The Profession of Violence Page 20

  Just after Christmas it seemed that the twins had suddenly slipped up and Gerrard and Read made ready to stake everything on one last throw; orders had reached them from above that the Kray case was to be settled one way or the other quickly.

  Most of Read’s hopes rested on a man called Hew McCowan. Son of a wealthy baronet, he was a well-known West End figure. The twins had known him at Esmeralda’s Barn and tried to borrow money from him for their Nigerian scheme. McCowan put his money into a club instead – The Hideaway in Soho.

  Soon afterwards he was in touch with Read, claiming that the twins were asking for a half-share in his profits. It was unique to find the owner of a club willing to stand up to the twins, but there was no corroboration of McCowan’s story until one night in January 1965. There was an upset at The Hideaway with pictures smashed and threats before witnesses. Police were called and a man was arrested; Read sensed that here he had the basis of a charge against the twins at last, for the man who caused the trouble was their friend and drinking partner, ‘Mad’ Teddy Smith. Smith had given a firm impression that he had come on behalf of the twins and was demanding money for them. This, with McCowan’s previous deposition, seemed enough. On 10 January the Kray twins were arrested and accused, ‘with Edward Smith, writer’, of demanding money with menaces from Hew Cargill McCowan at the Hideaway Club. Bail was refused.

  It was a flimsy case, at best a feeble substitute for the full-scale police persecution ruined by the earlier publicity, but there was a good chance it would succeed. Read knew the odds, and as the policeman closest to the twins was banking something of his reputation on it. Similarly the twins prepared to make the case a final showdown with the Law.

  The twins left nothing to chance. They engaged the finest criminal lawyers they could find – Petre Crowder and Paul Wrightson, QC: Wrightson had impressed Reggie when he prosecuted him in the Shay protection case four years earlier. They also hired one of the best private detectives in London; he was to find out all he could about the prosecution witnesses, particularly McCowan. Simultaneously messages were passing out of Brixton Gaol from the twins to all the members of the Firm, which was kept very busy in the next few weeks; it requires hard work and good organization to rig a trial at the Old Bailey.

  Before the trial there was a battle over bail. The Old Street magistrate refused their first request; so did a judge in chambers, but the twins did not give up. They tried Judge Griffith-Jones at the Old Bailey and finally the Lord Chief Justice, offering him sureties of eighteen thousand pounds. He, too, refused and the trial was fixed to start on 28 February.

  It was always a mystery where the twins were getting so much money from, and although both they and Lord Boothby always denied it, there seems little doubt that some of it must have come from him. As Ronnie had letters and photographs which proved their friendship, he could always threaten to expose him as a liar if he wanted to. Certainly some sort of outside pressure is the only explanation for Lord Boothby’s irregular and highly suspect action when the twins took their bail application to the House of Lords. Against all precedent he intervened in a law debate to inquire if it was the government’s intention to keep the Kray twins indefinitely without a trial.

  At the time, Boothby was strongly reprimanded, and his intervention did nothing to prevent his former counsel, Gerald Gardiner, from rejecting the bail application out of hand. But it was a significant example of the growing power of the twins, when they could get a member of the House of Lords to ask a question in Parliament on their behalf.

  There was still the trial. Juries are vulnerable and the jury’s verdict had to be unanimous. Under the jury law of those days, one juryman dissenting from a verdict was enough to force a re-trial.

  This was important. Jurors’ addresses could be found: they could be followed home, watched, carefully approached. Out of twelve men there was a chance that one could be threatened or bribed. Once the trial started, the Firm was busy. The jury failed to reach agreement on its verdict; the inevitable re-trial followed. This suited both the twins. The private detective had had time to dig out more about the major witness for the prosecution. In Scotland several years before McCowan had appeared in various cases involving homosexuals and appeared with something of the character of an habitual police informer. For Paul Wrightson this was sufficient. McCowan was discredited as a witness; the judge stopped the trial before the final speeches; the twins and Teddy Smith went free.

