by Linda Calvey
An hour later, he reappeared. No-one we knew had come in the pub, so we had a few drinks and then went home.
The next day, Ron told me to go and buy all the Sunday newspapers. I bought them, wondering why he was suddenly interested in news when all he ever read were the racing papers.
When I got home, he spread them all on the table and started searching through them in a kind of frenzy. He started throwing them on the floor when he’d picked through them.
“What’s goin’ on, Ron?” I said, bemused at his increasingly strange behaviour.
“Well, Lin, the man you cooked that meal for was in our boot when I picked you up yesterday.”
I looked at him for a moment, wondering if this was some kind of sick joke.
His face was straight. Without waiting for me to speak, he carried on. “When I left ya in the pub, I dumped his body deliberately on Hackney Marshes ’cause I wanted him found. I put him in a tracksuit ’cause I wanted it to look like he’d been out joggin’ and dropped dead, and I’m checkin’ the papers to see if it made the news. But it ain’t there.” His voice was harsh.
“That’s because if you dumped him last night then the papers would already have been printed,” I said, pointing out the obvious as my brain worked on keeping up with this macabre and murderous twist to our Sunday morning.
I knew Ron wasn’t lying. He was the kind of man who killed people and dumped their bodies. It was just strange how “normal” these kinds of events were becoming in my life with him.
The next day, the death was in the papers. It turned out he was a very high-profile man, and the police were saying he’d died from natural causes. I’d seen that poor man alive and well on Saturday, and knew that couldn’t be the case.
“You killed him,” I finally said, as Ron crowed over the reports. Quick as a flash, he looked up at me, his cruel eyes flashing. “No, Linda, you killed him. Perhaps you poisoned him while you made him his dinner?”
I looked back at him. It was so like Ron to shift the blame, to muddy the waters.
“No, Ron, I never poisoned him,” I replied as calmly as I could, though I felt my heart start to beat faster. Was Ron going to try and pin the blame on me?
“Are ya sure about that, Lin? You might’ve put somethin’ in the cream,” he said maliciously.
I shuddered, almost questioning myself for a moment. Oh my God, did I poison that poor man by mistake? I hadn’t, of course, but that was Ron. He twisted things until you were unsure what was true and what was a lie. Whatever had happened, I realised that what Ron had done was get me to prepare a last, perfect, meal for a man he was about to kill. It was Ron’s calculating way of thinking. If he was about to get rid of someone, the least he could do was give him a send-off as good as anyone on death row. It made me shudder to think I’d been travelling in a car with a dead person stashed away. Life with Ron just got more surreal by the day.
Perhaps I was complicit because I didn’t report Ron to the police. But I lived in fear of my boyfriend, and the last thing I felt able to do was grass him up. I’d have ended up on that marshland too – of that I have no doubt. A friend of mine was sitting having a quiet beer one Saturday afternoon when Ron pulled up, wound down the window and told this bloke to get in the car. He said he had business he needed him to do. Unwisely, the friend refused, saying he wanted to stay and drink his pint.
“Do me a favour, get my coat from the boot,” Ron had said and, not suspecting what would come next, the man opened it up to find a dead body and a shovel. “Get in the front, you’re comin’ with me,” Ron snapped.
The man had no choice but to obey. Ron had chosen him to help bury the body. He had a way of controlling people utterly, with threats and cruelty. And I was no different. He was a heartless bastard through and through.
The only way I’ll be free is if he’s nicked soon…
That became my mantra. I kept repeating it over and over in my head while submitting to his embraces, smiling at his conversation and wearing the clothes he picked out. He was a true psychopath. There was no escape for me. I didn’t ever stand up to him now. I’d learnt not to, and I was worn down.
“D’ya like the ring my friend had made for his wife?” Ron said, not long afterwards. It was the middle of December, 1980. He opened a small velvet box. Inside was a sparkling diamond ring. “It’s lovely,” I said, admiringly, thinking his pal must’ve commissioned the ring as a Christmas present.
