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

by Imran Mahmood

  ‘And all the time it was heating up, Face is whispering at him, “Where’s your P? Where is it at? Where’s your stash? Give it up.”

  ‘Then, when he don’t get no answers, and once the iron was glowing hot, he takes it and holds it like an inch away from the man’s eye.’

  ‘Curt,’ I say at this point knowing what is coming, ‘I think that is probably enough.’

  ‘No. I want to know,’ Ki says, eyes wide open.

  ‘Well what can I tell you? He holds the iron in front of man’s eye, slowly heating the air in front of it, until the eye goes pop. After that, with all that shit coming out of his eye socket all over his chest, man pretty much drew him a map to where the stash was. Something like a hundred grand came out of that taxing, in drugs and dollars. And guns. But that wasn’t enough as far as Face was concerned.

  ‘When mans stopped screaming, Face sends his boys out of the house and then he takes his balaclava off and shoves it into the tied man’s mouth. At that moment he must have known it was game over because Face had shown himself. No way could he let him live now you get me.

  ‘ “This is for my number two,” he goes, and takes up the blowtorch and puts it on a blue flame. Then when he had done what he needs to do, he shoots him three times through the head.

  ‘The very next day, every member of Face’s crew is wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a man’s chest with the letters R.I.P burned into it. Nobody from the dead man’s crew did a fucking thing to retaliate. Within two weeks the whole crew failed. The crew became basically R.I.P., you get me. That is who Face is.’

  ‘Put it this way, if Face finds out you and me were there when JC was taxed, we are smoke,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, about that,’ says Curt before this has even sunk in.

  ‘What?’

  ‘JC has started remembering more shit.’

  ‘Like what?’ we both say.

  ‘Like how it was some links that put a hole in him, a girl. A links that had grey eyes.’

  Anyway, I look over at Ki who has now gone pale. At first she doesn’t say anything. She just gets up and starts to walk in tight rows up and down the room.

  ‘This is not good. This is not good,’ she says over and over.

  I get up and put an arm around her but she shrugs it off and carries on pacing up and down the room. I know this is bad. For one we have to bail from this place. No way can we stay here. Then there’s Mum and Bless. What if this Face brer came looking for them when he couldn’t find me?

  ‘Don’t worry Ki. You’re safe here,’ I say but even as the words are coming out I look around my flat and know it ain’t true. The cheap front door and the loose windows bleeding sound in from the streets below tell me I’m a liar.

  ‘Yeah girl. No one knows where you are. It’s still cool,’ Curt adds and looks at me with a kind of ‘sorry bruv’ look.

  ‘It is not cool,’ she says still pacing.

  ‘Listen,’ I say stopping her and taking her shoulders in my hands and looking her directly in the eye, ‘they don’t know you are here.’

  ‘Or you know, if it gets hot, you just jump on a plane,’ says Curt.

  Ki meets my eye and holds my gaze. ‘It’s not me I’m worried about. It’s my brother. They’ll get to him,’ she says in a voice that sounds like a scream in a box.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I say. ‘What’s Spooks got to do with this?’ Then I realize what she means.

  Long adjournment 16:31

  IN THE CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT  T2017229

  Before: HIS HONOUR JUDGE SALMON QC

  * * *

  Closing Speeches:

  * * *

  Trial: Day 35

  Wednesday 12th July 2017

  APPEARANCES

  For the Prosecution:     Mr C. Salfred QC

  For the Defendant:         In person

  Transcribed from a digital audio recording by

  T. J. Nazarene Limited

  Official Court Reporters and Tape Transcribers

  27

  10:00

  Just yesterday at the end I was telling you that JC was starting to remember shit. A girl with light eyes. It was the kind of line nobody could forget and the girl was a girl that nobody could forget. And when people called her to mind, they would call up everything they knew about her to squeeze where it hurt.

