Krayzy Days Read online

  At first I brought home money from the corner and the jars, but it was never as much or as easy as the living I began to make when I ran long-firm frauds. We called them LFs for short. This work kept me off the streets and it meant that I could at last start to get in some serious cash. It was still a con, though. The idea was that you rented some premises, registered a company and built up good references under its name. You processed as many goods as possible by selling them under cost, but you always paid the bills promptly. You then exploited the good name of the firm to get goods in on credit before selling them off quick without paying for them, shutting the doors and disappearing.

  I didn’t actually do the frauds, but I managed the fella who did, Bill Stansill. It was rather a strange appointment by the twins, getting two conmen to look after their money. Not a safe business move to leave us in charge. Though it has to be said there wouldn’t have been any takings at all were it not for me babysitting the twins so they didn’t take all the money out of the firms before the fraud could be built up. I was with Ronnie when he visited an LF which had nothing to do with me.

  Ronnie said, ‘How’s it going?’ The two fellas who worked the firm ran through what they’d paid, what they hadn’t paid and what they might be able to order if they paid someone else a certain amount.

  ‘Yeah,’ sighed Ronnie. ‘Show me.’ They got the money out, Ronnie scooped it all up, stuffed it in his pockets and looked directly at me. ‘A bird in the hand is worth five in the bush, Mick. Come on, let’s go.’

  Of course, that meant the scheme collapsed before any money had been properly earned. I used to have to distract Ronnie from getting involved at all or manage the far more difficult trick of convincing him that he could make thousands more if he just let it build up. But neither brother had much patience to let things develop. It wasn’t easy, but it was safer and more lucrative work than my other cons.

  The twins knew I was smarter than most and that was why they needed me but they didn’t know – or preferred to ignore the fact – I slipped off out of their sight to run my own LFs. They had me around to make sure nobody was ripping them off and yet I was the very one who was doing it. Right under their noses. I was lucky they were short-sighted. They would send me to check on any rumours of rival action.

  I was even dispatched to the north of England, to Bishop Auckland, to check out a story that someone was working a rival LF. That the twins were prepared to go so far away from their home territory showed how seriously they took the business. I made sure I was particularly careful to hide my own actions, both from the Krays themselves and anyone who might get the word back to them. They might not have been that clued up but had they even had a sniff of what I was up to I wouldn’t have been seen again. I was under no illusions and I knew this was just one more reason why I could never relax around them.

  I also had to make sure that I didn’t leave any evidence for the police. I was scrupulous about covering my tracks and this would serve me well when I was later charged in the general conspiracy with the Krays. I never signed for goods or received money. I had no contact with the Krays’ financial adviser, Leslie Payne – who later gave evidence against them – and he never paid me for anything. I knew I was ahead of everyone else – I was just extremely confident. That’s one of the reasons writing this book is such a departure for me. At last I’m recording it all. I’ll probably get 100 years or something.

  Chapter Seven

  A Search for the body at The Glenrae Hotel

  The Krays trusted me with their long-firm frauds and I took advantage of that. I was never too greedy and I was always careful. They never suspected I was ripping them off and when they wanted someone to go to France, they turned to me.

  A Lebanese gold buyer in Paris had acquired the proceeds from a bullion robbery. The twins asked me to go over to France to see if I could ‘corner’ him somehow, although in reality it was a just a trip for fun. Bill Stansill came with me, though he wasn’t quite the conman he thought he was. He had the personality for it but at the same time he was that much older and you needed to be a bit more agile to do well in that game. It didn’t matter too much for the lightweight job and I certainly didn’t take our trip very seriously. We just took the expenses out of the LF we were working on and stayed at The George V Hotel in Paris. And we made sure we lived well. I’d never been to the city before and I had the time of my life.

