by Bali Rai
‘We ain’t done anything,’ I told her, which was basically true if you didn’t count Jas and Will scaring the life out of some poor bloke.
‘We haven’t done anything, Billy. You can save your bad boy language for your mates.’
‘Well we haven’t. We just found something, that’s all.’
My mum sighed. ‘Just like you found that condom in your jeans that time? Or the ecstasy tablets that just appeared in that jacket pocket last year?’
‘That’s not fair, Mum. You know that wasn’t my jacket and I’d tell you if I was thinking of doing Es or any other drug. I don’t feel that I have to hide things from you . . .’
‘But you do anyway?’ She wore this questioning look. One that I had to avoid.
Luckily Nanny jumped in to rescue me. Sort of. ‘Hol’ on, darlin’. They never do a ting wrong. They jus’ find a lickle money in the alley out back.’
I groaned.
‘Exactly how much money are we talking about?’
I hesitated and looked away. Anywhere but at my mum. ‘Er . . . quite a lot, Mum,’ I said, immediately realizing that I was about to get a rocket.
‘Don’t play me, young man. I’m not an idiot. How much?’ Man, she was getting angry.
‘Fifteen . . .’
‘Fifteen pounds?’
‘Grand.’
I let the word fall out of my mouth rather than making any attempt to project it, hoping that my mum wouldn’t hear what I had said, and then looked at Nanny, who just whistled at the amount.
‘Fifteen thousand pounds? Fifteen? . . . What the hell were you doing . . .?’ she began.
‘Jas and Will found it. Someone left a holdall in the alley and the lads went to check it out. They found the money inside it.’ I felt like a kid again. Scared of what my mum’s reaction was going to be.
She sat and thought for a minute. I tried to carry on talking but she just held her hand in my face to tell me to shut up. Nanny started to build himself a spliff but he got told to stop too. And he did. Without even a murmur of complaint. Mum looked at Nanny and then at me. ‘And I suppose you can’t decide whether or not to keep the money or hand it in to the police? Or maybe just put the bag back?’ Another gentle glare.
‘Yeah,’ I replied. ‘That’s it exactly.’
She just shook her head. ‘Now let me see. Who normally carries fifteen grand around in black bags and then leaves it in an alley – in the middle of an area where drug dealing and sex-work are just two of the many dubious activities that go on?’ There was real, heavy sarcasm in her voice. ‘Let’s see now . . . who could that be?’ She looked from me to Nanny and back again.
‘Look, Mum, I know—’ I began, regretting it.
‘You don’t know anything, Billy. Otherwise you wouldn’t even be thinking about it. You should have put the sodding bag back where you found it or handed it in to the police. That would make it their problem. Now it’s yours.’
‘I know . . .’ I began again.
‘What do you know? That it belongs to a drug dealer or a pimp? That whoever left it there left it to be picked up? That the people it belongs to are already out there looking for it?’
‘Yeah.’ I replied quietly, beginning to feel stupid. My mum had a way of doing that to me when I was messing things up.
‘You aren’t stupid, Billy. None of you are. But you don’t half do some stupid things.’ It was like she could read my mind.
‘I don’t think we can put it back. It will have been missed by now. We’ll have to hand it in, Mum. Tomorrow.’ There was that little kid feeling again.
‘No, no you won’t. You’ll take Nanny with you and go and hand it in right now. Tonight.’
Nanny looked shocked. He didn’t like seeing the police on the streets, never mind going to the station. It would probably make the skin at the back of his neck crawl. His frown followed mine, only his was deeper. ‘Why mek me take dem to the station? Me nuh deal wid police, man.’
‘Because I’m tired and I’ve spent all day arguing with one of their neighbourhood liaison officers. If I see another policeman tonight I think I might just lose it.’
Nanny smiled but still looked kind of unsure about going to the station. In the end, seeing that my mum wasn’t going to budge, he resigned himself to it. ‘Yuh muddah is right, Billy. Is Babylon money so we must tek it back to dem.’
‘It’s drug money,’ I said. ‘It don’t belong to the police.’
