Krayzy Days Read online

  The Berrys’ father had trained the twins as boxers and both Teddy and Checker had fought professionally in their time. Teddy had been particularly good, though, I was friendly with them both and so were the twins. Checker was charismatic and a good laugh. He drove Ronnie down to Dartmoor on a visit, which he later described to me in memorable terms.

  ‘God, I had a day!’ he said when they got back. ‘Do you know, Ronnie never spoke one word from Bethnal Green to the nick? We got as far as Exeter, on the edge of the moors somewhere, I was getting really bored and I turned the car radio on. He just leaned forward and turned it off again.’

  All we knew about the shooting was what Teddy told us. The attacker came up behind him and brought him down with a shotgun. John Pearson, in one of his books on the Krays, claimed that the twins were behind it and that they bought Teddy a pub as a reward for keeping his mouth shut. But I was with them when they heard the news and they were not only absolutely gobsmacked, but they were annoyed too. They were friendly with the Berrys but there was something of a professional jealousy there – they were the only ones who were allowed to dish out that sort of violence. There was also an element of fear there. What was all of this about?

  After the Berrys and the Dixons got together they started to throw their weight around and had a fight outside a late-night drinking club called The Senate Rooms. I’d previously stopped them after they knocked out a guy called Johnny Isaacs. He was laying spark out on the pavement, Checker backed off when I asked him. I wasn’t there for the later fight but from what I heard it was over not much more than the usual macho posing.

  This time, the fellas that the Berry-Dixon contingent had been fighting at The Senate Rooms had been pretty tasty characters and yet one of them ran away. Not much was thought about that at the time, but it was this same person who came back with a mate and shot Teddy. The twins found out who was behind it and told me, though they didn’t do anything about it themselves. The books that claim Teddy was bought off with a pub are wide of the mark, though I wouldn’t want to cause poor old Teddy, who is still hobbling about on one leg, any further misery by revealing the name of his attacker here. I can say that it made that person’s reputation with the Krays. They were friendly with both parties and that was why it never went any further.

  Some people fingered Limehouse Willy. He was an old Kray friend who worked for them in The Spieler and, although he wasn’t known for being violent, he did have a fight with Teddy Berry. It was one of those turnouts over nothing but the upshot was that Willy got badly slashed across the face. The rumour was that he was behind the shooting as retribution for the striping, though the truth was he was never like that.

  As anyone writing a book should have found out for themselves, the twins settled Willy’s grievance in a most ridiculous way. They had a little gambling club called The Greatorex, which was in the heart of Aldgate in Greatorex Street. They organised a bare knuckle fight between a fella called Alfie Barker and Nobby Clarke. The reasoning behind the match was no more than they were both about the same size and Alfie was a friend of Teddy. It was an absurd notion in the first place – having a little fist fight to make up for Willy being cut to ribbons – and it soon descended into farce. Nobby bit Alfie during the match and was disqualified. That was Reggie and Ronnie trying to save face and not make enemies but it was very convoluted. In the end, Limehouse Willy got his own back in a manner of speaking: he would later turn and give evidence against the Krays at their trial.

  Chapter Five

  Having a Quiet Drink at The Hammer Club

  Reggie suggested that he and I both sleep with the stunning girl he was talking to in La Monde, the Chelsea club. She was staying in a flat above the venue. When everyone had gone the three of us trooped into the bedroom. We all got undressed. We got into bed together, gorgeous girl in the middle flanked by me and Reggie. And then we slept together – in the sense that we all went to sleep, got up in the morning and put our clothes back on and we all left.

  I wonder what went through her mind. There she was with these two strangers, tough guys and absolutely nothing happened at all. Perhaps she thought that Reggie wasn’t interested. But he was very interested and certainly didn’t want to go sleep – I doubt any of us got much rest that night. As strange as it sounds for someone with his swagger, Reggie just didn’t know what to do next.

  He didn’t get much further with Vera Day, Forest Gate’s answer to Diana Dors. He spotted the starlet in another nightclub when we were out with his old friend Johnny Squibb. Vera was a celebrity back when there weren’t the sheer volume you see today and she was quite something, married to East End bodybuilder Arthur Mason. He wasn’t with her that night and Reggie invited her over to join us. He soon slid his arm around her, like a teenager who had just gone for his first date in the back row of the cinema.

