After he had been at Parkhurst a couple of days, I went to see the Chief Prison Officer, who told me that Reggie still wasn’t one hundred per cent but they would have him back to normal in a few days.
Within a week, Reggie was as right as rain and able to talk coherently about what had been a four-week blitz on his brain. He said the move to Long Lartin had unsettled him and he had never been happy there. His letters had either been late or stopped altogether and officers tried generally to provoke him, as if they were seeing how far they could go and how much he could take.
And he remembered being told that people ‘usually hang themselves with a piece of sheet or something’.
‘That was a very irresponsible thing to say,’ Reggie said. ‘Or maybe they really did want me to top myself.’
Ronnie had known before any of us that Reggie was heading for a crisis. Reggie did not talk about his problems in his letters but Ronnie picked up that something was wrong. Even if Reggie had not written at all Ronnie would have sensed the trouble ahead, for the amazing telepathy they shared as children was still there.
Mum never ceased to be amused by it, even though she had grown used to it over the years. Ronnie, for example, would write to her from prison saying she should go on holiday for a couple of weeks, then Reggie, from a different prison hundreds of miles away, would write saying the same thing, even though the twins themselves had not discussed it. She would go to see one of them and talk about a certain subject, then when she visited the other one, he’d bring up the same subject, and Mum would find herself having an identical conversation. She would come home and laugh. ‘Would you believe it, it’s happened again!’
So it was hardly surprising that Ronnie knew Reggie was suffering in Long Lartin. One thing is certain: Ronnie would have understood Reggie’s desire to be left on his own to avoid listening to all that talk about violence from idiots. For Ronnie had gone through the same problems himself, first in Durham then in Parkhurst. He liked being on his own so much that I’m sure it wouldn’t have bothered him to stay in the chokey block for six months, not twenty-four hours. Broadmoor is perfect for him: most of the inmates there are in for domestic crimes and not caught up in the supposedly glamorous side of villainy. The novelty of having a notorious Kray twin in their midst has worn off and Ronnie can now go off and sit on his own for an hour without being bothered. It took him a long time to get to this comfortable stage, though. After he arrived so many people from other parts of the hospital wanted to chat to him that it got on his nerves and he didn’t go out for two years.
One would have thought that after all the medical reports on Ronnie the staff at Broadmoor would understand that he doesn’t need people nor does he want to buy friendship. But they are still puzzled by his charitable nature.
The Superintendent called me in once, a concerned look on his face. ‘Ronnie keeps giving things away,’ he said. ‘What do you think the motive is?’
I smiled to myself. I knew he kept half his ward in tobacco, and at the last count he’d given away thirty watches. ‘He likes giving things away,’ I said. ‘He’s done it all his life.’
The Superintendent was not convinced.
‘What possible motive could there be?’ I asked.
The Superintendent shook his head. ‘I don’t know. That’s why I asked you.’
‘If you think he’s bribing people so they’ll be on his side, so they’ll help him in some way, forget it. You should watch and see what sort of people Ronnie picks out. You won’t find any tough six-footers, I can assure you.’
It was true. All their lives the twins have had an overwhelming compassion for the underdog – the little man who can’t protect himself from the bully, the old lady who is ill or down on her luck. Often I’ve been sitting in the visiting hall at Broadmoor when Ronnie has spotted an old lady he’s never seen in his life. ‘Look at that old lady, Charlie,’ he’ll say. ‘Bless her. Get her a box of chocolates, will you?’
I do it for him because I believe in it. I’ve always been soft-hearted too.
I realize that I knew this side of Ronnie for more than thirty years before our arrest, but one would expect an institution that has supposedly been monitoring his health and behaviour to understand that acts of good-natured charity are part of Ronnie’s character and nothing to get worked up about. In Broadmoor, he gives away so many watches that he is nicknamed ‘the watchman’. Wilf Pine gave him a watch on one visit which Ronnie immediately sold for £50, giving the money to someone who was having an operation for throat cancer.
Once he gave away a chain which I had just given him. I was quite angry and said, ‘I didn’t buy you a present to give away.’
‘If you gave it to me, it’s mine,’ Ronnie replied. ‘So I’ve got the right to do what I like with it.’
‘But I expect you to keep it,’ I told him. ‘I bought it for you.’
‘If it gives me pleasure to give it away there’s no harm in that, is there?’
There was no harm in it, I suppose, but it was galling to think that a chain I wanted Ronnie to wear was being worn by someone else who I had not even met. ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘I’d prefer it if you didn’t give my presents away.’
Ronnie assumed that look of determination, the look that said: Don’t you argue with me. If I want to do something, no one is going to stop me. ‘If I want to give them away, I think it’s better that I do,’ he said. ‘I would accept it if you did it. Why can’t you?’
And Ronnie would accept it. But then he can go one way or the other.
Other inmates must think the world of Ronnie. He will give away half his tobacco allowance, borrow some back when he runs out then buy them some more. Sometimes inmates are allowed to buy meals and Ronnie will pick ten people he feels are in need and treat them. Once Wilf took him in a platter of seafood and Ronnie immediately said, ‘We’ll have a party tonight.’ If he gets money, he’ll buy a dozen steaks and share them round. It goes on all the time. He’ll never change.
