‘We ain’t done nothing wrong,’ he bleated as he screamed. ‘What do you want with us?’
They knew why I was there. A few seconds later Old Frank and I walked into their little office and placed Kennedy carefully against the older brother’s head. The live round was left in the shotgun, and I am sure he knew his days could be numbered. He stared at the hammer, as it hovered over the cartridge. His eyes began to bulge and he shook with fear. I could smell and taste that fear.
I can’t say I got any enjoyment from what I was doing: it was just a bit of work. I was doing a job, like a plumber fixing a washing machine. It’s true that I felt a rush of power in the early days when I held my first pistol, that sort of thing, but the business side took over after that, until I was just simply doing my job.
‘If you ain’t off the manor in twenty-four hours, I am going to blow the pair of your fucking heads off. So it’s best that you’re gone. Just this one warning. Your brother there has been shot with rock salt. He’ll recover. This one is a couple of inches from your brain, and it’s a live round. Do you want your workshop redecorated?’
They were gone in twenty-four hours. Problem solved. Everyone in the manor knew the ‘Turkish Terrors’ had been removed; no one liked those scumbags dealing in drugs and getting young girls to work in the streets.
People sometimes say we should have just upended the pair at the garage, with a few well-aimed punches but, on this occasion, I knew the fist would have been only a temporary measure.
I heard that they went back to wherever they came from in the first place. Other people got to hear about the ‘stinger’ incident. If the brothers had gone on another manor, people would have been on to them straight away, keeping a constant watch. They would never have been able to operate.
Sorted.
Later that day I headed off for a drink in the local nightclub, the Log Cabin in Caledonian Road. It was time to catch up with the boys and get updates on our protection rackets and armed robberies.
‘Have a drink, Bobby,’ they all said at once, as I entered.
‘Go on then, I’ll have a bitter lemon.’
The firm were all there, enjoying a drink and a catch-up. I felt like a Robin Hood character, having restored law and order, although my methods were definitely outside the law. The ‘stinger’ was well outside the law.
‘Nice one, nice one,’ Tony the Greek said, buying me another drink and refilling everyone’s glass. ‘Thank you. Thank you.’
Tony, dressed in his latest John Travolta-type gear, complete with flares, was twitching less than normal and seemed to be thrilled with the outcome. The job had been much heavier than his everyday work, so he had no intention of discussing the finer points of the operation.
‘Well sorted. Best thing that could happen to them pieces of shit. Total lowlife,’ Eddie the mountainous minder pointed out, keeping the conversation away from our tactics. Eddie always said that you never knew who was listening. He clenched and unclenched his fists, showing a hand made up of fingers the size of jumbo sausages.
‘It wasn’t personal, Eddie. I didn’t know these people. It was all business. We’re not gangsters, fucking up people’s lives for no reason. We don’t take liberties with working-class people. They were just thugs, advertising the fact that they were gangsters.’
Alan, another wheel man, was a bit of a comedian. He’d heard about the payment for sorting out the Greek/Turkish problem, announcing to everyone that the Turkish issue had been resolved, with no more action needed. He then announced that I had refused cash for the job, and made a general observation to his attentive audience: ‘If Bobby did that for a bag of chips, what would he do for a pickled onion?’
The ‘stinger’ incident shows that, in those days, firms ruled their manors and people didn’t want to go to the police. Anyone who reported a crime to coppers found themselves in a difficult position: they had to give evidence in court and all that sort of thing – they didn’t want the aggravation. They knew they would come up against a smart-arsed brief whose job was to save the guy he represented. People just didn’t want all that. The last thing they needed was police around their house, taking statements. All they wanted to do was to get on with their lives.
When the victims went into court they became the victims. So they thought, ‘I’ve seen it happen to other people and I don’t want that. I can talk to someone and we can sort it out that way.’
And that was how it worked with our own system of dispensing justice. Instead of getting a slap on the wrist in court and told off for being a naughty boy, the villain received a slap on the jaw. No matter what your intellectual capacity was, no matter what language you spoke: if I hit you on the chin, you knew I had the hump with you.
