Who They Was

by Gabriel Krauze

  As we step out of Kilburn Park tube station, word comes through that just a couple of hours ago, Rico got shot and killed. Gotti’s phone is ringing off. Yo fam. Whaaaat? Don’t lie. How? My phone starts vibrating. Uncle T. Yo pops wagwan? Snoopy, did you hear that bwoy that rush Malice from the balcony get shot and kill jussa hour ago?

  It’s the first thing that Mazey starts telling me when he opens the door to Bimz’s yard. Everyone inside is talking about it – did you hear? Rico got duppied. Rah. Mad ting ah lie? Rico is – was – one of the top brers in FAC, which is what the D-block mandem call themselves. FAC, Family About Cash. I’ve seen them filming music videos on the block or in the square inside the estate, opposite Blake Court, everyone dripping in Gucci and Fendi and Louis V, flexing iced-out Rolexes and Cartiers and diamond grillz and white gold chains. One time they were doing a video right in front of the little shop and some of the mandem hung their iced-out chains around the necks of their children who were there with them in the middle of it all, looking mad confused, unsteady on feet that had only just learned to walk. Those video shoots were fucking lit, everyone shouting FAC and SK at the camera and then they’d throw up a middle finger with one hand and gun fingers with the other – the tip of the gun fingers touching the joint of the middle finger – the FAC sign.

  I saw Rico with his brother Warlord just last week when I went to cop couple d’s from Uncle T. They were on the balcony and Warlord said wagwan Snoopz but Rico never said nuttin coz I’ve always been a nobody to him. It’s not like I’m tight with any of them man anyway. I remember he was laughing at suttin with mandem on the balcony and just for a second as I passed he went quiet and looked at me hard. He was the one who fucked up Malice’s face outside that rave. But now he’s gone and Malice can actually come down these ends coz after that shit happened to him he stopped coming to Uncle T’s, you know—

  All I hear over the next few days is that Rico got popped as he sat in his whip in Scrubs Lane near Kensal Green. His window was down and someone pulled up and burst him in his head. Everyone in SK – everyone in Northwest – is talking about it because Rico really was one crazy brer who had a lot of man shook of him. So now everyone’s saying there’s gonna be a war, like no way can SK not retaliate and drop a body or two. And we know it musta been someone from Kensal Green or someone from Mozart Estate who duppied Rico coz them man have been beefing SK from time. There’s gonna be some serious gunplay now, says Mazey.

  The story goes that the beef between SK and Mozart started back in the day because one SK brer came out of a corner shop in the ends and some Zart brers who were passing by asked him for Rizla and he wouldn’t give them a sheet so they shanked him up and he bled to death before the ambulance got there. He was well loved in his ends and it kicked off a whole cycle of retaliation between South Killy and Zart, inherited by the next generation. If that even is how it started, I don’t know – no one’s really sure. Everyone from these two areas can tell you some story of rivalry and revenge and there’s already enough bodies on both sides and survivors of shootings, stabbings, acid attacks, kidnappings – all that fuckery – to keep the cycle going on and on. What’s crazier still is that a lot of these mandem went to the same schools and colleges. Mazey went to school with that same brer whose murder supposedly started the whole beef, and he was in school with Daniel Ross and Rico, and quite a few of his old classmates are now dead because of all sorts of shit. It’s nuts because the ends are right next to each other. It’s only a five ten minute walk from Malvern Road to Mozart and yet for both sides these are no-go zones, everyone knows what roads you can’t cross, where the invisible lines are drawn, where to keep an eye out, because you never know when you might get caught slipping by the other side. At the very least you’ll get sucked for your jewellery and p’s, you’ll get punched up, you might even get stripped and filmed and then the footage gets sent around and if you want to live it down you have to take revenge, you have to even the score and on and on and on – ah so it go said Uncle T when he told me about Rico getting murked. But it goes beyond just these two areas. SK is linked up with Stonebridge in NW10 and Zart with Kensal Green, so the Bridge mandem and the KG mandem are also part of the beef and really it’s all just one giant trap which I do my best to avoid coz I have bredrins in KG and SK and Zart and I don’t wanna get sucked in to all that gang ting, mandem beefing over blocks and postcodes n shit, when I’m already watching my back the second I step out the door coz of all the moves I’ve been doing with Gotti.