  Ki was right. First place the Olders would go was to Spooks if they couldn’t find her. Once they worked out who the girl with the light eyes was, they would know all about who her brother was. Even if they didn’t know where she was, they knew where he was. And it didn’t matter whether Spooks knew where she was or not. That wouldn’t stop them applying a bit of pressure to his pressure points, if you get me. We all knew that, and right then we ran out of things to say. Curt left a short while later. Part of me wished I could leave too.

  I spent most of the night trying to think of things to say to make Ki feel a bit better but even I knew that nothing was going to work. She was doing her thing where she went and hid in her own mind. It was the best thing probably, I thought, so I left her alone. I weren’t allowed in that place in her head. I ain’t even sure I wanted to go there even if I was. Sometimes you just had to let Ki do her thing and wait till she came out again.

  The surprising thing in the end was that the next morning when I woke up I found her in the living room reading a book, like nothing had happened. It was almost as if she realized that the shit was what it was and there was no sense worrying about it. I knew better than to stir it all up again so when she smiled at me and asked me if wanted coffee I just nodded and smiled back.

  Of course I was worried that in the next days she would sink down again but the next few days could look after themselves. It had only been a couple of weeks since the taxing so I had no idea whether this was healing or some next shit that was going to send her down. All I could do was keep them fingers crossed. I smiled at her again. She looked at me calmly and I tried to do the same. To be calm. To double out the calm in the room even when I knew there weren’t no good reason for it. I felt like a dad making a clapping sound so his kid would forget that he fell down and scraped his knee.

  What I remember most was this look she had. It was more than – what do you call it? – resignation. It was more like a look that said she weren’t so worried about Spooks any more. She looked like she did when she knew what was coming next. You know, like, in control. She handed me a mug of coffee and smiled casually.

  ‘You not having one?’ I say.

  ‘No. I’m going out for a few hours. I’ll be back by one.’

  I rub my eyes and look at her puzzled. ‘Out where?’

  ‘Just out. I need to get some space.’

  I begin to wake up a little more and then when her face comes back into focus I say in a panic, ‘Ki, you know you can’t go out. It’s too dangerous.’

  ‘Err excuse me? Who do you think you’re talking to? I’m not asking. I can go and I am going. I could have gone while you were asleep. So you just have to deal with it.’

  ‘But you’ll get seen.’

  ‘I won’t. I’ll pull my hood up and wear some shades. It’ll be fine. Besides as you keep saying, there’s no gangsters awake at this time,’ she says and just like that she leaves.

  I tried keeping her back but it weren’t no good. I took her arm and looked at her like I wasn’t in any mood for messing about. But she gave me a look back that was twice as heavy and slid her arm out of my grip.

  ‘I will see you later,’ she said before she left. And I prayed she was right.

  ‘Where are you even going?’ I say to her back as she pulls at the door, but she doesn’t answer. She doesn’t even look back.

  The rest of that morning I am basically wired. I try her phone a few times every hour but it goes straight to voicemail. I send her some texts but I get nothing back. Where has she gone anyway? It can’t be just a walk or she wouldn’t have said she would be back at one. I couldn’t thi
nk. Maybe she was at a friend’s. Maybe she went to see Mum and Bless. I didn’t really think so, especially after the hassle of the last trip and all the things we had to do to make it safe. Anyway I racked my brains but I knew that my brains didn’t have the room for much racking so eventually I just give up and stand by the window looking out for her to come back.

  One o’clock comes and goes. Then so does two. By the time it’s three I am really starting to worry for her. That makes it what six hours or something she has gone? It feels like the first time she disappeared all over again. Fuck. I shouldn’t have let her go man. I should have kept her in even if I had to hold her down and lock the doors. I stayed by the window for the next hour nearly, still calling and texting with no answers either way. Then as I am gazing out of the window I see her. But I nearly don’t. Which is more fucked up than it might seem to you lot. You see to get into my estate, there is really only one way you can get in if you are coming from the street. And that is a place I can see right from my window. I can’t miss it. It’s like directly in front of my view. But where she came from, and why I nearly missed her, weren’t from there. It was from around the back. I caught her just coming into view from the side. And if I can explain it to you, it is not a place she should have been. That is the place where like kids chill and blaze or deal or whatever. There is no other reason to be there – you can’t even get out to the street from there. You can get to the estates at the back but you going over some rough ground to get there. It didn’t make no sense to me. Not one bit.

