Once Upon a Crime (6 page)

D
uring my time in jail Christine had been offered a brand new, three-bedroom council house on the very estate where we had first set up home in our little caravan. It had been the last house to be built and was situated right at the top right-hand corner of the estate, with a large garden sweeping round and no other houses to the front or to the side. It gave us the illusion that we sat alone on an isolated property and that was perfect. We got straight to work turning it into our own home and before long we had it looking just the way we wanted. Even if I say so myself it looked really stylish.

Shortly after Easter in 1975 I ran into John Renaldi with a very attractive female. I called out to him, crossed the road and we threw our arms around each other. He introduced me to the girl, Pauline, and said that she was his wife. Pauline was a Londoner and a terrific lady. She was a bit unsure of me at first but as time went on we became great pals and I think she saw how close John and I were and how I held him
in such high regard. They were having a look around the area with the idea of moving out of London and that is what they did eventually.

Everything was going really well in our lives until six o’clock one Saturday morning when we were awakened by some loud banging on the front door of Ma’s house. It was the cops and they quickly had the cuffs on me and informed me that I was under arrest on suspicion of arson. I couldn’t believe this. ‘Look, fuck off and don’t wind me up. Arson? You must be joking! You know that isn’t my game, and anyway I have been absolutely straight since I came out of the nick last year.’

It was true. I hadn’t put a foot out of line, but I was still a wee bit concerned because I could tell by the attitude of the old bill that they were treating this as a very serious matter. Only people who have never had any dealing with the law say, ‘Well, if you haven’t done anything then you have nothing to worry about.’ The same type of people macaroni their pants if the law turn up at their door unexpectedly.

I was asked about my movements the previous evening and I told them that I had spent the entire evening with all of my family at Ma’s place. Only after checking out my story did they tell me where the arson attack had taken place and it was a real body blow when I heard: our new home. To make matters worse we were not insured, which was the main reason that the cops released me. I mean, apart from anything else, only a fool would deliberately burn down his own uninsured property.

My brother-in-law James Park was waiting for me outside the cop shop and we made our way in his car to my house. It was a lot worse than I had imagined and the house was almost completely burnt out, the fire having been deliberately
started in the living room and spread to the upper floor and bedrooms. The saddest thing for me was seeing what remained of baby James’s toys and all the beautiful furniture and his clothes that were now lying in a charred heap in the middle of what had been our living room. James’s bedroom was directly above the living room and had taken the brunt of the blaze.

Worst of all was the fact that I would have to break the news to Christine. There was nothing at all that could be salvaged and all we had left were the clothes we stood in. I decided it would be better if Christine did not see what remained of our home and I managed to persuade her that it would be better if she did not return to have a look. Of course, baby James took it all in his stride as he was still too young to understand.

James was growing into a really very special wee guy: he was just so smart and had been walking and talking before he was one. I used to show him the coloured cartoon sections of the daily paper and he would look at them and laugh his head off almost as if he got all the jokes. James was the light of my life and I hated to be away from him for more than a few hours. The time I spent with him was easily the best of my life. I used to just sit and stare at him without him being aware of it and I thought I would burst with happiness. Of all the things I have lost in my life, nothing compares to the sense of loss I still feel to this day regarding my James and not a day has passed in over 30 years when I haven’t thought of him. He was my soul mate and I miss him so badly it hurts and it has left a huge hole in my life that has never quite been filled.

So now we were homeless and we moved in with Ma. It was a bit of a tight squeeze but we managed and Ma loved
having us all under the same roof. She absolutely doted on James and he loved her with equal measure. I still have quite a few photographs taken during those summer months and the faces are filled with laughter and happiness.

After the initial shock of losing our home Christine never let it get her down. She was, like me, very strong mentally and I promised her that we would soon be back better than ever. I arranged with my boss at the building site to take a couple of weeks off and as he was aware of the circumstances regarding the fire at our home he was very understanding and told me to take as long as was needed. I had decided to go back to my more lucrative ways of earning money and I did so with a vengeance.

O
ne evening a group of four or five women came to visit us at Ma’s. I recognised some of them and in fact one, a girl named Ingrid Bergin, had been in my class at school. They all lived on the estate where our house had been and had come to tell us they had organised a fundraising evening in aid of Christine, myself and baby James.

We were deeply moved by this and on the night we were called on to the stage and presented with an envelope containing over
£
700. The generosity of the people of that estate, most of whom didn’t even know us, was truly magnificent. But helpful as the money was, it was only a drop in the ocean of what we would need. Unless I really went to work at my old game then we would be struggling to get back on our feet.

