The Last Real Gangster Read online

  That’s Ronnie Knight with Barbara Windsor in the middle; he was partners with Mick in the A&R Club and I got on well with him. Barbara was lovely; I knew her through the twins and I was at the 1963 premiere of her film, Sparrows Can’t Sing. Charlie Kray was going with her for a while.

  We had a great club down Lambeth Walk in the early sixties, the Walk-In. I put the money up; Buster Edwards was running the bar; my George was manager; I was behind-the-scenes minder – making sure none of the fucking mugs took liberties, or took over the club as they used to in those days. I put Ronnie King on the door, the ex-fighter I always had on a job – I had him up in my casino as well, on security. He was very well spoken and well behaved.

  My sister-in-law Nellie was the barmaid. We had Jock the piano player, Bertie Blake singing, Roaring Twenties dress-up nights. It was successful; we had people coming from all over London. We kept it on time, because Kennington nick was right on top of us.

  It was in old warehouse-type premises. You entered via a shopfront before it went long and narrow. We had two floors upstairs, where there was a little SP going on, a bookmaking game. Joe Carter, an ex-lightweight out of Mitcham, was running that. It was like a family-run business, in a way.

  Then I get a visit from the local police to tell me there’ve been some complaints about people leaving of a night, making a noise, slamming car doors – you know how people can be when they’re drunk. The copper was Frank Williams.

  ‘Have a drink, Frank.’

  We had a chat. He was a commando during the war, captured prisoners and brought them back across the channel. There’s a photo of him carrying the British flag at Montecassino. I got on well with him. There was a kind of understanding – he never asked questions about anyone or anything. But it was coming to an end. He told me, ‘They want to object to the licence when it comes up.’ The club had a short lifespan.

  We knew we were going to lose the Walk-In club and we wanted to get insurance money out of it. We couldn’t burn the fucking place down – it was all concrete and solid. But my relation was an insurance assessor, so I got him down: ‘How can I make a bit of money out of it when we shut up shop?’

  ‘There’s not much you can do about it, is there, Fred?’

  No, there was nothing we could claim for. But one night Buster had an accident. He’d been drinking; he smashed the car and cut his head. He came on foot, covered in blood.

  We’d had enough of it, so we smashed the bloody club up – smashed the whole bar, the mirrors, the jukebox. Buster was shaking his head and spraying blood up the walls, over the furniture. We made out there was a disturbance and a fight, and claimed damages and loss of earnings till the club got fixed. We got out with a few quid, but that was the end of the club.

  That’s how I got to know Frank Williams. He went from there to the Flying Squad – ‘the Sweeney’. Frank was in touch with Albert Connell, the bookmaker, and all those people, so he could put feelers out if I was in trouble. Then it finished up that Jimmy Hussey and Gordon Goody got involved with Buster, and it led to the Great Train Robbery.

  Before that, we had a go at a Lloyds Bank van in Bow, in December 1961. It was one that got away. Two guys reversed a flat-back lorry into the bank van – one of those little V8 vans with a reinforced back axle. They didn’t expect that at all. Then we came up the side of the van with another lorry that had a tarpaulin sheet where we’d cut out the side of it. We put a hook and chain through the doors and windows and drove off. The doors fell open in midair and exposed the money from the tellers in those big, red-leather cricket bags. They were all lined up, full of cash, from the power companies. It would have been a good bit of work. But there was a City copper, Ted Buckle, and his dog Flash, who jumped out onto the street.

  One of our firm was shot through the head. Two guards shot through the windows, but we had no guns; they had the shooters. An MP later got up in Parliament and asked how many of these vans were driving round London with armed guards.

  ‘Is this New York or Chicago?’

  (It turned out that the two guards from Coutts, the Queen’s bank, went for target practice every week.)

  When the chain went, Mickey Regan put his arm in and they shot him too. The bullet went through his arm but he still hooked up the van. When we pulled it forward the two doors fell right off. Alf Gerard and I tried to climb in the back but, once they started shooting, one of our firm was crawling on his hands and knees with a bullet wound that went into his head at the base of the skull and out the other side.

