Читать книгу Me and My Brothers - Robin Mcgibbon - Страница 12

Mum, as always, was the centre of our lives. And when Esmeralda’s Barn started lining our pockets, the twins and I were keen to give her everything she had ever wanted. She wanted very little, however; she certainly didn’t want to leave Vallance Road for a bigger house in a posher street. But she and the old man did not say no to holidays. They had never been further than Southend in Essex, and now there was some money around they seized the chance to be more adventurous. Mum had had nothing for herself all her life and I was thrilled to be able to give her a taste of the ‘jet-set’ life. We went to Tangier, Italy, the South of France, and even lashed out on a wonderfully expensive cruise. It was lovely to see someone who had been nowhere suddenly going everywhere, and enjoying every sun-soaked minute.

Exotic places abroad were all very well for a couple of times a year. But we wanted to enjoy Steeple Bay, a nice little spot I had discovered near Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex, so I bought a caravan and a little motor cruiser and I’d pop down there with Mum and the old man every weekend. They were blissfully happy times. The twins were very funny about me going away at weekends. They would say: ‘Going away again! Leaving us to do all the work!’ We’d argue every weekend. They would call me a playboy and it really got on my nerves. Then they would suddenly turn up in Steeple Bay with their mates. They always had loads of people with them; they attracted people all the time.

Mum lapped up the good life at home, too. Two good friends of ours, Alex Steene and his wife, Anna, made a point of taking Mum to the Royal Command Performance at the London Palladium every year, followed by a slap-up meal in a top restaurant. Mum always looked forward to that.

It was all a dramatic change from the modest lifestyle Mum had previously enjoyed. But the money that was suddenly available did not change her one bit: although she now mixed with dukes and duchesses, lords and ladies, she was always herself. She wasn’t one for intellectual conversation, but what she had to say was said with a simple honesty that endeared her to everyone she met. The twins and I were proud of her.

Ronnie and Reggie never put on airs and graces either. Far from being ashamed of where they came from they were proud, and took a delight in taking friends and business acquaintances home to meet Mum over a cup of tea in the upstairs sitting room.

I was sitting in that room talking to Ronnie one day when the phone rang: it was Lord Effingham, whom we paid to sit on the board of The Barn for prestige. When Ronnie put the phone down he said the friendly peer had told him he needed two hundred pounds immediately; if he couldn’t get it, he was going to kill himself. When Ronnie told me he was arranging for someone to deliver the money within an hour I went spare. I said it was an obvious ploy to get money, and Ronnie was mad if he fell for it. But he would have none of it; he said he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if something happened to Effingham. I suppose I should not have been surprised. Nothing had changed; Ronnie had been a soft touch when he didn’t have much money and now that he had it coming out of his ears he was even more charitable. I’m sure that the word went round London that if you were plausible you could get anything out of Ronnie Kray.

Lucien Freud, a heavy gambler, owed the club £1,400 and I told Ronnie that someone should speak to him about it. A few days later he came up to me and said triumphantly, ‘It’s all sorted out.’

Relieved, I asked, ‘He’s going to pay up?’

‘No,’ Ronnie replied. ‘I told him to forget it.’

‘What?’

‘I said we wanted to see him back in the club,’ said Ronnie casually. ‘It’s better for us to have his custom.’

I tried telling him he had made a bad mistake but Ronnie just said, ‘Don’t go on about it. I’ve done it now.’

My dismay at his misguided generosity deepened a few days later when I learned that Freud had offered a very valuable painting as collateral for his debt and Ronnie had turned it down.

One of our customers was Pauline Wallace, a lovely, well-dressed, well-spoken Irish lady. What she didn’t know about gambling was not worth knowing, so when she hit hard times we gave her a job supervising the croupiers. A month or so later she told Ronnie she was being evicted from her Knightsbridge flat unless she paid £800 rent arrears. Quick as you like, Ronnie took the cash from the club coffers and gave it to her. When I had a go at him he said, ‘It’s all right. I can use the flat whenever I like.’

When Pauline got on her feet she never forgot what we had done for her. She would visit Mum in Vallance Road, always with some beautiful flowers. Then one day she told the twins she wanted to give them some money every week to repay them for helping her when she needed it most. The twins refused, so Pauline said she would give it to Mum. They told her it was not necessary, but she insisted. Every week Billy Exley went to Knightsbridge and collected some cash. It was something Pauline wanted to do; she was that kind of woman.

A couple of years later she married a multi-millionaire in Texas and the last I heard of her she was running all the greyhound racing in Miami.

