‘When mans stopped screaming, Face sends his boys out of the house and then he takes his balaclava off and shoves it into the tied man’s mouth. At that moment he must have known it was game over because Face had shown himself. No way could he let him live now you get me.
‘ “This is for my number two,” he goes, and takes up the blowtorch and puts it on a blue flame. Then when he had done what he needs to do, he shoots him three times through the head.
‘The very next day, every member of Face’s crew is wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a man’s chest with the letters R.I.P burned into it. Nobody from the dead man’s crew did a fucking thing to retaliate. Within two weeks the whole crew failed. The crew became basically R.I.P., you get me. That is who Face is.’
‘Put it this way, if Face finds out you and me were there when JC was taxed, we are smoke,’ I say.
‘Yeah, about that,’ says Curt before this has even sunk in.
‘What?’
‘JC has started remembering more shit.’
‘Like what?’ we both say.
‘Like how it was some
Anyway, I look over at Ki who has now gone pale. At first she doesn’t say anything. She just gets up and starts to walk in tight rows up and down the room.
‘This is not good. This is not good,’ she says over and over.
I get up and put an arm around her but she shrugs it off and carries on pacing up and down the room. I know this is bad. For one we have to bail from this place. No way can we stay here. Then there’s Mum and Bless. What if this Face brer came looking for them when he couldn’t find me?
‘Don’t worry Ki. You’re safe here,’ I say but even as the words are coming out I look around my flat and know it ain’t true. The cheap front door and the loose windows bleeding sound in from the streets below tell me I’m a liar.
‘Yeah girl. No one knows where you are. It’s still cool,’ Curt adds and looks at me with a kind of ‘sorry bruv’ look.
‘It is not cool,’ she says still pacing.
‘Listen,’ I say stopping her and taking her shoulders in my hands and looking her directly in the eye, ‘they don’t know you are here.’
‘Or you know, if it gets hot, you just jump on a plane,’ says Curt.
Ki meets my eye and holds my gaze. ‘It’s not me I’m worried about. It’s my brother. They’ll get to him,’ she says in a voice that sounds like a scream in a box.
‘What do you mean?’ I say. ‘What’s Spooks got to do with this?’ Then I realize what she means.
IN THE CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT T2017229
Before: HIS HONOUR JUDGE SALMON QC
Closing Speeches:
Trial: Day 35
Wednesday 12thJuly 2017
APPEARANCES
For the Prosecution: Mr C. Salfred QC
For the Defendant: In person
Transcribed from a digital audio recording by
T. J. Nazarene Limited
Official Court Reporters and Tape Transcribers
Just yesterday at the end I was telling you that JC was starting to remember shit. A girl with light eyes. It was the kind of line nobody could forget and the girl was a girl that nobody could forget. And when people called her to mind, they would call up everything they knew about her to squeeze where it hurt.
Ki was right. First place the Olders would go was to Spooks if they couldn’t find her. Once they worked out who the girl with the light eyes was, they would know all about who her brother was. Even if they didn’t know where she was, they knew where he was. And it didn’t matter whether Spooks knew where she was or not. That wouldn’t stop them applying a bit of pressure to his pressure points, if you get me. We all knew that, and right then we ran out of things to say. Curt left a short while later. Part of me wished I could leave too.
I spent most of the night trying to think of things to say to make Ki feel a bit better but even I knew that nothing was going to work. She was doing her thing where she went and hid in her own mind. It was the best thing probably, I thought, so I left her alone. I weren’t allowed in that place in her head. I ain’t even sure I wanted to go there even if I was. Sometimes you just had to let Ki do her thing and wait till she came out again.
The surprising thing in the end was that the next morning when I woke up I found her in the living room reading a book, like nothing had happened. It was almost as if she realized that the shit was what it was and there was no sense worrying about it. I knew better than to stir it all up again so when she smiled at me and asked me if wanted coffee I just nodded and smiled back.
