The Profession of Violence (12 page)

These two men had the complementary qualities of all natural double acts, and thanks to this they had become the Laurel and Hardy of London crime, or, as they liked to call themselves, ‘kings of London's underworld'. For years they had been allies. From the mid forties, Spot with his gang of bruisers, Hill with his following of thieves had been raking over the criminal pickings of London's West End. They had faced little opposition. The pre-war gangsters had grown tired, but the West End was booming. Night clubs and drinking clubs, prostitution and illicit gambling clubs were producing fortunes. The rich underworld of London was there to be milked by anyone who guaranteed the one thing it required – peace to prosper and grow fatter still.

This Spot and Hill had done for more than ten profitable years: running the protection, taking their cut on the gambling and using their power for one main purpose – the survival of the
status quo.
They had never been a criminal ‘brain' at the centre of a web of dangerous intrigue, nor were they Mafia-style organizers. If other gangs like the Italians or the Maltese wanted a stake in the West End, Spot and Hill would come to an arrangement with them. They acted very much like businessmen, drawing their profits from a discreet monopoly, carefully preserving good relations with the police, and becoming dangerous only when they felt their plastic empire threatened. The worst threat they had to face had come from non-caring tear-aways, but these could be dealt with, and it seemed that nothing but old age would stop the coalition of Spot and Hill continuing for ever. Then the unthinkable occurred. Spot and Hill fell out.

Hill, who is now agreeably retired in a large white villa on the Mediterranean, is inclined to be charitable over what happened. ‘Jack was becoming insecure and a bit jealous of me. He was an older man, you see, and once he got this persecution complex he was impossible to work with any more.' Spot says he should have shot Hill while
he had the chance. Certainly their friendship had already gone very sour by the time the twins took over the billiard hall.

Once trouble started between gangland's two ‘kings' the odds were against Spot. The August before, in the so-called ‘Battle of Frith Street', Spot had already been badly cut in the face. He was beginning to get too old for this sort of thing, and if it came to a showdown Jack Spot would need much younger, tougher allies – like the Krays. He had known of them for several years, but had kept clear of them: he could recognize trouble when he saw it.

Now things had changed, and just before the Epsom Spring Meeting Jack Spot had swallowed his pride and called on them at the billiard hall. The twins were most polite but not effusive. This was their territory. Jack Spot was asking to see them. When he offered them a pitch at Epsom races, they said they'd think about it. It was unheard of for two boys like them to have their own pitch among the country's leading villains, but they were not impressed. ‘We never had liked Spotty. Never thought much of him.' Finally they accepted for the hell of it. It might be interesting. ‘Interesting' had become a favourite word of Ronnie's.

Spot saw to everything. The twins knew nothing about racing. This did not matter. Spotty had found them a good bookmaker to ‘mind'; they simply had to stand by his pitch keeping an eye on their percentage. They also had to keep an eye on Billy Hill. He had the number-one pitch up by the winning-post, and was surrounded by some ‘interesting' friends. There was a dark young man who smiled a lot – already one of London's leading hatchet men, ‘Mad' Frankie Fraser. He, like Ronnie Kray, would stop at nothing in a fight. Next to him was Billie Blythe, a wild little man with a conviction for cutting a Flying Squad officer in the face; and there were others like them.

Against men like these, Jack Spot had little but his fat cigar. Five years before the men round him might have
made a fight of it – not now. Several had just returned from prison. For them nothing was worth the price of going back; their softness showed. This brought everyone's attention to the twins. Young as they were, they suddenly seemed to be challenging the toughest criminals in London. They also had a chance of seeing just how vulnerable and weak their allies were. But their behaviour puzzled everyone. It was hard to tell if it was sheer bravado or stupidity. For the twins seemed to be making a point of totally ignoring their danger. They appeared as unimpressed by Hill's men as by Spot's.

Most of the Italian gang were there, intent as usual upon weighing up the odds between the two sides. One of them knew Reggie well enough to feel he should warn him what he was taking on.

‘This lot mean business. You two must be stark staring mad to show up here with Spotty. If you want to kill yourselves, there are less painful ways of doing it.'