  That night the twins held the biggest celebration party of their lives. They were supreme by now and typically they chose the one place that would drive this message home. That very afternoon they bought McCowan’s club, renamed it El Morocco, and invited everyone they knew, including the police from West End Central.

  Read went along. One of the greatest problems a policeman has to face with organized criminals is simply knowing who is who – their clients, their dependants, their associates and friends. Such people constantly change, and a party of this sort offered a rare chance to learn about them. Read spent more than an hour in a telephone box opposite the club watching the arrivals; someone asked him in. It seemed a good idea to meet the twins at last on the basis of ‘know thine enemy’, and Read was soon face to face with them. It was the first time they had met. Ronnie was affability itself, laughing and pouring out champagne.

  But soon afterwards, Scotland Yard – already sensitive about the twins – started receiving letters of complaint about Nipper’s presence at the party. What nobody realized was that all these letters were prompted by the twins and intended to discredit the detective who had dared attack them. Even here it seemed they had succeeded. There was an immediate Yard inquiry. Read was cleared of any suggestion of improper contact with the twins. He was promoted but moved on to other duties, and Ronnie Kray boasted that with one glass of champagne he had chased his most dangerous enemy in the police out of the West End for good.

  The police had been badly burnt by the Krays and a directive was issued from the Yard that in future detectives were not to frequent the haunts of known criminals; also to exercise caution when associating with anyone with a known police record.

  And it was partly as a result of a report on the McCowan case that the jury law was changed. In future verdicts would be decided by a majority of the jury; one juryman dissenting would not secure a re-trial.

  Police who knew the twins and understood the way their power was developing felt that the McCowan case had rendered them invulnerable. Press, politics, police – all had been used and all defeated by the twins. They were entrenched now: nobody wanted to risk trouble from them. Four years of fraud and murder were to pass before the spell was broken.

  TWELVE

  A Marriage in the Family

  The two of them came arm-in-arm down the long steps of the Old Bailey when the McCowan case was over and they were free again. Frances was twenty-one and prettier than ever; Reggie was smiling the wry grin of his boxing days when he had out-fought someone in the ring. People were clustering round congratulating them, press photographers elbowing them for pictures. Ronnie was behind them. Like Reggie, he was pale after fifty-six days in custody. But it was Reggie and Frances everybody had to see, Frances especially. She had her happy ending after all.

  There was a hired Daimler waiting at the kerb; they drove off like top celebrities, laughing at each other. A reporter had asked their plans for the future: for years it seemed that they had talked of nothing else, but they were suddenly embarrassed. Even in Brixton Gaol, when she agreed to marry him if he were acquitted, everything was in the future and a long way off; now it was happening. She was the star of the twins’ acquittal, the prize the innocent man had waited for.

  When the big, gleaming car drew up in Vallance Road there were still more congratulations – flags, neighbours, relatives and boyhood friends. Old Cannonball was beaming in his braces, wearing his best Sunday cap to welcome his boys home. Reggie was buying Frances a big engagement ring, a car, a gold pendant. There was no doubt
of his love for her; she had convinced herself she loved him in return. Both were sincere in the way that human beings are at moments of extreme relief.

  They talked a lot about their wedding. She wanted something quiet, Reggie was set on something grand. He was a public figure; his marriage could not avoid being an event. After the publicity of the Boothby case and the Old Bailey trials, he saw his wedding as a way to prove that he could still be good, respected, loved. The wedding would take place at St James’s Bethnal Green, the red church opposite Pellici’s Cafe where he and Ronnie went as boys. His old friend Father Hetherington would officiate.

  They went to see the old priest. He had moved to Ealing, a quieter parish than Bethnal Green. Reggie carefully explained that he had come to ask him to marry them as he had been a true friend of his family and one of the few men he respected. For half an hour they sat talking in the front-room study with its books and crucifix in the redbrick terrace house in Ealing. Finally, as gently as he could, the priest refused, explaining that he could not perform a marriage which he felt should not take place. He would not give his reasons, but he was adamant. If they insisted on the wedding there were other priests.

