In the Bag Page 11

  Ash breathes a big sigh of relief and lets the chair fall to the floor. I get up and dust myself off just in time to see Rabbit come through into the room. He’s looking serious.

  ‘What’s this about?’ Rabbit says. He pulls up a chair and sits down.

  Ash goes over to the table and picks the bag up from underneath it, places it back on the table. Then he sits down. ‘Did you see the news this morning?’ he asks.

  Rabbit shakes his head. Suddenly he looks worried, anxious. ‘No, why?’

  Ash explains the whole thing. And as he does, Rabbit looks more and more anxious.

  ‘Oh fuck,’ he says, when Ash has finished.

  We both nod at him.

  As we all sit in silence, I start feeling angry. Not with Rabbit. It’s not his fault he got caught up in this. But with Ash. Because I trusted him. We were supposed to keep this a secret. We were supposed to be honest with each other. And in the space of a week he’s gone and blabbed to Rabbit, and kept the fact that there was a phone in the bag to himself. I have an urge to go over and smack him in the face and then walk out of here. I should leave him to deal with this shitty situation. I feel angry enough to do it. But I don’t. I close my eyes for a couple of seconds and let the anger pass.

  When I reopen my eyes, I look over at Rabbit, sitting, chewing his lip, nervous. ‘This is some real messed-up business,’ he says to no one in particular.

  Ash takes the mobile phone back out of the bag. He turns it round and round in his hands, staring into space.

  We all sit, thinking, staring at the floor, at the walls. There are empty, faded cans and wrappers on the floor. I look up from the floor, at Rabbit. There’s something that needs to be said before we can get any further. Before I can trust Rabbit. Only I don’t want to have to ask it. I look over at Ash. He’s just sitting there, turning the phone over and over in his hand. He’s not gonna ask it. So I compose myself and then I open my mouth.

  ‘Rabbit,’ I start.

  They both look over at me.

  ‘There’s something I need to know.’

  Rabbit nods, like he knows what I’m gonna say.

  ‘Have you told anyone else about this?’

  ‘Course I fucking haven’t,’ he says. ‘I’m not stupid.’

  There’s a pause for a second. Outside, a bird calls.

  ‘You haven’t let anything slip?’

  Rabbit shakes his head.

  ‘Cos it’s easy to let things slip.’ I look over at Ash.

  Ash flashes back a look that’s says, ‘Fuck off.’

  Rabbit stands up. ‘Look,’ he says. ‘Do you think I wanna be in this situation? Do you think I wanted to incriminate myself, to leave my fingerprints on –’

  ‘Shut up,’ Ash says, cutting Rabbit off. He’s standing up too now, looking angry.

  Rabbit stares over at Ash. There’s a weird look between the two of them, one which I don’t understand. Something’s going on here. Something I want to know about.

  They keep staring at each other. Neither of them looks away. There’s a tension in the air, like before a fight. Eventually, Rabbit shakes his head, sighs and sits back down. Ash sits back down too.

  ‘What was all that about?’ I say. And I look from Rabbit to Ash.

  They both keep their heads down, not wanting to look at me.

  ‘Nothing,’ Ash says. ‘Just leave it, Joe. Rabbit’s just being a dick.’

  Still neither of them looks at me. ‘It’s obviously something,’ I say. ‘Tell me.’

  Ash shakes his head. ‘Leave it.’

  And it’s silent again.

  Then, slowly, Rabbit looks up. He looks over at Ash. ‘We should tell him.’

  Ash stares at Rabbit like he’s totally lost it. Like he’s deciding whether or not to go and lamp him one.

  ‘What?’ I say. ‘Tell me what?’

  Ash doesn’t even look at me. He stares at Rabbit like he wants to kick his head in. ‘I said, “Leave it”,’ he says.

  ‘Why?’ Rabbit says.

  ‘Cos . . .’ Ash begins. ‘Cos . . . he won’t be able to handle it.’

  That makes my blood boil. I can’t believe he’s talking about me like that when I’m here in the room. ‘I won’t be able to handle what?’ I say.

  Ash doesn’t answer me. He’s still staring at Rabbit in the gloom.

  ‘He should know,’ Rabbit says.

