The Profession of Violence (21 page)

Despite a joke like this and an occasional experiment, Ronnie disliked women more than ever; now he was out of the East End he made no bones about his homosexuality. It was a relief to be able to admit it. Now he discovered its advantages. It was quite smart, a sort of eccentricity to be made the most of, and he had an entree to the useful freemasonry of the similarly inclined.

There was no hint of effeminacy about him. ‘I'm not a poof, I'm homosexual,' he would say, and was genuinely put out by the antics of effeminate males. ‘Pansies,' he used to say, with the same cockney contempt with which he pronounced the word ‘women'.

He liked boys, preferably with long lashes and a certain melting look round the eyes. He particularly enjoyed them if they had had no experience of men before. He liked teaching them and often gave them a fiver to take their girl-friends out on condition they slept with him the following night. He always asked them which they had preferred. He was something of a sadist, but was generous with his lovers. The gifts he gave them were his main extravagance. He never seems to have forced anyone into bed against his will and, as he proudly insisted, was free from colour prejudice, having tried Scandinavians, Latins, Anglo-Saxons, Arabs, Negroes, Chinese and a Tahitian. An important part of the compulsive pederasty which had begun to dominate his life was his growing fear of the dark. He dreaded sleeping alone.

During this period at the Barn he fell in love. This was not something he actually approved of: love, especially when combined with sex, was usually a means women employed to keep men at home and relieve them of their money. So it might be more accurate to say that Ronnie began living with a boy on a regular basis and permitted himself the luxury of continued tenderness for the first time in his life.

Vanity came into it. He enjoyed taking the boy out and being seen with him in the best restaurants: the boy was beautiful and behaved like a petulant young mistress. Ronnie enjoyed indulging these shows of temperament. He liked taking him to his tailors, selecting all his shirts and ties and doing what he could to curb the excesses of his youthful bad taste. He was extremely jealous: one man the boy had flirted with had his face cut open. The boy was ‘his' boy.

He called him ‘son', referring to himself as ‘your old Dad'. Any extravagance was allowed him. One of Ronnie's greatest pleasures was taking him with a select party of ‘interesting people' to the old Society Club in Jermyn Street. Ronnie loved the Society. With its dark panelling
and pink silk-covered lamps, it was like something from a thirties film. This was where jovial businessmen brought their secretaries for a night out; an Israeli violinist called ‘Gipsy' played Lehar at the tables; the champagne was expensive.

Never a great one for the swinging scene, Ronnie felt that the Society was somehow ‘right', always tipped lavishly and paid his bill. When Gipsy came to his table, as he always did, Ronnie's eyes moistened at the music. Turning to his guests, he would point to his boy.

‘Beautiful, isn't he? Don't you think he's beautiful? Don't you wish he was yours?'

During these six months with Reggie in prison Ronnie could finally enjoy worldly success himself –money, cars, boys, admirers, a West End flat, even social respect of a sort. He had achieved what every poor cockney boy longs for: freedom to be and do exactly as he liked.

But it was no good. Everybody round him seemed to find happiness; not Ronnie. Possessions meant nothing, friends could not be trusted, even his freedom made him feel an outcast. His spending orgies left him wardrobes full of suits, piles of shirts he never wore again. His new friends seemed to offer sympathy or flattery but he knew they laughed behind his back. Boys were like drink. They helped him to forget; next day the hopelessness returned.

His nightmares worsened. The world was slipping out of his control. His psychiatrist increased his daily dose of Stematol, and ordered him to rest. Somebody mentioned the Canary Islands: he booked at the best hotel, taking his boy-friend for a fortnight's holiday. This was no use either. How could he lie on the beach or waste his time swimming when there was always something to be done?

The boy soon became sullen at Ronnie's attitude, especially when he insisted on moving to a seedier hotel where he felt more at home. This didn't help: nothing on that sunny island interested Ronnie or could set his mind at rest. They returned to London six days early.