Ronnie did not spend all his time playing the nice guy, however. If someone stepped out of line he’d be swift to crack down on them. Lord Effingham was given a fee, plus all he wanted to eat and drink, but that was not enough for him. One of our senior employees complained that the noble lord was interfering in the running of the club, so Ronnie asked to see him.

‘Yes, Ronald?’ Effingham said.

‘Mowbray,’ Ronnie said quietly, using the peer’s Christian name. ‘You’re getting above yourself. You’re getting paid for nothing, so you can shut your mouth or leave.’

Effingham knew what side his bread was buttered. ‘You’re so right, Ronald,’ he said. ‘I do apologize.’

The people who flocked to The Barn in 1960 seemingly had money to burn; it would shake me when I watched thousands of pounds being risked on the turn of a card at the chemin de fer tables.

Neither the twins nor I were gamblers, but I do remember one night I tried my hand at chemmy and won £350. Well pleased, I told Reggie, who immediately thought he’d have a go. I saw him about two hours later and he was falling about laughing.

‘How much did you win?’ I asked.

‘Nothing,’ said Reggie, highly amused. ‘I did £750 in an hour.’

Reggie was not as careless with money as Ronnie, but when he had it he was not afraid to spend it.

It was during the early days of The Barn that Reggie developed an outside interest that in time was to change his personality and, eventually, his life.

She was a sixteen-year-old girl and her name was Frances Shea. Like us, she was from the East End and Reggie had watched her grow from a child to a beautiful young woman. When he fell in love with her it was with the same intensity, commitment and passion he showed in everything he did. Although eleven years younger, she was everything he wanted in a woman; it was as if even then he knew that this was the girl he wanted to marry, and he courted her in the old-fashioned sense, with roses and chocolates, the deepest respect and impeccable manners. Reggie put Frances Shea on a pedestal that would eventually destroy him.

Early in 1961 we got our first warning that the police were not impressed with the Kray success story and that someone somewhere had decided a couple of East End tearaways and their elder brother had no right making a few bob and mixing with wealthy folk far above their station.

Ronnie and I were at Vallance Road when Big Pat Connolly’s wife phoned from a call box saying Pat had been taken to hospital. A friend of ours, Jimmy Kensit, ran us to the Connolly home to see if there was anything we could do. When we arrived, we discovered Pat had suspected polio: since we had all been in recent contact with him my first thought was to tell Dolly and Gary to go to the hospital for an anti-polio injection. I made a call from a kiosk in Queensbridge Road, then we all headed back to Mum’s house where we could phone everyone who had been in contact with Pat.

We did not get there until several hours later – after a spell in Dalston police station.

Jimmy Kensit had decided to call in for something at his flat in Pritchards Road, in Haggerston. Ronnie and I were sitting in Jimmy’s banger when a squad car roared up. We thought there must have been some big robbery – a murder perhaps – but in fact we were the lucky ones to be under investigation. A detective constable called Bartlett started asking Ronnie and me who we were, where we were going, etc, while two uniformed constables inspected Jimmy’s car.

Fortunately, just as Bartlett was preparing to take us to Dalston nick for further questioning, a friend of ours named Billy Gripp walked by. Billy, who trained for judo at the gym above The Double R, was a respected citizen of Bethnal Green and I admitted to him I was worried about a frame-up: would he mind searching Ronnie, Jimmy and myself, and the car, to satisfy the police and a gathering crowd that we didn’t have anything we should not have? Bartlett objected, but Billy went ahead anyway. Then we were taken to the police station. While Bartlett strutted around, warning us that we’d be inside soon, our homes were searched – without warrants – and later we were charged with…loitering with intent to commit a felony!

Poor Pat Connolly had to take a back seat for a while, as did all the people we were keen to warn to have anti-polio jabs.

The case actually went to court but, happily, did not last too long. Bartlett told the Marylebone magistrate under oath that Ronnie and I had been seen in Queens-bridge Road trying the door handles of parked cars, and that we fled after Kensit hooted his horn to warn us we were being watched.

Jimmy’s car horn was found to be out of action, and we proved we were somewhere else at the time of the alleged offences. But we were far from happy walking out of Marylebone Court that day. It was obvious we were marked men.

Bartlett – a pervert later convicted of molesting young girls – was merely a pawn in a game controlled by far more senior and influential officers.

A few days later I arrived at Vallance Road to find Mum comforting Frances, who was crying: some policeman had turned up and arrested Reggie for breaking and entering an East End house. Seething, I raced round to Bethnal Green nick and told them I knew it was a ‘get up’; that they were framing Reggie for something he didn’t do.

The police said they had a witness – a Jewish woman in her seventies called Lilia Hertzberg who claimed to have seen Reggie and another man running out of her husband’s Stepney home with jewellery and cash valued at £500.

