Krayzy Days Page 3

  We got taken to Paddington Green nick and slung in a cell and it was ages before I finally fell asleep. In the middle of the night the police came back for me and demanded to know where we were going, what we were doing.

  ‘We were just having a walk around!’ I insisted. And that was absolutely true. We’d never been to that area and we were just there for something to do. They told me to sign for the items they said they’d found in my pockets, I refused – a knife and a car door handle – neither of which were mine. I couldn’t even drive at the time and I’d have had no idea how to pinch a car. Why would I keep the door handle anyway? I found out what they were up to the next day when I was charged with being a ‘suspected person’ loitering with intent to commit an offence and being armed with an offensive weapon. I’d done no such thing but that was no defence. They had me under the hated ‘sus’ (for suspected person) law that they’ve since done away with – the one they used to nick loads of black men. The police thought they could do anything until there were riots when minority communities decided they weren’t going to put up with it any more.

  My parents might not have been so concerned with what was happening at school, but this got their attention. My dad went mad. Neither of them could believe that they were going to have to come to court with me. Fortunately, my new friend Sonny came to my assistance. When I told him what had happened he was calm and unruffled.

  ‘Oh, go and see my solicitor,’ he said. ‘Ask for Bernard Perkoff and tell him I sent you.’

  He was right not to be worried. The solicitor tore the police to bits, while the two detective sergeants sat in court with their heads in their hands. They’d got us for no good reason and must have thought we’d be an easy way to get the arrest numbers up. Now they shifted and squirmed as they were taken apart by us nobodies. Then the magistrate came to the verdict and after much thought he found us guilty. But then he added, ‘Conditional discharge.’ He wasn’t actually going to go against the police – that wasn’t the done thing in a police court. They all knew each other and the magistrate wasn’t going to step on police toes. That was the way it worked and once I had a bit of experience myself I knew what to expect.

  But I already knew that I didn’t mind being in court. More than that, in a strange way I liked it. Here was a taste of a different life – from the buzz of the Aldgate place, to being recommended a solicitor by Sonny and getting one over on the police. We hadn’t entirely got away with it but it had been exciting. At last I had found something I could really get into. That’s what finally made sense when I found out that all those fellas down Queen’s Road were gangsters. I got on with my work and in return they looked out for me. This was a world that I instinctively felt comfortable in and they recognised me as a like-minded person.

  But before I had a chance to start my new life in earnest I got my papers. National Service. It was September 1955 and I resolved to go in quickly and get it over and done with as fast as possible. That same morning a newspaper board caught my eye on the way to work: MAN SERIOUSLY STABBED IN WEST END BRAWL. I thought to myself, I bet that’s Jack Spot! The man that the Sohns talked about. I’d had a chance to meet him when he and Sonny made one of their regular visits to the auctions. I only knew him in passing, but I was convinced he was the one in the story – and I was right. The people in whose world I was just starting to move were right in the middle of major trouble – and I had to go in the army. I was even less inclined to do my National Service.

  But there was nothing for it. I got through the medical and was posted down to Portsmouth for six weeks of square bashing – drilling and that sort of thing. They decided that if I fitted in anywhere I would be a corporal and I got sent to Blackdown. I didn’t want to be a corporal, of course, and I didn’t want to be in Blackdown either – I had more friends over the road at Deepcut. But nobody was going to listen to me. I was in the First Battalion RAOC and we were sent to Bordon Camp. A waste of time. I thought so and so did a new friend from Liverpool – Jerry White: Scouse White.

  Like me, Jerry had been a schoolboy boxer. We filled our time in the army gym, sparring, running together in the morning and waiting until we could go to the cookhouse, then waiting until the evening. When the village pub opened we’d go for a drink and – well, nothing else. There was nothing happening. At least when the weekend finally did drag itself along we could go home. A coach took me back to London where I was allowed 36 hours with my family. I would usually go out on the town on a Saturday night before heading back. The routine never varied and I hated it.