Reggie would help him. Reggie would soon be out of gaol. But when Reggie did return the unforgivable had occurred: he was in love, and with a girl. She was just sixteen, a schoolgirl – pretty and pert and innocent and earnest. Reggie was twenty-seven. She was called Frances Shea and was the sister of Frank Shea, a Hoxton boy the twins had known for years. Ronnie once admired his looks and there was a strong resemblance between Frank Shea and his sister. Her father once ran the gambling at The Regency Club in Stoke Newington, where the twins already had an interest. Reggie had noticed her during his period on bail from Wandsworth and taken her out then once or twice. She was in awe of him at first, but he was respectful, almost shy of her. He talked a lot about life, ideals, and ‘seemed sort of sad, different from other boys,' she told her friend. He hadn't tried to kiss her yet.

It was when he returned to Wandsworth that Reggie really fell in love with her. During the previous period of his sentence he had been cheerful, ‘one of the best, a laugh for everyone. When he came back he'd changed. All he could think about was this girl of his. He'd got it bad – you couldn't kid him about it.'

Each day he wrote to her. He was afraid she might fall in love with someone else before he was released. He wrote her poetry and was tormented by the memory of the brown eyes framed in the chestnut-coloured hair. Once he was free he could carry her off to a deserted bay beside a blue sea and build a house; the dark life with Ronnie would be buried and forgotten. She was his cockney Cinderella and he made her his princess.

This time with Reggie back the rows between the twins were the worst anyone remembered, with insults screamed about the girl and Ronnie's boys.

Ronnie soon realized his greatest danger of losing Reggie to Frances Shea would be through Esmeralda's Barn. Now that Reggie had his directorship and share of the profits, he had no need for crime. He could do what he had always
dreamed of when away from Ronnie, living the good life and dazzling the girl.

The Barn was still bringing in big money throughout 1961. A discotheque was started in the basement. Lord Effingham joined the twins on the Barn's board of directors. There was still great potential; it would not be hard to make the most of it and use the contacts offered for expansion into other gambling clubs. Their brother Charlie had been doing well at the Barn on his own account. Anxious for this life to continue, he urged the twins to invest their profits in betting shops and clubs. Ronnie objected. He knew if Esmeralda's Barn became the centre of a thriving business chain, he would be quite superfluous.

Ronnie told Reggie it was time he brought his girl to meet him at the Barn. She was nervous when she came, a wide-eyed child in an unaccustomed world. But Ronnie seemed in a good mood, his big face beaming as he greeted her like one of the family.

‘Hullo, Frances, my dear. I've heard a lot about you. 'Ow are you?'

And Frances Shea, who'd heard a lot about him, relaxed and was impressed. She met Lord Effingham. Ronnie insisted that she try her hand at roulette; she won a pound or two. She and the twins ate in the restaurant. But something about Ronnie scared her.

Just eight weeks after Reggie emerged from Wandsworth, all three Kray brothers were in trouble with the Law. First Reggie – he was accused of petty house-breaking on the evidence of a woman who failed to identify him when she entered the witness-box of the East London Magistrates' Court. The case was dismissed; Reggie was awarded costs.

Then it was his brothers' turn; both were accused of ‘loitering in the Queensbridge Road with intent to commit a felony' and of trying the door-handles of parked cars. The improbability of the charges gave Ronnie just the case he needed to stage a demonstration of the power of the Krays against the Law. It was something he'd been waiting for.

There was a combination of flair and thoroughness in the way he played it. The first thing he wanted was publicity; he briefed Nemone Lethbridge, the prettiest young female barrister in the country, to defend him. His case needed to be watertight so he hired a private detective and produced eight solid witnesses to swear to his alibi. Finally he wanted to teach the local police a lesson; this wasn't difficult. Through a contact on a local paper he made sure the East End press carried his allegations of victimization by the police under banner headlines: ‘Detective called us “scum of the earth”.'

In court the case could not stand up: on 8 May the Marylebone Magistrates' Court dismissed the charges. Now Ronnie could enjoy himself handling the publicity against the Law like an adroit public relations man. He held a
full-scale party for the press at Esmeralda's Barn, where he proposed a toast to ‘British justice'. There was a lot of free champagne and instant friendship. He got the full press coverage he wanted – the
Daily Express
carried a long article complete with pictures of the twins and ample quotes from them both under the headline: ‘“It's a vendetta,” say freed boxing twins.'

