Read Online Inside the Firm - The Untold Story of The Krays' Reign of Terror by Tony Lambrianou - Free Book Online
Authors: Tony Lambrianou
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usually watered-down scotch – the john could be paying more than £500 for a bottle’s worth – and each drink is served with a stick. The girl returns the sticks at the end of the night and cashes them in for money. Some of the men would spend a fortune on alcohol and cash gifts to the girls.
Afterwards the girl would tell the punter she would meet him down the road in ten minutes. She didn’t, of course. Our job was to have a car standing by to get her away from the club. For this, we received 50 per cent of what she had earned. I can only once remember a girl actually going with a bloke, when she happened to meet a millionaire. I took them to the Russell Hotel in Russell Square. But the biggest coup I ever knew was when a girl called June clipped a wealthy old farmer for about twenty grand. He’d come to London for the Agricultural Show at Olympia and he was so delighted to be promised a night in a hotel with a pretty girl that he lavished her with cash and champagne, for which she later picked up the rewards. Needless to say, she did a runner before the farmer even saw a hotel. They did need protection, the girls. If any of themen got troublesome, we’d give them a kicking. We were always four-or five-handed.
We began to build up a lot of contacts in the West End, and we became known in the clubs round there. I started to see quite a bit of the twins, especially Reggie Kray, who was always around. He was very active at that time, very smart, a man about town. The twins were running Esmerelda’s Barn, a gambling nightspot in Wilton Place, Knightsbridge, and they were into all the best places. I used to bump into them in the Regency in Stoke Newington, in the City Club in the Angel and generally around the West End in the Pigalle, the Bagatelle, Churchills, the Stork and the Society Club. I joined their company on these occasions, and I came to know virtually everybody around them.
In October 1961 I got nicked again, and again it was with Phil Keeling. He was a gelly man – a gelignite expert – and he drove me to the West Country, where we headed for two small Somerset towns called Ilminster and Chard. Phil was into blowing safes, and he had heard of one in the Ilminster Co-op department store. It was like a post-box: people used to post their money into it.
As we were driving along, Keeling pulled out a packet of three. I thought, ‘What does he want them for?’ That’s when I learned that French letters and balloons are ideal for keeping gelignite in. When you do a safe you have to put the explosive to the weakest point, which is usually the lock. You have to get a thin layer of gelly round the door, you have to goo it up into the keyhole itself and you’ve got to get as much as you can into the safe. When you’re laying the gelly, you pierce the end of the rubber and squeeze it out in a thin line like you do with pastry or icing. Then you can cover it with Plasticine. You set it off through a detonator, a battery with a wire on it. You cross the circuit, and that’s what causes the explosion. But you’ve got to know what you’re doing.
We got into the store at midnight and ran round the different departments, picking up fur coats and carpets to cover the safe with so as to muffle the bang. But gelignite has got to be kept cool and dry, and the heat was making ours start to run. It was too dangerous to use – we would have blown half of Somerset away. So we had to find another way.
I went for a walk around the Co-op and found a 14lb sledgehammer. But the safe had a steel door, solidly built into concrete. The counter was built round it. I was smashing this hammer into the concrete and making no impression whatsoever. Then we went right to the back of the store, by the railway, where we found an oxy-acetylene bottle and a flame gun. So we set about cutting the safe. We were half an inch away from getting the door open when we ran out of gas….
We read in the next issue of the local paper that
Afterwards the girl would tell the punter she would meet him down the road in ten minutes. She didn’t, of course. Our job was to have a car standing by to get her away from the club. For this, we received 50 per cent of what she had earned. I can only once remember a girl actually going with a bloke, when she happened to meet a millionaire. I took them to the Russell Hotel in Russell Square. But the biggest coup I ever knew was when a girl called June clipped a wealthy old farmer for about twenty grand. He’d come to London for the Agricultural Show at Olympia and he was so delighted to be promised a night in a hotel with a pretty girl that he lavished her with cash and champagne, for which she later picked up the rewards. Needless to say, she did a runner before the farmer even saw a hotel. They did need protection, the girls. If any of themen got troublesome, we’d give them a kicking. We were always four-or five-handed.
We began to build up a lot of contacts in the West End, and we became known in the clubs round there. I started to see quite a bit of the twins, especially Reggie Kray, who was always around. He was very active at that time, very smart, a man about town. The twins were running Esmerelda’s Barn, a gambling nightspot in Wilton Place, Knightsbridge, and they were into all the best places. I used to bump into them in the Regency in Stoke Newington, in the City Club in the Angel and generally around the West End in the Pigalle, the Bagatelle, Churchills, the Stork and the Society Club. I joined their company on these occasions, and I came to know virtually everybody around them.
In October 1961 I got nicked again, and again it was with Phil Keeling. He was a gelly man – a gelignite expert – and he drove me to the West Country, where we headed for two small Somerset towns called Ilminster and Chard. Phil was into blowing safes, and he had heard of one in the Ilminster Co-op department store. It was like a post-box: people used to post their money into it.
As we were driving along, Keeling pulled out a packet of three. I thought, ‘What does he want them for?’ That’s when I learned that French letters and balloons are ideal for keeping gelignite in. When you do a safe you have to put the explosive to the weakest point, which is usually the lock. You have to get a thin layer of gelly round the door, you have to goo it up into the keyhole itself and you’ve got to get as much as you can into the safe. When you’re laying the gelly, you pierce the end of the rubber and squeeze it out in a thin line like you do with pastry or icing. Then you can cover it with Plasticine. You set it off through a detonator, a battery with a wire on it. You cross the circuit, and that’s what causes the explosion. But you’ve got to know what you’re doing.
We got into the store at midnight and ran round the different departments, picking up fur coats and carpets to cover the safe with so as to muffle the bang. But gelignite has got to be kept cool and dry, and the heat was making ours start to run. It was too dangerous to use – we would have blown half of Somerset away. So we had to find another way.
I went for a walk around the Co-op and found a 14lb sledgehammer. But the safe had a steel door, solidly built into concrete. The counter was built round it. I was smashing this hammer into the concrete and making no impression whatsoever. Then we went right to the back of the store, by the railway, where we found an oxy-acetylene bottle and a flame gun. So we set about cutting the safe. We were half an inch away from getting the door open when we ran out of gas….
We read in the next issue of the local paper that
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