  There was young Father Foster, Father Hetherington’s successor at St James’s. A kindly man was spectacles, he felt no doubts about the couple’s fitness to marry. On 20 April 1965 he conducted the East End’s wedding of the year.

  It had all the gusto of the Krays themselves: the Rollses gleaming down the Bethnal Green Road, heavy with guests; the women in their big hats like some cockney Ascot; the famous boxers in the church – Spinks, Allen, Ted ‘Kid’ Lewis; the young bride pale at the altar, as she became Mrs Reginald Kray. The wedding photographer was David Bailey.

  His pictures are revealing. True to form, old Charles Kray has managed to duck out of them, but all the other central characters are there, immaculate in Bailey’s Vogue-style camerawork. On one side are the Krays – Violet with hair swept back smiling regally, good-looking brother Charlie and his sleek wife, Dolly. And on the other – already the eternal cockney in-laws – stand the Sheas: Frank the father, Frankie the son and Elsie Shea with the dark eyes her daughter had inherited. She wears a dark velvet dress. Reggie was never to forgive her ‘for wearing black at my wedding’.

  Frances remains the perfect bride, serene, oblivious of everything except this one great moment. Reggie smiles nervously. Ronnie’s grin is hardly the expression of a man seriously concerned at losing his twin brother to any silly woman.

  Business was booming for the twins now that they were reaping the rich rewards of their acquittal. As long as they were sensible, they had a clear run for the future. The police had no wish for further trouble with the Krays; no other gang would challenge them, no one would enter a witness-box against them if he could help it. Once the McCowan case was over they were free to operate their frauds, protection and their various rackets as never before. There was something almost weird about the way their fortunes never seemed to falter. The next big step in their career had started.

  Five days before Reggie and Frances married, $55,000 of instantly negotiable bearer bonds were stolen in an armed raid on the Royal Bank of Canada in Montreal. In May an even larger batch of bonds and valuable debentures vanished from a bank in Ontario. Both were sophisticated robberies: in neither case were the securities recovered, but the Canadian police and the American FBI were staying on the alert for somebody to cash them. No one did.

  For some time the twins had had a working arrangement with a London-based front organization for the American Mafia over a group of Mayfair gambling clubs the Mafia controlled. Ronnie had met the top New York Mafioso, Angelo Bruno, when he was staying at the London Hilton the previous year. It had been a stormy interview, with Ronnie stating the terms on which the Krays were prepared to guarantee the Americans a peaceful life in London. There was an element of bluff involved, but as usual the twins had won: Bruno appeared impressed by the twins’ Chicago-style approach to crime and tended to accept them as the nearest thing to a home-grown Mafia in England. This understanding was purely a local arrangement: the Mafia regarded them as one more London gang convenient to do business with. But the twins’ publicity and success against the law were changing this. They were winning an international reputation; when any big-time foreign criminals were concerned with Britain the first name they thought of was the Krays.

  The stolen Canadian securities were being held by a New York syndicate associated with the American Mafia. Professionals at disposing of this sort of loot, the syndicate knew they were too hot to handle in North America. As an experiment they decided to try them on the undercover European market. Shares could be stolen in America, then sold off in Europe. The syndicate had a backlog of $2 million of stolen securities waiting to be sold. Somebody suggested that the Krays might possibly be interested.

  It was extremely tempting. Payne and his accountant Freddie Gore were ready with advice; both seemed quite confident that with the Krays behind them there would be no difficulty in disposing of the bonds in Europe. In July Payne flew to Canada. At a motel in Montreal he met a man sent by the Mafia. On the twins’ behalf he purchased £20,000 of stolen bearer bonds at a quarter of face value, brought them to Paris, then helped the twins dispose of them in England. The twins pocketed three-quarters of the take. The traffic in American securities had started.

