You Don't Know Me

2

Before I was arrested for this murder I had a job. Well not a real job with pay as you earn and all that, but I had something that I did to bring in the dollars. I weren’t no gangster either – what my thing was, was selling wheels. Cars. I love them. There’s nothing you or anyone else can teach me about cars. I like the old ones. I like the new ones. I like the V8s, I like the naturally aspirated ones, I like the turbo-charged ones.

Anyway, what I realized was that most people don’t always know what they got when they selling their cars. This one girl was selling what she thought was an old Vauxhall Carlton that used to belong to her boyfriend. But what she didn’t know was that it wasn’t just any old Carlton that was maybe worth about three hundred quid. This was a Lotus Carlton. A three point six litre twin-turbo three hundred and seventy-seven horsepower Carlton. Nought to sixty in five seconds. Top end, one hundred and seventy-six miles per hour. Twenty grand of anybody’s money even though it’s twenty years old. See I check my shit before I buy. And I tell you what else, most of the people when they buy from me, they check their shit too. You can’t be selling no bangers to the people round where I live. They want to go over the thing with a magnifying glass. Every dent’s a discount. Every bit of optional extra is extra, you get me?

So this has to be the same thing here innit? Are you just going to take what the prosecution say on their say-so or are you going to look at it carefully and check under the bonnet? Is it proper quality what the prosecution is selling you? Or is it just some made in Taiwan rubbish?

So look at the first piece of evidence. The dead boy was shot in the same area I live in. What I say about that is, so what? He was shot in the same area that all the people who live in that area live in. This is just a nothing argument and it’s a nothing evidence. Do I even need to go on about this any more?

If he was shot in your areas would that mean that you shot him? No man. That is just stupidness. But Mr Prosecutor thinks it does and makes a big thing out of it. But that’s just a thing he’s got over me innit. He can say anything and it sounds proper bad. But when you look at it, it’s just bollocks. Sorry Your Honour, it just slipped out. What I mean is if I could say it like the way he can say it, the prosecution, you would be saying ‘this is just a rubbish evidence’. What, I was living there and so was the dead boy? Is that an actual evidence that means something? That don’t mean shit. Come on, yeah?

Then look at the second evidence. I was seen walking past the victim and that I said to him, ‘You’re waste man’. To the prosecution, and to everyone else that’s been watching too many movies, that is supposed to be evidence. That is supposed to be me saying that the victim is a dead man. Like I’m some Mafia guy in an American film. Ha! Sorry, jury. Sorry if you knew what I knew and you grew up where I grew up you’d be laughing too. On the streets in London that means something else. Mr Prosecutor wouldn’t know that because he’s not from the streets. Not the real streets, the kind of streets I know, the kind of streets where people shoot each other. Actually maybe that’s a bad example but you know what I mean. He’s on a different level. I’m not saying that as a bad thing. It’s just the truth. If I was going to one of his shooting parties or whatever, I wouldn’t know what their words mean. When I hear the word ‘estate’ I think of a car with a long boot or maybe a council block. He probably thinks of a house in the country, you get me? We are from different worlds, me and him. I don’t wish I lived in his world but I wish he spent a day in mine. Waste man!

Let me tell you about waste man. When I was about eleven I went to a new school. It wasn’t the local state school, it was some next school a mile away because they didn’t have room in my nearest one. It was one of them old seventies boxes that they must have thought looked cool at one time but by the time I got there it just looked like a falling-down block of flats. It had green panels, I remember that, with big square windows in between them. There was a yard that went all the way around where all us kids used to play at break time, with a railing round the outside to stop the kids spilling out into the road. That was it. Basically, it was like the most space they could make with the least money and wide open like a desert so there was nowhere anyone could hide.

There was this one place though. It was this fire escape kind of thing which ran down the side of the building in square spirals and under the last run of steps there was a like a well, you could call it. If you followed it all the way down it led to a locked metal door into some basement thing where the caretaker probably wanked himself off or whatever. That place, that was what we called ‘the Spit’. It was one place you did not ever want to be.

Anyway you move ends and it’s like moving into a different country. I moved and it was like I was in some war zone. In my first school it was maybe fifty per cent black. This place though, rah, it was like I had moved into BNP central. There was only like eight or nine non-whites in the whole school. It was like my eyes had suddenly gone from colour to black and white. And the kids, man! There was some proper racist shit going down there, trust me. Sorry Judge, I know what you said before about the swearing but it was, ‘Nigger this, coon that, black bastard that.’ Whatever though. That was just what it was. Some shit you got to just live with.