“Oh good, I bought it for you, but I wanted to see if ya liked it,” he replied. “Put it on, then.”
I slipped it onto the middle finger of my left hand and held it out, watching the light bounce off the stone.
“Oh, and I want a stockin’.” Ron added.
“A what?” I said, looking up at him.
“Give me one of ya stockin’s,” Ron answered, suddenly sounding brusque. “I’ve got a bit of business, and I want to put it on my head.”
I laughed at that. I went into the bedroom and picked out a black sheer stocking with a red lace top.
“You bitch!” he barked.
“D’you want it or not?” I couldn’t help goad him. The thought of him going into a robbery wearing a sexy stocking was too good an opportunity to miss.
I didn’t know it, but Ron was planning a Brink’s-Mat robbery. That evening, as I sat watching the news, it flashed up that an armed robbery in South London had been foiled, and everyone had been arrested. Gunmen had raided a security van near a school in Dulwich. The Flying Squad had waited until the men had the money before swooping in on them.
I knew instantly it was Ron.
The robbers had been supergrassed, and police were lying in wait. There was a knock at my door. What looked like a tramp, a real down-and-out, was standing on my doorstep.
“Can I help you?” I asked, bemused.
“Where’s Ron?” the man said.
“He isn’t here.”
“He must’ve been on that robbery yesterday. We were meant to do a job today, would’ve netted a couple of hundred grand each.”
Without saying goodbye, the man slunk off. I shut my door, my brain whirring. Ron had certainly been caught, so what would that mean for me?
A couple of days later, his nephew appeared at my door. Ron was on remand at Brixton Prison, and he wanted me to go and see him. I turned up, went through the searches, and finally got to sit opposite Ron in the cheerless visitors’ room. He was being held in the maximum-security part of the jail, as joyless a place as it was possible to be.
“Listen Lin, one of the co-defendants is goin’ to bribe the jury to find us Not Guilty. I was goin’ to do it myself, but he said he was already on it.” Ron’s voice was low. I had to lean over the table to hear him. “I’m goin’ to be ’ere for a year cos I’m on remand, but I’ll be walkin’ out in a year’s time. You’ve got to behave yerself until then.” Ron stopped and stared at me. His gaze was cold.
“What d’you mean, Ron?” I asked.
“Well, you do love ya son and brother Tony, don’t ya?”
“Yes, I do, Ron, and you don’t need to say that,” I answered, horrified.
Ron was threatening harm to my family. He was doing it to ensure that I stayed faithful to him, that I stayed scared of him, and to make sure I waited for him.
I had no choice but to visit Ron every fortnight for the next year, and woe betide me or my family if I deviated from that path. Yet again, Ron was in control of me. How stupid I’d been to imagine he wouldn’t still have sway over my life if he was sent to prison.
Before Ron went away, he had introduced me to a friend of his, called Brian Thorogood. From the moment I’d met him, we had formed a mutual dislike of each other. Brian was distinctly off-hand with me, but I noticed that he was the only person who wasn’t afraid to talk straight to Ron. He’d just come out of prison at the time, and had heard Ron was shacked
up with me. He obviously didn’t approve. When I leant forward to give him a kiss, he drew his head back, making Ron laugh.
“Isn’t she wonderful, Brian?” Ron had said, chuckling.
“If you say so,” he’d replied.
Brian looked like a young Bob Hoskins – the video shop owner round the corner used to call him “Long Good Friday” after the Hoskins film. He was medium height, short-haired and nice-looking, though I thought he was quite a rude man. Ron clearly liked the fact we hadn’t got on, because it was Brian who Ron entrusted with keeping an eye on me, and helping me find work. Without Ron’s £100 on my mantelpiece every week, life was suddenly a financial struggle again. Ron called Brian and me into prison together, and told his pal to give me a job at his haulage firm.
“Do I ’ave to?” Brian replied.
“Yes, ya do. She needs to be looked after,” Ron had replied, and that was that. Under sufferance, Brian gave me work in the office, and we came to a kind of truce, as neither of us had any real choice but to follow Ron’s orders.
