Wannabe in My Gang? (10 page)

A Scotland Yard intelligence officer was quoted at the time as saying: ‘Blackmore had a drugs bust up with Wilson and had him rubbed out. They lived by the gun and they died by the gun.’ John Masterson was a friend of Blackmore and attended his funeral at Benchley Gardens Crematorium in south-east London. John had known Blackmore well and told me there was going to be a lot of shit over his death. ‘Reprisals,’ he said, ‘are a certainty.’

Alan Smith, the man who had ‘survived’ Lambrianou’s ‘hammer attack’ with me, was also a friend of John, having met him on visits to Ronnie. When Alan came down to London, more often than not he would stay at John’s house in Peckham and we would all meet up for a drink. On one such visit, John was telling Alan and me about the tabloid newspaper that had wanted to set up his friend Lord Longford.

There was a general discussion about the way certain sections of the media behave and somebody said jokingly, ‘Well, why don’t we try to get one over on them?’ Because we had all taken a drink, we were laughing at the very thought of it, but soon we began to kick ideas around.

John was a good friend of the infamous gangster ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser, who had recently been shot in the head outside Turnmills nightclub in Clerkenwell, central London. We talked about how Fraser had survived, although his relative David Brindle had not been so lucky. In a separate incident, two gunman opened fire on Brindle, killing him and an innocent bystander, Stanley Silk, in The Bell public house, Walworth, south London. The media seized upon the recent upsurge in shootings, declaring a gangland war had broken out. Overnight, all gun-related crime across London was being linked by the most dubious of threads.

Any tourists on a visit to London who read the newspapers would have thought they were in Beirut. According to the media, a similar war had broken out in Glasgow and soon the shootings north of the border and those in London were linked in the press.

Both Alan and John were Scottish and so the conversation turned to the recent murder of fellow Scot, Arthur Thompson junior. During the 1960s, his father, Arthur Thompson senior, controlled Glasgow in much the same way the Krays controlled London. Arthur senior had ruled Glasgow with an iron fist and was a trusted friend of both Ronnie and Reggie Kray. Arthur junior, or ‘Fat Boy’ as he was known, had been serving a prison sentence for supplying drugs before being gunned down outside his house in Glasgow whilst on weekend home leave. Detectives believed that a London hit-man had carried out the shooting. Hours before Fat Boy’s funeral, Joe ‘Bananas’ Hanlon and Bobbie Glover, two men suspected of his murder, were shot dead and their bodies left slumped in a car on the Thompson funeral route.

A senior London detective was quoted in the press at the time as saying:

Things in the underworld are out of control. These are drug wars, plain and simple. The Glasgow mobs are doing business with the London gangs.

We are trying to find the killers but these are all professional hard men who have learned how to make sure we can’t get the evidence we need. Three things are common to the professional murders in London and Glasgow: all the killers and their victims are connected by big-time crime, they are all involved in the drug business and there have been no arrests.

After discussing the press reports and consuming vast amounts of alcohol, we came up with the idea that John, who was known in Glasgow and London for his underworld contacts, would go missing.

The press would be told that Scottish villains who wanted to know who had carried out murders in the recent turf wars had abducted him. John would then suddenly ‘be released’ by his ‘captors’ and sell his dramatic story to the press for several thousand pounds. We were all laughing about it but nobody was really taking it seriously. The following day, we discussed it again and agreed that with the media currently desperate for gangland stories, John could probably get £10,000 if he managed to make his abduction story dramatic enough. It was less risky than committing a crime – the scam wouldn’t harm anybody and the £10,000 would come in handy, so we decided to give it ago.

Two weeks later, Alan returned to London and parked out of the way whilst John and I went drinking around Peckham. We visited various pubs and ended up in The Heaton Arms. At closing time we left and met Alan at a pre-arranged spot. John got in the car with Alan and drove off. I knocked on the door of a nearby house and told the people who lived there that I had been sprayed in the eyes with CS gas and my friend had been abducted. I kept rubbing my eyes as I wanted to make out I hadn’t been able to see anything in case I was asked for descriptions.

The man had already telephoned the police, but he became so concerned about my eyes that he also called an ambulance. When it arrived they washed my eyes out and took me to King’s College Hospital. I was trying to stifle my laughter so much that one of the ambulance crew actually thought I was crying. When we arrived at the hospital, they checked me out, the police arrived, recorded my details and left. I was then told that I could go.

I was rather disappointed that nobody was taking much notice of the fact that John had allegedly been kidnapped. I decided that I would contact the newspapers the following day to set the ball in motion. I spoke to two or three journalists and the following morning John’s ‘abduction’ was reported in several national newspapers.

The Guardian
published the following article:

KRAY FRIEND MISSING AFTER STREET ATTACK

Disappearance Follows Series of Underworld Killings

Police are investigating the disappearance of a south London man who is an associate of both the Kray twins and Lord Longford. It is the latest of a series of incidents, some fatal, involving members of London’s criminal fraternity.

Two men wielding ammonia sprays allegedly attacked John Masterson, aged 47, from Peckham in south London, in the street on Monday night. There were reports of a shot being fired and he has not been seen since.

Mr Masterson had been drinking in two local pubs, The Heaton Arms and The Montpelier Arms in the evening with Bernard O’Mahoney from Essex, who is also a friend and visitor of Ronnie Kray in Broadmoor Hospital.

Mr O’Mahoney said that the two men were walking along Nutbrook Street at about 10.30 p.m. ‘The two chaps were aged about 30 to 35 and they sprayed ammonia into our faces. I fell to the floor and there was a loud bang.’ Mr O’Mahoney went into a nearby house and the police and ambulance service were called. He was unable to see for several hours and was treated in King’s College Hospital.

