You Don't Know Me

12

Have any of you lot ever held a gun in your hands? It’s not like you see in the films where you can put one in the inside pocket of your jacket or stick it in your jeans and forget you got it on you. A gun is a heavy thing. It weighs you down. When you pick one up it’s like you can feel the seriousness of it. You can sense the life it can take and the damage it can make. A gun is a living breathing thing in a ways. And it’s even got a voice. As soon as you pick one up it starts whispering shit to you. It’s whispering all in your ears. All the time you have it on you it’s whispering. Wsss wsss wsss wsss. And it’s saying just one thing to you over and over. It’s saying, ‘Let me out.’ It wants you to shoot it.

I can tell by his face he’s feeling it now. His gun wants to shoot me. Kira senses something too and starts to scream. The guy steps back but keeps the gun aimed at me. He whips round with his other arm and grabs Kira by the hair and pulls down hard. She lets out this noise like a kicked dog.

I step forward and then stop quickly and hold my hands out. ‘Blood, it’s cool. It’s cool. I’m going,’ I say and start stepping back slowly.

‘It’s too long for that shit bruv,’ he says and pulls Kira’s head down by his knees, so she can only see the ground. ‘You don’t want to see this, baby,’ he goes, and straightens out his gun arm.

I’m suddenly aware that my own gun is heavy in my waistband. As soon as I get it out, everything happens at once. The Glockz boy’s eyes go big and he takes a step back. Kira struggles free from the guy’s grip and freezes. Then a second later she starts to shout ‘Oh my days oh my days oh my days’ over and over. I point the gun at the Glockz and tell him to fuck off. But there is something in my voice that cracks just as I’m saying it that makes me sound like a kid. His face changes. He smiles like an evil smile and takes a step towards me, gun leading the way. ‘I’m going to shove this up your hole innit,’ he says and takes another step towards me. My mind is all syrupy as he comes closer. I want it to start working again. It feels like there’s a dead battery in there and I just need something, some spark to get it going. Then out of nowhere Kira screams and my head comes alive. The motor starts working again. Smooth like a straight-six engine.

I shoot. It hits him somewhere in the shoulder and he spins round and hits the deck screaming out. There’s splatters of blood in my eyes. I can barely see what’s going on till I wipe them clean with my sleeve. I look down to where he was but he has gone. Just disappeared. There is like a small puddle of blood on the ground but no person there. I look around wildly but can’t see him. I panic, expecting any moment that he’s going to jump me from behind. Round and round I go searching. Then finally I catch sight of him and see him staggering off to where he came from behind the bridge.

I take Kira’s arm and push her into my car. I start it up. My hands are shaking. My heart is slamming so hard against my ribs I believe that it’s going to burst into pieces. It is so loud now it is frightening me. Somehow though I manage to get past it, put the car into gear and drive off.

I’m all over the road. The blood is pumping through me. Banging in my ears. I look over at Ki and see that her mouth is opening and shutting but I can’t hear a thing with all this noise in my head. It must be the gunshot. I’m still deaf from it. But I keep driving. Revving hard from what I can see of the rev counter, but still hearing nothing.

I keep going, swerving at first, but after a minute or two the driving gets more level. I turn the corner but I’m in a dead end. I spin the car around one eighty and drive back past the puddle of blood. Where the hell did I come from? I drive a bit further but I can’t seem to find a way out of this maze. Suddenly every turn leads me to a road that has been blocked off with iron bollards or has been pedestrianized. Fuck. Eventually I make a turn and find the road that brought me here and before I know it I am heading home, with my girl in the car.

Just saying it now brings it back. My heart is going right now here in this court. Fuck! I know, language, but serious, that was some scary shit. You don’t know until you in one of them situations how you going to react. You might be okay but you might choke you get me? That could have been me on that day. I could have choked and if I had maybe that would have been the end of days. But life hadn’t finished with me. There was still chapters to go. More story to tell. That’s how I look at it anyway.

I’ll let you guys into a little something. My QC, before I sacked him, told me under no circumstances to tell that story. ‘Why?’ I goes. ‘Why not?’ He says it’s just going to prove you are guilty. It proves, one, you have a gun. It proves two, you are willing to carry it. It proves three, that you are willing to shoot someone with it. It proves four, that you are clever enough to get away with it.

