Wannabe in My Gang? (23 page)

Eleven days after being arrested for assaulting the police officer, I had to appear at West London Magistrates’ in Hammersmith for assaulting the football steward at Chelsea.

In my eyes, I wasn’t guilty. I had only retaliated after being slapped in the nose and grabbed by a couple of over-zealous hard men who thought they could flex their beer guts in front of children. I worked out the estimated cost of travelling and loss of income for a trial, which would surely happen if I pleaded not guilty. I decided a guilty would be preferable on the pocket – i.e. half a dozen 140-mile round trips to court, half a dozen days off work and only a 50–50 chance of a not guilty would prove more expensive than pleading guilty. I wasn’t going to come out waving a flag though. I wanted enough mitigating circumstances to ensure I didn’t get a custodial sentence.

My friend Benny, from south London, had gone to work in Japan so I sent him a typed letter which was supposedly written by him. The letter said that Benny was a businessman who regularly attended Chelsea matches and he had been appalled at the treatment I had received at the hands of the stewards. It said that after the incident he had taken my address and posted me this letter in case I should need a witness. Benny signed the letter and posted it back to me in England, the Japanese stamp and postmark making it appear authentic. When the contents of the letter were read out in court, the magistrate would not accept my guilty plea because the letter indicated I could be innocent. Instead, a not-guilty plea was entered despite my protests and the matter was set down for trial.

I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to play it. The police had mustered six ‘upstanding’ stewards of impeccable good character as witnesses and the victim had been photographed bearing some pretty ugly injuries. I had the letter from my friend Benny in Japan, but there was a possibility they would rule that inadmissible as he wouldn’t be able to attend and give evidence. It certainly didn’t look good for me. When I arrived at the court I saw the stewards sitting with the detective who had arrested me so I sat on a chair immediately behind them. None of the stewards appeared to recognise me and they carried on talking, unaware I was able to hear every word they said. The steward I had head-butted was telling the detective that he wanted the magistrate to ban me from ever visiting Chelsea’s ground again. ‘In case I bump into him again,’ he said. He then asked the detective what he should do if somebody didn’t get ‘their story straight’.

The detective said, ‘Don’t worry, it’s a stipendiary magistrate today, she’s a good old bird, she will guide you through it.’ I stood up and turned around to face the detective and the stewards. ‘Trying to get your story straight, are you? As a policeman, I’d have thought you would know better than to coach witnesses.’

I could see that they were shocked that I had been sitting listening to them so I added to their anguish by saying that I was going to complain to the stipendiary magistrate. ‘You know the one officer, that good old bird.’ I went to the court office and asked them to call the police as an attempt was being made to pervert the course of justice. At first the court official seemed keen to get some toerag locked up, but when I told him the instigator was a detective, his mood changed.

He said he would make the magistrate aware of what was going on and I would be informed what, if any, action was going to be taken. When I entered the court I was advised that I shouldn’t make the complaint in open court but I could question the detective and the witnesses about matters ‘which may or may not have occurred outside the court room’. When the witnesses entered the box I asked them what had been said outside; some were totally honest, some denied any conversation had taken place and others ‘couldn’t really remember’. The incident at the Chelsea ground became almost irrelevant as everybody could see that some of the witnesses were unreliable.

In less than half an hour the stipendiary magistrate dismissed the case against me. The detective and the stewards looked physically sick. On the stairs outside the court, the steward I had head-butted got rather upset and went for me, but his colleagues held him back. I smiled at him and walked off, thinking he shouldn’t take matters so personally. His detective friend should have warned him that there is no justice any more.

11

A RIGHT CHARLIE

The Essex firm I had been part of was in tatters. Those who hadn’t been murdered were either locked up, in hiding or facing some other distasteful dilemma. The remnants of our 1960s counterparts, the Kray firm, were not faring any better. Like our firm, gang members had defected after its leaders had embarked on an orgy of mindless violence against not only enemies, but their own friends. Further divided by deceit and betrayal, those not dead, imprisoned or in hiding were all waiting for their own personal tragedies to happen. On 14 May 1997, Charlie Kray sat in the dock at Belmarsh Crown Court with his head bowed. He had pleaded not guilty to a charge of supplying two kilos of cocaine. As his eyes roamed the public gallery looking for a friendly face, he must have felt both disappointment and relief. Disappointment because only two of the seats were taken up – one by a man who had written a book about Charlie’s life and another by a female who had read that book and become a Kray fan. Absent were the legions of gang groupies that so publicly and vocally professed to be firm friends of the Kray family. It must have hurt Charlie to realise that so many of his friends were not friends at all. Now the shit had hit the fan, these friends were nowhere to be seen. Their loyalty, like the Kray legend, had been nothing more than romantic nonsense.