The police went on nicking people. Often, they realised they didn’t have the right person to fit the crime, but they knew when a guy was ‘bang at it’. They knew he was a crook, causing them time and aggravation, and they wanted to put him away.
So they went to court and told lies to get him out of the way. It was a sort of moral dilemma – a pious perjury, if you like. They knew what he was up to, but they couldn’t prove it. That practice still goes on today.
I remember coppers coming round to the manor to chat to us. They knew someone had done something really terrible, but they couldn’t get him for it, so they sat in the pub with our firm.
They were very cunning. They would tell us about the toe-rag and how they couldn’t nick him because there wasn’t enough evidence. The message was that if the guy could be sorted out, the coppers wouldn’t come back to investigate: if we wanted someone ejected from the manor, the coppers were prepared to turn a blind eye. The scheme worked a treat.
There were so many rumours about what I’d done and hadn’t done it was getting ridiculous. I even heard that I’d dumped a body in Hampstead Ponds wrapped up in a carpet. That was just a wind-up; the Old Bill investigated a load of stuff that didn’t really happen. Some of it did, of course, but they were having a hard time separating fact from fiction.
Another legendary tale involves a knife, a lunchbox, a wardrobe and a flask of tea.
A guy was going around taking money off people and bullying them. He took money off a young kid, about thirteen, who had a few bob. He was quite a big kid and he tried to have a fight with the bully. The older geezer was around eighteen or twenty. He just pulled out a blade from his pocket and cut the kid on the arm with it.
The kid’s dad was really angry because this guy was violent. This was a nasty bully. He was taking money out of people’s wages on the building sites when they got paid on Thursdays, and that sort of trash. The guy was even taking money off his own mother. He terrorised her a bit and then she got him moved out, so he lived in a flat on his own. I heard people saying he always carried a weapon and threatened people. I thought he might be on drugs, the way he was carrying on.
The dad said to me: ‘Bobby, he’s doing it to elderly people and geezers coming home from work, taking twenty quid out of their wage packets. He’s a total menace and now he’s cut my boy. Something has to be done, Bobby.’ The dad was offering a hundred quid to sort the guy out.
The only way to sort him out, really, was to do him some damage.
One Thursday, after the guy had threatened people at the building sites and taken money off them, he went into his flat, had a shower and went into his bedroom to change. He opened up his wardrobe door and someone came out and cut him.
The rumour went about that it was me. People were saying that I sat in the wardrobe and waited for him. They said the attacker, whoever it was, sat in his wardrobe with a packed lunch, waiting for the bully. As time went on, people even said the guy had a picnic basket in there with him.
Who attacked the bully? Nothing was ever proved. Someone cut him anyway, and cut him up pretty badly, but he left the manor and didn’t come back again, so the problem was solved.
Rough justice, maybe, but the garage brothers had to be stopped and the same
applied to the pay-day bully. There was no other way.
CHAPTER FIVE
FIRMS AT WAR
OLD FRANK THE driver always had his ear to the ground. He had dozens of contacts who fed him pieces of information. Old Frank put them all together like a jigsaw and worked out exactly what was happening on and off the manor.
Our money-making schemes were bringing in several grand a week. He knew people were after some of our business, and that a great deal of aggro was on the cards.
‘I reckon there’s going to be a ruck tonight,’ Old Frank warned me, during an unexpected Sunday morning phone call. ‘A couple of firms are getting greedy. I heard they’ve been sniffing around the manor.’
I made some more enquiries. A girl we knew told us that a firm in Upper Street, Islington, had talked about cutting me up and throwing me to the dogs. I’d heard such bollocks before and normally took no notice. But when she said they were tooling up for a ruck, well, that was different.
I knew the aggressive firm and sent them a message to meet us at Highbury Fields, where we would put them in their place.
A scribbled note came back, addressed to me: ‘We’re looking forward to it!’
