A plonker, eh?
Well, if fat Brian was a plonker for indulging in two nights of lust with a sexy blonde, what did that make me? I’d put myself on offer, simply for free booze and the cheerful company of guys I assumed liked me, and now I was going to pay for it with my freedom and – who knows? – maybe even my life. If anyone was a plonker, it was me.
In my cell, lying on the metal slab they called a bed, the thought that had been nagging me was there again: Why had I fallen into the trap so easily, willingly almost? Why, oh, why, had I been so trusting, thinking Jack and his mates wanted nothing more from me than my company? As they say, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, is there?
When it hit the papers that I’d been pulled in, Reg had been quick off the mark, as usual, slagging me off for getting involved in drugs and jeopardizing his parole chances. He said I should have been on my toes, seen the set-up coming, and, for once, he was right. Bells should have rung when I saw Patsy Manning being handed an expensive birthday present by someone he barely knew. And they should have rung louder when I received a gift, myself, then was given money by a guy I’d only just met.
I could understand Reggie’s anger, but, then, neither he nor Ronnie had ever appreciated how their notoriety had destroyed my life, shattered my confidence and self-esteem, and made me more susceptible than most to flattery and generosity.
The effect of the twins’ murders and general violent lifestyle hit me soon after walking out of Maidstone Prison that January morning in 1975. My aim was to pick up where I left off, get on my feet, financially, and restore my pride – a pride that had been swamped in shame by my unjust conviction.
I didn’t expect it to be easy, but nothing could have prepared me for the wave of distrust, bordering on hatred, my name now inspired. The dramatic headlines and long-running stories of violence and terror that followed each day’s Old Bailey evidence seemed indelibly printed on everyone’s mind. In restaurants and bars, people stared at me warily, their expressions full of curiosity, disgust – even fear. Acquaintances who, before, were only too pleased to offer help were now ‘unavailable’. Business contacts who once saw me as a reliable, skilful operator now didn’t return phone calls. The name Kray, spelt NO in giant capitals, not only in London, but the whole country.
What made my blood boil was not so much that I’d been locked up for something I hadn’t done – although that was bad enough – but that people refused to give me a chance. They assumed that what they had read or heard must be true, and that was that. People who’d never even met me took it for granted that, because I was the Kray twins’ brother, I was a ruthless, nasty piece of work who should be avoided at all costs.
I had to try harder with everything. And I did. I battled to revert to my former self, to recapture some of the good-humoured personality and energy that had endeared me to many people and helped make my businesses successful. I even tried to win over the doubters by telling them precisely how the twins had dragged me into the McVitie murder. But, in the main, people didn’t want to know.
Several friends suggested that the simplest solution was to change my name. But that was something I’d never do. I’ve always been proud of my mother and father, and the name they gave me and my brothers, and I remember being so proud, seeing Kray on my boxing trophies, before and after my Navy life. The mere thought of going through a legal process to rid myself of that name would make me feel quite sick. It would be a betrayal of the dear mum we loved so much. And I couldn’t bear that.
Once I’d decided not to fight a legal crusade to prove my innocence, I did become a happier, more contented, person. It still bothered me, though, that people could hate and distrust me without knowing me and I found myself wanting, needing, to be liked. I didn’t go out of my way to be popular or win approval and I certainly didn’t beg for it, but it became very important that people liked me for myself – cheerful Charlie, a fun-loving party animal, always up for a laugh.
It was this insecurity that made me so vulnerable to Jack and his sneaky mates. They gave me the impression they didn’t give a monkey’s what my name was, or what had, or had not, happened in the past. They liked me for myself, I was sure of that.
Why else would they push the boat out so grandly on Patsy Manning’s birthday at The Wake Green Lodge? Why else would one of them slip me fifty quid in the toilet? It was not as if I was some influential businessman they needed to impress, whose palm they wanted to grease. It was as plain as the nose on your face that I had nothing to offer. Honestly, I felt the same about them as I did with Big Albert. He treated me to this and that all the time, with no strings attached, simply because he liked me and could afford to.
Looking back, of course I’m angry with myself for falling for all the bullshit, for guzzling Jack’s champagne with not a thought that he and his cronies wanted something from me; that there would be a price to pay. But unless you’ve been tainted in the papers and on TV as an evil criminal, who got rid of the body of a man, murdered by one of his equally evil brothers, it will be difficult to understand.
