Wannabe in My Gang? (4 page)

‘Name please, sir,’ asked the hospital official.

‘O’Mahoney,’ I replied.

‘And which ward is that?’

I explained that I was O’Mahoney and that I wished to visit a patient.

‘Oh right,’ he said, ‘and who might that be?’

‘Kray,’ I replied, ‘Ronnie Kray.’

I could feel all of the people in the waiting-room looking at me. Even here in an institution renowned for holding some of Britain’s most notorious killers the very mention of the name Kray still prompted a reaction. I must admit it made me feel slightly apprehensive. Who was this man I was going to meet? A monster, it would seem, judging from the way the people in the waiting-room had turned to look when his name had been uttered. After a short wait, a hospital warder appeared with a clipboard and called out: ‘All visitors for Henley Ward please.’

Ronnie was on Henley Ward, so Jon and I approached the warder with about five others and gave our names, which were then ticked off a list on his board. We were allowed through a door, which was locked behind us.

Immediately in front of us was another door. We were effectively locked in a very small room. When the door in front of us was unlocked we stepped into another room and then the door behind us was locked. This procedure happened about four times until we emerged into a large courtyard, which we crossed, closely guarded by a hospital warder.

Broadmoor Hospital reminded me of my old secondary school. A big Victorian red-brick building with big arched windows.

There was no ‘buzz’ about the place, the atmosphere was subdued, controlled, intimidating almost. When we eventually reached the building on the other side of the courtyard, the door was unlocked and we entered a long corridor at the end of which came the sounds one might hear in a school dining-room. There were voices, people moving about, the clink of teacups, chairs being dragged and the odd raised voice giving instructions to others.

At the top of the corridor, I turned to my left and saw a large room where approximately 50 people were seated at tables. To my right was a canteen hatch where a man was serving teas and biscuits. We had, I realised, finally reached the visiting-room.

I scanned the faces of the men sitting at the tables, looking for Ronnie Kray, but he didn’t appear to be there. I was looking for a stocky, intimidating figure with brushed-back, raven-black hair. Like most people, when I pictured the Krays I saw the two faces David Bailey had captured in his famous photograph of the twins: Ron at the forefront scowling, his eyes deep, inky, black pools; Reg appearing over Ron’s right shoulder, head tilted, brazen-faced, cocky almost.

I was going to ask one of the warders if Ron was coming when at the back of the room, I noticed a man stand up and beckon us with his hand. This was not the Ron Kray Bailey’s lens and the police had captured two decades ago.

Ronnie Kray was now short and slightly built, and his intimidating scowl had long gone. He was dressed in an immaculate pale-green-striped suit, white shirt, pink-and-white-spotted tie complete with gold rings, gold watch and diamond cuff links. He was, without doubt, the best-dressed patient in Broadmoor.

As Ronnie stood before me, he put his hands on my shoulders and pulled me towards him. It seems funny now, but I genuinely thought that he was going to kiss me in the way that the Hollywood mafia kiss fellow gangsters. I was aware Ronnie was homosexual and so I instinctively pulled away from him.

Ronnie could see from my expression that I was confused, but he just laughed and said: ‘Don’t worry, I’m deaf in one ear and I just wanted to say something discreet to you. I was pulling you to my good ear so I could hear your reply.’

We both laughed and sat down at the table. He asked Jon if he would go and fetch him a few cans of alcohol-free lager from the canteen. As Jon walked away, Ronnie said that he wanted to know if I trusted Jon. I told him I wouldn’t have brought him if I didn’t. Ronnie said that was good enough for him, but he had previously had some bad experiences with the press and didn’t want anything going wrong; he was doing this interview to help James.

I found his mood surprisingly philosophical for a man who had spent more than two decades incarcerated for crimes which had shaken the nation in the far-off days of the swinging ’60s. Ronnie Kray, friend of the famous, East End gangster and now Broadmoor prisoner, said he had no regrets. ‘What happened to me was fate, just fate,’ he reflected. ‘That’s life. You take the good with the bad.’

Flashing Jon what probably would have passed as a menacing leer 20 years ago, he added: ‘We had a good life. We were arrested and jailed for political reasons. They wanted to make examples of us but I’m not bitter and I do not resent what happened to me; I accept it.’