  Then one day in April, 500 police storm South Kilburn Estate. 500 feds, including 65 armed police, dogs barking, battering rams licking off doors at four in the morning, and me and Gotti watch it in Bimz’s yard getting replayed on the BBC Six O’Clock News that evening – oi I swear that’s myman’s door getting licked off, yeah forreal, I was always tryna draw his sister still, bloodfyah that’s whatshisname getting cuffed innit – and a news reporter says 17 people were arrested, manhunts are underway for at least four fugitives.

  Basically, the FAC mandem had been shotting straps to undercover feds for months in one mad sting operation, until eventually the undercovers decided they’d got enough evidence to fuck the mandem up. So South Kilburn gets raided, bare man get shift and the brers who went on the run get featured on Crimewatch a week later. I recognise a couple of faces from when I used to see them on the balcony of Blake Court, trapping or just bunning zoots and whatever.

  The blocks quieten down after that. There ain’t as many heads about no more. We start seeing the youngers in Precinct more often, coz shotting b and work to the nittys ain’t gonna stop. Now that a lot of the olders are getting birded off there’ll be a lot more opportunities for hungry youngers to make some bread.

  A few weeks after the raid, me and Mazey are walking down Malvern Road from Uncle T’s and a bully van drives past slow with the door wide open. One tall white fed leans out of it without his cap on like he’s ready to jump out, watching us, actually screwfacing man, and as we stare back he says what the fuck are you looking at? We both have shanks on us and draws of ammi stinking out our pockets so we don’t say nuttin, just look away and carry on walking, saying fuck dat pussyole, hoping the van won’t stop. When we get to Peel Precinct, we see the same bully van pull up and three feds jump out and rush up to these youts who are jamming on the staircase of one of the little blocks and the first thing they do is grab the youts by their throats and slam them against the wall, pinning them there before searching them and we can hear the youts choking, one of them going I can’t breathe man I can’t breathe, sounding like bubbles bursting in his throat. I swear down I actually hear the big white fed who’d been watching me and Mazey earlier say there’s been reports of you lot shotting on this block, and I say to Mazey nah myman just said shotting you know, and Mazey kisses his teeth and says come we go inside. And I swear those youts are like fourteen, fifteen at the most, I mean they’re still in school or at least the age when most youts are in school, but round here it’s normal when the boydem stop you like that, violate you, choke you up, pull your trousers down in the middle of Precinct or wherever, pull your boxers down to look at your tings in case you’ve got food stashed there, although really it’s done to embarrass man since they’re not actually allowed to search us like that in public places but they know mandem round here ain’t gonna file any complaints.

  A couple days later, two bully vans full of jakes come round Bimz’s block and they cut down all the bushes and flower beds in front of the building. They find a strap and some food, but no one replaces the flowers and bushes.

  So I’m jamming in Bimz’s yard and we can hear some brer outside saying I fuckin told you, you fuckin prick and we can hear one chick crying. Bimz opens the door and we see one of the youngers sparking some girl in the face. She’s crying – why are you doing this? He says I fuckin told you, bangs her in the face, her head smacks against the concrete wall of the block and then he goes oh shit are you all right? She starts crying even mo
re. He says shutupman and sparks her in the face again. Bimz says blood allow doing this shit in front of my yard wa’um to you? The brer says stay da fuck out of it blood. Bimz stares at the brer and the brer looks away coz Bimz has one hardbody screwface that makes him look mad greazy, like he could switch at any moment, even though once you get to know him you’ll clock that man has a good heart forreal.

  Although he’s surrounded by all the greaze that goes on in this place, in reality all Bimz wants to do is draw gyal, spit bars, shoot music videos, make customised garms and fly his remote toy helicopter. Bimz looks at the brer who’s now pinning the chick against the wall, kisses his teeth, mutters wa’um for this yout, as if he’s talking to himself and says come away from my door g. The yout takes her by her arm and walks out into the precinct, dragging her along with him. We go back inside to play Soulcalibur.

