Bringing Down the Krays Read online

  ‘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.

  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.