In the Bag

by Jim Carrington

  And then there’s an electrical buzzing noise. The passenger side window opens slightly. I try to look inside, but it’s too dark and too far away to make anything out. I close my eyes for a second, hoping that when I open them again this won’t be happening any more. But when I do open them, the car’s still there. As I stare at it, a glowing cigarette butt flies out of the window and on to the track. The window buzzes back up again. The engine roars, the wheels spin for a second and the car speeds off along the track. I let out a long breath. I can feel my pulse pounding through my temples.

  Me and Ash stay silent and still after the car has gone. It must be a minute or more before it finally feels safe and we get to our feet, brush the leaves and soil off our clothes.

  ‘Who was that?’ Ash says.

  I shake my head. ‘I don’t know. Didn’t see their faces.’

  Ash stares over at the track where the car was. ‘Do you think they saw us?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Maybe. Why else would they have stopped right in front of us?’

  Ash doesn’t say a word. He just stares after the car, down the track. And then suddenly he grabs his bike and starts wheeling it back towards the path. ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here,’ he says.

  I grab my bike and follow. ‘Let’s stick to the smaller paths,’ I say. ‘Just in case they come back.’

  Ash nods and then bombs off along the track.

  WEDNESDAY

  Joe

  I couldn’t sleep last night. I got back home at about three in the morning. My heart was still beating at a million miles an hour and my head was rushing. I changed and got into bed, but there was no way I could sleep. So I just lay there and thought things through.

  I was panicking about the BMW in the forest. I thought about who it could have been in the car. And there were three options that I managed to get it down to:

  1. It was undercover police, patrolling the forest because of the abandoned car or something.

  2. It was whoever the bag belongs to, looking for their money.

  3. It was just some random person who happened to be driving through the forest.

  I’d feel most comfortable if it was number 3, the random stranger, obviously. But let’s be honest, that one is the least likely cos for a start why would they be driving around the forest? And secondly, why would they be there at two in the morning?

  So realistically, I guess it had to be either the police or the owner of the bag. Which is bad news either way.

  And then I started thinking about whether they saw us or not. When I first got back, I had convinced myself that they must have done. I was paranoid. But when I thought about it more, I realised that they couldn’t have seen us. If they had, they would have done something, wouldn’t they? If it was the police and they saw two teenagers hiding in the woods, they would have come and asked us what we were doing. And if it was the owner of the bag and they’d seen us, they wouldn’t just drive on, would they?

  I got some sleep in the end, when I’d tired myself out with thinking and worry, but I don’t know what time it was.

  All I know is that right now it’s the morning, it’s a school day and I feel tired. And I also feel weird about what happened last night, like I’m keeping a guilty secret. Which I guess I am.

  I go downstairs and eat breakfast, though I don’t manage to eat much. And when I’m done, I go into the lounge to watch TV for a bit and take my mind off everything before I get ready for school. I want to check the sports news cos the cricket starts tomorrow. First Test. Except Kate’s already beaten me to it and she’s watching some crappy R & B video on a music channel.

  ‘Do you have to watch this?’ I ask her.

  She turns and fixes me with a stare, right eyebrow raised. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I do. First one into the lounge gets control of the remote. That’s the rule.’

  I think about getting hold of the remote control and changing channels anyway. Kate’s not strong enough to get it back off me. But it’s too early for that. So I go upstairs. I’ll check on the internet instead.

  In my room, I switch my computer on as I get dressed for school. Trousers, shirt, tie, jumper. And by the time I’m finished, the computer has played its little warm-up jingle. I go straight to the sports page to check the cricket news, but before I can read it, I notice the news box at the top of the page. My stomach turns as soon as I see it. MAN KILLED IN DORSET FIRE LINKED TO ABANDONED CAR, with a picture of a policeman standing in front of the taped-off flats. I click straight on the link.