I take his point and that but bottom line is I think that’s rubbish. It don’t prove nothing. You lot already know I had a gun in my flat. And everyone knows that people don’t have guns unless there are circumstances under which they will use it, otherwise no point in having one in the first place. But this was self-defence. That boy was going to kill me for sure. I saw it in his eyes. I was there, you weren’t. He had a gun in my face. I can still see it. This was a real thing. He would have killed me and there would have been no one to tell you about it. Do or die. I did what I had to do. But I didn’t kill him though. At least no one has come forward and said I killed him. If I killed him, charge me with that. I will fight that one too. And I tell you now, I can bust that case. Self-defence all day long. But don’t be charging me with no bullshit next shooting of some kid I didn’t shoot. Fuck that shit.

Anyway you got it all now. Sorry my QC wherever you are. I had to tell it though. That was the only way to explain how the police found that firearm discharge residue in my car. It was from that shooting, members of the jury. It was from shooting that Glockz prick not from shooting Jamil. That explains most of evidence number five.

Anyway, Kira was home but she wasn’t by no means safe. Actually she was safer than we thought at that time, but we didn’t know it then. At that time, the way we saw it, the biggest danger to her was herself. The drive back home was a long one. Although she started off dazed and spaced out it wasn’t long before she turned into a maniac. She started banging on the windows and screaming to be let out. I didn’t get it at first. What the fuck was the problem? I wasn’t expecting no hero’s welcome or nothing, but I definitely wasn’t expecting the abuse that came out of her mouth right then. But the truth is that was my own fault. I hadn’t thought the shit through at all.

When I found her, I was so like consumed by how to get her out I hadn’t thought about what to do with her once I had her. I was making this shit up as I went along. Find her. Oh, I found her – what now? Get her out. Oh, I got her out – what now? Take her home. No, don’t fucking take her home that is the first place they will come looking. That is how my mind works. In a straight line.

Kira thought differently. If my mind was a pencil drawing of a stick-man, hers was a Michael Angelo. She had what you call it, perspective. And all that other stuff, colour, 3D, the lot. I had a big head and stick arms. Eventually after the screaming had died down and I managed to persuade her not to open the car door and try and run off every time I stopped at a light, she told me what was on her mind. If she wasn’t there when they came looking for her, they would off her brother, she says. Simple as that.

I hadn’t even thought about that for a second. In my head as long as she was gone from that place, from them, she was safe. Tell the truth I didn’t really give a shit about Spooks. He was a nobody crack addict. If I had thought about it beforehand though I would still have done it but I would at least have been prepared for how Kira reacted.

I managed to calm her down after a while and get her to my yard without her jumping out. ‘I’ve got a plan,’ I kept telling her, ‘I’ve got a plan’, even though I didn’t. Big head and stick arms remember. On the way though, I thought of something that might become a plan, even if it wasn’t an actual plan yet.

‘Nobody knows you’ve been taken by me innit? As far as any of them Glockz is concerned, some next man, a gang member maybe, took you at gunpoint for no better reason than to fuck with them.’

She stared ahead at the windscreen and I knew I was in for one of them long silent treatments.

‘And I shot one of them innit so they have to be thinking that it’s some gang thing. No boyfriend would have pulled anything like that. As far as that guy knew I was a customer and I shot him up because he was giving it rah rah rah.’

She looked at me and said nothing.

When she do that silent thing anything could be going on in her head, so believe me when I say I was relieved when she finally said, ‘Okay maybe you’re right.’

When we got to my flat I put her straight into a hot bath. Even poured in a load of shampoo to make bubbles for her. She didn’t want to get in but after a bit of persuasion she finally did. It was like she didn’t have the energy to argue with me, which if you know Kira was something serious. I knew it was serious anyway. She made me wait outside while she changed. I went back a few minutes later and knocked on the door with a cup of tea.

‘Put it outside,’ she goes. ‘I’ll get it later.’

I stood outside the door listening. See maybe if I could hear her crying. ‘Can I come in Ki?’ I say at last.

‘No,’ she says so I went back into the living room and waited. TV off.

By the time she came out in my dressing gown she seemed a bit better. Her cheeks were still red from the heat of the bath and her hair was wrapped in a towel. She looked more Ki and less ghost. I got up to try and hold her but she shrugged me off and sat down with her knees to her chest and her eyes to the floor.

‘Ki,’ I goes.

‘Just give me some time,’ she says. So I did.