Charlie must have also felt relief because he had been spared the ordeal of having an audience hear the truth about him. For years he had basked in the infamy of his brothers, allowing people to believe that his family controlled some Mafia-type empire, awash with money. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Charlie squirmed uneasily in the dock as his defence barrister told the court that he was ‘a pathetic, skint old fool who lives on handouts from his pals’ and ‘a charming but gullible old man that doesn’t know his limitations.’

Charlie had been trapped in an elaborate sting by police officers keen to arrest the remaining free Kray. Had they been minded, the police could have gone on a prison visit and put Reggie in the frame as well. People were always putting hare-brained schemes to the Kray brothers, who always agreed to get involved.

They knew most proposals were nonsense, but the Krays had no capital, no business interests and no income to speak of, so they chose to take a chance on anything they were offered. To ensure the brothers would agree to a business proposal, they would be promised a high percentage of any profits without having to invest any of their own money. The person who had proposed the deal would then dash off to the nearest printers and have a wad of business cards and letterheads made which would proudly display their name alongside that of their heroes. These would then be dished out at every opportunity to friends, family, people down the pub and in the street and anywhere else these nobodies could pretend they were business partners with somebodies. The Krays rarely made money out of these ventures. What genuine entrepreneur would contemplate such a meaningless amalgamation? Reggie would justify getting involved with yet another loser by saying to me, ‘You never know, one of them might make some decent money for us one day.’ The trouble was, I did know, and Reggie was fooling himself. Just like Charlie had been fooling himself when he had unwittingly boasted to undercover police officers about being able to supply huge quantities of drugs.

Further shame and humiliation was heaped on Charlie as the details of his amateurish attempt to deal in drugs were revealed to the jury.

On 7 March 1996, Charlie Kray’s son Gary died. He had been suffering from cancer. Charlie, who had an extremely close relationship with Gary, was, quite naturally, devastated. To add insult to injury, Charlie had to suffer the indignity of asking his brother Reggie for money because he couldn’t afford to pay for Gary’s funeral. When the funeral took place, the Home Office would not allow Reg to attend so an empty car was hired to follow the cortège. It was Reggie’s way of saying that despite the fact he couldn’t physically attend, he was there in spirit. One man who did attend was Patsy Manning.

Patsy was from Birmingham and I had met him on several occasions. He had been Reggie’s co-author on the book
Slang
from which Reggie had originally pledged all proceeds to James Fallon, although neither he nor his family ever received anything. Patsy was a likeable man and had known the Krays all his life. He had spent time in prison with Reggie after clubbing a doorman with a hammer and almost killing him. I had attended Patsy’s 60th birthday party in Birmingham at a club called the Elbow Rooms with my friend Stephen ‘Boss-eye’ Whiddon. Charlie Kray came along and we spent the entire weekend celebrating. Whilst at the Elbow Rooms, Charlie had called Stephen and me into a toilet cubicle where he was snorting cocaine with a £50 note. Giggling and unsteady on his feet, Charlie was urging everybody to share a few lines with him. Eventually, Stephen and I had to help Charlie back into the bar area as we thought he might collapse he was so drunk and drugged.

Patsy had attended Gary’s funeral with another man called George, who had been kind enough to drive Patsy to London for the service in his Jaguar ‘as a favour’.

Charlie always enjoyed a drink but following his son’s death, he turned to the bottle for comfort. Instead of the drink making him the life and soul of the party, as it had done in the past, it now had the effect of making him extremely depressed and very emotional. Whether it was the alcohol or his state of mind, nobody knows, but Charlie certainly wasn’t thinking straight in the months following his son’s death.

Some time after Gary’s funeral, Patsy rang Charlie to invite him to a party at the Elbow Rooms. Charlie told Patsy that he wouldn’t be able to go, as he had no money. Patsy said that he had a friend in Birmingham who owned a hotel and Charlie would be welcome to stay there free of charge. Charlie didn’t relish the thought of going back to the Elbow Rooms – on previous occasions he had gone there with Gary, so it would have been an emotional journey for him to return. However, his partner Judy encouraged Charlie to go, telling him that it would get his mind off things to be amongst friends and have a good time.

