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

by Imran Mahmood

  ‘Nah man. Not that kind of business.’

  ‘Well I ain’t selling fucking trainers.’

  ‘Nah, I mean it is this kind of business but he wants to buy a block innit,’ I say pointing at Curt with my elbow.

  ‘A whole kilo?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ he says and turns as if to go.

  ‘Serious,’ I say and just then Curt makes as if to walk off like he’s had enough. It feels like I am juggling balls. Any minute now I think one of them is going to slip out of my fingers.

  ‘Nah man, hang back,’ I goes to Curt then I turn back to Jamil. ‘Man’s good for it.’

  Curt stops and waits looking from me to Jamil. He is playing this just right. Jamil and his mans stop in their tracks. It’s like they can see money flying around. Binks especially is proper panting.

  ‘Lay it down for me,’ says Jamil and then in that moment, I know he’s hooked in.

  Curt and Jamil huddle together a little closer and start speaking low at each other. At first it’s just general chit-chat about prices and shit and then when we notice Jamil beginning to relax, I give Curt a little side-eye and we start reeling him in.

  ‘Nah, let’s fuck this off,’ Curt says eventually. ‘Fifty gees for a kilo? This guy’s taking the piss.’

  ‘Take it or leave it man. You’ll get fifty a gram after you cut it up innit. That’s doubling up easy. I got to make my own slice though too you get me?’ says Jamil, arms folded.

  ‘What purity you giving me though? Eighty per cent?’

  ‘Fuck off. Forty.’

  ‘Forty per cent and you want fifty K? Do I look like I just came out my mum? I can get eighty per cent for fifty K no problem. What kind of fucking slice you carving up blood?’ Curt leans over him using his huge bulk to intimidate the man.

  ‘No way you can get eighties for fifty K. No fucking way.’

  ‘I can even get you eighties blood. Sixty K if you want it.’

  ‘I’m selling, not buying,’ says Jamil pretending he’s all cool about it but you can tell from his face that he is interested.

  ‘You got to buy though innit? You gotta buy and either you ripping me off or you being ripped off. Simple as that. Tell you what though, I never took you for a kid. Mandems telling me you connected and you just a kid selling street deals. Soldier innit,’ says Curt and then he nods at me and walks off. ‘Let’s bounce.’

  As we walk off I see that witness who came into court saying that she heard me arguing with Jamil. I didn’t even know she was there till I saw the CCTV. But when she came into court I realized that I know that girl from time. She’s okay, you know. Now I can understand why she might have thought that it was a bit on top at this point. There were plenty of loud words being spoke and bare waving arms so I don’t blame her for what she said. In fact to my mind she is kind of a witness in my favour. What she is saying kind of proves what I am saying. There was an argument. Well kind of an argument but what she don’t say is what it was for. What I can do that she can’t do is to say that.

  Anyway, there is a few seconds as we are walking away when I am thinking to myself have we blown it? Curt is whispering at me, telling me, ‘It’s okay, it’s okay, he’s on the hook’, and to keep walking, but I’m not sure. Then as we are nearly on the road, Jamil comes jogging up, shouting for us to stop.

  ‘You got a deal then blood,’ he says. ‘Fifty-five K. Eighty per cent.’

  ‘Sixty,’ goes Curt, ‘I ain’t unloading a kilo for five K.’

  ‘Okay sixty,’ Jamil says not missing a beat. ‘How long you need?’

  ‘You got the dollars? Next week then. Where you want to do it?’

  ‘Nah, tomorrow man. I got the P right now. At one of my yards,’ says Jamil and points vaguely in the distance like his place was just there.

  ‘Nah man, too soon,’ says Curt all calm. ‘Okay three days. My yard. I got a trap going round the block. These are my digits. Check me laters,’ says Curt getting out his BB, you know, BlackBerry, as he’s speaking.

  There’s a few seconds where no one is talking. Jamil’s got his head down typing in Curt’s number. Shilo and Binks are just watching but you can tell they’re feeling useless. Finally Jamil looks up. ‘Who’s your crew?’