Every day I would be up at the crack of dawn and would leave the house and catch a train to towns within about a 50-mile radius of Newbury. I concentrated on stealing high-value, portable goods like jewellery, top quality suits and overcoats,
and electrical goods such as expensive cameras and electric shavers. Another good earner was top-quality car stereos. I could easily steal ten or 12 a day and sell them on at
£
25 a piece. I would set myself a target each day, usually about
£
500, and I would keep at it until I reached it. Some days it would be ten o’clock at night before I arrived home.

I had a top fence who would take everything I brought and who always paid cash there and then. I did not make any attempt to hide what I was up to from Christine and Ma. It would have been pointless and while I did not exactly have their blessing the one comment my ma made was, ‘Well, I don’t think anybody could blame you after what has happened, but just be careful, son.’

After about six weeks the council offered us another house in a different part of Newbury called the Valley Road Estate. This two-bedroom home had a beautiful garden at the back with winding steps leading up from a patio to a long, well-manicured garden surrounded by pine trees and it would be ideal for James. I had managed to put a tidy sum of money by and we were able to buy all the things we needed to move straight in. Before long Christine had turned it into a beautiful home for us.

I played football in a local league for a team that was made up mostly of villains or guys who were at it in one way or another. The captain of the team, a well-known face, came round with an envelope with £500. The boys had had a whip round, he said, to help us get back on our feet. He also had a van parked outside with a new dining suite and some of the guys carried it into the house for us. Both Christine and me were almost overwhelmed by this generosity shown to us by these so-called criminal undesirables, who also included. As well as having hearts of gold, each and every
one of those fellas could have a real row but were never anything less than gentlemen.

I went on to meet a guy who was to have a huge influence on my life and who was a character in the truest sense of the word, Tommy Daglish. He was another Londoner, from Brixton. I was with John Renaldi one Friday evening when we entered the Wheatsheaf pub in Thatcham. Standing at the bar was a big bear of a man, dark-haired with sparkling blue eyes. He was dressed in a two-piece, dark blue, pinstripe suit, white shirt and light blue silk tie and was wearing a pair of highly polished black brogues. Before we had even been introduced he asked me what I wanted to drink and then proceeded to buy everyone in the bar a drink including the staff, paid for out of a large bundle of
£
20 notes he took from his trouser pocket. This was typical of Tommy and something he would do wherever he was.

John introduced us and we hit it off straight away, with Tommy telling me that he was in fact ‘a Jock’ as he put it, having been born in Dumfriesshire. John pulled me to one side and told me to be very careful around Tommy as he could be a bit unpredictable especially when he had had a few, and he could be very violent at the drop of a hat, but this just fascinated me all the more.

It wasn’t long before I saw Tommy in action. Tommy, John and myself were again in the Wheatsheaf at the bar. From our vantage point we were able to see directly into the small games room and standing at the bar ordering a drink was a well-dressed couple in their early forties. The guy was wearing a dark red blazer and collar and tie. Suddenly and without any warning Tommy let out an almighty roar as he spotted the couple. ‘You fucking slag!’ he screamed as he raced through to the games room. I was in a perfect
position to witness what followed and I couldn’t quite believe what I saw.

Tommy threw some really vicious punches into Mr Red Blazer all the while screaming, ‘You fucking dirty, no good slag! I’ll fucking kill ya!’ I had seen other men like this and it is awesome and a bit unnerving to behold – a killing is a real possibility in these situations. John and I ran through to the bar and it was a real struggle to drag Tommy off the guy, who was lying unconscious next to his missus who had fainted.

Once we had returned to the lounge bar Tommy casually said to the barmaid, ‘A large Vera [Lynn: gin], tonic, ice and a slice and whatever the lads are having, darling.’ With fresh drinks in hand we took a seat and I asked Tommy what the fuck was that all about? Was the guy an old enemy or a grass? It had to be something serious to provoke that kind of a reaction. Tommy replied, ‘The geezer’s a fucking redcoat, ain’t he? The fucking slag.’ I asked what he meant. ‘Look, Jim, when I was a kid my old mum took us off to Butlins for a holiday and one day this slag of a redcoat beat me up and I have fucking hated the bastards ever since.’

‘Do you mean, Tommy, that the fella lying unconscious in the bar is the one who beat you up as a kid?’ I asked.

