Chapter Ten
The early hours of Sunday 29 October 1967. The ringing of the phone shattered the silence of my bedroom. I reached out for the receiver and grunted, ‘Hello.’ It was Harry Hopwood.
‘Something’s happened,’ he said. ‘It’s very urgent. You’ve got to come over.’
‘What?’ I asked sleepily. ‘It’s three in the morning.’
‘Ronnie said you’ve got to come over. It’s very urgent.’ Harry sounded very worried.
‘I’ll get over as soon as I can,’ I said. I put the phone down, wondering what could be so urgent that Ronnie would get Harry Hopwood to ring me in the middle of the night.
As I drove to Hopwood’s house my mind ran riot with vivid imaginings. But nothing could have prepared me for the horrific revelation waiting for me at 14 Ravenscroft Street, Bethnal Green.
A distant cousin of ours, Ronnie Hart, opened the door. His face was pale, his expression worried.
‘What’s going on?’ I demanded to know.
Hart motioned with his head to a back room. ‘They’re in there. You better ask them.’
I strode into the back room: Ronnie and Reggie were sitting in two armchairs.
I looked at Ronnie, then at Reggie. My heart raced with apprehension. ‘What’s going on that’s so important at this time of the morning?’
‘We’ve done McVitie,’ Ronnie said in a matter-of-fact tone.
I knew Jack McVitie. He was a small-time villain, who was always shouting his mouth off about what he’d done or was going to do. He was bothered by his baldness and always wore a hat to cover it. He was called Jack The Hat.
He was also a crank; everyone knew it. For weeks he’d been slagging off the twins saying what he was going to do to them. One day they collared him and warned him he was heading for a lot of trouble. Shortly afterwards he went into The Regency, high on drink or drugs, armed with a shotgun, and started shouting that he wasn’t scared of anyone – the twins included. He was warned that he was going too far. But he said he didn’t care.
I stared at Ronnie. ‘What do you mean, you’ve done McVitie? How bad?’
‘We’ve killed him,’ was all Ronnie replied.
I couldn’t believe what I’d heard, couldn’t take it in. My heart raced faster; my head pounded. I could understand teaching McVitie a lesson. But, murder?
‘You’ve done WHAT?’
‘It’s true,’ Reggie said.
Between them, they told me the story: they’d all been to a party, Chris and Tony Lambrianou, their pals from Birmingham, Ray and Alan Mills, Ronnie Bender and Ronnie Hart. Someone told the twins McVitie had been shouting his mouth off in The Regency again and Ronnie arranged for him to be brought to the party in Stoke Newington. Things had got out of hand.
‘That’s lovely,’ I said sarcastically. ‘Well, that’s it. You’ve gone over the top this time. End of story.’
Typically, Ronnie said, ‘Well, it’s done now. That’s the end of it. He had it coming anyway.’
‘He’d been mouthing himself off about what he was going to do,’ Reggie chimed in.
Hopwood came in with some tea, and I drank some quickly to calm myself. I glared at the twins.
‘Nice,’ I said sarcastically. ‘You have somebody over. Now you ring me up at three in the morning.’
‘The Old Bill are going to be buzzing,’ Ronnie said.
‘So? What’s that got to do with me? I wasn’t involved. I wasn’t there.’
They said nothing.
‘What’s happened to him?’ I asked.
They shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ Ronnie said. ‘Somewhere in South London, I think. The Lambrianous have taken him.’
I shook my head slowly from side to side. I didn’t know what else to say to them; but I did know I wasn’t involved and didn’t want to be. I decided to stay out of it and let them sort it out themselves, so I left the house and went home. Dolly woke up as I went in. I made up some cock and bull story about the twins having a row and told her to go back to sleep. There wasn’t much sleep for me. Since the Cornell killing, police pressure had been stepped up. With a second East End murder they would go potty. I’d been woken up from a dream and dragged into a nightmare from which there would be no escape from the ghost of Jack ‘The Hat’ McVitie.