‘Police. Criminal. Is the same shit to me.’
‘What if they saw the lads take it, Billy? The people who it belongs to?’ added my mum. She was looking concerned now.
‘They didn’t,’ I replied, trying to sound like I wasn’t concerned myself.
‘Billy, don’t be so naive. Anyone who knows this area knows that you and your mates use that alley like it belongs to you alone. They’ll know it’s one of you that took it. The kind of people who have fifteen thousand pounds in black bags don’t mess about. Trust me, kid. I know.’
I couldn’t argue with her. She did know. She knew all about life on the streets and she knew all about the bad men that operated in the area. I could see in her eyes that she was back on the streets now, back in her past. She still found it hard to deal with. Her face darkened and she touched her left cheekbone. A punter had beaten her up once, smashing the bone, and whenever anyone mentioned the past or anything linked with it, she instantly touched it, as if by reflex. I thought I would start crying. I wanted to. I hated that my mum had all this shit in her past that I could never help her to get over. It cut me up.
‘Rita, chill,’ said Nanny. ‘We can tek it to the police. That way it’s out of we hands. It gonna be more dangerous still if we put de ting back now.’
My mum didn’t look totally convinced. She looked at me with suspicion.
‘Now?’ she said, a question in her voice. ‘How long have you had this money then, Billy?’
‘Er . . . three days,’ I admitted. ‘Jas and Will found it Saturday morning.’
‘Well, no argument then,’ Mum said firmly. ‘They’ll have missed it by now for sure, so you’d better get your Crew together and get your sorry arses down the station. Now!’
She was right. I rang Jas and told him what was going to happen. He had just had the same conversation with his own mother. He told me that he realized that they were right, his mum and mine. There was way too much grief involved – keeping hold of the money or putting it back just wasn’t an option any longer. I told him to go and get Will and bring the money with them but then decided it was probably safer for Nanny and me to go over to them. My mum was right. We had no idea if anyone was watching or not. And if someone was watching and saw two youths walking down the road with their bag . . . Well, you can figure out the rest.
seven:
monday, 11 p.m.
THE WALK TO the police station took us back over the iron bridge and across the dual carriageway where I had first met Ellie. On the way, Nanny was talking to Jas about his kick boxing and Will was complaining about how he was going to have a problem getting back into his house. He had sneaked out of his bedroom window and over a low roof to get out. His old man would have gone spare if he had come out at such a late hour. Sometimes he treated Will like he was still a child – which really wound Will up. After all, he was sixteen now and working.
The police station was a huge grey box – a complete eyesore in an already architecturally impaired area. There was a new annexe to the back of the station where the public entrance was. I had never been in that way. The last time I had visited, it had been through the huge security gates around the back and I had been chauffeured there by my local neighbourhood storm trooper. Even Nanny looked worried about visiting what he usually called ‘Babylon Regional Office’.
‘Hey, Nanny – what’s up? You look scared, man!’ I asked, smiling.
‘I ain’t scared, Billy – I just don’t like coming here. Is like the hairs on me neck stand on end an’ I wan’ run away ev’r
y time me on yah.’
I think he was saying that the police made him nervous but you never can tell with Nanny.
‘Them bring me ’ere back in the riots, man. I was tryin’ to stop de yout’ from mash up the high street an’ get dem to organize. I never even fling one stone ’pon de beast but they still lock I up in prison for one year. Jus’ on the word a one policeman.’
‘Which riots, man?’ asked Will.
‘Man, back in the ghetto Summer of Love, youthman. Nineteen eighty-one. None a yuh even born yet. Man, de whole a England get mash up.’
‘What? Like what the youths in the north been doin’ last year?’
‘Yeah, man, all due to Babylon treating we as subhuman.’
‘Boy, it’s coming like nothing ever changes, man,’ I said, shaking my head.
Jas decided to make a contribution to the conversation. ‘So, like you was in prison? Man, that’s cool, Nanny. You is one bad bwoi.’
Nanny gave Jas a pitiful look and shook his head. ‘There is nothing good or cool about prison, Jas. Prison is an ugly place. It break a man’s spirit. Jah meant fe a man to fly free like a bird, not sit in a cell like so many bull ina pen.’