  ‘Are we all ’ere?’

  ‘No, where’s Bill and Jerry?’

  We looked down the side of the bank van to our long-backed lorry. Twenty-five yards further down there’s Billy Ambrose and Jerry Callaghan fighting with the copper. Jerry’s swinging on his arm and Bill’s got the dog hanging on his arsehole. The three of them were fighting in the road.

  I grabbed a stick and jumped out the van. The guards in the back said, ‘They’re coming back! They’re coming back!’ and started shooting again.

  It’s funny how you do things in the heat of the moment. I ran down the side of the van. They’re further down the road now, the three of them struggling and spinning around, the dog still hanging on his arse. I’ve whacked the dog and he’s legged it. I said to the copper, ‘Let ’em go!’ He’s got one under his arm – he was a big, strong bastard, you’ve got to give him credit. He’s got hold of another stick and Jerry’s swinging on it.

  ‘You bastard! You bastard!’ the copper’s saying to me.

  ‘Let ’em fuckin’ go!’

  Whack! I gave him another and another. He let them go. Now they were all getting excited in the van again because they thought we were coming back again.

  The bullet had entered my friend’s ear, ricocheted around the base of his skull and come out the other side. He was nearly brown bread (rhyming slang: brown bread = dead; hence the soubriquet ‘Brown Bread Fred’, i.e. mess with Fred and you’re dead). He had searing red-hot lead tearing through his head and they thought he might get meningitis, so the old doctor pumped him up with antibiotics and drained the wound through the night, then got him to King’s College Hospital on Denmark Hill. They had a theatre for brain operations. Maureen, my wife, was up with him all night – he had a bit of a bad turn, not so much from the injury as because he could have got plenty of bird just for being on the scene. But he’s about today. He survived to enjoy his life ever since.

  There was a big scream about the Battle of Bow: 150 grand on board. It was a big one for that time. We’d have got the prize if not for the guns used by the bank tellers. Just before the Train Robbery, in May 1963, I robbed forty bars of gold. I buried them in the country. I was going to leave that for a year before I surfaced, because I had the pub and all the coppers were going down the cellar: ‘Got any gold bars down ’ere, Fred?’

  People were coming to me: ‘Oh, Fred, I can buy that gold! Can you come and give me a bit of credibility?’

  ‘Yeah, sure, I’ll come with you.’ I know it’s bollocks because I’m the one who’s got it put down. I’m not walking round, going, ‘Who wants to buy this?’

  There was only one bar that went out on the market, and that was because Tommy my mate had no money. He was brought on the firm because Alf and Ronnie were in the nick; Mick and Big George had gone into business together and were giving it a rest, so I had to make up the firm.

  Tommy sold his one bar to a man named Tony Maffia. He was murdered by a man named Jewell, from up north. Maffia was a buyer of tom. He got him out in the car on a moody one of selling some jewellery – ‘Bring some money with ya’ – and shot him in the head to nick the money off him. He was charged with the murder. When they went to investigate Tony Maffia, they found a safety deposit box and, lo and behold, there’s a bar of gold. I never even knew who Tommy had sold it to. He said he wasn’t going to market it, so there was no danger of it coming on top, but that was the only one they got back.

  This gold was so h
ot we had to put it down. Every fucking grass in London was trying to find out who’d got it and who was trying to sell it, and some of the tommers in Hatton Garden were working with the Old Bill. You couldn’t trust some of the bastards.

  I wanted to get it out of the country and get the right price for it, because each bar had its own quality with the South African rand stamp on it. You couldn’t damage it, you had to keep it how it was, because otherwise they’d have it assayed to see if it was pure gold or not – whereas this marking told you it was.