As I lay there, it struck me that I didn’t know how McVitie had met his death. I hadn’t asked. And the twins hadn’t told me. They never liked talking about their rows.
Later that morning Ronnie and Reggie changed their clothes and set off for Hadleigh, in Suffolk, where we had spent our evacuation. They took Ronnie Hart with them and left Ronnie Bender to clean up the flat in Evering Road, where McVitie had met his death.
The twins and Hart spent a week away, keeping on the move among the villages and hamlets of the pretty east coast country. They kept in touch with me by telephone and were relieved to hear that Jack The Hat’s disappearance did not seem to have caused any undue police activity. When they returned they were buoyant and overjoyed, carefree almost. The only thing they could talk about was this fabulous Victorian house they had found in Bildeston, a few miles from Hadleigh. It was set in eight acres, with stables, a paddock and a stream running along one boundary. It was called The Brooks and it was on the market for £12,000. The twins snapped it up.
Mum and the old man, who had moved from Vallance Road to a tower block in Bunhill Road, not far from the Bank of England in the City, did not need much persuading to move to Bildeston and for the next few months The Brooks was the centre of the twins’ lives.
They spent thousands doing it up and Ronnie took great delight in giving children from the village the run of the paddock, including a donkey which they could ride. Christmas was celebrated in style, with lashings of food and drink, and Mum and the old man were as happy as they had ever been, surrounded by family and friends in a house that surpassed their wildest dreams. The ugly face of villainy seemed a million miles away: a brief glimpse of a strange face in the village or a car cruising past the house were the only reminders that the police were still interested in us.
That period of the twins’ lives was hardly idyllic, but the atmosphere was quiet and peaceful and they loved it. For two young men with a couple of corpses on their consciences they were remarkably relaxed. Far from worrying about being arrested, they started talking about retiring from the London scene and becoming country gentlemen.
It was the calm before the storm. For when the twins returned to London early in 1968, the East End was buzzing with rumours that the law had been busy and it wouldn’t be long before the Kray Firm was nicked. Typically Ronnie and Reggie laughed in the face of the impending danger. They honestly believed that they were invincible and that no one would dare ‘grass them up’. I advised them to go away for a few months, maybe longer, to take the heat out of the situation but they just said, ‘Why should we run away? This is our home. No one can touch us.’
Every night they drank in the Carpenter’s Arms with their Firm, oblivious, it seemed, to all that was happening around them. Night after night, drinking, drinking, drinking. It seemed to prove something to them: if you went drinking with them, you were a lovely bloke. I did not go drinking every night, with them or anybody. I knew what was looming and I didn’t want to get involved. During the day, I kept myself busy with my coat factory and theatrical agency. At night, more often than not, I’d be at home with Dolly and the kids.
But one night I had to see the twins about something and went to the Carpenter’s Arms.
All the Firm were there, as usual, sitting around like bit-part actors in a bad gangster movie. Ronnie started having a pop at me; mocking me for never drinking with them, for being hen-pecked, ‘under the cosh’.
Then Reggie started putting in his twopenn’orth on the same theme and I lost my temper – ‘went into one’, as we say in the East End.
‘See this lot here,’ I said, my eyes sweeping the Firm sneeringly. ‘They hang round you. They love whatever’s going
on. They love the violence. They love being bloody gangsters.’
‘You’re a nice bloke,’ Ronnie said, taken aback. ‘All these nice guys…’
‘Nice guys!’ I yelled, feeling all my anger at what was going to happen to us welling up inside me. ‘You know what’s going to happen?’
I glared at Ronnie. ‘You’re going to get nicked.’ I glared at Reggie. ‘And you’re going to get nicked. And I’m going to get nicked, too.’
I glared at the Firm. And they sat there, their mouths open, shocked at dear old Charlie, good old, quiet, straight Charlie, losing his rag.
‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ I said, my voice rising. ‘You see all these clever Jack the lads here? They’re going to give evidence against you. And I’m going to have to stand there and take it all. For you.’
