The Wicked Mr Hall (6 page)

C
hatting to young girls in pubs can be very gainful for a man such as myself. A young
au pair
in the Maidenhead area, in a repeat of the Slough episode, told me one evening of her rich employers in Henley, who were leaving for the USA in a few days and were taking all their valuables with them. That morning, the lady of the house had taken her jewellery taken out of her bank safe deposit box, and it was now locked in a travelling wardrobe trunk. Before she got too drunk, the
au pair
gave me the address. The next day, in a hired car on a bent licence, I drove past my next target.

It was a nice property, a modern lodge house. I parked the car in the lane and approached their drive. There were no cars parked there. I walked up to the front door and rang the bell. No answer. I walked round to the back of the house and quickly entered. I started with the master
bedroom and found some trinkets, but nothing of real value. I methodically searched all the rooms, including the travelling wardrobe trunk.

In the dining-room, in a glass case, there was a beautiful piece of Renaissance work – a Spanish galleon with portholes of rubies and diamonds encrusted in its bows. It was beautiful, I took it.

On a whim, I drove to Scotland. I approached Louis Henry, Esther’s son. I showed him the galleon. He offered me £2,000. I refused, as that was a fraction of its value. I put the galleon in a safe place and considered spending a couple of days in Edinburgh visiting old friends. I was in my hotel room getting changed when there was a knock at the door. Opening it, I was confronted by four policemen. The one who did all the talking was an old acquaintance, Chief Constable Merrilees. He had been speaking to Louis Henry. His men searched the room, but found nothing. They took me down the station and interrogated me for four hours. Being questioned by the police, like going to prison, is all part of my professional work. I’ve never given them anything. In the end, lacking evidence they released me. Going to Louis had been cheeky, but I couldn’t resist it. I had a night out in Edinburgh, but I felt a nagging sense of frustration. I was sure the information the
au pair
had given me on the jewels had been genuine. The next day, back in Henley, I watched the lodge house. Packing boxes were now evident at all the windows. There was movement. By mid-morning the man had left in his car and, just before lunchtime, I watched his wife and the young
au pair
, along with the children, get into a family
estate car and drive off. I waited a few minutes and then approached. I went in through the same set of French windows. This time there was less to search, as most of the belongings were in packing crates, presumably for storage. I felt behind the folds in the gathered curtains that framed the Georgian windows. I looked in food tins. I used all the tricks I had learned during my many prison terms. The airing cupboard was the last place I looked. In between the folded blankets, I found the jewel case. I had just earned myself another few thousand pounds.

I was under no pressure to sell, because I still had plenty of money. I took my latest little earner to Harrods, where I deposited it in my safety deposit box. Afterwards, I went to what is essentially the store’s own pub, the Green Man Bar. I was in a good mood, I was free, earning money hand over fist and enjoying the thrill and excitement of being a good thief. All I wanted now, besides the brandies that were giving me a nice warm glow, was sex. Either gender would do. As the brandies slid down my throat, I looked around the bar. They were met, and held, by a
well-groomed
, quite handsome, middle-aged man. We looked at each other, both knowing, or hopefully knowing, what the other wanted. He raised his glass and, using body language, signalled would I care to join him for a drink. I walked over. After the initial ritual, he asked me whether I’d like to go to his flat for drinks. I said yes. We ended up in bed together.

He was a nice man, a brilliant conversationalist. This was hardly surprising, for he was Bob Boothby, later to be made a Lord and one of Europe’s most noted political speakers.
He was a close friend of Harold and Dorothy MacMillan and was rumoured to have been Dorothy’s lover. This could well be true, there were photographs of her in his bedroom. There were also photographs of the Kray twins. Again, it was alleged that he and Ronnie had been lovers. Boothby had been private secretary and friend to Winston Churchill. His photograph was next to one of Ronnie Kray, which seemed a strange combination. The class barriers that separate us are not as strong as some people might imagine. After sex, we lay in bed and talked. I mentioned that I was thinking of taking a holiday abroad. I wanted a break from England. Bob said a friend of his had a beautiful villa in Antibes. The owner was a man called Peter Seals, Somerset Maugham’s gay lover. Throughout the summer, Seals would take in selected house guests. The villa was exclusively male. After making a phone call I flew out. The Mediterranean sunshine was just what I needed. There were five luxurious bedrooms, two handsome young houseboys whose duties were more than just domestic, and three other guests. We ate delicious food, drank the finest wines, and enjoyed the young boys and each other. Some nights we went out to the Eden Rock Hotel to gamble and drink. I was on my most honest behaviour. With a lifestyle where so many other senses were being satisfied, I had no need to rob. This decadent two-week orgy perfectly suited my true sexuality and my true nature. We fitted like hand and glove. I felt like an Emperor, with drink, food and flesh at my indulgence.