The reception area of the station was a cold blue and grey colour. Nanny walked up to the desk and sat the bag on the counter. The copper behind the desk looked down his long nose at Nanny and then at the bag. He gave me, Will and Jas the same treatment.
‘Can I help you?’ he asked, not looking at any of us.
‘Yes, man. We would like to hand in this bag a’ money dat de man deh,’ Nanny began, pointing at us, ‘. . . dat dem man find in de alley. Sah.’
I wanted to laugh. Nanny was deliberately talking in a way that the policeman would find hard to understand. And calling him ‘sir’ after the sentence was as sarcastic as a weed-smoking, Jah-loving man like Nanny could get.
‘I see,’ said the policeman. He looked us over again. ‘And what country do we all come from then?’ he said, smiling.
‘You’re funny, man.’ Will looked immediately angry. ‘We’re English.’
‘And what about your . . .’ he began, giving Nanny the kind of look that most people save for something stuck to the sole of their shoe . . . ‘your mate here. The one who can’t speak English.’
‘Actually I can speak the Queen’s tongue rather well,’ said Nanny, causing even my jaw to drop. How posh was his voice?
‘So you do speak—’ began the copper.
‘Nah, man. Least not wid Babylon.’
The policeman turned his attention to the bag. He picked it up and studied it. ‘It’s quite heavy,’ he said, putting it down and trying to smile, something he didn’t quite manage.
‘Yeah, well, it’s full,’ I said.
‘With what? It’s not got a bomb in it, has it? Can’t be too careful these days . . .’ He sneered at us.
‘Yuh tek de piss nuh, man?’ said Nanny in a serious tone of voice.
‘If you like, sir,’ the policeman answered but in a tone that said he didn’t really give a shit.
‘Do you have a superior officer, little Babylon? Yuh know – like yuh master?’ Nanny turned and winked at me.
‘You don’t need to see anyone other than me. It’s only a few pounds and a stolen bag.’
‘The bag ain’t stolen and if you think fifteen grand is a few pounds then you must be on the take, man,’ added Will.
The copper looked shocked all of a sudden. He opened the bag and looked at the contents. My holiday money. Ellie’s new trainers. Will’s new decks and mixer. He picked up the phone on his desk and called someone else down. ‘. . . three teens and a gentleman . . . yeah the bloke’s IC3.’ He put the receiver down and turned to us. ‘DI Ratnett is on his way down,’ he said before turning away.
Nanny grinned at the man’s name.
We were all interviewed about the money separately. When it came to my turn, I spent five minutes explaining to DI Ratnett that the money might well be stolen but that I hadn’t stolen it and nor had anyone else in the Crew. He then spent the next twenty minutes asking me if I knew whether Jas or Will needed money. Whether they had drug habits. If they indulged in any criminal activity like dealing crack. As he asked his questions I tried not to breathe in the stale air around him. It smelt of cigarettes and coffee and he carried a faint whiff of cleanliness masked by overpowering body odour. I didn’t even want to think about when he had last showered. It felt as though we were being treated as the criminals when all we had done was find the money and hand it in. Fair enough, we had told a prearranged little white lie about when we had found the money, claiming that it had been earlier that evening.
‘Are you sure it was this evening?’ he kept on asking me.
‘Yeah, I’m sure.’
‘You didn’t keep it for few days? Think about whether or not to keep it? Take a little bonus for yourself? I know it would be tempting.’
‘No,’ I said, getting more and more pissed off.
‘After all, we’re all human,’ he said, smiling in a way that suggested someone had held a gun to his head and made him do it.
All human? Not you, I thought to myself. Dutty Babylon.
‘And you’ve no idea who it might belong to, this money?’
‘Like I keep telling you, no.’ Man, he was winding me up.
‘Local dealer, maybe? Pimp?’
‘Man, I told you. I ain’t got no clue where it came from and I don’t care – you gets me? Why you tryin’ to make me and my Crew out to be criminals?’
