Inside the Firm - The Untold Story of The Krays' Reign of Terror

by Lambrianou, Tony

  I answered, ‘Stealing a car. But I don’t know how I could have stolen a car that I didn’t even move.’

  He was like a barrack-room lawyer, this guy. He said: ‘You cannot be convicted of stealing something you haven’t taken.’ I put in an appeal, and lo and behold, the Court of Appeal set me free over a misdirection of the jury. I walked out of that court in June 1964 saying, ‘Never again.’ It was Derby Day. My Dad, Pat and Leon were there for me, and we went back to the East End together to my parents’ home. I was thinking, ‘That was easy enough to get out of.’ In a way, it was like cocking a snook at the law.

  Chris, in the meantime, had finished his CT and married Carol, a Liverpool girl who worked in public relations and was earning a good living. Like me, Chris was anything but a stay-at-home type, and I was getting around with him. We palled up with a man called Eric Mason, a well-known villain of the time.

  Eric had just finished a seven down the Moor – seven years in Dartmoor – and as an old friend of the twins, he went to them for a little bit of help when he came out. Typically, they gave him suits, some money, all the rest of it. With two men called Kenny Bloom and Maurice King, he then went into partnership in a West End club called the Brown Derby in Kingly Street. It was a drinker and spieler, or gambling club.

  I was in the Brown Derby one night with Chris, Eric and another villain called Davy Clare when Reggie came in about ten-handed. I saw Big Pat Connolly, Tommy The Bear Brown, Tommy Cowley, Teddy Smith, Albert Donaghue and a few others. All of a sudden there was an argument. One of the boys whacked a geezer who came in drunk. The twins didn’t allow drunken behaviour around them. I remember that incident in particular because it was the night that Reggie came over to me and said, ‘Come and see us soon, Tony, you and Chris – but be careful of him,’ meaning Eric Mason.

  I hadn’t realised there was any bad feeling there. Apparently Eric had been running around sticking their name up – using it in front of a lot of people in the West End for his own advancement. The twins weren’t too pleased about it, and were even less impressed with Eric after a dramatic turn of events in another West End nightspot.

  Maurice King, in addition to his partnership with Eric and Kenny in the Brown Derby, owned a club called the Starlight in Oxford Street; he was also legitimately involved in the early careers of many of the sixties’ pop singers and groups, including P. J. Proby, the Walker Brothers, Shirley Bassey, the Rocking Berries and Jackie Trent. Jackie, who went on to make a fortune with her husband Tony Hatch as his songwriting partner (composing the Neighbours TV theme tune, among other credits), started her rise to fame as a barmaid in the Starlight. Her first husband, Drew Harvey, was very friendly with Maurice.

  At this time the Brown Derby was like a Kray club, but the Richardsons had started getting into the Starlight. Everyone was aware that trouble was brewing, particularly between the Krays and the Richardsons, over the balance of power in the West End, especially with regard to protection in the clubs and businesses. The area was divided up among three or four firms, with the twins taking the lion’s share, but the Richardsons were expanding fast and people were treading on each other’s toes.

  One particular night, Erie was in the Starlight with Davy Clare, a man named Boot and Maurice King, who was behind the bar. Frankie Fraser, a notorious villain from south London, turned up for a drink with some of the Richardson firm, and an argument broke out between the two groups.

  It all stemmed from an old Dartmoor sore: Eric had apparently taken the side of a Scottish firm against the Londoners in the prison, which caused a lot of bad feeling and was surprising, since Eric was a south Londoner himself. The argument in the Starlight suddenly went off, and Eric wound up getting the treatment. He was dragged out of the club and badly done with pitchforks and shovels, after which he was thrown out of a car outside a hospital in north London. The police called it a gangland warning.

  No one was quite sure whether the Richardsons were behind it or not. Assumptions cause trouble, but feelings were running high and Chris and I were ready to make one with him – to take his side – against Frank and the Richardsons. Eric, for some reason, didn’t want to know.