The next few days were really strange and a bit dream-like. On the one hand she was back and every time I remembered it, when it crept up on me, I felt like this wave of relief wash over me. But then when I looked at her, if she was sitting reading a book or just watching TV, she had this look that made me realize that maybe she wasn’t really back after all. Not in the sense that it was the same Kira who’d come back to me. She wasn’t the same. She was a different Kira come back to me.

I tried to speak to her every now and then, when I made her a cup of tea or brought her some soup, but she weren’t really interested. I knew I needed to give her some time but all I could see was this girl that I loved just slipping away from me and the harder that I tried to hold on to her the thinner she became until I had almost no grip left on her. I was desperate. I didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t like I needed to know what happened to her in that time she was with Glockz. But I did need to know whether what they did to her was something that could be fixed. Even if not straight away, just one day, you get me?

The one thing she could bring herself to talk about was Spooks. She was still terrified that someone somewhere was going to maybe stick a shank in him for her disappearing.

‘What you care about him for anyway?’ I said to her once and she just says, ‘Don’t.’ Her eyes flashed me one of them looks and I knew that I couldn’t even go near that right then.

Later that same day she made me promise to see if I could find out if her brother was still alive.

‘I will. Don’t worry about him. Worry about you,’ I said.

‘Just do it.’

‘I’ll get a message through don’t worry,’ I said.

She looked at me and flared her nostrils.

‘Fine,’ I said, ‘I’ll go and see him. In prison.’

‘And you’ll make sure that nobody comes looking to him?’ she said, eyes wide open.

‘I’ll put a few rumours in the right places about some new gang causing a problem in those ends. I’ll say some gangster’s been causing trouble in North. Throwing his weight around. Fucking up people’s patches. Nicking their whores. Don’t worry. Spooks, that piece of shit, will be clear.’

And that is what I did. And at the same time I made sure that nobody knew Kira was with me.

Now that probably doesn’t sound all that difficult to you lot. She’s not famous. How hard can it be to keep her on the low? Well even though she’s not famous a person can still have a rep. In fact everyone has a rep. Some people have good reps. Some people have shit ones. But people round my ends know all the people round my ends. It’s like it’s their business to know. They know who is going out with who. They know whether this man has got a baby for this next girl and how many babies he’s got for how many girls. And trust me a girl like Ki is a girl that gets noticed by everyone. And not just men. In fact it’s the girls that are most likely to mark her. They want to know what all the other girls are doing because if any of them is doing it near their own mans, they will have something to say about that. And Kira, like I said, was a type of a girl who could worry a lot of other girls just by turning up.

In the end, though, it wasn’t really that hard to keep her low profile at the beginning. She basically had no desire to go out anyway. She would just sit in my room staring into space. Occasionally she would pick up a book but her eyes would glaze as if all she could read was her own thoughts.

After a few weeks had passed things were no better as far as Ki was concerned. She was still locked in her own head. I tried every known thing then to get her out of herself but nothing really had any effect. In desperation I told Mum about it. I didn’t tell her all details, just that some men had put her in a car. Mum started to freak out at first but then I managed to calm her down some. ‘You can’t tell no one about it Mum. I mean it,’ I goes. I really didn’t want to have to tell Mum but I didn’t have any other ideas and she sometimes had some good ones. In the end the best she could do was tell me not to worry and that Ki just needed some time to heal.

A day after I told Mum about her, she called me and told me that she had made Ki a doctor’s appointment.

‘You did what? I told you didn’t I? No one. You can’t tell no one about it Mum. It’s serious Mum.’

‘I did not tell anybody about it. Just I said to Blessing to make an appointment with the doctor for Kira. Just depression. Not to say about kidnapping and all of these matters.’

‘You told Bless? Mum!’ I say. I definitely didn’t want her talking to Bless about it.

‘Of course I tell your sister. You want me to have a mental breakdown all on my own, foolish boy?’

‘Alright alright. No one else Mum. I mean it. No doctors. No friends. No church people. No one,’ I said and hung up. I called up the surgery straight away and told them that it was a mistake. Fuck knows who would have seen her if she wandered over there. Plus I wasn’t sure I wanted no doctor to be finding out that her problem was that she had been kidnapped by a gang and pimped out. It was too dangerous to do that. Most likely the doctor would have called the Feds and I didn’t want no police turning up and putting blue lights over her head, you get me. So I thought of other ways.

