The Last Real Gangster Page 11

  He earned a fortune.

  The wicked bastard who killed him has never paid the price, although his son, Billy, was found guilty of defrauding £2 million from his father’s company (but not of hiring a hitman with intent to murder his father).

  This is my first apartment in Alcazaba; I ended up owning four, including a luxurious penthouse split over two levels where I lived. Alcazaba was a top-class complex and I had amazing views out over the port to the sea.

  I was one of the first to go to the ‘Costa Del Crime’ – in 1982, after I’d returned from the States and got a two-year suspended sentence in the Dukie Osbourne/Eddie Watkins case (see Part One). There’s my George on the right, when he was working with me, then Ronnie Everett, Johnny Mason and me. We were three of the ‘Costa Del Sol Five’ – the others being Ronnie Knight, who’d been nicked at this point, and Clifford Saxe.

  They brought it all on top, the Knight family; they were being kept under observation in their pub, The Fox, before the Security Express robbery (at Shoreditch in the East End in 1983), and the fucking garage owner they went round to – John Horsley, who rolled over straightaway – had nowhere to put the money so he put it in his father-in-law’s council flat, in a ‘secret cupboard’.

  My name never came into it at all until I was in the El Alcazaba complex in Puerto Banus, Marbella, buying a flat there. Once I settle in, Ronnie Knight comes and moves in – he got a villa up the fucking road! Admittedly, it’s down in Fuengirola, but he’s coming down to Puerto Banús, getting drunk and driving home. He came off the road and a tree stopped him and his wife Sue going down the canyon; they’d have been dead otherwise. It was lucky – they got out the car and dropped fifteen feet to the fucking ground!

  So then they come and tell me that they’ve bought this flat at the same place where I’m staying. The idea was to keep separate from each other, all along the coast – with Ronnie, Johnny Mason and myself split up, though Mason was next to Everett’s place. But Johnny Knight had been arrested, so we didn’t want Ronnie living next to me in the Alcazaba.

  They came to interview Carlos, the manager of the Alcazaba complex: ‘Does Johnny Knight own any property in your development here?’

  ‘No, no, no, no!’ he said, so they put all their papers back into their briefcase. They go to the door and he says, ‘But Señor Ronnie Knight has an apartment here.’

  ‘Oh, has he?’

  So, they turn round and come back and sit down again.

  ‘And his big friend, Freddie.’

  ‘Freddie? Which Freddie’s that?’

  ‘Señor Foreman.’

  ‘Oh, that Freddie!’

  It was the first time my name came into the frame – over him buying a fucking apartment where I was living! This was a long time after the robbery.

  That copper is Fred Cutts. He now works down at the Peacock Gym in Silvertown for Tony and Jacky Bowers, doing a bit of charity work with them. But the tactics of my arrest, in July 1989, were totally illegal. They swept me up as I came out of the Alcazaba to buy a newspaper. I was just walking in my slip-ons to get some groceries and a bit of breakfast. They pounced on me, got me down to Marbella nick; banged me up downstairs. I wanted my lawyer to come down but they never got him for me. They made out he was there so I’d come out of the cell. Instead they got an interpreter down who I’d sold an apartment to.

  ‘Mr Foreman,’ he said, ‘your lawyer is upstairs.’

  Fucking lying bastard! When I went up, I realised it was on top. I was hanging on the stairs, scuffling and struggling. They put the cuffs on me, got me out into the car. I tried to crash the car on the motorway – I knew they were taking me to the airport.

  ‘If you’re going to deport me, let me go over to Tangiers, not back to Heathrow!’

  But they got me there. As they got me out of the car, I ran round to the departure lounge, over the barrier. They recaptured me and brought me back. We went from the top to the bottom of the stairs, getting on the plane. They got the right needle and were punching me in the bollocks, giving me a hard time.

  When I was brought back, the judge said, ‘Well, he’s here now.’

  But my lawyers filed a motion saying I shouldn’t be standing there because I’d been kidnapped off the street, brought back without a passport. My lawyers in Madrid were never notified. I’d won a case there: I was a residencio, paying two grand a year to be a resident.

