You Don't Know Me

35

I followed her. That was the time when I should have known that everything weren’t on the level. I mean I knew it weren’t on the level but I should have seen more. I blame myself for that. But this was some mad sideways thing that I didn’t see coming at me. It was like when a car pulls out straight into you and you don’t know it’s happened until you hear the crunch. And you say to yourself over and over, I should have seen it man. I should have seen it.

So anyway like I said I followed her, the very next day. I wasn’t buying that whole Faisal crap. I wanted to see with my own eyes what I could. Maybe it would all check out no matter what I thought. Don’t get me wrong I was hoping it would check out. I thought maybe I could have a quiet scout around this time and see whether there were any guys hanging round who might be Face’s boys. Because if this shit Ki was telling me was actually happening then maybe what I thought was right, that she was being set up. So I justified it to myself like that. I ain’t following her following her. I’m following her, looking out for her.

I got to the ground floor of the block and quickly scanned the road to see where she was. I couldn’t see her at first, but that was because I was looking the wrong way. She was walking in the opposite direction from the mosque I had been going to. No wonder I never saw her there whenever I went. She was going to a different mosque. Anyway my ride was parked just there on the corner so I quickly jumped in even though I knew it was risky to be taking it out on the road. But truth be told this whole thing was really getting to me and I needed to find out if the place she was going to was safe. I pulled out of the road just in time to see her getting on a bus and then I followed it.

My mind was racing even then but really and truly I weren’t that surprised she was going to a different mosque, there’s more than one mosque in London. But what did surprise me was that she took the bus all the way to Elephant and Castle. That seemed a long way to go for one. And for two it didn’t really fit to me. Wasn’t it Curt who took her to the mosque that first time? Surely he would have said if he’d taken her all the way to Elephant? I kept meaning to check this with him but didn’t know how to do it without sounding like I didn’t trust her – or him.

I kept the bus in view but stayed a couple of cars behind. I just needed to be close enough to see when she got off. Just after the roundabout I saw her. There she was. All in her Darth Vader kit. Once she got off the bus I knew I had to be more careful because even if no one else recognized my ride, there was no way Ki would miss it if she saw it. So I decided to park up and follow on foot. In the end it wasn’t that hard to follow her because with her wearing that burkha thing she probably couldn’t hardly see anything but her own feet. She turned down into a side street and I followed.

What surprised me though was that she didn’t stop at no building that looked to me like any mosque. She was outside a building with nothing to see but a black door. I saw her then check her phone and then ring the bell.

I waited hidden in a doorway and watched. My heart was going for some reason I couldn’t explain. A few seconds later the door opened and she walked in. I was a blank. I couldn’t even guess what the hell she might be doing there. Maybe this was where the girl lived? Could it be that? Could it actually be a mosque? I know that sometimes a mosque is just a person’s house that has been like converted. I waited a couple of minutes and then made up my mind to knock on the door. If she was there, this girl, then maybe I had a few questions of my own to ask her. I walked up to the door that Ki had just walked through and took a breath. I pushed at it but it was locked. I looked up at the building to see if there was anything interesting about it but I couldn’t find anything that stood out. It just looked like one of those places that you could walk by without even noticing. That was the weird thing about the place. There was nothing about it told you what it was. It definitely didn’t look like no mosque. And then there was the people. There weren’t any. The place was deserted. There was nobody queueing up to get behind this door.

It didn’t feel right to me. So I walked past and decided to wait at the bottom of the road. Maybe it weren’t such a good idea to go into a place without knowing what is inside it. I keep watching for twenty minutes or something but nobody walks in or out the whole time. Just then I see right at the end of the road, squeezed between a silver VW Golf and a black BMW X5, almost out of view, is a thing I recognize. That ice-blue Alpina. I just have time to register it when the door to the building opens again and I see Ki. She steps out, sorting out her burkha, and goes back up to the main road. She doesn’t even turn back so I don’t even have to hide. I ain’t even sure whether I even would have hid to tell you the truth. I was so confused. This couldn’t be no mosque that she’d just come out of, and that ice-blue Alpina, what was that about?

