We had two jobs to do within a couple of nights of one another. The cigarettes and some cases of spirits we had taken from a licensed grocer in Golders Green were still in the lock-up as we had decided to wait until the second job was done so we could deliver the goods in one go. I had gone on my own to collect the tools, having made arrangements to collect Bert later in the evening. As I turned the car into the square of garages, my headlights shone across the door of our lock-up and I spotted immediately that the padlock had been removed and hasp was open.
In retrospect, I should have simply turned the car round and driven off, but the place seemed dead quiet and I decided to have a look. I drove the car right up to the garage doors and stopped, leaving just enough room to pull the doors open a few inches.
When I looked inside I saw two men sitting on ordinary kitchen chairs. They must have dozed off because I can still see them lurching into life as the door rattled a little. They threw themselves off the chairs and lunged towards me, but the car jammed them in. I didn’t stop to stare. I just turned and ran, hearing shouts of ‘Police! Stop there, you!’ Their voices faded as I sprinted out of the yard and disappeared towards the main road, where I jumped in a taxi and headed for Liverpool Street Station.
Later on, I realised there had been no need to panic. The detectives couldn’t have got out of the garage unless the car was moved. I should have stayed and had a laugh at them before running away. If they had any brains they would have sat in the garage next door and waited until I was inside my own lock-up before pouncing – or is that me just being smart in retrospect?
Later on, we figured out what had gone wrong with our lock-up. It was all down to the thermic-lance bank robbers! Because they had left so much heavy equipment behind, the police reasoned that they must have stored it fairly close to the bank in the first place, so they wouldn’t have to transport it very far when it was required. As a matter of routine they had checked out all the people who had recently rented lock-ups in the immediate area and when they couldn’t trace the person at the address I had given, they forced the lock and found our stuff.
The same thing had happened to one or two other crooks in the area who were not as lucky as me. This sort of fall-out always happens when the cops are galvanised into action by a particularly spectacular robbery. I suppose all the small fish they net during their massive investigation and crackdown serve as a consolation prize for them.
A few days after losing our garage and equipment, not to mention the stolen goods, I was sitting in my room above the café when there was a thumping on my door. It turned out to be a couple of Notting Hill detectives who were searching the premises for a load of stolen booze that Les, the club’s owner, was supposed to have something to do with. The search warrant, if one existed, was for the Kimberly Club premises. The cops hadn’t found any of the stolen booze there and decided to search the whole building, including the café and the rooms above it. In the course of our cigarette-stealing activities, Bert and I always ended up with some strange brands. As these fags only came in relatively small amounts, hundreds rather than thousands and no one wanted to buy them anyway, I had been in the habit of taking them home and tossing them into a cardboard box on top of my wardrobe. I used to give them away down the club or to friends of mine.
I had accumulated several thousands of these odd cigarettes and now, like an idiot, I was caught with them sitting on top of my wardrobe. Needless to say they found my cigarette stash and to make matters worse the cops also found a complete set of twenty-six double-ended skeleton keys in my chest of drawers – a proper professional set of ‘twirls’. These articles attracted a lot of attention and I was bundled off to Notting Hill police station to explain myself. I was nicked for the fags as a holding charge; then they found the ‘lost’ driving licence on me and this started another line of inquiry. This then led to the car I had left outside the lock-up, to the embarrassment of the policemen trapped inside. Of course I admitted nothing. I had found the licence and never been to Clapton in my life. After several appearances at the magistrate’s court, I was remanded until 3 December 1958 to the County of London Sessions for sentence.
This time my good behaviour on remand backfired on me. When I finally went up for sentence I got glowing reports from my interviewers and they all said, more or less, that I wasn’t really a bad fellow. Another guy on remand who was about my age, but a right rebel, told them all to stick their interviews up their arses and got a terrible report. My remand reports, on the other hand, were all very good and it was the governor’s opinion that I would benefit from a period of rehabilitation. The judge agreed with this opinion and, after warning me that this was my last chance, proceeded to sentence me to three years’ corrective training. The rebel, however, was considered ‘untrainable’ and sentenced to nine months in prison.
Chapter Ten
Working for the Kray Twins
Corrective training – CT – was simply another name for imprisonment and the induction prison for anyone sentenced to CT in the London area was Wandsworth. When I first arrived there from the court, I was put into a cell on C Wing and even with my previous experience I found it all very dingy and intimidating.
During my remand in Brixton, I had known about the possibility of a CT sentence, but I had been convinced that it was more or less an adult borstal. Instead, here I was doing time like any other con in the jail sentenced to ordinary imprisonment. At just under twenty-two, three years seemed a helluva long time and I immediately lodged an appeal on the grounds of the severity of the sentence. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred this is a hopeless cause but, when you are twenty-two and have just been lumbered with what seems a massive sentence for ‘receiving’ a few thousand cigarettes, you tend to clutch at straws.
The problem with appealing, however, was that in the late 1950s you automatically lost forty-two days of your sentence if the appeal failed. After waiting about three months for the result I found myself deducted forty-two days and passed on assessment and allocation to a prison deemed suitable for corrective training.
I was just about at the end of my assessment period when I was sent for and escorted over to F Wing, the administration block. When I got there, I was taken to a small office and introduced to a little fat man in a greasy-looking trench coat. It turned out he was a sergeant in the Special Investigation Branch of the army. He didn’t like me at all, scowling at even having to talk to me. I was a bit concerned at first, until I discovered that he was only there to serve me with my army discharge papers.
‘We don’t want your sort in the army,’ he sneered at me in disgust and pushed a pen into my hands. I couldn’t sign fast enough. I had been wondering when the military would catch up with me and worrying if they intended waiting until I finished my CT to grab me back. Getting discharged was good news to me. Then, just when I thought everything was over, he pulled out an envelope and handed it to the screw who was in the office with us.
‘Here’s his money,’ he said and at the same time pushed another form at me. ‘Sign here for it.’ I was amazed. Chucked out of the army and they even gave me money! I think my smile annoyed him and he pushed past me out of the office without even shaking my hand. I was escorted back to C Wing with a smile on my face.
Eventually I was allocated and sent to Verne Prison. I really do think the Verne would have bored me to death and it was only through an incident completely foreign to my character that I was thrown out of there.
One evening when we were all sitting round the stove in the dormitory, this Scottish guy who was always telling improbable tales was going on about his time in the RAF. He was a big boy and the Verne’s top football player. He used to swagger around a bit and he looked quite a hard ticket. He said he was in charge of the gym and ran the football team at Bridgnorth. Then he said that he used to nip into Birmingham for a drink in the evenings. I asked him how far Bridgnorth was from Birmingham and he told me it was about five miles down the road. Then I asked him what sort of
RAF camp Bridgnorth was. By now he was giving me funny looks. But I persisted and asked him if he knew the address of Bridgnorth.
‘Just RAF Bridgnorth,’ he snapped back at me.
‘No it isn’t,’ I told him. ‘I was in the RAF at Bridgnorth and if you had been there you would know it is Number Seven School of Recruit Training. And what’s more,’ I went on, everyone staring at us now, ‘Wolverhampton is the nearest city to Bridgnorth and that’s twelve miles away. Birmingham’s nowhere near Bridgnorth – it must be fifty miles away at least!’
By now the guy was getting red in the face, but I carried on with my logical demolition of his story. ‘So that means you’ve never been to Bridgnorth and you’re telling a tale.’
Suddenly he lunged at me, obviously prepared to do me serious injury. I got a fright, because, although I knew I was showing him up a bit, it really wasn’t that serious. I jumped up to protect myself and we grappled together, the usual jail fight. We staggered around a bit then he fell against a bed and, as he was underneath me, I swung a punch at his head. I was amazed when he started squealing as if he had been really hurt and he rolled into a ball, not even attempting to fight back. I gave him a couple more swings and a couple of kicks as well. Then it was all over and he crept away to his bed. I was amazed, but I knew that it wasn’t my abilities that had defeated him – it was just that he was utterly useless.
Next day, I was dragged out from the blacksmith’s shop and marched in front of the governor. The guy had gone and reported that I had attacked him and beat him up. It turned out that he had ripped his leg open on a spring at the edge of the bed and had required stitches. The governor remanded me for the visiting court and I was immediately taken to Dorchester Prison to wait for adjudication. Three weeks later I was taken back to the Verne and appeared before the Visiting Committee (the VC).
I argued that all I had done was defend myself and that the damage to his leg, which was the thing that was bothering them, was an accident. Luckily, two guys from the dormitory came forward and agreed with my version of the story. Nevertheless I was found guilty of fighting and assault, but because of the circumstances I was only sentenced to twenty-eight days’ loss of remission.
The Scottish guy who had already given his version to the VC was called back in and sentenced to twenty-eight days’ remission too. He would have been better off keeping quiet about Bridgnorth. Or maybe I should have kept my mouth shut and let him rattle on. Two days later, no doubt as a direct result of the incident, I was transferred to Maidstone Prison in Kent. I can’t say I was sorry to leave the Verne.
Because it was so close to London, there were live concerts and plays almost every week in Maidstone and lots of top stars came down to entertain us. I also bumped into one or two people I knew there. Charlie Wilson and Mickey Ball were two of them. Charlie, Mickey and Roy James had all been jailed for conspiracy and possession of explosives for blowing safes. Roy got a three and Charlie and Mickey both got thirty months.
A City and Guilds printing course was about to begin not long after I arrived at Maidstone; I put in for it and was accepted. Now I only had to get myself something to do in the evenings and my time would be fully occupied.