  We’d got some muscle with us in the shape of a fella called Buller Ward. He came from the Angel in London and I didn’t like him at all. Just a fucking gorilla. His nickname told you everything you needed to know – he was really called Sidney. Buller came from a family of four brothers and the others were all right. One of them moved to France during the war, married a local girl and was to all intents and purposes a Frenchman, with children who were completely French. We stayed with Buller’s brother for one night while we were out there.

  The trip was all very enjoyable, though Buller’s presence was entirely unnecessary. We didn’t need protection. If anything, Paris might have done with some help to deal with us – we were out for the best of everything and as many French birds as we could get. And we were doing it with someone else’s money. I’d always wanted to go to Paris, I’ve been back dozens of times since, but I don’t think anything could top that first trip.

  After the trip I was making one of my regular visits to Vallance Road with Bill when I saw a red car with a cream roof, a Hillman Hunter estate. Something about it held my attention. I don’t know what it was. Maybe it slowed when it didn’t need to or turned around. Later on that same day when we were out at an LF in Chingford, I thought I saw it again. It had to be the same car. Yes, I realised, when I saw it do the same manoeuvre – driving slowly, turning around and coming back for no apparent reason. Now I couldn’t keep it to myself.

  ‘I saw that motor this morning round the twins’,’ I told Bill. I knew what it meant. ‘That’s Old Bill.’ Bill, however, had seen nothing.

  ‘Nah, what are you talking about?’ he said. ‘Shuddup.’ I’ve had that a few times when I’ve spotted things. But I was observant and one of the things I noticed was that people like to be in denial when there’s something uncomfortable in front of their faces. I would naturally spot those sorts of things when even supposedly smart guys would prefer to blank it out – and to ridicule me for saying it. The ‘we’re-all-right’ mentality.

  ‘Bill,’ I said mildly, ‘I’m telling ya.’ But he was determined to carry on as if nothing was happening. We finished with the LF at the end of that week and on Sunday saw a story in The Mirror: GANGSTERS NAIL MAN’S FOOT TO FLOOR. The story was written in such a way as to be as ambiguous as possible – perhaps they didn’t have the proof. But they alluded to the Kray twins. And now everyone had to know something was up. Somebody was poking around.

  Now Bill was as excited as me about who might be in the area. If it was in the papers it was as if he’d never disbelieved me in the first place. But he still didn’t think it was Old Bill who had been in the car.

  ‘Maybe they were reporters.’ Yeah, all right, Bill. I got hold of Reggie.

  ‘Look, it’s getting a bit warm,’ I said earnestly. ‘I think it’s on us here, you know. I don’t feel comfortable. We gotta get out somehow. It’s no use being sitting ducks.’

  Reggie had an idea. ‘I know a bloke who’s got The Glenrae Hotel over at Finsbury Park.’ I’d never heard of the hotel or Ted, its owner. I didn’t even know how he knew him, but I didn’t ever ask questions of the twins. Reggie said he would have a chat with this fella, ‘see if he’ll let us use the place for a bit.’

  The Glenrae was generally quiet, mainly used by travelling businessmen passing by through London on the Seven Sisters Road. It was unremarkable, out of the way – the perfect hideaway. Ted was more than agreeable.

  ‘If any of you want to meet any of your friends,’ he said to Reggie. ‘I can open up the bar downstairs for you.’ There was quite a sizeable venue downstairs. W
hich was just as well. Within two weeks, our bolthole was the busiest club in London. This was the twins being discreet. They just couldn’t help themselves. It was packed. They were turning people away and Ted was delighted. We might not be very secretive but he was earning a fortune. The regular Kray crowd liked to spend big. Once again, Ronnie and Reggie slipped comfortably into the role of mine hosts.

  Reggie’s wife Frances was supposed to come along with him one night but he turned up without her. He beckoned me over frantically and we slipped out of the bar so he could talk in private.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

  ‘A strange thing,’ he said. ‘When I was getting ready tonight, there was a knock on the front door. I’d just heard a couple of bangs, like shots. I didn’t take that much notice. And then there’s a knock on the door. It was Jimmy Evans. And Jimmy said, “They’ve just shot Ginger Marks.” I wanted to ask him more but he just went, “No, don’t hang about, I gotta go.” And that was it.’