I can’t work it out. It’s too weird to make any sense. Anyway I am about to go and follow her when I see the door open again. I half expect another burkha to walk out. But I’m wrong about expecting that. What comes out is some white man. Six-foot-odd. Short blond hair. Grey suit. He turns the same way that Ki has gone but then stops halfway up the road and fishes for something in his pocket. The lights on the Alpina flick twice and he gets in and drives away. It must have been this fucker that had dropped her off to that other estate. But why? And who was he?

I should have realized then. But I didn’t. I swear. I didn’t even have a clue.

Look I know that this speech is long. It is bare long. But I feel like I need to tell you all the details of the thing so that you can feel me. And so now this Judge is telling me with his huffing and what have you and the snide looks he is giving me that I need to speed this shit up. It was the one thing my QC says to me just before I sacked him. He said keep the speech short enough to keep the jury’s interests up. An average speech, he goes, should be like two hours max. But I can’t do no two-hour speech for this. Even he couldn’t do a two-hour speech if he was being charged with murder himself. It’s like a thing you only get to know when you are in it. So I take it all on board. And I will speed it up. But it’s not a kind of thing like I want to skip stuff out. I don’t. But I don’t want to lose you either.

But what I will tell you is that I did have it out with her when I got back to my yard. I looked at that Alpina pull away, and my head was full with just this one repeating thought. What is going on? What is going on? I walked back to where my ride was parked up and got in. I drove back to the flat in a daze. What could she even say to all this? This was not a thing she could lie her way out of. Too much needed explaining.

I went in and waited for her. She wasn’t even that long behind me and when she came in she had that smile for me that she had shown me before and which had stopped me then from saying what I wanted to say. But this time, I wasn’t having it. She shut the door quietly behind her and whipped her burkha off and hung it on a chair by the table.

‘Hi,’ she goes, ‘everything alright? Any food going?’ She is cool as she has ever been and I don’t know how she can do it.

‘What the fuck is going on Kira? I know about the other guy,’ I say from behind a cup of tea I am drinking.

She freezes in the middle of rooting around in the fridge. I see her take a breath like she is considering her options. Finally she goes, ‘It’s not what you think.’

‘How do you know what I’m thinking?’ I say standing up so I can look right at her face when she turns around.

‘You ain’t thinking this,’ she says her head still facing the fridge.

‘Thinking what?’ I go, trying to keep the volume out of my voice.

‘I can’t tell you. But you have to trust me,’ she says turning to me at last. Her face is calm. Not like I expect it to be at all. There’s no nervousness. She ain’t acting caught out. She seems, I don’t know, kind of relieved.

‘How?’ I shouted. ‘How the fuck am I supposed to trust you after this Kira? Especially when you won’t tell me what’s going on?’

‘Just – I promise. I will tell you everything. After. Tomorrow.’

And at the end of the day what choice did I have? She was going to tell me and right then that had to be good enough. But I was an idiot. I should have made her say. I should have maybe worked it out. It was all there. All the pieces were there, I just didn’t know how to make them fit inside each other.

So, now I can tell from the Judge’s face it is time to get to the main point. And what you need to know about that most of all is the plan, innit. So Friday night came, the night that Face was going to be in the club, and Curt swung by early so we could go over the details of the plan again. We were all a little bit wired and the conversation was quite minimalist. He had managed to get his hands on a nine mil that wasn’t too dirty. It had been used in some robberies here and there but as far as he knew there weren’t any murders on it. He had brought it over in a McDonald’s bag and set it down on our round kitchen table.

I opened the bag to take a look when Curt’s giant hand came out of nowhere and swatted me away.

‘Use the gloves man,’ he says and fishes out a pair of latex gloves from his jacket pocket.

