Krayzy Days

by Micky Fawcett

  I did meet him and he was indeed a right berk with money. Though he might fool you after Billy let him loose in the clubs. He wasn’t very bright but you didn’t need to be as long as you could read the cards.

  Billy himself was very impressive – certainly in comparison to the likes of Riley, but also in contrast to the Krays. He had once hired a yacht in South Africa with a full crew. One of his right-hand men was Georgie Walker – one-time owner of the Trocadero in Piccadilly Circus. A very wealthy guy. After the Krays I got to know Billy’s circle well.

  In turn I later introduced him to a friend of mine called Jimmy, a good-looking geezer – though not a villain. Jimmy was very likable. Everyone seemed to get on with him and Hillsy was among them. Jimmy ended up doing odd jobs for Billy, sometimes walking his dogs. They were equally sex mad and Billy even made a play for his wife in front of him. Jimmy had only just introduced Maureen when Billy said, ‘If ever you’ve got time and you fancy it, give me a ring. He won’t know.’

  Billy’s own partner was Phyllis, though she was always called Gyp – a shortening of Gypsy. Billy was proud of her.

  ‘She had a geezer’s eye out with a glass, you know,’ he would tell me. ‘Everyone’s frightened of her.’

  Billy himself would get violent on drink and he made a point of never having anything to do with it. Gyp knew that and when he got up and left his birthday party to go to the toilet, she suggested that someone put ‘a large of gin in his orange juice. That’ll liven the old bastard up.’

  Billy and Gyp had separate rooms in the Bayswater flat. ‘I can have any birds up here I want,’ he said, ‘as long as I don’t take them in her bedroom.’ She was part of the swindle, as we used to say – when they first met she had been a brass.

  Hillsy would also advertise in the Bayswater area for help in his flat and when girls rang up he would say something to let them know exactly what he wanted. That was heaven for Jimmy and it gave him further encouragement to do work for Billy just so he could spend time around him. Taking acid was another way that Billy found of heightening his sexual adventures. I have no idea what he got out of it but he had it all worked out. To counter the effects of the trip he would take one of his stash of incredibly strong sleeping pills to knock himself out. Jimmy thought this was hilarious.

  But there was a darker side to Hillsy that never reached the public, though Jimmy got to see it. He interrupted a terrible scene at Hillsy’s one day when he arrived to see a woman of mixed race with scars up her back, he later told me, as if she’d been slashed by a razor at some point in her life. This woman was setting about Hillsy, punching him and Billy yelled for help. They got her to the floor and Billy tied her hands with tape before they managed to get her into another room and lock the door. Jimmy was still shocked when he told me the whole story.

  ‘A right fucking turnout,’ he said. ‘After a while she must have gone to sleep or something and I left.’ He hadn’t wanted to find out what had been going on and neither did I. But that wasn’t the end of it. When he was next at the flat, Billy took him to one side.

  ‘Don’t ask no questions. She’s dead and buried,’ said Billy flatly. ‘I couldn’t put up with that sort of behaviour, could I, Jim?’

  And the woman was never mentioned again. I can’t say I was entirely surprised to hear what had happened. It reminded me how Billy would sometimes tell me about poisoning people. I hadn’t paid him much attention at the time. But I also knew from Jimmy that Billy had put methadrine in ice cubes he served in drinks to girls in his flat.

  I thought about the woman again many years later. A Justin Hill started being mentioned on the internet not so long ago. He was brought up by Gyp and he said his father was Billy Hill. Yet he was mixed race. The story was that Billy had spent a lot of money adopting him from a children’s home where he was being ill-treated. But there was no word on his real mother and it seemed to me as if she could well have been the woman that Jimmy saw that day.

  Other disturbing stories about Billy began to come out. Mikey Harris, a fella from over the Elephant & Castle, was older and had known Billy from way back.

  ‘There’s something wrong with that man,’ Mikey said. ‘He hates animals and he hates children. He’s got to have something wrong with him.’