  So, I couldn’t risk what we had put down and go and get nicked on something else – there was a lot of fucking money there. It was the biggest gold robbery since Captain Blood sailed the Spanish Main – that’s what they put in the papers! After a while I got it out to Switzerland. Someone bought me out in Swiss francs and I put them in a Swiss bank account. That’s how it was sold, one bar at a time. I was in Geneva for months.

  (Later I’m in Brixton, nicked, and I’m in a cell next to this fucking geezer called Jewell. He was the one who shot Tony Maffia and got life for it.)

  FRANK KURYLO: I was in Cockney Joe Freeman’s office one afternoon in Mayfair, and Freddie came in because he knew him. Freddie had about four offices; this was after the Train Robbery. He didn’t notice me.

  Joe said, ‘That fella who was just here, do you know who he is?’

  I didn’t know his second name, so I said, ‘Yeah, it’s Freddie from Dulwich.’

  ‘Do you know what his people are doing?’

  ‘Well, I’m not going round with him …’

  Cockney Joe treated him like he was his own son. Charlie Kray was Freddie’s pal – he didn’t meet the twins until after about six or seven months of knowing Charlie. That’s how I used to see Freddie about.

  I knew he was at it, or rather, we thought he was at it, we thought we knew what he was doing. I know now, but back then nobody knew.

  FREDDIE: Later in 1963, Roger Cordrey, who did the signal on the Train Robbery, was arrested with the poor old darts player Bill Boal, who he used to have a drink with. The two of them had seen an advert in the newspaper for garages to let. They went down and put Cordrey’s Ford Prefect in there. But in the car he had a couple of holdalls. He pulled out the cash and paid in advance. They were all spending the money, which was reported to the police. It turned out that the woman who owned the garages was the widow of a police officer.

  That’s how Cordrey and Boal got arrested. When they got him in the police station Roger was wriggling about. They said, ‘What’s the matter with you?’ He said, ‘I’ve got to tell you … you’ll have to get a doctor. I’ve got a key up my arse.’

  He had an ignition key up there, so they got the doctor in. They take it back to open the motor and find a holdall with thirty grand in it. Then they find more money in the other car.

  ‘Where did you get it from?’

  ‘Oh, I can’t tell you that …’

  They go to his house and find more cash, so he’s in deeper shit. Boal had some money in his house too. So, they’ve got them banged up and the Flying Squad are coming down. They pulled them out the cell, giving them the usual treatment, a hard time right through the night.

  ‘Now, tell us who you got the money off of.’

  ‘A fella called Fred.’

  ‘Where did he give it to ya?’

  ‘At the Brighton races.’

  ‘What’s his other name?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that, I’ll get topped.’

  Nice statement. But from then on everything went pear-shaped. He was the first one to get nicked. Then Brian Field’s father (the crooked solicitor, who conspired on the Great Train Robbery) threw all the money out into the woods, when it hit the newspapers, but he left a little with his name on it at a hotel he stayed in at one time with his wife.

  After the Train Robbery, I did the phone-box business – left fifty grand with ten grand on top for Albert Connell, on a separate little parcel wrapped up. But then Superintendent Tommy Butler got in the car with the person who was meant to be getting the money from the phone box and Detective Constable Frank Williams, so they couldn’t go to pick it up.

  ‘We’ve got to go to arrest Jimmy White,’ he said.

  ‘We’ve got to pick some money up.’

  ‘No, that’s all bollocks, that won’t be there!’

  But Williams and his little firm knew it was good information – there was going to be some money from the Train Robbery.

  Tommy Wisbey could have walked at that point but the silly bastard wouldn’t stand for it. Tommy had left a thumbprint at Leatherslade Farm, the Train Robbers’ HQ.

  ‘I’ve got two alibi witnesses.’

  One was Jimmy Kensit, Patsy’s dad – he was a pickpocket – and the other was a publican in East Street market, near Walworth Road. The Old Bill went to see them and they rolled over straightaway, said they were approached to give a false alibi.

  If Wisbey could have pulled out thirty grand he might have walked from a thirty-year sentence. I’ll never forgive him for that. I was close to him and his family.

