Who They Was

by Gabriel Krauze

  Now what you saying g?

  I hear the door of the flat open behind me and Not Nice and Kane come out. Not Nice comes past me, smell of ammi following him as he goes oi Smek allow it, he’s with me, it’s my young g, he’s bless and he puts his arm on my shoulder and kinda nudges me away. I start heading back towards the flat, looking over my shoulder to see the brer tucking the burner into his waistline as he goes I don’t like how this yout’s moving you kna. I stop at the door, turn back and go dafuck do you mean you don’t like how I’m moving blood? Not Nice goes allow it Snoopz, just go into the yard. Kane puts his hand on my back, says come on g and edges me through the door.

  I sit down at the kitchen table. Kane grabs the bottle of Henny and pours some more into his cup and then the front door slams and Not Nice comes into the kitchen. You can’t be moving like dat Snoopz he says, that’s Smekman, myman’s fully on this ting, he coulda bun you right then and I say I don’t give a fuck who he is and Not Nice goes shhh all sharp like he’s tryna blow the dust of my words away and says blood, you best be careful he don’t hear you. Kane stands up, goes to the window and closes it. Not Nice says you don’t know what that yout’s on Snoopz, my don’s only nineteen and already he’s known for terrorising the olders, running up in yards on his ones, tying up mandem’s babymums and raping them n all sorts and then waiting for man to come home so he can take all their p’s and food. Truss me, he don’t give a fuck forreal. I look at the bud which I’ve started crumbling with my fingers so I can bill a next zoot and say how was I supposed to know that though? Anyway, myman’s not bulletproof ah lie? I’ll go and get my Star 9 right now fam, it’s not a ting. Not Nice says come on Snoopz, I know you’re smarter than dat, just lissen to man so you don’t have no problems round here. Kane laughs and says Snoopz is on it still.

  The next day we don’t go back to the white flats.

  A week later, Not Nice gets his own flat in some block in Wembley and he’s got his little son and daughter with him. Tells me he won custody of them but doesn’t tell me why or how. I help them move, carrying chairs and cardboard boxes from his mother’s yard, unloading the car. The heat of summer sticks to my skin like something you wanna rip off but don’t know how bad it might hurt if you do. Not Nice says you can stay the night whenever you want Snoopz.

  One evening we’re jamming in the living room, billing zoots and spitting bars over instrumentals. We’ve just been talking about 2Pac and next rappers who died when they were young and Not Nice is saying how it’s always a car crash or an overdose or some gang killing, but really it’s some Illuminati shit. They killed him, says Not Nice, fucking sacrifices innit, they wanna hold us down whenever we get power. Then he tells me that black people are gods who fell to Earth and the water in the Earth’s atmosphere caused their green skin to rust and turn brown and everything started in Kemet, in Ancient Egypt where the New Beings, or Nubians as history books call them, built the pyramids. Then the white man came out of his caves in the Caucus mountains and stole all our shit, he says. I say I know this one, I’ve heard it before.

  He says I got suttin to show you. He leaves the room and comes back in with gloves on, holding a blue plastic bag with something heavy in it. Put your gloves on, he says. He pulls out a black MAC-10 and hands it to me. The MAC is so heavy that it bends my wrist down with its weight, like I can’t even hold it straight with one hand. It’s not like the movies where it looks like some light piece of equipment, I mean a MAC-10 is a proper submachine gun, all solid metal and it’s got a long clip full of shells coming out of the handle. Not gonna lie, as soon as I grip the ting I can feel the energy, like I just wanna let it off and lick a man down just to feel the power. Not Nice smiles while I point it around the room and then he says he’s gonna tell me how to get away with doing a booting.