  Detectives investigating the death of a man in a fire at an unfinished block of flats in Fayrewood have released CCTV footage of the man and made a link to a car abandoned in nearby woodland. The body has been identified as that of Martin Garrard, who Hampshire police believe was involved in a shooting in Southampton on Friday night. CCTV footage released by Hampshire Police appears to show Mr Garrard emerging from the address where a Southampton drug dealer was shot dead. He is seen in the footage carrying a holdall and getting into a silver Vauxhall Astra. Dorset police have now confirmed that the silver Vauxhall, a stolen vehicle, was found crashed in woodland on Saturday morning and recovered by police. Forensic detectives are now examining the vehicle.

  Earlier this week, detectives confirmed that Mr Garrard had been shot before the fire at the flats in the early hours of Saturday morning. Det Insp Michael McDermott said: ‘We are treating this death as murder, and encourage anyone who may have seen anything suspicious on Friday night in Southampton or Fayrewood to contact us.’

  Police are urging anyone with information to call Crimestoppers.

  As soon as I’ve finished, I get up from my computer. I don’t know what to do. I’m in shock. I run it through my brain, over and over, trying to work out what this means. Oh God. This can’t be happening.

  I go back to the computer and reread the story. At the bottom of the page there’s a picture, a freeze-frame from CCTV. In the centre of the picture there’s a Play button. I click on it and the CCTV clip starts. It’s black and white and really grainy. It starts off with a view of a street, with front doors and parked cars on the road. It moves along jerkily for a couple of seconds, before a door opens and a man comes running out. And sure enough, he’s carrying a holdall. It’s so small, so blurry and jerky that I can’t really make out whether it’s the same bag that we found, that we hid last night. The man crosses the road and gets into a silver car. The same kind of silver car that we found in the woods. An Astra. The car zooms off and then the clip finishes.

  I take a deep breath and blow it out slowly. I can’t take this. This is too much.

  I scroll back up the page, scan through it again. And I focus on the number. I pick my mobile up and stare at it, thinking. My thumb hovers over the numbers. But something stops me from pressing the buttons. My head is a blur of thoughts and feelings that don’t make sense. I don’t know what to do. Without thinking too much about what I’m doing, I punch the number into my phone. I take another deep breath, close my eyes and press the Call button. I put the phone to my ear. It rings. Once. Twice. Then there’s a click on the other end of the line.

  ‘Hello, you are through to Crimestoppers. Please hold and your call will be answered shortly.’

  The line goes quiet for a few seconds and my heart starts to thump in my chest. Then there’s another click on the line and another voice. ‘Hello. Crimestoppers. How can I help?’

  I gulp. I try and work out what I’m going to say. I open my mouth. I want to say something. But the words don’t get as far as my mouth; they catch in my throat. And all the time I can feel my heart beating like mad in my chest, in my neck, in my temples.

  ‘Is there anybody there? Are you in immediate danger?’

  I breathe deeply, try and compose myself.

  ‘Your call is in the strictest confidence. We won’t ask you for a name. Your call will not be recorded or traced.’

  I take the phone away from my ear. I can’t do it. I press the button
on my phone to end the call. I close my eyes and put my head in my hands.

  You know what I’d really like to do right now? I’d like to go straight downstairs and tell Mum and Dad what’s happened, just so they know. So they can help me. So that this is out of my hands. So someone else can make the decision for me. Except I know that I can’t do that. Mum and Dad can never know what’s happened. They would go spare. Whose parents wouldn’t? Imagine it. ‘Um, Mum, Dad, you know the dead body that was found in Fayrewood? Well, I found twenty grand and a big bag of drugs in the woods, and I didn’t tell the police about it. Oh, and by the way, I think it probably belonged to the man who died in the flats.’ It wouldn’t go down well.

  I open my eyes and look around my room. There is only one thing I can do right now. I have to go and see Ash. We have to sort this out together. I get up and grab my school bag and coat off the floor. I go straight downstairs and out of the house.

  Thirty seconds later, I’m banging on Ash’s front door. I take a step back and wait for an answer. After a bit, the door opens.

  ‘Hello, Joe,’ says Ash’s mum. ‘You’re early.’