  He had been slashed by Billy after a joke that went wrong. It was Billy’s birthday and Mikey gave him a can of corned beef – it was a reference to an argument that Billy had with someone else over a stolen lorry load of the stuff. Mikey was always a comedian, but Billy didn’t see the funny side.

  As for the animal hatred, it was also true that Billy kept two standard poodles. But for Teddy Machin this in itself was suspicious.

  ‘There’s something funny going on with them two dogs,’ he said. ‘He gives them choice cuts of meat. He wouldn’t fucking do that for no reason. There’s something funny going on with those dogs.’ Knowing Billy’s sexual heroics it was probably better not to think too much about what he might be up to.

  For my own part I certainly never saw anything odd going on in my dealings with Billy Hill. He was like the legends that sprang up about him as the king of the underworld. If anything, he went out of his way to be good to me. While I was overseas he introduced me to Marcel Francisci on a trip to Tangier and I would have still been in the gambling game today if it weren’t for Billy’s brother dying while I was out there with him in Spain.

  Billy immediately went home for the funeral while me and Teddy Machin stayed on in his flat. I was surprised to get an earful from my wife when I phoned home.

  ‘What you been doing?’ she shouted. She told me about a visit from Chrissie, the wife of her cousin Mick McKenzie. ‘She said, “Teddy says they’ve gone out there with two birds!”’

  I was furious with Teddy. It should have gone without saying that we didn’t tell anyone where we were going, but in any case, we made a specific agreement not to discuss our visit with anyone. But Teddy wasn’t very bright and was a bit like a child in some ways. He could never just keep his mouth shut and less forgivably he was always stirring things up, which would do him no favours in the end.

  I really let Teddy have it. I was furious with him. We had never been proper friends, but we had at least been fairly good business associates and now Teddy was really upset. We never properly spoke again.

  When I returned to the UK it was to get on with my life. The Krays were on remand, but they were always going to go down. I needed something new and with the help of a silent partner, who I won’t name here, I took on a pub called The Steamship, a little place near Blackwall Tunnel in the docks in E14. At the time I took over it was taking virtually nothing. Maybe £40 a week. It was useless. Knowing that I had no chance of being given a licence, I visited my brother Fred to see if he’d front it. He lived around the Norwood area of South London and although I knew he was an alcoholic, he said he was clean. But there were bottles of beer lying around his flat.

  ‘I thought you’d given up,’ I said.

  ‘I have,’ he said. ‘I went in the off licence for a packet of fags and they got a fruit machine in there. I won – but they only pay you in tokens. They were only good for beer.’

  To me this sounded perfectly believable and with that I gave the keys to the beer cellar to an alcoholic. I didn’t particularly care. The details of running a pub didn’t interest me and I wasn’t concerned about turning a profit. I did enjoy getting The Steamship ready for the big opening. I threw myself into getting the decoration right and as I was getting about in the West End quite a bit in those days, there was plenty of inspiration to draw on.

  Even the toilets were just right. I used to go to a restaurant in Dover Street which had facilities like little palaces with ornate taps and an elegant mirror and I did the ladies toilet in my place in the same style. I was also proud of the advert I put in the local paper: THE WEST END COMES TO THE EAST END, ran the headline. I included a list of top singers of the time from Frank Sinatra to Perry Como and invited people to co
me and listen to them on the best sound system around. Bertie Summers set up the audio side of things for me. As a jazz fan, he was a perfectionist and made sure the music was well amplified. It all worked and I’m sure part of the appeal was my unrivalled position of having just come out of the celebrated Kray case. It wasn’t a bad scalp to have on my belt.

  Guests on the first night included friends I worked with who showed up in their Rolls Royce’s, Porches, etc, which they parked outside The Steamship. I should have been serving but I wasn’t that interested in being the diligent host. It gave me a chance to enjoy myself. The small space was packed out. A few of the local police turned up in uniform and you’d occasionally see a copper’s helmet bobbing about. They were as fascinated as anyone else. There were so many faces there that they wanted to see who was about. My pub became the place to go and everyone talked about it – the ladies’ toilet attracted particularly admiring comments. A good part of the reason was my connection with the twins and how I’d walked away. The acquittal had even made it to the national news and people would have seen me on TV.

  The Steamship was, like most pubs at that time, tied to a brewery. The area manager told me he had an important visitor coming to see how things were going and asked me to make sure the place was looking good.

  ‘Be here yourself, won’t you?’ he asked.

  I readily agreed and made sure that everything was polished and gleaming for the appointed meeting. I had no idea who this person was going to be and I was not much enlightened when they turned up. Having had a drink with the brewery man, the pair left without even speaking to me. I couldn’t see how this was of benefit to me.

  The other curious thing was an ad appeared in the paper for another pub and the wording was identical to mine. It all began to make sense when a friend advised me to go and look at this pub, The King William in Manor Park, Ilford. I hadn’t actually connected the ad to what I’d been told until I walked in the other pub and saw that it was exactly the same down to the last detail. They’d pinched the decoration and the signs revealed that it was the same brewery. Perhaps they didn’t know about my unique selling point, but they clearly thought that if they followed my interior design they could have themselves a similar hit further out east. I might as well toast their cheek with a drink, I thought. The barman looked very surprised to see me approach the bar and very embarrassed. As well he might. It was the area manager.

  ‘This won’t hurt you, you know,’ he said almost immediately. ‘It’s too far away.’ I told him I wasn’t that bothered and, genuinely, I really wasn’t.

  My focus was living the life. I might have watched the Krays fall apart but now I was letting the trappings of success go to my head. Most of the time I kept on going out in the West End and I didn’t serve a single drink to a customer in my own venue. More importantly, I never bothered looking at the takings. The responsibility was all with my brother and thinking about that now makes me laugh. I left an alcoholic in sole charge of a busy pub and I can’t say that I didn’t even have warning. The night before we opened he disappeared and he was the one who had the keys to everything – from the front door to the safe. When he did at last call it was long distance from Ireland where he had gone with some girl he met in the pub. We had to work around him when he didn’t make it back in time for the official opening. I spent much of the day worrying about the brewery coming down and kicking off but somehow we made it. Fred did come back in the end but it was mostly Bertie, my friend from The Regency, who took most of the responsibility for The Steamship.

  I would act as mine host in the pub on occasion but I’d always be on the customers’ side of the bar. There was something of a sense of power that went with it, which I liked. All I had to do was chat to people and I knew I had a bit of a reputation, which I was beginning to trade off. When I think about my state of mind at that time I realise I was out of control. The Krays were gone and I’d faced them down – and I liked that feeling.

  The Steamship was heading for disaster but I didn’t care. I had my famous friends, including most of the players at West Ham. Frank Lampard’s dad – also called Frank – was a regular visitor, as was Harry Redknapp. A highlight was the day that half of the first team turned out to play football for me at Hackney Marshes. But I’m not so good on the details now – I can’t even remember how I got friendly with most of them. To some extent it must have been because I was known in the East End but it didn’t work in quite such an obvious way as that. You just got to know people when you looked the part and I had the smart suits, the nice shoes and I was never short of a few quid.

  I could be relied upon to do flash stuff. I took the whole West Ham team to a boxing match by coach, but I’m just not that proud of doing those kinds of things. I’m not sorry about it; I just don’t enjoy thinking about it because I was drinking so much. It could have been a good business move for the pub, though I wasn’t that clear-headed about it at the time and that’s not the point. I just can’t think of it without remembering all the booze that went along with it and that makes me feel quite ashamed. While I wasn’t falling over drunk, I was permanently hazy.

  It wasn’t long after that night out that I ran into England captain Bobby Moore. He was great, a really lovely guy and he knew who I was. I’d got to know him when some mutual friends asked me to give him advice when a company he was involved with had some trouble from a mob unconnected with the twins. He had also heard about the coach trip.

  ‘You took the lads out, didn’t you?’ he said. ‘Do you want to come to The Grosvenor for this sports dinner I’ve got to go to?’