I had had six years and eight months taken off my life for something of which I was totally innocent. I’d sat in jail seething with frustration at the injustice of it all. I’d driven myself almost round the twist discovering people who had received far lighter sentences after pleading guilty in similar cases. But I’d resisted the temptation to write letters because I felt them to be a waste of time. However, something had to be done about it and I decided to wait until I was out then go to the International Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. If there was one place that could put right the wrong that had been done to me and mete out the justice I’d been deprived of all those years before, that was it.
Day and night, night and day, throughout the agonizing, mind-numbing tedium of prison existence, I had thought and dreamt…and fantasized about the wonderful moment when the truth about me would scream across the pages of the British Press and people would know they should not tar me with the same brush as my twin brothers.
Then, three months after my release, a visit to Ronnie, in Parkhurst, led to me having an emotional talk with an eminent psychiatrist, Dr Klein, and abandoning all those dreams. Ronnie wanted to know the truth about his mental state and needed Dr Klein’s help. He’d known him for many years before our arrests and felt he could rely on him to get accurate information from the prison’s medical staff.
I fixed an appointment to see Dr Klein at his Harley Street office. We were talking about Ronnie, but also about me, and after a while it dawned on me that Dr Klein was analysing me. I asked him if this was the case and he admitted it, saying he found it worrying that I seemed so full of hate and anger, even though I had served my sentence.
‘Wouldn’t you be if you’d been jailed for something you didn’t do?’ I said.
He had assumed I’d helped dispose of Jack McVitie’s body, so I put him right as succinctly as I could. He sat back, behind his desk, deep in thought. Then he leaned forward and looked at me. ‘Charlie,’ he said earnestly. ‘Don’t waste your time trying
to prove your innocence.’
‘What!’ I snapped. ‘I’ve thought of little else for nearly seven years. I’m taking the case to Strasbourg.’
Dr Klein shook his head slowly, sadly.
‘No matter what you do, you won’t be allowed to win.’
I didn’t understand.
He explained. ‘Even if you did succeed in getting the case to Strasbourg and the court did agree you were wrongly convicted that doesn’t mean the British Government would do anything about it.’
‘They would have to,’ I said.
He shook his head again. ‘It would cause some embarrassment, but that’s all. They certainly wouldn’t issue a pardon.’
‘But it’s the principle,’ I insisted.
‘Even if the principle’s right, the whole exercise would be futile because you’ve served your time. You can’t get back those seven years.’
I said nothing. I stared back at him, unable to think of anything except that his last point was spot on. Nobody could give me back seven years of my life.
He let the silence continue, allowing the profundity of what he had said to sink in. Finally he said softly, but very warmly, ‘After being away so long, don’t you think you should just enjoy your life? Don’t you think you owe that to yourself?’
‘Of course I do,’ I said quickly. ‘But I’ll enjoy my life more if I can clear my name, make people aware I didn’t do what they believe I did.’
Dr Klein shook his head. ‘If you carry on your fight, it will become a full-time occupation that would ruin your life. It could ultimately destroy you.’
I didn’t reply, and he asked me if I respected him and his advice. I told him I did.
‘I know you will never completely forget the injustice,’ he said finally. ‘But try to put it to the back of your mind and put all your energies into living. That is the best advice I can give you because you will never be allowed to win.’
As I walked out of his office and along Harley Street I thought of what he had said. I hated the idea of not going through with what I’d promised myself, but there had been something in Dr Klein’s warm sincerity that warned me I should consider his advice very carefully indeed. I was no fool. I knew no one was going to admit I was wrongly convicted, because that would throw a huge question mark over the whole case. The authorities had been given all the evidence they needed to release me when Ronnie Hart tried to kill himself and left a note admitting that he had lied about me in court. But even that had made no difference to my appeal.
Over the next few weeks I pondered Dr Klein’s advice: it dominated my thoughts, nagging away at me as I tried to get back into the swing of daily working life, hammering inside my brain as I fell exhausted into bed at night. And then, one day in the summer of 1975, one lovely day when the sun was shining and the East End was bustling with happy, smiling, contented people, I knew what I had to do.
Dr Klein was right in everything he said; I think, deep down, I knew that all along. But it was something he didn’t say that made me decide to drop my plans for taking the case to Strasbourg. Life was precious, but short, and I was one year away from my fiftieth birthday.
I was fit, strong and as alert as I’d ever been – a youthful fifty – but no matter how I looked or felt, time was not on my side. As Dr Klein had said, taking on the Establishment would be a full-time occupation; to give myself even half a chance of success I would have to drop virtually everything else I was involved in, all the little business deals I was trying to pull together for Diana and me. I would have to dedicate myself singlemindedly to the whole business, think, talk, dream about nothing else twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. And not just for a year; I’d read of human rights cases taking years. And for what? Dr Klein’s words came back to me, filling my mind: ‘You will never be allowed to win.’