I sent a car round to Islington with another note, outlining the terms of engagement. I suggested ten men a side. There were to be no rules, apart from a ban on guns. Frank loaded Kennedy in the motor just in case they pulled one on us.
I arranged to meet my firm in the Enkel Arms. All were tooled up to the hilt. Neil, one of the best fighters, had a razor at the ready. I’d picked up a wartime bayonet for a couple of quid; it was so sharp you couldn’t touch the edge. It had a metal sheath to hide the blade and prevent any accidents. Old Frank was a small man, and he was almost dwarfed by his fearsome-looking iron bar; Chrissy and Andy the Greek had sharpened their evil-looking knives for the occasion.
We crouched over a table in the corner of the bar, like a rugby team in a huddle, and vowed to fight like tigers. Then we crammed into three motors with our accessories and headed for the Fields, each of us determined to rip the rival firm to shreds. I know it sounds grim, but that’s what it was like; we had to protect our interests and avoid being booted off the patch by a bunch of scumbags.
Davey, our reconnaissance man, went ahead on a spying mission. We had to make sure that we weren’t heading into a trap. I feared an ambush close to the location, but that didn’t happen. We parked up about half a mile away and Davey did his stuff; he came back and reported that the Islington mob was there, hanging around the Fields and waiting for us, as arranged.
Even in that dark, cold air, you could feel violence in the atmosphere; you could detect an animal-like ferocity; you could sense that death or serious injury was more than likely. And I was the main target. I knew that, because I was the leader and they would try to take me out first. Also I’d slagged off the opposition on a previous occasion because I hated the way they went about their business. They showed no loyalty to anyone.
The gangs faced up to each other and Chrissy ran straight into the mob with his blade flashing. He was thrusting in all directions and took one guy by complete surprise. Chrissy tried to slash his face, but the bloke put up his hand and his palm was badly cut instead. A stream of blood shot out of his arm, and Chrissy kept flashing his blade around, cutting and cutting. Someone grabbed Chrissy’s victim, covered him in towels to soak up the blood and then carted him off. That guy must have been close to death.
As I weighed in with my bayonet, I could see a group had gone after Chrissy: two or three went at him hard with iron bars and beat him as he lay on the ground. I moved in with the bayonet and kept them off him, but at the same time I was battered with a lump of wood. I could feel blood running down my face; my back felt like it was breaking up.
This was getting serious. I caused as much damage as I could; all around me, men were crying like babies as they tried to stem the flow of blood from their injuries. In the middle of North London a horrendous battle was happening, fought by a bunch of savages. I struggled to breathe after a vicious blow from an iron bar.
As twenty or so yelling men hacked away at each other in medieval style, sirens pierced the night air. It was the Old Bill; by the sound of things, they were arriving in force. Both sides in the fray halted combat and, almost as one, limped and crawled to the getaway cars and made rapid arrangements for treatment. Hospital was out of the question with the Old Bill swarming all over the place.
Chrissy was in a bad way. ‘What day is it? What happened? What the fuck is going on?’
‘Everything’s sweet,’ I lied. ‘We’ve had an accident, but we’re on our way for help, so don’t worry.’
Chrissy had been so badly beaten around the head that he was concussed, making no sense and continuing to bleed. Our two getaway cars with enormous, souped-up engines raced away from our pursuers. Our destination: the Major’s house.
The Major was an absolute diamond who’d served as a medic in the army during the war. We knew he wouldn’t call any police or hospitals or anything like that. He was used to patching up wounds in the heat of battle. He had a regiment’s supply of field dressings – and we needed rolls and rolls of the stuff. Chrissy looked like an Egyptian mummy when the Major had finished with him, and I was also well wrapped up. Old Frank was badly cut from razor wounds. Davey, Andy the Greek and three younger helpers from the manor had minor cuts and bruises, which the Major sorted out in a matter of minutes.
