by John Pearson
Ronnie became excited at the idea. Reggie would have to kill; as his twin brother, his other self, it was imperative, for he and Reggie always shared their secret life. Only when he had killed would they be properly united. But this would be just the beginning. In time the whole Firm could be ‘blooded’, all share in the strange brotherhood of killing, all become equally involved.
When Ronnie first used Jack ‘the Hat’ McVitie he had seemed ready for any villainy. He was a well-known East End character, as strong as a dray-horse, and he used to boast that nothing frightened him. He was an old-style fighting man. Only that spring a gang had tried to teach him a lesson by smashing up his hands with a crowbar but as soon as they were healed he was brawling again. In fact, though, Jack the Hat was nowhere near as tough as he appeared. He was a drunk. His nerves had gone; his courage came from the bottle or from enormous pep pills called ‘black bombers’.
Much of the time he was a cheerful soul, erratic, generous and kind to children. He was vain enough to have earned his nickname from the hat he always wore to cover his baldness, and was proud of his success with women. He treated them in the old East End manner. He casually pushed one mistress he was annoyed with out of his car while travelling at speed and broke her back. This caused him some remorse, but in a day or two he found another girl to live with. Jack was like that.
That summer Ronnie had employed him in the purple-heart business; it appears he cheated Ronnie on the money but Reggie, who liked him, smoothed things over. In September Ronnie became convinced that Leslie Payne had made a deal with the Law and realized that he would be a dangerous witness for the Crown. That same week Ronnie had a drink with Jack the Hat; he gave him £100, a gun and Leslie Payne’s address. He explained that the £100 was payment on account. There would be £400 more when Leslie Payne was dead.
When Reggie heard, he disliked the idea. He disliked most of Ronnie’s ideas, but lacked the power to oppose him: he was deep in his own hell and past the point where he could do much against Ronnie. The only peace he knew now was the hour he spent each day by Frances’s grave. He had had it planted with red roses and was convinced that something of her spirit lingered there to listen to him. Each day he talked to her and each day he returned to Ronnie. There was no one else with Frances gone. Ronnie was someone to lean on; when he had drunk enough Reggie took on his power; when he indulged his hatred and his violence they became one person. Sober, it was not so easy. There were still moments every day when he was sane and weary with a deep longing to have finished with it all.
Jack the Hat went off to kill Les Payne one September evening and bungled it, as Reggie had predicted. He promised he would try again, but Payne had become wary. The days went by; Les Payne was still alive; McVitie still had Ronnie’s £100. Threats followed. Ronnie heard that Jack had made a scene at the Foremans’ 211 Club in Balham. This was ‘a diabolical liberty’, as Foreman was an old friend of the twins. Once again Reggie smoothed things over. There was a meeting at The Regency. Jack, sober and repentant, told him about his nerves, his debts, his child who was ill. A soft touch as usual, Reggie lent him £50.
‘You should’ve paid George Cornell as well,’ stormed Ronnie when he heard, and sent fresh threats to McVitie about his money. McVitie, thinking Reggie had let him down, took several bombers, got himself drunk and staggered into The Regency, hat askew, waving a sawn-off shotgun. Next day someone made a point of telling Ronnie how Jack the Hat had threatened to shoot the twins.
The Carpenters’ Arms is a small pub in a dingy street near Vallance Road. The twins bought it that autumn. During these months of crisis they had not been able to keep their clubs going. This was the last place of their own. But here in Bethnal Green where they had grown up they felt secure and knew that they could drink in safety. There was a narrow doorway to the street, a narrow bar; one could see everybody who was there.
On weekdays the Firm assembled here for orders; at weekends there was sometimes a party for the Firm and friends, with womenfolk invited and drinks were on the house. The last Saturday in October The Carpenters’ was crowded.
Violet was there. She had left her house just round the corner for a new council flat in Braithwaite House in Shoreditch, but she missed Vallance Road and loved a night out with the twins. She kept herself smart for them – a blonde rinse for her hair, a big gold pendant round her neck. Sometimes she laughed and said the worry of the twins helped to keep her young; she was immensely proud of them. Charlie’s wife Dolly was there too. She loathed the twins and they returned the compliment, but on this family occasion she had her place, standing aloof from them and very cool.
