The Profession of Violence

by John Pearson

  The full interrogation lasted three intensive weeks. Payne shrugged aside the offers of police protection, so Read chose a quietly down-at-heel hotel in Marylebone, hoping that the Krays’ eyes wouldn’t reach that far. He arrived each morning punctually at 9.00; Payne would unhurriedly appear an hour later in a taxi. Then, with a police guard sitting in the next-door bedroom, the questioning would start. The guard made coffee, meals were sent in from the cafe round the corner. Nothing was omitted from the questioning; each morning Read read over what Payne had said the day before. Payne had a meticulous memory. Nipper checked places, names, dates and bank-account numbers against his statement. Payne would then sign and date it and the questioning continued.

  It was nearly Christmas before it finished. Payne’s statement ran to more than two hundred pages and detailed everything he knew about the twins: the early frauds and gang fights, the entry into Esmeralda’s Barn, protection and the long-firm frauds, the share deals, rackets, woundings and connections with the Mafia. All the names Payne remembered were included, together with the figures, facts and places. It was a blueprint for a prosecution. All Nipper needed now was proof and witnesses.

  As his war against the twins gained ground, Nipper’s real talents showed. Like a good general he could see his one advantage over the twins and make the most of it. He had the initiative now and numbers on his side. He could no longer hope to keep the investigation secret, but he could keep the twins guessing by working fast. Speed and surprise might crack their wall of silence.

  Over Christmas Tintagel House was mobilized. Twenty men were working on the case; Superintendent Donald Adams had taken charge of documentation with three policewomen as assistants, leaving Nipper and his detectives free for action. It was a very big, simultaneous investigation. The different crimes and victims named in Payne’s statement had to be verified before the twins could get at them. There was no time for conferences or the sequence of routine inquiries. Each policeman operated separately, directly responsible to Nipper Read. As well as countless inquiries in London detectives had to go to Scotland, Canada, Belgium, Spain and the United States. Prisoners were interviewed. All the time Read’s men knew they could easily be signing a potential witness’s death warrant.

  Although the twins had failed to silence Payne there were a lot of others still worth shooting.

  They tried. Just before Christmas one of the Firm was sent to Scotland to deal with a potential witness rumoured to have talked to Read. Read heard. The twins’ man was picked up with a gun in Glasgow. Naturally he admitted nothing. Not all the twins’ attempts were so inept. Time after time detectives visited someone they believed would talk, only to find that somebody had been there first and he had changed his mind.

  Despite these setbacks, Read began to get results. The whole department was now working round the clock; the pile of statements stood several feet high and was growing daily. The police knew more about the twins than they ever had, and were closer to destroying their whole organization than at any time since 1964. Only one difficulty remained. As a firm safeguard for his witnesses and an inducement to make them talk, Nipper devised a clause attached to all their statements which guaranteed that the evidence would not be used until the Krays were safely under lock and key. He still had to get them there.

  Clad in their slacks and vests, smoking and drinking endless cups of hot, sweet tea, the twins would meet late every afternoon in their mother’s flat to argue about their latest plans. They picked up the current rumours, made certain of what each member of the Firm was doing, heard the reports sent in by spies and allies.

  Since Read took over the investigation it had become a personal affair. Ronnie was for killing him. Reggie was more reasonable. He knew about the clause in all the statements. He was also satisfied that none of the key witnesses in the Cornell, McVitie and Frank Mitchell cases dared talk. The Firm was keeping constant watch on all of them. Reggie was coming to his senses fast. The blonde who had stayed with him in Tangier was fond of him. ‘He was so sad and such a lonely man. I never knew quite what he wanted – nor did he.’ Once he stopped drinking he could be remarkably efficient. During this time he introduced fresh standing orders to the Firm: no risks or unknown propositions were to be accepted. Unnecessary violence would cease. Firearms and weapons were to be moved to safer hiding-places; no one would carry guns without an order from the twins. Telephones were for emergencies; conversations would be coded and kept short.