I flew back to London on my own. After a few days I flew out to the Channel Islands and, staying in a nice
hotel, just soaked up the sun for a week. From there I popped over to France. I have loved Paris since my youth, when Jackobosky would tell me tales of Europe’s cultural capital. I visited museums and art galleries. For weeks now, my life had been one of pure pleasure. In the past, the prison time I’ve done has been hard and to my way of thinking, this evened things up a bit. After a decent summer break, I knew I must consider working again so I returned to London and, sitting in my Knightsbridge flat, I began to think about my next scam.

Bernstein’s was a West End theatrical costumers that could supply you with any kind of dress imaginable. I ordered a Sheik’s headdress and bought some iodine to darken my skin. In Regent Street, I purchased twelve high-quality leather suitcases. Then back at my flat, I got on the phone and started to put things into motion. I made a reservation for Sheikh Mutlak Medinah, arriving in this country from the Middle East in one week’s time. My choice of hotel was important. At this stage I didn’t want a top one. If suspicious, the top establishments run a security check. ‘Good’ hotels, however, are just pleased to get the seemingly high-class custom. For the next seven days, I bombarded the hotel with a series of bogus phone calls from Embassies and banks. Using the names of bona fide stockbrokers, I established the Sheikh’s identity. The plan was to have three stages, all with the same purpose – to establish identity and credibility. On the morning of stage
one, in full Arab garb, I was picked up by a hired
chauffeur-driven
Rolls Royce and taken to the first hotel. Bellboys were tripping over each other to carry my luggage up to my suite. I spoke hardly at all and paid for everything in cash. After a few days, via room service, I had the management book me into the Cumberland, one of London’s finest, but not yet the top, hotels. The Cumberland asked no questions, the reservation had been made by another hotel manager. I did the same thing again for five days – I sat and bided my time. I tipped room service well – I was growing into my role, the way an actor does. Finally, I was ready to make my move.

I asked the management to reserve me a suite at the Dorchester, one of London’s oldest and grandest establishments. By the time I walked into the Dorchester, I was a convincingly arrogant Arab oil Sheikh. This was not my first time in this hotel, there were two reasons behind choosing it as the base for the con. One was status, and the other was that I knew the layout. The suites had two points of exit. As I looked around my rooms, I thought, perfect. I couldn’t afford to talk to anyone for fear of blowing my cover, so for a couple of days, I just enjoyed the luxuries of the suite and hotel.

On the third day, I called down to the manager and asked whether I might look at some jewellery. I wanted to buy some gifts for my fiancée back in Arabia. Samples from the jewellers in the hotel lobby were sent up to me. I looked at them, and was disdainful. Was this the best they could offer me? They said they could make some telephone calls. I insisted on looking only at the best. On my
behalf, the management phoned up some of Hatton Garden’s finest jewellers. The shops immediately dispatched assistants with attaché cases full of samples. Within a short while, these assistants were in my suite, eager to sell me their wares. Disdainfully I looked through the fine jewels, seemingly uninterested. I told them I would bathe and think about it. Once in the bathroom, I switched on all the taps. I left the door ajar. When the room was full of steam. I reached through the half-open door: ‘Pass me some things to look at while I bathe.’ Greedy for commission, the assistants passed me their sample cases. Standing, still fully dressed in the
steam-filled
room, I emptied all the sample cases into a briefcase. I slipped off the Arab robes. Underneath I was wearing a suit and tie and I looked like a Middle Eastern businessman. I left the bathroom by the suite’s second exit. Walking swiftly down the staff staircase, I left the hotel through the side-door of the building. I hailed a taxi, which dropped me off in Knightsbridge. From there I walked to my flat in Hans Crescent and emptied the briefcase. I had spent a few thousand pounds setting this job up, but laying on my carpet were £300,000-worth of gems. I heard later from contacts that, at around the same time that I arrived back at my flat, six increasingly worried jewellers entered an empty steam-filled bathroom. On the floor they found the discarded clothing of an Arab Sheikh, and six empty attaché cases. To use a more modern vernacular, they had been well and truly tangoed.