I learned to tune it out as much as I could. But I won’t lie to you, there was times when I had to bust a few faces. There’s only a certain amount a person can take before he snaps. I didn’t like to fight back all that much. Because apart from anything else it made me feel like every black dude who ever fought Rocky in them films. Everyone was always hoping that I would get my head kicked in. Mainly I just styled my way through as much of the shit as I could. If I could avoid a front-up, I would. You got to remember I was prettier than most of them boys so I had more to lose innit! Eventually though, after a few fights where I did a bit of damage, most people knew to leave me alone. People don’t just want to pick fights that they can win. They want to pick fights that they can win easily. And if that’s your thing then it ain’t me you’re looking for.

Anyway there was this one boy, Curt, one of the only other black boys at the school. He was this big fat dopey kind of kid. He was like a type of boy you could say anything to and he would just give you this drooly grin. Didn’t matter what you said to him and it didn’t matter that the boy even at that age was the size of a house, he would just smile straight at you. And I don’t mean you could say just anything to him like call him a fat c—, sorry Judge.

I mean you could say that his mum did tricks for a quid and he would still just let it go. He was just one of them peaceful type of guys. But that was the problem. You let someone take the piss a bit then you may as well let him take a piss all over you.

Anyway these are just the lessons. It’s kind of like being in prison I guess. If you show even a bit of weakness, you will get taken apart. So you can imagine the shit Curt had to deal with.

To me it looked like bad luck was going to follow Curt round for life. He wasn’t just over-sized and over-friendly, he was also a bit mixed up. His mum was a drug addict or an alcoholic or something and although we didn’t know it at the time, she probably was hooking on the quiet. There were days when Curt would come into school with bruises on his face. You couldn’t really see them that easy on him because he was so dark. But I could see them. I could always see them. On them days he wouldn’t smile as much. He would just have this look like he was guilty of something. He wouldn’t want to talk so much. He got a look on his face that even if you were a bit of an idiot you wouldn’t want to take the piss out of him too much on them days – it was too harsh to dark him like that.

But those boys at our school didn’t care about a kid’s home life. I’m not saying they didn’t have their own shit to deal with. No doubt they did. But that somehow didn’t exactly make them go any easier on him. I used to watch them when they went for him. Some little stick-boy half his size would walk up to him and call him a nigger and Curt would just put his head down. Then the kid might jump up and slap him across the face. Still Curt would do nothing. There’d be all these kids laughing at him and jeering at him and I would be standing there thinking, ‘C’mon man, you’re twice the size of these fools. Fuck them up proper.’ But he never did. He just let it slide.

It seemed like to me they were just trying to get him to react. Like they knew deep down that he could kill them in a second if he was pushed hard enough but it was like they just couldn’t help themselves. They wanted to see the Hulk breaking out of him. Anyway, they tried everything. They swore at him. They threw shit at him. They robbed him. Fucking whatever you could think of to do to a boy they did to him. Once they even chucked him into the Spit and tore all his clothes off him. Then when he was there crying in his pants, a hundred boys stood at the top of the well and spat fat green gobs down all over him. Some kid even tried pissing on him but couldn’t get much on him. Eventually when the teachers came, Curt just wiped himself down, put his clothes back on and carried on like nothing had happened. Yeah, he was crying a bit and whatever but he basically did nothing.

I kind of liked Curt, man. In fact, he later became my best friend. You could even say my only real friend. But back then I didn’t know him all that well. He didn’t even stay in that school long because one day his mum was moved up to someplace out in North London and he had to go with her. But what I remembered of him from those days was how calm he tried to be and how no matter how much he tried to find peace, war just followed him. The boy was a magnet for trouble.

Yeah. I know this sounds like I’m on a bus route diversion. But I am getting there I swear down. So, Curt. One of these days he was just sitting by himself as he usually did on the step waiting for break to be over so he could get back to the safety of lessons. I went over and decided to just chill with him for a while. Because I was so feisty, usually when people would see me and him together they left him alone. So as far as I saw it I was doing him a favour. I can’t remember what we were chatting about. We weren’t exactly tight and he weren’t exactly my boy then but we did have some shit in common.

At first I didn’t notice that anything was wrong. I don’t think anyone did really. There was noise, sure, but there was always people shouting at break like they was in a prison. What I do remember though is seeing Mark Warner. You know those thirteen-year-old boys who were thirteen in years but had faces like twenty-year-old men? He was one of them guys. He had a face that looked like it had never seen one happy day. Thing about him, though, was that he was one evil fighter. Yeah he was thin as a rope, but he was so fast that when he was fighting you didn’t see the hands even move. They just blurred right in front of the other boy’s face until that boy’s face was on the ground. It was a weird thing to watch because you hated him up for it but at the same time there was something about it that had you glued to it. You couldn’t take your eyes off him.