  Tommy Marks was shot in the street and his body taken away. Reggie was clearly a bit shaken up by the news. We had a meeting to investigate who might be behind the killing.

  I said, ‘Freddie Foreman’s done that.’ I was roundly disbelieved, though Charlie was despatched to ask Freddie himself. He was met with the expected denial, although Freddie did admit he was busily turning his own house upside down trying to find his diary. He was clearly trying to dispose of evidence.

  Inevitably, the Old Bill steamed into The Glenrae just a few nights later. I wasn’t there to see them checking up chimneys, looking under beds – they were after Marks’s body. Poor old Ted wasn’t so sure he’d got a good deal now.

  But The Glenrae remained popular and the guests included the gay son of a baronet called Hew McCowan. He asked the twins if they would be interested in becoming his partners in a Soho nightclub he was setting up called The Hideaway. The venue was then owned by Gilbert France, who also ran the renowned restaurant Chez Victor in Wardour Street. Ronnie agreed and McCowan made a big mistake. He changed his mind and came back to tell an enraged Ronnie a couple of nights later – in front of everyone. McCowan was to be blanked from then on, just as journalist Tom Bryant had earlier fallen out with the twins over the ‘axeman’ story. We were all to glare at him to make him feel uncomfortable and clear off. In the end, though, McCowan was to have his revenge – and without lifting a finger.

  A friend of Ronnie’s called Teddy Smith was in McCowan’s club one night and was thrown out for being too pissed and becoming a pest. Around the same time a TV crew was touring Soho trying to find people who’d been threatened by gangsters. When McCowan was asked, he jumped in and claimed that Teddy Smith was sent by Ronnie to demand a share of The Hideaway. The TV crew passed the report to the police. It was all they needed to arrest the twins.

  At that time the Old Bill were going through a period of using Volkswagens, one of which I saw outside The Glenrae when I was going to pick up my car one day. It made a change from the Hillman Hunter. This time I was completely certain about identifying them – I’d seen the car’s driver before. I immediately went to the nearest phonebox and called Ronnie.

  ‘I’m not going to try and talk code in case you don’t understand me,’ I said urgently. ‘There’s Old Bill fucking everywhere! Now, get out. Old Bill everywhere. Don’t hang about, I’m telling you.’

  ‘Okay, Mick,’ came the decidedly cool response.

  ‘I’m not coming back, by the way,’ I said. ‘I’m going to get out of the way.’

  Within a couple of days they were nicked. Next time I saw Ronnie Kray he was in Brixton Prison.

  ‘Ron!’ I said. ‘I gave you that message. Why didn’t you act on it?’

  He looked unimpressed. ‘Well. We came out that night and we looked around. We couldn’t see anything and we said, “Oh, he’s mad.”’ No wonder they got arrested. The pair of them were so short-sighted they wouldn’t have seen anyone.

  It was quite ironic – Hew McCowan’s allegation was not at all true but that was the charge that put them on remand when there was no shortage of crimes they were guilty of. That wasn’t an uncommon experience, though. The hardest thing of all was to defend yourself against the thing you haven’t done. You can always think of an alibi when you know where you have to pretend not to have been and what you have to pretend you’ve never done. If you haven’t got an answer at all you’re going to look guilty. It was quite a few months before they managed to get themselves out of that.

  I was with Charlie at Vallance Road one morning while the twins were away when the post came.

  Opening a letter Charlie said, ‘Listen to this, Mick. “Don’t you care what happens to us, Charlie, or are you just a brainless cunt?”’ Poor old Charlie, that is what he had to put up with.

  At that moment there was a knock on the door. Some fella called Byrne turned up and said, ‘Sorry, but I’m part of the conspiracy against you and your brothers. I know they didn’t do it.’

