Bringing Down the Krays

by Bobby Teale

  The police obviously CRO’d them [checked with Criminal Record Office via radio] but then they let them on their way. Maybe they wanted to see whether they were really going to Dartmoor or anywhere else. When they got to Dartmoor it was just as Alfie had always imagined it to be – mists were swirling around the moor and it was so cold you could feel the damp in the wind, even though it was March. Alfie and Wally went up to the prison door, gave their names and went upstairs into a visiting hut, with a little canteen inside, like something out of a prisoner-of-war camp. It reminded Alfie of stories about Colditz.

  ‘He won’t be long, he’ll be back in a minute,’ a prison officer told them. ‘He’s just out on the moor.’

  Frank’s cell was never locked – he’d been inside so long the officers trusted him to go down to the gatehouse and ride his horse for an hour, or go to the pub and have a couple of pints before coming back to the prison. He’d even got a girlfriend in one of the villages. He’d been inside for eighteen years. He had the mind of a child but the strength of Goliath.

  All of a sudden Alfie and Wally heard the sound of Frank’s heavy footsteps coming up the wooden stairs, more like a giant approaching than an ordinary man.

  He looked at Wally and my brother, and shook Alfie’s hand so hard he nearly broke it. He didn’t know Alfie, and all Alfie knew of him was a photo he’d seen in the paper.

  It was freezing in the hut where they were sitting. Frank was dressed in a denim jacket with nothing underneath it, a pair of jeans, no socks and a pair of boots with the laces missing. He looked like a mad ogre of a man. He kept asking Alfie to feel his bulging arm, repeatedly telling him how he did two thousand press-ups each morning to stay in trim.

  ‘Right, do you want a nice cup of tea?’ Frank asked them. They nodded yes.

  From behind them, a prison officer called out: ‘Would you like a cup of tea, too, Frank?’

  Frank turned on him with a face like thunder. ‘You know full well I don’t drink tea! I’ll have a glass of milk, like I always do,’ he barked.

  ‘Sorry, Frank!’ said the officer, clearly petrified. Later Alfie was to hear stories of how Frank used to walk round the exercise yard with the governor of the prison tucked under his arm, while the governor shouted, ‘Put me down, Frank, put me down!’

  Frank then turned round and whispered to Alfie, ‘Any news?”

  Alfie repeated what he’d been told to say. ‘Ronnie and Reggie are going to go to the Home Secretary and try to get you a date. They have got some police onside who are going to try and help from inside Scotland Yard and MPs they know who are going to help too. And if they can’t get you a date, you are going to be sprung from this prison. Ronnie suggested that I do it.’ That’s exactly what Ronnie had told Alfie. But it wasn’t going to turn out like that.

  Frank’s eyes lit up at what Alfie had told him.

  ‘Tell them that once you get me out of here, I can get a machine-gun and kill anyone they want,’ he said.

  Alfie didn’t think that was quite what Ronnie had in mind, but you never knew.

  Anyway, whether he meant to or not, Frank scared the hell out of Alfie. The guards were terrified of him too, sitting well away from him. Whenever they came too near Frank would shoo them away with his hand and they’d scurry off.

  Frank leaned forward and said, ‘I like you Alfie.’ Alfie laughed and said he liked him too. Then Frank continued: ‘I want you to bust me out of here today. I want to you stop at the phone box you passed on the way here and wait there for me. I want you to take me to London now!’

  Alfie said, ‘All right, Frank, all right,’ while trying to think quickly how on earth he was going to get out of there in one piece. What the hell was he meant to do?

  Poor Alfie was truly terrified now. There was no way he and Wally were driving Frankie Mitchell off that day. Ronnie would have killed them if they’d pitched up back at the flat with him. So Wally and Alfie just looked at one another, walked straight out, down the stairs and out of the prison – and sped back to London without stopping.

