You Don't Know Me

41

DEFENDANT:

He is basically right innit. Everything he says is basically true. I ain’t got no proof of nothing. He says that Ki don’t exist. I got no proof to show you that she does exist. And MI5 ain’t dumb enough to leave any records of her visit to the prison. If I had known that he was going to say them things then maybe I could have brought some evidences about her. I could have brought you pictures but you know what, if I had brought them, he would have said, ‘How do we know that isn’t just some next girl you took a picture of?’ If I brought in her birth certificate even, he could have said, ‘Yeah that is just someone called that name. How do we know you know her even?’ This could go on and on. At the end of the day some things though, you got to take on trust. Some things I take on trust too.

I take on trust that the world is round. I can’t see it round with my own eyes but I take a picture’s word for it. I take on trust that Obama is a real person in America. I ain’t never seen him for real. I ain’t even ever seen anyone who saw him for real. I seen him on some TV screen. I am being told that he was a president or whatever. I don’t know for sure that he was. I don’t know for sure that this man here is a QC. He tells me he is and I take that. So now I am in the same boat and I am asking you to take a seat on my boat. Take it on trust. You can take some things on trust.

Ki used to read a lot of history books and shit. Henry the this and his twelve wives and whatever. And in them books there is always a bit in it where you get told this king had this advisor and this many servants and this is what they did here and what they did there and this is what this guy had for breakfast and rah rah rah. And I always said to her, how the fuck they know that? She used to say back, they work it all out from other stuff. They find a painting here and it shows some guy. Then in a writing somewhere they have a description of an advisor and then someone says, hang on, maybe it’s that guy in that painting. Then someone else goes, well he’s holding a couple of dead ducks in that hand. And then he says, oh he must like shooting. And then another guy goes, well he’s definitely shot two there so he must be a good shot. And then someone else goes, look at what he’s looking at, he is looking at that little boy, oh he must be a paedophile or whatever. What I think is that’s bullshit. What I think is that it’s quite a good story of what the shit could mean but it’s not proof is it?

So I kind of got a problem innit? What makes my story the real one of what shit actually went down? Everything I said is just like the history books. It’s just joining the dots but it might not be the real picture. I say to you that this thing happened and then the next thing happened and this is why it happened. But it don’t mean that the shit actually happened. It just means that I said it happened like that. That probably don’t mean shit at the end of the day. It’s just a theory. So I’m kind of shafted innit?

But then, the prosecution and the way they are saying what they are saying happened is the same kind of shit innit? It’s all just a theory. They can’t prove that I shot Jamil because they don’t have any witnesses to that shooting at the end of the day. They can’t prove that my blood got there the way they say because they don’t have a witness to say, ‘Oh this is how he got the blood on him.’ They can’t say that the firearm discharge residue was because of me shooting him or someone else shooting him, like Kira, wearing that top or me wearing it when I carried Jamil out of the trap. They can’t show nothing for sure. They can’t even prove that what I am saying never happened and what I am saying about how it happened didn’t happen in that way. They can’t show you an evidence to prove that Ki did not exist or Curt or Face or Guilty.

So where we at now? Everything just becomes about maybes. Maybe this happened. Maybe that happened. But what’s the good of that? It ain’t no good to have maybes. Like the prosecution said, you got to be sure, not maybe sure.

There a few things you can be sure about though. First is that Jamil was shot dead. The second thing is that out of all the people in this room, only I know for sure how he was killed. Even the prosecution have to agree with that. Either I shot him or I was there when he was shot by Kira. The third thing is that there is thirty thousand quid in my flat. What the prosecution can’t say is what their theory is about how I got that cash. The only theory you got is mine or some other theory you can think of. But what else could be the reason I got the money? Did I rob a bank? Did I win the lottery? It’s got to have come from somewhere innit?

Then there is this next thing. Jamil got shot for a reason. People don’t usually get shot for no reasons. Again the prosecution is saying that they don’t need to prove motive or whatever. But what kind of sense is that? There has to be a reason and the only reason you got is the one I gave you – because just saying someone is ‘waste’ don’t mean nothing. That ain’t a reason to kill a person.

