compensation but on 19 and 20 September the Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror did allow four column inches to apologize to him.
To celebrate the end of the affair, Ronnie threw a party at a Bethnal Green pub. Boothby didn’t come; nor did Reginald Payne, who was fired as editor of the Sunday Mirror on 14 August. But many celebrities were there. And among those who showed no fear at being photographed with the so-called thug, Ronnie Kray, was someone who was to become a dear, dear friend: Judy Garland, the Hollywood moviestar.
The spider spinning a web to trap the twins made his first move in January 1965. Detective Inspector Leonard Read – known as ‘Nipper’ in criminal circles – walked into the basement bar of the Glenrae Hotel and charged Ronnie and Reggie with demanding money with menaces from a Soho club owner. They were said to have threatened Hew Cargill McCowan with violence unless he gave them a percentage of the takings of the Hideaway Club in Ger-rard Street. When McCowan refused the twins’ offer, the prosecution alleged, a drunken writer called Teddy Smith smashed some bottles and glasses at the club, causing twenty pounds’ worth of damage.
The evidence was wafer-thin and, thankfully, Ronnie and Reggie were acquitted. But they were subjected to two Old Bailey trials and three months on remand in Brixton before being cleared. Police objected to bail four times because they feared Ronnie and Reggie would not turn up to stand trial. But the twins offered to give up their passports, report to the police twice a day and undertake not to interfere with witnesses – all this in addition to sureties of a staggering £18,000. The court’s refusal to allow bail caused widespread controversy and Lord Boothby was so incensed he asked the Government in the House of Lords whether ‘it is their intention to imprison the Kray brothers indefinitely without trial’.
The trial took place at the Old Bailey in March 1965, but after a nine-day hearing the jury failed to agree. The retrial started on 30 March, and I was spending money and time trying to find witnesses who could help the twins. I went to the solicitors’ at 9 A.M. every morning to tell them what I was doing. I had a private detective running around all over the place. And I had a tape on my phone, to cover every call.
The police had the hump with me for trying to help the twins and tried to fit me up one night.
I arrived home and Dolly told me a man had just phoned from Finchley saying he had some information that would interest me; he was going to ring back. About fifteen minutes later, the phone went. The guy was at Aldgate; could I meet him there? And would I be in my white Mini? I smelled a rat. How did he know what car I drove? And if he had rung from Finchley the first time, how had he got to Aldgate in fifteen minutes? I pulled him on this and he gave me some story, but I wasn’t fooled. I told him I knew he was a copper and if he thought he was going to fit me up he had another thought coming. Both conversations had been taped, I said, then I put the phone down. I did not keep the appointment. And I never heard from the guy again.
I was spending so much time on the case – chasing witnesses, helping the private detective or attending court – that I had no time for my work as a theatrical agent. No work meant no bookings. And no bookings meant no money. But money was what was needed if the twins were to get off; for lawyers want paying, no matter which way the verdict goes.
I had been dipping into my savings and was absolutely boracic when I got a call from the solicitor representing the twins. The legal costs had been paid up front, but they had run out, the solicitor said. He wanted £1,500 for the next day’s hearing, or he and the barrister were pulling out of the case.
I was owed money that would have more than covered the required amount, but I would not get it until the end of the week. I needed the £1,500 urgently and racked my brains for someone who had that sort of money at the drop of a hat.
I could think of only one person: Lord Boothby.
I rang his Eaton Square house and Boothby’s charming butler arranged for me to see the noble lord that afternoon. Boothby was very pleasant: he offered me a drink and allowed me to say my piece. I explained why I needed the money so quickly and stressed that I wasn’t broke, just in a tight financial corner.
I honestly felt Boothby would agree to a loan: he’d just been awarded £40,000, and he knew the ‘menaces’ charge against the twins was nonsense. So I was shell-shocked when he said, ‘I’m sorry, my dear boy. The forty thousand’s all gone. I owed so much.’
I was choked. I didn’t know what to say; there wasn’t anything I could say. I’d blown out. I needed to get out of there quickly and try someone else, or else the twins would find themselves with no legal brief the next day – which would almost certainly mean a verdict of guilty and a prison sentence.
I left Eaton Square a very worried man, and not a little disappointed in Lord Boothby who, I’m sure, could have found £1,500 if he had really wanted to.
Of course, I got the money in the end; you always find a way when it’s critical, don’t you? And then I got on with the business of tracking down witnesses willing to tell the truth and get the case against the twins kicked out once and for all.
They did get off. But, sadly, I wasn’t there to hear the Not Guilty verdicts.
On the sixth day of the retrial I went to see a possible witness instead of going to the solicitor’s office first. When I finally turned up an hour or so later to tell them I’d found someone willing to give evidence, one of the clerks said, ‘That was good, wasn’t it, Charlie?’ I didn’t know what he meant. A minute later, in an upstairs office, a solicitor said, ‘Congratulations.’
‘What for?’ I asked.
‘Your case,’ he said. ‘It was thrown out this morning. Your brothers have been cleared.’
I was pleased, of course. But also cheesed off. It was the first day of the case I hadn’t been in court, and I’d missed the best moment. By the time I got home to Vallance Road, the Fleet Street hounds were outside the house and the twins were having cups of tea – free men for the first time since their arrest three months to the day before.
That homecoming made even bigger headlines than the trial itself and when all the reporters and photographers and well-wishers had left Vallance Road, I took the twins in the front room and gave them some strong advice that, had they heeded it, could have changed the tragic course their lives were to take. They had proved their point, I said. Once again, the police had tried to put them away on trumped-up charges – and failed. But Nipper Read and his men would not give up; if anything, they would take the latest setback to heart and try even harder next time. Whatever the twins had in mind, I said, they should stop and think and be very careful. If they stopped now we could go on for ever and be looked on as respectable businessmen; we could have everything we ever wanted, with no villainy, no worries, no police harassment. Having won a few battles, we could go on and win the war.
Ronnie and Reggie nodded. What I said was right, they agreed. They had indeed proved their point to the police. It was time to quieten down and become respectable businessmen. Reggie even admitted that he and Frances were getting married.
But already it was too late. Reggie’s marriage was tragically doomed. And in Westminster’s corridors of power, one of the top men in the country was preparing a Top Secret document that was to lure the twins into the spider’s web and trap them for ever.
Reggie could have married Judy Garland. She truly loved him, fawned all over him and was always trying to persuade him to stay at her house in Hawaii. But Reggie only had eyes for Frances Shea. She was all he had ever wanted in his life and could ever hope to want: the beginning and the end of everything. Reggie was very old-fashioned in his attitude to women and he courted Frances in an old-fashioned way. He took her to the top clubs and restaurants, always making sure she had the best of everything, but he liked the less flamboyant touches, too. If they were walking down a street together, Reggie would think nothing of stopping at a florist’s to buy her