The twins laughed and offered him a drink. When he had gone, Ronnie turned to his brother. ‘The way these old men worry, Reg. Fair makes you sick.'

For the rest of that day the twins kept up their show of insolent indifference against the best-known gangsters in the country. They drank, they entertained their friends, they roared with laughter, they ignored the racing and the betting. Finally Ronnie yawned and rolled off to sleep. When the day ended they collected what was owed them, and without bothering to thank Spot drove off in their van.

In fact, of course, the whole performance had been carefully thought out. Their day at the races had been a conscious demonstration of contempt for the older generation of criminals, just as their alliance with Jack Spot had been a determined bid for power. ‘It wasn't that we liked him. We despised him really. We just turned out with Spotty to show everyone that
we
was the up-and-coming firm and didn't give a fuck for anyone. Old Spotty understood.
Whatever else he may have been he wasn't stupid. He knew quite well that though we were there in theory as his friends, we meant to end up taking over from him.'

It was an exciting prospect, the big chance the twins had both been waiting for. For it to happen they had to stage the one thing all the other criminals at Epsom wanted to avoid – gang war, a real showdown with the enemy. Excitedly they prepared for total war, a running fight with the top West End gangsters where they could use their guns, and show how much tougher and more ruthless they and their followers could be against the old gangland kings. Ronnie was in his element collecting weapons, making plans, haranguing followers at the billiard hall. Fort Vallance was prepared as a redoubt and a headquarters. For several days the twins continued to mobilize. Then came the news that Blythe and Fraser and their friends wanted to fight it out in a pub near Islington. The twins were ready.

This was their moment, and that night London was very near a wave of gang-killing on a scale it had never seen before. Both the twins and their opponents finally meant business. Once shooting started it would be hard to stop; the retribution would inevitably roll on.

The twins filled their van with arms and a dozen of the best fighters from the billiard hall. Armed to the eyebrows they drove off to Islington. Ronnie had told them that their hour had come. But the pub was empty. They made themselves at home and waited for the enemy to come. This was a chance to ambush everyone and shoot it out with the advantage of surprise. Still no one came. Nobody entered the pub that night with the twins there and at closing time they could do nothing except call it a day and drive away. Ronnie was furious, and for several days he issued challenges and insults to the rival gang. They were entirely ignored. If the twins wanted action it was soon clear that no one else did.

Later they heard that Billy Hill had been alarmed to hear
about the challenge and had immediately called the battle off. The last thing he wanted now was bloodshed, Krays and trouble with the Law. Nor, when it came to it, did Spot. He too had had a little time to think. It was one thing to make a show at Epsom with the twins – quite another to become involved in a full-scale war where people would be killed. Spottie had always been a law-abiding monarch. He would far rather abdicate than hang.

And so the big war never came. The twins were carefully edged out from the dramatic role they wanted. For a while at least the old guard had succeeded in putting them firmly in their places. And 1955, which had begun so hopefully for the twins, ended with this setback, and neither was allowed to play a real part in the last rounds of the Spot-Hill feud that went on until the spring of 1956.

For a while they still had hopes. Nominal allies still of Spot, both twins and various followers did start coming west. Most evenings they would drop in at a club off the Tottenham Court Road where Spot still held court as in the old days. They had a certain status now, and found that they were getting talked about. One of Jack Spot's more genial lieutenants taught them a thing or two. Reggie began thinking of the money waiting to be picked up in the West End, Ronnie of machine-guns, bombs and full-scale war to exterminate Hill's following, leaving the Kray twins free to rule London as Capone ruled Chicago.

The only trouble was Jack Spot. True, he did take them racing once again to Leeds, but this was not what they required. He would not ‘educate' them, as they hoped, about his rackets. These were
his
secret. Nor would he use them in a real fight. He wanted money, not machine-guns.

On the May night in 1956 when Frankie Fraser and Alf Warren waited for Jack Spot outside his flat in Bayswater, and put a second set of gashes in his face, the twins were not involved. They visited him in hospital next day. Now was the moment for the war they longed for. They guaranteed control of London within twenty-four hours. All that
was needed was for Spot to give the word. Spottie roiled over in his bed and looked the other way.

