The Profession of Violence (28 page)

It had to be Cornell: there was no one else left from the Richardsons' gang worth killing. Fraser was in hospital with a police guard by his bed. The Richardson brothers were in custody, along with everyone who had been at Mr Smith's. Cornell was the one important member of their gang who was not involved and so was the ideal victim. Thanks to his information service, Ronnie had known exactly where to find him; he had been trailing him for weeks.

Ronnie Kray's shooting of George Cornell was soon the worst-kept secret in the East End. Ronnie had done what he had always dreamed of: he had killed openly as a gangster should. As he lay hiding in a small room over a barber's in the Lea Bridge Road he lovingly recounted how it felt – the noise and the recoil of the gun, the look of blank
surprise on Cornell's face, and how his head ‘burst open' as the bullet entered. Ronnie felt no remorse, no fear, only exhilaration. Reggie was taking care of things.

Superintendent Butler, Scotland Yard's greatest detective, came down to Whitechapel to nail the murderer, but could not touch him. He knew who was guilty. The whole of Bethnal Green knew, but nobody would talk. Butler was putting all his hopes on the barmaid from The Blind Beggar, who must certainly have seen the killer if not the killing. He was too late: someone had spoken to her. When Butler put Ronnie into an identity parade at Commercial Street Police Station, the woman nervously insisted that her memory was weak.

So the great Butler of the Yard departed, leaving the Cornell killing as one of the few ‘unsolved' murders of his career. He must have known that he was also leaving an entire area of London ruled by gang law.

In 1966 one of the potentially most dangerous prisoners in Britain was Frank Mitchell, the so-called ‘Mad Axe Man'. Gaoled originally for robbery with violence, he had spent eighteen of his thirty-two years in detention. He was immensely strong, but prison and the punishment he had received for violence had numbed what scant intelligence he had. His body bore the scars of birchings for attacks on prison officers. He earned his nickname when he threatened an elderly couple with a felling axe while on the run from a hospital for the criminally insane, and was detained at Dartmoor during Her Majesty's pleasure, i.e. indefinitely.

By now he seemed to have accepted life in prison. Handled with understanding he was easy to control, and during the four years he had spent in Dartmoor, warders had come to like him. The prison governor, Mr Denis Malone, took a particular interest in him and always called him by his Christian name. He saw that it was useless to impose too strict a discipline on Mitchell – warders would get hurt and Mitchell was strong enough to take any amount of punishment. He would just end up more rebellious and brutalized than ever.

Instead of this the governor allowed Mitchell a loose rein. He was given the blue arm-band of a trusted prisoner and promised that if he behaved himself the governor would do everything he could to get him a release date from the Home Office. Mitchell seemed happy with the arrangement, and Dartmoor became something of a home
for him. He spent hours in the gymnasium improving his extraordinary physique and during the day seems to have had more freedom than anyone in Dartmoor. Most days were spent on the moors in working parties guarded by a single warder, who often let big Mitchell wander away on his own. Mitchell liked this. He had a way with animals, taming the wild moorland ponies and riding them for miles. Wearing his shirt and denim trousers he was quite free to visit isolated Dartmoor pubs and often brought a bottle of Scotch back for the evening. He bought a budgerigar for his cell, and even had a mistress for a while, a village school-mistress he used to make love to in a deserted barn. Each night, when he was locked up in his cell, he did his press-ups and his weight-lifting and went to sleep dreaming of the release date the governor would get him.

Another reason for Frank Mitchell's peace of mind came from knowing he had friends outside and was not forgotten. It was ten years now since he first met Ronnie Kray in Wandsworth, but the Krays still kept in contact with him. They visited him and wrote quite regularly. The radio which Reggie brought him allowed him to listen in to the police and the prison authorities' short-wave conversations and he was well supplied for money. Kindness apart, Mitchell was a legend among long-serving prisoners, and the life he led in Dartmoor was a good advertisement for the twins' ‘Away Society'. This was one reason why they had taken such care of him when he was charged with the attempted murder of another prisoner during his period at Wandsworth. Word was passed round the prison that Frank was a friend of the Krays and that anyone giving evidence against him did so at his peril. Nemone Lethbridge, the attractive female barrister who appeared for Ronnie in his car-stealing case in 1961, was briefed to defend him. And Ronnie even paid his West End tailor to make Frank a suit so that he would look his best at the trial. After Mitchell was acquitted, he always spoke of the twins as ‘the two best friends a man could hope for'.