‘Well, you are, aren’t you? I’ve seen a copy of your arrest sheet. Juvenile delinquent, I believe you would have been called in the old, non-politically correct days.’
‘That’s got sweet f.a. to do with this,’ I said. ‘Besides, I never got done for stealing no money.’
‘Money . . . cars – what’s the difference, Billy?’
‘You don’t know me so don’t call me Billy. I ain’t done anything so just finish your stupid questions and let me go.’
‘Stupid would be you trying to tell me what to do, son. I don’t take kindly to people like you ordering me about.’
‘People like me? What the—?’ I began angrily.
‘Watch it, son!’ I calmed down before he continued. ‘And remember – I’ve got my eye on you.’
‘Where’d you get your lines, man? Off The Bill?’ I said as I walked out of the interview room.
Man, I hated people like Ratnett.
On the way home I found out that we had all been treated in the same way, with Nanny getting the worst of it. They had asked him what he was doing with us. Whether he was Will’s father. When he told them that he was my step-dad, kind of, they had asked him if he had any previous convictions. Whether he liked young boys. Really nasty stuff. I was fuming. I wanted to tell my mum when we got in and I told him so.
‘Leave it, Billy. Your mum got enough on her plate without having to worry about the dutty mind of some Babylonian. Forget them, man. We nuh deal wid dem.’
We walked through the same streets that I had walked earlier, losing Jas and a very pissed off and angry Will at the end of our street. I told them that I’d call them in the morning and walked on with Nanny. Halfway down our street there was a police car sitting at the kerb with its lights flashing. I looked at Nanny, who nodded, reading my thoughts. The car was outside our house! I took off at a sprint, Nanny right behind, and as I reached my house I saw that the downstairs front window had been smashed. My mum was standing outside, talking to a female copper.
‘Mum! What happened? Are you all right?’ I pushed past the copper and hugged her.
‘It’s OK, Billy,’ she replied. ‘Someone threw a brick through the window, that’s all.’
‘What do you mean, that’s all? Did you see who did it?’ I was well angry.
‘No. Whoever it was ran off before I got a chance. It’s just some nasty little racist. There’s been a few attacks this week on the mosque and the community centre, because of the
local elections. We’ll board it up and sort it out later. Come on, make your mum a cup of tea, Sleepy.’
‘Man, sometimes I hate this country. They dis us for not being patriotic and then they treat us like animals.’
My mum gave me a strange look. It said, ‘Don’t overreact.’
‘It’s not just this,’ I said, feeling a little silly because the policewoman was looking at me like I was a basket case. ‘I’ll tell you inside.’ The policewoman continued to stare at me. ‘What you looking at? Can’t you go and arrest some crack dealers or something?’
eight:
wednesday, 6 p.m.
ON THE EVENING it happened I was out walking the mutt again. He was pulling me this way and that way and I was having a hard time holding onto him. Stupid dog. I had tried my usual trick with Billy – you know, pouting, begging, anything to get him to take the bloody thing for a walk. And do you know what he did? He laughed at me. He’s such a man. A boy. I mean, I was trying to get him to cover my responsibilities but still . . .
It was cold and wet, which was typical, and I wasn’t wearing a coat, which was even more typical. Of me. We walked past a gang of lads who were hanging around by a couple of phone boxes and an off-licence. They seemed to be taking turns to go in and try to hoodwink the owner into selling them booze. As we got about a hundred metres away from them I heard a police-car siren and turned to see the lads running in all directions as the car pulled up. One of them was holding what looked like a four-pack of beers as he ran. The policemen took off after him. I shook my head. It was just a typical summer night. Full of silly little boys committing silly little crimes. I turned again and carried on dragging Zeus up the road. He was whimpering at me, as if I would take pity on him and turn back, but I wasn’t playing his game – just like Billy hadn’t played mine. Not that I was comparing Billy to a dog. No, Billy was just a miserable old man.
The first time I realized something was wrong was when I turned down a side street with Zeus and made for home. I didn’t notice the green car at first – on the main road there was loads of traffic and anyway, why would I have been looking at cars? But on the side street it was the only car that passed me. Three times.
