Shaw - Pretty Boy - If I Come After You Beware Cos Hells Coming With Me

Dedicated to all the friends who have stood beside me through thick and thin.

Ray Mills who supported and visited me throughout my prison years.

Bertie Costa who stood like a man when we were tried for murder.

Barbara who helped open my eyes when I was released from prison.

Eric Warne we were pals since school.

Joe Carrington who promoted my last three fights.

Sharon my former girlfriend and still a friend.

Terry Garwood computer wizard.

Freda Bolton for all her hard work and dedication.

Bobby Reading, John Sabeani, Patsy Gutteridge, Micky May, Colombo, Math twins, Paul Whitworth, Charlie Bronson, Danny Chippendale, Joe Lazarous, Bobby Howes, Rod John Conteh look-alike.

I would also like to thank all my friends in and out of prison who supported me throughout my boxing career, there are too many to mention by name but I would like to ask them just one more favour: BUY MY BOOK OR ELSE!

I ARRIVED AT THE HOME OF R OY S HAW , known as the hardest man in England, on a hot summer day. I looked around at the security protecting his property; closed-circuit cameras monitored my every move. I pressed a small buzzer and waited. Almost immediately, a voice growled over the intercom, Who is it?

I waved into the security camera and smiled. Its me, Kate Kray.

The heavily barred electric gates swept majestically open to let me through. Standing on the driveway was a shiny red Bentley Corniche with a personalised number plate. Next to it was a royal blue Mercedes sports. If that doesnt just about say it all, then what does?

Although this was the first time Id been to Roy Shaws home, wed met before on 6 November 1989. The reason the date is so prominent in my mind is because it was the day I married Ronnie Kray, and was the day I was introduced to Rons world the underworld.

Each and every one of the 200 guests dressed in wide-shouldered suits introduced themselves to me in turn. I met them all hoodlums, bank robbers, enforcers, murderers but one man who introduced himself was different from the rest, I could feel it the moment I met him. His name was Roy Shaw. I knew instantly he was a formidable man, extremely menacing and very, very dangerous.

We met on the odd occasion at benefit nights laid on by gangsters for gangsters who were doing time. I never got into an in-depth conversation with Roy, it was more a case of a kiss on the cheek, a hug and Hows the Colonel?

The last time I saw Roy was at my husbands funeral in March 1995. On that sad day, there were over 50,000 mourners pushing and shoving for a better view of the cortge. Security was tight, and amid the mayhem I noticed Roy Shaw pull up in his Bentley alone. He got out and was dressed in an irridescent electric-blue suit. He straightened his tie and walked towards a wall of security men. As he approached, they stepped back, parting like the Red Sea to let him through. Not one of them challenged him they darent.

Three years on, I arrived at his home to interview him for a book I was in the middle of researching about the toughest men in the country. As he showed me into his lounge on that hot, sunny afternoon, I sat on his sofa and sipped an ice-cold drink and listened as he started to unravel his harrowing life story. The more I listened, I became convinced that Roy Shaw was a cut above the rest in the violent dog-eat-dog world in which he lived.

It was a story that needed to be told, and within a week the contracts were signed and I began to write Roys story as he told it.

As each day, and then each week passed, and as the interviews progressed, we slowly peeled away the layers that Roy had built up over the years to protect himself. There was layer upon layer of madness, sadness, indifference, hate and, most of all, anger, that needed to be resolved. Roy went through the gamut of emotions, reliving the highs and lows of his life. He laughed at times, and cried, and was embarrassed by neither.

As we stripped away the protective shell, for the first time in his life Roy bared his soul. There were times when he had difficulty in expressing himself, and understanding why he was such a violent, angry young man.

But thats just it there were no reasons. I would like to be able to say he was so violent because of something specific, an underlying problem or a justifiable motive but I cant. There is no justification, none whatsoever, for Roys violence, and he would agree. He doesnt blame his childhood or society, and doesnt try to avoid the truth, because the buck stops with him. Roy laid down his own boundaries for himself and never overstepped the invisible mark, or allowed anyone else to. He has his own priorities which have made him strong, and he has examined his own experiences, good and bad, very carefully, and learned from them.

Every Wednesday and Friday I visited Roy at his luxurious home in Essex. He was always ready and waiting for me with a smile. His greeting was always the same, warm and sincere, but looking into Roys face, and particularly deep into his eyes, Roys unique character blazed through. Ive said it before and Ill say it again, his eyes are cold and expressionless, and would look more at home on a great white man-eating shark. Theyre small and are closely set above a corrugated nose. Roy appears to stare with an unnerving intensity into a secret world of hostility and hatred.

Everything about Roy spells violence. His shoulders start underneath his chin and spread outwards like a rugged mountain. Touch him and he feels like a rock. He is 15 stone of squat, solid muscle which knots and bulges under his silk shirt when he moves. How he looks, and how he actually is, I found to be a contradiction in itself.

Roy is always a pleasure to be with. He has endearing qualities that, for whatever reason, men of today rarely possess. He is one of the old school, and knows how to treat a lady. He would open doors and step back to let me through, take my coat for me, watch his Ps and Qs in order not to offend me, because its not tough or clever to be uncouth. In short, hes a true gentleman.

The first day I interviewed Roy, he asked me what I liked to drink. From then on, he always added it to his shopping list. Somehow, I always had trouble imagining Roy Shaw pushing a shopping trolley around Marks & Spencers. But he does. Every week. And each time, hed buy me something special a cherry or a chocolate cake which hed serve on a monogrammed tea plate with the initials RS emblazoned on the edge in gold.

I teased him one day by asking him if hed stayed at the Royal Swallow hotel. He laughed and told me not to be saucy. You only have to scratch the surface to discover that Roy has a dry sense of humour, like the time when he told me he had bought a memory book. When I asked him why hed bought a memory book, he said that hed become quite forgetful. He added that it had cost him about 200. I asked to see the book, particularly as it had cost a small fortune, but he shrugged, laughed, and said hed forgotten where hed put it. We shared a number of these light-hearted moments while writing his chilling and disturbing story.

Initially, Roy found it difficult talking about himself. He was shy and awkward with me, but after a couple of visits he relaxed and started to open up. Hed protected himself for so long and had never let anyone get close, or see him vulnerable and exposed.