You Don't Know Me

The boy physically backs down and puts his hands up. ‘It’s cool man. So you want me to keep it on the low bruv?’

Curt nods and then says, ‘What’s even the beef though? You know anything about it?’

‘Yeah some Pagans giving Glockz a bit of heat innit,’ the boy says smiling again.

‘Yeah? What about?’

‘Some Somali boy got shot up and these big mans – Olders – on the war path you get me. They reckon it’s Glockz who shot their boy up and Glockz reckon you might know something. Boy says he was in some yard doing a deal and got shot when it went mash up.’

Curt nods, trying to look all ‘whatever man’ when he suddenly twigs.

‘Boy said? What boy said?’ he says.

‘The Somali boy. The one who was shot up. JC, I think he’s called.’

‘No man. Back up. The shot boy said it?’

‘Yeah.’

Curt looks at me baffled. Then he turns back to Avirex. ‘The way I heard it is that the boy was merked.’

‘Nah, man. He was shot up but the bullet went straight through. Survived. Shit this is my girl’s stop bruv, I’ll see you about. Don’t worry though I’ll keep it low,’ he adds, winking, and then pulls his girl off the tube waving us goodbye as he does it.

Ki and me look at Curt. No wonder we couldn’t find nothing about the murder in the news. Fucker was still alive. Curt thinks for a moment then stands up and swings his bag over his shoulder.

‘Let me look at them tickets,’ he says to Ki who fishes the printouts out of her purse and gives them to him. Curt gives them a once over and then rips them up.

‘What you doing bro?’ I say raising an eyebrow at him.

‘We don’t need these no more. Five-O ain’t going to be on us now is it? Come on. Back to your yard. Some shit’s going to kick off soon though.’

‘What? We aren’t going to Spain now at all?’ says Kira following us off the tube, confused.

‘If this shit is true, we don’t need to run from no police if no police are looking for us,’ says Curt as he walks across the platform to catch the train going back where we came from.

‘How do you know the Feds ain’t looking for us?’ I say following him.

‘Because no way would he have said anything to police about a drug deal gone wrong. And anyways, he’s scum but he ain’t a grass innit,’ he says and gives Ki a look which tells us that he is talking about Spooks.

‘And what about the gangs? What about Glockz? What about the Olders?’ she says still worried.

‘Olders ain’t after us though are they? They after Glockz. JC would have told Olders it’s them. Glockz might come looking for us but I reckon they got more bigger problems than us,’ he says and just then the tube falls into view and we all get on. It is still early in the morning but by now commuters are just starting their days and the train is fuller than before.

‘Anyway,’ Curt says in a low voice just as the train doors shut, ‘if there’s no Feds on this then Bless and your mum and my mum and your brother are all in shit.’

Ki and I look at each other. We know he’s right.

Break: 10:45

24

11:00

We basically couldn’t believe it but we got confirmation of it the next day through some vine. Jamil was alive. Well I say through some vine but in this case the vine was Blessing.

Bless knew we were all planning to jet. Ki and Curt to go first as I said and then me following in a few days. We decided that linking up with Bless though was just too dangerous. At the moment we had deniability for her. Nobody really saw her. She didn’t shoot no one, she had her mask on throughout and was out of the flat double quick. And on top of all that she weren’t really a candidate for trouble. She was just a girl who lived with her mum. She didn’t even go out really. I’m not sure anybody even knew her to be able to line her up. So the last thing we wanted to do was to uproot her from Mum and go on the run with her. There was just no need, you get me.

But once we realized that there was no police on this thing, it was a different thing completely. With no police sniffing around to frighten them off, the gangs would start doing what gangs like to do. Glockz would come looking for Curt. Olders would come looking for all of us. Jamil would have lined us up for that. The added problem for me though was Bless and Mum. If we were in Spain when Olders came looking for me, when they didn’t find me, the next place they would knock on is Mum’s house. Just for the shit of it.

So there it was, catch-22 again.