  We all left at 2.00 am and Reggie offered her lift in his beautiful Mercedes. I rode up front with Johnny and Reggie and his new friend sat behind on the way back to her Kensington flat.

  ‘Hang on a second,’ said Reggie, ‘and I’ll just walk Vera to her door.’

  It was only a few steps up to the block’s entrance hall and Johnny, watching them in the mirror with a grin, began to pull away. As we looked behind us we saw a panicked Reggie desert his charge and come chasing after the car. It was all extremely undignified. Each time he got to the door, Johnny pulled forward again. When Reggie finally got in, panting, he called us every name under the sun. The truth was – as he knew we knew – that despite his bravado, Reggie Kray was terrified of women.

  A year before the threesome that never happened, I first noticed the girl that Reggie invited me to sleep with. Me and my friend Jonah discovered her staggering beauty in La Monde, the club ran by Ossie’s friend Jamette. The gorgeous girl was clearly out of reach for us, but I remembered her months later when Reggie was chatting to her. I was about to leave when Reggie caught my eye and came rushing over.

  ‘Hang about – you don’t want to get away, do you?’ He was whispering rather breathlessly. ‘We can sleep with that girl tonight, if you want,’ he continued. The out-of-reach girl was now a possibility. I hung on until everyone had gone home, but I might as well not have bothered.

  Reggie eventually married Frances O’Shea, whose brother I also knew. He had almost the same name, Frank O’Shea. The wedding was a major deal with David Bailey taking the photos. I didn’t go – I couldn’t stand the carry-on and I was always antisocial. I was snobbish too – there were too many mugs about. Not my scene. It was in Bethnal Green and everyone who’d ever met them even once had come out of the woodwork. I pleaded diplomatic flu. But Reggie didn’t mind that I didn’t see them until after they got back from honeymoon in Greece. They both joined me for a drink at the El Morocco.

  I’d hardly said hello before she said in front of him, ‘Do you know he hasn’t laid a finger on me in all the time we’ve been away?’

  What do you say in return to something like that? Reggie himself didn’t sound angry though, just defeated.

  ‘Cor, I’m glad it’s you she’s told,’ he said sadly, ‘and no one else.’

  Their marriage was never consummated. Poor old Reggie. His brother’s promiscuous antics must have just been just another reminder of his own failures. Ronnie could be very graphic in his physical description of men. He appreciated them like a woman and it used to wind people up. He was always talking about how this person or that old army buddy had ‘a lovely body’. Reggie hated all this. He was actually suppressing a gay side of his persona, one that I heard he later reverted to in prison. I guess that in the end he just stopped caring about whether people knew or not.

  Esmeralda’s Barn provided more prospects for Ronnie to fall for. This club was in the refined environs of Belgravia in a venue that would later be taken over by the Berkeley Hotel. Long before the Krays had even heard of the place it had been very tasteful, with a discerning crowd. The cynical Lord Kilbracken said of fellow punter Lord Effing
ham’s attendance at the House of Lords, ‘Do you know, he hasn’t missed a sitting since the allowances went up to £4 a day?’

  Esmeralda’s had a bar where Cy Grant, the resident pianist, would play jazz. It was all very cool. Everyone looked very hip and The Barn’s natural market, the Belgravia set, were the height of sophistication. After the Krays took over, you’d sometimes see the Krays’ parents, old Charlie and Violet, with their entourage and the generation and class gap was very obvious. Stone-faced, crossed arms, they scowled as if they were on just another East End night out.

  Some of the firm would go to The Barn, when they were given permission, but being a bit more freelance I went whenever I liked. Ronnie’s personal concerns were still in evidence despite the posh location.

  ‘Oh, Mick, I’m in love,’ he sighed one day. ‘There’s this boy up The Barn. Oh.’ He couldn’t stop talking about this young man, whose name was Bobby Buckley and when he wasn’t talking about him he was taking off his lisping voice. They did get together and I liked Bobby. He wasn’t a bad kid.