  Not gonna lie though, I feel kinda sorry for the girl but this is the thing: if you get involved in someone else’s mixup, like say we stick it on this yout and punch him up and tell the chick to go home – forget this dickhead, he’s a wasteman and all that – it will instantly spark off a next beef ting. Myman will have to come back and prove suttin. He isn’t just some any little dickhead; I’ve seen him in Precinct, hitting shoots, getting his line banging with nittys calling him at all hours and he hits them in Bimz’s block because it shields you from the camera in the middle of Precinct. Bimz coulda smacked up the yout but then what? He’ll come back with all his mandem and he knows where Bimz lives now, knows where all of us cotch, so— It’s like I resented the chick for being part of this drama popping off on Bimz’s doorstep since none of us wanted to allow it, but we also didn’t wanna get involved in the passa passa. It’s happened before; man getting into beef with up n coming youngers who can’t win a one-on-one, so they’ll come back later and shoot up your yard, beat off a whole clip full of shells into your front door, even pour petrol through the letterbox and burn the yard down while you’re sleeping or whatever. It happened to one brer I know called JD. He sliced one brer’s face open with a samurai sword because the brer and his team were trying to gatecrash a little shoobz that JD was having in his yard – couple man and couple gyal getting juiced and listening to tunes on some calm tip. JD didn’t have it. He opened the door just as the yout was tryna boot it off and sliced his face open with a samurai sword. A few days later, JD came home from doing a shift at the IKEA warehouse and saw his flat gutted out. Just a black shell flayed by fire, surrounded by firemen and police, nothing left for him to return to. So real talk, you can’t be inna. If it’s not your business just leff it alone, says Mazey because he knows how these tings can gwan.

  Later in the evening, we’re all sat in the spare room at the front of the flat, which is completely empty now since Jermaine moved out after the raid. The only thing in the room is a rolled-up rug on the floor that everyone leans against – Mazey and Sly and Spooks and Ki and Bimz – and we start billing zoots and chatting shit.

  Bimz says listen, do you know how they catch cats in Ghana? and starts laughing with that laugh of his that fills the room and infects everyone, so you start laughing before you even hear any jokes.

  Fam the cats out there are proper alley cats, there’s bare of them roaming about says Bimz. So what the mandem out there do yeah, they get a rotten fish and one of those big pipes that’s used in construction for like sewage or whatever and they put the rotten fish at one end of the pipe and they wait for a stray cat to enter the pipe from the other end to get the fish. Mandem are bussin up now, it’s the way he tells it I swear down. When it’s inside the pipe they quickly flip the pipe up so that the cat drops to the bottom and gets stuck down there, trapped against the ground with the fish and it can’t climb up the pipe coz it’s all slippery and curved.

  Sly laughs at the same time as he inhales a cloud of ammi and starts coughing up his lungs.

  Blood, that’s not even it says Bimz. Then the mandem bring a cage and they lower the pipe and put the cage next to the end where the cat is and the cat only wants to get out at this point, so it runs into the cage and bang, man close the cage. And then they cook it.

  My side hurts and I press my hand against my ribcage and feel the laughter tightening my bones.

  They cook it like that fam, in the cage you know. They put it over a pot of boiling water and the cat goes mad, screeching and going nuts while the steam burns it and then it drops dead and they scrape the skin and fur off and use the meat to make a stew. Swear down, you think it’s a joke blood, says Bimz and he’s laughing hard now, tears in his eyes along with the rest of the room.

  Then BAOWww cracks through everything, practically rocks the room, as if the hand of God slapped the concrete precinct, and we all know what it is because we hear plenty of fireworks round here, mandem love to have firework fights and that definitely wasn’t a Roman candle. Another shot goes off outside, so we all rush to the window and pull the curtain open but we see nothing, it’s just the stillness of night decaying all over the precinct and everything around it. After a few seconds everyone leaves the window and sits back down and then Sly and Bimz start arguing about whether Nigerian jollof rice is better than Ghanaian.

  LINKING MYSTERY

  MAZEY’S GIRL IS pregnant, so when Gotti says come we rob this brer carrying the week’s takings from the bookie at the bottom of Kilburn High Road, I’m like come we bring in Maze.