Chapter 17
Fur Coat and Black Stockings
1981
Ron was sentenced to 16 years in prison. My heart swooped when I heard the news. Was I finally free? Whether the evidence against him was too overwhelming, or whether his contact hadn’t been able to bribe the jurors, I don’t know. I wasn’t at court on the day of the verdict but I heard there was a torrent of abuse hurled at the judge and prosecution lawyers.
Details of the raid filtered out to me. Ron’s cronies had tried to attack a Brink’s-Mat security van carrying almost a million pounds outside Kingsdale Comprehensive School in Dulwich. One of the gang members had grassed up Ron and the other robbers. There was a suggestion Mr X – as the grass was known in court – had actually set up the police raid to frame one of the group that was caught. I was none the wiser. Ron never told me anything about his “business” and I didn’t ever ask.
Ron called me into Brixton Prison. He was a Category A prisoner and I had to go through extensive searches, before sitting down at the same table in that dreary visiting room. I’d been to so many of those rooms. The smell of disinfectant mingled with desperation, the cheery paintings by children who’d come there to see a dad or uncle. They all merged into one, and I didn’t even bother looking round as I sat myself down opposite him. Ron dispensed with small talk.
“I’m goin’ to be inside for at least 10 years, but of course, you’ll be waitin’ for me.” He was looking me full in the face.
“Of course, I will, Ron,” I replied, without flinching.
What else could I say? If my son and brother’s lives were on the line, as Ron had intimated they were, then I’d do anything to keep them safe. I didn’t want to wait for him. When I heard he’d been given such a long sentence I felt the first real joy I’d felt since Mickey was alive. For a brief moment, I had thought I might be free of him and his control over me. But I saw now that I was trapped just as securely as Ron was.
“I thought you expected a Not Guilty verdict?” I asked.
“I did. I sat in the dock and picked out the jurors I could offer a bribe. Got someone to follow them home and offer them 10 grand if they brought in the right verdict.”
There was menace in Ron’s voice and I shuddered, knowing all too well how it felt being followed home by a crook and being offered money. It was all irrelevant though. Whoever Ron had entrusted with the money hadn’t come through, evidently.
“So, ya will wait for me.” Ron deftly turned the conversation back.
“I will, Ron.”
“He’s a handsome boy, he’ll look good at 18.”
Nothing could be clearer. Wait for Ron, or Neil wouldn’t reach adulthood.
“Don’t talk stupid Ron, I’ve told you I’ll wait.”
That was the end of my audience. I went back home and told Maureen what Ron had said. My best friend hated my boyfriend, and I didn’t blame her. “We’ll start to enjoy ourselves now that he’s doin’ time, don’t you worry, Lin. You’ll be alright.”
We started going out on a Friday night, and soon Brian began to join us. He wasn’t at all like the uptight, disapproving man I’d first met. I visited Ron every fortnight, and I realised I was starting to enjoy Brian’s company, and look forward to our nights out together. Brian was cheerful, and everybody seemed to like him – in short, he was the exact opposite to Ron. Before long, Brian’s company was sold, and even though I wasn’t working for him anymore, he would pop by each Friday afternoon and give me £80 to go towards my bills.
Six months after Ron went away, the inevitable happened. One night, I invited Brian back to mine after we’d been out to the pubs, and I put a slow record on.
“Come and have a dance,” I said, and we had a smooch.
“D’you know what, I can see what Ron sees in you.” Brian smiled as he held me close. Brian stayed that night, and our relationship began.
Our secret was a dangerous one to keep from Ron, but I never could resist taking a risk. As I made breakfast, Brian sidled up to me and put his arms around my waist.
“I’ve left some money on the side, go and treat yerself. I know Ron always looked after ya.”