Charlie relented and travelled to Birmingham. After settling into his room, Charlie went to meet Patsy Manning who was waiting downstairs in the hotel bar. When he arrived, there were two men with Patsy who were introduced as George and Dino from Newcastle. George, it turned out, was the man who had driven Patsy down to Gary’s funeral in his Jaguar. Shortly after Dino and George were introduced to Charlie, two more people entered the bar. One was a girl named Lisa and another was a man named Jack. George introduced them to Charlie as his friends. After a few minutes, Dino called out, ‘Quiet for a moment.’ He then presented Patsy with a present from himself, George, Jack and Lisa. When Patsy opened the small package, it contained a Simply Red CD. Feigning delight, Patsy thanked them all. However, Dino started laughing and said, ‘That is only part of your present.’ Then a very large package was brought into the room and given to Patsy.

When Patsy unwrapped it, he was pleasantly surprised. His ‘friends’ had bought him a top-of-the-range music centre. The ‘generous’ foursome spent the night plying Patsy and Charlie with alcohol and refused to let them buy a single drink in return. During the evening, Charlie gave Patsy a knowing look: he had noticed Jack had a Rolex watch on his wrist which was probably worth about £12,000. These new ‘friends’ had money, a fact which warmed Charlie to them. When Charlie went to the toilet, he got talking to Dino, who was also visiting the Gents. Charlie confessed to Dino that he didn’t have the money to keep up with him or his friends, saying he was financially embarrassed. Dino laughed and gave Charlie £50. Smiling broadly, Charlie took the money and thanked him. He really thought he had landed on his feet with these people, but like the fools who approached the Krays with ludicrous schemes and business ideas, Charlie really had no idea who he was dealing with or what their motives were.

Once Charlie was suitably drunk and relaxed, Jack said to Charlie that he had been ‘left a bit dry’ after the guy he had been trading with was killed in Amsterdam. Instinctively, Charlie knew that Jack was talking about drugs and said he had a mate who could help out. The truth is Charlie was lying. Charlie was just doing what the Krays had always done. As soon as someone said anything that could lead to money, they would say, ‘Yes, we can help you with that,’ regardless of whether they could or couldn’t. It was to be a grave mistake on Charlie’s part.

Over the next few weeks, Jack kept in touch with Charlie by telephone. Keen to keep Jack on board, Charlie told his ‘friend’ that he was having a charity event at a friend’s pub in Kent to raise money for St Christopher’s Hospice in Crystal Palace where his son Gary had died. Jack was his usual enthusiastic self, saying he would get a football signed by the Newcastle United team for Charlie to raffle.

He said he would ‘pop down’ with a pal of his named Ken and give it to Charlie personally. The men from Newcastle arrived for the event and stayed at a hotel near Charlie’s home in Sanderstead, Surrey. They went to a couple of nightclubs together, where once again Jack would not let Charlie put his hand in his pocket. When Charlie was drunk, he put his Kray hat on and started to boast about his family’s mythical criminal empire. Soon the subject turned to drugs. Jack and Ken asked Charlie about people who could supply them and Charlie, in a barely audible mumble, said he never went near drugs, he only put people together. ‘Cause there’s too many eyes on me,’ he said.

The men were disappointed but not deterred. When Charlie told Jack that another friend of his was putting on a variety show at the Mermaid Theatre in Croydon in memory of Gary, he was as enthusiastic as he had been about the pub charity event. He told Charlie he would love to attend. ‘It would be nice to show some support and meet some of your friends,’ he said. Gullible Charlie thought it would be nice too. The event was a huge success. Three hundred people attended, amongst them the actor Bill Murray, Charlie’s old friend Freddie Foreman and his actor son Jamie Foreman, all of whom Charlie introduced to his ‘friends’ from Newcastle. He also introduced them to two other friends, Ronnie Field, and a man named Bobbie Gould. Charlie had mentioned his ‘friend’s’ interest in drugs to Gould and Field and they had said they might be able to help. A few days later, Jack telephoned Charlie and invited him and Ronnie Field to Newcastle, adding, ‘We might be able to sort out some business.’