  And that’s how I ended up at the top table during some glitzy occasion with Bobby Moore.

  Being on the top table meant we were all introduced one by one and everyone was being asked for autographs by a few starstruck kids who happened to be there with their parents. It was like a roll-call of the greatest sporting names in the football and boxing at that time. Then came, ‘Mr Michael Fawcett.’ I just felt like a terrible imposter for being there. I knew there were friends of mine that night who were just in the audience and I felt worse when the kids came running up for my autograph. If it had been during the days of the twins and there had been some occasion like this, I’d have stayed well away and I’d have had nothing but contempt for anyone who turned up. I hated being a hypocrite.

  I didn’t really know what I wanted. Another gin and tonic? Another pair of crocodile shoes and a beautiful bird? All of that. I had become a playboy more than a businessman. But I didn’t have solid money. I never really knew how to manage it. That’s what happens when, a bit like the twins, you come from a poor background. I’d lift the takings straight out of the till.

  I was drifting along, back doing a couple of con jobs, when I ran into a friend called Willy. A good-looking Jewish guy from Aldgate, much admired – but never caught – by Ronnie, he was a long-firm expert. Willy was good company – smart, and a funny Jack the Lad character. He started off in the ‘run out’ – mock auctions where you got as many people as possible in a shop with a megaphone and made sure they ended up with a bag of nothing.

  Willy had a good touch of more than 100 grand and decided to spend it in America. He told me how he’d also bought two plots of land in the Bahamas on an island called Great Harbour Cay. The Canadian mafia had bought the island and the big boss, Lou Chesler, had a guy called Ray Bonafante, who was a brilliant salesman. The Bahamas was much in demand and he pulled in the celebrity crowd, he had recently sold to Gunter Sachs and Bridget Bardot. Willy had got involved in this and asked me to sell a piece of his land when he realised he’d overreached himself. It would be a good way of meeting his contacts and also seeing if I could interest them in buying a plot back or selling it on for him.

  I flew out with my family, though by that time my wife and I were together in name only. We were leading separate lives in the same house and we only just about tolerated each other. I was only staying with her for the sake of my boy, but at least in Am
erica we would be able to relax and we did our best – in a hotel with five swimming pools. We did some sightseeing in Miami before I had to head off to do business in Nassau.

  All the real estate outlets were based around one hotel and Ray Bonafante himself did not disappoint. He looked like a film star with immaculate grey hair and a big cigar. His face lit up when I said who had sent me. Willy spent like a lunatic while he was out there and had made quite an impression on Ray.

  ‘Hey, what are we doing today?’ he said and put a load of his expensive cigars in my top pocket. ‘Are we island-hopping? Where are we going?’

  You could feel his energy from ten feet away and for a typical Englishman like me it was quite something from a person I’d only met for two minutes. I didn’t need to think too much as he had an itinerary planned in the next sentence.

  We picked up my family and went back to Miami and I couldn’t shake Ray off. The sign of a good salesman, I guess. He sold Willy’s plot of land and my last memory of him on that occasion is when I decided to take a road trip to New York. I was buying a Greyhound bus ticket from a bad-tempered clerk.

  Ray said, ‘Hey, bud, you’re being a bit sharp.’ He looked extremely displeased and the clerk crumbled immediately, apologising profusely and I didn’t blame him. Ray’s day job was collecting Las Vegas gambling debts for the Mob and his partners were Eddie and Dino Cellini, two top-ranking Mafia guys, who had been sent to London with George Raft. I loved it really; I was so big-headed and accepting of the life that I was leading. For me it was just a grand holiday – stopping in Savannah, Georgia, North and South Carolina and Washington DC. My feet weren’t that firmly on the ground. I barely remembered I had a pub to run back home when I stayed at the Park Sheraton on 7th Avenue, the site of the infamous shooting of Murder Inc’s top executioner, Albert Anastasia, and took time to go out to Harlem, back when it was considered to be so unsafe that several cab drivers refused to take me. Willy and I were pleased to be able to return Ray’s hospitality on his future visits to London.