  ‘Glockz innit,’ Curt says.

  ‘Guess your crew don’t mind getting their girls jacked if you hanging with him,’ he says, pointing his head at me.

  Curt shrugs his huge shoulders like he doesn’t give a shit one way or another.

  ‘Unless you Glockz too?’ he says turning to me.

  ‘Nah man, I ain’t rolling with no crew. I’m just giving my mans a bit of a favour. I ain’t part of this. And for your FYI, I ain’t got Kira. But I am looking for her, blood. So if you know anything …’ I goes and with that I was gone leaving the two of them to work out the details.

  Later that day Curt met me up and told me it was on. ‘All we need now is a trap,’ he says.

  Luncheon adjournment: 13:00

  18

  14:00

  So just before lunch I was telling you that Curt says we need a trap. By the way if any of you lot have like a spare sandwich or something the food in the cells is proper rank! No, no I was kidding I’m okay really. Just got to like lighten this tension. I been pacing as much as a man can pace in a cell that small. It feels good to tell you the whole truth, but it’s making me proper on edge innit.

  Where was I? Yeah we needed a trap. I can see you all looking confused. I know it’s quite a lot for you to take in but I need to make sure you got me. Right so the thing of it was this, if we could make Jamil think Glockz had done him over, then Olders and Glockz would start some kind of war, and then the pressure would be off Kira. The plan was supposed to be simple really, which I could laugh about now if the shit hadn’t got so dark.

  Ki’s plan was we would dress up some blank yard as a trap-house, a drug factory set up in an empty flat, which basically meant putting a lot of white powder around like we was cutting up gear. Just to give the impression of a legit set-up. Then when Jamil came and saw that the place looked right, and started to relax I would come out of the shadows and knock him out. Then we could tax him and take his sixty grand. And when he came to, Curt would send him on his way with a Glockz sticker on his head.

  It was perfect really for all kind of reasons. For one ‘taxing’ is a known thing that happens. Drug dealers get ripped off by other dealers. It’s a common thing that we know about on the streets. You lot don’t know it because who reports to the police that they just got their class A jacked?

  Anyway this was a sure-fire way to get his Olders sure fired up. Nobody was going to fuck with their number one shotter you get me? And then nobody would have any time to be worried about Ki. Like I was saying, the Olders were fucking brutal and we fully expected them to do a job on the Glockz and we weren’t even sure whether any Glockz would be left after that.

  Believe me, I really and truly did not want to get involved in all this gang shit. It terrified me. I heard all the same shit everyone heard about growing up. Trust me. I didn’t want to be anywhere in smelling distance of that. But if you was in my shoes right then you might have done the same? Have any of you, jury, ever loved someone? I know it sounds like a stupid thing to say. But have you? Really and truly? It’s a funny thing, love. I never knew it until I met Ki. But love is a thing that can make you do a thing for them that is exactly the wrong thing for you. It messes your order all up.

  I loved that girl, you get me. I would have done anything to make her even a little bit safer. Even if that meant messing around with the gangs I had tried my whole life to stay out of. But to do that, to keep her safe I needed Glockz to back off. But the only way they would do that was if they was taken out. And if not taken out exactly, if they was in a war with the Olders then that would give them some proper shit to worry about.

  And it also meant this. Jamil wouldn’t have no one to run his mouth off about Kira to. He wouldn’t be
telling Glockz who had their girl if he thought they had just jacked him. He would have no reason to. And if Glockz ran into Jamil any time soon, they would be less than impressed about Jamil getting the Olders on to them. Then, who knows, they might have to ice him and then the only person who knew about Ki was out of the picture. It was a perfect plan. That was Kira though. She was a person who had a head for a plan.

  I told you lot that this would make me guiltier though. This is like I was planning the murder of other people. And I can’t really argue with you there. I got to admit if you asked me I probably would tell you that I properly believed a few people would get killed. In fact I could have practically guaranteed it. But these were gang members at the end of the day. And in my mind they must have done some shit that they hadn’t paid for yet and if I was the one paying them out then that was just life. Like I always said, you got to pay for your shit one way or another. No one needs to walk away free of charge.

