Bringing Down the Krays (17 page)

I knew I was living on borrowed time. I was terrified for myself, and was even more frightened for my family. Someone at Scotland Yard was feeding everything I said straight back to the Krays.

I asked Pogue the next time I saw him how the hell this could be happening. Pogue said that ‘they’ were trying to stop it from happening – by which he must have meant the high-ups at the Yard – but he must have known who was leaking the information. Once more he told me to be very careful.

I said, ‘I will live a lot longer if you stop the leak. At least get some misinformation out. Tell a few lies. Pin it on someone else.’

I had already told the Yard about a very low-life character by the name of ‘Jack’ Frost – or ‘Frosty’ as he was known – who had told me once about a little girl he had raped and murdered. She was twelve. He’d buried the body in Epping Forest. Actually he had boasted about it.

As he was telling me he was getting so excited, like he was reliving the whole thing. I felt sick, but I had to look like I was interested. I told the Yard all of this and also about a man that Frosty said he had killed with an axe five years earlier. Now at
last I could see the Yard at work. Soon after they let a leak out from them saying that it was Frosty who was ‘Phillips’ the spy.

And now the pressure’s really on me. It’s not yet public knowledge that the famous Tommy Butler is on the Blind Beggar case but the Yard really needs a result.

Where are they living? I told Pogue that. Number 471 Lea Bridge Road – a flat above a barber’s shop. When’s the best time to nick them? I told them that too. There was a meet planned in two nights’ time.

‘We’re going to need to get John Alexander Barrie [alias Scotch Ian] as well,’ Pogue told me. I could only agree with that. It was vital for my survival to have all of the twins’ inner circle taken off the streets. All of them. And, although Alfie and David didn’t know it, it was the same for my brothers.

I got word to Butler where the twins were. I told the Yard when would be the best time to hit the gaff. I described the internal layout, the exit routes. There was a little alley at the back. I told Pogue in no uncertain times that they had better get it right. Nick the twins. Nick Scotch Ian. And keep them nicked.

Or else I really was a dead man.

You know what happened. It was in the papers. In fact it was the first time that anyone in the real world knew that the famous Tommy Butler was on the case. The coppers hit the place at 1.50 a.m. on 4 August 1966. They went in with ladders and sledgehammers in the middle of the night and rounded up everyone present. Ronnie and Scotch Ian were taken to Commercial Street Police Station, Reggie to Leyton nick with the others.

The identity parade later that morning was a farce. Ronnie refused to remove his horn-rimmed spectacles. It was all a big joke to him. They had briefs scuttling everywhere. The Blind Beggar barmaid failed to show altogether and the two witnesses who did turn up would not say anything except ‘maybe’ and ‘I’m not sure’.

Reggie, Ronnie and Scotch Ian got out the next day, 5 August. The press were tipped off and got down there pretty quick. I think it was at Vallance Road. It was ‘Read all about it, the Krays get away with it’, just like always. I’ve seen the cuttings. I’ve seen the photographs – they’re always being used – with that big floral wallpaper in Violet Kray’s front room. They must have been laughing their heads off.

‘The first we knew about [Cornell’s] death was when we read about it in the newspapers,’ Ronnie told the reporters. ‘Mr Butler came to see me – the police gave me sausage and mash for tea. I don’t know what they wanted to charge me with. It may have been murder, they didn’t tell me.’

‘Our mum’s getting distinctly worried about all this,’ Reggie said. ‘And today’s her birthday. So we’re going to have a little drink and cheer her up.’ How very nice. But no one was in a party mood. I certainly wasn’t when I heard about their release that morning. But I had to keep smiling.

The next day their boasting about getting away with it appears in the papers. Tommy Butler fucks it up. It’s all a big laugh.

But nobody’s laughing when we’re in private. Who’s the bleeding grass? How did the Old Bill know when and where to
turn them over? If I run they’ll know it’s me. So I have to go back in, to be loyal, dozy Bobby.

I was sitting down at a meet that day with the Firm and with Ronnie. Connie Whitehead looked into the room and said: ‘Phillips has been in touch again!’ He’d got that from some copper for sure. Frosty was in the room with us. He did not bat an eyelid – though of course, he didn’t know he was in the frame.