  Away from The Barn but in other West End clubs I could be a bad drunk, sometimes looking for trouble in nightclubs by leaving without paying when the bill came. It wasn’t that unusual for people to see me at the end of a night chinning doormen. It wasn’t really that malicious, though I might wonder what I’d done when it came to the next morning. I could usually find a grudge that needed to be settled. If there was already something kicking off then so much the better as far as I was concerned.

  Then came a couple of fights at The Hammer Club. I was pretty much sober when I fought there and that made me much more of a serious proposition. After that, people started to think I might get out of control. The Hammer was a good place to be seen doing that kind of thing. It was a rough old East End venue which was well named – there were often rows there. You could make yourself a reputation there but it wasn’t on turf that was claimed by any of the big firms. The club was in E13 and the twins’ influence ended around E3. This was well off their map, all the way down East India Dock Road, along Barking Road and on the turn off onto Greengate Street in Plaistow.

  The trouble centred on Johnny Davies. I’d known him since we were both ten when we met at primary school. Even then he was in the morons’ class but we stayed friends and I went on to introduce him to the twins. It was him who did such a good job of oiling Ronnie’s bullets. Johnny was completely mad at the best of times and now he had become involved in a feud that had come out of nothing more than a fight over a spilled drink at a friend’s wedding.

  The row started on the Saturday afternoon of the reception and I’ve still got a photo of some of the guests smiling away with their rosettes prominently displayed. By Sunday lunchtime everyone was fighting again. A fella called Bobby Reading got badly caught up in it. His brother Albert was with the twins in the army doing National Service. Ronnie used to go on about what a marvellous body he had. Back then many people were scared of him and he was a strange character. Albert was once arrested with a gun while dressed as a woman, though he got on well with the local Old Bill. I didn’t know him that well and hadn’t really grown up under his influence.

  The fighting got serious, although nobody was badly hurt until they found one of my pals at home and battered his front door down. But he was ready, lying on the floor with a shotgun, and he blasted them as the door went in. Bobby Reading lost an eye and gained a nickname – ‘cockle eye’.

  It was carnage. Both sides got arrested and the other side got nine months. Our lot, who didn’t have the same influence with the local Old Bill, got three years, including a fella called Bertie Summers who was a good friend of mine.

  Albert Reading grassed and they had a friend called Alan Castille who was busy scaring Johnny Davies. Johnny might have been dangerous but he wasn’t very brave. You always had to watch the ones like him. Cowards are always more likely to shoot you rather than risk a proper fight. Johnny’s family ran a fruit shop and he could generally be found sitting outside it on his apple box, staring into space with one arm resting over his head like a fucking gorilla. He looked like a gorilla too, with a big forehead and a bull neck. He had a proper tough guy appearance, although he wasn’t actually a gangster. He was easily spooked and Cassie was making the most of it, coming up and driving him mad. That was what Johnny said when he came crying to me about it, anyway. Equally, he was the type to imagine it all, though he swore to me that he’d been attacked with a chopper. Something had to be done.

  The pair of us, Johnny armed with his trusted meat cleaver that made holes in his trousers where he always hid it, and me with my knife, went to find Castille and the rest of them at The Hammer Club. It all sounds very dramatic fare for a Sunday afternoon and it was. Just another lunchtime drink down The Hammer. The enemy were in a big gang with all their mates, including George Dixon. Not all of them were involved, but if they were there that day that was just their bad luck. We polished off our drinks, got up as if to go and then turned at the door and set about them. They scattered in all directions. Some made it to the front door and others hid in the gents. Johnny done Castille on the head with his meat cleaver and he’s still got the scar on his face where I striped him.

  Roy Shaw, who I’d remembered from the schoolboy boxing championships, was there to hear the little speech I made to the terrified gang, telling them exactly why we were after them and warning them all off by name. Roy was a powerful figure in his own right and he was never shy of causing mayhem when the mood took him. I think he found the whole thing very entertaining.

  ‘I’ve got my car,’ he said afterwards. ‘I’ll give you a lift.’

  It was the start of a friendship between the two of us. Roy had become a legend himself and I soon discovered his character was very much in keeping with the stories of his adventures. An unpredictable man to be around, he was supposed to have been in a borstal where he tied up the psychiatrist and escaped. His appearance matched his reputation with a permanently furrowed brow and endlessly fierce expression. He drank vodka to excess and took purple hearts while keeping himself fit until he eventually succumbed to the lure of steroids. Still a tearaway even today, Roy was recently sectioned.

  Roy was in The Hammer again a couple of weeks later when Johnny and I had another fight, this time about a completely unrelated matter. It was over some fellas from Upton Park and it was this fight that made people sit up and take notice of me.

  Once again Johnny himself was at the heart of it when his stepbrother was attacked in a pub by a bunch of bullies, including such names as Freddy Skennington, the Bennetts – Russy and his brother Pippy – and Georgie Woods. The Bennetts were well known over in Upton Park and they drew a lot of their confidence from their history of being key figures with Jack Spot and Billy Hill. They had a stall on the Queen’s Road Market where a lot of the gangsters hung out. Johnny told me all about it and I knew that again we couldn’t back down. You couldn’t just keep out of the way of families like the Bennetts, otherwise they made your life a misery. I’d heard about them when I was 14 and still at school. Everyone was terrified of them since older brother Porky Bennett did eight years for razor slashing. This threat required an appropriate response. I suggested Johnny get the shooter he had hidden up his chimney – a .45 that he strapped to his leg with big leather clips like an undercover policeman – and I’d get my knife. We’d go back to the club to make a definitive statement.

  Russy Bennett was already taunting us. He knew Johnny and I were friends and he warned me about the consequences of the previous fight in The Hammer.

  ‘You’re gonna be in trouble,’ he said with a smile and his weak laugh. ‘You won’t like it. I’ll guarantee you somebody gets shot around here before too long.’ He was right about that.

  It was one Sunday a couple of weeks later, just before Christmas that we entered a packed Hammer Club at a time we knew the Bennetts and their mates would be around.

  I saw Roy Shaw with one of his friends and as Johnny
went off to sit down, I said, ‘Do you want to have it away? It’s going to be off in here in a minute.’

  ‘No! Course not,’ Roy said. ‘I’ve got a gun downstairs in the car. Shall I go and get it for you?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ I said. ‘We’ve got one.’ That comment ensured I had my new friend for life. For him the imminent row was like standing on the terraces waiting for his favourite football team to come out. Can I play? That’s what he was like.

  Russy Bennett joined me when I queued at the counter.

  ‘I stuck it on your mate’s brother the other night,’ he said. This was pure Queen’s Road bravado.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Didja?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘How’s he feel about it?’

  What else could I say? ‘Go and ask him.’

  Following the script for these sorts of occasions, he sauntered over to Johnny and repeated exactly what he’d said to me. What did Johnny think? I could see what he thought as he went for the gun. I knew he would, this was classic Johnny. As strange as it may sound, it was quite funny. I was excited and I was looking forward to it kicking off. The Queen’s Road mob were major names and we were going to strike at them hard.

  Davies didn’t use his gun, not at first. ‘You bastard!’ he yelled and threw a punch at Russy. Two of Russy’s mates dived in and it was soon a bit of a melee, much more so than our previous fight. I joined in with my knife, taking a swing at anyone and everyone who came near enough. I cut Freddy, slashed him across the cheek so hard it almost took his head off.

  Then Pippy Bennett punched me in the head and made me drop the blade. I looked around. A group of mates drinking in there had just had a collection for a crate of beers to share around. I reached down, and grabbed them – later I would get a few moans from those who contributed to the crate, especially Fatty Gray – I smashed all of them one by one over Pippy’s head and cut him. Some people later called it a scalping. By this time Johnny had his .45 out. He shot Russy in the bollocks and, though we didn’t know it at the time, only narrowly missed the crucial femoral artery. He also established a lasting reputation for himself for being what I already knew he was – a madman. All the pre-Christmas drinkers made a scramble for the exits at the same time. You’ve never seen a place empty so quickly.