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘Is Ash up?’

  Ash’s mum shakes her head and opens the door wider. ‘No,’ she says. ‘Go on up, though. Maybe you can shift him.’

  I climb the stairs and knock on Ash’s door.

  ‘What?’ he shouts.

  ‘It’s me. Joe. Let me in.’

  There’s no answer, but a few seconds later the door opens and Ash peers round it. He’s wearing his dressing gown. His hair’s all over the place, like he’s just got out of bed.

  ‘What do you want?’ he says. ‘It’s half bloody seven.’

  I squeeze past him into his room and go and sit on his drum stool. ‘Can I use your computer for a second?’

  Ash looks at me, confused as hell. ‘Yeah. Why?’

  I don’t answer. I just grab his laptop, switch it on and find the news story about the body and the car. I turn it round so Ash can see it properly. He walks over and leans in as he reads. The colour drains from his face.

  ‘Shit,’ he says.

  I nod my head. I thought I’d feel better when I’d shown it to Ash. A problem shared is a problem halved, or whatever they say. But I don’t feel better. I feel sick and nervous and guilty as hell. I feel like I’m drowning.

  Ash doesn’t say anything. He just stares into space, thinking, trying to take it all in.

  ‘What do you think we should do?’

  Ash shrugs and shakes his head. ‘Shit!’

  ‘We need to do something. We . . .’ I say. But I stop cos I don’t know what we need to do. It’s not the kind of thing they teach you in school, is it?

  ‘Christ,’ Ash says. ‘We’ve got the bag. We saw the car. I don’t believe this.’

  I nod. The guilty knot in my stomach tightens.

  ‘I wonder if Rabbit’s seen this,’ Ash says.

  I’m confused. ‘What? Why?’

  Ash stares at me for a minute with his mouth open, looking guilty. He glances away from me and runs his hand through his hair. ‘I fucked up, Joe,’ he says. ‘Rabbit knows what happened on Friday night.’

  ‘What? How?’

  Ash takes a deep breath. He looks down at the carpet. ‘It was Saturday night,’ he says. ‘Rabbit came round. We got drunk. And I let it slip by accident.’

  I don’t say anything. I don’t even move. I can feel the veins in my temple, throbbing, painful, like they’re about to explode. I turn away from Ash, start pacing round his room. I can’t believe he’s telling me this. What the fuck? If he’s told Rabbit, who’s to say that he hasn’t told other people as well? And what about Rabbit? He might have told someone else. Jesus. Loads of people could know by now. The whole story could be going around Fayrewood.

  ‘You dickhead,’ I say. I want to shake him. I want to punch his bloody lights out. I want to shout at him and let him know what a stupid, irresponsible little twat he’s been. ‘You stupid bloody dickhead!’

  Ash doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t even look at me. He just looks down at his dressing gown and shakes his head.

  ‘Rabbit could have told anyone,’ I say. ‘Someone could have told the police . . .’

  ‘Sorry,’ Ash says. ‘What more can I say? I can’t do anything about it now, can I? We’ve just got to deal with it. And Rabbit’s not gonna tell anyone, is he? He’s not stupid.’

  I snort. ‘You bloody told someone!’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ash says. ‘I know. Sorry.’

  I sigh, sit down on the drum stool again. ‘What does Rabbit know?’

  Ash takes a deep breath. ‘I don’t know exactly. We were drunk,’ he says quietly.

  ‘You’ve talked to him since then, though, haven’t you?’

  Ash nods. ‘Yeah,’ he says. He looks right at me. ‘I told him about what happened, how we found the car and the bag, how it was full of money.’

  I put my head in my hands. And I think.

  ‘I told him there was only five hundred quid in the bag, though. I offered to cut him in on it, to make sure that he didn’t tell anyone else. But he wasn’t interested in the money.’

  I sit and stare into space, trying to work out what all this means. Does it mean that whoever had the bag got killed because of the bag? Did the man who died in the fire steal the bag from someone? Cos if he did, does that mean that someone’s looking for the bag right now? That they might kill me and Ash for it?