Jack Spot retired and bought a bowler hat and a furniture business off the Gloucester Road. Billy Hill retired and bought a white Lincoln convertible and a house in southern Spain. An era of so-called organized crime was over. London was hotting up; no single organization could control it, certainly not with the old-fashioned methods of Spot and Hill. The twins went back to Bethnal Green. With Jack Spot's help they could have moved in on the rich rackets of the West End. Without him they were lost.

Had he done as they asked and ‘educated' them, things could have been different, but they both lacked the knowledge and support to fight for the succession on their own. Control of West End crime was passing to a loose federation of existing gangs, the most important being the Italians. They were anxious to warn any of Spot's old allies against ideas of a comeback. A list was prepared. Various people on it were cut in various painful places. News reached the twins that it was their turn next.

For several days Fort Vallance was more fortress-like than usual. Nobody saw the twins and rumours started. They had been killed together and their bodies were laid out in Vallance Road, embalmed according to a secret clause in the Colonel's will. They had both fled the country, and were living it up in the Bahamas on the great fortune Billy Hill had paid to buy them off. They were in prison.

Finally they emerged. At around 10.00 at night their old van, filled once again with armed men from the billiard hall, collected them from the house and set off west along the Clerkenwell Road. It drew up opposite the social club the Italians used as their headquarters. Ronnie stepped out. As Colonel he possessed a medieval concept of the rules of war. The leader went in first. Reggie and the others watched through spy-holes cut in the side of the van. It
was a dramatic entry. Several of the men who had put Ronnie on the list were standing at the bar.

‘Some of you want to settle some business with me and my brother. We're here. Let's get it over with.'

No one replied.

‘Can't yer speak English?'

Someone threw a bottle at his head; the Colonel drew his heavy Mauser automatic and fired three shots in return. Perhaps he aimed to hit the wall. Perhaps his marksmanship was bad. Nobody tried to stop him as he walked back to the van.

Ronnie Kray was never to forget this moment. It was an answer of a sort to the fiasco of the night at Islington. This was how life should be lived and victories won. This proved what he had always said – that the rich gangs of the west were soft and would collapse if anyone stood up to them. If someone like Jack Spot could govern the West End for ten years with a gang like his, think what the twins could do.

What they forgot was that Spot's power had come not out of violence but from its opposite – his skill in avoiding it. Like an old
condottiere,
his greatest battles had been those he never had to fight. His gang, his big cigars, the drink and the occasional brawls were his façade: behind it was a skilful fixer, an underworld diplomat who could negotiate between the clubs, the racketeers, the other gangs, and always fix a deal. Hill was the same, and ultimately a smarter man than Spot. But both took a lot of trouble not to offend the police. There was an unspoken understanding between them and the Law. Hill and Spot could keep their position provided there was no trouble to the general public and they kept their men in order. Behind this understanding lay a realistic old-time policeman's philosophy. Cities will always have a certain level of crime and there is something to be said for tolerating one gang that knows the rules rather than face a horde of unknown criminals.

This was anathema to the twins. In their way they were very honest. They both loved violence: they loathed the Law. By their lights Spot was a phoney: they would become the real thing. Spot's men had been the washouts of the West End: they would fight their battles with the toughest tearaways of the East End. And they would have none of the Spot-Hill understandings with the Law. ‘Coppers is dirt.'

If it were necessary to fight, they'd go to the limit. If Ronnie had to kill, he'd kill. ‘We weren't just playing kids' games any more.'

Now, as the twins aspired to greater power, many things changed, their gang included. It was still based on the billiard hall, but Ronnie was right. The kids' games were over. There were still jokes of course. Ronnie put on various acts, and there were as many guests and drunken evenings as ever. The twins remained good hosts and continued to have good parties. But they no longer seemed to have the old-style gang fights for the hell of it. Everything began to have a purpose. Even the hall seemed less of a club now, more of a business. Many old faces started to stay away.