by John Pearson
As for the three murder plans. Cooper insisted that all of them had been essential to retain the twins’ confidence. All had to be sufficiently feasible for Ronnie to think of Cooper as a fellow murderer. This was the basis of their friendship; it would have been fatal had he doubted him. The cyanide needed to be genuine, the crossbow capable of killing. Elvey, too, needed to be convinced that the murders were in earnest. Cooper could never risk taking an accomplice into his confidence, so he chose Elvey because he knew he was hard up but incapable of killing anyone. Elvey was such a bungler that anything he did was bound to fail.
Cooper had known the risks he was taking but his American employers still held the threat of possible imprisonment against him should he back out now. When he was with the twins he was entirely alone. ‘The Americans couldn’t help me, the Yard didn’t trust me, and I knew that once I slipped up with the twins, I’d soon be propping up a bridge.’
Read was furious; here was he working for eight months on a major investigation of the two most dangerous men in Britain only to discover that this so-called American agent had been quietly planning sophisticated killings totally without his knowledge. Backed by American government money, Cooper had supplied them arms and machine-guns, taken Ronnie to New York and encouraged them in countless crimes.
The truth of Cooper’s story will always be something of a mystery. He claims that someone in the Yard supplied him information to pass on to the twins; the Yard denies this. One police view of him is that he was a lone operator who had the nerve to play off the Krays, the American government and Scotland Yard against each other for his private interests. What is quite indisputable is that he was employed by the US Treasury Department and that the killings and the crimes he helped set up for the twins could certainly have taken place with anyone but Elvey as the killer. It is also indisputable that part of Scotland Yard knew who he was. Cooper claims: ‘From the very start I was working for John du Rose.’
Quite how much that shrewd old man knew about Alan Cooper is another of the mysteries of the case. When asked, he smiled enigmatically.
Cooper is more specific. ‘Du Rose is straight and hard and a hundred per cent. He was the man who really caught the Krays.’ But even so, Cooper admits he could not tell du Rose everything. Du Rose knew in advance about the New York trip; he knew the Paris agent personally and understood that Cooper was trying to implicate the twins. Beyond this Cooper had been on his own; he felt he could not risk telling even du Rose about the murder set-ups because of the danger of security leaks.
John du Rose, it seems, had tolerated Cooper’s presence, and not trusted him. Nipper had not been encouraged to get near him; Cooper had been a spy. A keen fisherman, John du Rose had known when to fish with several hooks.
For all his resentment and undisguised dislike of Cooper, Nipper could not ignore him now, for Cooper had in fact succeeded. By leading Ronnie Kray to Caruana and helping him set up a murder, he had produced that final break in the twins’ defences everybody wanted.
Cooper maintained it had been a blunder to arrest Elvey; but for this one mistake he could have delivered the twins red-handed to the Yard for attempted murder. Now they were warned; Ronnie’s great mood of daring which Cooper had carefully built up was rapidly dispelled; Reggie was back in charge and pulling up the drawbridge; there would be no more mistakes as the Firm looked to its defences.
Cooper offered to go back to Bethnal Green and try to implicate the twins again; he was convinced he still possessed sufficient hold on Ronnie to make this possible. Nipper refused to let him go; now he had Cooper he was holding on to him. So while the twins were anxiously sending out their spies for news, Cooper, the ex-gold-smuggler, sat doing nothing in a small hotel in Kent. He had his wife, his Yorkshire terrier, a police guard on the door and a stock of Swiss cigars. Despite all this he was soon bored and frustrated; relations with Read deteriorated. Neither felt the need to be polite; Cooper believed Scotland Yard was ‘bone-headed, incompetent, inflexible’; Nipper made it plain that Cooper was under his orders, that he didn’t trust him and was making sure from now on that he worked for him alone.
But Nipper knew that even now Cooper remained his best hope of catching the twins; for Cooper was still in touch with them. Every morning he had been ringing them from the hotel and telling them he wasn’t well and was having a short holiday in the country with his wife. Nipper had listened in to all these conversations. There was no mistaking the twins’ eagerness to see Alan Cooper now as soon as possible.
This was what Nipper banked on when he made his final plans to trap the twins. Cooper was told to exaggerate his illness when next he spoke to them, saying his stomach ulcer was causing him real pain. At the same time Nipper booked a pair of adjoining rooms in a nursing home in Harley Street. Cooper was brought up to the Burford Bridge Hotel below Box Hill. From here he rang the twins again saying that in the night his ulcer had burst. Ronnie was sympathetic and said he would like to come and see him. Cooper said that when he was a little better that would be wonderful. Next day he rang from the nursing home in London.
Nipper prepared the trap convincingly. Cooper was in bed in pyjamas, surrounded with flowers, medicine bottles, temperature charts. Nipper and his deputy, Frank Cater, were in the room next door recording everything from a microphone by Cooper’s bed. Nurses and doctors were all taken in, but this time when Cooper rang the Krays, Ronnie was cagey and replied he might be able to come round. Cooper was set to do his best to incriminate him when he came, but late that afternoon it was not Ronnie but Reggie’s friend Tommy Cowley who arrived. Cooper tried drawing him out about the twins but Cowley was too sharp. He went back and told the twins that Cooper’s nursing home smelt of the police. From then on the line from Cooper to the twins went dead.