The impression was of a pair of clean-living cockney sporting boys caught up in a sinister persecution by the police. From now on it would be a bold East End policeman who would risk his career tangling with them.

Photographed that night at their victory party as Esmeralda's Barn, both twins were smiling – Ronnie from a sense of triumph, Reggie with relief. For Ronnie the acquittal at Marylebone confirmed what he had always known – he was being picked out, persecuted, but had the power to beat his enemies. He was untouchable. Reggie felt none of this. He had loathed his time in prison and wanted no more risks. All he desired was peace and the chance to enjoy himself like any normal man. That summer he tried very hard to get it. His share of profit from Esmeralda's Barn had mounted in his absence. He was rich. He bought a new Mercedes, smart clothes, improved his dancing, rode, ran, kept himself fit. He spent weekends at Steeple Bay in Essex where the family had a caravan and he could swim and lie in the sun. He began seeing less of Ronnie; for once this didn't worry him. Frances was there. He was becoming a possessive lover. Neither had been in love before.

While he was in prison she had started a shorthand course. He didn't care for the idea of her being independent or seeing too many people. Each afternoon he would be waiting outside the college with the car. Since she was his princess she needed royal treatment – gifts, evenings out, all the respect the Krays enjoyed. She lived quite simply with her parents in a terraced house in Ormsby Street, just off the Kingsland Road. Suddenly neighbours noticed the
expensive cars calling for her; word got round that she was Reggie's girl.

This turned her head at first. Reggie was very kind. Nothing was too much trouble and he never went too far like boys of her own age. He was proud of her and patiently possessive. She could be as temperamental and capricious as she pleased, but she was his for keeps. Her brother was in awe of him, even her father liked him. As Mr Shea says now, ‘I respected Reggie as an athlete and a clean-living man. He never used bad language, even when talking to me on my own, and always had her home on time. We knew he never tried anything wrong with her, but treated her like a lady. We thought that was very nice.'

Reggie proposed to Frances in the autumn of 1961. She turned him down, saying that she was far too young to think of marriage. Reggie suspected that the real reason was that her parents secretly disapproved of him. To show how wrong they were and prove himself to Frances he decided to become a real success.

For some time now, Ronnie had been complaining that he was neglecting their business interests. Suddenly Reggie began attending to them. All his old energy and interest revived; he began keeping accounts in the laborious, backwards-sloping script that was such a contrast to Ronnie's ill-formed scrawl. Soon he was thinking of expansion. The new gambling clubs and betting shops were obvious targets. Provided he used his brain there was no need for unpleasantness or threats. The twins were businessmen, offering a service that these places needed. Their ‘name' was an insurance policy against trouble and there was something of the insurance salesman about Reggie as he began whipping up fresh clients. He bought a black Crombie overcoat and started thinking of an office and a secretary. Les Payne gave him a briefcase like his own that Christmas; as Reggie drove from Vallance Road to the West End with it on the front seat of his Mercedes he felt he had a settled job at last with all the trappings of respectability –
Frances approved of that. And he was back with Ronnie in the only life he really understood. It seemed the perfect compromise to make everybody happy.

For a few months it worked: the twins made money and avoided trouble. Then Ronnie turned. Reggie and his briefcase – who did he think he was?

Nor did Frances seem to get much happiness from the new arrangement. Reggie was so on edge. They often danced late at The Hirondelle and called in at Esmeralda's Barn for a last drink. One night they found Ronnie there, drunker than usual; for the first time the twins had a slanging match with Frances present. She was terrified. All the old arguments and hatreds were brought out and finally Ronnie stumbled off, shouting that he had done with them for good. This had often happened in the past, only to be forgotten when he sobered up. This time he meant it and that evening marked a turning-point in his career.

He often used to spend the night in an old caravan on a bomb-site near Vallance Road. He went there now and stayed. Next day he sent his driver to the flat in Chelsea for his clothes. His West End life was over.