These ladies’ evenings were extremely formal: the women sipped their Babychams beneath expensive hairdos and kept their places in the old East End manner, genteelly twittering among themselves. All the men would be uncomfortably smart – small, strangled knots to ties, stiff white collars, gleaming shoes. They took their style from the Colonel and with his mother present would be painfully restrained.
Reggie was an accomplished host. He was attentive to the women and drank little; the serious drinking would start later, after the pubs closed. There was a party at the house of a girl called Blonde Carol in Cazenove Road, Stoke Newington; the Firm was welcome.
Ronnie was the only person at The Carpenters’ that night who seemed out of things; most people recognized the danger signs and left him carefully alone. When Reggie talked to him he found him brooding about McVitie. Since Reggie would not do anything, Ronnie was going to deal with him as he had dealt with George Cornell. McVitie would be at The Regency around eleven.
Several people in the bar that night remember how quickly Reggie changed. He started drinking heavily and at closing time drove off to The Regency.
The Regency – ‘North London’s Smartest Rendezvous’ – was very different from the down-at-heel illicit gambling place the twins had had a share in seven years before but they had no connection with it now. Two brothers, John and Tony Barry, had stepped in, both of them smart young businessmen. John was the elder and the tougher – broad-shouldered, short, with an assured manner and a white Mercedes; his brother was skinnier and shyer, very much the junior partner. They worked well together, had installed the big upstairs bar, dance-floor, restaurant and the gaming-room in the basement. It was a lively place. Much of the Barrys’ success came from the way they could keep order without asking questions: tact was their stock-in-trade.
This was how John Barry had managed to disarm McVitie when he was waving his shotgun and looking for the twins a few days earlier. Still greater tact over the years had saved The Regency from having to pay regular protection money to the twins, although they took the place for granted as their preserve. They and the Firm would often visit; when they were there the regulars would be a little careful how they spoke and who was standing near. Drinking men would tend to stand in groups, ready for trouble – the sort of trouble that occurred that night just before 11.00 when Reggie burst in with several of the Firm, looking for Jack the Hat.
It should have been a simple death. Reggie had heard so many times how Ronnie had murdered George Cornell, and endured so many taunts about the proper way to kill a man, that it seemed perfectly straightforward. Now he was drunk and violent he had no scruples about killing; he could not go on letting Ronnie down for ever. If he let Ronnie kill McVitie, how could he face himself afterwards? There was no possible alternative. He had his .32 automatic. When he saw Jack the Hat he would quite calmly shoot him through the head as Ronnie had shot Cornell. That was what Ronnie wanted; twins had a duty to each other.
But slowly it dawned on Reggie that McVitie was not in The Regency at all. He searched the gaming-room, the bar, the restaurant. Ronnie Hart was with him and a man called Bender; the Lambrianou brothers joined them. They went to the Barrys’ office to ask where McVitie was. Tony Barry was there and asked why they wanted him. Reggie told him. Barry would have known better than to argue had it been Ronnie. With Reggie it was
different. He begged Reggie to be sensible. He knew McVitie; the man was a fool, a drunken nobody. He wasn’t worth the trouble that would come from murdering him.
Reggie made no attempt to answer. Instead he stood chewing his lower lip and scowling as he always did at moments of uncertainty. Then he handed Tony Barry the .32, asked him to mind it, and quietly invited the Lambrianous to the party at Blonde Carol’s. Hart and Bender were to come too. The violence had gone from Reggie’s face. Barry put the gun in the drawer of his desk, thinking another spot of bother had been tactfully averted. He failed to notice that the man called Bender had a long knife tucked in the waistband of his trousers.
Blonde Carol was the sort of woman Ronnie approved of: a thin, pale woman in her middle twenties, she did as she was told, never complained and kept her mouth shut. The truth was she was scared of him. She had two young children from a broken marriage and lived with them in a basement flat in Cazenove Road, Stoke Newington, together with a man who ran a spieler for the twins. Sometimes she had nightmares about Ronnie.