  One of the things that they shove down your throat every day is that people are equal. People believe this shit even though it clearly isn’t true. You even know it ain’t true but you still believe it. Or you say you believe it. But if you are honest with yourself you don’t believe it any more than I do. It’s bullshit. In my eyes a drug dealer isn’t equal to a normal person. He ain’t even equal to most criminals. Most criminals do some shit and deep down they know that the shit they are doing is wrong. You rob someone, you know it’s sly. You thief something out of a shop even, you still know it’s wrong even though you might tell yourself they got insurance. You know it’s wrong because it’s not your shit you just took.

  A dealer fucks up people’s lives and doesn’t give a shit even while he’s doing it. He don’t give a fuck if he’s selling to adults or children. He don’t care if a child becomes a prostitute at the age of twelve just to get a score. It ain’t none of his business. He’s just after the dollars. As far as he’s concerned if mans stupid enough to take it, mans deserves what comes at him. So do I feel guilty about hoping that some bad men were going to rough up some other bad man? No. Not a fucking bit.

  Sure, life is life and all that but at the end of the day, if they live, they probably take out twenty good lives each. A way you could look at it is I am saving lives. It wasn’t how I was looking at it exactly at the time, but to me they weren’t really lives worth crying over. You could show them someone who is now a crack addict because of them and they would be like, nah man, they a crack bitch because of themselves. Even if they sold the drugs to them in the first place. It’s not a real human being is it? Where is the human in that being? Nowhere. But at the end of the day, as long as I didn’t pull no triggers, whatever shit went down is not on me. That’s how I see it. You pay for your own.

  So getting back to the thing of it, one of the problems in the plan and there were a few of them, was that Curt was going to be exposed. Jamil knew him now and if he had to he could name him and pick him out. And if he picked him out to the Olders they’d probably merk him. Kill him.

  If Glockz found out that Curt had taxed someone like Jamil and they wasn’t in on it, they would probably ice him too. I wasn’t that happy about two lots of very bad men looking for him. We discussed the situation back at my yard the day after the meet with Jamil. But the funny thing was, Curt weren’t that bothered about it.

  ‘I need to get out of this shit anyways blood. It’s all getting a bit on top, you know what I’m saying?’ says Curt and pulls up a chair around my little kitchen table.

  I take up a seat next to him and Ki stands behind with her hands on my shoulders like she’s giving me a massage but has forgotten to do the actual work.

  ‘They’re going to find you though whether you want to get out or not,’ she says.

  ‘Yeah well they ain’t going to look for me in Spain is it?’

  ‘Spain?’ I goes. ‘What the fuck you going to do in Spain?’

  ‘The way I’m thinking about it, I ain’t putting my head on the block without a little something innit,’ Curt says and gets up and helps himself to a beer in the fridge.

  ‘I don’t get you,’ I say and look at Ki for some clue. She doesn’t seem to have one and pulls up a seat next to me.

  ‘When we tax Jamil, I’m taking the dollars. Sixty long is going to set me up in a bar or something out there or if not there I’ll keep moving,’ he says and takes a long swig of his beer. He looks at me all the while to see whether I’m going to start arguing about the money.

  ‘Fair enough,’ I says. I weren’t interested in the money anyway. For me taking the money was nothing but a pain in the arse anyway. What would we have done with it? What could we have done with it? I just wanted Ki safe, that’s all that was on my mind. And since Curt was helping us out it only felt right he should get whatever he wanted out of it. We couldn’t do it anyway without him.

  ‘So where we going to set up the trap-house?’ Ki asks. Her eyes have got some colour in them again. They ain’t quite like the diamonds they used to be but they are getting a bit of sparkle back. I reach over and touch her arm. She doesn’t flinch. Which I think is the first time since this all happened that she hasn’t.

