The Profession of Violence (29 page)

Lennie had trouble – with his nerves, his business and his wife. He lived alone in a ground-floor flat in Barking and was sufficiently scared of the twins to do as he was told and keep his mouth shut. Reggie ordered him to expect a visitor.

Then came a further problem. Mad Teddy Smith and Albert Donaghue, another member of the Firm, had both agreed to collect Mitchell in a car; neither possessed a valid driving licence. Reggie had to borrow one so they could hire a car. Someone else produced clothes for an extremely large man. 12 December arrived.

Mitchell was wearing his black nylon mask as he came lumbering through the moorland mist towards the green Vauxhall parked on the Princetown road. Donaghue told him to change his clothes and take the mask off to avoid attracting attention. Nobody was interested in the car as it sped to London. It was to be another four hours before Mitchell was missed. By the time the police were checking the roads from the moors Mitchell was eating steak and chips in Lennie's flat in Barking and feeling faintly disappointed. He had expected something grander, a hero's welcome from the twins, a great party with champagne and girls and the congratulations of the underworld. Instead Smith had to explain as best he could that the twins were unable to see him that night and that Scotch Jack Dickson and Lennie Dunn would be taking care of him. Just for a few days he would be the most wanted man in Britain and must make no attempt to see anyone or contact his family. He must be patient, lie low, trust the twins.

Mitchell was reassured. The twins were his best friends and they were very smart. Now that they had freed him he had nothing to worry about. They gave him more to drink; he brightened up. When they turned on the television news at 10.00 P.M. and watched marine commandos
combing the moors for him he laughed until the tears came.

‘If they try coming for me now, I'll kill the lot of them.'

‘You won't have to, Frank,' said Dickson. ‘Now that the twins are looking after you, no one will ever find you.'

‘But I'd kill anyone rather than go back to prison. Anyone at all. Even you.'

They gave Mitchell the back bedroom with the double bed; Dickson took the front bedroom; Lennie swallowed two sleeping pills and stretched out on the living-room sofa. At 3.00 Dickson was woken up by Mitchell, who was standing by his bed with a knife. He said he was restless and couldn't sleep. Dickson made him tea and they talked – about his family, about his friends and the animals on the moor, and about the twins. He hero-worshipped them, Ronnie especially. Ronnie had told him that when everything was sorted out they'd live together, just the two of them, in a beautiful rich house in the country. He could keep all his animals there. He loved animals, particularly little ones – birds, mice and kittens – anything he could be gentle with. Ronnie had promised him all the animals he wanted; Ronnie was an animal-lover too.

He waited all next morning for him, but no Ronnie – Reggie came instead. Rather than say that Ronnie too was in hiding, he told him he was away on business and would soon be coming. In the meantime Teddy Smith would help him write his letters to the press and the twins would see that he had Christmas with his family.

Mitchell was reassured by this. Soon he was suggesting one of his favourite games, a trial of strength. To humour him, Reggie took off his jacket, sat down at the kitchen table and gripped Mitchell's enormous hand with his own. Reggie was exceptionally strong in the arms and shoulders, but Mitchell smiled and pushed and slowly Reggie's arm went back until his knuckles touched the table. Mitchell was delighted.

‘See what I used to do in Dartmoor,' he said, and picking up both Dickson and Lennie Dunn by their belts, lifted them, one in each hand, until their heads touched the ceiling.

‘That's what I'd do with anyone who tried to catch me.'

That afternoon Mad Teddy and the Axe Man worked on the letters to the press and the Home Secretary. Mitchell had learned to write in prison but was slow and lacked the literary touch which, as a writer, Mad Teddy thought the letters should possess. After some false starts they agreed on a rough outline and, with Smith dictating, Mitchell laboriously penned his letter to the
Mirror
editor and to the Home Secretary, care of the editor of
The Times.

‘Sir, the reason for my absence from Dartmoor was to bring to the Notice of my unhappy plight, to be truthful, I am asking for a possible Date of release, from the age of 9 I have not been completely free, always under some act or other.