I know what I told you is the truth. Do you know what though, at the end of the day, maybe none of it matters. I’m half in the mind of just putting my hands up to this and saying I did it.

If I admitted I shot him, would that make it easier for you? Would you be able to walk away from this with a clear conscience and think to yourself, ‘We did the right thing?’ Okay then I did it. I shot him up. He was a waste man. He pissed me off or whatever and I killed him with my Baikal. Shot him dead. On the streets. Wearing my Chinese-writing made-in-Taiwan hoodie. I jumped in a cab. I bought a ticket to Spain and was going to go and fly off. I ain’t sure where I got the thirty gees but who cares about that? And I ain’t sure why I didn’t go to Spain. And I ain’t sure why I didn’t go on the run with my thirty gees instead of waiting there for the police to come arrest me. And I ain’t sure why I left the gun in the flat. But they got me banged to rights.

So now what? Are you happy now? You know I get life for this, is that a fair thing in your mind? Is just the fact that I shot him make it fair to lock me up for the rest of my life? What if it was you? But it wasn’t never going to be you though was it? You was never going to be meeting him on your front door. You don’t have to deal with no drug dealers on your street. You got better things to do. You got jobs and bare opportunities. What do I have?

The only thing I had was Ki and she’s gone. And whether you believe in Ki or not, you can believe that she was a real person. She came into my life on a bus and changed my life. Then she left. Like that. I get what the prosecution is saying. But you can believe that she exists. Or if not, that someone like her does exist whatever her name might be. It’s not impossible is it that I was in love with a girl who changed everything for me?

But it’s the whole MI5 thing. You can’t believe that.

But here’s the thing. You can if you want to.

You do believe that MI5 does exist. You can believe that MI5 can get up to some shady things. You know they are secret but you also know that people have to be working there. You know that there are somewhere in the world some real people who are MI5 and that MI5 does its shit and when it does the shit happens the way it has to – and it’s secret. And you don’t want to know the details. Fuck even I don’t want to know the details. But you still want the shit to be done.

Don’t let him fool you innit. He says them three little letters in a way that makes them so big. ‘M’ – ‘I’ – ‘5’. And the way he says it makes me wonder whether MI5 even exists at all. He makes it sound like he has just said ‘The X-Men’. But you know MI5 is a real thing. So what is so wrong about them putting a bit of quiet pressure on some next girl so they can do their thing? They know her weaknesses. They know about Spooks. They can disappear him. Keep him safe. Keep her safe. Keep them unknown.

And if you stop and think about it, you know this shit happens. I mean actually happens. Just think about that Russian man, Litvinenko. He was poisoned with like a uranium or some shit at the tip of an umbrella. In broad daylight. And we know this happened. We know he was assassinated. And it sounds all James Bond and even though we know it happened and we know it happened probably lots of times before then, we don’t want to believe it. It fucks with our happiness. We would rather believe that some white lady that looks like a teacher runs our country and that only ordinary boring things happen here like NHS or cuts or what have you. But shit is darker than that. Even I don’t want to believe it. I want someone to say that it’s all conspiracy theory and our world isn’t like that. But it is. And it is like that a thousand more times over because most of the shit you can believe is shit we will never know about. Shit that we will never be allowed to know about.

So here we are members of the jury. When I started off this speech I never thought I could do no five-hour speech like Palmerston. But shit, I did ten days. Maybe not as good as he would have. Maybe not with all the smooth words that can make you think of a higher cause like he did. I can’t even match in days what this prosecutor said just now in ten minutes. It’s like he just exploded my whole speech. That is the power of a person who can use his words. But I am glad I did my speech at the end of the day, because I worked something out while I was telling you all this. I worked out what he meant – that guy in the mosque when he said all people ain’t the same but that they could be. I ain’t the same as you, and you ain’t the same as me, but you could be too if you tried.

So try now. Try and be me.

Up to you innit at the end of the day.

Guilty or not guilty?

JURY OUT: