The Profession of Violence (11 page)

What Ronnie really wanted out of life was fame and notoriety. For years his dream-life had been peopled with successful gangsters, boxers, military men. Now he was ‘the Colonel' he could at last invent a style of life that suited him. The billiard hall was his theatre; the house at
Vallance Road became his citadel. It contained everything he really loved – his swords, his suits, his mother and his dog. It was the one place he felt really safe. Somebody christened it ‘Tort Vallance'.

He knew that big-time Chicago gangsters always had their private barbers. He would have the same. When he awoke now someone in the house would telephone the barber's shop in Whitechapel Road. Half an hour later the Colonel would be sitting in the kitchen in a purple dressing-gown, face smothered in lather, and while the barber stropped his razors Ronnie would hold the first conference of the day with his lieutenants. He also had his hair cut at home now, summoned his tailor here for fittings for his suits and ordered shirts and shoes by telephone. For a while a masseur called to give him massage every morning. He tried to practise yoga. Later he lived upon a diet of raw eggs, ‘because raw eggs are strengthening and make you good at sex'.

At the same time his permanent suspicion of the police grew worse. From earliest boyhood he had hated them. Now he was certain they were always watching him. Outside his home he trusted no one and was convinced the telephone was tapped. At night he could sleep only with the light on and a gun beneath the pillow.

Reggie began to slip into his shadow. They still looked identical and were constantly together. One might have thought Reggie would have dominated Ronnie. He was the saner of the two – cleverer, more charming, more responsible. He was quite capable of living in the ordinary straight world. Yet it was Reggie who fell into second place and followed Ronnie's fantasies. He lacked the actor's instincts of his brother. Nobody thought of calling Reggie ‘Colonel'.

Nevertheless he seemed quite happy now to follow Ronnie, dressing as he did, joining in his plans, even adopting the Chicago gangster role. He could be as suspicious now as Ronnie, on occasions just as violent; and he had problems
Ronnie never had to face. Ronnie accepted that the straight world was not for him and wanted no part in it. Reggie was not so sure. He had that hankering after what he still referred to as ‘the good life'. Possessions and respect, a comfortable house, even a woman and a family – these were anathema for Ronnie, but for Reggie they were possibilities. One day he knew that he might leave the violent, homosexual world of Ronnie and go out to seek them on his own. But for the present, Reggie's duty was to stay with Ronnie and look after him. They could enjoy their life together, and Ronnie needed him. It would all work out in the end. In the meantime there was money to be made. Money is one thing that means much the same in both the straight world and the crooked.

‘What is straight business, anyhow? Be honest. It's just a bloody racket, same as our way of life. All of that keeping in with the right people, going to the proper school, an' knowing how much you can fiddle an' get away with. All of those lawyers and accountants to squeeze you round the law. What's all of it except one great big bloody racket?' This was how the twins looked at life: business was a racket; rackets were business. By becoming something of a racketeer Reggie Kray had his first big chance to pick up some of the trappings of the good life he had heard about. If it was necessary he would take it seriously, dress the part, become methodical, even keep accounts. So he cut down his drinking, kept to more regular hours, bought himself single-breasted suits and started making money. Ronnie could be the Colonel. They would still have each other.

Now on their twenty-second birthday they were a formidable pair and there suddenly seemed no stopping them. They were the ideal complementary couple. Ronnie would bring the crowds in, Reggie would fleece them. Ronnie would make their ‘name' for violence. Reggie would market it. When there was a serious fight they could still join in together.

It was now that Reggie started to be known as the ‘live wire' of the two. He was terrier-like in his eagerness to worry out cash from any situation. There were already certain dues ready for the taking. In the East End it had been taken for granted that the reigning ‘guv'nor of the manor' had his legitimate sources of income. Each week he could count on a few pounds from every betting shop in the district as insurance against lesser hooligans. If trouble did occur the guv'nor was expected to deal with it; it was the same with some pubs, cafes, and various tradesmen. The arrangement was usually informal; sometimes a loan, sometimes some infinitely extended credit. Anyone vulnerable to trouble was a potential source of income. Sometimes it needed tact to get it, but Reggie knew how to ask a careful question and never take no for an answer.