I put them on and open the bag. The gun is in there, lying fat in the bottom like a big black lump. I pick it up and feel its weight in my gloved hand.

‘Loaded?’

‘Five rounds. It’s all I could get.’

‘Guys, you ready? If anything’s not clear, now’s the time,’ says Ki stepping into the room from the bedroom. She is in sky-high heels and a black-and-white dress. Her hair is up and the make-up is only just there. She is beautiful.

‘Yeah man,’ says Curt who hardly notices her, ‘let’s jet.’

‘You got your two-ways?’

We nod.

‘Remember, keep it on that channel. There’s no phone reception in the club,’ says Ki and holds out a sports bag.

‘Doesn’t really go with the dress,’ I say but she isn’t in the mood.

I take the sports bag from her and slip the gun inside. I peel my latex gloves off and shove them in my jeans. Then we leave.

As we walk down the steps I hang back and let Curt head out in front. I pull Ki back a little by holding her wrist. She turns and looks at me. I want to say something, anything, just to connect with her, but I can’t think of any right words to say. In the end I say nothing. She holds my eyes for a few seconds.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says and then stops and kisses me on the cheek.

Once we are on the street we stream off in two different directions. Ki goes one way to look for a black cab. Curt and I head for the bus stop and wait for the bus. We both have on almost identical white hoodies and white trainers. We know about the cameras on the bus. We want them to get us. It’s all part of the plan that Ki has gone over and over. After a few minutes, the right bus comes and we jump on and head to the top deck and sit at the back so no one can hear us. In the end it doesn’t matter that much because for the whole journey neither Curt nor me can think of anything to say.

The next fifteen minutes are slower than they should be. They stretch out until some part of me feels like we have been on this bus for an hour. Every now and then I catch myself panicking and then have to slow breathe until I am okay again. My brain is on a loop I can’t get it out of. This idea of doing a murder. Not someone else pulling the trigger and taking a life. And not like in a film or on Call of Duty but in real life. With blood. With a person’s face in front of mine and his smell in my nose. That kind of murder. I am going to do this thing that once it is done will stick to me for ever and be a part of me. When I get up in the morning there will be half a second where I know I will forget it ever happened. A half a second where I might think it was a dream or just even something we talked about but never did. And then that half-second will pass. And I will drag myself through the day until it ends. And then, the next day, it will happen all over again. Like a prison sentence but worse because there’s no end time. All there is is a hope. A hope that one day it will stop feeling real and become a dream. I don’t know for sure. All I got to go on is the feeling I had when Ki had been taken. That’s what it felt like to me. And that is what brings me round again. Kira. I can’t lose her. I can do this for her. I can do this for her even though it will mean that I am doing it every day for the rest of my life. Because without her, there isn’t anything.

The club we are looking for is directly on our route and the bus makes a pass almost bang outside the front entrance.

Already the Friday night crowd is building up. A small queue has just started up and people seem to have lives that have nothing to do with shooting and gangs and raised heartbeats. It feels weird even to be out, watching people with normal lives. The bus has stopped but we don’t move even though we are right outside the club. Then after a couple of moments it lurches off again leaving the club behind and taking us with it. As we pass it I look out of the back and just catch a glimpse of Ki. She is tiny against a mountain of a man she is standing next to. Ain’t no bouncer going to turn her away looking like that, I am thinking, even if he didn’t know her. As the club fades out of view, I catch a flash of a smile that isn’t meant for me and one I haven’t seen in weeks. Then she turns and slips through the double doors into the club, the bouncers following her with their eyes.

Five stops later Curt and I get off. We are half a mile away from the club but it’s exactly where we need to be right now. The kiss on my cheek still tingles and I feel like it should feel like a good luck charm, but it doesn’t exactly. But it does feel almost, what, holy? I nearly touch it but then stop at the last moment. I don’t want to take the shine off it. It sounds stupid now but I needed it there to protect me. I still don’t know why she said she was sorry but I put the thought away till later.