So Warner was there with his big fists and his busted face. He was just walking past with this wide ‘I own the world’ walk when he sees us and stops. ‘Fucking black queers,’ he goes or something. Now when shit like this happens to me these days, which if I am honest with you ain’t too often, no one, I don’t care who he is, gets away with it. You best be packing if you coming at me with that shit. Back then though, as I said, I only picked the fights I could win and trust me I weren’t ever going to be in no mood to be dancing with Warner. So I look at the ground and just under my breath I goes, ‘Fuck off,’ and carry on talking to Curt.

I didn’t even see it coming. All I know is that in the next second I’m on the deck and my face is beating like it’s been hit by a baseball bat. I get up and my instincts take over. Before I have even had time to think about it I’ve taken a swing at Warner and then suddenly there is a crowd around us. I was like a hundred metres from connecting with my punch. My arm swings past his head and I almost go on the ground again. Warner though, he goes off like a machine. Punches coming at me like pistons. They are all so fast that it feels like I’ve just run into a brick wall. I go down immediately and then he is on me, his knees on my arms and his fists trying to ruin my face. I reckon another second or two and I would have been eating through a straw for life. I can’t see nothing. All I can do is keep turning my head away and try and drown out the punches and the shouting crowd.

Anyway, just as I felt like I might go under, Warner just flies off me, backwards, his hands still moving but hitting nothing but air. It takes me a minute to work out what has happened. It’s Curt. He just pulled him off me like he was picking up an angry cat. Warner struggles free and then when he sees it’s only Curt, he turns on him. ‘C’mon you fat nigger,’ he goes and starts beating away at him. Curt does nothing at first. He just kind of ducks and takes the punches like he has been doing all his life. But then Warner shouts out, ‘Fucking waste man!’ and something just snaps.

Curt’s eyes suddenly come to life like someone just turned on the ignition. He blocks Warner’s punches with one arm and then with the other arm he swings straight at his head. He doesn’t use his fist. He uses his whole arm. And that boy went down. I mean he crashed. You could even hear the crack as his head hit the pavement. The crowd starts going mental. People are shouting out Warner’s name and saying things like, ‘Are you going to let that jungle bunny show you up?’ and all this. Warner staggers back to his feet and somehow, I don’t know where he gets the strength from, he takes another go at Curt. Curt don’t even think this time round. He catches Warner’s fist with one hand then twists it round until the boy is screaming out. Then he puts the other hand on the back of his elbow. Then just like that he snaps it.

A few weeks after that Curt left the school. Like I said, I think his mum for some reason had to move and he went. But for years after that I used to think back to that day. What made him do it? We weren’t mates then. I didn’t even really talk to him that much. If anything I felt sorry for him because he was weak. So why did he do it? I am pretty sure I wouldn’t have stepped up for him. In fact I know I wouldn’t have. I never did before. But I think I know now what it was. He could take all the shit, the coon, the nigger and whatever. He could even take the beatings and the humiliations. But what he couldn’t take was being called that. ‘Waste.’

To him, this went back to everything. It went back to his mum who was selling herself for a pipe. It went back to all the men that came and used her and left. It went back to his mum waking up with the shakes in her own sick and him having to clean her up and put her into bed. It went back to her telling him every fucking day that he was alive that she wished she had had him aborted. That he was a waste man. It went straight to his insides. I doubt even he knows why he reacted like that but I tell you something, if you called him ‘waste’ today he wouldn’t stop at your arm.

I will say one thing though. That fucker deserved getting his arm broken. He had that shit coming to him and in my book it’s not ‘you get what you pay for’, but ‘you pay for what you do’. Every time.

Anyway when then this QC talks about ‘You’re waste man’ as if it means you are about to be wasted, I have to laugh. It might be all just words to him but down on the ground this shit matters. It ain’t just words, man.

I was going to start off by saying I never said those words to the dead boy anyway, but do you know what? I admit it. I did say that to him. That was me. But it did not and does not mean what he, Mr QC, wants it to mean. I called him a waste man. And he was a waste man, no matter whether he is dead or not. Where I come from, he was a waste man: an idiot, a waste of space, whatever. If I was a Mafia made guy or something, maybe I would have meant he was a dead man. But I ain’t so I didn’t. Mr Prosecutor needs to stop watching TV and get real for a few minutes.

This is what I mean about these evidences. You need to be looking at this shit properly. Because he ain’t doing the job properly. He could be. But he ain’t. He’s trying to, what did he call it, pull the wool over your eyes. Shit yeah. That is exactly what he is doing right there. He is getting a big blanket and putting it over your heads. You don’t think he could have found out what ‘waste man’ means before making a murder case on it? Course he could have. He probably even did. Nah. But he don’t want you to know that.