You Don't Know Me: A BBC Radio 2 Book Club Choice

by Imran Mahmood

  After a few weeks had passed things were no better as far as Ki was concerned. She was still locked in her own head. I tried every known thing then to get her out of herself but nothing really had any effect. In desperation I told Mum about it. I didn’t tell her all details, just that some men had put her in a car. Mum started to freak out at first but then I managed to calm her down some. ‘You can’t tell no one about it Mum. I mean it,’ I goes. I really didn’t want to have to tell Mum but I didn’t have any other ideas and she sometimes had some good ones. In the end the best she could do was tell me not to worry and that Ki just needed some time to heal.

  A day after I told Mum about her, she called me and told me that she had made Ki a doctor’s appointment.

  ‘You did what? I told you didn’t I? No one. You can’t tell no one about it Mum. It’s serious Mum.’

  ‘I did not tell anybody about it. Just I said to Blessing to make an appointment with the doctor for Kira. Just depression. Not to say about kidnapping and all of these matters.’

  ‘You told Bless? Mum!’ I say. I definitely didn’t want her talking to Bless about it.

  ‘Of course I tell your sister. You want me to have a mental breakdown all on my own, foolish boy?’

  ‘Alright alright. No one else Mum. I mean it. No doctors. No friends. No church people. No one,’ I said and hung up. I called up the surgery straight away and told them that it was a mistake. Fuck knows who would have seen her if she wandered over there. Plus I wasn’t sure I wanted no doctor to be finding out that her problem was that she had been kidnapped by a gang and pimped out. It was too dangerous to do that. Most likely the doctor would have called the Feds and I didn’t want no police turning up and putting blue lights over her head, you get me. So I thought of other ways.

  One of the first things I did was to go round to her flat to pick up some things for her. Some clothes, yes, but mainly something for her to read. She needed her books round her. To her they were like her friends. Or family even. It’s weird I know, but book people are weird, trust me.

  I waited till it was dark and drove up in the A3 and parked somewhere out of the way but close enough to load it without making too many trips. As I walked up to the door I suddenly had a flashback to that day when I came round looking for her. The door was still splintered at the frame from when I broke in that time and the new lock I had fitted was still there like a surprise I had forgotten about. It was out of place though. It was too new and didn’t fit in with the peeling paint on the door. The key went in smoothly and turned. At first I was half wondering if someone might have already been round there looking for her but the door was still locked. It all looked fine to me. I went in and turned on the light and it flooded the room.

  I took a look around and everything was like I remembered it. Maybe something seemed off but I wasn’t sure what exactly. The books all looked like they did when I had left it. Nothing seemed like obviously wrong. I decided it was probably my mind playing me and went into the bedroom and started piling clothes into the bin liners I had brought with me. I had just got two bags full and was moving them into the living room when I saw it. Just out of the corner of my eye. By the window. The net curtain there was like fluttering but I knew no window were open when I left it. I walked over and pulled the curtain back and saw the bottom of it had been smashed in. I looked down at my feet. Glass everywhere. Shit.

  I quickly threw some books into a carrier bag and left, locking the door behind me. Then I ran. If someone saw me then someone saw me. It didn’t matter. I could be anyone. A family member. Someone just checking in, taking some stuff. Whatever. What I knew though, was that dem man were looking for her. This weren’t good. I jumped in the car and drove off quickly.

  When I got back that night, Kira’s face lit up a little when she saw her books. Then they dimmed right back down again. Wrong books apparently. I told her I would go back and get more for her, but truth was I knew I weren’t going back there again. I didn’t tell her about the break-in. No need to worry her any more than she was already.

  I tried other things I thought might help too. Some herbal stuff, St John’s something and some Chinese medicine shit too but it was no good. This wasn’t one of them things that could be medicined. This was one of them things that just had to be mourned over time. She was never going to get over it, just like you never really get over a death. All that happens is that the sorrow gets older. It’s like a light that gets fader and fader. One day after years and years have passed maybe the sorrow is too covered in dust to properly see what it is but it is still there. It’s just harder to see.