Someone who did understand was Dave Courtney. When Reggie decided he needed someone on the outside to help pull the funeral arrangements for Ronnie together – particularly the security – he called Dave, not me. Unfortunately, like many others who provided services that day, Dave is still counting the cost. The funeral gained him a lot of kudos for his security company, but there’s no doubt in my mind that the Kray association also led to his wrongful arrest – and put him in Belmarsh on remand with me – for importing drugs illegally. Fortunately, he was acquitted and released from prison early in 1997.
At the time, I was hurt that Reg wanted me to have nothing to do with the funeral. But, watching Dave in action during the build-up, I knew I would not have handled it so well. The discussions with the police over crowd control, for example. The Commissioner of Police, Sir Paul Condon, who came to Bethnal Green himself, clearly had no idea how big the funeral was going to be, but Dave and his security guards had seen the huge numbers wanting to see Ronnie’s body and knew it was going to be colossal – far bigger than even our mother’s funeral in 1982. And that had brought the East End to a standstill.
The three of us met at English’s funeral parlour in Bethnal Green Road and Sir Paul made it clear he wanted his men in sole charge of the operation, from the time the funeral cortege travelled from English’s to when it left St Matthew’s Church for Chingford Cemetery. But Dave was having none of it, and said he had 150 very big, very tough, experienced security guards who would be more of a deterrent to troublemakers than young PCs more used to controlling pop fans.
‘You just get your lot in the street and do the holding hands bit and leave everything else to me,’ he said, in his usual cocky manner.
Sir Paul thought about it then agreed. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But I think your men should wear coloured bibs to distinguish them from mine.’
Dave nearly choked. ‘My little band of men will be wearing £2,000 overcoats, mate. They won’t want to be wearing any bibs – fancy coloured or otherwise.’
‘But I insist your men wear something that identifies them,’ Sir Paul said.
‘Okay,’ Dave said. ‘I’ll have some little red badges made, saying Courtney Security. Will that do?’
Sir Paul agreed, albeit reluctantly. ‘I’ll allow you to do the security, Mr Courtney. But not everyone is a Kray fan, you know. A sniper attack or assassination has not been possible for thirty years because the twins have been locked up, but, the Krays being driven at ten miles an hour, who knows what might happen. Something we’ve got that you haven’t is a firearms’ unit.’
‘Sir, the one thing you’ve got that we haven’t is a firearms’ certificate,’ Dave said. ‘We’ve all got fucking guns!’
Sir Paul’s face was a picture: if he could have nicked Dave there and then, I’m sure he would have. I found it hilarious, but, in the light of what happened to Dave later, I wonder whether his cockiness that day did him any favours. Policemen, particularly high-ranking ones, do not like being made fun of. And they never forget. I told Dave that his association with the Kray name would affect him badly for the rest of his life, like it had with me.
I never thought there would be any trouble at the funeral, but we did get a scare the day Ronnie’s body was taken to the undertaker’s. One of the staff there told a newspaper she had received a phone call from someone threatening to break in and desecrate Ronnie’s body – and Reggie went spare: he told Dave not just to guard the funeral parlour itself, but to sleep next to Ronnie’s body in the Chapel of Rest.
Easier said than done: Dave’s band of hard nuts may have been fearless in the line of strong-arm duty, but not one of them was brave enough to sleep in that room on his own – Dave included! In the end, he had to persuade three to do it – and, as he said afterwards, it was harder finding them than the 150 he needed to handle the funeral security.
‘A ghost is scary enough, but imagine the ghost of Ronnie Kray,’ Dave admitted to me. ‘I slept in there a couple of times myself and don’t mind admitting I was scared shitless. I can imagine how frightening Ronnie was with the hump when he was alive, because he looked scary enough when he was dead. But I’m pleased we did it, to put Reg’s mind at rest.’