  I hand him the MAC and he wraps it back up in the plastic bag. Just then his daughter knocks on the door and says Daddy, so Not Nice drops the bag under the table and walks over to the door while pulling his gloves off. He goes wa’um princess as he opens the door and bends down to pick her up. She rubs her eyes, looks at me, frowns and turns her head away quicktime as she wraps her arms round Not Nice’s neck, and the pink plastic butterflies on the end of her braids bounce against his teeth as he says you want some water princess? The little girl shakes her head and buries herself into him. He starts bouncing her gently against his chest while he looks at me and says never go and do a booting in a vehicle that’s registered to you or connected to you in any way. Me, I prefer motorbikes coz you can duck out mad quick through London traffic, down alleyways, over the pavement and alladat, but if you’re in a whip there’s always the risk you’ll end up stuck behind traffic and whatnot. Always burn the getaway vehicle somewhere deserted where it won’t get clocked while it burns. I’m just gonna put her back to bed he says and steps out of the room. I look out of the window and a white slice of moon falls slowly into the drifting darkness.

  Not Nice comes back into the room, pulling his gloves on. He picks up the plastic bag. Once you’ve dumped the getaway vehicle, go somewhere d-low where you’ve stashed a next set of garms and some petrol. Burn everyting you was wearing when you did the booting. It don’t matter to bloodclart if you’re rocking your favourite creps. You can cop them again. Burn everyting, including your socks and boxers. Nah serious blood, lissen to what I’m telling you. Before you put on the new set of garms, wash yourself with petrol, make sure you use your fingers to wash in all the curves of your ears, up your nostrils and in your hair. It gets rid of all the gunpowder residue. Once you get home, put your change of clothes in the wash and have a long shower, scrub your whole body several times over and don’t tell no one what you done. Then he leaves the room and the loneliness of the night holds me in its arms. I drift off on the sofa, sweating in the heat, memory of the MAC-10 weight like a ghost in my hand.

  A week before I go to start uni, Not Nice and I fall out because he still owes me nine bills from when we were shotting cro. He hasn’t dropped me any p for almost two weeks. When I phone him, I get pissed off and say what kinda wasteman can’t pay a lickle nine bills when you got two youts to feed and clothe, like how are you even looking after them? He switches and goes you know what, forget your money, you’re not getting anything, watch when I see you, I got the big mac ready for you. True he knows I’ve got a strap as well, knows he can’t just punch me up. I say you got the big mac for me yeah? Don’t forget I know where you live blood and I hear the moment of hesitation on his end like the loudest silence. Then he says are you mad Snoopz, I will bun your skin.

  So you got the big mac for me yeah? Say nuttin and I lock off the phone.

  I’ve got the strap on me right there and then. It’s one of those days when I decided to bring it out with me, tucked into a pair of tight jeans I’d put on that morning under some baggy tracksuit bottoms so you can’t see a bulge. Got my balls sweating forreal. Not the right weather for this shit. I’ve left the silencer at my mum’s yard, rolled up in a T-shirt in the shoebox where I keep my p’s. I bell my don Stitch who’s been my bredrin since we were thirteen going to Stowe youth club on Harrow Road and he’s always on crud, but bare d-low with it like his girl and his family would never guess. Stitch picks up and I say fam I wanna lick this pagan down, and I tell him what happened and he says come we ride out on this brer then, you got the strap? I say yeah and he says come link me in Paddington in fifteen minutes. When I get to the spot he’s there with the motorbike and two helmets and we start chatting about how to do it.

  But there’s something stopping me from going to kill Not Nice. I start remembering what he’d told me about doing a booting and getting away with it. I start going through all the rules he taught me, step by step, and I realise I’m going about it all wrong. Stitch holds out the spare motorbike helmet to me but my mind starts racing like shit I can’t do it, it’s too bate, what if this and what if that and maybe I’m just not ready today and just for a flash another thought pokes in and says
maybe you’re not ready for killing and I remember Not Nice’s daughter with her plastic butterfly hair clips, but I shake it out and it’s like my eyes are wide open but I can’t see anything, and then I hear Stitch saying oi Snoopz what you on, you wanna do this or what? But then I think nah, not like this, not today. I’m not ready to catch a M-charge over nine bills, even though I badly wanna duppy Not Nice, especially since we’d been rolling so tight and then in one conversation we’d become enemies. Fucking pagan.