I lay on the Major’s couch as he checked out my ribs; I could tell a few were broken, and the Major pointed to the problem areas, caused by a ferocious swing of a rusty old iron bar. The Major actually looked like an army officer, if you know what I mean. He was tall, with thin lips and a neatly trimmed moustache. He must have been around forty-five to fifty years old with short, receding hair. He also had a crimson face and large reddish ears. I assumed it was all to do with his blood pressure, and we weren’t helping to bring that down.
I told our battered gang to hang around for a few hours while we recovered some more. A roll call in the morning established that most of our walking wounded would head for Andy’s house. We didn’t need the Major to tell us that Chrissy was in no fit state to go anywhere. He was barely conscious, and had several swellings as big as footballs.
‘Is it a hospital job?’ I asked, hoping that the Major would rule out that option. ‘They’ll call the Old Bill, but we might have no choice.’
‘Give him a couple of days,’ the Major tried to reassure me. ‘Some of that swelling has to go down. I’m worried about his head injuries. If there’s no improvement, I’ll take him to casualty. They won’t believe he’s been in a car crash, so I’ll have to come clean.’
‘Understood,’ I nodded as we clambered aboard our two motors, looking like a sorry bunch of war victims.
Back at Andy’s house, we laughed and boasted about our exploits. We exaggerated our fighting skills, of course, and we all had tales of amazing bravado during the duel.
When our wounds healed, we went in search of the other firm. We found them in a café and handed out such a hiding. The café owner had never seen anything like it; we almost knocked their heads off. They gave us no more trouble after that.
There were so many stories spreading about me that I had to do something. My girlfriend at the time said a violent guy on the manor, called Johnny, was telling people that I’d been shooting and cutting rivals throughout North London. Well, some of it was true but a lot of it was bollocks. This bloke also told the girl she was going out with I was a gangster; I told her the word should be ‘businessman’, as I wasn’t a mindless thug.
Down to business, then. She pointed out my victim in a pub – I knew who he was – and I called Old Frank to the scene. He was always my first point of call with his mean machine and reliability. Old Frank, of course, also had access to my store of weapons. They were locked away in a secret place, which I still can’t divulge.
‘Could you bring Kennedy’s brother?’ I urged
from a phone box near the Hercules pub in Holloway Road. It was an older-style building on a street corner, not far from Arsenal tube station.
Within minutes I heard Frank’s throaty exhaust pulsating along the street and I could see his small frame, sitting bolt upright in the driver’s seat. He drew up in a dark lane near the pub. I made a quick check of the area, slid into the driver’s seat of that ordinary-looking Vauxhall and accepted a cigarette from my mate.
‘Do you have Kennedy’s brother?’
‘Under the seat,’ Frank confirmed.
‘Loaded?’
‘Loaded.’
‘Let’s go,’ I hissed.
Kennedy’s brother was a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver. It fitted neatly under my jacket.
I spotted Johnny at the bar, gorging on a gigantic steak, being as loud as ever and shooting his mouth off; he was a real fucking one-man crowd. He stood there, shouting in his shiny leather jacket, chunky gold rings and bracelets, an arrogant snarl all over his face.
‘Oi, it’s Bobby and Old Frank!’ he boomed. ‘Couple of drinks over there for those boys.’
‘Johnny, I need a word with you. Something’s come up. Best not to talk in here. Let’s go outside.’
I left Old Frank with our drinks – a pint and my usual bitter lemon – and shepherded Johnny to an alleyway at the side of the pub. Johnny thought, as he was a good creeper – burglar – that I had some work for him.
I pushed Johnny up against the wall and his whole body – including his overhanging beer belly – quivered as I stuck the barrel of the revolver into his big mouth. I chose my words carefully.
‘I’ll tell you this once. If I ever hear that you’ve been talking about me again, especially calling me a gangster, you can look forward to your next meal. It will be fed up a plastic tube, and that’s if you make it to intensive care.’
He pleaded for his life. ‘Christ, what’s going on? Don’t shoot me … don’t shoot me.’
‘I am not a gangster,’ I spat. ‘I’m a businessman trying hard to earn a crust. Understood?’
I Am Not A Gangster Page 7