  ‘I’m trying to get you out of trouble ’ere,’ I said.

  I was trying to talk to him in a lift, knowing there were probably cameras on me.

  ‘I’ll take me chances!’ he told me.

  ‘Take your chances? You’re going to get a load of bird. What’s the matter with you?’

  I tried to impress his situation upon him but he wouldn’t have it, so he got his thirty years. I was just trying to help him out.

  There was nowhere else to drink in those times when the pubs closed halfway through the day. If you went over to Ludgate Circus you could drink for another half-hour. People used to drive over the bridge just for that when they had the flavour.

  So, there’s a gap here, we’ve got to do something about this. There were derelict buildings that were going to be pulled down and empty shops waiting for their leases to run out before they demolished them. We got a couple of those places, knocked the wall down in between and made more room, put a bar in the corner and made a ‘Shush club’ – after the Schweppes advert when they used to go, ‘Shh …’

  Everyone used to come over when the pubs closed at lunchtime, had a drink and went back to the pubs in the evening if they wanted to be out all day; it filled the day. But they often didn’t leave our Shush club because they enjoyed themselves so much – we used to have singers, music, dancing. It was like a speakeasy. We named it after the Humphrey Bogart film Casablanca. As we closed one down or it got raided, we’d open up somewhere else, where the demolition people were pulling houses down. Hence the club got called Casablanca 1, 2, 3 …

  ‘You’ve gotta get out now,’ they’d say, ‘we gotta pull the fucking house down! We’re holding it up as best we can …’

  They’d come in and pull the floorboards up; people would just tread over the nails and the gaps. They were jumping over fucking trenches to get into the house! Women were pulling up their skirts between their legs to jump over. We’d say, ‘We’ve still got a lot of stock to sell, you’ll have to give us another week.’

  We had one in a transport yard with charabancs, in Peckham. The coachmaster would say, ‘Now, look, if we get raided then the coach has broken down. We’d got all the booze on board so the twenty-five, thirty people are havin’ a drink in ’ere instead of goin’ down to Southend. It’s their day out, but it’s been ruined.’

  On the day we did get raided, he was standing there, pissed.

  ‘Give ’em the fuckin’ spiel for fuck’s sake!’

  But he was too drunk to say anything.

  They nicked all the booze – the cossers used to take it all back to the station and have a piss-up. But it wasn’t that serious a deal, you were just drinking out of hours.

  The Shush clubs ran for a long time – all the way up until when they legalised drinking through the day. They were great little places and there was not one bit of trouble in any of them – but, then again, they k
new they were mine and George’s. What I didn’t know was that George had been having an affair with Pat, one of six girls who used to come in on Friday nights. I never knew anything about it, but my sister-in-law Nellie sussed it out and told Maureen. George was going away a bit early when I was closing up; he’d do the till and disappear.

  Then all of a sudden, in December 1964, I get a message from one of his daughters that George is in St Thomas’s Hospital and he’s been shot.

  I go up to the hospital and there’s coppers everywhere. When I said I was there to see my brother, they said they might have to take his leg off from the hip because it had hit the femoral artery, just past the groin. They had to stop the bleeding and you could have put a bottle in the wound, it was that big. It had been done close up. He was in a bad way, his eyes were sunk in his head; there were big, dark rings and he looked fucking terrible.

  They left us alone and I whispered to him, ‘Give me a name, George.’

  He whispered, ‘Ginger Tom.’

  When George was having a meal with his wife and kids, he’d heard a knock at the door and gone to answer it. There was this guy standing there, asking for a fictitious person. George said, ‘I don’t know anyone of that name.’

  ‘Oh, okay, mate.’

  He shut the door but he thought, ‘I recognise him, I know him from somewhere.’

  I pieced it together. There was a bloke running car sites at the time who fitted the bill. ‘Yeah, that’s him. That’s Ginger Tom – Tommy Marks,’ I thought.