“That’s very kind of you, darlin’,” I said and kissed him. It was good to feel safe in a man’s arms again. All of a sudden, I felt a kind of freedom. So what if we had to hide from Ron? Brian and I could carry on as we were, pretending to my psychopath partner that everything was normal, and he wouldn’t know that we were now an item. I felt a surge of happiness, so, grabbing my coat, I headed out to a gorgeous boutique on Roman Road.
“I haven’t seen you for a while, Linda, how are ya?” the shop owner said as I walked in.
“I know, sorry love,” I replied, “Ron is in prison.”
“Sorry to hear that. Well, come in because I’ve got somethin’ ’ere you’ll like.”
I grinned at her. She knew my taste, high glamour and eye-wateringly expensive. She pulled out a coat with a matching hat from the back of the shop. They were a deep maroon-coloured fur, and I was instantly smitten.
“How much are they?”
“The hat is a hundred, the coat, six hundred.”
I didn’t bat an eyelid. It was a sum that would run into the thousands these days, but it was normal for Ron or Mickey to spend that kind of money on me.
“I’ll take them,” I said, handing her the £100 that Brian had put on the mantelpiece for me. “Use that as a deposit, and I’ll be back for the rest.”
When I went home and told Brian what I’d done, he made a show of falling off the work surface he’d been perched upon.
“For a moment, I thought you said the coat cost £600!” he said in astonishment.
“I did, Brian. Did I do wrong?” I replied in my meekest voice.
Brian looked like he was undergoing some kind of internal battle within himself. Finally, he barked a laugh that made me sigh with relief.
“It’s not your fault, you’ve been spoilt by Ron, and you’ve lost all concept of the cost of things. I’ll go back with the money and get you what you want.”
“Thank you, darlin’,” I smiled. It was good to be treated again too.
Later that day, when Brian had left, I phoned Maureen.
“You prat!” she laughed. “Why don’t I get men to do things like that for me?”
We both burst into fits of giggles at that.
“I have no idea why men buy me things, they just always have.” I shook my head. It was true. I never really had to work a proper day in my life, though I also had to live a double life, lying to Ron while secretly going out with his only friend. We never flaunted our relationship. Brian wasn’t a very sociable person, and so most of the time we stayed in and I’d cook for him. Whereas I loved going out and meeting people, he was just as happy sitting in front of the telly with ham, egg and chips.
Often he’d drop Maureen and me down to a pub we liked on a Friday or Saturday night, then come and pick us up later. It didn’t bother him that I was out without him. He wasn’t controlling like Ron. The only thing he and his pal had in common was that they were both armed robbers.
Unlike Ron, I introduced Brian to all of my family, and they adored him, especially Neil and Melanie, who had moved back home with me since Ron’s imprisonment. It felt like we gelled as a family, which was a nice feeling after the tumultuous years we’d all endured. Finally, we had some peace and stability, though Brian didn’t stop doing raids. He would just hand over all the money he seized, barely keeping anything for himself. He was such a generous soul.
Ron’s controlling behaviour didn’t stop now that he was behind bars. One day, I got a call from him telling me to visit him as he was in hospital. He was under guard, but I could go and visit him in his hospital bed.
Before I could ask what was wrong with him, he said, “Lin, I want you to do exactly what I’m about to tell you to do.”
“Ok Ron, what is it you want?” I replied, my curiosity piqued, though inwardly sighing at yet another demand. What now?
“I want you to dress in a red and black basque, black stockings and suspenders under your dress, and a fur coat on top. When you get to the hospital, go to the Ladies and take off your dress, keeping your coat on.”
“Right.” With any luck I’ll give him a heart attack, I thought.
I did exactly what he told me to do. I turned up for visiting time, went straight to the toilets and took off my dress, packing it into my handbag. Keeping my fur coat wrapped around me, I walked up the length of the ward, my heels clicking on the floor.
Ron was sitting up in bed, with wires and bleeping machines connected up to him. He was due to have a pacemaker fitted the next afternoon.
“How are you, Ron?” I asked cautiously. Why on earth would he want me to be dressed the way I was when he was obviously sick?
Ron ignored me.