  He understood the pressure there must be on Read to tie the case up quickly. This was to the twins’ advantage: they could let everything tick over now indefinitely. All the Firm’s energies could be used for keeping people ‘loyal’. No one was permitted to forget that ‘if we go, half London will go with us’.

  So while Read and his men were rushing round the world and making do on four hours’ sleep a night, the twins and their close followers could take life easy, with weekends in the country and most nights drinking. Their regular sources of income were so carefully tied up that money still came in with very little effort; not quite as much as in their wildest days, but still enough for most of what they wanted – and it was safe. The hard core of protection business stayed with them to the end. They had their bankers too, who were far more secure than ordinary banks.

  ‘Banks are crooked as arseholes. Shop you to the law as soon as look at you. That’s what they did with the Richardsons.’

  Instead they had entrusted money to several of the rich men they had known, men who would always have enough to hide to make them vulnerable. Such men were useful in emergencies. Ronnie pulled one out of bed at 3 A.M. to write a cheque for several hundred pounds he needed. Another took care of the purchase of the house he chose in Suffolk.

  ‘We’ve got no need to worry,’ Ronnie said. ‘Reg and me’ll never go short of a bob or two.’

  * * *

  The Brooks at Bildeston, near Sudbury, was an unlikely place for his retirement; that was why Ronnie wanted it. This comfortable Victorian mansion set in a sleepy Suffolk village offered the perfect cover for the new life he was planning. The house was tile-hung and gabled, with long lawns, flower-beds, a paddock and a strip of woodland out beyond the billiard-room. The twins would come here for the weekend, bringing their favourite members of the Firm for company. While Nipper’s men kept watch from the damp shrubberies Ronnie would play his latest part – the country squire. The police would see him as a burly man in tweeds, leaning on the white gate by the lodge, smoking a cigar or patting the donkey in the paddock. Sometimes he strolled down to the village for a drink, or wandered round his land swinging an ash-plant. He and the Firm began redecorating rooms; on Sundays everyone would eat a mammoth lunch cooked specially by Violet. Like a good cockney mother she would make the boys drink the ‘greens water’ the vegetables were cooked in. ‘They needed all their vitamins these days.’

  Nipper was getting worried now; he had to get results and the twins were being far too canny for his liking. Now that he had the broad foundations of his case he hoped to tempt them into making some mistake. Instead their cunning looked like saving them again. He couldn’t know how brittle a facade their show of easy living was. The strain of the investigation was affecting them: behind the parties and the long weekends the twins were in the middle of another crisis.

  Reggie, who had almost recovered from his bereavement, was all for caution. When he could bear to think about McVitie he was horrified, but the whole killing seemed so utterly unreal that he could usually avoid the memory of it. Most of the time he thought about survival and escape. He was in love again. It was the same old dream – only the girl was different. The idea of the understanding blonde was taking the place of Frances. Writing about her in a letter he said:

  ‘I hope to settle in the country with Christine, get married and have a couple of children and leave the past behind me. Christine and I both like the country and I’m sure it’s the best place for a fresh start. With her and some children and the country a
s our home, I know I will be happy. Meeting her has been a lucky break for me as she is a wonderful person. I intend to cut away from all my drinking companions in London. Recently I have had anonymous phone calls saying I’m going to be arrested soon, others saying I’m going to be shot or run down by a car.’

  All Reggie wanted was to shut up shop, forget the past and vanish, but this hardly suited Ronnie. Reggie could not desert him now, when he needed him so much. This was the culmination of their lives. He had tried to make a man of him, but he was just a coward. How could he let Read frighten him? To show Reggie what he thought of the police he rang Harrods’ pet department, knowing the Law had tapped the telephone. He asked for the most cunning snake they had. They sent a python round to Braithwaite House. He named it Read and sat for hours with it twined round his arm. He called it rude names and fed it live mice.

  When the rows started over Reggie’s girl or the need for caution Ronnie would scream that Reggie’s fears were ‘babyish’. Read was a snake and grown men weren’t afraid of animals.