  I knew that the only thing anybody could do for her was to let her heal as Mum had said. In the first few weeks, believe, I thought it was too late for her. She didn’t eat. She didn’t sleep and she looked grey. When she made any sound at all it was usually to cry or occasionally to scream out. In them moments I felt like my heart had caved in. I can’t even explain it, blood. It was like a deep, deep pain that felt like all my insides were collapsing in on itself. I felt like a demolition building falling to the ground, where it did that collapsing thing. It was like my heart had collapsed from the inside.

  In desperation I decided to speak to Bless about it. She already knew something was up after speaking to Mum so I figured it wouldn’t be the end of the world if I spoke to Bless. I picked up the phone and called her. I didn’t have no time for small talk so I got straight to it.

  ‘She’s in a bad way, sis. I don’t know what to do to bring her out of her head.’

  ‘J-just give her time. She will get there on her own. She just needs a bit of t-time,’ Bless says quietly.

  ‘I don’t think time is going to do it Bless. If anything, time is making the shit worse,’ I say, cupping the phone in case Kira can hear me from the next room.

  ‘Maybe right now it is. But in a few days, or a few w-weeks, she will get better. It’s like being in a tunnel. You don’t know how long it will stay d-dark but if you walk long enough, the light will come. Eventually.’

  I didn’t know at that time that Bless was right, but I did know that she knew something about being in tunnels so it gave me hope.

  But what I hadn’t counted on was how long them tunnels could be.

  Those were days when she wanted to kill herself.

  She asked me to do it for her once and I tell you I would have. She was hurting so badly that I would have done anything to free her from it. If you would have seen her then yourselves, with your own eyes; if you would have heard her crying in her sleep, I guarantee you would have thought about it too. It would have broken me to do it but I would have done it for her. I would have murdered her just to help her to leave the world behind. You don’t understand, man, I loved her. I loved her with every cell in my body. I would have done it in a heartbeat.

  What saved her, what saved me, in a funny way, was seeing Jamil, the deceased, on the road one day.

  Break: 11:30

  13

  11:45

  I know that sounds weird what I said before the break, that seeing Jamil that day saved us. But it’s true. This was the day we’ve all heard about when I called him a waste man. I had been on my way to pick up a few bits of food and stuff for Mum and for me and Kira, when I saw him.

  He was just chatting to a couple of girls when he clocked me. As I said, I knew Jamil from just being in the area and shit. We weren’t mates or nothing but I knew him to nod at or whatever. So I was going to the shops and he was there on the street just doing his thing. I ignored him as I usually did but this time instead of ignoring me as he usually did, he held out his arm to stop me. He pulled me to one side, away from the girls, like he was about to share me a secret. To begin with he was just whassup and whatever, chit-chat, and then right out of the blue he just comes out with it. ‘I hear Kira’s back in town. Where you hiding her blood?’ he says and grins at me out of the side of his mouth.

  My face turns from friendly to something else. I give him this look
like I don’t even know him and go, ‘What you chatting about man? Don’t be chatting shit like that at me.’ I stand face to face with him just to make him know that I ain’t even messing with him.

  ‘Nah blood,’ he says, backing away a bit, ‘I’m just saying that’s all. It’s nuffing man. Don’t worry about it.’

  I am panicking because I don’t know what he knows, if he knows anything. Or maybe he’s just bluffing.

  ‘Why you saying shit though?’ I say to him. ‘You know where she is? You even seen her?’ I say with anger in me.

  He looks at me and moves like he’s about to walk away. I can feel he doesn’t want to start a thing over nothing without his mans with him for back-up.

  ‘Nah bruv. Relax. I was just you know testing out some rumours. That’s all. But it’s all cool bruv. If you saying you ain’t got her, then you ain’t got her, innit?’ he says and starts off in the other direction.

  ‘Nah, blood,’ I say. ‘It ain’t cool. Don’t be chatting shit about my girl when you know I’m looking for her.’

