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everything must go. A huge sum might be cleared in just one day. The warehouse would be abandoned and everyone would vanish.
    At the end, when the whole lot went missing, Alfie would have to front it out and say he’d spent it all. He’d say he was a drunkard and a loser and he’d pay it back when he could. There was nothing the supplier could do.
    There was another kind of scam, according to Alfie. Whenever the twins found themselves short of money, Ronnie would say: ‘Let’s get everyone over and declare a charity.’
    Ronnie would then have a big party, getting all the rich people he knew to donate large amounts of money, which was supposedly for children or old people or some other worthy cause. But in reality it he’d siphon off a thousand or so of it straight into his pocket.
    Big-hearted Ronnie liked to cultivate a reputation for sudden, spontaneous acts of charity – having first ensured the photographers would be there, of course. What my brothers were beginning to realise, if they hadn’t done so already, washis equal capability for sudden acts of extreme violence. They were being drawn in. They weren’t yet part of the Firm themselves, but were getting close to being so.

CHAPTER 4
    A CASUAL VIOLENCE
    GRADUALLY, MY BROTHERS were being lured deeper and deeper into the Krays’ twisted world. David told me stories about how Ronnie would arrive at the 66, walk through the door and hand him and Alfie a couple of guns – ‘a Beretta or a Luger’. He’d have to look after them for him, hiding them in the oven, the fridge, or anywhere else he could think of.
    It was a big thrill at first, according to Alfie. My brothers didn’t know much about guns, although pretty soon they would learn. It was just a way of luring them in, into the Firm, although they never considered themselves a real part of it. It just seemed so cool to be strutting around with an automatic tucked into the waistband of a smart suit.
    David admitted to me that he would often be tooled up if they went in a club, carrying guns for the Colonel in case he needed one. ‘We just sit there having a drink, while the Colonel does the business,’ he would tell me. ‘It’s only happened to me once when he actually asked me for it.’ David told me Ron had got up from his table and as he passed him on the way to the gents, he had nodded to David to follow him. ‘Giss that,’ hehad said, taking the gun from my brother – but he never used it. Not on that occasion, at least.
    At the time I thought this kind of talk was fantastic. Any young man would, I suppose. I’d had been to sea and thought I was pretty tough, but this was like something out of the movies. I wanted to be part of it. David told me more: how Ronnie would tell them to go down to some club and cause havoc. ‘Smash it up, start a fight, get drunk,’ he’d order my brothers. Ronnie and Reggie would then come into the club they’d just trashed and say to the owners, ‘We can deal with all that. You give us a little pension, we’ll sort all that out. You won’t have any more trouble…’
    One day Ronnie told my brothers: ‘Listen, you two! Go back down the West End and do anything you like. If you want to take clubs over, do it, if you want to take over all the porno stuff there, do it. If you want to take over all the after-hours drinking clubs, do that too. And if anyone tries to stop you, or threatens you, just come back to us in Vallance Road and it gives us an excuse to go and get them.’
    It was exhilarating, exciting, head-turning stuff. My brothers relished telling me these stories and in turn I lapped it up. But some of their stories chilled me to the bone.
    One night David was having a drink with Ron in a club when a rich fence they knew had a few too many and started laughing to himself about how he had kept a lock-up garage round the corner for years, which the police believed belonged to Ronnie.
    Ronnie turned round to the man and, still smiling at him, said: