Krayzy Days Read online

  Bertie asked me over to his place in Canning Town.

  ‘There’s a funny old turn-out,’ he said. ‘I think there’s a bit of a sad story gone on. I think they’ve done Jackie McVitie last night.’ More news spreading faster than was wise. ‘Give me until tomorrow,’ he continued, ‘and I’ll tell you exactly what’s happened. Jack might have gone away again or something, I don’t know. He was pissed and saying, “The twins don’t fucking frighten me, I’m not frightened of anybody,” and all things like that. Paralytic drunk. Pilled up as well.’

  I already knew I’d done the right thing in leaving them but I could tell that this was a major development. As soon as he was about the next day, at tea-time, I went back to Bertie’s.

  ‘A sorry tale,’ said Bertie. ‘They lured Jack to a party in Evering Road,’ and he gave me all the details of what would later be the well-documented killing of Jack the Hat.

  It was still quite some time after then that the police got to hear about the killings but I wasn’t at all surprised when the twins were nicked. The Evering Road party was full of people. They sent the women over the road but there were too many people watching. It was only a matter of time before the police caught up over those two deaths and Cornell.

  I heard about their arrest from a friend in a phone call.

  ‘The others have been nicked.’ I thought, oh, right. Well, that will do. This was not long after I’d sat in the car waiting to shoot Reggie myself. My mates and me had been prepared to take them all on because we knew that some day we would end up having a battle with them. An arrest was the only other way it could have gone.

  I had an errand to run to my parents’ house and Bertie from The Regency happened to be with me. My mother looked panicked as she opened the door.

  ‘Go away, go away,’ she whispered. ‘The police have been round. They’re looking for you!’

  Neither she nor my father knew what I was up to. They were straight but she knew I was in trouble and she was worried for me. I don’t like to dwell on what I put them through – it would give me nightmares. They must have been so anxious as me and Bert jumped back in the motor.

  I had thought that I had been out of it long enough for it not to concern me. I knew from having kept the twins under close surveillance that the police could have nothing on me relating to the murders. This had to be to do with something else. We drove past my house and I saw an unmarked police car, given away by its communications aerial. I got dropped off, knowing I would be better off alone. The anonymity of a bus would be much better for transport and I couldn’t stay in my own home.

  I moved into a hotel called The White House in Regent’s Park. It was there that my brother phoned to say that our dad had lung cancer. There was no warning and he was only in his early 60s. He had gone into hospital feeling some pain and they operated to find the cancer. But I couldn’t leave the hotel. My distractions were television and the newspapers and if nothing else there didn’t seem to be anything for me to worry about, no case for me to worry about. Eventually, I thought it would be safe to return home to Plaistow. My white Rover was waiting for me in the garage and I returned to my life as usual. I had indeed got away with it – almost.

  A month later the police swooped mob-handed and arrested me.

  ‘A bit of luck catching you,’ one said, ‘as nobody put it on you.’

  I had nothing to do with the murders and the police had missed the long firms, though they had taken some interest in the Krays’ business dealings. Instead it was down to the less discreet of my two sisters, who lived four doors away from the McVities, that I got into trouble. She was on nodding terms with Jack’s wife and was fascinated by their world. She would name-drop that her brother – me – knew all these people and she loved finding out who knew what. She also bought Jack McVitie’s old van. That was when the Fawcett name came up. The Old Bill had taken their time to get the investigation right. They put themselves all over the East End, being very friendly to everybody in order to get a good reputation with the people they wanted to trust them enough to give evidence.

  ‘We’re thinking Jack may be in his van at the bottom of the river somewhere,’ said one Old Bill. ‘What we wanted to do was eliminate it and we come across you. So that was handy, wasn’t it?’ I didn’t exactly agree but I didn’t have much choice now but to get in their car.

  We drove to West End Central Police Station where I was grilled about my involvement with the Krays. The interviewer indicated a stack of papers and said, ‘That is about you.’ They made a great deal out of my having run Esmeralda’s, but that was a sign of desperation. I never left many clues and they didn’t have anything on me.