  Ash shakes his head. ‘No! I’m gonna smack you in the mouth in a minute, Rabbit. Change the subject!’

  Rabbit rolls his eyes. ‘Look, if we’re gonna sort this out, we’ve gotta be honest, tell each other the truth.’

  ‘Just tell me,’ I say.

  Rabbit turns to me. ‘There was a gun,’ he says. ‘In the bag.’

  I sit and stare at him. A gun? No. This is way too much. ‘You’re joking, right?’

  Rabbit shakes his head. He looks down at his shoes.

  ‘Fuck!’

  It’s silent again. And I struggle to take this in. A million things go flashing through my mind. Thoughts, questions. And the guilty knot in my stomach tightens so much that it actually feels like I’m gonna vomit.

  ‘Happy now?’ Ash eventually says to Rabbit.

  Rabbit doesn’t answer him.

  ‘Where is it now?’ I say. ‘Is it here? In the bag?’

  Rabbit shakes his head. ‘We got rid of it,’ he says. ‘Cleaned all the prints off it and buried it in the woods.’

  ‘Does anyone else know about it?’

  They both shake their heads. ‘No one,’ Ash says.

  No one says anything for ages. Not a word. We’re all probably thinking the same thing. We’re out of our depth. We’re fucked. I stare at the cracks in the ceiling, where the light’s coming in. I listen to the sound of the rain outside. And all I can think is that I want to be out of here. To leave all this behind and just run into the woods. To keep running till all this is miles away, just a bad memory. I’d give anything not to be me right now, to be an animal or a bird or something, without any worries. I’d give anything to be able to just fly away. Anything.

  But that’s not happening, is it? I’m stuck with this. I think for a second that maybe I can pick the bag up, take the money and make a run for it. I even get as far as wondering how long the money would last me and whether they’d track me down.

  I look over at Ash. He’s still staring at the bloody mobile phone. I start thinking about the news story earlier on. A shiver runs down my spine. The phone must have belonged to the body they found in the flats, Martin Garrard or whatever his name was. And the reason the guy in the flats died is probably sitting right here on the table. The bag. And then I realise something else. About the gun. The news said the guy was wanted in connection with a shooting in Southampton. That means that the gun in the bag could have been the murder weapon. It must have been. Shit.

  Rabbit sits up and looks over at Ash as well. ‘Whose phone is that?’ he says.

  ‘It was in the bag,’ Ash says.

  ‘Chuck it here,’ Rabbit says.

  Ash throws the phone to Rabbit. And then he puts his hands in his pockets and takes out his fags and lighter. He lights a cigarette and stares over at Rabbit as he starts to look through all the stuff on the phone.

  I sit and watch them, hoping that someone else is going to make a decision – one that makes everything right, so this is all over with. But no one does. Ash smokes his fag right down to the filter. And Rabbit plays around with the phone. The dead man’s phone.

  ‘Fucking hell! Have you seen this message?’ Rabbit says all of a sudden.

  I shake my head. ‘I didn’t even know the phone existed until a minute ago,’ I say to Ash. ‘Ash doesn’t tell me anything.’

  Ash sighs. ‘The message came the other day,’ he says.

  ‘Let me guess,’ I say. ‘You didn’t think it was important?’

  Ash shakes his head. ‘I didn’t want to worry you.’

  I ignore Ash and hold my hand out to Rabbit. ‘Let me have a
look,’ I say.

  He pauses for a second, looks up at Ash and then passes the phone over kind of reluctantly.

  I grab the phone and read the message. What have you done with my money? I will find you.

  I read it through again, just to make sure I’ve read it correctly. ‘They’re on to us,’ I say. ‘Why the fuck did you keep this to yourself?’

  ‘They’re not,’ Ash says. ‘They don’t know where the bag is. They don’t know who has it. They’re just trying to scare whoever found it. If they knew who we were, they would have found us by now.’

  I don’t say anything. I put the phone down on the table. I don’t even know what to think. I feel scared. But what Ash said makes sense.

  ‘Have you ever tried texting them back?’ Rabbit says after a while. ‘Or phoning them?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ Ash says. ‘What would I wanna do that for?’

  Rabbit shrugs. ‘Dunno,’ he says. ‘Just an idea.’