  Mazey is twenty-six, six years older than me and three years older than Gotti and he’s the one brer who never asks me for anything but is always down for man – mad heart, never hesitates to back it – and he loves Skittles. Especially the tropical flavour ones. Always gives me the green ones coz he knows green is my favourite colour. Sometimes we call him Five Foot Five coz he has this grime bar which he always drops when we’re spitting that goes, Don’t step to this five foot five coz this five foot five will take your life / Your life span ain’t nuttin to me coz that can be changed easily, even though he’s actually five foot six, which he knows from getting measured in police stations. He’s got a tattoo on one arm of Mighty Mouse wearing Nike tracksuit bottoms and Huaraches that I drew for him.

  At first, he’s a bit uncertain about the move coz me and Gotti are moving mad and it’s not like he wants to risk getting locked up before the birth of his child. We end up pressuring him into it – you need to do this before your baby is born brudda, one last time, do it for your wifey – like it’s his stag do or some shit.

  Bimz says Gotti can only be in the yard when Mazey’s there. That’s your cousin he tells Maze. We stay the night, sleeping on the two sofas in Mazey’s room in our tracksuits and, early in the morning around six, we get up, ready to go and lurk on one block just off the high road where we can watch people passing by and wait for the brer we’re gonna eat. As we head out of Bimz’s yard, I watch dawn’s pink fingers claw the sky open and sun spills from its guts.

  The plan is that when this brer walks to the bank with the week’s takings from the bookie, we’re gonna run up on him. Gotti says I know the yout, he’s a normal guy, once he sees the wetters we’re carrying he’ll definitely melt and let off with the p. Then we duss back to Precinct and once we’re indoors it’s cool, no one will ever know wagwan. He’ll be going to the bank before the bookie opens, so we just have to watch and wait.

  We’re jamming on the concrete staircase of this block with a clear view of Kilburn High Road and I can feel the tide coming in. That familiar wave that sinks your chest into your belly before you do a move. We’ve brought kitchen knives for this one, big wetters to make a man shook. Me and Gotti have ballys rolled up on our heads while Mazey is carefully folding up a bandanna to tie over his nose and mouth. One thing I’ve always clocked about Maze is that no matter what his situation is, he always looks fresh. He’s always got a trim, his garms are always ironed, and his creps are always clean and not scuffed up n shit. Even now, the way he’s folding the bandanna is mad neat and precise, and when he ties it round his face he gets
me to take a pic of him with his phone, which he then looks at as if he’s making sure he looks cris or suttin. Gotti watches the road.

  Mazey gets a call from Davina and says babes I’m just doing suttin with Snoopz and Gotti, lemme bell you later. I say lemme chat to her broski and Mazey says Snoopz wants to speak to you babes and passes me the phone. I say yo and she says hey Snoopz what are you doing with my man? She laughs, stops and says no but seriously. I say we’re about to do a move and if it pops off, we’ll all have a few bags and true you lot are having a baby so he needs it innit. You’re mad Snoopz, she says, and then, I swear sometimes I think he’s got no motivation you know, we’re supposed to be getting ready for the baby and he ain’t even working or anything. I say just chill b, he’s on dis ting, we’re out here, p’s for the baby soon come, and she says you better not get him into trouble though, I can’t have my man in prison while I’m giving birth to our child. Don’t watch dat, no one’s getting shift, it’s all bless, and then I say bye and she says lemme speak to Jerome again, so I pass the phone back to Mazey and he locks it off without speaking to her.

  When Mazey first met Davina, he told her his name was Jerome, even though he’s Sierra Leonean and an actual prince – his father being a tribal chieftain – and his real name is Saar. But whenever we draw chicks we give them fake names coz it’s usually just a beating ting and you never know when you’re chatting to a set-up chick. It’s headache though. You end up spending half the time tryna concentrate on not letting your real name slip out, or at least I think it’s headache, although man like Bimz and Maze draw so much gyal on the regs that they never have any problem with it. Anyway, when Mazey met Davina he told her his name was Jerome and by the time they realised they were in love with each other, it was too late to call him anything else. To her he was Jerome and to her family too: mum, dad, aunties, brother, all of them. Whatajoker.