Sir, I ask you, where is the fairness of this. I am not a murderer or a sex maniac, nor do I think I am a danger to the public. I think that I have been more than punished for the wrongs I have done.
Yours sincerely,

Frank Mitchell.'

While Mitchell waited patiently for Ronnie, Ronnie was having troubles of his own. His depressions had begun and he was spending most of the day behind drawn curtains, armed and watching the road for the police. One of the Firm had brought his favourite records of Churchill's wartime speeches; he played them endlessly and drank a lot.

Sometimes he ordered a full meeting of the Firm and talked about the future – further link-ups with the Mafia, control of a London-centred narcotics network, a Kray representative running the rackets in every major British city, an international strike force ready for villainy anywhere
in the world. Ronnie was thinking big. At other times he was obsessed with private grievances and wanted someone hurt. A boxing manager had been impolite about a young boxer he fancied; a villain they occasionally employed called Jack McVitie was becoming unreliable; Payne was suspiciously silent. What was he up to?

Sometimes the strain of hiding seemed unbearable and even Churchill's wartime speeches were no help. All he could do was drink himself insensible or lie in bed taking more Stematol until the depression lifted.

Time passed slowly for both prisoners. While Ronnie had his nightmares in Finchley, Mitchell in the basement flat in Barking talked obsessively about him and the life they'd lead together. He would be Ronnie's right-hand man; they would become inseparable, the greatest criminals of the century. He would willingly die for Ronnie – that was the one way he would like to go. But when could he see him?

For more than a week Dickson and Lennie made excuses; then Mitchell seemed to understand that Ronnie would never come and stopped talking about him. Two men were always with him; Donaghue and the ex-boxer Billy Exley took turns with Dickson and Lennie. All they could do was make the time pass. For hours on end they played cards with Mitchell; he was no card-player but they always let him win to keep his spirits up. He ate hugely, cleaned his teeth a dozen times a day and constantly combed his hair, examining his appearance in the mirror. He was inordinately vain.

There was a day's excitement when
The Times
and the
Mirror
published his letters, both of them in full. The
Mirror
included an appeal from its editor for Mitchell to give himself up. Then nothing happened. Reggie called in next day, but he had no news, only fresh promises that Frank would see his family for Christmas. Mitchell became restless. This was worse than prison. A few nights later he threatened to go out and find himself a woman. He was beginning to
groan in his sleep. Dickson told Reggie that if he didn't get a woman soon, there would be trouble.

They brought a girl for Mitchell in a taxi at 2 A.M. With Reggie was Tommy Cowley, a little gambler with pale eyes and short red hair who always seemed a cut above most members of the Firm. The girl was thirtyish; Cowley said they could count on her discretion. He and Reggie picked her up at Winston's Club in New Bond Street, where she was a hostess. In the taxi they had informed her of her duties. Reggie said that if she did as she was told she would have the gratitude of the East End. She replied that gratitude was all very well: she preferred cash. Reggie agreed with her.

She had a lot of blonde hair and a good figure. Her name was Lisa. She was expensive. When she entered Lennie's flat in a long black dress and heavy make-up Mitchell was all for having her at once. He appeared almost childish in his enthusiasm, but Lisa was no child; since Reggie had gone on to Vallance Road without paying the £100 she wanted, she told the Axe Man he would have to wait.

Mitchell could have forced her. Nobody would have stopped him. Most girls in her position would have done as they were told. But Lisa had her professional pride, and Mitchell wanted someone he could love, not rape. She kept her dignity and her black lace dress, and both of them sat in the kitchen, drinking tea, while Scotch Jack Dickson drove round to Vallance Road to collect her fee. Reggie grumbled but paid – a hundred used notes in a carrier bag; Dickson gave them to her, less twenty for expenses. Reggie had promised that if she kept Frank happy there would be more to come. And on this tender note Lisa and her Axe Man went to bed.

They stayed there for the next two days, curtains drawn, the glow of the electric fire providing the only light, and Mitchell sometimes leaping out of bed for fifty press-ups. Mitchell was an enthusiastic lover – ‘His virility was greater than that of any man I have known,' the girl wrote later.
But even sex was no real answer to the twins' dilemma. It was soon obvious to everyone that he would not remain cooped up in the flat much longer. He was becoming moodier; only the girl could quieten him. On 20 December he gave Lennie £5 and asked him to buy enough drink for a small party as he was going to ask his family over before Christmas. The twins had promised he could see them.