  At this time we were very active, the nucleus of our little lot being Davy Clare, another villain called Peter Metcalfe, Chris and myself. Peter, Chris and I went to visit Eric in hospital. He was all patched up on his hands, his legs and his feet, and his head had been slashed. He’d been cut up quite a bit, in fact. We told him we wanted to do something about it, but he seemed very reluctant.

  When he came out of hospital, the twins called him round to their house in Vallance Road, Bethnal Green, and asked him what he thought should be done. Again he said, ‘Nothing.’ I think Reggie and Ronnie were putting pressure on him because they were looking for a row with the other firm – ‘They’ve had a go at one of ours.’ Eric’s attitude left a bad taste, and the twins lost a lot of respect for him.

  Chris and I had already seen at first hand what certain members of the Richardsons were capable of doing, notably George Cornell, who was later shot dead by Ronnie Kray in the Blind Beggar pub. Earlier, during this period with Eric, we’d heard of a long firm which was being operated in a block of offices in Great Portland Street. A long firm is an outwardly respectable company which will build up good contacts with its suppliers and then suddenly vanish with the stock and the takings, leaving only unpaid bills. We were introduced to the two fellas who were running this long firm, Manchester boys called Bill and Derek. The Richardsons were running an operation on the floor below: George Cornell was working out of there with a man called Don Giles.

  They had approached Bill and Derek about hiring some cars out through their long firm. The two Manchester lads phoned a contract hire firm and arranged to have four cars delivered to the offices, while the invoice would be sent on. The cars were duly sent round but two were illegally parked, and the council impounded them without anyone knowing it. When Cornell and Giles went out and found the two cars missing, they thought Bill and Derek had had them over (conned them).

  We went round to the offices, Chris, Eric Mason and I, only to discover that Cornell and Giles had got these two tied up. Cornell had a golf club and about twenty balls, and he was lobbing golf balls into one boy’s mouth while Giles held his head. The lad had lost nearly all of his teeth. The other fella was on the floor with bits of paper stapled to his body. It was a nasty little business.

  As we went in, Chris said, ‘What the fucking hell’s going on here? It’s a liberty.’ He then decided, ‘We’ll make a few phone calls here.’

  We rang to find out if the cars had been put in the police pound, and the police said, ‘Try the council compound.’ The council confirmed they had the cars and for a fee would release them. Meanwhile, Bill and Derek were trussed up like chickens, black and blue, which made Cornell and Giles look a bit stupid. He was a stocky character, Cornell, and an arrogant man. His main pal was a bloke called Roy ‘Little Legs’ Hall. I met Roy in Hull prison in later years. While I was away with him and the rest of the Richardsons none of the outside troubles between us were mentioned, and no old wounds were brought up. Charlie Richardson, in fact, did most of his sentence with Chris and me.

  But that was well into the future. For the present, my brother and I were looking at a new career as mobile criminals, the first of our kind in the country. And the key to it all was Eric Mason, who moved away to Blackpool after his fall-out with the twins.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A TRIP TO BLACKPOOL

  It was late summer 1964, and with my prison sentence well behind me I travelled to Liverpool with Chris and his wife for her sister’s wedding. I wasn’t really all that keen on going to the wedding, but I was hoping that we could combine it with a trip to see Eric Mason, who was living in that part of the world. He’d told Chris that he had it all his own way up there, and that there was a lot of opportunity. As it happened, we did pay a visit to Eric, but it was more than a social call: it lasted for six
months, and it came about as a direct result of Chris bashing up all the in-laws at the wedding and turning the celebrations into a shambles.

  All of the bride’s family were football-mad, and fanatical Liverpool supporters. Chris was a Spurs man. Liverpool were playing at home on the afternoon of the wedding, and her relations all left the reception, which was held in a drinking club, and went to the football.

  The reception was still going on when they came back, and they were all ready for a drink-up. Chris had a row with her father and her brothers over Spurs and Liverpool, and next thing all of them were going up in the air. We went back to the caravan site where the immediate family were to stay. Chris, his wife Carol, her brother and I were all expected to stay in this one caravan which was the size of a cloakroom. Chris said, ‘I’m not staying in that.’ And we went into Liverpool to try and find a hotel – but with no luck. It was then about eight o’clock at night.