Mr O’Mahoney said it was possible that Mr Masterson was bundled into a car. He was aware of no motive for the attack but inevitably there is speculation following the recent killings involving members of south London’s criminal fraternity. ‘He is always fighting everybody’s case for them,’ said Mr O’Mahoney, ‘maybe he had been asking too many questions.’

Lord Longford said yesterday: ‘He liked poking his nose into things like I do. There is always a danger with that. One hopes and prays that he is all right.’

Peckham CID is investigating the disappearance.

The only harm that John may have suffered was the damage to his liver as he drank himself into a stupor with Alan up in Edinburgh.

I spoke to Alan and John two or three times a day, keeping them up to date with the press interest in the story. As the
Telegraph
,
Guardian
and
Daily Star
had already reported the ‘incident’, we were confident that when John was ‘released by his captors’ he would be able to sell his story for a substantial amount of money.

By the end of the first week, John had run out of beer money, so he decided that it was time to cash in on his ‘ordeal’. I thought John would telephone a journalist and say he had been released and then hope the journalist would ask him for his story. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

When I heard what John had done, I must admit I could not stop laughing – he was certainly intent on making as much money as possible out of his ordeal. His ‘release’ was reported in several newspapers, but the most dramatic account appeared in
The Guardian
:

John Masterson, a friend of the Kray twins and Lord Longford who had disappeared a week ago after an alleged attack in south London turned up doused in petrol at a Glasgow hospital over the weekend.

Last night, Mr Masterson, who has convictions for robbery, said that he had been abducted because of a dispute over recent murders and attempted murders among criminals in south London.

‘I wasn’t the man they were after,’ said Masterson. He said that he had been abducted by two men who had approached him in Peckham, south London and sprayed ammonia in the eyes of his companion, Bernard O’Mahoney, with whom he had been drinking. ‘They fired a shotgun and put it to my head to make me get in the car,’ said Mr Masterson.

Strathclyde Police confirmed that Mr Masterson had appeared in the casualty department at Glasgow Royal Infirmary late on Saturday night, saying that he had been abducted.

Police interviewed Mr Masterson, but it is understood that apart from saying he had been seized by two Scotsmen in London he gave no details or names. Police in London began an investigation into his disappearance on 14 October after the reported attack.

A Scotland Yard spokesman confirmed that Mr Masterson, who is originally from the west of Scotland, had been traced and interviewed.

Mr Masterson said yesterday that he was already aware of everybody’s scepticism about his story. Mr Masterson is negotiating the sale of his story to a national newspaper.

John telephoned me and asked if any newspapers had shown any interest in buying the story of his ‘ordeal’. I told him that he had fucked up any chance of making money because newspapers were only willing to pay large sums for exclusive stories and as he had been quoted in the
Guardian
article, he could hardly say he had an exclusive story to tell. John seemed disappointed and said he would get back to London as soon as possible.

I arranged to meet him outside the House of Lords where we had agreed to meet his friend Lord Longford, known to John as Frank, for a drink. As we waited outside for the good Lord, a
Daily Star
photographer took our picture. This seemed to perk John up as it convinced him that there was still press interest in the story, which meant that he would still be able to make money out of it. We spent the evening drinking with Lord Longford in the House of Lords bar. I was pretty certain he knew the ‘incident’ was not genuine. He kept joking about how well John looked and asked if he had enjoyed his holiday.

Lord Longford knew that a tabloid newspaper had tried to get John to set him up by bringing a prostitute into the House of Lords and so may have guessed this was how John had intended to turn the tables on them. To my knowledge, John never did get paid for his story, but the ‘incident’ has taken on a life of its own. I have since met journalists who claim they know who abducted John and why.

The story has also been repeated in true crime books,
Gangland
by James Morton being one. The publicity the incident generated created more problems for me than it did John. A couple of days after going to the House of Lords and my photo appearing in the
Daily Star
, I was arrested for the non-payment of the fine that had been imposed when I was late for the Darley trial and bailed to appear at Basildon Magistrates Court.

When I appeared in court, I was asked why I had not paid my fine and when I intended to pay it. I told the magistrates that I was unable to pay until I received the expenses I was owed by the courts. ‘You give me my money and I’ll give you yours,’ I told them. The magistrates were having none of it. I was told my costs and my fine were two separate issues and despite the fact I was owed approximately £500 by the court, they decided to imprison me for one day for failing to pay them £50.

Sometimes I get the feeling that there are laws for some and not for others – it was certainly one of the most bizarre cases I have ever had the misfortune to endure and I’ve endured a few. The local evening newspaper agreed, reporting the story under the headline:

CRAZY COURT SAGA

A former Codsall man is saying that he is still waiting for £500 court costs that he is owed nearly a year after being cleared of an assault charge, but this week Bernard O’Mahoney was sent to prison for a day in lieu of a £50 fine for breaching bail conditions in the case. Mr O’Mahoney today said that the ‘judicial system was completely crazy and it was unfair that the other matter had been pursued’.

Mr O’Mahoney claims that he is still awaiting costs after he was cleared of the charge at Stafford Crown Court in October last year. Before his acquittal, he found himself on a further charge of breaching his bail conditions after he failed to attend court on time for the original assault hearing.

The bail offence was transferred to Basildon Magistrates’ Court near his home. A spokesman for Cannock Magistrates’ court, with whom Mr O’Mahoney has been in touch, said he should submit a claim in writing via a solicitor.