Free The Profession of Violence by John Pearson Page A

London gang-world. A loner, too independent and irresponsible to accept the authority of the Spot-Hill kingship, he went through life with a masochistic desperation never to give in to anyone. A smallish man and an indifferent fighter, he could be rash to the point of lunacy. His lean, dark face cut to ribbons, he would fight and lose and go on fighting. He was free with his money, off-hand with his women, game to the last and unimpressed by anything the ‘straight’ world values.
    That summer he was running a snooker hall and illicit gambling club above a restaurant in Archer Street, Soho. When he met the twins he offered them the hospitality of his club, and they spent a few nights sleeping on the snooker tables when the last customers had gone.
    A few months later Smithson was slashed and left for dead in Regent’s Park at three in the morning by a gang he had had the rashness to challenge. Somehow he survived, refused to name his assailants, and swathed in bandages, his right arm paralysed, was back in his snooker hall before the week was out. He finally died of gunshot wounds in 1958 after a Maltese fired a shotgun into his stomach from such close range that not even Smithson could survive. Years later, Reg Kray was to describe his death in a short obituary of his own.
    â€˜As he was dying he followed his enemy to the streetdoor where he collapsed and died. This last effort on Smithson’s part was typical. He always fought on until he died. Ron and I went to his funeral, for we admired him.’
    Violent and early death would be the fate of many of the villains the twins befriended now. One was Tony Mulla, another East Ender of Greek and German descent, a big good-looking psychopath given to outbursts of wild rage, and fits of weeping and self-pity. When the twins met him in 1952 his state of mind had hardly been improved by having had his flat at the Elephant and Castle broken into at three in the morning by members of the same gang Smithson challenged. Mulla was in bed with his wife. Realizing his visitors meant business and that if he resisted his wife certainly would be hurt, he begged them to leave his face and his wife alone. They agreed and sliced him up the back with cut-throat razors.
    Mulla always had a devoted friend – a large, not over-intelligent ex-boxer from Tottenham called Melvin. In the late fifties Mulla and Melvin were to stage a come-back by taking over a number of the new strip clubs in Soho, and suddenly becoming rich. Then at the height of their success, Mulla and Melvin had the sort of sudden, pointless disagreement such criminals are always prone to. Mulla insulted Melvin. Melvin shot Mulla through the head and when he realized what he had done, turned his gun on himself.
    Doomed, desperate men like Mulla, Smithson and Melvin made a great impression on the Kray twins and as much as they ever modelled themselves on anyone they probably did on them. But these non-caring villains were by no means the only people the twins met now who were to influence their future. There were also smarter, cannier men who were in an altogether different league, men like Bobby Ramsey, with his black coat, pig-skin gloves and Irish profile, who had been associated with one of Billy Hill’s less successful ventures in South Africa and was stillin close touch with the man who was to tell an Old Bailey jury – ‘I am the King of the Underworld.’ The Kray twins were to hear from Mr Ramsey later.
    Summer turned to autumn and the twins were still seeking the elusive ‘Good Life’ – and still on the run from the Fusiliers.
    They weren’t bored any longer. They had friends, and were getting quite a reputation.
    For a while they even took a room – in a condemned tenement block in Finsbury Park – rat-infested, uncarpeted, the ceiling down, with a wash-stand and an ancient brass double bed where they would sleep together. When they felt it was time to move they