  He would don his best suit, then stalk off through the streets of the East End under the noses of the police. Cautious no longer, he would be himself, scattering money, picking up his boys, wearing his heavy jewellery and dreaming of his grandest coup of all. He was still not quite sure what it would be, but he was burning with impatience. Time was short, the enemy was all around. He was an artist with his greatness to consider. Nothing he had done counted against what he could do if he put his mind to it.

  Where Reggie thought of nothing but escape, Ronnie had everything worked out. Soon he would leave the East End for the house in Suffolk; it was to be a fortress and a pleasure house. To guard against his enemies he would have the house surrounded with an electrified fence. Mountings for searchlights and machine-guns were being fixed in the roof, steel shutters made for all the windows. There was to be a secret well, a hidden stock of food, a radio transmitter, an underground garage for his Rolls.

  His parents were already living in the lodge on the estate, leaving the flat at Braithwaite House for him and Reggie when they wanted it. Within a few months a good-looking friend was coming out of prison; he would join Ronnie at the big house as servant and companion. They would have friends to stay, enjoy their boys, conduct their parties, live in style. But before that Ronnie had to fight his last big battle.

  If Reggie had lost interest in his dreams, others could still appreciate them. Alan Bruce Cooper disappeared when Walker and his men swooped on his private bank; he seemed to have a knack of floating clear of trouble. Now he was back and Ronnie found in him the man he needed. Others saw Cooper as a stuttering American with thinning hair and wondered why he came to Whitechapel when he was clearly scared of Ronnie. He couldn’t drink because he had an ulcer, so sat and smoked his long, thin Swiss cigars while Ronnie drank; he would talk, his sharp voice stuttering out details of international crimes, a twilight world of licensed killings, monumental deals, unmentionable men. This was what Ronnie longed to hear. Reggie was sceptical but Ronnie reminded him that the machine-guns Cooper sold them had certainly been genuine; so were his contacts with the Mafia, his various flats around the world and his big Rolls-Royce.

  Sometimes, as if to prove that he was genuine, Cooper would bring photostats of Scotland Yard reports. These would invariably prove to be correct. At other times he would become the informed adviser, always impressing Ronnie with the need to think big. He kept insisting that Ronnie was on a par now with the top men in the Mafia and important Continental gangsters: he had the chance to be the man behind the scenes, building a syndicate of killers to work anywhere in Europe. Cooper could be the brains, Ronnie the power, living in the country like a gentleman, directing crimes that Scotland Yard would never hear of. As Cooper put it, Ronnie would soon be like the head of General Motors, president of a business corporation, working with international associates.

  Reggie kept hearing rumours about Read. He dreamed of breaking free, but there was Ronnie: apart from all the ties that bound him to his twin, he knew that Ronnie on his own would certainly do something to involve them both. After McVitie’s murder Reggie had to stay. All he could hope for was to hold on long enough for the investigation to blow over and for Read to be discredited again. He was a very anxious man, and sometimes questioned journalists and old friends from the past.

  ‘What’ve you heard about the other side?’ he’d ask. ‘Is the Law cracking? What do people think about us? Do they believe we’re as bad as the Richardsons?’

  Ronnie had never cared about such things. He was becoming bored with Reggie’s neat precautions. Cooper was giving him ideas. Reggie saw Cooper as a menace. How could they trust him? How could his brother know he wasn’t working for the other side? For some while Ronnie sullenly refused to answer; he needed Cooper. Then to keep Reggie quiet he said he had a test for the American: murder.

  * * *

  A murder is the ultimate guarantee and test of criminal loyalty, since it remains the only crime no spy from the police can actually commit. In Cooper’s case it had additional attractions. As well as testing him it would involve him, giving the twins a hold on him for the future: it would also offer Ronnie a chance to cross someone off his list at no risk to himself. Ronnie proposed the idea casually to Cooper early in January 1968. Cooper agreed.