I was talking to Frosty at the time and staying in step with the conversation – but not letting Ronnie know I had heard what Connie had said. In fact I was absolutely terrified. Please God, don’t let me show how frightened I am. Let them think that Frosty is the informer.

Ronnie started glaring at each one of us in the room as I glanced over to him. I kept talking as if I had nothing to fear. Reggie caught my eye and leant over to me and said quietly that he wanted me to go with him on a meet the next day. I asked him what for? ‘You will see when we get there,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a nice drink tonight. We’ll go to Madge’s.’

If there was a time to run it was now. But they’d know – and wherever I managed to hide, Alfie and David would get it. They wouldn’t have a clue what was coming. ‘Sure, Reggie,’ I said. ‘Let’s go to Madge’s.’

CHAPTER 14

A WALK IN THE WOODS

IT WAS ALL
about getting things done as far as Reggie was concerned. That was how he was. The way he made it seem that day, he was just asking me very nicely if I could come and give him a hand doing some small bit of business that had to be got out of the way. We’d have to do it quickly and do it quietly. Just the two of us – Reggie Kray and Bobby Teale, the best of friends just as we’d always been.

We’d had a few drinks the night before round at Madge’s just as we’d agreed. Reggie had been very direct: have an early night and be round at Vallance Road at nine the next morning as we would have some running around to do, he had told me. I think that he and Ronnie had fixed it after I left the meet with Frosty. In fact I’m sure of it. I think that Ronnie told Reggie it was his turn to get something going. It was time to get rid of me. Perhaps I was Phillips, perhaps not – they couldn’t be sure. But either way I was getting too close to Reg and Ron wanted me out of the way. He’d leave Reggie to decide how to do it. Somewhere quiet – somewhere out of town.

It was Sunday 7 August. I got to Vallance Road a few minutes late and I started to open the front door to walk right in as we always did, but it was locked. So, I knocked. Reggie came to the door with only his trousers on and said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I thought it was open.’

I closed the door behind me and asked Reggie, ‘Should I lock it?’ Reggie said, ‘No, Connie Whitehead is on his way.’ I followed Reggie down the narrow passage to the kitchen and his mum, Violet, asked me: ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘thank you.’ I sat in the kitchen and Reggie added, ‘I won’t be long,’ and he went to finish getting dressed.

There seemed to be no one else in, or at least no one awake and up in the house. Violet Kray was fussing around, putting shirts on hangers. She did a lot of that. ‘Reg,’ she said, ‘let me make you a nice breakfast,’ and turning to me she started chatting away, saying, ‘Bobby, you need some breakfast,’ and ‘How’s Nell, your lovely mum, doing?’

‘OK,’ I said, as I looked over to Reggie, who had just walked back into the room, to see if I could get a read as to whether we really would be staying for breakfast.

‘No Mum,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a meet to go on. We don’t have time,’ and out the door we went, with me going first. All the while we were looking all over the place as usual just in case anyone was going to make a hit on us.

It may sound crazy but I was never afraid of Reggie – or Ronnie – or any of the rest of the Firm. And if you think about it, you will see that if I did show any fear they would have picked up on it. Perhaps that is what it really was all about that summer morning. I think I knew that at the time.

So I just had to act like not a thing was going on. It was just the two of us. No muscle from the Firm. It was like we could sort things out with a little chat. There was a lot to sort out. Reggie strode out and walked very fast to the Jag parked outside.

I tried to get a read on whether he was carrying a gun. He didn’t always carry one. When he did he would have it in his outside jacket pocket or stuffed in his waistband. I couldn’t tell. Although normally I carried a gun myself (at least since I’d swapped running a holiday boat hire for being a villain), I wasn’t tooled up today. I got in the car. It was a brand-new Mk II Jaguar – dark grey, with wire wheels, leather upholstery and a walnut dashboard.

‘So where are we going, Reggie?’ I asked casually. Reggie started the car and took off at great speed with me in the front passenger seat with the car door still not closed. He was always a bit like that. ‘You’ll see when we get there,’ he replied. I asked him why. ‘You will see when we get there,’ he said again.