  The two coppers who came to give evidence against me swore my life away. I supposedly told them that I’d taken part in the robbery and, not only that, but I’d told them Señor Ronnie Knight took part too – that introduced all the evidence from the earlier Knight brothers’ trials.

  They came and saw me in Brixton and issued this confiscation order for £7 million plus interest. It’s ridiculous, but they did it on the others as well, though they’d never get anything back. They tracked down 360 grand of mine on a paper trail from different banks; they traced it from Spain way backwards and managed to come up with that figure.

  When Horsley was arrested in 1984, written inside the cupboard door with a crayon they found a similar figure – 300 and something grand, which was deducted from where Horsley had been taking the money out. When they arrested me, they brought this fucking door into the court and stuck it in front of me in the box. All the time they were referring to the similarity to the amount of money they’d traced of mine.

  This was how they played their hand – they had no evidence on the robbery charge at all, so it was a backup charge of handling the money. It took them months to find the case of a Chinese guy in Hong Kong who’d been charged with handling. That was the precedent; that they didn’t necessarily have to prove the money had come from that particular robbery. Because Hong Kong was under British rule they could use it. My case is now apparently in Archbold News, the legal bible, instead of the Chinaman’s.

  They never even proved it was money from Security Express. There was no evidence to say it wasn’t from another robbery, or a drug deal or fraud. I’d also sold the house in Dulwich Village and betting shops to move to Spain; I’d sold a house in America, which I’d had built when I was on my toes there, after Scatty Eddie Watkins shot the customs officer dead during the robbery.

  (I’d also left a council flat on the Bonhomie Estate, with Jamie and Gregory living in it – but they’d never paid the rent. I’d left sixty pool-table sites but they were too lazy to get out of bed in the morning to empty moneyboxes. My partner Teddy Dennis had to do it all himself. Fucking hell, I worked hard to get that round together! They blew it up in the air, but that’s kids for you.)

  The judge gave me a fucking nine-stretch for Security Express, but the jury were shocked; they gasped.

  ‘Where’s the beach?’ – ironic, eh? I was in Full Sutton prison for a few years until I got down to Maidstone. I was up at Full Sutton with Eddie Richardson, who was painting a portrait of Lord Longford all the time I was there. I had a visit from a probation officer. I’m only sitting there a few minutes talking when Longford comes over to my table and says to the officer, ‘I want to go home now, can you take me home?’ because he’d given him a lift there.

  So, I said to him, ‘Do you mind? We were talking business.’ I was trying to get a bit of parole or a transfer down to London because it took visitors all day long to get there. I coated Longford off and told him to piss off out of it.

  I went from Full Sutton to Maidstone, from Maidstone to Spring Hill, from Spring Hill to Latchmere. I did a good sixstretch. I think I was on home leave from Maidstone when I met Frank Kurylo and Ian Atkinson (left and right). I knew Frank from way back when he was a minder at Danny La Rue’s club. He knew more about me than the average person and considered it was a story worth telling. The twins had already done two or three books, and you were getting all the different stories coming out. But of course I was always lurking behind the scenes, popping up here and there.

  He knew the SP of it, and the underworld of London knew I was always planning
things – and what they didn’t know they suspected. He and Ian gave me ten grand upfront for my 1997 autobiography, Respect. Random House took up the deal and earned well out of it. It was funny – I was on a plane later on, opened this magazine and there were chapters of my book in there.

  FRANK: Freddie used to come in Danny La Rue’s club; he was a regular. I love Freddie. He was a villain, he was the main man, but I used to be a bit wary of him. I’d heard stories of how he’d done this and done that, and I used to call him ‘Mr Foreman’.

  Later, I saw him in Spain when he had to go there for seven years. I had a pal of mine who was there for twenty-odd years, a right good singer who had a couple of clubs there. I used to see Freddie in Lloyd’s nightclub and restaurant, and I’d just nod.

