You Don't Know Me

21

That picture of Ki. That look on her face. That is going to be something that I ain’t ever going to be able to forget. Her face had lost all its blood and her wide-open eyes seemed just blank. Like the life was all gone. Like when that boy’s life was draining out of him, hers was draining out of her too. I took the gun from her hand and felt its heat burning. That fucking gun. I knew what happened. It had been whispering at her like it had whispered at me. Shoot. Shoot.

I asked her what had gone down.

‘He, I don’t know. He woke up and he went for my gun,’ she says crying. ‘I kept shouting for you. But you didn’t hear me.’

I look at Curt and he shrugs his shoulders at me.

I hold her close to me. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, babe. I didn’t hear you with everything else that was happening’

I take the gun from her hands and put it in my pocket. It’s still warm. I take her by the hands and lead her out of the room. She says nothing. I don’t even think she blinks. As we walk into the main room I remember the two men taped up on the ground and spin her back round to the bedroom again. I hold her face in my hands.

‘Ki. Listen to me. Curt is going to go out now and get you a cab. Then in a minute I’m going to walk you both outside. Listen to me though. I want you to keep your eyes shut till I say. Okay? Curt?’ I say to him and he turns and leaves straight away.

I look around to find Bless. She is turning round in circles and mumbling to herself.

‘Bless. Bless! It’s going to be cool. You too. Hold on to me and keep your eyes shut.’

Bless suddenly snaps back into herself and seems calmer and turns to Kira.

‘Kira, it’s going to be f-fine. I’m going to be with you all the way. Come on now. Let’s get you out of your c-coat and into your clothes. Come on baby.’

I turn my head away as they dress and then wait another two minutes before taking them both by the hand and rushing out of the flat as quickly as I can. The scene is like a thing from a movie. Two men out cold on the floor. Blood in places it had no business being. Door with cracks all through it. Shit everywhere. Binks looks like he’s asleep but he’s moaning like he’s having a nightmare. Shilo is knocked the fuck out though, face to the sky.

By the time we get to the street Curt is already standing by a waiting car in the dark. I help the girls in and give a twenty pound note to the driver and give him the address, just trying to sound normal. I nod to the girls at the back and say to the driver, ‘Just split up from her boyfriend,’ and he nods back to me like he’s seen this a lot.

Curt and I run back up to the flat. Shilo and Binks are still there on the ground but they are both coming to now and making noises. The blood around Binks’ leg has changed colour and seems to be drying. That tape must have stopped it. Curt and I nod at each other and then go to where Jamil’s body is waiting for us. That’s the immediate problem, not the two boys groaning in the other room, with their faces taped up like mummies. We had to move him out of there before his mans woke up and realized he was dead.

It was already late at night which was a good thing because it meant that we could move him without being spotted or whatever. Curt and I agreed we would take him one arm each and walk him to his M3, which we knew was probably nearby. Jamil had a gunshot wound in his chest. There was a bit of blood but not nearly as much of it as Binks who’d been shot in just his leg.

‘His heart’s still pumping, that’s the reason,’ explained Curt. ‘Fuck though bruv, you look like you been shot too. You can’t go out again like that. You better hope that driver didn’t see that.’

I look down and realize that Binks’ blood is all over my clothes from when I was taping him up. It was dark outside though so the driver probably didn’t see anything.

I look at Curt who is pacing the floor as if he was trying to work out what to do next.

‘Listen,’ I say, ‘I’ll tape JC up to stop the blood. You don’t need no blood on you and I’m already covered. Then we can zip him up in his coat and drag him out.’

‘Plan bruv,’ says Curt and I get to work.

It’s pretty messy work taping up a bloody dead man. A little bit of blood makes a lot of fucking mess. I can’t tell you how many times I scrubbed myself clean when I got back home, but however many times it was, it wasn’t enough to get rid of the tiny speck they found under my nails when they arrested me more than a month later. And when I say I scrubbed, I mean I scrubbed until my own skin was beginning to bleed and then I couldn’t tell whether it was his blood on me or my own. I basically soaked myself in bleach that night but no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get the feeling or the smell of the dead boy off my skin.

Once I had taped him up and wiped him down with bleach, I went into the main room and scooped up a handful of baking soda that’d been laid out everywhere and covered all the wet bits on him with it. I more or less covered him in powder until he was dry. The smell of it helped to cover the smell of the blood too. Anyway, I finally zipped up Jamil in his coat and to my mind, I thought, if you didn’t get up too close, he didn’t look too bad. For a dead boy. I pulled his hat over his eyes and called Curt over.

‘Good,’ says Curt. ‘Now you better get that shit off you.’

I take off my top, which is bloody and covered in powder at the same time and throw it in a bin liner. Just as I am wondering what I am going to wear, Curt hands me his hoodie. It was his hoodie, you get me. An XXL black hoodie with Chinese-style writing on the back of it. You remember. The number three evidence the prosecution has been going on about. That hoodie. I put it on without giving it a second’s thought. The same one Curt had been wearing three days before when we had met up with Jamil on the block. The witness that saw me that day, must have seen Curt and me and confused who was wearing what. I don’t know how that shit can happen but apparently it can.

‘Gloves man,’ says Curt and hands me a pair of them yellow washing-up gloves. He also puts on a pair and together we stand there for a second looking at each other, wearing these ridiculous gloves. Then without saying anything we take him by an arm each and stumble down the two flights to the ground floor main entrance.