  Truth be told I was panicking, properly panicking. I didn’t know how the fuck he had found out but I was scared. As he leaves he turns to give me a I-know-what-you-been-up-to smile. Before he gets too far I call out to his back, ‘Waste man.’ And then I leave too. As much as he doesn’t want to be starting something here in the street, neither do I. But I had no idea that those words that I said just like that would be bouncing back at me over a year later. And causing all this.

  I don’t know how he knew Kira was back, if he even did know. She hadn’t even been out of the flat since that day under the bridge. Then suddenly I realized what it was. Since she had been back I had stopped looking for her. That’s what he must have been thinking. That the only reason I stopped looking for her was because I had found her. I felt sick about how stupid I had been.

  I had to deal with this quickly. I did the shopping and ran back home in a sweat. My mind was going crazy like a hundred miles an hour. I knew that if anyone else believed what he was saying, or even heard what he was saying, that somebody would be knocking my door down any day. I decided that somehow I needed to spread the rumours that I promised to spread; that Kira was taken by some gang-banger. That she was kidnapped by them for whatever purposes. Whatever, just as long as nothing pointed her back to me. I also decided I needed to act like I was still looking for her.

  So who knows how Jamil knew Kira was back, like I say, if he even knew at all. Jamil was tied up in all that gang shit himself so it’s possible that he heard through the vine that she was missing but I never really got to the bottom of it. I knew he was in a little gang that they called The Squad. I remember they went through a load of names, like Money Squad and SouthEast Squad and whatever, even Flying Squad at one point, like it was just jokes. But as I knew it, it wasn’t proper big man gang like Glockz. It was just kids.

  I found out later, too late, that The Squad had changed in the previous few months. It had grown. The shit had started getting serious. Truth be, it might have changed anyway. They probably would eventually have grown up into a full working man gang given enough time. But the thing that catapulted them into the big leagues was just something you could call luck. Bad luck or good luck, it’s up to you how you see it. Whichever way you call it though, that luck was all linked in with these guys we came to know as the Olders.

  Look this is a lot for anyone to get just looking from the outside. Gangs and shit aren’t like in the movies. They’re complicated and have rules that don’t make no sense to other people from other places. They have history. They don’t just come out of nowhere. Before a big gangster was a big gangster he was a baby gangster. And before he was that he was the next thing. It sounds obvious maybe to a person like me but maybe not to you. I grew up hearing about all this shit. It’s part of like my local knowledge. Everyone round my ends knows about this. But you probably ain’t from my yard so I need to try be clear about this because it matters, for later.

  The Olders was like these old-time big drug dealers who got sent down in the eighties and nineties for ten, fifteen, even twenty years at a time. Proper big names who had been into all kinds of shit including guns and armed robberies.

  Anyway these Olders started leaving jail at about this time. It was weird but they were like all coming out at about the same time or that’s how it seemed to us. Every day an old name would turn up on the vine. ‘Oh you heard about Caesar – he out now and looking for a crew.’ That kind of thing. And the one thing they all had in common apart from being Olders was that they wanted to get out there and start making some P. You know, ‘paper’. Money. But this time they didn’t want no risk if they could help it. But they were happy to pay some kids to take the risk for them and sell their drugs for them. On commission. This was where Jamil and his boys came in. This is how they begin to link in.

  It became kind of a well-known thing that JC had hooked up with some of these Olders. It wasn’t just that his crew became known for it. Really and truly it was him that was known for it. People began to know him. He became like a, not exactly famous, but just like a known name round our ends. And for why? Because he became about the most highest volume salesman those streets had ever known. I don’t mean like those Olders who bring in twenty keys. That’s different. But on the street, as a street merch, he was like superstar. But I didn’t know that then. Because like I told you, I ain’t no gang-banger.

  So once he’d got in with one of these Olders, JC turned from a kid who was just interested in pushing other kids around to something like a businessman. Before you knew it he was everywhere. He pushed the stuff wherever he could and nothing and no one was off-limits, not even school kids.