  ‘I still got my old yard. There’s a few people using it from time to time, but I’ll get it cleared and we can set it up,’ Curt says. He drains the last of his beer then scrapes back his chair and gets up. I think he’s leaving but he walks towards the sofa, sits down heavily on it and then switches on the TV. He just wanted to change the subject, I reckon. You could tell he was tense. We all were.

  The next day when we got to Curt’s old yard my heart proper sank. There was no way we could pass this place off like a den. It was just too normal. Sure it was a bag of shit, but it was a dump like a student house is a dump. It still looked like a place that someone lived in or could live in. The door opened to a big square room with steel-framed windows. There was some curtains up but curtains like you never see these days with flowers over them and made of some shiny material. There was a mattress right in the middle of the room with a duvet on it and against one wall an old table with drop-down edges which had all plates on it. There was all kind of rock posters on the walls from fuck knows when and the place smelled rotten. It smelled really and truly like the inside of my trainers.

  To the left there was a small kitchen which still had like cabinets from the sixties in it with no handles on the doors just like metal tracks going along the tops and bottoms that you pull at. There was one of them ring cookers which probably once was white but right then it was mainly the same colour as the inside of the oven. The sink was probably there somewhere but you couldn’t see it for takeaway boxes and bits of rotting food.

  To the right of the main room there was the one bedroom. It had a window in it but it looked out on to a brick wall so there was not much light. It didn’t matter anyway since the room was just full of random junk that you probably didn’t want more light to see.

  There was an old flat-pack wardrobe which looked like it was trying to go back to being flat-pack again. An old mattress was stood up against one wall but had slipped so it looked more like it was sitting against it than standing. The middle of the room had all kinds of shit in it like a bike and one of them frame things for drying clothes and just boxes of tapes. There was even a bit of pushchair or something in amongst it.

  There was a bathroom off to the side. That was it.

  It wasn’t what was in the place that was the problem it was just the normality of it all. It didn’t give you the feeling that people could be cooking up crack in there. It was too boring. That’s the worst thing about council blocks, worse than all the noise you hear at all times of the day, worse than the leaking pipes and the fact that all the stairwells smell of piss. For me the worst thing was that right there. It was fucking boring. You live in a place like that and all you want to do is spend all your time out of it. In more ways than one.

  ‘This ain’t going to do it,’ I goes. ‘Fuck.’

  We sat on the m
attress on the floor, me and Curt. I was half wondering whether something was going to crawl out of the duvet so I couldn’t really relax, though. I could tell he was thinking the same thing that I was, both about the rats and the yard, and he shifted on the mattress like it was alive and then got up.

  He stood in the middle of the room and stared at the yellow ceiling as if there was some writing up there that spelled out what to do next but he couldn’t read it. We was fucked and he knew it.

  It was Ki though who came up with the goods. She looked around for a few seconds and then she started coming alive.

  She started walking round the place quickly waving her hands in the air as if she was creating stuff out of it. I looked up at her. She had this look in her eyes that changed her face. It was the same look she always had when her brain was in gear. The whites went really white. The pale irises became dark and dangerous. I knew then whatever she was about to say, she was about to say it fast.

  ‘No this is perfect,’ she says. ‘It just needs work. You got pans?’ she adds walking into the kitchen. She comes out making a face and then says, ‘There are three big ones in there under all that crap. Get ’em, clean ’em and start clearing all the crap away from the stove.’

  ‘What, you want us to clean it up?’ says Curt with a kind of puzzled look in his eye.

  ‘Not exactly. Just make it look like it knows what it is,’ she says.

  Me and Curt look at each other with like a what’s-she-on-about kind of look. Ki shrugs her shoulders and lets out a sigh as if she is talking to idiots, which might not have been that far off the target.

  ‘A trap-house isn’t just a dump for no reason. It’s a dump with a purpose. You have to think of it like, I don’t know, a building site. There’s stuff around. It’s a mess. But the stuff has to be there for a reason. So unless you got better things to do guys, you better step to it. Now!’ she says and starts walking around again with her hands making shapes in the air and shouting out orders.