My confidence was now sky high. If there was a better thief in Britain, I didn’t know of him. For that matter,
neither did the police. Talking of which, I was never questioned or charged with that job. The days when Collins and I smashed through plate-glass windows to relieve jewellers of their possessions now seemed far off and coarse. Now it was all about sleight of hand and confidence. I window shopped at the city’s many jewellery shops. I had a good memory for settings and would study the ring and then the salesman. I had copies made through forger friends, then I would return to the shop, making sure it was a different assistant before entering. I would ask to see the ring and, quite often with the salesman or woman at my elbow, I would ‘switch’. It was easy. The copies would sometimes cost hundreds of pounds, but I would walk out of the shop with a £10,000-£12,000 ring. On other occasions, an elegantly dressed woman would pose as my fiancée. She would try on an engagement ring and I would complain that the true beauty of the stone couldn’t be seen in artificial light. All three of us would step on to the street. Shops were more trusting in those days. Buried under the hum of London’s constant traffic, they wouldn’t hear the running engine of John Wooton’s car. As my fiancée looked at the stone, I would take out my cigarettes. Just as I went to light one, I would drop the lighter. In true servile deference, the assistant would bend down to pick it up. By the time he looked up, me and my pretend wife-to-be were in the car. By the time he had straightened up, lighter in hand, the three of us were losing ourselves in the city’s ever busy traffic. Those were halcyon days. I was at my peak.

A
t 6.00am on 7 January 1956, the Metropolitan Police smashed through the front door of my flat in Hans Crescent, Knightsbridge. I was awake with the first thud of the sledgehammer and knew instantly what was happening. I heard the rush of feet as they gained entry. My bedroom door opened and three plain clothes detectives crowded round my bed. I could hear other officers starting a search of my flat.

‘Get dressed, Fontaine, you’re nicked.’ I asked, ‘What are the charges?’

‘We are arresting you on suspicion of the robbery of the Montague Arms public house in Slough.’ They cited two other jewel robberies, including the one in Henley. I dressed with an audience.

I was taken initially to Slough police station, charged then held on remand. At Buckinghamshire Quarter
Sessions, I was sentenced to ten years for each robbery and five years for a revolver they had found in the flat. The judge sentenced me to thirty-five years in prison. Luckily, the ten-year sentences were to run concurrently. That meant I would serve one ten-year stretch for the three robberies. But I was still looking at a fifteen-year sentence. This was tantamount to a life sentence in Britain. I had been done for three robberies, all without violence, all against wealthy people who were well insured. This sentence was out of all proportion to the crimes. I got five years for a gun that had never been fired or used in intimidation. This left a bitter taste in my mouth. The man before me in the dock was was a paedophile, convicted of sexually molesting fourteen young boys. He got six years. With time off, he would be back hanging around school playgrounds in four. English justice makes me sick. It is designed to protect property more than people. It is implemented by the rich. A fucking pervert who wrecks children’s lives is treated more leniently than a thief.

I was taken to Wandsworth. Again. Even before I was given a cell, I was in trouble. While being examined by a doctor, I refuse to call him ‘sir’. I told him I only used the term ‘sir’ to people, irrespective of position or class, when I have some respect for them. I had no respect for him. Within days I had been transferred to Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight. Parkhurst was Britain’s very own Alcatraz. It had the worst warders, the harshest regime, and the most serious criminals. It is the very worst prison that I’ve been in, and I’ve been in plenty. I was back on the ‘E’ list. The only prisoners I associated with were also ‘E’ men. We ate
together, worked together. We were segregated from the other cons and had less free time and the worst work duties. As ‘escapees’, we were considered to be subversives and troublemakers. They sought to break our spirit. In fact this had the opposite effect. The one saving grace of being an ‘E’ man, is that those that surround you are not weak, they are survivors, men the authorities have tried to break and failed. The more they tried to crush us, the more we supported each other. The more they attacked us, the stronger we grew. Together we kept our spirits up. But camaraderie or not, life was cold and grey. On bitter, dark winter nights, it was hard to feel good.

Some officers would assault you and put you on punishment for the slightest thing. In some cases you wouldn’t have done anything, they would do it for you.

A favourite pastime of one of the officers was to go into a con’s cell while he was on exercise. He would press live matches into the cracks in the stone floor. When you returned from exercise, he would have you pulled out of your cell and stripped naked. Everything would be searched, the cell, all your belongings, thrown about, quite often smashed. Naked, you would stand in the corridor, watching. Eventually, the matches would be found. Then, it was down to the Punishment Block to solitary confinement, bread and water, and some indiscriminate whacks from their sticks to set you on your way. Rehabilitation?

