Read The Wicked Mr Hall for Free Online Page A

Underworld who preceded the Kray twins as possibly the most feared man in London. Collins release date was some months before mine and close to Christmas. Before he left he made a promise to seeme alright for 25 December. Although difficult to escape from, the prisons of post-war Britain were nothing like the security-conscious places they are today. There was no barbed wire on top of the walls, nothing was alarmed, there were no perimeter fences. If you could somehow scale the walls, you could quite feasibly get to the exterior doors and windows of the prison itself. There was a glassless, but barred, window to the tailoring shop. Stacked next to the bars were rolls of cheap cloth, which were used for prison uniforms. On the day before his release, Johnny pulled me to one side and told me of his proposal. On one of the days leading up to Christmas Eve, he would scale the walls, cross the wasteground and, reaching inside the bars of the tailor shop window, he would leave me some Christmas cheer to share with our mutual friends.
    As the time approached I would deftly slip my hands in between the rolls of material to see whether he had been as good as his word. There was nothing on the twenty-first, nothing on the twenty-second or twenty-third. As Christmas Eve dawned, my hopes were fading fast. Many men make promises on the inside only to regain their liberty and adopt an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ policy. I considered Johnny’s to be just one more empty promise. But at 11.30 that morning, as I slipped my hand between the rolls of cloth, my fingers touched a package. The last hand that touched that package had been Johnny Collins’. He had come through. His word was good.
    Later he would tell me how he and a friend had borrowed a builder’s open-backed van. They had an extended ladder, blankets and torches. Together theyscaled the wall, flipping the heavy wooden ladder over from one side to the other. The friend stayed with the ladder and carried a torch to guide Collins back to him. Taking the bag of presents Johnny crossed the wasteland, then sticking close to the wall, made his way to the tailoring shop window.
    That night in our cell, a small group of us sat around the open package. He had left us cigarettes, tins of fruit, salmon, biscuits and two bottles of the finest Scotch whisky. Jack Spot had allegedly seen fit to put a razor to Collins’ face, but that Christmas Eve five smiling cons raised their tin mugs to the East End villain, who was probably the world’s most unlikely Santa Claus.
    I have many memories of that first Wandsworth sentence. Chirpy Downes was another Eastender, his cousin Terry Downes was a famous boxer of the time. We were in the prison chapel one Sunday morning when the Chaplain delivering his sermon said: ‘When I was a child, I spoke as a child, and acted as a child.’ With his head bowed, Chirpy said: ‘You still are a child.’ It wasn’t said in a loud voice, it was just a disgruntled con letting slip a sarcastic remark. As we filed out of the chapel at the end of the service, a screw stopped Chirpy in his tracks. He told him he was putting him on punishment for insolence. Chirpy grabbed hold of him and a fight ensued. Later that evening a group of warders with batons entered Chirpy’s cell and beat him badly. He was taken to the punishment block where he was put in solitary on rations of bread and water. After a few days, he was taken to the prison laundry. There waiting for him were twelve warders and the prisondoctor. He was forced to take off his shirt and, after having a wide leather belt fastened around his waist to protect his kidneys, he was strapped to a large timber triangle. Out of his vision, one of the warders was handed the ‘cat o’ nine tails’. Chirpy would never know which prison officer beat him. The ‘cat’ is a barbaric flogging implement. It has a short handle from which hang nine strips of knotted