Minor protection was the bread-and-butter of villainy; there were far bigger pickings to be had from other criminals. With honest men there always comes a point when they will rather call in the police and take the consequences. Crooks can't. The reigning local villain has them at his mercy. Illicit bookmakers and unlicensed gambling clubs had always been fair game for a pension to the local guv'nor. Working methodically, Reggie made the rounds of all of them in Bethnal Green and Mile End and upped the contributions. It was the same with the local rackets that he heard about; and the twins were making sure they heard about most of them. The billiard hall was a good receiving ground for criminal information, a word from a fence, a tip-off from a taxi-driver, a telephone call from a barman. The twins would always pay well for any information they could use, and they had a sixth sense about what was going on in their district.

Mile End has a lot of thieves. Few of them are very good. A big haul is rare and any thief who has one tries to keep news of it to himself. This is hard. Others are usually involved and goods have to be disposed of. Somehow the
Kray twins always seemed to discover in the end; when they did, the thief would get an invitation to the billiard hall and it would usually be Reggie who discussed their percentage. Thieves are vulnerable, and they would usually pay up more or less what the twins demanded. Those who didn't finally wished they had.

‘You know who I met the other night?' said Reggie Kray to a small man with a squint, after losing a game of snooker to him at the billiard hall. The man was a successful fence from Shepherd's Bush. ‘Old so-and-so from Islington, asking if I wanted ten thousand quid's worth of forged fivers. Just shows how barmy people are. What could I do with all them snide fivers? Even if I could afford 'em, which I can't.'

‘Some people's like that, Reg. How much he want for 'em?'

‘Yeah. A right bloody nutter. Thirty bob I think.'

‘Thirty bob for a snide fiver? You do pick 'em, Reg boy. I'll say that for you. What're they like?'

‘Looked fine to me. But as you know that's not my game, and he said he was selling the lot. Three thousand quid, take it or leave it. Must think I'm rolling in it.'

‘He's off his chump, Reg. Stark staring. Still, there's one born every minute.'

They played another game of snooker, had a drink, and the man went back to Shepherd's Bush. Two days later, Reggie received an inquiry about forged £5 notes. It came from a friend of a friend who wanted Reggie to meet a man with a maroon Rover in a pub in Dalston. The man was brisk, well-spoken and wore a neatly trimmed moustache. After a couple of drinks he said he might be interested in some goods that Reggie had for sale. Reggie was non-committal. He said the goods weren't his, and he wasn't particularly interested in the idea.

The man became more enthusiastic. If these were quality goods, he would be very keen; naturally he'd have to see them first. Reggie said so would he. Finally they arranged
to meet again the next night at the Terminus Café in Mile End Road. Reggie would bring the man with the goods; if they both liked his work they would split the lot between them. Reggie would bring £1,500. If he were genuinely interested the man with the moustache should do the same.

There used to be a tall, lugubrious thief called Ozzie who was often around the billiard hall. He had been in prison so many times that his nerve had gone, but he was always glad to be of use to the twins, and the following night Reggie took him with him to the Terminus Café. The maroon Rover was parked outside; Reggie was soon introducing Ozzie to its owner as a master forger. Reggie called for tea and something to eat, paying with a fiver which was automatically accepted.

‘One of his?' asked the man with the moustache.

‘One of his,' said Reggie.

‘Any more I can see?'

Ozzie produced a roll of fivers from his back pocket. Examining them, the man said that he couldn't tell them from the real thing, which was hardly surprising as Reggie had drawn them just that afternoon from the Mile End branch of Barclays Bank.

Where were the rest of the notes that were for sale? In Ozzie's flat off the Commercial Road. Why not collect them straight away and settle the deal? Five minutes later the Rover was drawing up outside the tenement where Ozzie lived with a lady pickpocket from Stoke Newington. This was the crucial point of the operation. The man with the moustache opened the door and started to get out of the car.

‘No,' said Ozzie. ‘If you don't object, I'd rather bring them down to you. My dear wife knows nothing of my activities. I prefer to keep my business and my private life apart.'