  Then I got to know an actress called Helen Keating, who was in London’s Burning, and I met a girl called June, who had a big house next to Fred’s. They both knew him.

  Then he got nicked and I got to know him to really talk to when he was in prison. I got a letter from someone who said, ‘You’ve got to get hold of Freddie, he wants to talk to you.’

  So, when I gave him my address I said, ‘Do you want to do a book?’

  There was this millionaire in Leeds called Ian Atkinson, who told me once, ‘I want to do a book on the Krays – d’you know enough to do a book?’

  I said, ‘I’ve been there, I could finance it, but this is Freddie Foreman.’

  ‘D’you know him?’

  So, I said, ‘Yeah.’ I told a lie because I didn’t really know him that well.

  Then, a couple of weeks later, he got home leave. We were writing letters to each other, so I met him in the hotel near Marlborough Road station. So, I put it to him: Atkinson wanted to give Freddie fifty grand!

  At that time nobody knew much about Fred because he kept everything to himself. Freddie’s an extrovert now, but when he was a villain you couldn’t talk to him. One fella got a glass eye through him – he’d frighten you to death.

  We got the publisher Random Century and a fella called John Lisners. Atkinson was going to give another ten grand to Lisners for writing it. ‘But, before this goes any further, before you sign a contract, what’s my whack?’

  ‘Five grand,’ he said.

  ‘Bollocks!’ I said. ‘I want twenty grand or you won’t get Fred.’

  He promised me twenty grand in four lumps, over a year.

  Cut a long story short, I’d got cancer by then. I was in bed, about eight and a half stone and no hair. I’d fallen out with Atkinson by this time – he tried to fuck me over the last five grand. He wasn’t coming forward because he thought I was going to die.

  Atkinson got shot to pieces. I got arrested; they’d done the fucker and the fella had used my name – ‘This is for Frank Kurylo’ – as he shot his fucking hand off!

  ‘’Ow could I ’ave done anything? I’ve got no ’air, I’m sick all the time, I’ve been really poorly for a year!’ I said.

  ‘Oh, but you organised it!’

  Everybody’s ringing up, saying, ‘I’m sorry Frank’s dead.’ Then three years later I had another operation to get some stuff out, and I’m sound. Even the doctor said, ‘Fucking hell, I can’t believe you’re living!’

  All of a sudden Atkinson’s dead; all the people who think I’m going to die are dead before me and I’m still here. He died of asbestosis from a big factory he used to work in when he was young. Fifty years later it worked on him and killed him.

  There’s story upon story, upon story, but I got really pally with Fred and we’ve been pally ever since.

  FREDDIE: This was my book launch for Respect, at the Café Royal, London. Roy Shaw (overleaf, right, with Alfie Hutchinson and me) was a great character. You never knew, when you gave him a drink, whether he was going to eat the glass. He used to munch ’em up! It can’t have done him much good in later life, though. He was the original guvnor in the unlicensed boxing game – he beat Lenny McLean the first time around.

  At one of those bouts I had a row with the Nashes. I knocked Tilley, their top henchman on the firm, spark out. They were after my brother-in-law, Freddie Puttnam – he had a row with Roy Nash outside the A&R Club. So, they picked that time to sort Freddie out, at the boxing show when Roy was fighting. We’re all mates now, though.

  I haven’t known Alfie so long, only since I came home last time in the mid-1990s, after the Security Express stretch. But he’s a lovely little fella – a good friend of Roy’s and an ex-fighter.

  I’ve known Alex Steene, the boxing promoter, for years. I could have gone backstage to meet Sinatra at the Palladium. I’d just come out of that ten-stretch for Jack the Hat and Alex came running out to my car: ‘Come on, Fred, I’ll take you back!’ But I’d had a drink in the bar with Jimmy Quill (below, with his wife Chris) from The Blind Beggar and Bobby Moore, who Jim was a great friend of – they opened up Morrows, the club in Stratford, together.