  The Krays’ former financial adviser, Leslie Payne, and his friend had left them and later put it on the twins. They were terrible. They also provided evidence against me, although I’d never dealt with either of them. Payne said I’d been involved in some dodgy company, which I hadn’t been. It didn’t really matter to the police. The point of the exercise was to get the Krays and Foreman and to find something to get anyone who had been involved in any way assisting them. At the end of what turned out to be an extremely long day, I was charged only with conspiracy in connection with the long firms and they had to give me bail.

  What should have been a routine committal hearing at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court was a sensation with the Krays at the heart of it. Television cameras were there every day, following the vans as they went to and from the prison. The Old Bill all had guns. I loved the excitement and prepared myself by doing my best to look as unlike a Kray as possible. I had on a green tweed three-piece suit and bought a copy of The Financial Times because it was pink. With The FT rammed smartly under my arm I was escorted to a cell containing all those people I’d not spoken to for a long time. All of the Kray team were being tried together. There were 13 of us in there in total. It was strangely quiet in there and I stood away from them at one end of the sizeable cell. The contrast was marked. They were all in the trademark East End gangster outfit while I stood out and away from them in every possible sense.

  I knew I was at risk from reprisals but I was also aware that the authorities were not going to give me a choice of accommodation. What could I do? I stood with my back to the wall and looked as non-aggressive as possible. The twins must have thought I would turn but the reality for me was I knew there were others in that cell who would end up giving evidence. I didn’t have any incentive. The police had nothing on me and I wasn’t going to run the risk of incriminating myself for no reason, was I? But I knew the twins couldn’t be sure of that and I expected a confrontation at any moment. There would have been 12 witnesses, but when had that ever stopped Ronnie before? The expected assault never came. It was baffling.

  They certainly weren’t frightened of me in a physical sense. If nothing else they could easily have overpowered me but perhaps they just didn’t know who they could trust around them. Or maybe it was the policeman who brought them down, ‘Nipper’ Read, who inadvertently helped me out. He searched me in the cell on the second day and that must have provided a hint that I wasn’t about to give evidence.

  Even so, this was the Krays’ last chance to take revenge on me for having walked away, but they failed to take it. I don’t think they really knew what to do with me. I was a bit of a strange case, having left them without a word and seemingly without motivation, and here we were all in rather unusual circumstances, eyeballing one another directly under the court in Bow Street. What conversation there was tended to be between the three Krays and Limehouse Willy.

  For two weeks we were based in that one cell during the procedures, filing out for our appearances every day and all that time the only person to approach me at all was big Tommy Brown, the gruff gypsy.

  ‘Why are you blanking me, son?’ he growled. ‘I ain’t done fuck all to you.’

  ‘No, but plenty of you want to,’ I said. He grunted and walked away.

  Whenever we were in the dock, I left a space
between me and the rest of them. I craftily meant to suggest that I didn’t like them and I wasn’t going to have anything to do with them. If there was any influence I could exert on the magistrates it would be that I was separate from the Kray firm. However you wanted to put it, my attitude said, I was a different race, another breed. Whatever might keep me from their fate. It worked.

  On the last day after lunch the jailers asked, ‘Do you mind if we move you up a row, much nearer the twins?’ I said I didn’t.

  Despite all my careful attempts to distance myself, I was actually a bit mad myself at the time, a very confident character. It will sound completely bizarre to say it but I have to admit I was enjoying being in the courtroom. The officer looked relieved.

  ‘A few of the others have made statements against the Krays,’ he said, ‘and they’re frightened that when the balloon goes up it will be on them all.’ Among those who turned was none other than trusted associate Limehouse Willy, the very one they’d been chatting to so much in the cell.

  The trial at the Old Bailey that would follow the committal has been well documented, with Ronnie insulting the prosecutor at every opportunity. But the twins also put on a little double act while they were at Bow Street, which was not so well reported. Reggie got himself on his feet on the second day.