I almost burst out laughing when Ron said he had been imprisoned for political reasons. Being convicted of the murder of two men may also have been a factor. At 56, Ron was a grim shadow of the man who had ruled London’s underworld. Thin and gaunt, he chain-smoked nervously, his conversation was muffled and occasionally incoherent, but behind the mask was something uniquely sinister about the man once dubbed ‘The Colonel’ by underworld associates.

Ronnie became quite emotional when he spoke about James. He told Jon: ‘James is a very deserving case for help. I am lucky compared to him. If you have got your health and strength then you are a lucky man. I can smoke and drink. I am not complaining about my lot. James’s is one of the most terrible cases I have heard of in my life. We have got to raise as much money for him as we can to try to give him some sort of life. I get letters every day from people asking for charity. I like to help where I can, but we’re not millionaires, you know, although some papers seem to think we are. I wish I could do more to help James and his family, I really do.’

Ronnie said that if each of the paper’s readers gave five shillings each, it would go a long way to helping James’s family. When Ron said that I realised just how long he had been locked up and understood how far from reality he had been removed. Shillings went out of circulation around the same time as The Beatles split up. In his fine suit and jewellery poor old Ronnie was living in the past, incarcerated in Broadmoor and locked in a time warp.

Ronnie’s mood suddenly changed. ‘Well, I think that’s enough for now,’ he said, rising to his feet. He shook hands with Jon and wandered off to another table to stand on his own.

It didn’t occur to me at the time but Ron was acting strangely because of his paranoia. He had been wary of talking in front of Jon before we had sat down and eventually he had just got up and walked away. Ron called me over and said, ‘I am sorry, I have really got to go but will you come and see me on your own soon?’

‘Of course I will, Ron,’ I answered, ‘no problem. Thanks for helping James out. See you soon.’ We shook hands, Ron smiled and then he was gone, escorted from the room by two warders.

Although I never heard from Gillett again, James Campbell kept in regular contact with me and we discussed various fundraising ideas. The event was going to be a variety show at the Hackney Empire Theatre, but Campbell could not attract enough celebrities for it to be put on. Eventually it was agreed that it would be a charity boxing show. Boxing clubs from West Ham and Newham in the East End agreed to provide the fighters. The donated items that I had received for the failed event in Wolverhampton could now be auctioned off between bouts at the show, which was to be held at the Prince Regent Hotel in Essex.

Campbell was really enthusiastic. He went on about all the people that he was going to invite. ‘Everything will go well,’ he assured me. ‘We will raise a lot of money for James.’ Looking back, I regret not asking him exactly which James he had in mind.

2

LOOKING AFTER YOUR OWN

After my first visit to Ronnie, he would ring my house two or three times a day and I would visit him at least once a week. To be honest, I felt sorry for Ron. He seemed like a man who ‘knew’ everybody, yet in reality had nobody. His life revolved around his infamous name, which after two decades in custody was all he had left. He genuinely believed that people on the outside were worried or interested in what he was up to. Ron was still living in the 1960s when he was a somebody in the East End, a force to be reckoned with. I got on really well with him but thought of him as the sort of old-age pensioner who sits down next to you in the pub and starts reminiscing about his ‘war days’ rather than some mythical manic gangster. Conversation in the main revolved around the 1960s in preference to the present or the future. Then again, there was very little else he could talk about, having spent the last 20-odd years of his life in a cell. As for the future, I doubted if he had one beyond the walls of Broadmoor.

It was true that Ron was not a well-balanced man. He wasn’t foaming at the mouth or barking at the moon, but he was a very paranoid person. Ron the good guy wanted to be liked and do good things for people so he could read what a nice man he really was. He thrived on publicity and it was as if he was screaming out for affection. Ron the bad guy would also court publicity, revelling in the fact he was portrayed as Britain’s most infamous gangster, and had no regrets whatsoever about his murderous past. This two-fingered gesture at the authorities cemented his reputation as gangster number one and undoubtedly made him feel as if he had ‘achieved’ something. Ron the good guy was easy to deal with, while Ron the bad guy was a fucking nightmare.