I spent a lot of time on punishment, a lot of time shivering, eating only bread, drinking only water. I was on punishment once, when the door was opened and a screw
asked me whether I’d like to do a work detail with another prisoner. I accepted. We were both taken down the corridor and shown three stripped cells. We were to whitewash them. Giving us brushes and buckets of paint the warder left. He obviously thought it was safe to leave us alone. The other con and I started to work. There was a ventilator shaft in the wall of the cell. I knew the layout of the prison, as I had been there now almost two-and-a-half years. The shaft must run to the outside areas. In the corridor outside the cells was a wall cupboard. It would almost certainly be for maintenance tools. The brushes and buckets we were using would have come from that cupboard. I played with the padlock and opened it. We found a bricklayer’s trowel and a steel chisel. Quickly, we removed the cover of the shaft. There was just enough room for two men to crawl inside. Clambering up the wall, both of us crawled into the dark cavity. To our amazement, the brickwork was already crumbling and we started to dig. To the left of the shaft ran two pipes, which I guessed were gas. I warned my friend not to lean on them. We crawled to a bend in the shaft. If we followed the shaft, it would just take us further into the prison. On the other side to the brickwork in front of us, would be one of the outside yards, then a wall, and then the Forest of Parkhurst, and freedom.

Frantically we stabbed at the disintegrating sand and cement round the bricks. My eyes had now adjusted to the dim light. I could see what I was doing. I tried to dig without swinging my arms. The constricted space meant our bodies were touching, our arms and elbows
continually banging each other. The other con seemed to be in more of a panic than me. Twice he just missed my face with the sharp trowel. I told him to be careful, that we must dig together in unison. As I jabbed the chisel into the bricks, I knew that in as little as half an hour we could be free, or, if discovered in the ventilator shaft on an escape attempt, we could be lying naked in a cell, taking a beating. I dug and prayed, neither one less important than the other. My partner switched arms, saying his left was too tired. Now his swings were going from right to left. The first one grazed the wall and the momentum took it straight into one of the gas pipes. Gas leaked out, right beside us. I got him to hold his thumb on the leak while I slithered out of the shaft, broke into the maintenance cupboard again and got some putty. Crawling back to my friend, we plugged the leak as best we could. The escape attempt was over. The slightest movement would cause the leak to open. We had wasted precious time. Hurriedly we got out of the shaft and cleaned ourselves. We replaced the cover, put everything back as it had been. It was only when the fear of being caught for our aborted attempt had subsided that the abject desolation hit me. We had had a chance of escape, and we had failed. Our wall painting was neither enthusiastic nor thorough.

That night, with all doors locked and all the cons in bed, the putty on the gas pipe blew. Gas started to pour out through ventilator shafts throughout the prison. The sirens went up and the prison was evacuated. Hundreds of half-dressed men stood under floodlights in the exercise yard. The engineers were sent for and eventually the gas leak
was traced. It was discovered that the brickwork surrounding the pipes had been freshly dug away. The atmosphere in the segregation wing was tense. I wondered whether the warder would admit to leaving two men on punishment, one an ‘E’ man, to work unsupervised. Time would tell. Whatever happened to the warder never became public. That they had managed to trace back the sequence of events became evident two days later, when my partner and I were both transferred off the island. He went to Chelmsford, and I went to Nottingham.

There is ‘hard time’, and there is just ‘time’. I’ve never been in a prison that has been like a holiday camp, as some political right-wingers on the outside seem to think. Having your liberty taken away from you is punishment enough, no matter what the conditions. When those conditions are brutal, your life is a struggle and the very worst of you comes to the surface. Brutalise a human being, and you end up with a brutal human being. If Parkhurst brought out the worst in me, Nottingham would bring out the best. The Governor was a man called David Inders. He was popular with staff and inmates. Inders was a humanitarian, a simple enough word to say, but a tall order for a human being to meet. In the jungle that is the penal system, he was like a breath of fresh air. He was not a weak man, his actions were guided by his morals. His natural bias was to look for what was best in a man. I gave him not one moment’s trouble. I fight fire with fire. If there’s no fire, I don’t imagine flames. Within weeks, I was taken off the ‘E’ list.