  ‘Can I speak? Can I speak?’ He wasn’t usually a natural public speaker, tending to mutter. ‘I want to make a complaint. Mr Read and his men have taken my granddad’s pension book away.’

  The magistrate looked irritated. ‘I’ll make a note of that,’ he said, ‘for what it’s worth.’

  Ronnie, still sitting, looked with open disgust at the magistrate.

  ‘“Make a note of it”? You old cunt!’

  Like his brothers he knew it was all over. In that sense there was little point in trying to make things better for himself and he could barely follow the case half the time anyway. He’d clearly resolved to have fun while he still could. The magistrate decided the best course of action was to talk through this and he did what he could while Ronnie continued to repeat ‘old cunt’ to the delight of the other defendants. Even the police couldn’t keep their faces straight.

  As the last one to be nicked, I was the last to take my seat in the dock. Walking up the stairs my eyes happened to lock with Freddie Foreman. He didn’t flicker, just looked down. Since the day I left the car after we discussed killing Stayton, we’ve never exchanged a word.

  Albert Donoghue, who was also in on the plan to kill Stayton, turned and put it on Foreman. I’ve still got the transcript of the committal proceedings with my own very brief statement.

  ‘I’ve got nothing to say about the Kray twins.’

  The atmosphere in the courtroom altered after that. Now at last the others knew what I was up to – nothing.

  Bobby Buckley, Ronnie’s boyfriend, later said to me, ‘We all thought you’d grassed when you blanked us all, Mickey.’

  The committal continued with an old mate of mine – and former good friend to the twins – giving evidence for the prosecution. Billy Exley was recovering from a heart attack and spoke from a wheelchair.

  When it came to the charges against me he said, ‘Fawcett said to me, “I think this is crooked, Bill, I’m going,” and he wouldn’t have anything to do with it.’ That was enough to get me off.

  My solicitor stood up to defend me but the magistrate waved him into silence.

  ‘I don’t think you need to speak,’ he said. ‘There are clearly major flaws in the evidence against Fawcett. He’s discharged.’

  I stood up immediately and made to leave. And Charlie Kray shouted out with great warmth but poor timing, ‘Oh, good luck, Mick! Well done!’

  Two of us were freed, me and Sam Lederman.

  Charlie was to suffer again as a result of his family name. He made a lot of contacts up north and in the Midlands after his release, living with a girl in Leicester, but he wasn’t intelligent enough to know how to deal with so many admirers. He had a sort of Krays’ supporters’ club and it was one of them who finished him off some years later.

  In 1996, Charlie had gone to the funeral of his son Gary, who had died of an HIV-related illness. A member of his new group of friends came to the funeral with a driver who, as Charlie went on to write in his own book, introduced him to what turned out to be undercover police. He set them up with a cocaine supplier and they nicked him. You could say it was the Krays’ celebrity status as much as anything that destroyed them all in the end. Charlie got 12 years and died in prison. Ronnie was also never freed before his death in 1995 and Reggie was allowed out a few weeks before he died in 2000, the same year as Charlie.

  I still miss Reggie. I can go a long time without thinking about him and I can even be glad he’s gone and that we didn’t speak for so long. But then I’ll think of some incident – and it might be one of his madder, more violent moments – and think, yeah, he showed them there for a while. Like the night we went for a drink in The Senate Rooms Club.

  It was an unremarkable evening, quite dull, in fact, until we visited the toilet. I was just mid-slash when I was deafened by a tremendous explosion that made me think I might have permanent hearing damage. The noise of a gun going off in a bright, echoing space like a toilet makes you forget what’s going on. I couldn’t work out for a moment what had happened until I saw Reggie put the gun away in his pocket. The bloke standing next to us at the urinals had dropped to the floor, bleeding from the leg. His name, I found out later, was Ginger Cooper. Never saw him before, never saw him again and I didn’t know what he’d done to receive such punishment, but he came from Hoxton and that would have probably been a good enough reason in Reggie’s mind. Reggie and I strode calmly out of the toilets, through the club and into the night. Nobody tried to stop us, in fact, I stopped and had a chat with Terry Gill the boxer on the way out but I could tell Reggie was worried about something.

