Inside the Firm - The Untold Story of The Krays' Reign of Terror Read Online Free

‘All right, I’ll drive it.’
    Chris said: ‘While you’re driving the car, we’re with you all the way.’ Ronnie Bender drove the car which followed me, with Chris as his passenger. They were both armed. If anybody had stopped me that night, they would have had to go with Jack.
    We drove down Evering Road into Clapton, along Mare Street, Hackney, into Cambridge Heath Road, through Commercial Road and into the Blackwall Tunnel. It was a quarter to two in the morning.
    We came out the other side and about half a mile from there I parked the car up beside an old derelict church down a side turning. My intention was to report it to the twins to let certain people know where it was so that it could be taken away and disposed of. Little did I realise it was on another firm’s manor, the Foreman manor, which could obviously cause problems for them if it were found.
    I dropped Jack’s keys into the Regents Canal. If you come up from Hackney Road through Queensbridge Road, Haggerston, to the canal bridge, they are in there on the right. If they sent a diver down there today, he’d recover them.
    We went back to Blonde Carol’s flat and carried on cleaning up. We finished at roughly five in the morning. There would be another clean-up the next night when Albert Donaghue went round and the place was completely redecorated and fitted out with new furniture, as though nothing had ever happened.
    Chris and I went back to our Dad’s house. He got out of bed and knew something was wrong. We were sitting there, the old man, Chris and I, with a cup of tea and we said: ‘Something very, very bad’s happened tonight.’ The old man didn’t want to know. He didn’t ask us. I went home to my wife, who also realised that something was wrong but again didn’t ask questions. That was an accepted thing. She knew I was involved with the Krays.
    I could hardly sleep. I might have had a couple of hours, andwhen I woke up I didn’t want to believe what had happened. There was nothing in the papers, so it seemed the body hadn’t been found.
    There were, at the time, five or six firms operating in south London, and I can say that while Freddie Foreman had absolutely nothing to do with the collection and disposal of the body, certain help was given, and it was done properly. It was picked up at about eleven o’clock on the morning we left it there and held until the early hours of Monday in a shed about three miles away from the church. The people involved said they were pleased it was Jack The Hat because he had caused trouble for them in the past.
    When they picked him up, there was a fine white powder covering his body. No one seems to know what that could have been. Obviously, all the blood had drained out of him. The stink, apparently, was terrible. His car was crushed into a three feet by three feet cube in a masher. After that it was referred to as the Oxo. Then it was slung on to a scrap heap.
    Jack himself is about three miles away from where the car went into scrap, and fifty miles away from where we left him. His body will never, ever be found. He and his hat were put into a grave which had been pre-dug, and covered with a layer of soil. A funeral took place the next day, and the grave was filled. So he did get a decent burial.
     
    Chris and I next saw the twins on the Monday after the murder. They were in the Carpenters Arms with the Mills brothers, just sitting talking. Jack The Hat was mentioned only once. That was when Chris said, ‘Tell me something, Reg. Was he a grass, was he a wrong ’un? Let’s justify it.’
    Reg said, ‘No, he wasn’t. He was just a nuisance.’
    I hadn’t in a million years expected to see anything like what happened. I thought Jack would be hurt, which he thoroughly deserved, and that would be the end of it. But set out to kill him? Itjust wouldn’t have made sense. Where was the plan? There was no plan. Would we have been daft enough to bring the Mills brothers along to witness a murder?