During these ten years there was one thing the twins never did – encourage Mitchell to escape. It would have been no problem for him to get away from Dartmoor, but they agreed that much his best hope was to rely on the governor's ability to get him a release. They also knew that if he escaped he could never stay at liberty alone; his size made him conspicuous, his simple-mindedness a liability.

Then suddenly they changed their minds. A few months after George Cornell was shot they told Mitchell they were going to get him out. Mitchell was thrilled. If the twins told him to escape it must be right. From that August on he thought of nothing else and began planning on his own account.

This strange decision of the twins has never been properly explained. In court the only explanation offered was that the twins required Mitchell on the Firm as a strong-arm man. This is absurd. They had all the strong arms they needed and Mitchell's would have been superfluous. But the twins' own account, that they were ‘simply feeling sorry for Frank', is equally implausible. They had been feeling sorry for him for years. The truth is that the whole idea of helping Mitchell to escape began as a simple exercise in underworld public relations, a gesture of the sort the twins could not resist – especially that summer when it was clear that something needed to be done about their reputation.

For, contrary to Ronnie's arguments, the Cornell murder had backfired, scaring their friends more than their enemies. Business was suffering. Payne and Gore had both left town. Even the protection business seemed to be suffering. London's top gambling club, which the twins had ‘minded' for three years, decided they were far too dangerous to have around and offered a £10,000 lump sum to end the arrangement. Something was needed to convince the underworld that the twins were more than trigger-happy murderers. The idea of using Mitchell for this
purpose seems to have come from one of Ronnie's friends, ‘Mad' Teddy Smith. Smith was an unusual gangster. The BBC had recently accepted a play he had written about a bank robbery and he was tending to see life in dramatic, televisual terms. He had been interested in Mitchell's story for some while and asked the twins to let him visit the Axe Man. He found him starting to get worried about his release date and formed the idea of helping him to win some public sympathy.

Smith put his plan to the twins. Mitchell should be helped to escape, then kept in hiding. While in hiding he could write letters to the press, pointing out the hardship and injustice of his case and promising to surrender if his sentence were reviewed. There was a new Labour Home Secretary and a current mood of sympathy for the underdog. Mitchell would be sure to get his case looked into, and most of the credit would belong to the twins.

The twins were easily convinced. This seemed the sort of coup they needed, something to restore their image as benevolent, responsible public figures. Ronnie began to think of several journalists and politicians he could put pressure on to back up the campaign, including the inevitable Tom Driberg. And Mitchell was informed that he would definitely be home for Christmas.

But this remained an awkward period for the twins; reactions to the Cornell murder were making life uncomfortable for both of them. Ronnie saw potential traitors all round him and wondered whom to shoot next. Reggie was drinking heavily. Most nights they slept at Vallance Road and one night Cornell's widow came and smashed the windows, screaming that the twins were bloody murderers. Violet was most upset that anyone could say such things about her boys.

In fact nobody was talking to the police, but the twins had grown so jittery that when they heard rumours of fresh police evidence about Cornell they fled the country.
They had had an escape route ready for some time and a private aircraft was waiting for them in a field near Bognor. This flew them to a landing-strip near Calais, where they were picked up by a car and driven to Paris as dawn was breaking. Tickets were waiting for them both at Orly under assumed names and they flew on without incident to Morocco.

Here they spent three untroubled weeks and for the first time since his marriage Reggie enjoyed himself. Billy Hill was there, a respected figure with his big white car, to show them round. They spent most of their time in Tangier, drinking and swimming and lazing on the beach; Ronnie enjoyed the Arab boys, Reggie invited out a blonde hostess from the Latin Quarter Club in London. During her fortnight with him he never once referred to Frances or the East End. Instead he spoke of settling in Tangier and buying a small club. The girl agreed to join him. Reggie was wondering how to break the news to Ronnie when the police saved him the embarrassment. The chief of the Moroccan police arrived in person at their hotel to inform them they were undesirable aliens. Two seats were booked for them on the next plane back to London – this time in their right names.