The twins stared at me disbelievingly. I don’t think I’d ever shouted so loudly and been so angry in front of people before.
Finally Ronnie found some words, ‘You’re being disloyal, Charlie,’ he said.
‘No I’m not,’ I said. ‘I don’t owe any of them any loyalty at all. They’re your mates, not mine. But I can promise you this. You won’t get any loyalty from them when the Old Bill gets lively. They’ll grass you up as fast as you like.’
I didn’t care that the Firm was there. Big Pat Connolly was all right except when he’d had a few and Bender was a bit of a laugh. But the rest I wouldn’t give two bob for. I didn’t give a monkey’s what anyone thought. My views on them and what they would do to the twins was long overdue anyway.
Yuka Stuttgart was a ravishing blonde Swiss beauty who had earned the title Playboy Bunny of the Year in 1966 under her Playboy name, Surry Marsh. She looked me up in London at the suggestion of Joe Kaufman, and when the Leicester club opened she was the perfect partner for me. She turned out to be something else, too – the unwitting catalyst that brought Diana and me together.
The club was bustling with activity that September night. Everyone was done up to the nines and no expense had been spared to give the club a champagne launch. I walked into the club proudly, the sumptuous Surry Marsh on my arm. Heads turned; knowing smiles were exchanged.
Later, Diana came up to our table to serve something. She motioned her head towards Surry, engaged in conversation with someone on the other side of the table. ‘I must say you have beautiful friends,’ Diana said quietly.
I grinned. ‘Yes. She’s very attractive.’
Diana’s eyes twinkled. ‘Well, you’ll enjoy yourself there, even if the club’s not up to much.’
I laughed. I admired her sauce. She always saw the positive side of situations.
And although it was a flippant remark, just a bit of harmless nightclub banter, there was something in Diana’s warmth and friendliness that I found appealing and, in a way, exciting.
Surry and I spent the night together in Leicester and returned to London the next day. The following week I went back to the club, Di accepted my invitation to go for a drink and the affair began. After the dreariness and monotony of marriage to Dolly I found Diana’s exuberance and love of life exhilarating and refreshing. She was so much fun she didn’t have an enemy in the world, although she was having a very bad time with her husband who had beaten her up a few times; but she kept her unhappiness to herself.
Chemin-de-fer games were all the rage then and Trevor and I opened a new club in Coventry. I had to spend my Wednesdays there, but that didn’t stop Diana and I seeing each other. She would ring the Leofric Hotel to find out if I’d checked in, then get a taxi from Leicester after work at the club.
Diana was such an attractive creature that she was never short of admirers. One of them was Con Cluskey, a member of the Bachelors singing group, which was appearing in Coventry at the time. Con was mad about Di; he would tell me so every time we had a drink. And he was always wanting Diana to dance with him. Happily for me, Di preferred my rough-edged Cockney and didn’t fall for the Irish blarney. Those mid-week spells together were joyously happy for Diana and me – welcome breaks from our respective homes where we were less and less content. But as our feelings became deeper, the need to see more of each other grew. When, early in 1968, Diana said her marriage had got so bad she was going to leave home, I knew the time had come for me to make a similar decision.
It wasn’t easy with the increasing activity around the twins. Diana was no fool, but she was blissfully innocent of any kind of villainy and I was worried she might hear bad things about the Krays and associate them with me. As tactfully as I could, I explained that the twins had been involved in the odd bit of trouble and had given the name a notoriety. I warned her that it was possible something might happen. Diana, bless her, told me not to worry: she knew me well enough to know I wasn’t a villain and that was enough for her. She didn’t care what people thought.
Relieved, I decided to tell Mum about the woman I wanted to share my life. But just before I was going round to see her, something happened which I had to put before everything else.
Reggie was having a drink in the Carpenter’s Arms one night when two plain-clothes policemen walked in. Reggie told the barman to give them both drinks. They accepted, then asked to speak to Reggie privately. Reggie said, ‘What about the toilet?’ and they all went in there.