  The Old House falls silent again. Rabbit picks the phone off the table and looks at it. Ash lights another fag. I stare around the room and wish I’d never seen the bag in the woods, that someone else had found it and got into this mess.

  ‘Maybe Rabbit’s right,’ Ash says. He starts pacing around the room, taking drags from his fag.

  ‘What?’ I say.

  Ash stops and looks at me. ‘What Rabbit said about the numbers on the mobile. Why don’t we phone them or text them or something?’

  I stare back at him. That sounds like a really stupid thing to do. ‘I don’t understand,’ I say. ‘How is that a good idea? That sounds like suicide. If we do that they’ll know who we are.’

  Ash stamps out his fag. ‘The easiest way out of this is to get rid of the bag, right? If we give it back to whoever it belongs to, we’re out of this. The police would have no reason to come after us. And neither would the people who wanted the bag so much that they killed the man in the flat.’

  I nod. He has a point.

  ‘Pass the phone here,’ he says to Rabbit. ‘If we phone the number that sent this message, we could arrange to give the bag back to them.’

  I shake my head. ‘No way.’

  ‘But we’d get rid of the bag,’ Ash says. ‘Think about it. No more money, no more stress, no more –’

  ‘They’d kill us, for fuck’s sake!’ I say. ‘They’d think we took the money in the first place.’

  Ash doesn’t reply. He stares at me instead.

  ‘They’re gonna be pissed off that someone took their money, aren’t they?’ I say. ‘And seeing as whoever took the bag last time ended up dead, I don’t think they’re the most understanding people on the planet, do you know what I mean? I can’t imagine them waiting to hear the end of our explanation.’

  Ash doesn’t say anything. He glares at me, sighs, then turns away. He must realise it’s a crap plan.

  Rabbit just stares into the distance. Until all of a sudden he sits up straight and looks at me, then Ash. ‘It’s not such a bad idea, actually,’ he says.

  Ash turns round. ‘Thank you,’ he says.

  ‘Except we have to make sure that there’s no way they can track us down. If we do it on our own terms there’s no reason why they should ever know who we are.’

  ‘So how exactly do we do that then, genius?’ I say.

  ‘Easy,’ Rabbit says. ‘We take the bag somewhere right now and hide it. Then we get well out of the way before we give them the call. We tell them where the bag is. Then that’s that.’

  I nod. It sounds like a plan. It sounds like it can’t go wrong.

  Ash has a wide smile on his face. ‘You are a fucking genius,’ he says. ‘Let’s do it. We could just leave it here and then call them.’

  Rabbit shakes his head. ‘No,’ he says, ‘it’s too close to home. We need to find somewhere else.’

  Ash

  I grab the bag from the table and zip it up.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I say.

  I start off towards the door, Joe and Rabbit following behind.

  It’s still raining outside. We pick our way through the undergrowth and collect our bikes. In no time at all, we’re riding back along the tracks. I have the bag resting on my lap. It feels kind of exposed there cos someone could see it if they go past us, but I have nowhere to hide it at the moment.

  ‘Where are we going with it?’ Joe asks as we pedal along.

  No one says anything. I think about it. It needs to be somewhere out of the way, where no one’s gonna come across it by mistake, where no one’s gonna see us drop it or see the pickup. And also somewhere we can get away from quickly.

  ‘What about the golf course?’ Rabbit says.

  It’s not such a bad idea. The golf course is right on the edge of town, and being rainy today no one’s gonna be there.

  ‘Where would we hide it, though?’ Joe says. ‘If we put it out on the course, one of the golfers could find it.’

  ‘Where do you suggest then?’ Rabbit says.

  Joe doesn’t answer right away. He just pedals along through the puddles that are starting to form on the track and thinks. ‘What about the common?’ he says eventually. ‘There are loads of little clay pits. It’d be easy to hide the bag there. No one would find it. Only if they knew where to look.’

  I nod. It’s a better idea. There’ll be fewer people there. And it’ll be easy to hide it.

  ‘OK,’ Rabbit says. ‘Let’s do it.’

  We cycle through the forest and then out on to the main road and turn right going out of town. There’s not much traffic on the roads, which is just as well given that I have a bag full of money on my lap and Rabbit and Joe are both in their school uniforms. We’re hardly inconspicuous.