The main road is busy like it always is at this time of night at this time of the week. People out, needing to wash away their week or just to celebrate the end of it. Everyone just wanting to forget their lives for just a few hours. We mingle in with them as they walk by. We could even be them. Just normal people doing normal things in a normal life.

Curt nudges me as we approach the first side street we see. We walk down it and as we do I unzip the bag I am holding and take out a black hoodie as Curt takes off his white one. I hand the black one to him and he puts it on. Then I do the same. Both white hoodies go in the bag. Next, the trainers. We change our white ones for black ones that are in the bag and put the white ones in their place. It’s all done so quickly and casually that we barely break our stride. We get to the end of the side road and turn left so that we are now walking parallel to the main road. My heart starts picking up pace again. My hands are sweating but I can’t do anything about that. I wipe them down on my hoodie but I don’t say anything to Curt. Curt strides on as if he has closed his mind to everything else. Something in his face tells me that he is going to treat the whole thing like this. One foot then the next.

In another twenty minutes or something we can see the back of the club. We pull the hoods down as we head towards it. There is a skip on one side all filled with rubble. I pull on my gloves as we near the skip, ducking under its cover, and take the gun out of the bag and put it in my waistband. I make sure nobody is looking.

I fish into the bag again and take out a smaller bag, it’s a white plastic carrier bag. It has another hoodie in it and some tracksuit bottoms and trainers. I hide the sports bag with the white clothes we had been wearing in the skip under a bit of wood panelling. I do it quickly as I am walking and I know if anybody was watching they would have hardly noticed it. As we leave the skip behind, all I have in my hands now is the white carrier bag. The sports bag, the white clothes and the white trainers are all left behind now in the skip and a part of me feels like I am leaving some of my life there with it.

We keep walking towards the club in our dark clothes. I look at Curt. The dark of his clothes and the dark of the night and the darkness of his face all merge into one. He says nothing but pulls his hood down tight over his eyes. I do the same. We know there are cameras on this road but as long as we can keep our faces hidden it doesn’t matter. As far as anybody who looks will be able to tell we were the two boys on the bus in white. We were never these two boys in black. The cameras. We can’t avoid them whichever way we approach the club. There are cameras all over London. We can’t dodge them all, so we just have to use them to our advantage. Let them tell a different story. Let them be our alibis.

In another two minutes we are at the back entrance to the club. I am starting to breathe heavy now even though I’ve only been walking. For some reason this isn’t as easy as what we did in the trap-house, which now seems a different lifetime ago, even though it’s only a couple of weeks ago. I try make my breathing normal again and then nod at Curt. I am ready.

We are at the rear doors of the club. Curt leans his weight against the door and it opens up, just like Ki had promised. We look at each other and then slip quietly inside and pull the door to. Ki was right about this too. It is dark. The lights, if there ever were any in there, have blown. I take my phone out, turn it on and use it as a torch. I don’t realize at that time that even as I turn it on it is sending a signal to a phone mast that will tell the prosecution in months from now exactly where I am.

The phone gives me just enough light to see by and just as Ki had said, there is a door off to the left just before the stairs. We push it. It opens. Curt and I duck in and all around us is nothing but heavy blackness. I feel along the wall for a switch and find one. The room fills with light. I see Curt’s face, his eyes screwed momentarily against the whiteness of the light and then an almost smile. We are in.

We slump down on the floor with our backs against the door so if someone pushes it we will know about them before they know about us. I put the carrier bag down next to me and both Curt and I take out our two-ways, turn them on low until they hiss and wait. Curt’s face is like a mask. You can’t see what he’s thinking. I reckon that if you took a picture of that moment even he wouldn’t be able to tell you what he was thinking. I wonder just then whether he is thinking anything. Just the plan maybe. Only the plan.