Just before we open the front door, I look at Curt. He is breathing heavy but other than that he seems like he’s okay. Calm in a ways.

‘What about those two upstairs?’ I go.

‘They ain’t going nowhere. That tape’s not coming off any time soon,’ he says and heaves the body out into the cold air.

It was the hardest thing man. It was like dragging a bag of cement and trying to keep it upright at the same time. We dropped him a couple of times on the way down it was that bad. Every time we did I kept expecting him to scream out. But he never did. Like for once he was taking his licks like a man.

Once we were at the bottom Curt held him up while I stuck my hands in his coat pocket and waded through used tissues until I found his car keys. Then we stepped out into the cold air, and looked for his wheels.

‘Where the fuck are his wheels at?’ I say looking around.

‘Just press the button, maybe it’s got one of them bleeper things.’

I did and suddenly two amber lights wink at us from the other side of the street. There it was, his gleaming M3 right under a tree. Don’t know how we missed it.

Now what I really should have checked if I had been thinking straight was his phones. I really should have got rid of them. But I ain’t got a murdering kind of a mind, you get me. This wasn’t planned or nothing. This was just supposed to be taxing, end of story. Get Ki safe. That’s all it was about. Anyway that was my bad luck really. Doesn’t matter now though does it? You know the whole story now innit? Oh shit and the hair. My hair in his car. I just never even thought about it. Who would think of hair when you practically ain’t even got none on your head? Maybe I should have put plastic on the seats before I sat down, or fucking hoovered the car up afterwards but I just didn’t think of them things with all the other things that were crowding my mind. That’s how they find you though. What’s that thing people say. You can think of some things. You can think of nearly all the things. But nobody can think of all the things all the time. Whatever. You know what I mean.

Anyways we parked up round the back of one of the estates we knew and dragged him out of his car and round the back to like a shed thing where they keep all the bins. We had no clue what to do with him so we just proper dumped him. Like he was just another bag of rubbish. And when he landed on the ground, the thing I remember most is how he made a muffled kind of a sound like he wasn’t even really there, like he was far away from his body already. That’s the only thing that kept me able to even do it. That I knew it weren’t even him there any more. It was just his past.

We put a bin liner over his taped-up body so he didn’t stand out and looked back at him. I said a kind of prayer under my breath and tried to make it real but all I could see was rubbish lying there. I remember thinking then about that dust to dust thing and I knew that he was gone.

After we left him, we had to lose the wheels. We didn’t want to go too far though because we had Shilo and Binks to deal with still. So I drove a little bit until we saw another council estate and then parked up.

‘Here?’ says Curt.

‘Why not here?’ I say getting out.

‘This whip? Here? It’ll get jacked for sure,’ he says, heaving himself out from the seat.

‘Exactly,’ I say and head towards the main road, making sure I leave the doors unlocked and the key in the ignition.

We dash the gloves into a nearby bin and jump on the bus and back to the trap. We walk up slowly to the big front doors, looking at everything. Just in case. You never know what can come at you. But it all looked cool to us. Everything like it was. We bounced up the stairs and listened at the door for any sounds. Last thing we want is to be jumped by two very fucking vex boys, you get me. I have my ear pressed to the door but all I can hear is Curt’s breathing. I give him like a thumbs up and he puts in the key and turns it. As we open the door I half expect them to be gone. But Shilo and Binks are still there, fully awake now moaning and squirming in their taped suits. We ignore them and start cleaning the place up. We basically threw bottles and bottles of bleach around the place until the whole place smelled like a swimming pool. Nothing can survive bleach apparently. Kills ninety-nine per cent of all known shit, everyone knows that. It was only once we had washed the place down that Curt finally looked at me and then at the groaning men on the floor. He pulled me into the back room out of earshot.

‘What the fuck do we do with those two clowns?’

‘Cut ’em loose,’ I say. I just wanted the thing to be over right there and then. I wanted them out. I wanted Curt out. I wanted me out.

‘What if …?’

‘They don’t know fuck all. They was out cold,’ I say.

‘Well, eventually they will start to wonder where the fuck their bossman is at though.’

‘We tell ’em we delivered him up to Glockz. They might even drop the word to the Olders and start the war themselves.’

‘True say,’ he says and then walks back into the room and starts to pull the tape off their faces. They scream like girls. Then Curt leans his big face right into theirs and gives them this look.

‘Listen you motherfuckers, next time I see your ugly faces, they’ll be chewing steel you get me,’ he says and drags them to their feet. One under each hand.

‘Where’s JC?’ says Shilo rubbing his head.

‘He got some business with Glockz innit. They took him. Now if I was you, I would maybe want to get the fuck out of here before Glockz comes back for your arses.’

Binks is coming to life now and starts getting all jumpy again. Then he looks down at his leg and screams out. ‘You fucking shot me man,’ he goes to me, crying like a baby.

‘Yeah man,’ I goes, ‘I fucking shot you.’

They make as if to leave but Curt grabs each of them, by the collar.

‘Wait the fuck up boys. Curt got some questions for you. And you better think before you give me any bullshit or you gonna follow JC up North.’

Even I am afraid when I hear Curt talking about himself as if he’s some next man. I look at him and he nods like he’s saying, ‘Yeah I know.’