  ‘I think I shot him in the head,’ he said.

  ‘No, it was definitely the leg,’ I said.

  ‘No, but as I shot him the gun jumped and he put his hands up to his head,’ said Reggie.

  ‘That was because it was so loud,’ I said.

  There was no further comment or explanation from Reggie. When I mentioned it to another friend of ours they seemed to know who the man was.

  ‘Oh, what’s he want to shoot Soppy Cooper for?’ That was as much as I ever found out.

  The next day Reggie seemed keen to talk about the night – but only in as much as he wanted to tell me about a terrible nightmare he’d had in which I was running over rooftops in the dark. The shooting was never mentioned again.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Steamship

  Billy Hill invited me out to join him at his apartment in Spain. After all the chaos with the last days of the Krays it was a completely different experience to spend time with someone who was so successful. I was even more interested when he offered to get me into the gambling games which had made him so much money.

  I met Billy through a mutual friend, Teddy Machin, who was himself the most gangster-type gangster I’d ever seen in my life. He was about 6ft 1, he had black hair and he had black eyes. He knew how to dress and he had the walk. You’d think he was Sicilian. They used to call him Terrible Ted and he was the king of the Upton Park mob. He would end up being a bit of an uncle figure to my son, until we fell out. Teddy had been doing some driving for me while I was working on a long firm and I told him about the time that Reggie kidnapped Patsy Murphy and went to visit Billy and his ‘waiters’. This tale duly made its way back to Hillsy who was intrigued to meet me.

  He had a nice flat near Torremolinos in Spain and was as friendly and welcoming as I remembered him. We chatted about various people and places we’d known and Billy took me on a tour of the Costa del Sol, which back then was very pretty and not at all developed. We went to the Marbella club before returning to his place. Hillsy was never without 200 Benson & Hedges and smoked like a chimney. Taking out
a cigarette, he rolled it between his hands until the tobacco dropped out. Perhaps he was going to replace it with marijuana. I’d been offered that before, but it didn’t do anything for me. That one occasion was the end of drugs for me as far as I was concerned. I wasn’t interested. But what Billy had was something different – he called it kief, a Moroccan cannabis derivative and this was good stuff. I’ve never come across it since. Having rolled it up, he presented it to me along with a stunning young French woman called Lilianne Satine. She used to sunbathe on the roof above Billy’s place and she was tanned and golden, with elegant gold sandals. Having made the introduction, Billy fucked off with Machin and left me there with his drugs and the beautiful young woman. I realised that this was just his way of putting me at ease. Hillsy didn’t drink, though he was utterly obsessed by women and liked his drugs a lot too – I guess that this was just his version of a gin and tonic.

  The next day we were lounging around the pool and I said, ‘A pal of mine named Boy Boy Clifford has bought a piece of land out here near Madrid. He’s going to open a shooting club.’

  ‘Do you realise that what you’ve just said could make you a fortune?’ said Billy. ‘Shooting clubs are about the only place in Spain where you can legally gamble. Now, I tell you, I have got friends in the Unione Corse. I’ll put you in it. I’ll introduce you to the main man. We’ll do it up in Madrid.’

  This contact was Marcel Francisci – the Unione Corse boss himself. Billy was obsessed with playing cards and understood chemin de fer backwards. If ever he had time to kill with someone, out would come the deck. Our conversation drifted to the twins and Billy once again called them ‘those brainless cunts’. That was when he told me what had really gone on when Reggie got involved with Billy and the French ‘waiters’ and how they had in reality been Unione Corse.

  Billy’s own brother-in-law, Mickey Riley, was a talented rick. In Billy’s own colourful phrase, ‘a right berk with money, but he can read the cards. I’ll introduce you to him too. He can graft with you. I gave him £100,000 last year and he ain’t got a fucking penny now.’