The two men said they were well aware what went on with fit-ups; sometimes they agreed with them, sometimes they did not. They had just come from a meeting where it had been decided to set somebody up. And this time they did not like it at all.
Because the person who was going to be fitted up was me. And everyone knew I was straight.
The plan, they told Reggie, was to plant drugs in my car, then stop me on some pretence. Reggie asked why they wanted to put me into the frame; the cops said the powers that be were upset at some of the things I’d done to get the twins out of trouble. They told Reggie to tell me to make sure my car was secure whenever I left it.
Before they left, Reggie offered them money for the tip-off but they refused, saying that if they took it he would think that was the only reason they had come, when in fact they had come because of the principle. It may be hard for Reggie to believe, they said, but it was true.
After the pub shut, Reggie rang me. He didn’t want to talk about it on the phone but asked me to go round to his place very early the next morning.
When I heard what it was all about I went spare. I rang a friend on the Sunday Pictorial, Norman Lucas, and told him the whole story. I told other people, too, and I told them to tell their friends. And then, just in case that didn’t make the Old Bill think again, I fitted my car with the most sensitive alarm system I could afford; it was so sensitive, the wind set it off one night!
I’m happy to say that, in the end, the fit-up never happened.
Thank God for coppers with principles.
Mum, as usual, did not criticize me when I finally told her about Diana. She listened intently as I explained that it was over with Dolly, that I’d met someone else who was everything Dolly wasn’t, and then she said if that was what I really wanted, she would like to meet Diana. Whether she was tempted to tell me what she knew about Dolly and George Ince I don’t know; she didn’t say anything. I arranged to bring Diana to the flat the following Wednesday then I walked out along Bunhill Row in the late April sunshine feeling cheerful, and a little light-headed. Telling Mum had made a huge difference; had made it all right in a way. She was going to love Diana.
But Diana couldn’t come to London the following week because one of her children fell ill. I was disappointed; I’d been looking forward to introducing the two women I loved deeply. But I wasn’t too bothered. There was no rush. I would go to Leicester, as usual, next Wednesday, 8 May, and bring Diana back with me. Seven days wouldn’t matter.
Sadly, it was to be nearly seven years before I saw Diana again.
They came for me that Wednesday at 6 A.M.
The doorbell rang and there was heavy knocking on the front door. Dolly sat up in b
ed. ‘What’s that, Charlie?’
I put on a dressing gown and shuffled sleepily downstairs. I opened the door to the full extent of the safety chain. I didn’t get a chance to ask who it was or what they wanted because three plain-clothes detectives shoved against the door, breaking the chain.
‘Hold up,’ I said, suddenly wide awake. ‘What’s wrong?’
They all closed in on me so that I couldn’t move.
‘Let’s go in here, shall we?’ one of them said. They ushered me into the lounge. One of them eased me into a chair; another took the phone off the hook.
My eyes went from one to the other searching for a clue to what it was all about. All I could think in my confusion was that they were not Metropolitan Police, and that they were probably armed.
By now Dolly had come down with Nancy, wondering what all the fuss was about. Then Gary appeared, looking bewildered. They all stood there, looking at me, hoping I’d tell them what was going on.
I looked at the senior officer and demanded to know what I was supposed to have done to warrant my front door being broken open at six in the morning.
He said I was being arrested on a charge of conspiracy to defraud. I stared at him in shock. I’d never defrauded anyone in my life, was all I said. They cautioned me that anything I said would be taken down and might be used in evidence against me. I decided to say nothing else. There was nothing to say: the allegation was utter nonsense.
They told me to get dressed as they were taking me to the nick. The three of them stood watching as I washed. I wanted to shave, but they told me not to bother. Then, after I’d dressed, Dolly made some tea and we all stood around drinking it and making polite conversation like strangers at a vicar’s tea party. Finally one of the officers said we were leaving and produced a pair of handcuffs. He asked me to hold out my hands. Flabbergasted, I said, ‘Are you joking?’
Me and My Brothers Page 14