  It appealed naturally to Ronnie, who had the instincts of a genuine tycoon – the love of power, the feeling for expansion, the monomaniac’s obsession with himself. For him reality and fantasy were one so that the chance of dealing with the Mafia and entering the league of international big-time racketeers seemed quite inevitable. Soon he would have his private plane, his bank accounts in Switzerland, his foreign interests, his house like Billy Bill’s in southern Spain.

  Like all Ronnie’s dreams, there was an element of truth in this. No other English racketeers had ever reached such heights: like royalty the twins could give their name to any scheme, knowing it would bring results. Other men would do the work, others supply the brains. On the strength of the Kray name a succession of con men, gun men, smugglers, fixers, forgers and international money men could begin to operate around the world. All that was required of the twins, it seemed, was to make sure everybody feared them.

  Reggie and Frances spent their honeymoon in Athens. Frances disliked the food. Reggie could see nothing in the city. There was no one to talk to and the high-spot of the holiday came when some sailors invited them aboard a visiting American warship for the evening. Several nights running Reggie got very drunk.

  Even so, he kept up his dream of living the good life with Frances. After the honeymoon he rented an expensive furnished flat off Lancaster Gate, but they had no real friends there, no interest in theatres, films, the life of the city. Reggie was out a lot. Frances was lonely and cut off. Reggie drank. The rows inevitably started. Finally they agreed they both wanted to live back in the East End where their real life lay; Reggie found a flat in Cedra Court, directly below Ronnie’s. He might have chosen a more tactful place to live with a young wife.

  Frequently the noise of Ronnie’s parties kept Frances awake at night. She was never invited, but Reggie often went and in the early morning she would hear the sound of Ronnie’s boys going down the stairs. When Reggie finally came home he was often bitter with her. Later he apologized. She blamed Ronnie and began to think he really hated her. She hardly ever saw him, but often heard him shouting in the night. Soon she refused to speak his name. For her, Ronnie became ‘the other one’. Occasionally they passed each other on the stairs. The ‘other one’ would always be polite, smiling at her behind his spectacles.

  ‘Hullo Frances, my dear. And how are you? Enjoying yourself in the family?’

  Frances had never understood how joyless and oppressive the twins’ private world could be. While he was courting her, Reggie had always been escaping from it; on their own he could seem gay and almost childlike. At Cedra Court there was littl
e gaiety. There were still nights out with her husband to meet visiting celebrities. She dined with Judy Garland and George Raft, but rarely spoke at such occasions unless spoken to.

  Her days were spent alone at Cedra Court, her evenings usually at clubs or parties where the guests were always criminals, the talk invariably of crime. A few of the regulars amused her. Mad Teddy Smith could make her laugh and she liked talking to him. The rest were not her type.

  Everything was done for her: this was one way Reggie could still show his love, but when she suggested taking a job he was indignant. When she went shopping someone from the Firm was always with her. She had her own car – the smart red Triumph Reggie bought her when they became engaged – but she couldn’t drive. She asked for driving lessons, but Reggie became jealous of the instructor. She stopped them before they were trouble. The car stayed outside in the street until the credit company reclaimed it.

  She lasted eight weeks, then she left. Eight weeks were all the married life they knew and Frances finally returned to her parents in Ormsby Street.

  But though she left her husband’s roof she could not get away from him, nor he from her. Each evening around six o’clock he would put on a clean shirt and his best suit, have two stiff gins and drive to Ormsby Street. The Sheas would not allow their son-in-law within the house, so he would stand on the pavement; she would talk to him from the bedroom window, often for an hour or so.

  Apart from Frances, Reggie had one big problem on his mind that summer: how to provide a steady outlet for the stolen shares from North America. After the success of the first transaction, trade was booming, but there were technical problems which the twins could not hope to cope with on their own. The latest batch of $70,000 stolen Canadian government bonds needed forged registration certificates to make them negotiable. One of the twins’ contacts spoke of a man to fix it. He was called Alan Cooper.