  I was feeling increasingly desperate and a fellow recruit gave me some tips for getting out. What I was going to do would need practice, but I was determined. Step one was to complain of having headaches. It was duly noted. I waited for a while before choosing step number two. We had to attend an officer commanding (OC) parade which meant yet more drilling and this, I decided, would be my way out. I told a fellow recruit from Highbury and Islington in London what I was going to do just beforehand. But as we clattered down the stairs in our army boots on our way to the parade grounds I felt my courage drain away with every step.

  ‘You’ve given me all that fucking mouth about what you’re going to do,’ the kid from Highbury hissed at me, ‘and you ain’t going to fucking do it? No!’ This was the encouragement I needed.

  ‘All right, I’ll show you,’ I said.

  As we got in formation I walked sideways up to a corporal who totally ignored me as he gazed out over the parade ground, at all the new soldiers and the sergeant major. I hit him on the chin. Completely unsuspecting, he went down at once but soon staggered back to his feet and was about to get at me. Other recruits got in the way.

  ‘Hold tight, hold tight!’ they told him.

  I stared at the corporal. ‘He was laughing at me!’

  Well, he wasn’t. He wasn’t even looking at me. This caused much consternation among my superiors. What was to be done with me? My erratic behaviour, taken with the headaches, was enough to get me referred to Hut 25, Stills Road, Aldershot – the army psychiatrist.

  ‘Would you be happy if I recommended you for discharge?’ he asked me. This was step three and the fella who had been coaching me had told me exactly how to respond.

  ‘Yes!’ I said. This was the point at which most people messed up. If you tried to make out you didn’t really want to get out then they would keep you on. You couldn’t pretend to be loyal. You had to be definite about it. It worked. The psychiatrist wrote up his report and I was out, marked down as ‘temperamentally unstable’, with a huge smile on my face and the assault on the corporal behind me.

  During my brief time in the army the Aldgate auction warehouse had closed down after Leon Kaiser skipped to America with all the money. I went back to life down Queen’s Road where, after work had finished for the day, a lot of the locals would go out drinking. They were known as the Queen’s Road mob and nobody interfered with them. Now I got my first proper brush with gangster families and I loved it. Part of the Queen’s Road strength came from everyone being very clannish, all seemingly related to each other. Daughters-of would marry sons-of. It was an exclusive club and I was determined to find my way in. The key was not to be a nuisance. Just stay on the right side of them and earn their trust slowly. I liked what I saw of them. They were unmistakable – confident, flashy, smart and they always had money. It looked like an exciting life.

  Crime bosses Jack Spot and Billy Hill – who were partners for a while and controlled a large portion of London’s crime – drew a lot of their supporters from the Queen’s Road. They also had another crew who were Bobby Warren, Battles Rossi, Billy Bly, Frankie Fraser and co. Jack and Billy made sure they were friendly with everyone – that was how they became successful. North, south and Upton Park – everywhere was under their control, except the East End. There wasn’t really a distinct criminal fraternity in that area then, not in the sense of something around Mile End. That would come with the Krays who were Jack Spot’s prot
égés at the time.

  Billy had a lot of interests in West End gambling, while Jack Spot never set his sights as high. Spot would always go the criminal route. He’d never pay for anything if he could avoid it, while Billy bought himself a luxurious, tasteful lifestyle in London and he had a reputation – which wasn’t really that accurate – for being refined. After their split, Jack didn’t manage to hang on to his position and everyone set about him. It left Billy Hill the undisputed top figure in London.

  Jack and Billy were as well known as the Krays. They were more successful, smarter and Billy Hill, in particular, was more discreet. He would end up playing a big part in my life. He was more thoughtful than the twins, more considered and was always able to think a few steps ahead. The Krays knew it and they hated it. Their ambition and lust for glory always outstripped their abilities and Billy made fools of them.