As it turned out, the printing shop was quite a boring place to work. The letterpress machines were all ancient, hand-fed types; once a job was locked into their bed all you had to do was stand at the roller and feed sheets of paper into it. Some of the print runs were huge and every single one of them fed into the machine by hand. I honestly fail to see how anyone of average intelligence could not fail to master machine minding in a couple of months.
One day, I was working away on the small Heidelberg platen when someone approached me. He gave me the eye and pulled me to one side.
‘Would you do a job for the twins?’ he asked me.
‘Who’re the twins?’ I asked, not having the faintest idea who he was talking about.
‘The twins,’ he hissed. ‘Ronnie and Reggie, the Kray twins.’
I had never heard of them up to then. ‘I don’t know them,’ I said. ‘But what is it they want?’
He held up a small, red driving-licence holder. ‘Driving licences. Can you run some off?’
I looked at the licence that was gummed inside the small book’s covers. In those days a driving licence was simply a tiny sheet of white-gummed paper with the issuing authority and the words ‘Driving Licence’ plainly headlined on it. There was a space for the licence number to be typed in, then half-a-dozen dotted lines for the name and address of the holder. The bottom line showed the classes of vehicle that could be driven and the final printed item was ‘Fee 5/-’ in the bottom corner of the paper. The licence was printed on gummed paper so that it could be securely stuck inside the little red booklet, which was issued along with it. This booklet contained half a dozen blank pages to be used by the courts if any endorsements were required. New licence holders were easily obtained by applying for a provisional licence in any name you could think of at the local county council offices and once issued with the provisional licence all you had to do was tear it out and you had a brand new booklet to stick any licence you liked into.
The issuing authority of the licence he had handed me was the West Kent County Council and it really was the plainest-looking licence I had ever seen. I estimated that it would take about five minutes for a compositor to have it set and locked into a forme.
‘I could print that easy enough,’ I said. ‘How many are you looking for?’
‘Five hundred,’ he told me. ‘Print up five hundred and they’ll pay you a fiver a piece for them.’
I looked at him in surprise. ‘A fiver each? That’ll come to two-and-a-half grand!’
‘Yeah,’ he nodded. ‘That’s what they’ll pay. Everyone’s looking for a bent brief these days.’
I thought for a moment. I knew that the current price of a stolen licence was £10 and villains were always trying to get their hands on them. A new blank licence would be even more desirable as they could fill it in to suit themselves. They could easily be sold for £15 or £20 a piece.
I had a pal in the compositing shop and I knew he could set it, two up, in a matter of minutes. Running them off on the speedy little Heidelberg would take five minutes at the outside. I decided to be more realistic. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘I can run them off no bother, but pay me a pound a piece and I’ll be happy.’
I was thinking to myself that the chances of getting the two-and-a-half grand would be slim, but £500 might well materialise and that wasn’t bad money for fifteen minutes’ work. I know that it would have been sensible to ask for some of the money up front, but the job was nothing and I decided to give it a whirl. It wasn’t costing me anything and I might just get the money. The licences were duly produced and handed over and I never saw a brown penny for them. So much for my business with the twins.
With four months of my sentence to go, I heard that Bert had got himself done. He had been working now and again with another guy from Fulham and had been spotted unloading snout from a car into his basement flat in Eustace Road. He was in remand in Brixton and expecting to go to jail. Three months before my date of release I was granted, as part of the CT deal, five days’ home leave and spent it with friends of Bert’s in Hanworth, near Hounslow. I went with his friends, Betty and Dave Pegler, to visit Bert on remand and he was very down in the dumps. I was surprised because he was only looking at months rather than years. He couldn’t get lumbered with corrective training, because as well as being a bit old for it, he only had one minor previous conviction and you had to have at least two previous indictable offences on your record to qualify for CT.
He just couldn’t handle it inside at all and swore he was packing up the thieving game. I was disappointed to hear this, but it really didn’t make a lot of difference to my position. He would, after all, be doing time when I got out. I would need to find someone to work with. The snouting game had run its course and the up-and-coming game was good, hard cash blags.
I saw Jack during my leave and we decided to team up again when I got out. This suited me because I knew Jack would be prepared to have a real go. At the end of my five days’ leave he drove me back to Maidstone where, despite the influence of several large vodkas, I reluctantly banged on the prison gates to be let back inside.
At half-past-seven on a Thursday morning in February 1961, I stepped to freedom through the huge gates of Maidstone Prison and into a waiting car. On the drive into London, Jack passed me a bag containing overalls, a woollen hat and a heavy lead-filled cosh. Less than three hours later, along with Johnny Thomson and Chick Harris of Paddington, I was on the pavement outside a bank in East Acton carrying out my first payroll blag. It all went off well and we raced away from the scene richer by almost £4,000. It was a good start to my freedom.
The three years of CT had no beneficial or reformatory effect on me at all.
Chapter Eleven
Armed and Dangerous--This is the True Story of How I Carried Out Scotland's Biggest Bank Robbery Page 11