One of the first things I did was to go round to her flat to pick up some things for her. Some clothes, yes, but mainly something for her to read. She needed her books round her. To her they were like her friends. Or family even. It’s weird I know, but book people are weird, trust me.

I waited till it was dark and drove up in the A3 and parked somewhere out of the way but close enough to load it without making too many trips. As I walked up to the door I suddenly had a flashback to that day when I came round looking for her. The door was still splintered at the frame from when I broke in that time and the new lock I had fitted was still there like a surprise I had forgotten about. It was out of place though. It was too new and didn’t fit in with the peeling paint on the door. The key went in smoothly and turned. At first I was half wondering if someone might have already been round there looking for her but the door was still locked. It all looked fine to me. I went in and turned on the light and it flooded the room.

I took a look around and everything was like I remembered it. Maybe something seemed off but I wasn’t sure what exactly. The books all looked like they did when I had left it. Nothing seemed like obviously wrong. I decided it was probably my mind playing me and went into the bedroom and started piling clothes into the bin liners I had brought with me. I had just got two bags full and was moving them into the living room when I saw it. Just out of the corner of my eye. By the window. The net curtain there was like fluttering but I knew no window were open when I left it. I walked over and pulled the curtain back and saw the bottom of it had been smashed in. I looked down at my feet. Glass everywhere. Shit.

I quickly threw some books into a carrier bag and left, locking the door behind me. Then I ran. If someone saw me then someone saw me. It didn’t matter. I could be anyone. A family member. Someone just checking in, taking some stuff. Whatever. What I knew though, was that dem man were looking for her. This weren’t good. I jumped in the car and drove off quickly.

When I got back that night, Kira’s face lit up a little when she saw her books. Then they dimmed right back down again. Wrong books apparently. I told her I would go back and get more for her, but truth was I knew I weren’t going back there again. I didn’t tell her about the break-in. No need to worry her any more than she was already.

I tried other things I thought might help too. Some herbal stuff, St John’s something and some Chinese medicine shit too but it was no good. This wasn’t one of them things that could be medicined. This was one of them things that just had to be mourned over time. She was never going to get over it, just like you never really get over a death. All that happens is that the sorrow gets older. It’s like a light that gets fader and fader. One day after years and years have passed maybe the sorrow is too covered in dust to properly see what it is but it is still there. It’s just harder to see.

I knew that the only thing anybody could do for her was to let her heal as Mum had said. In the first few weeks, believe, I thought it was too late for her. She didn’t eat. She didn’t sleep and she looked grey. When she made any sound at all it was usually to cry or occasionally to scream out. In them moments I felt like my heart had caved in. I can’t even explain it, blood. It was like a deep, deep pain that felt like all my insides were collapsing in on itself. I felt like a demolition building falling to the ground, where it did that collapsing thing. It was like my heart had collapsed from the inside.

In desperation I decided to speak to Bless about it. She already knew something was up after speaking to Mum so I figured it wouldn’t be the end of the world if I spoke to Bless. I picked up the phone and called her. I didn’t have no time for small talk so I got straight to it.

‘She’s in a bad way, sis. I don’t know what to do to bring her out of her head.’

‘J-just give her time. She will get there on her own. She just needs a bit of t-time,’ Bless says quietly.

‘I don’t think time is going to do it Bless. If anything, time is making the shit worse,’ I say, cupping the phone in case Kira can hear me from the next room.

‘Maybe right now it is. But in a few days, or a few w-weeks, she will get better. It’s like being in a tunnel. You don’t know how long it will stay d-dark but if you walk long enough, the light will come. Eventually.’

I didn’t know at that time that Bless was right, but I did know that she knew something about being in tunnels so it gave me hope.

But what I hadn’t counted on was how long them tunnels could be.

Those were days when she wanted to kill herself.

She asked me to do it for her once and I tell you I would have. She was hurting so badly that I would have done anything to free her from it. If you would have seen her then yourselves, with your own eyes; if you would have heard her crying in her sleep, I guarantee you would have thought about it too. It would have broken me to do it but I would have done it for her. I would have murdered her just to help her to leave the world behind. You don’t understand, man, I loved her. I loved her with every cell in my body. I would have done it in a heartbeat.

What saved her, what saved me, in a funny way, was seeing Jamil, the deceased, on the road one day.