On one visit to Ronnie Kray, I was surprised to see Roger Daltrey, lead singer with The Who, sitting at the table. In my youth I had been a big Who fan, so I was quite impressed, not to mention pleased, to meet him. Ron introduced me to Daltrey, who listened painfully to me reminiscing about Who concerts I had attended over the years and Who songs I considered to be masterpieces. It soon became apparent to me that Daltrey had endured this conversation a thousand times before so I reluctantly shut up. Given an opportunity to speak, he explained why he had taken the time to visit Ronnie. Daltrey was apparently obsessed with the idea of making a film about the Krays.

He said it was the only British gangster film worth making and, handled the right way, would make as good a film as
The Godfather
, if not better. I learned that very early on in the negotiations Daltrey had been going to Parkhurst Prison to talk things through with Reggie. Apparently, Reggie also thought it was a good idea and had set the wheels in motion for Daltrey to make the film. Daltrey had already paid for three scripts to be written and had even lined up actors to play the lead roles. Hywel Bennett was to play Ronnie and a lesser-known actor, Gerry Sundquist, was to play Reg. Bill Murray, who played Detective Don Beech in the television series
The Bill
, was to play Charlie. Daltrey’s idea was that violence wouldn’t be a major force in the film. He was more fascinated by the twin element and the fatal power of one brother over the other. The film he had in mind concerned the bond between the twins rather than the fear that they instilled in people. It all sounded a bit too deep and arty for me.

The singer had a binding agreement with the Krays, but he seemed unable to make the film happen. Two other film producers, Dominic Anciano and Ray Burdis, came on the scene and said they were going to make a film about the Krays without the Krays’ permission. Daltrey decided that this would be a good time to bail out so he sold all his rights to a company called Parkfield, who were backing Anciano and Burdis, and who proceeded to make the film. Ronnie Kray was not at all happy about this and a couple of weeks after the visit with Daltrey he asked me and James Campbell to go to the singer’s trout farm in Sussex and ‘give him a slap’. I had absolutely no intention of slapping Roger Daltrey and Campbell was incapable of slapping anybody. Eventually, Campbell just telephoned Daltrey to warn him of Ronnie’s threats. People in the Kray camp thought it was marvellous that Ron was issuing threats to one of the world’s most famous rock stars. I knew one of the hangers-on would eventually ‘let it slip’ to a tabloid reporter. It was, after all, good material to bolster the Kray legend and keep their name in the newspapers.

The ‘incident’, if it can be called that, was later reported in the
News of the World
.

KRAY’S FURY AT STAR ROGER DALTREY

Ronnie Kray ordered his henchman to sort out rock star Roger Daltrey after he had felt that he had lost out on a film deal. The gangster signed over the rights to use the Kray name to a Daltrey company. He was furious when he learned Daltrey had sold on the contract to a film company. They later made the film
The Krays
. It had profits of around £7 million, but because of the contract, Ronnie and brothers Reggie and Charlie received just £85,000 each.

A pal of the gangland villain said: ‘Months later, a film producer met Ronnie and said he would have paid two million for the rights.’ Ronnie summoned his lieutenants and said that he wanted Daltrey sorted. The pal said Ronnie was deadly serious, but his men just phoned Daltrey to register his displeasure.

Whether people were genuine friends or imaginary enemies, few escaped Ronnie’s wrath. One day he could be talking to you without any hint of a problem, the next his paranoia would kick in and he would be discussing damaging you with somebody.

Ronnie had told me he didn’t like Peter Gillett because of his closeness to Reggie and the fact he had slept with Kate. To add insult to injury, it had been reported in the press that Gillett and Kate had sex ‘in the back of a Ford Escort’. It wasn’t the sort of tacky publicity Ron liked to see his ‘good name’ associated with. Both denied the allegations, but Ronnie had made up his mind that they were true. In an effort to calm things down, Reg spoke to Ronnie in defence of Gillett but Ron refused to listen and, for a time, the once inseparable twins fell out. What made it worse was the fact both Ron and Reg were putting their side of the story to reporters and the rather distasteful matter was being played out via the press. Eventually Ronnie resorted to what he knew best and asked me to find somebody to sort out Gillett. ‘Get somebody to hurt that rat,’ he hissed. Ron was really going into one, saying Gillett had caused him and his brother to fall out. Throughout the visit I was barely able to get a word in, but by the time I had left Broadmoor, Ron had changed his mind. The very next morning I received a letter scribbled in his childlike scrawl: ‘Bernie, tell that fella I asked you to speak to about Gillett to leave it out. Talk soon, your pal, Ron.’