I hope Reggie was as grateful as me for the work that went into that funeral. From the outset, Dave said he wanted to organize a State-like occasion, fitting for Britain’s criminal monarch, a flamboyant affair that would show the world what England could do for its most famous gangster. He succeeded spectacularly, but, unfortunately, ended up £14,000 out of pocket. Dave didn’t believe Reg’s promise to cover all costs – such as wages, travelling expenses and walkie-talkies – but went ahead anyway because he felt the international publicity would be good for his security company and eventually earn him more than what he was laying out.
Unfortunately, Dave never got paid and, worse, his connections with the country’s major villains – most of whom were employed for the funeral – brought him to the attention of the authorities and he has had all sorts of aggravation ever since. The curse of the Kray name again!
That night before going into the witness box, I found it hard to sleep and started wondering about my decision to talk directly to the jury. It hadn’t once crossed my mind not to. After what had happened at the Old Bailey I was taking no chances. What had I to lose? One had only to listen to those incriminating tapes to know I was certainly going to be found guilty, at least on the first charge of offering Jack cocaine. My only chance of getting a lenient sentence was to let the court see the real me, no matter how degrading and humiliating that would be; to stand before the jury and convince them that I was, indeed, a pathetic, if likeable and charming, old man, not a top-class gangster, so dangerous and well-connected that I needed round-the-clock surveillance.
The thought that had been nagging me most of the time since my arrest was there again: was I right to plead not guilty in the face of such crushing evidence? Mr Goldberg had told me the judge had indicated I’d get a much lighter sentence if I did admit the charges – six years, probably, seven at most. With parole, which I’d certainly get, being a model prisoner, and less the time I’d been held on remand, I’d be out in three years or so. It was tempting, because Mr Goldberg said I could plead guilty without compromising Ronnie Field and Bobby Gould, which obviously I wouldn’t want to do.
But I could not plead guilty unless I was prepared to betray Reggie and lose the respect of all those people who’d kept me going all these years. It was the East End code: always keep your mouth shut and admit nothing. And I was trapped by it, no matter how much I wanted a lighter sentence. With everything else in my life in shreds, the respect of my friends was something I could not, would not, throw away.
Not for the first time I found myself wishing Dave was in the next cell. How I’d love to hear his cheeky banter now! Dave wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea: he was loud, brash, talked at a hundred miles and hour, and was very much in your face. He didn’t suffer fools – gladly, or otherwise – and I’m sure people were in awe, if not frightened, of him. But I’d known him for years, even been on holiday to Marbella with him, and wouldn’t hear a bad word said about him. We’d got close when he was organizing doormen for London clubs, and he’d given me a job as host at the London Hippodrome, off Leicester Square. Someone told me later that he saw me as the perfect man for the job because of my ‘charm and impeccable manners’. That pleased me, as you might imagine. I was only there a couple of weeks, but it was the closest I’d come to a proper job, since coming out of prison, and I revelled in it. A shame it couldn’t have lasted longer; maybe then I wouldn’t have attracted the attention of those Geordies.
In our time on Cat A, Dave was a diamond who knew who I was – the real me that is – and what I was going through. There were times, during those six months, when I was so low I could barely open my eyes and get out of bed, but Dave’s fast wit and general good humour always lifted my spirits. Despite my anxiety at what lay ahead, he had me in stitches and brightened most days. Behind the wisecracks, though, Dave is nobody’s mug: he’s a clever, very intelligent, guy, quick to cut to the chase and size up situations for what they were, not what they appeared to be.
He’s honest, too, and always tells it how it is: he gives people the truth, not just what they want to hear. That’s why I liked talking with him. He was the only one in that high-security wing I’d have dreamt of opening up to the way I did. The others in there didn’t have a clue what I was all about, but Dave knew the full SP. He knew what rubbish I’d had to endure because of the Kray name. And he understood, more than most, why, even as I faced another prison sentence, I felt compelled to uphold that name, keep the legend going. I was the Kray flagship, he’d say. And he was right: as the only Kray brother free, I’d been the one that all those people fascinated by the twins could look at, speak to, touch even; the one the twins were judged by.
It sounds pathetic, but that’s all I’ve had to do in the last twenty-two years – be a sort of ambassador for my brothers, so that they can continue to sell their books and get fan mail from all those thousands of strange gangster groupies.