  FIRST YEARS

  UNI IS A fashion show. Especially for the first years. Capo has a Daffy Duck Iceberg jacket. I’ve got a brand new black leather Avirex jacket. Brers with fresh trims. Chicks who smell of shampoo and moisturiser. Everyone seems to have bought their creps a week before uni started, walking slow and measured so their toes don’t crease. Especially when they’re rocking Air Force 1s. Muslim tings in fresh headscarves with peng eye makeup that makes you look. White people from out of London, excited about eating their first Perfect Fried Chicken meal deal in Mile End. There’s some nitty who teefs books from the uni bookshop, slipping them under a long overcoat that swallows his whole body and then he shots the books for mad cheap to students outside. Capo’s cousin, Blix, is a second year so we already have a group of heads to jam with. He shows us where we can go and bun zoots by the canal, behind one of the student accommodation buildings. Introductions to the course, to lecturers, to students. Capo gets a flat with Blix up the road from uni. Sometimes I go and stay the night there. I’m serious about my degree. No way am I ducking any lectures or flopping assignments. Everyone on my course buys the complete works of Shakespeare. It’s like a bible.

  For one module I have to write a 3,000-word essay on ‘Art and truth in the works of Aristotle and Plato’. I long it out and end up writing my essay at Capo’s the night before I have to hand it in, bunning bare zoots of ammi and drinking can after can of Boost until the sky goes back to blue and I can hear birds. I don’t manage to catch any sleep. In the morning my eyes are redup from all the cro and I swear my hands are trembling from all the caffeine. My body is cold. I go and hand in the essay. A week later my professor hands our assignments back to us and I’ve got a First – not only that but it’s the top mark in my class. And that’s how my first year of uni goes by: chirpsing chicks in the library, linking Yinka, writing essays, reading books, discussing literature and all sorts in seminars … and doing moves.

  After the first big move, I go and get myself some iced-out grillz: two white gold teeth set with diamonds on either side of my upper front teeth. Something to remember that morning, running up in some top badman’s yard in a block in Grove and – actually the way it happened was a mad ting, lemme tell you.

  I stopped living at Uncle T’s when I started uni, because I needed to be able to stay in East to get to classes and to move from place to place without the pressure of rent. In my first term though, whenever I had days without seminars and lectures, which were plenty, I’d go back to West and more times I’d stay the night at my mum’s so I could link up with Dario early in the morning and look for yards we could run up in once the owners had gone to work or whatever. We’d pick them at random. Gut instinct, make sure no one’s watching on road and then fuck it; run up and kick off the door while adrenaline bursts in the guts.

  My brudda Dario. Short, sharp and careless, like a stone. Often rocking a du-rag, big cubic zirconia studs in each ear that he’s always losing and replacing, even though with all the p’s we’ve made from moves, he could blatantly buy himself some real diamond ones. Swear down I’d just lose them as well, he says. When he talks, the words rush out of his lips like they’re escaping from inside him and you only really hear them inside your head, moments after they’ve been said. Always linking chicks who are taller than him and mad thick and when they hug him, they press his head into their breasts like he’s their baby forreal.

  These times Dario was beating some ting who lived in one block in Grove and apparently her dad was some proper badman. The girl was always telling Dario about stacks of paper in the yard and how early one morning she’d come into the kitchen and found her dad cleaning his burner. When she told Dario that her dad would be going on holiday, he phoned me and told me to get ready.