  CHAPTER 12

  BESIDE THE SEASIDE

  THOSE LAST DAYS at Moresby Road were the most chaotic – and the most dangerous. What was this – a hostage siege or a gigantic piss-up? There’d be treks out to boozers, as if we didn’t have a care in the world. At first we went to a dreadful place in Clapton filled with pensioners sipping stout. We called it the Dead Pub. Then after a few days we started going back to Madge’s or the Grave Maurice, where the twins were greeted like long-lost friends. ‘Where’ve you been Ronnie? There’s all sorts of talk about you.’ Well, you can imagine how it went. In the end, after two weeks, Ronnie, Reggie and the rest of the Firm finally left the flat. I think they wanted their old mum back washing their shirts. And by then they’d got word that nobody who’d been in the Blind Beggar that night was talking.

  We were all pretty roughed up but grateful to be alive. Ronnie was still exulting in what he’d done – killing an unarmed man sitting on a bar stool in a pub – and now he started telling Reggie to do the same.

  I’d been having my little meets with Pogue but no one from the Yard seemed to want to do anything. All they wanted was more, more information. By now Ronnie was lying low somewhere different but I knew exactly where he was.

  David, meanwhile, just wanted to give his family a break. And where do they go? To Kray territory, down to Steeple Bay, the caravan site on the Thames estuary, where the twins and their mum would go down more or less every weekend that spring of 1966. A few days later I’d go down there myself. So did Alfie.

  David knew the place well. It was his job to drive the Krays’ mother and their old man down there. Christine wanted to go to her parents in Birmingham after the Moresby Road siege but David persuaded her it was the only place to go, crazy as that might seem. They were pretty skint and their flat was a wreck. It was easier all round just to pack their bags and get out of it. So they ended up staying down there for several weeks during the next month or so, with Alfie and me joining them, and the Kray family coming and going too.

  Charlie Kray had a caravan down at Steeple with his old woman, Dolly, on the opposite side of the bay. We all liked Dolly. She was a nice woman, strict perhaps, but otherwise OK. Charlie was a right playboy. She had her hands full with him from the beginning.

  There was one time Charlie and David were in the pub, and he said to them: ‘I want you to do me a favour. Come with me. I want you to go round and tell my wife that we’re going to Dartmoor together. Say we’re going to share the driving.’

  So David went round to see Dolly with him, at their gaff off the Mile End Road, and backed up his story for him. He felt a bit bad because he genuinely liked Dolly, but he didn’t feel he could refuse.

  As soon as they came out, David asked him, ‘What’s happening, Charlie?’ He said, ‘Nothing. I’ve got to go now. I’m going to see a bird…’ David had been used as part of the plan. The next morning Charlie came round to the 66 Club at about eleven or twelve, and asked David to go back to Dolly with him so that it looked genuine.

  David would later have good reason for mistrusting Charlie, and I mean good reason. We would all come to consider Charlie as the most cunning one out of the lot of them. There he was walking round in expensive suits with diamond and gold tiepins, all the time telling people ‘I’m the good guy.’ He boasted that he was ‘in entertainment’, but he wasn’t even in the business until Alfie and David introduced him to it.

  According to David, whether it was stolen out of the bank or took off a church collection, Charlie was always the first in the queue for his money. He didn’t care where it came from. Then he’d say: ‘I’ve got to go, Dolly wants to go to the hairdressers.’

  David reckoned Dolly must have lived in the hairdressers the number of times he heard Charlie say that. But underneath all his charm and swagger he was a two-faced womaniser and not to be trusted. Barbara Windsor had an affair with Charlie when we knew her. The rumours that Reggie was goi
ng out with Barbara were just put round by the twins to keep Dolly quiet.

  But Charlie wasn’t the reason we were heading for Essex. After that time in the flat, Ronnie seemed to want us down at the seaside all the time. Did he want our company, or did he want the kids round him as protection? He seemed pretty keen to get David’s family down there.

  After they all went down to Steeple Bay, Ronnie started urging David: ‘Get a caravan, Dave. I know the geezer on the site, he’ll get you one.’ So David took Ron’s advice and got a caravan, a lovely, big, beautiful brand-new one that they put right next to Ronnie’s. Ronnie and Reggie came over to admire it: ‘Look at that, Ronnie. We’ve got another caravan. Isn’t it great?’

  So of course it wasn’t David’s caravan. It was in David’s name and he had to make the payments on it, but it was the twins’ caravan, their possession, just like everything else.

  That spring, in the evenings, everyone would all go to the caravan park clubhouse together. Christine would sit and have a chat with Mrs Kray who she thought was a really nice woman. You’d see Ronnie down there one day, but the next minute he’d be gone.

  Alfie and I used to come down too. We were drawn back to the Krays’, despite all that had occurred. All of us were in too deep to do otherwise. Plus of course I knew I had to carry on acting like their friend so as not to arouse any suspicions.

  So there we’d all be – Ronnie, Reggie, Charlie, Mad Teddy, David and me – we’d all have a laugh, all be pissed. Everyone used to walk in and out of everyone else’s caravans like next-door neighbours. One minute we’d be on our own, the next minute you’d look out of the caravan, see four cars and know that Ronnie or Reggie had arrived.

  At that time Ronnie wasn’t too bad. It could change minute to minute. One night he got up and said he was going for a walk. He was in one of his black moods, which he would get for no reason at all. That evening Ron came over and told us: ‘See that graveyard in the woods over there? We’re all going to go in there.’

  ‘What you talking about, Ron?’ I asked.

  Ron answered, ‘I bet you can’t! We’re all going in the graveyard to see who gets scared.’

  Alfie, David and I all said we didn’t want to. But Ron threatened he’d give anyone who didn’t ‘a good hiding’.

  ‘I’ll go through it first,’ he volunteered. We got to the woods, and Ron disappeared off into the graveyard, ordering us to wait a little while before we followed him.

  So we gave him a minute, and then I said, ‘I’ll go.’ Then someone else offered: ‘I’ll go too.’

  In the end we all went together into this big graveyard. We were all laughing and making spooky noises. The Colonel had gone on ahead, of course. Ronnie was waiting for us at the other end. When we came out together, calling to him, he went mad.

  ‘David, Alfie, Bobby! What are you doing? I wanted you to come in one at a time, not all together. You’ve spoilt the whole game now.’

  When we got back to the caravan he sat there, sulking like a baby and refusing to talk to us. At one point he wanted us all to go back out and do it again, but this time we refused. He was muttering about how a graveyard would be a good place to hide bodies. Then there was another place nearby, an old Roman camp with gravel pits around it. That really got him going, too.

  On another day Ronnie turned round to us and said: ‘Come on, we’re going for a lovely walk… Do us some good, have some nice fresh air.’

  We walked down to where the inlets came in from the sea. The place was like a bog and you could easily sink into the sand if you didn’t watch where you put your feet. We got to some creeks and I said to Ron, ‘Look at that, Ron. If you stepped in there you’d be up to your neck.’

  Ron said, ‘Yeah, if you put a body in there it would sink to the bottom and no one would find it for thousands of years. Coo, there’s some lovely places to hide people here, aren’t there? Isn’t it great?’

  ‘You’re not going to put us down there, are you?’ Alfie asked, only half-joking. Ron’s eyes just glazed over, staring into space. He didn’t reply.

  This kind of fantasy was starting to come on him more and more. Except it wasn’t fantasy. He was quite capable of doing somebody over even when he was supposed to be on ‘holiday’ – even when he was supposed to be looking after his mum.

  We were in the clubhouse one night when we noticed another caravan owner sitting at the bar, who we used to call ‘the bully’. His family had stayed in caravans on the site for years and he behaved like he owned the place. Ronnie wasn’t there but his mother was with us. We were all having a drink when Violet got up and went to the toilet, and the bully pushed by her.

  About a week later we were all in the clubhouse again when Ronnie arrived. Afterwards as usual he suggested we all went back to David’s caravan for a drink. We were just getting there, at about eleven o’clock, when we suddenly noticed that Ron had slipped back to the clubhouse on his own.

  Minutes later Ron came in, breathless, gasping, ‘Give us a brown ale. That’s better…’

  Everyone was smoking and we put a few records on and started drinking and enjoying ourselves again. Ronnie in particular seemed as happy as a pig, staying the night in David’s caravan, on the spare bunk.

