You Don't Know Me

But with the Olders, it was a different kind of a game. These were men as I said before who had been in prison for long and knew their way around. These were people who had actually seen hundreds of thousands of pounds in cash in their own hands. And when someone came to them and tried fronting them up, they knew it wasn’t for no feud about who called whose mum a slag. If it happened it was going to be to steal their whole stash. Drugs, money, guns, the lot. And when someone comes after you for what you have spent ten years on the block for, ten years of their life, they ain’t going to just stab you up. Nah man. These guys will torture you.

They won’t think twice about killing you. They won’t even think once about it. And believe, if your mum or your nan or your sister is in the way, they will kill them too. These guys aren’t the Krays. These are proper hard men who will kill your mum. And to them, Jamil was like a massive bag of cash and a massive bag of drugs all rolled into one. No way were they going to let any posse fuck with their bag.

So, when I started putting the word around that Jamil had taken Kira, even if the Glockz wanted to, they didn’t have the balls to do anything about it. Jamil man, they couldn’t touch him. He was protected up to the top. That wasn’t the real problem though. I didn’t need them to do anything about it, I just needed them to believe it. If they believed that Jamil had taken her they could be vex about it and then forget about it. And most importantly, stop looking for her.

As it was though, now that Jamil was getting to be a top shotter, they preferred to believe him over rumours that I had planted. I can see your faces doing that thing again, jury. Right so ‘top shotter’ is like our word for top drug dealer. Nothing to do with shooting. Better not be getting them things wrong innit.

Anyway, with him being a top drug dealer, his word was more gold than mine if you like. So they would believe him over anything that some nobody like me might be telling. And it weren’t long before Jamil started saying he had heard that I had Kira. Jamil knew about her going missing like everyone round my ends. From me. They all knew I was looking for her like a mad man. I’d been tapping everyone out over it, I was desperate, you get me, and I didn’t care in them times, who knew I was looking for her. I wanted people to know. But when I found her and then stopped looking JC got the idea that she must be back. It was just a fucking guess but when he saw me that day in the street and called me out about it, that’s when he knew. It was my fucking reaction. It told him everything he needed to know. That’s what Curt told me. ‘Your face, blood. It gave up the game.’ That was when he decided to warn me. They would rather believe that and cut me up than believe Jamil had her and risk their own lives. It didn’t basically matter whether I had her or not. It was still better for them to fuck me over just as one of them things. Just for face. They had do someone over for the shit. And if they were too scared to do Jamil then they would be just as happy doing me.

Now, obviously, to you guys it looks proper guilty on my part that I now have a better reason to kill Jamil than even Mr Prosecutor thought I had. In other words that I killed him because he was telling mans that I had Kira. Like a revenge kind of thing. And I know that don’t look good for me right now. It does give me a reason to want him dead. Fuck I probably did want him dead at that time. But this is the truth. I wouldn’t be telling you this stuff against me if it wasn’t true, is it? Besides the thing on my mind wasn’t getting revenge on Jamil. He was still a nobody really in my eyes. The thing on my mind was getting the Glockz the fuck away from Ki. The rest of the story isn’t that much better for me, I will tell you that here and now. Just remember though that my life is in your hands in a way so just hear me out innit, please.

Break: 12:00

17

12:15

It was Ki who came up with the plan actually. I was dead against it, I ain’t even going to lie to you, but once I thought about it I knew it made sense. The fact was that Jamil was being ripped off by the Olders and he knew it and everyone knew it. It was like a joke everyone was in on. Now I know boys like him from old. Underneath all the front he was just a wannabe. He was still only a plastic gangster and the thing that mattered to him most of all was the same shit that mattered to all of them boys. Face. Or as Ki put it, ‘It’s one thing to be ripped off and to pretend you want it that way. It’s another thing if his mandems start calling him out about it.’

It was just a matter of time really. Someone was bound to rub his face in it one of these days and what Ki thought was that it might be better for us to do it and to do it sooner rather than later.