  Some of the faces on a Monday night in The Queen’s pub were serious names in their own right: Jacky Reynolds, Teddy Machin, Georgie and Jimmy Woods, who had served long sentences for a major robbery at Heathrow Airport. Porky Bennett was another. He had got eight years PD (preventative detention) for slashing a wrestler with a razor in a restaurant in the old Chinese neighbourhood around Limehouse. I would later have a run in with his family myself. Georgie Woods and Jacky Reynolds would go on to run The Spieler for the twins. Among the Queen’s Road mob were also those who would venture over the water – meaning over the Thames – to around the Elephant & Castle area. This was the crowd I felt at home with. I was watching the way they made sure they knew people all over London and it was through them that I first heard about a new venue – a club called The Double R.

  Chapter Two

  The Jars and the Corner

  I started making serious money by being a conman. And the best people to con are other criminals. Big ones – fences. This is how it works. It all relies on the intro – a mutual acquaintance they can’t and usually don’t want to contact because, greedily, it would mean giving them a cut of their profits. ‘Listen,’ I would say, ‘so and so told me to contact you. I’ve just done a robbery and it looks like it’s come on top for me. I need to sell this stuff quick and get some money before I get a pull off the Old Bill.’ I would give them a flash of a handful of stones wrapped in a handkerchief, mounted in beautiful settings, men’s and women’s, that anyone would love to wear. ‘I could do you a right good deal. There was a mink coat there and a sliding cigarette case,’ I’d add, ‘but I don’t know about them, they might be gone. Look, get them valued if you want.’ Of course, I won’t really let you inspect the stones, much less take them to a jeweller and if you get too close I’ll go, ‘What are you doing? You’ll get us all nicked.’ Make you feel stupid. The stress is on speed, secrecy and I’m good at it.

  You’re a fence, remember, I have been introduced by a friend and this is turning on your greedy switch. Of course, what I’ve shown you aren’t real diamonds. They’re jargoons – a type of zircon gemstone material. Those of us who did this con called them the jars for short and that was how the con itself got its name – ‘the jars’.

  If you did get close enough to the jars to test them you’d soon see they weren’t the real thing. Try filing the jars and they’ll mark. Real diamonds never do. The other way to tell is to put the glass on them – there’s no such thing as a flawless diamonds but these fakes are clear. But I haven’t let you have a good look, have I? You’re not quite sure why you haven’t been able to look, though you’re sure there’s a good reason and if I’ve done very well you might even think you have inspected them. In the words of the old song – it’s not what you do, it’s the way that you do it.

  I learned all my tricks from the professional conmen I met in the Queen’s Road mob. I was fascinated by their game. They knew the Krays – we all knew of each other – and it was through them that I first got to hear about the twins’ club, The Double R. The Krays found the venue in Bow Road, just before the old bridge near the Lea, not more than a couple of miles from the Krays’ house near the bottom of Brick Lane in Bethnal Green. The family used to live just off Brick Lane at the end of Cheshire Street, though even the house has gone now. I still pass the site on the train these days when I’m travelling into London and each time I go through the area I think of how much of a change those short years made in me.

  When I first visited The Double R I liked what I saw and became a regular. That was how I got to know Reggie, while Ronnie was away. Ronnie was doing a prison sentence before he eventually landed in Long Grove, the mental hospital. There were varying accounts of why he was certified – everyone seemed to have a theory. I didn’t take much notice, still being busy getting to know people in the Queen’s Road mob. What was happening with Ronnie didn’t really make much impression on me while I was developing my technique with the jars.

  Ronnie Curtis was a good example to me as I was starting out. He got the nickname ‘the Prince’ for always looking immaculate and for being well mannered. Albert ‘the Jar’ Lovett, as his nickname might suggest, was the king of our trick, though. He had built himself quite a reputation. We used to have breakfast meetings in Joe’s Cafe at the top of Queen’s Road in Upton Park. One sunny summer morning as we strolled out of Joe’s, Ronnie suddenly spun round and slashed Albert’s face to ribbons, the knife cut right through Albert’s face lacerating his gums. Ronnie had discovered that Albert was having an affair with his attractive wife Sheila.