The night of her party he arrived just after 11.00 with several of the Firm and two young boys. He didn’t speak or even look at her but stood there scowling in the hall as one of the men explained that Ronnie required her flat for a private party of his own. She knew better than object and told the guests who had already arrived that they were moving to another party across the road. Nobody complained: everyone knew Ronnie.
As Blonde Carol’s guests were leaving, Reggie arrived with Hart, Bender and the Lambrianous. There were two women with them – Hart’s girl-friend, Vicki, and a young red-head called Carol Thompson. The red-head was a girl Reggie had met at Steeple Bay. As they came down the basement steps they all seemed ready for a good time but Blonde Carol heard Ronnie tell his brother that this was no place for women. The women were to go with her.
Ronnie was taking charge. Without bothering to ask, he knew Reggie had failed him yet again. If things were left to him he would end up buying Jack the Hat a drink and lending him another £50; Ronnie was not leaving anything to him in future. If Reggie wouldn’t kill McVitie, he would have to do it personally.
When they were in the sitting-room Ronnie began to give his orders. Before Frances died Reggie would probably have stopped him, but now he lacked the power and had drunk too much. Ronnie was in command. While Reggie poured himself another drink young Hart was ordered back to The Regency for the gun left in the office. To incriminate the Barrys and make sure they kept quiet, Ronnie gave strict instructions that Tony Barry was to bring the .32 to Cazenove Road himself.
Then it was the Lambrianous’ turn. They were good friends of Jack the Hat; he would trust them as he never would the twins. Now was their chance to prove themselves fit to join the Firm. They were to follow Hart to The Regency, find Jack the Hat, buy him a drink or two, then ask him round to Carol’s party without mentioning the twins. Hart and the Lambrianous left. Reggie appeared to fall asleep. The two boys put a record on and started dancing together. Ronnie watched them.
It was a crude trap for an old villain like McVitie; Hart, Tony Barry, the Lambrianous could all have warned him. Even when they failed to, he should have smelled something a little odd about this sudden invitation, but he was probably too drunk.
Barry brought the gun and drove off looking scared before becoming even more involved. Young Ronnie Hart returned; Ronnie posted him as a lookout in an upstairs window facing the street. Just before midnight Hart saw a beaten-up Ford Zodiac draw up. Five men got out: the Lambrianous, two brothers by the name of Mills and finally a man in a hat – McVitie.
Hart gave the alarm.
McVitie burst in, ready for a party.
‘Where’s all the birds, all the booze?’ he shouted.
Ronnie was waiting for him, watching from the sofa. Reggie was behind the door. As Jack the Hat barged past, Reggie tried to shoot him through the head, but the gun jammed. Outside big Chrissie Lambrianou, who had wanted to be a gangster, suddenly realized what he had done and was sitting weeping on the stairs.
McVitie must have thought he still had a chance when the gun jammed. When the same thing happened with George Dixon, Ronnie had let him off with a warning; if he decided he deserved a beating up, Jack could take it like a man. But he must soon have seen from Ronnie’s face that he was not to be so lucky.
Ronnie was shouting at him, his eyes bulging with fury. The Mills brothers and the two boys ran from the room. Reggie had thrown away the gun and was grappling him from behind. McVitie, very sober now, tried to be reasonable, but he seemed to have no voice left and Ronnie was shouting incoherently, the others joining in.
Suddenly he managed to break free. In the far corner of the room there was a window with a wooden frame that looked on to the garden. McVitie made a dive for it, but he got stuck, only his head and shoulders free. The others pulled him back by the legs, then hauled him to his feet.
‘Be a man, Jack,’ Ronnie screamed at him.
‘I’ll be a man, but I don’t want to die like one.’
Then Ronnie grabbed him, locking his arms behind him, and Reggie was holding Bender’s carving knife. The room fell silent.
‘Kill him, Reg. Do him,’ hissed his brother. ‘Don’t stop now.’
McVitie had lost his hat through the window. He stood there looking very bald and gaunt, his long face sweating.