Lennie and Scotch Jack Dickson had been guarding Mitchell for ten days now; both were afraid that he would break out soon. Rather than this they asked Lisa to try persuading him to give himself up. The first time she mentioned it he said that he would do whatever the twins thought best. Next day she spoke about it, but the idea sent Mitchell into a rage, shouting about the eighteen years he had spent inside and how he would kill anyone who tried to get him back. She tried calming him, but he went on shouting, and for a while the others thought he would make a dash for it.

‘Give me your gun,' he yelled at Exley, who was too frightened to argue. The gun calmed Mitchell.

‘I'll hang on to it,' he said. ‘It's nice to know it's there in case I need it.'

Next day, 22 December, Mitchell woke late and appeared cheerful, knowing he had a gun. Later his mood began to change. By afternoon he was weeping, shouting and saying he would go out and shoot the first policeman he encountered. When he was quieter he told Dickson he wanted him to take a letter round to Reggie.

It took an hour to write; in it he said that unless the twins got him away at once he would get in touch with his parents. If anybody tried to stop him, he had a gun and would use it. Reggie was visibly annoyed at Mitchell's letter. ‘Who does he think he is? He's got everything he wants, even a bloody woman, but he goes telling us what to do.' Then he asked Dickson more about Exley's gun and Mitchell's threats to leave. This clearly worried him.

‘Jack. Go back to Mitchell and tell him he'll be all right.
Tell him not to do anything silly and he'll be out of the flat in forty-eight hours. I think it's time I had a word with Ron.'

The twins and several members of the Firm discussed what should be done with Mitchell that night at the flat in Finchley. Although Ronnie was cut off, he had been receiving regular reports on Mitchell. He even knew about the gun, and according to one story he had heard Mitchell was threatening to go round to Vallance Road and use it on the Kray parents.

Certainly the Colonel's attitude to his old friend had changed dramatically: suddenly he seemed to understand just what could happen if the police caught him. The twins and many of the Firm would be involved. Mitchell could destroy them.

That night as the twins discussed what should be done, Frank Mitchell was no longer a friend but a threat.

Next day a further complication: Frank Mitchell was in love,

‘Wherever they're taking me to in the country, Lisa must come as well. We'll never be apart again.'

Later the girl whispered to Dickson, ‘He can think I'm going but I'm not. Just tell the twins I'll keep my mouth shut and that's that.'

‘OK, but don't say anything to Frank. If he thinks you don't love him, he'd really do his nut.'

When Reggie came, Mitchell asked him about the girl. Of course he could take her. It was a lovely place the twins had ready for them, with animals and servants. Lisa and Frank could both be there together.

Reggie gave Lennie Dunn money to buy Mitchell fresh clothes for the journey; his friends were calling for him the following evening. Mitchell was thrilled; to show how happy he was he put his arms round the piano and lifted it right off the floor. Everybody laughed. Reggie looked
relieved, shook hands all round and promised to be down to visit Frank and Lisa for Christmas.

It must have seemed the most exciting Christmas Eve in Mitchell's life: for the first time in nearly twenty years he would be spending Christmas Day in freedom, and with the girl he loved.

Reggie rang during the morning saying that Donaghue would be calling around 8.30 P.M. and that Frank was to be packed and changed and ready to leave immediately.

Dickson asked what was planned for the girl.

‘Don't worry about her. Albert will see to her.'

Mitchell and the girl got up around midday. She cooked them all a late Christmas Eve lunch. Afterwards everyone exchanged cards. In his Mitchell wrote, ‘To Lisa, the only one I've ever loved', and she wrote back, ‘Darling Frank, may this Christmas be the best you ever had'. They kissed, drank to the future and went to bed for the last time in the flat.

At 7.30 P.M. the telephone rang twice, then stopped, the sign that Reggie was on the line wanting to talk to Mitchell. Was he packed? The friends would soon be round.