‘No, Jim, don’t be a mug. Of course that wasn’t the same geezer, I just hate any slag I see wearing a red jacket.’ For Tommy this was a perfectly reasonable explanation. From that moment on I made sure I was never wearing anything remotely red whenever I had a meet with Tommy the Viking, as I christened him that day. From then on almost anyone enquiring about Tommy would say, ‘Seen the Viking?’ I know that Tommy secretly enjoyed being referred to in this way and it was quite appropriate as he really was a throwback to the days of the mad fucking Vikings.

There are a hundred stories I could tell you about Tommy, some of them very funny, because he truly was a funny guy – he just had these moments when it was best to give him some distance. But there was another side to him and that was he had a genius for jewellery shops and how to rob them. He knew every jeweller’s shop from London to Bristol and he taught me the art of robbing them. He started right at the beginning, showing me how to palm rings, before finally showing the professional way to carry out a hold-up. It was quite an education and I was like a sponge soaking up all the knowledge.

The year 1975 was proving to be a good one for my family. We had settled into our new home, I was earning good money with my various bits and pieces, and I hadn’t had as much as a sniff from the law. I was driving a Volkswagen Beetle that was very reliable and did not attract too much attention. It was my policy even then to try and stay under the radar but if I am honest there were times when I could be just a wee bit flash. I suppose I was influenced by my London pals, who could be very up front. Outside of family and friends they just didn’t seem to give a fuck what anybody thought of them and lived life to the full. They were fiercely loyal and generous to a fault and for a young guy like me they represented exactly how I wanted to live my life.

As well as spending a lot of time with Tommy the Viking, I was seeing a lot more of John Renaldi. We had always been close but now we were like brothers and I loved being in his company. John is a very special guy and of all the characters I have met and gotten to know over the years, there is no one who comes close to him.

But it was probably also around this time that a few cracks were beginning to appear in my relationship with Christine,
if nothing major. We were still very much in love but something had changed and it would be a while before we realised what it was.

B
y 1976 it was clear that Christine and me were quite simply growing apart. I had met her at 16, when I was still a boy really, and Christine was basically a very hardworking, honest person. The thought of when the next knock on the door would come from the old bill was never far away. I had learned to live with the risk, but it must have been very difficult for Christine who had never had any experience of this. But I suppose it is easy to see the answers in hindsight. I guess it’s called growing up. Or maybe it is just the way life is for most of us, a series of highs and lows interspaced with periods of boredom!

I had learned well from Tommy the Viking and was now almost exclusively concentrating on jewellers to get my earners. Sometimes I would work on my own if it was just a simple case of swapping a ringer for the real thing and I made a nice few quid stealing diamond rings. My method was fairly easy but it did involve a fair bit of acting on my part and you had to have a good nerve, but this came with
my confidence in my ability and the knowledge that I had picked up from Tommy. What was important in this type of work was that you looked and sounded the part. It was always to my advantage that I not only looked very young but was lucky enough to possess an innocent face. I also had the ability to adopt various accents but would concentrate mainly on a bland, non-regional type that the so-called middle classes adopt.

That long hot summer stretched right into early October and by the end of it I was a rich mahogany colour. Anyone would have thought I had spent an extended stay in the Bahamas, except that almost everyone else looked the same. In early September I was arrested after going out on the town with John Renaldi. I got involved in an argument with a taxi driver and it had come to blows. I had knocked out a couple of his teeth.

The taxi driver saw me escaping to a friend’s house and called the law who arrived in force and surrounded the house. It did not help matters when I taunted them from an upstairs window and told them to fuck off and get a life. The door was forced but I gave them a real fight before being overpowered and arrested. At court the next day I was refused bail and before I knew it I was on remand in Winchester prison. This was a bad jail at this time and had a reputation as being very tough on prisoners. It was what we convicts called a ‘screws’ jail’, meaning it was run totally by the screws with a very strict regime that would brook no nonsense.

I was charged with a number of assaults, including some on the cops, with resisting arrest and with being in possession of a fireman’s axe as an offensive weapon, putting various people in fear of their lives. This was all worded to show me in the worst possible light and my lawyer informed me that
they would throw the book at me in court with the possibility that I might receive a sentence of four years or more.

There was a possible way out – if I pleaded guilty and agreed to a new alternative to custody. That meant being placed in a secure unit under a radical new therapy, which it was hoped would turn offenders away from a life of crime. But the real carrot for me was that the maximum amount of time you could spend there was 12 months. The unit was in a large country house with extensive grounds in the countryside.

I gave the lawyer the OK to give it a go and try to persuade the courts that I was a suitable candidate. A couple of weeks later I appeared in court and it was a done deal. But nothing could have prepared me for the ordeal that lay ahead. I was about to enter the twilight zone where the lunatics had definitely taken over the asylum.