‘Why are you doing this to me, Reg?’
Instead of answering, Reggie pushed the knife into his face below the eye. The butchering followed as McVitie sank to his knees. According to Ronnie Hart, Reggie stabbed his stomach and his chest and finished by impaling him through the throat on to the floor. Reggie claims it was Hart who did the stabbing. Hart admits pushing a handkerchief into McVitie’s mouth to stop the flow of blood. Hart says that Bender put his ear to McVitie’s chest and then pronounced him dead.
It was approaching 1 A.M. McVitie’s corpse lay in the centre of the room, the carpet round him soaked in blood. The party opposite would soon be over. Blonde Carol soon be coming home. Before she did the body must be dumped, the worst of the blood mopped up. Once this was done the twins could say there had simply been a fight and she was not to talk.
So the dismal rigmarole of cleaning up began. The body was humped into the bedroom where Carol’s children were asleep. It was slung on their mother’s bed and covered with her bedspread. The Lambrianous started scrubbing the carpet with hot water from the kitchen. When the worst of the mess in the living room was dealt with, McVitie’s body was wrapped in an eiderdown, dragged up the stairs and placed in Bender’s car. Ronnie ordered him to drive it away. Then somebody remembered McVitie’s hat. It was his trademark and could easily identify him. When he dived at the window it fell outside. It was retrieved.
Blonde Carol had still not returned, but the twins were restless, particularly Ronnie. Now that the job was done he had to get away; the others could take care of things. As usual the twins were worried about getting clean again so that they could face their mother. For this they chose the house of one man they believed that they could trust. Harry Hopwood had been their parents’ best man, an army deserter with their father, and had advised the twins on the best way to dodge their own military service. They ordered Hart to drive them to his house in Hackney, where they engaged in a sort of ritual cleansing. First they both bathed thoroughly, soaping themselves all over. Hart says he remembers having to help wash Reggie’s hair as he had cut his hand on the carving knife. Shoes, suits and every stitch of clothing were left in a pile; later that day Hopwood arranged to have them burned. He also burned their paper money and scrubbed their watches, rings and cuff-links. Then Hart went off to fetch fresh clothes and Hopwood helped him throw the knife and gun into the Grand Union Canal by Queensbridge Road. At this spot, ten months later, the police dragged up a jammed .32 automatic.
Just after 2 A.M. Blonde Carol came back to her flat; as she came down the stairs Bender was coming up, his hands in a pair of her children’s wooll
en socks, carrying her plastic washing-up bowl full of blood and water.
‘Somebody’s been hurt,’ he said. He emptied the bowl into the lavatory. She knew better than ask questions: instead she followed him downstairs and helped him with the scrubbing. When he told her it was no good and that the carpet would have to be destroyed, she still said nothing, but watched as he cut the stained part out and tried to burn it in the garden. It was so damp by now that it would barely smoulder. Later that day two men arrived with a van and removed every scrap of carpet and the furniture. The following day Donaghue arrived to mend the broken window in the corner of the room and redecorate the flat. A new suite of furniture arrived. No one said anything; Blonde Carol asked no questions.
* * *
Once they had washed and changed their clothes, the twins felt compelled to get away completely. Ronnie could not allow the deed to be obscured with its sordid aftermath: it was the act of killing he enjoyed, in all its dreamlike clarity. Others could cope with the dull reality of murder. He would have been depressed by it. Instead he made McVitie’s death the excuse for a short holiday. Hart drove them up to Cambridge, where they booked in for two days at The University Arms. Now that Jack the Hat was dead, Ronnie could enjoy it all. He was in high spirits and quite irresponsible, relishing the details of the killing, talking about the way he died and how he looked, the noise he made and how much blood there was. The amount seemed to surprise him.
Reggie was stunned by everything at first and the drink took some time to wear off. Afterwards Ronnie’s good humour was contagious. Here in this solid university hotel it was difficult to credit the drunken horror of the previous night. He felt safe with Ronnie near him, relieved to know he hadn’t let him down. Ronnie’s approval meant a lot to him these days.