

The next morning I signed a piece of paper to get my things back. I noticed they didn’t give me a travel pass and asked how I was going to get back to London. But the prison officer told me, ‘You don’t need to worry about that.’ I guessed then that somebody was going to pick me up. Then they opened a little gate in the huge prison door and I stepped through to freedom. It was 13 September 1968.

Minutes later a car pulled up. Two men got out and walked over to meet me. ‘Hello, Alf! All right? Nice to be out?’ They sat me in the back of the car. I asked them where they were taking me and one of them said, ‘The first thing we are going to do is get you a nice breakfast.’

So they took me a caff where I ordered eggs, bacon, sausages and a few tomatoes, mushrooms, toast, Marmite, the lot. Nothing ever tasted so good. I asked if they were dropping me home, but they said we had to go to Tintagel House again.

They then took me to London. Nipper could not have been more reassuring. ‘Hello, Alfred, all right are you? Don’t you worry about a thing. David and Bobby are fine. It won’t be long until they are released. Everything is going to be all right, I promise you.’

Then I started talking. This time it was about my trip to Dartmoor to ‘bump into’ Frank Mitchell. I remembered Ronnie telling me in the Grave Maurice that he wanted us to pretend to be a pop group and take guitars with us. As soon as Nipper heard about Mitchell, he said: ‘This is wonderful!’ In the end I gave the full statement to Henry Mooney.

I told him about the orders given by Ronnie to go and see a ‘friend’ in Dartmoor. I described the drive with Wally Garelick – how we’d gone first that night to Stamford Hill to collect two girls to come with us. One needed to get a baby-sitter first. Only on the way down had Wally had told me who the ‘friend’ actually was. That’s what I told Mooney, although of course I already knew. At the prison, Wally produced the necessary visiting orders, which were in false names. The girls stayed in the car. When we met Frank he had said: ‘Wally, you’ll have to get me out of here – I can’t do no more bird.’ There had been talk about how fast Frank could run and over what distance.

I told Mooney that I was convinced that Ronnie, Reggie and Charlie Kray were intending to spring Mitchell, and I signed a statement to that effect.

Nipper was jumping with joy. ‘This is absolutely fantastic, Alfie. Just what I needed!’ At the end of the interview he told me: ‘Right, Alfie. You go home now. You, and David and Chrissie, have each got a police officer looking after you. They’ll keep you safe.’

So the two cops took me home at last. One of them said he was going over to the Section House and I gave the other a couple of blankets and a quilt and told him he could sleep on the couch. The protection officers changed all the time. All the officers were armed and had a direct phone to the Yard in their squad car.

David was also going home. He told me how it happened:

I got picked up by a policeman outside the prison on the day of my release from Ford. Christine was with him. It felt strange to be free but even odder to be kissing and cuddling Christine in front of this man.

I asked where the kids were, and Christine said they were being looked after by her mother. So the copper, his name was Dick De Lillo, said he’d got a horse to back and suggested we all go to the races. So it was that Christine and I found ourselves at Sandown Park racetrack. We didn’t get back until the evening and there wasn’t much time to talk about anything intimate with Dick around us all the time. Christine, too, had a policewoman with her so it was virtually impossible for us to be natural with one another. I knew why they were taking so much interest. Was I free or wasn’t I?

We were given twenty-four-hour protection. They used to come everywhere with Alfie and me after that – boozing, street trading, the lot. We tried to pick up as ‘normal’ a life as possible. The police used to joke with us, telling us they shouldn’t do it and that if Nipper Read found out they’d get the sack.

But although we laughed about it, there was a real danger that either of us could have got a bullet in the back. But there was nothing we could do. We couldn’t leave our wives and children.

But the joy of David’s homecoming was quickly turned sour by a cruel revelation:

Over the next couple of weeks Christine and I gradually started to talk about all that had happened to her during my time in prison. Of me, there wasn’t much to say. She told me about Charlie Kray coming round and bringing Big Pat Connolly and that at first it had cheered her and the kids up to see someone while I was banged up. She said they’d just have a cup of tea, he’d give her some money and then go. But I felt there was something wrong. I remembered what Charlie was like when we used to go out together in the past. I’d covered up for him lots of times, saying he’d slept on the sofa in the club when he’d really been with Barbara Windsor or Christine Keeler. Charlie was always with some woman or another, it was the way he was.

I asked in particular about an occasion when she’d come to visit me and seemed really upset. I’d assumed it must have been due to the stress of it all, but it had bothered me afterwards and I wanted to know more. Christine immediately started to cry, saying she didn’t want to tell me.

Out it came, through her sobs. Charlie had started giving her money, and she’d been grateful. He’d said he wanted to help in any way he could. This went on for a long time before he started making the odd remark, saying what a nice figure she had and generally starting to come on to her.

He’d come round one day with Big Pat and given her a ten-pound note. He said, ‘I might pop back later.’ He did come back, but this time Pat left and went home. Charlie then started touching her and following her when she went into the kitchen. Eventually he began to force her. Christine screamed and kicked and Charlie said, ‘What do you expect after I came round and gave you money?’

They struggled until Charlie eventually forced himself on her. Charlie Kray then raped my wife.

I felt so angry I wanted to go straight out and kill him. I was also so confused by my feelings that I started questioning Christine, asking her repeatedly whether she’d encouraged him. Did she really push him off? Why hadn’t she told me before?