Read Bringing Down the Krays for Free Online Page B

‘Ten years you’ve had it? And the police thought it was mine? I reckon that’s £10,000 you owe me.’
    There was an uncomfortable silence while the man searched for the right response. Ronnie just stared at him, waiting, still smiling. Then right in front of David, Ronnie took out a gun and shot the man straight in the foot. As his victim started to scream in agony, Ronnie stood over him, laughing, as if it was nothing. David and the other men present backed away, shaken.
    Minutes later the same man appeared, limping, beside David, who was now over at the bar trying to steady his nerves. ‘Get us a drink?’ he asked. Ronnie followed, calmly telling one of the Firm: ‘Set him down on that chair over there. Give him a light ale and a whisky and then take him in the car and drop him outside the hospital to get fixed up.’
    As the man left the club, Ronnie called after him, ‘And don’t forget my ten grand, will you?’
    As well as taking over the 66 Club as a sort of neutral territory, Ronnie would frequently use David’s car because he thought all the others he had access to were being watched. David became his driver a lot of the time, taking him anywhere he wanted to go. Ron loved having my good-looking younger brother driving him all over the place.
    If Ronnie wanted something, he had to have it. David would get to know about that little aspect of Ronnie’s personality, because unfortunately Ron wanted him. But it wasn’t just people. It was anything. If there was a club he fancied it would just be: ‘Oh look, this club would do us,’ and that would be it.He never mentioned money. One of the Krays’ clubs, the Green Dragon in Stepney, had been taken over like that. Soon they were in there all the time.
    David was in the 66 one night, when Big Pat Connolly – a member of the Firm who was effectively next in command after Ronnie and Reggie – came in and said he was wanted at the Green Dragon. So off David went to Brick Lane.
    It was a private club, which meant you had to sign members in to keep your alcohol licence and stay legal. When David got there, Ronnie was sitting at a table, with his older brother, Charlie Kray, and some of the Firm. David didn’t know it but Reggie was away again, in prison. They all sat down and had a drink. Ronnie asked David, ‘What do you think, David? Lovely club, isn’t it?’
    ‘Yes Ronnie, it’s lovely.’
    With that, three drunks came stumbling in, signing their names at the door. Whatever they’d written, the girl at the desk wasn’t having it. She came over to Ronnie and read him what they’d put in the visitor’s book. The three of them had written ‘Dickie Bird’ as their names, and their addresses as ‘Up a tree.’
    Ron said, ‘Oh, right.’ He went up to them and had a word.
    ‘You’re not Dickie Birds, are you?’
    ‘What do you mean, mate? Who are you?’ one answered back.
    ‘And you don’t live up a tree, do you?’ Ronnie continued, ignoring him. ‘Sign your names in properly next time.’ And with that – wallop! Ronnie took a swing, and like a cartoon, the three drunks fell over, one by one, into a heap on the floor.
    Ronnie just sighed and, walking up to the bar while dusting his hands down, said ‘Giss a drink, will you?’ to the stunned barman.
    That was David’s first real introduction to the casual nature of Ronnie’s violence. Nobody moved to stop him, nobody said it was wrong. He behaved like it was nothing to knock three men out stone cold. It was just another day at the office. David was beginning to get it. This was just how Ronnie was all of the time. Did it give life that extra edge? Or were he and Alfie going somewhere they really didn’t want to go?
    It carried on from there. That was the way Ronnie did things. If you were out of order in any way you knew what to expect. You had to be respectable, and respectful. There was only one rule, and that was that you did exactly as Ronnie said. And that was whatever happened to