You Don't Know Me

Now the thing with me is that I know most of the cars that go up and down my ends. It’s not that I know every car, obviously, it’s more that I know when a car is there that doesn’t seem right to me. It kind of just throws me off a bit like when you walk downstairs and you think there’s an extra step but there isn’t but your foot moves like there is. Anyway I see this one car pulling up directly outside but on the far side of the street and to me it doesn’t look right. Or maybe it’s not even that. Maybe that is whatever it’s called, hindsight, that I’m saying it. But thing was I noticed that car. I noticed it but my guess is that not many people would have. Not even people who are quite interested in cars would have noticed it. You would have to be really, really proper interested to have noticed it because it’s a kind of car that is designed not to be noticed.

What it was: a late-model ice-blue Alpina D3 two-litre bi turbo estate. What that basically is to anyone looking at it is a BMW 3 Series Touring. Just a normal BMW estate to look at. If you saw it, you wouldn’t notice anything about it. But what it actually is, is a company called Alpina; they take a BMW and change it.

The main thing they change is under the bonnet. So they take a naturally aspirated engine and turn it into a supercharged engine. It’s all about creating high torque at low revs. Anyway the point is you can’t really tell unless you get up really close and check for the badge that says Alpina on it. But if you know about them, like really know about them like I do, you can tell from the wheels. They put twenty-spoke alloys on it. Nineteen inches on this one. This car was a car for someone who knew cars. So I noticed it. And in my head I was just going, I reckon that’s probably worth twenty-five thousand pounds or whatever. But what shocked me was that after a minute of being parked up, the back door opens. And Kira gets out. She leans in to get something from inside and then starts to head in my direction. I can’t see what it is but it looks like a black sheet or something, which confuses me. I quickly duck in behind a van that’s parked up in the car park before she sees me.

I crouch down and watch her pass me by. My eyes follow her as she fiddles with the black sheet thing and then starts to walk in the direction of the front of my block. Shit. I think, I need to get back before she does. Something in me needs to see what her face is going to tell me as soon as she walks in that door.

I realize I only got about five minutes to trace back the route I came from and beat her home. But it’s only when I start to run that I remember that I haven’t had to run for years. I make it to the flat in about two minutes, my lungs pumping hard.

I open the door to the flat and my mind is still running even though I’m not. What the fuck is going on? Why she in a car like that? I poke my head round the door and see that I have beaten her back. Now I just need to think of what to say to her. So I wait. And then after a few minutes I hear the door.

When she comes in she is a changed person. And I don’t mean spiritually speaking. I mean she was a proper changed person. I didn’t even recognize her. In fact I almost screamed. I thought for half a second like I was maybe in a nightmare. It was only when she took the head bit off that I realized it was Ki. In a burkha. I swear down. The full Darth Vader.

‘Oh fuck,’ I go as soon as I see her face. I feel like I almost had a heart attack. She smiles at me like one of them smiles like don’t I look silly and I ain’t even sure whether to laugh.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ she says, cool as and takes off the rest of it. ‘Besides, I thought you’d be happy.’

‘Happy?’

‘What’s a better disguise than this? I can go out every day,’ she says hanging the whole shimmery black outfit on a peg by the front door.

‘Well I ain’t sure if –’ I say but she cuts me off by showing me a palm.

‘Shut up anyway. Listen I think I’m on the way to finding a way out of this mess,’ she says and those eyes are back, gleaming. This is like the old Ki coming back and right then for that moment I completely forget the whole Alpina thing. I can’t make it make any sense right now so I park it up.

‘Shit, a way out already? You are good Ki. I give you that. Smart. Always said it. Hit me. What you got?’

‘Got? Nothing yet. I said I am on the way to finding a way. I just need some time. Give me a few days just to think it through properly. After that I will tell you what I got. Now to change the subject. What do you think is going on with Bless and Curt?’ she says smiling one of them smiles. You know the ones.

‘What you chatting about gal? Ain’t nothing going on. He just dropping in to see Mum. Eh stop that smiling I swear down,’ I say and at that point I push her on to the sofa, both of us laughing like little kids.