They returned expecting Butler to be waiting for them to charge them with the death of George Cornell. Instead the Yard had got no further with the murder and they walked through the airport free men. Their departure had naturally caused something of a panic in gangland. Their safe return meant they now had work to do, repairing the damage. Members of the Firm who had prudently made themselves scarce resurfaced and were greeted as if nothing had happened. Fresh warnings were put out against talking to the police about Cornell. Arrears of protection money were collected, fresh deals for marketing a new batch of stolen American securities arranged. When someone in the Firm asked Ronnie if they were still proceeding
with the Mitchell escape he replied, ‘Of course' – Frank was his friend.

That same week in October 1966 Frances Kray made her first attempt to kill herself, locking herself in the front room of her parents' house in Ormsby Street, putting a rug against the door and lying on a cushion by the gas fire with the taps turned on. Her father, who came home at midday, found her just alive. When she revived in Bethnal Green Hospital she was murmuring, ‘Leave me in peace. Why can't you let me sleep?'

That night Reggie visited the hospital but was refused admission to his wife. Later he finished off a bottle and a half of gin and dropped off, muttering that he would have to kill his in-laws.

Mitchell was counting off the days to his escape and had made a mask from a piece of his girl-friend's black nylon nightdress in readiness. Various members of the Firm visited him to discuss the final plans. He would escape from a working party. Two of the Firm would pick him up in a car and drive him to London; 12 December was fixed as a provisional date, but at the crucial moment Ronnie involved himself in a curious case with a senior policeman.

According to the twins a police inspector had offered Ronnie the use of an East End pub with guaranteed police immunity for a regular £20 a week. The last thing the twins needed was fresh involvement with the police, but Ronnie was unable to resist a chance of scoring off the Law. He laid his preparations cunningly and hired a private detective to bug the pub and wire Ronnie up with a tie-pin microphone and shoulder-holster tape recorder. Prepared for anything, Ronnie invited the inspector for a discussion. A few days later Ronnie lodged a formal complaint against the police and tapes from the recorders found their way to the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. For some weeks nothing happened; then Ronnie was informed
that the inspector would be prosecuted. Ronnie was required as prime witness for the Crown. The trial would start on 28 November.

Ronnie insists that all he could do was disappear. It was a matter of principle. ‘I'd do most things, but I'd never go in no witness-box for the Law to get someone put away – not even a copper.'

The squeeze was put on a Mayfair property man to find the twins a suitably discreet flat; within a few hours Ronnie had exactly what he needed – a five-room furnished flat in a quiet road in Finchley. The day before he was due in court he moved in and for the next eight months remained officially on the run.

Ronnie was quite sincere about refusing to appear in court, but he could hardly have found a worse moment to disappear. He went to ground completely and had soon turned his flat into a fortress. It was crammed with guns and he kept one of the machine-guns under the floorboards. The curtains were kept drawn and he never ventured out. Instead he got the Firm to bring in stocks of food and gin and bottled beer so he could stay hidden there for weeks on end. Codes were invented for the telephone and letters. He played Italian opera on the gramophone and had a fresh boy every night. During the day he would be busy working out who needed murdering.

As usual in the twins' crises, everything fell on Reggie – running the Firm, coping with Ronnie, worrying about Frances. On top of this 12 December was approaching. His brother Charlie said that he was mad to think of springing Mitchell at a time like this. Reggie agreed, but Ronnie wouldn't hear of letting Mitchell down. As usual Ronnie got his way. But nothing was properly planned now. Reggie was forced to improvise as best he could and he asked several members of the Firm if they had relations prepared to put up Mitchell for a week or two. Predictably, none had. Someone suggested a man called Lennie Dunn, who kept a bookstall in the East End.