  Ronnie Kray took a liberty when he shot George Cornell in The Blind Beggar. I said, ‘You shouldn’t have done that to Jim, that’s his front room. The man’s family is upstairs.’ And they were putting bullets through the fucking floor! Ronnie was all sheepish, but I knew Georgie Cornell and he wasn’t a bad fella. I knew his wife too – Olive Hutton, from south London. Ian Barrie fired a shot into the ceiling and Ronnie fired a shot into Cornell’s head. The jukebox jumped and got stuck on the line, ‘The sun ain’t gonna shine any more …’

  Bruce Reynolds and me were teenaged mates. His Autobiography of a Thief came out before my Respect. But Bruce was Bruce – he got me looking at another fucking train after that one, down at Woking!

  It was years later, after he’d been released. He came out in his army battledress. I’d gone to the Army Stores to get myself a duffle coat and some boots because we had to go into the woods at night to watch the train come into the station.

  It came along on a trolley, but there was security all the way along the platform. It was the early hours of the morning – same old thing, but those trains are coming in from all over the country. I knew about them anyway: they were coming into London and running up into King Edward Building. I was going to have them up in town as they unloaded.

  But you couldn’t have had it in Woking. I said, ‘Look up in the hills’ – there were car lights flashing on and off, there were police every-fucking-where! They were surrounding the whole area when that train came into that isolated little station. It was deathly quiet, nothing happening, and they came along the platform with an open trolley with all the sacks on it. That was the money going on board – but I knew that, it was happening all over the place.

  In 1997, I took some money and a film crew over to Biggsy. I thought I’d lift him over the wall, just as a joke. I only knew him through getting him out of the country, getting his passports for him, getting him down into Belgium and Paris. Then he went on that little journey. I got a message later to say he needed another passport – he went to Brazil on Ronnie King’s.

  This documentary was to earn him money because he was skint. Biggsy got five grand for doing a little something. He could live cheaply for fucking months on that; he had a nice little place with a swimming pool.

  I always fancied going to Rio and seeing what it was like. This part of Brazil had had the old trams running up the street but they’d all stopped. It was in a state of decay, though it’d seen much better times – the apartments were beautiful, but run down.

  Tony Lambrianou (right – seen with Joey Pyle on the left and EastEnders actress Gillian Taylforth) was on me because I got him money for a book (Getting It Straight: Villains Talking) that the late Carol Clerk did with us.

  The photographer came over from New York to take the cover photo in pink shirts – we had a load-up with the shirts and ties. We got about thirty grand – big money, but the police objected to us getting paid for it and there was a big scream in the paper.

  Every time he was talking about something with Carol, I said, ‘Tony, you got that wron
g, that’s not how it happened.’ He wasn’t there – I was there, I know what happened, so let’s get it straight, for fuck’s sake!

  It was while I was living in Shoot-Up Hill that she’d come in my kitchen and work on it. We’d have a bottle of wine. She liked a lager, Carol; she could put ’em away – she’d match a man.

  During that time Martin Fido came out with The Krays: Unfinished Business – and that book had all the fucking statements that Tony and Chrissie Lambrianou, Ronnie Bender and these two croupiers had made about Jack McVitie’s murder. Tony had sworn that he never – they stayed shtum, him and his brother. They never said anything.

  But it came out that they’d made the statements after the trial, but prior to the appeals because Nipper Read and Frank Cater went into Wandsworth late at night. They dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s. That fucked us on our appeal, Charlie and me. We would have got out because all the lawyers said there was no evidence at all to substantiate what happened.

  John Pearson wrote a book on Wilf Pine (overleaf, left, with Charlie’s girlfriend, Diane) called One of the Family: The Englishman and the Mafia, about how he befriended the Pagano family in New York. They used to come over here and drink with me. Wilf worked with Big Albert Chapman; he started off as a tour manager for Black Sabbath.

  The week before Charlie Kray (right) died, Wilf said to me, ‘You better get down ’ere, Fred, he’s very ill.’ It’d be the same before Reggie kicked the bucket – Wilf got us down there.