  I was fully gassed the morning that we linked up, adrenaline trembling through my muscles as we walked to the block, ballys rolled up on our heads like beanie hats and gloves already on. Once we got into the building – waited for someone to be leaving and caught the door before it closed – we took the lift to the twenty-second floor. Mad high up. You could see the whole area of Ladbroke Grove spreading out into the city and losing itself from there. Dario couldn’t remember which door it was but he knew it was two doors away from flat 152. Two doors to the right or two doors to the left he said. We chose two doors to the right. The flats were down a narrow corridor so there wasn’t much space for the run-up. We rolled the ballys down over our faces. Dario opened the letterbox, listened and said there’s no one in. We did our usual ting: counted one two three, ran up and booted the door hard, aiming for the middle and close to the lock. When I’m telling you this door just wouldn’t break out of its frame – trust me it was mad. We were booting the door over and over, I mean we fully stopped giving a fuck if anyone heard us, until the doorframe started breaking out of the concrete. Still, the door itself stayed firmly closed. The concrete at the top of the frame crumbled, little bits of it falling down in a cloud of dust. One more run up and kick, and then slow motion, like some huge animal full of spears, it groaned, separating from the concrete and the whole ting crashed inwards, onto the floor of the flat. The moment we ran up in there we realised we’d got the wrong yard.

  There was a dirty little kitchen, a bathroom with black mould growing on the ceiling and a room that doubled as a bedroom and living room. There was a sofa bed with a white sheet on it and on the floor, a little Buddhist shrine with Chinese characters carved into white plastic and some blackened stumps of incense sticks. Nothing else in the room.

  Then voices, people coming down the corridor, shit shit shit, so I went into the kitchen, grabbed two big kitchen knives, gave one to Dario and we pressed ourselves against the wall, waiting to see if anyone would be dumb enough to come into the flat.

  I was ready for it to turn real scatty, I told Dario later. Man woulda had to start poking up whoever came in and he said I know, I saw how you was moving Snoopz, you just went straight into autopilot and I laughed and said dun know my brudda. Whoever was in the corridor walked past the flat. I know they noticed the door and everything because the voices stopped at the doorway and one said rah that door got lick off and another voice said that’s peak, and then they moved on and disappeared.

  So we stepped out, looking up and down the corridor, dashed the kitchen knives into the flat, went back to door number 152 and counted two doors in the other direction. It was a black door with 150 in brass above a door knocker. I could tell straight away this door would get licked off easy. Dario was certain the chick was at college and her mum had gone on holiday with the dad so it would be empty for us to do our ting. Worst case scenario we’d have to wrap up the girl if she was in there, but that would be nuttin still.

  The door burst open on the first kick. It was a much bigger flat. No one was in. We went from room to room. It was in the parents’ bedroom that we found the belly in a shoebox: stacks and stacks of £50 notes tied up with orange bands. We jumped onto the bed and threw the money into the air and hugged each other, shouting and laughing. We musta looked mad; black tracksuits with patches of concrete dust on our legs, gloves on, black ballys covering our faces, jumping on this thick white duvet in a white bedroom with pink stacks of fifties falling all around us. When we counted the money it came to thirty bags. Thirty grand between the two of us. I wasn’t even twenty years old.

  After that move, Dario bought a ticket to Canada and went to stay with some family he had out there for a month because we needed to lie low. The chick’s dad w
ould definitely be on duppying us – I mean he woulda killed us forreal if he found out who done it – so I went back to living in South Killy at Bimz’s yard, or staying up in East with Capo.

  Things were never the same after that.

  Now, anytime a van slows down next to me or passes by, my whole body tightens, I’ll half open my shank in my pocket and grip it tight, ready for someone to jump out and try wrap me up. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll feel the shots when they hit me, or I prepare myself to dive behind parked cars. Lots of other things aren’t the same now. I mean this is a whole next level from when I was fifteen, yacking next youts for their phones and wallets. Now that I’ve had a taste of real paper, I want more.

  All this is why one Friday afternoon, after my last seminar of the day – a discussion of poetry and why poets make the choices they do – I go to Hatton Garden with my boy Capo to see a jeweller called Christmas. He’s the only one in Hatton who makes grillz these times, and I get him to make me two single teeth in white gold set with white diamonds and Capo gets a single tooth as well, all paid for in fifties. Then I go and cop an Aqua Master watch with diamond chips around the bezel coz everyone in the ends is into them and I also get a gold chain.