Did I want that? Did I want more pressure, more aggravation, more courtroom confrontations, more legal mumbo-jumbo, when the odds were stacked so heavily against me? Did I want to go through yet again all the mental anguish of trying to convince people of the truth of that terrible October night when they had had enough facts to convince them already, and had chosen to come to the wrong conclusion?
Did I really want all that in my life as I approached my half-century? And, just as important, did my darling Diana?
On that sunny day, with the East End and its people so full of life, I decided once and for all to stop dreaming about getting a pardon or even a court victory for wrongful conviction. I would take Dr Klein’s advice and I would take it from that very minute.
I would never be able to forget the trauma and indescribable agony of it all. But at least I could try to push it further and further back into my mind until it was just a memory, not a crusade. I would not allow the Establishment another victory by destroying myself. I would rediscover my zest for living and get back into the business of making money to provide for the woman I planned to marry.
After the darkness of prison, where nothing is easy, I would revel in the sunshine of a free life, where everything is possible. I would throw myself into it with all my heart, determined to try to catch up with my lost years by making every moment count.
Chapter Sixteen
I cannot thank Maidstone Jail enough for teaching me artificial resuscitation. I passed the elementary exam so well one morning that I was asked if I wanted to take the advanced test in the afternoon, and passed that with honours. This was great for me but even better for Diana a few years later. For it helped me to save her life. Three times.
Diana suffers from asthma, and towards the end of an evening at Joe and Rose Rankin’s pub in Hackney she suddenly found it hard to breathe. I suggested we leave, and soon we were heading down Kingsland Road on the way to Ewell in Surrey. I did not realize how serious Diana’s asthma attacks could be until I looked at her in the passenger seat and realized she was passing out. I needed to get her home as fast as possible so I put my foot down, assuming that if I was stopped the police would be sympathetic. Fortunately, there were no police cars to be seen that night and I got her home in double-quick time. Without a booking.
I helped Diana out of the car and sat her in an armchair while I made some coffee. When I came back she was on the floor. Out of my mind with worry, I picked her up and put her on a settee.
I felt for her pulse. There was none.
I felt to see if she was breathing. She wasn’t.
I picked up the phone despairingly. It was out of order.
Trembling with panic, I moved Diana gently back to the floor. She was lifeless. And she would stay that way unless somebody did something quickly. Well, there was nobody else. Only me. I knew I had to find out just how well I’d learned artificial resuscitation in jail and I prayed I’d learned it well enough.
My Diana was not going to die on me.
I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with as much air as I could, and blew into her mouth – first one big blow; another deep breath; another blow, then another. Next I hit her on the sternum to start the heart.
She didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
Another deep breath. More air, more life-giving air. I hit the sternum again, harder this time.
Come on, Diana, come on!
But nothing.
And then again, and again and yet another rib-crushing thump on the sternum. Come on. Come on. COME ON! Breathe, my darling. BREATHE!
And then, finally, she did. She took in the air I’d given her and started breathing it. From an inert, lifeless body, she started coming back to me again.
I got up and dashed across the road. I knocked on a door urgently and a young girl of about fourteen opened it, alarm on her face at the sight of a strange man on her doorstep at 11 P.M.
‘Don’t worry, darling,’ I said, not wanting to frighten her. ‘There’s a lady across the road having an asthma attack. She’s in a bad way. Can you ring for an ambulance?’
I left her to it and ran back into the house. Diana’s breathing kept st
opping then starting and I prayed I could keep her going until the ambulance arrived. Just then the girl came in, looking terrified. The ambulance was on its way, she said. At that moment the ambulancemen came running into the house, carried Diana out and put her on oxygen. I jumped in the ambulance and we were racing to the hospital with someone radioing ahead to tell them to prepare for a major emergency. And all the time Diana’s breathing was stopping and they had to keep starting it again.
At the hospital they put her on a machine, then on to a bed which turned upside down so that a pipe could be put down her throat. It seemed like hours before the ambulancemen came out and told me I could relax because Diana was breathing normally.
I thanked them for all they had done, then, as they started to leave, one of them turned to me and said, ‘By the way, you saved that lady’s life. Where did you learn resuscitation?’
I shrugged, embarrassed. Somehow, the place did not seem right to get involved in a conversation about prison. ‘It was years ago,’ was all I said.
Diana was told she was being kept in overnight but I was allowed to see her once she was settled. She was sitting up, looking perky and right as rain.
‘How do you feel?’ I asked.
‘Like a fool,’ Diana replied. ‘I feel perfectly well enough to go home.’
‘Well, you’re not,’ I said. ‘We’re not taking any chances.’
I told her how the whole business had opened my eyes: I hadn’t realized asthma attacks could be so lethal. ‘You were completely out,’ I said.
Diana smiled. ‘I know. They told me who saved my life.’
‘Well, now you’re in my debt,’ I joked. And we both laughed.
I left her at 3 A.M. and suddenly remembered my car was at home in Ewell. I got a cab easily in Epsom town centre, but I was so brimful with relief I could happily have walked all the way.
Me and My Brothers Page 24