John and my mother, on leaving Scotland, had settled in
Stafford. Nottingham was much easier to get to than Parkhurst and every fortnight Wooton made the forty-mile journey to visit. There was a civilian, an odd-job man, who worked at the prison. I think originally he had been a gardener. In middle age he did whatever work he could get. His name was Bert and he would have his dinner in the mess alongside us. He was an unassuming, simple soul. Prisoners and staff alike treated him well. Bert would travel to work on his bicycle. He had an allotment, and often he would bring a sackful of his own vegetables into the prison to sell to the catering department. No warder ever stopped Bert, or looked in his sack.

Every fortnight after his visit John would leave, in a left luggage locker on Nottingham railway station, a bag of ‘goodies’ for me. During the visit, the ticket for the key was slipped into my hand. The day after John’s visit, Bert would purposely sit near me during lunch. At some point during that meal, the ticket would move from my hand to his. Twenty-four hours later, just before the end of the lunch period, Bert would come into the prison mess. He would be carrying a sack of vegetables for the kitchen and on his way, he would stop and sit with me for a quick chat. The sack would be placed between us. Inside would be a carrier bag. I would take out the bag, and Bert would go on his way. During lunch time and leisure periods, cons can move around quite freely. Within minutes I would have the bag back in my cell. Inside were all the things that made life bearable – tins of salmon, a bottle of wine, good soap, razor blades, aftershave. For me, being dirty and unkempt was as difficult as losing my freedom.

The other thing that made life bearable was Whisky. Whisky was a two-month-old kitten when I first got her. Again, it was Bert I had to thank. Both John and myself made sure that Bert was well rewarded for the little favours he did us. In prison, any prison, the only side of yourself that you dare show is the hardest aspect of your character. When a con is allowed an animal or a bird, for some brief period of the day, it lets him reveal his gentler side. For a human who spends half his life in a cage, it is easy to lose yourself. Whisky went some way towards keeping me a reasonably worthwhile human being. I loved that little cat.

Besides the company, Whisky also gave me a purpose. I would scheme and trade to get fresh meat and fish for her. I never once gave her tinned food. Cats are independent animals and sometimes she would vanish for a few days. But whenever I was on exercise, I had only to whistle and, within seconds, the small ginger cat would be winding herself around my ankles. Sometimes it would be minutes before I could move. She gave me so much pleasure, too much to put a price on.

I had been at Nottingham for a few months when I was called from exercise, because the Governor wanted to see me. The way he looked at me as I stood in his office gave me an inkling of what was to come. The words were quietly spoken: ‘Roy, I’m very sorry to have to tell you this. I have just been informed by a Glasgow solicitor that your father died yesterday.’ The main thing I felt was shock. He asked me whether I wanted compassionate leave to attend the funeral. I said: ‘Not if I have to stand by my father’s coffin in handcuffs, with a policeman at each arm.’ Inders looked at
me. I went on: ‘My father was a law-abiding lay preacher. To be at his graveside, handcuffed and under escort, would shame his memory.’

Again Inders looked at me, but this time the look was more penetrating. He held my gaze, before speaking. ‘If … IF … I recommend you for two days unescorted compassionate leave, will you give me your word that at the end of those two days on the morning of the third day, that you will report to the main gate by 8.00am.’ I nodded. Inders continued: ‘If, after giving me your word, you fail me, I will give you my word that as long as I am a prison governor, I will never grant such a privilege to any other prisoner in my custody again.’ This time I looked him in the eye: ‘I give you my word.’

Dressed in my own clothes, I went to reception where I was given a black tie and a rail warrant. I was also given a few pounds subsistence money. The Deputy Governor drove me to the station. Dropping me off, he pushed a
ten-shilling
note into my hand and said: ‘Have a couple of beers while you wait for the train.’

The journey north was strange. I was elated to be free, but sad for my father. Also, I knew that the freedom was an illusion. As the train rumbled northwards, two thoughts continually swam around in my head. I had no warders and no bars to restrain me. If I wanted to go on the run, I could. As my head filled with the dreams of free life, the realisation of why I was sitting on the train hit me – I would never see my father again.

I arrived in Glasgow early Monday morning and went straight to see the solicitor who was handling my father’s
affairs. His house and contents had been put up for sale. All proceeds were to be split equally between me and my brother Donald – nothing for my mother.

John Wooton, my mother and Donald had all travelled up from England. The funeral was a quiet affair, just family and a clerk from the solicitor’s office attended. When the service was over, I was keen to put some things right. I asked the young clerk to open up my father’s house, as there were some personal possessions that I didn’t want sold. He hesitated, saying that it wasn’t really in his authority. I pressed the issue and he gave way. I suggested to John that he take Donald for a drink, while my mother accompanied me to the house.