  The next morning Alfie got up early to go out and get the papers. He told us when he got to the shop a feller in there said: ‘That Ronnie Kray came down and did Bill [the bully] last night. Came into the clubhouse and just smashed into him… knocked him out. We had to get an ambulance and everything.’

  When Alfie got back to the caravan he asked Ron about it. ‘What happened, Ron? I heard they had to get an ambulance for that man last night.’

  Ron shrugged. ‘He was only a cunt,’ he said.

  Next he threatened to drown a dog whose barking was keeping his mother awake. He would have done it, too, without a second thought.

  But he didn’t always have the upper hand. Another time a young man on a motorbike, a straight guy, not a villain, pulled up outside the caravan. We all started admiring his bike, and when Ron mentioned he’d never been on a motorbike, the young man offered to give him a ride on it. Ronnie had no shirt on, just his trousers, but he climbed on and the guy drove off, with Ronnie grabbing him round the waist, his face white with horror.

  The motorcycle rider, thinking Ronnie was enjoying himself, took him all round the camp. It was hilarious to see Ron’s face. You didn’t know whether to laugh or not, but the language Ron used was unrepeatable.

  I remember Charlie coming round one night. It was pretty late, but then before you knew it Reggie and Ronnie had arrived too. I thought, ‘Oh no,’ because we were all tired, but we got up and gave them a drink.

  Ronnie said: ‘We need to have a talk, all right?’ So Alfie, David and I said, ‘Yeah, all right, Ron.’

  He said he had some money, ten thousand pounds, which he wanted David to look after – to ‘put it away somewhere safe’. David told Ron that he’d bury it under his caravan. We knew Ronnie had guns, too, buried all round the place. One way or another my brothers were being drawn more and more into Ron’s criminal plans, whether they liked it or not.

  Even David was realising by now that we just had to get out of this situation. He told me he knew he should have done this straight away after Moresby Road. I just agreed with him, longing to tell him what I was trying to do to help get us out of the Krays’ grip, but scared of getting us into even more trouble if I said anything.

  Alfie and David were just ordinary market traders – not career criminals. They both had young families to look after. And unlike me, they weren’t going to abandon them. They’d been in trouble with the law as kids but they had always got their own money, not taken the Firm’s handouts. That was the difference. The Firm, some of them had wives, but they were invisible. Reggie’s bid for married bliss lasted two months. Mine hadn’t lasted very much longer. Ronnie, well, you know what he was.

  After no one got him for Cornell, Ronnie started getting his confidence bac
k. You could see it. Everyone knew what he’d done but no one was saying anything. It made him feel even more in command. He really was untouchable. In the meantime his madness seemed to be getting worse.

  He’d started talking to himself, just muttering: ‘Yeah, right,’ all the time as if he was in conversation with someone else. Or else he was constantly reminding everyone: ‘I’m the governor round here. I’m the Colonel. Fuck the police, fuck the government.’

  The only authority was his mum, Violet, whose disapproval did bother him. As for me, David and Alfie, the twins had no respect for us whatsoever. We were all just errand boys.

  I could see my brothers wanted to get away from the madness and violence of the Krays. As much as I was trying to, perhaps – but I was on a different track. And by this time they knew so much and were so far in, they really didn’t know how to escape.

  Alfie and David knew that if they went missing for a few days and they went into a pub on our own manor, a car could pull up at any second and the Colonel himself could jump out. It didn’t matter where you were – he’d find you. Even on the night of the World Cup final later that summer when we were watching it on TV round a friend’s house – when practically everyone in Britain was glued to the telly – there was a knocking at the door with a message that he wanted to see us.

  There was no hiding place from Ronnie. And I was in as deep as anyone. What I did not know then was just how much Ronnie was preying on my family. For many years I had no idea what had happened to David that spring, when he was back in London after they’d come back from Steeple Bay. One day, several decades later, he found the courage to tell me. This is his story, in his own words:

  We were down the Astor Bar at about two or three o’clock one morning when Ronnie asked me if I was going home and would I give him a lift. I was tired and half-pissed myself and said I would. We were driving along when I began to realise how dangerous it was to drive after so much to drink. So I started saying to Ron: ‘This looks bad, Ron. If we get pulled I’m going to be done.’