The one success Nipper could claim for all his trouble was with little Joe Kaufman. While in New York Cooper had made arrangements with him about another parcel of stolen securities from New York. Cooper was hoping he would bring them with him when he arrived in London. When Cooper spoke to him at the Mayfair Hotel he learned that they were being posted. When Kaufman came to the nursing home, the police in the next-door room to Cooper recorded the conversation.
By May it looked as if the twins had got away again. Every conceivable way of catching them seemed to have misfired. They were alerted now. Cooper could no longer get near them and the real crisis was not for the twins but for the police. Nipper’s investigation was now in its ninth month, and seemed to have yielded all it could. The hope the twins would make some fatal error if the police were patient seemed no longer feasible. The twins were quietly confident and seemed to understand that they had been luckier than they had any right to expect. Reggie felt safer with Cooper off the scene; Ronnie had a new blond boy and was turning his attention to home-making – homicide could wait. The house at Bildeston was pretty in the spring. Reggie was confident that nobody would talk; furthermore he had been hearing rumours of a despondent Nipper Read. Maybe they were true. The twins spent the first weekend of May at Bildeston with several of the Firm. Violet as usual cooked them lunch; the sun shone, Reggie felt that now that Ronnie had his country house life could settle down. Ronnie’s great friend ‘Duke’ Osborne would soon be out of gaol; Reggie might yet marry blonde Christine, live in the country and have children.
It was du Rose who called the conference on the twins. He knew that something must be done about them now if they were ever to be caught; as a policeman he also knew that a point arrives in all police investigations when one must cut one’s losses. There had been blunders, but despite them all, the law still had some firm advantages. Nipper’s plan for using Cooper at the nursing home had not worked, but Cooper on his own could still provide crucial evidence. There was the evidence of Elvey; there were the suitcase and the crossbow, and Payne could give the facts about the long-firm frauds. Maybe the case was flimsy as it stood, but these were serious charges, certainly strong enough to ensure that the twins would be re
manded without bail when charged. This would immediately unlock the safety clause from Nipper’s mass of statements; his undercover witnesses could make their statements openly and add their evidence to the charges against the twins. From then on everything would depend on how much more the police could rapidly uncover.
Superintendent Harry Mooney felt that once the twins were safely behind bars he could persuade the barmaid of The Blind Beggar to give enough evidence to convict Ronnie of murdering George Cornell. Apart from this the police still had little to connect the twins with any of their major crimes.
It was an uncomfortable gamble Nipper had to take. The twins had shown their cleverness in the past at dodging firmer evidence than this. If they did again Scotland Yard, as one detective put it, ‘might just as well put up the shutters and go home for good’.
On the night of 8 May 1968 none of the police from Tintagel House went home. John du Rose and Read had been there since early afternoon. With them were the other senior officers on the case – Superintendent Donald Adams who had supervised the paperwork. Superintendent Harry Mooney, who performed much of the investigation, and Read’s assistant. Chief Inspector Frank Cater. Soon after dark, fresh police began arriving from the regions: more than sixty of them, all with their cars and two-way radios, none of them knowing why they’d come. Strict security was enforced. Once they had parked their cars they were conducted to the big main office with the view of the river; they were served sandwiches and coffee, and then locked in. No private telephone calls were allowed; they were warned they would not be getting any sleep that night.
Soon after midnight the main conference began: John du Rose announced that the three Kray brothers and their gang were to be arrested at dawn. Some might be violent and the police must be prepared. The success or failure of the operation would depend on making sure that everyone on the police list was rounded up at once. In all there were twenty-six names to be accounted for.
Nipper spoke next, standing on a filing cabinet; he was crisp and lucid, very different in his young man’s way from the old-style Yard man, John du Rose. He was in his element as the perfect staff officer allocating duties and outlining the whole complex operation. Twenty-four separate addresses across London had to be raided simultaneously. Since early morning the Krays had been under constant observation. At that moment they were in a nightclub in the West End. When they went home central control would be informed. Provided nothing unexpected happened all the arrests were to be synchronized for 6.00 A.M. No member of the Firm must be allowed to warn another. Once arrested they would be brought immediately to West End Central Police Station.
Nipper had had index cards prepared with photographs of all the wanted men, along with their addresses and particulars. These were distributed among the raiding-party. Somebody asked who would be going for the twins. That, explained Nipper Read, was a privilege he was reserving for himself.
The twins were entertaining Kaufman. They started drinking at The Old Horns pub off Bethnal Green Road at 9.00 P.M. It was a gala night. Ronnie was anxious to show Kaufman the two sides of London, the beery bonhomie of the East End and the bright lights of Mayfair. Kaufman was happy to be back in London, but both twins appeared preoccupied. There had been rumours of fresh trouble from the police. Reggie suspected Cooper of betrayal since his Soho office was still heavily guarded by police. Reggie’s girl was on holiday in Spain; rumour had it that the affair was over.
