You Don't Know Me

We spent the next day on edge. I can’t even tell you. It hadn’t really hit us at the beginning that somebody had ended up, you know what I mean, dead. Even when we was dumping the body on the estate, it still didn’t hit us. It was only once all the work was done, all the hair and blood and cleaning up, it was only then that it hit home. I remember it vividly.

We was sitting at my yard round my table, Ki was still in the zone. A hundred things to do. Number one on the list of which was booking tickets for us all to Spain. We could only get two tickets out straight away, the third one had to wait for another couple of days. We agreed that Ki and Curt needed to get away the quickest. Ki because she was now in the frame for this as the shooter and Curt because he had no other place to go. His yard here in South, the one we had made into the trap, was way too hot. His yard up in North London was being banged on every hour by Glockz who were now starting to get on top. His phone had been ringing off the hook with threats and even his mum was chasing him down. So they needed to jet urgently.

‘The shit is getting hot on top, fam. I can’t even tell you. Glockz chasing me down every two minutes,’ Curt says after ditching yet another call.

‘How the fuck those boys nail you for this so quick?’ I say.

‘Probably them two innit. They must have gone running straight out of the trap to the Olders. That was the plan though,’ he says walking to the fridge and picking out a pasty before dropping it whole into his mouth.

‘But so soon? And not knowing your name. I mean,’ I say turning to face him.

‘Yeah you think you need to know my name to pick me out?’ he adds holding his arms out so that he looks twice his normal size. ‘We should have fucking iced them bruv.’

‘Fuck man,’ I say. ‘That ain’t us. We ain’t about all that shit. Sure a boy got merked but that was not something we like aimed for. That shit just went wrong. And I know you Curt. You’re not a gangster no matter if you linked in with this crew.’

He throws himself into a chair next to us at the table.

‘Yeah man, I know. I’m just prang innit bruv. Glockz is heartless and I don’t want to know what they got planned for me.’

‘It’s okay bruv. We getting you out of here soon. And for as long as you need. Or as long as thirty gees can keep you in meat.’

The cash weren’t exactly straightforward though. We couldn’t just stick it in a suitcase and jump on a plane with it. It needed chatting out properly. Then, as we were physically handling the money, counting it up and dividing it up, the whole thing hit us. One by one. Bang. Bang. Bang.

‘He’s dead,’ says Curt.

I look at him like he’s gone mad. ‘We know,’ I say slowly.

‘Nah man. I mean he is dead,’ he says, rubbing his face. ‘I mean he was alive one moment. Now he is just gone. Everything that he knew is still here. But he himself, he is just gone. This money here, was here and it’s still here. He was here with this money. Now the money is here and he ain’t. He’s just like disappeared. He is like proper gone, you get me?’

At first I carried on looking at him as if he had lost his mind. Of course he was dead. We had just spent the whole of yesterday covering the flat with hair and chicken blood. Did I get him? No. I didn’t get him. And then just as I was about to say all that, I did. For the first time I got it. It just slotted into place like a piston into a cylinder bore.

Weirdly it was Ki that got it last. Then again, the shit she had been through kind of turned the world on its head. You have to forgive her a bit for that. Also, she was the one who was doing all the follow-up shit. She was the one booking the flights. She was the one getting the passport details. She was the one watching the news for updates and trawling the net for any information on Jamil aka JC, R.I.P., and whatever. I suppose for her brain, the thing hadn’t properly finished happening yet. It was still going on. Then when she made the final flight confirmation and sat back and looked across at us. She got it too. Bang. Those white lights in her eyes were gone and suddenly she was sobbing. Crying enough tears. Enough tears. Enough for all of us I reckon.

But then this next strange shit happened that changed everything.

Ki and Curt were going to be flying off the next day. It had to be quick. So quick that we was happy to pay nearly four times the normal cost of the ticket. Anyway I planned to go with them to the airport to see them off. We were all pretty on edge still and I don’t think that we maybe had three hours’ sleep in three days.