Bringing Down the Krays by Bobby Teale Read Free Book Online

come into his head.
    Another time, David told me, he was in Esmeralda’s at closing time when Ronnie asked him to drop him and Mad Teddy Smith off at the Regency Club – a Kray favourite in Stoke Newington – which five years later would become infamous as the starting point of the Jack the Hat murder.
    Smithy got in the back, Ron in the front. Coming along Shaftesbury Avenue, David noticed a police car was following them, and pointed it out to Ron.
    Teddy said, ‘I’ve got a tool on me, Ron.’
    Ronnie answered, ‘So have I.’
    David couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He gaped at his passengers.
    ‘Just drive careful. Don’t look round,’ Ronnie said. His voice was calm.
    David started to panic. ‘Look, Ron, I can see them in the mirror, the Old Bill. They’re going to pull us,’ he said.
    Ron said, ‘If they stop us, I’m going to kill them.’ He wasn’t so calm now.
    Terrified, David begged him, ‘Please, please don’t do that!’ He was shouting.
    Ron just kept repeating, ‘No, I am… I really mean it.’
    And he did. In that moment David saw himself being caught up in the middle of a police killing. They hanged you for that in those days. Drenched in sweat, his mind racing, David turned sharply off the main road to try to lose them. Eventually he managed to duck in and out of a few side-turnings and got rid of them.
    Arriving at the Regency, to David’s great relief, Ron told him: ‘You know, I would have shot the fucking lot of them.’
    David could only reply, ‘Ron, you know you’re not all the ticket! I’m off.’
    As he left, Ron said, as if nothing had happened: ‘Be round the house in the morning.’
    And of course David was. That’s how Ron worked. You had to do what you were told or else something very unpleasant would occur. Everyone knew it.
    By now Ronnie was using the 66 Club like it was his front room. All the rules had changed to Ronnie’s rules. There was a big cellar at the back, where David used to put all the beer. It was like a big strong-room, or a cell. Once you were in there you couldn’t get out. All concrete, no windows. If anyone was out of order, Ronnie would put them in there and leave themthere, often all night. Sometimes people ended up being kept down there for days. That was just a playful slap.
    David would tell me about more extreme punishments too. There was a certain face who owed Ronnie some money. Ronnie had the hump with him. So he got some thugs to take this man on to the flat roof of the club and dangle him by the legs off the back of it. They held him off the side by his feet while Ronnie said: ‘Now you know what’s coming to you next time.’ Then they put him down the cell.
    But it could go either way in the twins’ company. It could be terrifying one moment and hilarious the next. David once brought a very good-looking friend of his called Johnny into the 66 one evening. Ronnie noticed him immediately. ‘Who’s he?’ he asked, the moment he walked in. Following a brief introduction David took Johnny up to the bar for a drink.
    Suddenly Johnny started nudging David, and whispering in a panic-stricken voice: ‘That man over there – he keeps looking at my arse. He’s a back-passage merchant. I’ve got to get out of here.’ By the time Ronnie started asking for him, Johnny was already in a taxi on his way home. He didn’t know what a lucky escape he’d had.
    This wasn’t the only time David’s friends had a close brush with Ronnie. One night the Krays were doing some business upstairs when three or four old school-friends of his turned up at the door of the 66. Knowing Ron wouldn’t want them in that night, David tried to tell them to leave. As they were talking, Ron appeared at the top of the stairs to ask him what was going on. When David told them it was his friends and he wastrying to get rid of them, Ron’s mood suddenly went sour, and he snarled, ‘Go on, open the door – I’m going to do them!’
    Terrified that Ron