  When she came through the door I was in a mind to call her out. I weren’t angry exactly, just you know, confused. I couldn’t think of a thing she could say to explain it really, unless she would have said she went out to score, you get me? But something about the look on her face made me stop. She seemed worried and calm both at once.

  So I just casually go to her, ‘Where you been Ki?’ I say, expecting her to give me some bullshit.

  What she says next though throws me.

  ‘To see Spooks.’

  ‘What? Are you mad Ki? Fuck knows who saw you in that prison.’

  ‘I had to,’ she says, as if it was obvious, and takes her coat off.

  ‘Had to? Do you even know what you’ve done?’ I was furious. How could she put herself at risk like that? How could she put Mum and Bless at that kind of risk?

  ‘Just leave it. I had a visiting order already and, you know, I had to see if he was okay.’

  I turned my back on her trying to just settle myself down, I was so angry I didn’t know what I might say or do. Eventually when my blood stopped making my face red, I turned back to her.

  ‘What if you were seen?’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ she says as she moves past me into the kitchen to put the kettle on.

  ‘So was he? Okay?’ I say at last, still simmering about how risky she has been but wanting to try calming myself.

  ‘Yes. He’s fine. They’re moving him next week. Protected wing.’

  I look at her then but her face is giving nothing away.

  ‘Okay, you’ve seen him now. No more of this bullshit please, Ki.’

  ‘Plus I had to get some more books,’ she says, holding out an Oxfam bag with a dozen paperbacks in it.

  Man, sometimes for a clever girl Ki did some stupid things. Actually going into a prison to see Spooks, in a prison full of gangsters, some of who are probably on the lookout for this very girl? Shit. It wasn’t like you would have missed her. She walks into a supermarket and everyone looks at her. Imagine what effect she would have had on a room full of men in a prison. It was like – I can’t even say what it was like. It was like a beautiful girl walking into a male prison.

  Then I remember seeing her from the window. How she came round the back. From that place she shouldn’t have been in. I was about to confront her but Ki wasn’t really a girl you’d want to just accuse straight out. I had to play it gentle like.

  ‘Just tell me one thing though. Which way did you come back?’ I say eventually, not sure if I want to hear her answer.

  For a second she has this look like I have caught her out doing some shit she shouldn’t have been doing. Then the composure comes back so I ended up feeling like I had misread it.

  ‘I got a lift from one of the visitors.’

  ‘What visitor?’ I say, thrown back by what she just said.

  ‘Someone at the prison. It’s okay. I know him. He’s a friend of Spooks.’

  ‘Spooks? You got a lift from a friend of Spooks? Ki, you must be off your meds or something man.’

  ‘I said I know him. He’s safe. He’s been more of a brother to me than Spooks.’

  I don’t know what to say any more. She’s never mentioned no second brother friend of Spooks in all our years together, but I can’t control Kira. But I need her controlled if she is going to be safe. Then I remember the route she took. It didn’t explain that.

  ‘What way you come back?’ I ask again.

  ‘What way?’ she says back to me.

  ‘Yeah. What way?’

  ‘Oh’ she says and then quickly her face lightens up. ‘Don’t worry. I got them to drop me to the other estate. No one saw me coming here. I cut through the back.’

  ‘Ah,’ I goes and at that time, that was good enough for me. It’s only later when I am turning it over in my mind that I wonder about the books. If a visitor gave her a lift back, how did she get the books? Did he take her to Oxfam? I suppose he could have. But then did he wait for her and then drive her back? It didn’t make no sense I could follow.