  And that was how we learned the truth. This fella wasn’t someone we knew, but rather a friend of Hew McCowan, perhaps one of his boyfriends. The police had got him to make a statement and now he had thought better of it. We got straight on to George Devlin, the private detective who worked for Samson and Co, the solicitors. The twins’ solicitor took a statement of what really happened but even then – such was feeling against the Krays – the jury was still hung. Lord Boothby used parliamentary privilege to demand of the government whether they intended to keep the twins inside for ever. It was only when the case went to retrial that it was at last thrown out by the judge. Writers would later make much more of the story, but the real facts of the Krays’ and McCowan affair were really that straightforward.

  Gilbert France, who knew the twins, suggested they take over The Hideaway.

  ‘I don’t want McCowan in there now,’ he told them. ‘After all these problems he’s caused for you – it’s ridiculous.’

  The club was reopened as El Morocco, after a famous New York venue, but as with everything with the twins, it was all smoke and mirrors. It would subsequently be claimed by those who bought into the Krays’ myths that they bought the place. In truth, no money had changed hands and suddenly they fronted up a big nightclub. The Krays had club business cards printed for themselves and Freddie Foreman.

  I thought this was taking the piss out of the police. The Krays thought they didn’t need to learn any lessons, but the coppers took careful note of how their case collapsed. For so long the police had been used to swooping on anyone they wanted, like in the Longfleet robbery when those two innocent men, Bill C and Bill S, were arrested. The police nailed them with whatever circumstantial evidence they could find. It was an easy result and the case didn’t need to be that tight. But even the police could see that the same approach didn’t work with the Krays. They couldn’t take them down on a whisper.

  Now the twins were drawing attention to the police’s failures. In beating the case, the twins had, in effect, denied they had anything to do with the club. And then they took it over with maximum publicity, their guests including the likes of comedian Frankie Howerd. They were showing nothing less than open contempt for the police. I thought there was no need for antagonising the Old Bill like that. I didn’t want my name on that business card and I didn’t even consider going to the opening night. Yes, it was a glitzy affair which was widely reported by the media, but who was outside the entrance, taking photos of everyone as they arrived? Scotland Yard’s finest, Nipper Read, the man who would achieve fame by bringing down the Krays. This was where he started his work.

  I even told Reggie of my fears.

  ‘We’ve got to step back a bit. We’re too much on show all the time. We’ve got these big meets and loads of people turn up. You have a pub full of people on the meet for no reason.’

  ‘Yeah, right, we’ll talk about that,’ he said. When he got back to me it was to say they were going to ‘decentralise’. That was the first time I heard the te
rm. Somebody must have given them that one. He said that the next meet would be in Walthamstow, a few miles further out. That was the extent of the changes.

  The El Morocco didn’t last very long. I don’t know why, as I wasn’t involved with it, but I think there were financial reasons behind its closure. During its relatively brief life, Ronnie introduced me to the psychiatrist responsible for his treatment and medication. He was a guest one night.

  ‘He’s Dr Klein,’ said Ronnie, ‘from the London hospital. He’s very upset. In a right state. He was telling me he’s just come back from Switzerland. He went out there with a girl – this fella’s much older – and she committed suicide out there. He’s come back, Dr Klein, and he’s all depressed so I sent him over a bottle of champagne. That’ll straighten him out – he’ll be all right, now. You watch.’

  The story sounded terrifying but Ronnie’s attitude was very self-satisfied. He was essentially telling me how clever he was, having sorted out his psychiatrist’s problems for him.

  Dr Klein himself didn’t have quite such an easy going view of his client. Charlie Kray told me what Klein said about Ronnie.

  ‘If he ever has a drink,’ said Klein, ‘I don’t want to be around. I won’t be responsible for that – I’ll wash my hands of the whole matter.’

  I don’t think Charlie told him that Ronnie’s record for drinking was 28 brown ales straight off in The Double R. Big Pat kept the bottles for posterity – equivalent to something like 14 pints in one sitting.