  We came back to the site and Chris towed the caravan into a take. The police were called, and we disappeared. We rang up Eric Mason, who said, ‘Come over right away.’

  Eric was living in Lytham St Annes, just outside Blackpool, in a road where singing and variety stars used to rent houses while they were doing the summer season in the seaside theatres. He was staying with the Clarke Brothers, who were tap dancers appearing at the Queen’s Theatre, Blackpool. We arrived at the house to find that our neighbours were Dave Clark, Freddie and the Dreamers, the Bachelors and Stan Stanwick, who went on to appear in Coronation Street.

  Peter Metcalfe flew up from London to join us. A bloke who had to do things in style, he was always immaculately dressed. At about five feet ten he was a tubby fella, clean-shaven with neatly trimmed mousy hair and Italian-type features. Peter was into karate.

  The other member of our team, Davy Clare, was in Manchester on the run from the twins. There was a rumour going around at the time that he had been asked to take some action in London against George Cornell, who was becoming increasingly troublesome, but hadn’t done so. It was also said that before he went into hiding Davy Clare went to see his bank manager, handed him a letter and said: ‘If anything happens to me, you’re to give this to Scotland Yard.’ Chris and I later found Davy in Manchester accidentally, when we bumped into his girl in a casino one night. We went round to where he was living. He must have seen us coming because he had his head in a gas oven and he was saying, ‘I know it’s all over, you’ve come to get me.’

  Chris said, ‘Don’t be stupid. Get up. If I was you, I’d go and see the twins and straighten it up with them.’

  But at the time we arrived in Blackpool we had no idea where Davy Clare had gone, and we were anticipating nothing more than a couple of nights out with Eric Mason. He was a stocky chap, Eric, with fair hair cut in a similar style to Reggie Kray’s. He was known as a hard man, he had a great knowledge of boxing, and he knew everyone who was worth knowing in our circles, but what he wanted more than anything in his life was stardom.

  He introduced Peter, Chris and me to the Clarke Brothers and invited us to see their show the next night. We went on from there to a nightclub called the Embassy, where we were given the best table. Sitting with us were the Clarke Brothers, the Bachelors, a singer called Twinkle and Bill Heaney, the owner of the club. They gave us the full treatment, and even put the spotlight on us. It hadn’t taken long to get around that we were East End gangsters up from London courtesy of the Krays, which was totally untrue. But Eric was trading on the twins’ name, just as he had in London, and was having a good life, thanks to them.

  I saw an opportunity, so a couple of nights later I approached this Bill Heaney and asked him to lend me a couple of grand. I said, ‘We need it until our expenses come up.’ It’s a way of asking for protection money without using the threat.

  We had no trouble. He said, ‘You want it now?’ He put two grand in cash in a bag and slipped it on to my lap.

  Not long afterwards, he called me into the foyer and introduced me to a very pretty woman he was obviously having an affair with. He pulled out a .22 pistol and asked, ‘What do you think of that, Tony?’

  I said, ‘What are you trying to do – impress me, Bill?’ I took it off him, put it in my pocket and told Chris. It was Heaney’s little test. He then realised we were into it 100 per cent.

  It reached the stage when we were going there every night, and every night we were at his throat for more money – a grand here, £1,500 there. Chris, Eric, Peter and I used to cut it up between us. Dominic Pye, the doorman, all dressed up in his gold braid uniform and top hat, used to salute us when we walked in. We had to straighten a few things out, though, like the time the head waiter, Jimmy, handed me a bill. I said, ‘Don’t embarrass us,’ and he never troubled us with the bill again.

  On a later occasion, Jimmy made a proposition. He said: ‘If you look after me, I’ll tell you what’s going on with the law if they start to make inquiries, or if I hear of anything like that coming up.’

  It looked to us as though we were on to a good thing in Blackpool. We could get anything we wanted and were having the time of our lives – we were getting five-star treatment everywhere we went. We were also into one or two other clubs, a bank manager and other leading citizens from the area. The fact that we were so-called underworld characters attracted a lot of business people – straight people who loved the image of it around them. They wanted to say they knew us. Bank managers, company executives, show business personalities, sportsmen – they all loved that mystique, that danger, and the strange prestige they thought it gave them to be seen associating with us.

