You Don't Know 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 waiting 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.

So far he hadn’t been cornered by Glockz because he was working some proper hideaway places. He was going to them out of the way crack dens that other people didn’t go to. Like he did in the South, he went to schools. He went to colleges. And then just when it was starting to get on top, he’d go back to his ends in South and start trading there again until the heat was off. So it shouldn’t really have surprised me that when I saw him that day, he knew about Kira. That fucker had ears everywhere.

After I saw him I went home and sat on my bed for time and just mulled this shit over. It was quite serious. The way I thought of it was this. If one day Jamil gets trapped by Glockz and they started threatening him, all he had to do was start chatting about Kira. ‘I know where that Kira bitch is who shamed you innit. I’ll give her up. You let me go rah rah rah’. It would be no time then before they sent a fucking army to kick our doors down. They wouldn’t need no definite reasons even. They probably would have done it just on his say-so, just to make things even after Jamil had pissed on their patch. You come to North, we’ll come to South. All it needed was the smallest push.

Then, after hours of turning it round and round in my head, I found the beginnings of a plan. And no, in case you’re wondering, my plan was not to shoot him in the head.

Luncheon adjournment: 13:05

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14:15