  We used to get our jars through a fella named Tommy Plumley – or Red-Face Tommy. His contact in Hatton Gardens, London’s jewellery district, used to supply us with the fake diamonds. Tommy was a small fella, not a tough guy, but he had a swagger that came from having all the police straight. Red-Face Tommy had money and was known for being able to bribe any of the Old Bill. At least, until I got him caught up in a chain reaction of arrests which caused such a scandal that everyone heard about it.

  The risk with any of the cons we used to do was dealing all the time with strangers. On the one hand they had to be unknown for the trick to work but we knew there were grasses everywhere. Some of the fences had mates in the police – it was always useful in their line of work. They would do them a favour on occasion or they might even be a professional informer. We could hardly complain if our targets wanted to make money out of us. It came with the job. These guys wouldn’t have any concern about going to the police because their fencing would be overlooked if they dropped us in it.

  A mate of mine called Jim Cox, aka Coxie, got nicked in Greenwich over the jars and I was determined to straighten things out for him. Tommy was my first thought but wasn’t a straightforward type you could just ask for a favour, and he didn’t know me. I was just getting to know Reggie at The Double R and he was very interested in seeing how the cons worked. I think he found them quite impressive. He helped us out and with his assistance two of us had even managed to sell La Discothèque, the first disco in the West End, to an unsuspecting mug.

  However, when I first asked Reggie to use his influence with Tommy, he just brushed me off with an assurance he never acted on. As the date of my friend’s court case came up I became desperate and approached Reggie again. This time we both went over to Red-Face’s flat above a barber shop in Hoxton. Reggie did the introductions and Red-Face asked me what it was about. I went through all the details, how my mate had got done over in Greenwich, where he was being held on remand. Tommy didn’t say much but he got us to follow him downstairs, through the barber shop itself and into a toilet at the back where he kept his phone. Within minutes he was through to the policeman in charge of the case.

  ‘My name’s Tommy, I’m a little red-faced fella. You’ll know who I am when you see me,’ he said. ‘You know that job you’ve got on in Greenwich? Let’s meet Thursday.’ With Tommy’s contacts, it was that simple. The officer readily agreed to discuss the case in a pub near Guy’s Hospital on the south bank of the Thames, listened to his story carefully – and nicked him. Although they gave him bail
he was fuming when he came home and I thought it was best to stay out of his way. It wasn’t a bad decision as things got even worse for Red-Face. He discovered that the case was based around the testimony of four drinkers standing nearby in the pub. When he was bribing the policeman they were listening to every word.

  Tommy enlisted the help of the twins to recruit the same number of men, among them trusted associates such as Claude the cab driver, Larry the Lamb and Electric Les. They all made statements that they were standing nearby and they didn’t hear anything. But the police had made themselves busy and revealed that the official witnesses were all doctors from Guy’s who were in the pub most nights.

  The case became famous, as I discovered on a Sunday, which had been shaping up to be a rather boring one until The News of the World came through the letterbox. I remember feeling so unmotivated that I almost couldn’t be bothered to read it. They’d have to have a story about me today, I thought, to get me reading. I wasn’t far wrong. I opened it up to find a spread with the headline: THE FOUR JUST MEN. There were the doctors telling their stories and I was suddenly wide awake. The feature had all the detail and the police officer who had arrested Tommy was featured in full. ‘I scurfed the villain!’ he was quoted as saying. ‘I grabbed him by the collar and brought him to justice.’ Red-Face folded and pleaded guilty – rather selfishly – as it meant his four mates went to prison alongside him for not telling the truth. They’d all gone off like a chain of fire crackers. It broke old Tommy and he died not long after that.

  The jars was not the only trick I pulled. A more skilful con was ‘the corner’. This involved selling nothing at all and that was always going to require more talent than was needed for the jars, when you at least had some stones to show your buyer. But what the corner and the jars did share was the necessity for an indirect approach. You had to tell your target that a mutual acquaintance asked you to have a word with them. You had something this friend said your target would be very interested in. As long as you’re sure this mutual acquaintance isn’t going to turn up, you’re safe.