  The bank manager, when we met him, was rotten drunk. He said, ‘Look, if you’re thinking of investing money up here, come and see me.’ If I wanted a loan, who better than the bank manager? We got about four grand out of him, and he wasn’t going to get it back. For his part, he could come out and be entertained and sit at our table. No doubt he was a hen-pecked husband.

  But although we were spreading our wings in Blackpool, working our way into various different businesses, we still used the Embassy as our base. Heaney was making it worth our while. One day I had to go down to London immediately. At a suggestion from Chris, Bill Heaney offered to lend me his black E-Type Jag. I told him, ‘I might as well have the log book too.’ I said it jokingly, but at the same time I didn’t mean it as a joke. He went to the safe and gave me the log book. Obviously, by doing that he was giving me his car.

  Eric Mason was continuing to drop the twins’ name, more than we knew at the time. He was always careful to hide it away around us, but we caught him out when someone said to me one day in the club, ‘He’s the twins’ right-hand man,’ pointing at Eric. ‘What are you talking about?’ I said. It turned out that this was what Mason had been telling people.

  He loved to be the centre of attention. In London, he’d had a flat with a woman dancer in Jermyn Street. The way he felt about her was neither here nor there: it was a relationship of convenience. He just liked the image of having a young girl around him. He only ever used to wear one suit, the serge one Reggie had given him when he came out of the nick. One day my brother found him putting black polish on the patches where it had gone shiny. And it was a blue suit! Then there was the time we went out to spend a couple of grand Bill Heaney had given us at a nice men’s store. Chris and I were looking at the £75 shirts, and Eric was at the sale counter where they were getting rid of three for £l. Yet, despite all this, he always looked presentable.

  Chris and I went to another club one evening at the invitation of a man called Mitzi Walsh who had an involvement in it. He was from a family of brothers who were very big in Blackpool at the time and who made us welcome there. We arrived there to find Eric holding court. He had all the dancers from the Blackpool Tower sitting round him, and he was ordering champagne as if it was going out of fashion. He had a £20,000 cheque with him, made out to himself, and he was waving it about, getting all the credit in the world. He had the bank manager with him too �
�� anyone who was anyone in Blackpool…. But he knew and I knew he hadn’t got a tenner on him.

  He threw the cheque on the table: ‘Where can I cash £20,000 at twelve o’clock at night?’

  Mitzi asked me, ‘Can he meet the bill?’

  I didn’t know what to say. I looked at him as much as to say, ‘Don’t ask me.’

  Chris, Peter and I enjoyed all the hospitality in the world at this club, like every other, but people were starting to become suspicious of Eric over his so-called connections with the twins. Yet, because there was an element of doubt, Mitzi couldn’t go against Eric. He had to write the money off, and it did cause a bit of aggro.

  Meanwhile, Eric was becoming more and more ridiculous in his bid to grab the limelight. Take the night we were invited to go and watch Gerry and the Pacemakers at the Queen’s Theatre. We got VIP seats right at the front. Eric made sure that he had the spotlight put on him, and he was introduced as ‘Eric Mason, that well-known club-owner from London.’ On another occasion, we went to a Tom Jones concert. When the singer reached the request spot, Eric shouted out, ‘Tom, what about my number?’ as if he knew him. He’d never even met him.

  He then went over to Gordon Mills, Tom Jones’ manager, and said: ‘What’s up with Tom tonight? He didn’t seem to recognise me.’

  Mills looked at him vacantly and said, ‘What are you talking about?’

  There was yet more embarrassment, thanks to Eric, when he, Chris and I accepted an invitation to the Grand Order of Water Rats’ charity ball at Pontin’s Holiday Camp, just off the Golden Mile. We each had a ticket, but Eric brought along a girlfriend who hadn’t. Most people wouldn’t get through the doors without a ticket, but Chris decided just to walk straight in. We plonked ourselves down at the finest table in the room.