  The victim Ronnie chose was one whose death would place another gang firmly in his debt. He was a small-time London villain who some months earlier had started an underworld vendetta by firing a sawn-off shotgun into the groin of his young wife’s lover. The wounded man was the brother of an important London gangster who was an ally of the twins. Already one man had been killed in error for revenge; Ronnie suggested that Cooper should get the right man.

  Normally this would have been impossible: the man was hiding. But Ronnie knew that in two weeks he would appear in public, as a witness at the Old Bailey. Cooper seemed more than willing, treating the whole idea of killing him as a professional assignment; he said he had arranged a lot of murders in his time, but a killing at the Central Criminal Court was something of a challenge. He would employ one of his best men on the job; in the meantime he would work out the means of the perfect murder. Reggie was sceptical.

  He began to change his mind a few days later when Cooper called at Braithwaite House to show them the weapon. This was no crude affair but a sophisticated means of killing a man in public with the minimum of risk. Cooper explained it as an old idea of his: the mechanism had been made to his design by one of the great specialists in the business.

  Cooper produced a small attache case covered in light-brown pigskin. He opened it. Inside was a hypodermic held by two steel clips. By the handle of the case there was a small brass ring. Cooper pulled it. The hypodermic slid forward so that the full length of the needle was projecting through a small hole at the corner of the case. He touched the needle; this released a spring within the case that worked the plunger. Cooper was very cool about it all. Reggie was intrigued and asked for a demonstration.

  Cooper uncorked a bottle. Reggie sniffed. It smelled of almonds, Cooper said it was cyanide and filled the hypodermic. He set the spring, pulled the small ring by the handle and the twins saw the needle slide out from the corner of the case. He pushed it against the sofa and a thin jet squirted from the needle.

  Cooper explained then how it could be used. ‘Get close behind the man you want in a crowd. Pull the ring, jab the case against his leg, then make your getaway. He’ll think that something’s stung him; in five minutes he’ll be dead. Symptoms will indicate a heart attack. Perfectly normal. Only a thorough autopsy would spot the pin-prick on the leg, and there would be no evidence of cyanide in the stomach.’

  Plans for the perfect murder went ahead. Cooper brought the man who was to do the killing round to meet the twins. A tall, white-faced young man called Elvey, he seemed an unlikely murderer, but he was somehow in character with Cooper. He told the twins he had killed a lot of men. They spent some time to
gether showing him photographs of the man he was to murder and having him taken to the Old Bailey.

  But Elvey bungled it. He had his excuses, and explained that the man never appeared in the central lobby as the twins predicted. Cooper was angry but apologetic to the twins. He would immediately devise another means of murder.

  A few days later he produced a high-powered hunting crossbow firing steel-tipped bolts lethal to fifty yards. Elvey had found out where the man was living; he would wait for him in his car, then shoot him silently in the street. Again it was a plan that would appeal to Ronnie. He and Cooper spent a lot of time discussing it, but once again a last-minute hitch prevented Elvey making the kill. By now this hardly seemed to matter. Reggie was cynical, but Ronnie felt Cooper had established his credentials.

  And then towards the end of January, with the police still waiting for the twins’ next move, Cooper got his final hold on Ronnie. He seemed to take the place that Leslie Payne once held as father figure and adviser. Ronnie consulted him at any time of day or night: Cooper would always come, and always leave him happy. He seemed to understand him perfectly. Ronnie confided his ambitions to him. In return Cooper had the big ideas that Ronnie needed and seemed as thrilled as Ronnie by them all. They often talked about narcotics; Cooper had European contacts and clearly knew the market. This was the quickest, safest way for the twins to become millionaires. As a start Cooper suggested setting up a flat in Belgrave Square as a clearing-house for wealthy addicts and their pushers. Cooper got as far as renting the flat when Ronnie said he wasn’t interested.

  Other rackets they discussed were large-scale gold-smuggling, further currency deals, a takeover of an existing marijuana racket carried on through the diplomatic immunity of some Pakistani diplomats and the traffic in illegal Asian immigrants from Belgium. And each time it was Reggie’s caution that prevented Ronnie from becoming involved.