  Break: 11:00

  28

  11:30

  I get the feeling you lot are waiting for the ending. And one of the last things my brief said to me was ‘Don’t let them lose interest’ and I don’t know if you lot are maybe losing interest. But I am getting there, really and truly. Just give me a little more time yeah? So where was I?

  That’s right. The Spooks thing. Anyway it was the day after that whole thing that Curt comes knocking on my door.

  ‘So it looks like the shit is heating up,’ he says. ‘Face’s lot is combing the ends looking for Guilty. This thing’s about to happen.’

  ‘Good,’ I say, ‘about time.’

  The way we figured it, the sooner those two mans knocked each other out, the better. It had been nearly ten days now of being locked up in my flat. The walls felt like they were closing in and all the space in between them felt poisoned. We hadn’t had a clean breath since this whole thing began except for that day at Mum’s. We needed it to be over. All it needed to end was for it to start. The two gangs take each other out and we are home free. We just had to hope that with that kind of war going on Face would be too busy to be wondering about the girl with the light eyes. With luck one of the Glockz might even finish him off you get me?

  Things even have begun to feel more positive in my mind. I look over to where Ki is sitting on the sofa and it’s obvious she is much calmer now that she’s seen Spooks. She seems even like nearly her old self. I feel like she is more in focus, less faded. The edges of her are becoming sharper.

  I look across at her and say, ‘A few more days, a couple of weeks maybe and this shit’ll be over babe.’

  She looks up from her book and hooks into the conversation like she’s been listening all the while.

  ‘Face and the Olders are way too bad for Glockz from what you say,’ she says calmly.

  ‘Bad? Face by himself would be bad enough. But with a crew behind him? This shit is going to be dirty. Those boys are medieval,’ I say.

  ‘Well isn’t that a problem for us?’ she says, putting the book down next to her on the sofa and blinking slowly at me.

  ‘What you getting at Ki?’ I say, hating the way that she saves her punchlines like this.

  ‘Is Guilty going to die?’ Ki asks.

  ‘He’s getting iced for sure,’ says Curt, interested enough now to put his spliff down.

  ‘If he’s dead,’ she says cool as, ‘who’
s going to take care of Face?’

  We pause, just looking at each other and breathing in the silence.

  What Ki was getting at was that the plan only worked if the two gangs cancelled each other out. If Face survived and Guilty got killed, Face would still be looking for us. The only thing that interested Face was the money and it would only be a matter of time before Face realized that Guilty didn’t have the money. We had the money and that meant just one thing. With Jamil whispering into Face’s ears, about who was behind the shooting, Face would soon come looking for us. All of us. Me, Curt and Kira.

  Of course we already knew this in a ways. But what me and Curt had hoped though was that in the crossfire, Face might catch a couple of bullets. Maybe, we thought, it would be enough for Face that he had won a gang war. You know maybe he would be happy with just that and a chance to do his own taxing on Glockz.

  ‘We can’t do shit about that though,’ Curt says at last. ‘Face and his crew are like Terminators. They unstoppable.’

  ‘But that don’t mean they can make bullets bounce off them,’ I add, wondering if maybe there could be a way of stopping Face’s crew.

  Curt rubs his face with a huge paw and then says softly, ‘I don’t know man. Maybe they can.’

  Ki pulls her cardigan round her shoulders and then stands up straight after thinking a moment.

  ‘Then we have to do something,’ she says, ‘to slow Face and them down.’

  Slowing down Face was one of them easier-said-than-done tings. How were we supposed to slow down Face? For one thing we were in hiding. We couldn’t even roam the streets freely you know what I mean? We were stuck in this place. For another thing, Face’s Olders crew was proper big mans gang. Guns and shit. I mean proper guns. MAC-10s. Sub-machine gun kind of gun. What could we be doing against that? I said something like that to Ki.