  But it was more than that. JC, Jamil, was dangerous, anybody with a mind could see that. Because he was organized. His best idea, and the idea that earned him big money and big respect, was that he was modern and systematic. If there was a lull in one area, he would take his rocks and sell them in some other area. He would go online, find all the schools and colleges in a five-mile radius and hit them all one by one. He would do the schools first for new customers, then the colleges, then a bit later on in the day he would knock on the pubs and late, late at night he would do the clubs. When it was quieter, like early and mid-week when the clubbing crowd was light, he got himself known amongst the crack houses and started dealing there. He had crack dens on his books all over town, you know, places where people could do their drugs without being bothered by no one; places where there was a load of customers all together all wanting the same thing. A crack den is some nasty shit you get me. But it meant that before long he got to know the small-time dealers and the prostitutes who hung out there.

  The whores were excellent business for him. He used the same tactics that the Olders used with him. He gave the girls a free rock for every twenty they took and they loved it. The girls sometimes had punters who wanted action and wanted it while they were getting high. The girls got to double their profits and he got to shift even more gear. The boy was methodical I give him that. There was even a rumour that he had a spreadsheet on his phone. His dealer list was electronic. That was a first for street dealers. Most of them just had scraps of paper with numbers on. Jamil had encrypted lists. The boy was new generation, you get me?

  Around about this time Jamil started to get proper brazen and was moving gear all over London. Don’t get me wrong, he was still small-time, dealing to users mainly, but he was rolling over a lot of rocks. The Olders were amazed by the kid. In the May they had started him off on ten rocks, by August he was taking two hundred rocks a week and driving a new whip. They told him to be careful not to get pinched, because kids with fifty grand rides tended to get pinched a lot. But he didn’t care about none of that. As far as he was concerned he had his own crew to watch his back and now it was a crew he could arm.

  When he went off to do a trade, he kept a couple of goons with him and there was always a few extra nearby on the end of a phone just wa
iting for him to say the word. His two main guys though was Shilo, who was just a hench, and Binks who was a shooter. They went where Jamil went and they were pretty effective. Shilo was one busted motherfucker. He was the size of a bus and had a face like it was made of smashed glass – all glued back but it didn’t quite fit if you know what I mean. He didn’t say much but he wasn’t one of them types of people who needed words to get his point over. The other guy, Binks, was the complete opposite but if anything he could have been worse. This boy couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He was thin to look at but if you mistook that for weak you’d have been wrong. Seemed like he shoot up people for fun sometimes. If anyone looked at him the wrong way, there was as good a chance that the gun would come out. Probably a Baikal innit?

  Sorry. I know. Bad joke. It’s proper tense doing this, with you all looking at me.

  Anyway, although I didn’t know it at the time, round about when Kira was taken up northside, Jamil and his boys started to hit North for serious. It was just a coincidence. If it had been a month before, then it’s possible that none of this would have happened. I mean he might even still be alive today. And that’s the thing my brief didn’t want me chatting about, coz yeah I know what happened to Jamil, but I didn’t kill him. My brief goes to me, it don’t work like that, even if that is the truth you shouldn’t say this. But I have to, don’t I? To make you all see what I seen and feel what I’m feeling innit?

  Anyway, Jamil moved into the northern territories and started to shift gear like it was on sale. That was some bold move though, because North didn’t like people walking on their grass any more than South did. And it wasn’t long before Glockz started to notice him.

  They had heard stories of some dudes pushing in on their patch or whatever, but they hadn’t yet got a proper look at any of them. Usually when a Pagan – a rival gang member as I told you before – hits another crew’s yard, they shout out about it wherever they can. They make a big noise. They tag the street up – graffiti everywhere. They make their names known. They want to be noticed. For them kind of gangs it’s all about reputation. Jamil was different though. As I said he was smart. When he went into new ends, he didn’t tell no one who he was or where he was from. If someone he was dealing rocks to thought he was just another Glockz soldier, he just went along with it. Mostly though, no one asked and no one got told; they just wanted a hit. In fact, half the people that dealt with him, if you asked them, would have sworn down that Jamil was Glockz. Just ask them if you like or the police can. Jamil didn’t give a fuck either way. He would have told them he was Bloods or Crips if it sold him more rock.