  And if we took it to the police, what would happen then? Would they even know that we spent some of the money? Would they know that we found it on Friday night and we’ve had it all that time cos we were gonna keep it? Would they care? I have no idea.

  All of a sudden, Ash gets up. He marches over to his wardrobe and gets some clothes out, starts pulling them on in a hurry. Some jeans, a T-shirt, a hoodie.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I say. ‘It’s a school day.’

  Ash stops, his foot still in mid-air as he pulls on a sock. ‘Fuck school,’ he says. ‘We’re not going today.’

  I just stare at him. I’ve never skived off school in my life. But right now, that’s the least of my worries.

  Ash pulls his other sock on, then grabs some trainers off the floor and pulls them on as well. ‘We’re gonna do something about this,’ he says. ‘We’re gonna sort this out once and for all. I’ll phone Rabbit.’

  I nod my head, even though my stomach feels like something’s got a tight hold on it, squeezing it.

  Ten minutes later we’re riding through the woods. Ash is on his new bike and I’m on one of his old ones. It’s started raining lightly. The sky above the treetops is slate grey.

  We cycle without a word, heading right through the woods, back to the Old House, to the bag. It’s only a few hours since we were here.

  There’s a problem with this, of course. My sister, Kate. She’s going to notice that I’m not at the bus stop. She’s hardly likely to keep quiet either. She won’t tell the teachers – she’s not that stupid. But she’ll drop it into conversation in front of Mum and Dad, you can bet. There’s nothing I can do about that right now, though.

  We stay well away from where we found the car last Friday, just in case the police are there, in case they’re investigating where the car crashed.

  By the time we get close to the Old House, it’s really starting to piss down with rain. We jump off the bikes and wheel them into the undergrowth, throw them to the ground and run towards the Old House. Ash leads the way, his hood pulled up over his head.

  He pulls the piece of boarding covering the door out of the way so we can get inside and then puts it back in its place behind us. He takes his hood down and sighs. He goes straight through to the room on the left, walks up to the chimney and pulls the bag down and out. A load of soot and dust comes with it and lands in the fireplace and on the floor. Ash carries the bag over to the table and puts it down. He opens it and checks the money is still there. Which it is. He looks up at me and nods. />
  ‘We should get rid of it,’ I say. ‘Once and for all.’

  Ash looks back at me. He doesn’t say anything right away, like he’s thinking about something. Eventually he nods his head and says, ‘Yeah. Maybe you’re right.’

  He opens the end pocket of the bag and takes a mobile out.

  ‘Whose mobile is that?’ I say.

  He shrugs. ‘It was in the bag when we found it,’ he says.

  I stare at the mobile. I think back to last Friday night. There definitely wasn’t a phone in the bag. Not that I saw.

  ‘It wasn’t,’ I say. ‘I’d remember.’

  Ash stares at the phone. ‘I found it in the end pocket of the bag the other day,’ he says.

  ‘And you didn’t tell me?’

  He shakes his head and shrugs. ‘Didn’t think it was important.’

  I snort with laughter. Not important! How dare he not tell me? We’re in this together.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says quietly. ‘I fucked up. Again.’

  ‘Too right,’ I say. ‘We could have traced who the bag belonged to using the phone. We could have taken it to the police. You dick.’

  He shakes his head. ‘It’s pay as you go. Can’t trace that.’

  I shake my head in disbelief.

  Ash doesn’t say anything or even look at me. He switches the phone on and stares at it. But as he’s doing it, there’s a noise from outside – branches breaking. Someone’s near. Ash chucks the phone back into the bag and stashes the bag under the table.

  ‘Get down, Joe,’ he says.

  So I do. He picks up a wooden chair and goes and stands near the doorway with it raised above his head. I keep down and watch him.

  And then there’s the sound of the panel covering the entrance to the Old House being shifted, and the whole place momentarily gets lighter.

  ‘Jesus!’ says a voice. Rabbit. ‘I’m soaked.’