With all doors to a respectable job locked, money became a big problem, which was hard to take, because I’ve always been a sociable animal and I loved having a few quid in my pocket to enjoy myself. This is why, I think, I started accepting offers from people on the strength of my name. As is clear from those incriminating tapes, I love a good drink and, to be frank, if someone was prepared to get them in for me in return for a few stories about the twins, who was I to refuse?
In the late seventies and eighties, when I was living with Diana in her flat near Crystal Palace, I didn’t have to prostitute myself in this way: Di was hard-working and always made sure I had money in my pocket to pay my way. But when she kicked me out and I threw in my lot with Judy and her children, my life changed significantly: with all the money from the film long gone and Judy having next to nothing from her £14,000 a year salary to spend on socializing, I started living on people’s generosity more and more and very soon it became a way of life, with me going more or less anywhere, provided it didn’t cost me anything to get there, and I didn’t have to put my hand in my pocket. I’ve got to be honest: in this respect, the Kray name worked for me and provided an enjoyable social life I wouldn’t have had otherwise. There was the odd business opportunity, too: all sorts of strangers would worm their way into my company, with various weird and wonderful schemes, so that they could bask in that inane, reflected glory of being seen with the Kray twins’ closest living relative. Of course, I loved it, didn’t I? When you haven’t got two bob, and there are holes in your shoes, a bit of hero-worship does wonders for one’s morale and self-esteem. I found I became all things to all people, telling them what they wanted to hear.
Now, in my cell, thinking about my appearance before the jury, I thought back to those long months on remand, when Dave made me laugh at the image I’d invented for myself. He’d say: ‘If someone asked you if you could get a bright pink Scud missile delivered to Peckham the following Saturday, you’d say: “I’ll see what I can do – get us a brandy and coke…Someone wants a combine harvester, painted yellow, driven by a black man – I’ll have a chat – mine’s a brandy and coke…Madonna tickets? Singing on stage with her? I’ll make a phone call. Brandy and coke? That’ll be lovely.”’
It sounds ridiculous, but Dave was spot on: I found it impossible to say No – to anything, or anyone. Even if a guy asked me if I could arrange to have someone hurt, I’d say, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ Then, the drinks would continue to flow and the subject would never be mentioned again. It was all about keeping the Kray legend going: I couldn’t admit I was unable to do something, give the cold shoulder – in the same way I couldn’t admit I was skint.
It doesn’t please me to admit it, but throughout the nineties I was – no two ways about it – a ponce. And it was that lifestyle that landed me in this mess. I remember opening my heart to Dave, saying how much I wanted to talk to the jury as I was talking to him; how much I wanted to tell them: ‘It’s my name. It’s the second time I’m going to prison because of my name. There’s no £39 million cocaine deal. I have no money, not even a home of my own. Look at the holes in my shoes, my wcrn-through suit. All I have done is talk a load of rubbish to someone because he gave me loads of booze. Yes, I am guilty of that. Sentence me for that. But not for being a drug dealer, because I’m not.’
I don’t mind admitting it, I cried in Dave’s cell more than once; and when he saw my look of defeat, and I told him I was going to die in prison, his eyes filled with tears, too. Dave, more than most people I know, could identify with what I’d gone through. He had image problems, too: because he’s publicly loud and brash, oozing self-confidence, people assume that’s the real person. But there’s more to Dave Courtney than meets the eye and he was a good understanding friend to me. More than once, it had crossed my mind that we were both in the position we were because the circus that was Ronnie’s funeral had drawn the attention of more than just the public and media.
Quite honestly, I don’t know how I got any sleep that night before my evidence, and, shortly after nine o’clock the next morning, I was walking robotically along the tunnel to the court. It was the day the Press had been waiting for; the moment when the evil Kray twins’ older brother spoke up for himself. What were the reporters and jurors expecting? I honestly didn’t know. Would I appear to be everything they thought I’d be, or a bitter disappointment? All I was sure about, as I stepped from the dock and walked to the witness box, was that I had to be myself. Everyone close to me had told me that. Let those twelve jurors see the real you, they said. Tell them how different you are from the image they have of the Krays; let them see you have not got it in you to deal in drugs. That was the easy part. What I was going to find more difficult was swallowing my pride and self-esteem and admitting how shabby and shallow my life had become. And, more important, what I really was.
A plonker.