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Reggie was waiting, and he slammed into the surprised officer’s face with a few right-and left-handers then walked away.
    I was at home with Mum when someone knocked at the door and told us what had happened. When I got to the police station I couldn’t believe it. Ronnie was in a terrible state: blood all over him, his shirt ripped to pieces.
    ‘What the hell happened?’ I asked.
    Ronnie was still defiant. His eyes hardened. ‘They got flash. A load of them came in the cell and gave me a hiding.’ He glanced over to some of them watching. ‘They all think they’re big men. If they want a row it’s ten-handed.’
    I turned round on them angrily. ‘Aren’t you lot clever?’I said sarcastically. ‘Not one of you is man enough to fight him on your own.’
    ‘Look, Charlie,’ one of them said in a friendly tone. ‘We don’t want any trouble – any problems.’
    ‘No problems!’ I yelled. ‘I’m going to cause you plenty of problems. This is diabolical, what’s happened here. You’re not getting away with beating up a sixteen-year-old kid!’
    I started ranting and accused them again of being cowards. They threatened to arrest me and suggested I left. Finally I agreed but I warned them I was taking Ronnie to a doctor.
    Later that evening it was bedlam at Vallance Road. Mum was crying her eyes out at the sight of Ronnie’s smashed face; Ronnie was trying to console her, saying he was all right and he hadn’t hurt the policeman anyway; the old man and I were wondering if we could take legal action. Then there was a knock at the front door. It was an inspector the old man knew from the local nick. PC Baynton was with him, looking the worse for wear. The Inspector wanted to speak to Reggie.
    When I said he wasn’t in, the Inspector motioned towards Baynton. ‘Look what he’s done to him,’ he said.
    ‘Oh, yeah,’ I replied scornfully. ‘Come in and have a look at what your officers have done to Ronnie.’
    ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ the Inspector said.
    I made them come in and see Ronnie anyway. ‘You’re dead worried because one of your men copped a right-hander,’ I said. ‘Ronnie got more than that – from half a dozen of them.’
    The Inspector didn’t want to know. All he wanted was to arrest Reggie and charge him with assault. A few minutes later Reggie walked in. After a brief chat I advised him it was best for everyone if he gave himselfup, and he did. But I warned the Inspector that if Reggie was so much as touched, I’d blow the whole thing wide open to the papers.
    A day or so later, the old man was told the police didn’t want to make a song and dance about it unless they were forced to. The twins had to be charged because they had unquestionably assaulted a policeman, but they would be treated leniently – probably just put on probation – if I kept quiet about Ronnie’s beating. If I didn’t, the police would make it unpleasant for the whole family – starting with nicking the old man for dodging the call-up. I decided to swallow it.
    A few days after their seventeenth birthday the twins appeared at Old Street in North London, accused of assault. For some reason, the magistrate, Mr Harold Sturge, praised PC Baynton’s courage in a ‘cowardly attack’. No mention, however, was made of the cowardly attack behind closed doors at Bethnal Green police station.
    Not long afterwards Baynton was moved to a different area. But the PC had fuelled the twins’ resentment and distrust of uniformed authority and the legacy of his arrogance that autumn evening was to last a lifetime.
    The Baynton episode did nothing to destroy the myth that was growing up around the twins. They were tough and fearless and, in the tradition of the Wild West where the ‘fastest guns’ were always the target of other sharpshooters, they became marked young men in the East End. Hard nuts from neighbouring districts came looking for them in search of fame and glory as The Kids Who Toppled