The case was a laugh throughout the East End, for most people knew that Reggie would rather give an old couple £500 than steal it from them. But Reggie was still sent for trial at Inner London Sessions. We were not sure if there had actually been a robbery or if Mrs Hertzberg was being paid by the police to invent one. But we knew she had not seen Reggie so we offered her £500 to encourage her to tell the truth in court. Since she and her husband were due to leave to begin a new life in Australia shortly, they both jumped at the idea.

It was decided that on the day of the hearing someone would go to the old man’s house with the £500. As soon as Reggie was released, the husband would receive a phone call from the court and the money would be handed over.

That’s exactly what happened – except that the old man never got the £500. When the phone call came through and he asked for it, our friend said, ‘You’ve got to be joking. You’re lucky you’re not younger – I’d knock you up in the air for what you’ve tried to do.’

Since we had discovered he was a paid police informer, none of us had any qualms about not giving him the £500.

As for Reggie, he was awarded costs against the police – satisfying in a way, but hardly compensation for the seven weeks he had been held in custody.

Later, Reggie admitted to me that he’d panicked when the police arrived at Vallance Road. I was amazed because Reggie had never been intimidated by the law. But it was all to do with Frances. Reggie knew the robbery allegation was a joke and he felt they might go the whole hog and claim the woman had been assaulted. The thought of Frances thinking for a second that he had touched another woman sent him into a cold sweat; and when the police said it was only robbery he was relieved, and went quickly and quietly – even though he hadn’t been anywhere near the scene of the alleged crime.

The warnings were there for the future: the police had played two tough games against the Krays and lost badly each time. But there was bound to be another time. We had bought cars, clothes, jewellery, exotic holidays, and other luxuries that make life sweeter. But we had not bought any policemen.

When the police moved in and closed The Double R, the twins got the hump. Why did the Old Bill have it in for them? they wanted to know. One minute they were millionaires, demanding with menaces all over London, the next they – and I – were supposed to be pilfering from cars. Now a harmless club was shut down. It did not make sense.

Around this time Billy Hill gave the twins some advice, which he urged them to take and never forget. Over drinks at his sumptuous flat in Moscow Road, Bayswater, the notorious gangland figure of the fifties told Ronnie and Reggie that they were fortunate in having a brother who was straight, who had no criminal convictions and was not involved in villainy of any kind. It was vital to keep it that way, he said, because I would always be an ally; an important weapon they could use to set legal machinery in motion if things went badly with the law. ‘Never involve Charlie in anything crooked,’ he said.

And he begged them to remember that advice.

Billy’s remarks gave the twins an idea. Since I was trusted one hundred per cent by the Old Bill, could I not have a word with someone to find out just why they appeared to be marked men. I said I’d speak to someone in the know, which is how I came to be talking to two plain-clothes coppers in an out-of-the-way pub in Walworth, South London.

The men arrived with a load of papers. And what they contained blew my mind. To me, the twins were just two ordinary cockneys from the back streets of Bethnal Green: tough, certainly, but likeable and respectful unless their feathers were ruffled by idiots. But to Scotland Yard, it seemed, the twins were a highly important duo, worth watching closely. I was shown telexes to Scotland Yard from forces in other countries, giving details of where the twins had gone and who they had met. There was a lot of stuff on Tangier and Ronnie’s meetings with Billy Hill, who had a house there.

I told the two coppers that I couldn’t dispute that the twins had had a few rows. But they were not robbing people; they were just club owners who wanted to make a few bob. Why, I asked, was the Yard going to such lengths to find out what they were up to?

The coppers told me that, quite simply, the twins had become too powerful. They may have started out as two ambitious, but insignificant, East Enders of modest intelligence, but now they were powerful; too powerful. They had money, and friends in high places with a lot of influence. The mixture was too dangerous.

I said I couldn’t understand it. How could the twins be a danger? All they wanted to do was to run a few clubs, have no money worries and be able to count the rich and famous – particularly sporting and showbusiness celebrities – among their friends.

Top political figures, it seemed, believed the twins could get 1,000 men behind them from all over the country, with a few phone calls.

The twins knew a lot of people, I agreed. But if they could get 1,000 people, what would they want them for? What would they all do?

The coppers didn’t have an answer to that. They just said that the people who ran the country considered them too powerful and were thinking of ways to control them. But I could be sure of one thing, they told me, and the twins ought to be aware of it: they would not be allowed, under any circumstances, to become more powerful.

I paid the coppers the agreed £100 for their information and went home, my head swimming with the implications of what I had been told.

Surprisingly, the twins were not at all bothered. Ronnie, particularly, thought it a big joke.

‘What do they think we’re going to do?’ he quipped. ‘Take over the bleeding country?’