‘Quite right,' said Reggie. The man closed the door, and Ozzie walked up the stairs to his flat. As soon as he was
there, he rang Limehouse Police Station, gave his address and asked them to send round a squad car as the man in the flat below was murdering his wife. Three minutes later he came down the stairs holding a solid-looking brown paper parcel.

Reggie had £1,500 in his hand, ready to pay. So had the man with the moustache. All that remained to do was to examine the parcel of fivers.

The string was stiff and tightly knotted. Inside the first parcel was another, also tightly tied with string. Reggie had nearly undone it when the squad car came from Limehouse, klaxon wailing, blue lights flashing.

‘Christ,' said Ozzie, ‘they've twigged. I'm off,' and shoved the parcel into the man's lap.

‘Don't go without your money,' shouted Reggie, giving him his money.

‘Here's mine,' said the man with the moustache, who had already got his car in gear.

‘Thanks,' shouted Ozzie. ‘See yer,' and the Rover hurtled off down the Commercial Road. By Aldgate Underground Reggie remembered an important appointment.

‘Sorry, I gotta go. But remember, I'm trusting you with my share of the notes.'

‘You know you can trust me, Reg.'

When the man with the moustache got back to his large house in Barnet and found that his parcel contained wads of neatly guillotined newspaper he was angry. But he should have had more sense than turn up at the billiard hall with a loaded shotgun, looking for Reggie Kray. Apart from the beating he received when he found him, he was also charged by the police later in the evening, when they picked him up, still clutching his loaded gun, from an alley in Whitechapel. He was fined £25 plus costs.

Reggie was philosophical about it all when he met Ozzie to collect his £1,500 and tipped the old thief £50 for his part in the affair. ‘Just goes to show. If people weren't
greedy and always thinking about getting something for nothing, Ozz, they wouldn't come unstuck.'

There were old-style cockney con tricks too: some of the ways Reggie Kray made money were as ancient and dishonest as the East End itself. There was the ‘tweedle', for instance, one of the classic cockney tricks in which the victim was sold a valuable ring at bargain price. The ring was genuine and the victim was actually encouraged to have it valued, but there always came a point, just before the money was handed over, where the con man on the tweedle switched the real ring for a replica. By the time the buyer had discovered his mistake, there was nothing he could do about it. Similarly with the ‘jargoons', except that here the jewellery sold was fake from the start and the seller had to rely on faster talking and a quicker sale.

Reggie had a way with him. People trusted him, and he could always pick up a few pounds when he needed them from the jargoons and the tweedle. But these were small-time rackets, and Reggie Kray had no real wish to be a con man. He knew he lacked the polish and the self-deception to reach the top of this particular profession. He and Ronnie were agreed that their future would be as robber barons of crime rather than as hard-worked criminals.

The 1955 Epsom Spring Meeting was a historic one for gangland and for the twins. Word had got round that the succession stakes of London villainy would shortly start as well and the twins felt a duty to be there to see what happened. Traditionally the Epsom races are an annual outing for the villains of London. Back in the days of ‘Derby' Sabini and his gang this was where they made their biggest haul of the year. Whichever gang controlled the leading bookmakers' pitches was automatically guaranteed a percentage of the take from every bookie on the course.

By the fifties crime had outgrown the race-gangs, but tradition lasted. Anyone who wanted to could still work out the form sheet for London crime from what went on during these few days. A smile or a brush-off would show who was rising or on the way out; a handshake make it clear that an old grudge was forgotten or a new alliance in the offing. Little went unnoticed. The year 1955 was an exceptional one for London's criminals, and at the Spring Meeting attention was particularly focused on two of them.

One was a thin-faced gentleman called Billy Hill. He was an ex-thief and had spent seventeen of his thirty-eight years in places of detention. The other was a big, bombastic man with a large cigar who called himself Jack ‘Spot'. He was Jewish and his real name Comer. As a young man he had fought against Mosley's black-shirts in the East End; since then he had organized his Upton Park Mob across many of the race-tracks in the country.