Why should I be frightened of Reggie Kray? Since we had first met a year earlier, Reggie had become my closest friend. He had even paid the solicitor’s fee in my divorce. Ronnie was the crazy one. Ronnie was the only one to be a killer – as far as anyone knew – but it was no secret that he was leaning on his brother to do the same. I had once heard Ronnie say: ‘You must do someone because when you do there is a rush like you would never believe.’ It seemed to be just for the fun of it.

Ronnie hated anyone who got close to Reggie. But in his mad way it was important to Ronnie that Reggie did the killing. That he should kill me. I suppose it was to prove that he,
Ronnie, had been right about me all along – and that now Reggie thought the same.

If Ronnie had known for certain I was the spy for Scotland Yard he would have set the whole Firm to bring me in and then taken his pleasure in my slow death by torture to find out what information I had passed and to who. I am sure he suspected, but he could not be sure, especially with the misinformation about Jack Frost starting to surface and clouding the issue. Perhaps it was easier to just get me out of the way. And it was Reggie’s turn.

I needed to work out if Reggie was on a downer or upper pill. I was getting good at reading him, but I would never let him know. So I would just jabber on to see how he responded. I would talk about the night before or something to make him think my mind was somewhere else.

We drove through north-east London. The day was cloudy, a bit chilly for August. I looked out the window and thought it might be the last time I would see ordinary people just going about their business. Going to church, waiting for the pubs to open, going out on a Sunday. I envied their lives. I noticed the people glancing at Reggie and me as we glided past, dressed to the nines in this flash car. They must have thought we were millionaires on our way to some business meeting. Instead it looked like I was going to my death.

I knew where we were heading. We were out of Hackney, out of the East End – into the neat suburbs. It was Epping Forest where we were going, right on the edge of the big city. It was where I had run away with my brothers as a boy. You could hide anything there.

All the while as we were driving my mind was whirring away frantically, trying to work out what to do. At one stage I thought I would jump from the car if Reggie slowed down. But he always drove like a lunatic. I mean a raving lunatic. So jumping was out of the question – and anyway he would just run me over. It’s funny, but as we drove, I could see how the thing would play out as if it wasn’t happening to me but to somebody else. It was like watching a film. It was as if I could see Reggie driving the car over me and backing up over me just to make sure I was dead.

We got to the forest. The sky was overcast. There was absolutely no one around. No families, no picnickers. When we got to a spot in the middle of the woods, Reggie stopped the car and turned to me and said, ‘Get out and give me a hand.’

So I got out. Turns out Reggie did have a gun. Of course he did. He threw a bottle in the air and started shooting at it. He told me to go and look for a bag in the trees with some money in it. It was evidently a ploy to get me in front of him and make me an easy target. I ran into the trees but he was not shooting at me at first. Then he asked me to pick up the bottle and hold it as a target. I kept running. Then he’s firing in my direction and he’s shouting, ‘Stand still!’ The gun may have been a .22 because it was not very loud. Or he may have had a silencer.

I got to the other side of the car and thought I would use the car to hide behind. By now it appeared to me that Reggie was pretty high on pills.

He started screaming at me: ‘I promise not to hit you! I just need target practice. You know I’m your best friend…’

He’d stopped shooting now. Perhaps he needed to reload. He couldn’t see me but kept on yelling for me to come back. ‘Come on out, we’ve got to go.’ I knew then for certain that he was going to kill me.

I didn’t trust him not to trick me. He started the car and let it run but I still didn’t come out of hiding. Finally he shouted, ‘I’m leaving!’ and I heard the noise of the engine fade away. I waited about a half hour because I thought he might have driven a few feet away and walked back to wait for me to come out of the woods. When I did leave the forest, I circled around and came out at a different point on the road. My knees were shaking.

I thought I’d had it, whatever kind of escape I might have just pulled off. I knew that wouldn’t be the end of it. It wasn’t even a warning off. They must have known it was me. Tell me I could not still be getting away with it. My friend Reggie Kray had been sent by Ronnie to take me out to the forest and kill me. Then he couldn’t shoot straight. There would be no second chance.

I thought seriously of contacting Pogue at the Yard and trying to get some sort of immediate protection. But right then I decided not to. I knew that all the information I was giving was getting back to the Krays somehow. So I realised that if this story got back to them and no one else knew about the Epping Forest episode but me and Reggie, I would have been exposed as the real ‘Phillips’.