  We take a left off the main road and then follow the smaller road down to the common. We leave our bikes leaning up against the fence and go inside, through the gates.

  The common is basically a fancy word for a bit of grass with some gorse bushes and some kind of pits on it. It’s nothing special really. Except that there are some lizards and snakes that live there, so the place is protected. If there weren’t, they would have built some houses or a supermarket on the land by now. There are lots of pieces of corrugated iron on the common which they put there for the snakes. Fuck knows why snakes like corrugated iron, but apparently they do. Joe always used to try and get me to come down here with him when we were like ten or eleven, to look under the metal sheets. But to be honest, me and snakes don’t get on. I’m not exactly scared of them, but they don’t make me feel too good.

  We walk across the common dodging cowpats, checking around us to make sure no one’s watching what we’re doing. We head off the main path, through some low, scrubby gorse bushes.

  ‘There,’ Joe says, pointing at a metre-square sheet of corrugated iron. ‘We can use that.’

  We all stop and stare at it. Joe and Rabbit both look back at me.

  ‘What?’ I say. Cos I know what their looks mean – that I should be the one to pick up the sheet. I shake my head. ‘I’m not picking it up. I’m taking enough of a risk just carrying this bag. You two do it.’

  They stare at each other.

  Rabbit shakes his head and puts his hand up, like he’s surrendering. ‘Don’t look at me,’ he says. ‘I’m scared of snakes. There’s no way you’ll get me touching it.’

  Joe sighs. He mutters something under his breath. And then he gets down on his knees, an arm’s length away from the metal sheet. He stretches out and gets hold of the corner.

  I take a step back.

  He starts to lift the sheet slowly, peeking underneath. I can’t see anything at first, but then he throws it right back. I just about have a heart attack.

  ‘Ha!’ he says. ‘Nothing there!’

  I shake my head. ‘Bastard,’ I say under my breath.

  Joe and Rabbit grab hold of the sheet and start walking with it over towards a pit in the ground. They drop it on the ground.

  ‘This’ll do,’ Joe says. ‘Throw it in th
ere and we’ll cover it.’

  I open the bag and take the phone out, close the bag up again and then throw it into the little pit. Joe and Rabbit pick up the sheet and lift it over the bag and the pit and then drop it. They stand back. There’s no way that you would guess a bag is hidden under there.

  ‘Right,’ I say. ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here and make a phone call.’

  We’re back in the Old House. Me and Rabbit are sitting on the chairs, Joe’s on an upturned crate. I can feel them staring at me but I don’t look back at them. I stare at the phone instead. The dead man’s phone. And all of a sudden it doesn’t seem like such a good plan. I feel sick just thinking about it.

  I press the buttons, go to the inbox. And then I dial the number that sent the message. I put the phone up to my ear. The phone rings. My heart thumps. I don’t know what I’m going to say to them. Which is not like me. I normally know what to say in any situation. But not this one. It keeps on ringing, over and over and over. And I start thinking, what happens if nobody picks up? What do we do then? Leave a message on voicemail? Go and get the money back?

  Just as I’m getting ready to hang up, there’s a click at the other end of the line. Then background noise. But no voice.

  ‘Hello?’ I say. ‘Is there anyone there?’

  I hear some noise at the other end. It sounds like cars going past. And then a voice. ‘Who’s this?’ It’s a deep voice. A London accent.

  And I realise I still don’t know what to say. I can’t tell him my real name. ‘Layzee Eyez,’ I say. The first thing that pops into my head.

  ‘Lazy what?’ demands the voice at the other end.

  ‘Layzee Eyez,’ I repeat.

  The man laughs – a deep, intimidating laugh. ‘Jesus, your mum and dad must have had a sense of humour,’ he says, and he laughs again.

  I don’t say anything. I look at Joe and Rabbit. They’re leaning forward on their seats, staring at me, wanting to know what’s going on.

  ‘Enough with the introductions, Lazy Eyes,’ the man says. ‘Down to business. Where the fuck did you get this phone?’

  My heart is pounding. I can’t think straight. ‘Found it,’ I say. I sound really weak. Like a little kid.