At closing time, as they all left their private bar at The Old Horns, none of the Firm noticed the courting couple in the back of the car parked opposite; a detective and a policewoman from Tintagel House hard at work keeping the twins under observation. But at the Astor Club Reggie was jumpier than usual: when a photographer insisted on taking flashlight photographs of him and his guests he became aggressive. Ronnie calmed him down. Ronnie was happy. It was 5 A.M. before Tintagel House had its report that the twins and the Firm had just left and were on their way home.
Nipper was armed when they smashed in the door at Braithwaite House two hours later and rushed in for the twins. It was not necessary. Both were fast asleep, Reggie with a girl from Walthamstow, Ronnie with his latest fair-haired boy. Read had the handcuffs on the twins before they had really woken up. His was the first car back to West End Central.
SEVENTEEN
Retribution
When Nipper Read hauled the twins from their beds on 9 May 1968 their power was by no means over and the police were taking a considerable gamble. Thanks, largely, to Alan Cooper there was sufficient evidence about the crossbow and the murder suitcase to keep the twins and all the Firm in prison on remand, and make sure they came to trial before a magistrate. That was all. The police possessed no proof of murder yet; much of the existing evidence connecting them with the bond deals and frauds was complex and obscure, while Cooper on his own was a distinctly shaky witness for a major trial. Nobody needed to tell Nipper Read what this meant. On the existing evidence, the twins might get five years apiece if the police were lucky; and if they weren’t, there was nothing to prevent them repeating their performance at the McCowan trial and once again emerging from the court scot-free. Recognizing this, the police began the last and crucial stage of their investigation.
They had the few weeks before the preliminary hearings to clinch their case and persuade their major witnesses to talk. They knew exactly who they were, but had to be able to assure them that this time the twins were finished. Otherwise, as one old cockney put it, ‘if people talk to the police and the twins get off again, they’ll have to send the plague carts into Bethnai Green and shout, “Bring out your dead!”’
With so much at stake the police meant business. A top Scotland Yard detective talked of ‘driving the Krays and all they stand for into the ground’. To do this the Yard was finally prepared to use its full resources, and the investigation had the highest backing. Through contacts in the underworld, warnings were sent out that the police would tolerate no nonsense on the Krays’ behalf from other criminals. Witnesses were offered round-the-clock protection. The police were set to crack the Kray twins’ ‘wall of silence’ and challenge time-honoured myths of East End villainy – the idea that East Enders never ‘grassed’, that there would be a terrible revenge on those that did, and that the police were a common enemy.
Their task was not going to be easy, and at this stage the twins appeared confident and in high spirits. Since their arrest they were both in Brixton Gaol, but even here there was a lot they could do. As they were still technically innocent they had more privileges than other prisoners. They wore their own clothes, and could have alcohol and cigarettes and food brought in from outside. This helped to keep up their morale and, more important still, they both were allowed as many visitors and letters as they wanted.
As a result the two of them maintained something of a court in Brixton. They were celebrities as well as prisoners. The warders treated them with definite respect, and the twins managed to make it seem that they were still the centre of a rich and influential world. Most days Violet would organize cold chicken dinners and a glass of wine for them and for each member of the Firm. Actors and pop singers wrote to them, boxers and film producers came to visit them, and all the time the twins seemed calm and unconcerned about the future. Although the key members of the Firm were nearly all in prison too, there were enough old friends visiting Brixton to ensure that their messages were circulated round the East End. Soon the twins’ confident demeanour seemed to be having its effect.
‘The law may think they’re clever,’ said one old lag who visited them, ‘but those twins can still run bloody circles round ’em. You’ll see. The twins have got so many strings to pull, so many important people they can ruin, that in the end you’ll find that Scotland Yard won’t dare go on with it. The twins have had their plans in readiness for years. In three months they’ll be back amongst us. And they’ll remember who their friends were, mark my words.’
There seemed a chance that he was right. Wh
y else should the twins appear so cheerful at a time like this? For most of May people in Bethnal Green who knew them seemed to be waiting to see which way things would go.
There were naturally a lot of rumours – most of them in favour of the twins. From Brixton they were hard at work directing what they called their ‘propaganda war’ against the enemy. But soon there were clearer indications that the Krays were losing their last battle. For some time one of their strongest cards had been the presence of two of the most powerful members of the Firm at liberty. Their young cousin, Ronnie Hart and Scotch Ian Barrie, who was with Ronnie when Cornell was murdered, had both escaped the 6 A.M. arrests on 9 May. Both were considered dangerous, and the knowledge that they were free must have scared many of Nipper Read’s potential witnesses. There was a strong rumour that the twins had specially arranged for them to avoid arrest to guard their interests. They were reported to be armed and in secret touch with Brixton.
Hart was the first to go – the police found him hiding miserably with his girl-friend in a caravan. He confessed everything without a struggle. Then a few days later Barrie was spotted in the East End. He was drunk, broke and lost without the twins. Like Hart he put up no resistance. With these last members of the Firm in gaol, the idea of the twins’ ‘reprisal force’ was quietly forgotten. People began to doubt the existence of the ’emergency plans’ the twins had always claimed to have prepared for their arrest.