In the Bag

by Jim Carrington

  ‘We can’t afford any mistakes,’ Rabbit says. ‘We have to do this right.’

  I nod. I feel panicked. How can we ever be sure that the gun is clean?

  Downstairs I hear a key in the front door. The door opens and then closes.

  We both freeze.

  ‘What’s that?’ Rabbit whispers.

  ‘Mum,’ I say. ‘She must be back from work.’

  Rabbit doesn’t say anything for a second. I can see him taking deep breaths, trying to compose himself. ‘Shit.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I say. ‘The bathroom door’s locked.’

  I go back to cleaning again. And then when I’m done, I look at Rabbit and say, ‘Do you want to have a go, make sure it’s clean?’

  Rabbit shakes his head. ‘No. Let’s just get rid of it.’

  ‘Yeah. Right.’

  ‘We need a plastic bag or something,’ Rabbit says, ‘to put all this stuff in.’

  ‘Wait here,’ I say. ‘I’ll go and get one.’

  Rabbit takes the gun from me. He holds it awkwardly, like it’s gonna go off or something. I take off the rubber gloves and leave them on the floor with the bleach and unlock the bathroom door. As soon as I’m outside I look up and see Mum’s just about to go into her bedroom. She turns and looks at me. Behind me, the lock clicks shut on the bathroom door. Mum’s brow kind of furrows, like she’s confused.

  I roll my eyes. ‘Rabbit,’ I say. I’m about to come up with some excuse, about why we were in the bathroom together, but something stops me.

  Mum nods. ‘Is he all right?’

  I nod. ‘Yeah, course.’

  Mum rolls her eyes, opens her bedroom door and goes inside.

  I rush along the landing, down the stairs and into the kitchen. Mum keeps plastic bags in one of those bag for life things, on a peg. I grab the first one that comes to hand. I screw it up into a little ball. And then I turn and run back up the stairs and knock on the bathroom door. ‘It’s me,’ I hiss.

  The lock clicks and the door opens a crack. Rabbit cranes his head out and looks around the landing. ‘Come in,’ he says.

  I go into the bathroom and pass the bag to Rabbit, who puts the gun, the cloth, the bleach and the rubber gloves straight into it.

  Then we leave the bathroom together. I look across at Mum’s door, kind of expecting it to open. But it doesn’t and me and Rabbit rush down the stairs, not daring to breathe the whole time.

  We go through the kitchen out into the back garden and I search around for something to dig with. There’s nothing on the patio, so I go across the lawn into the shed, grab a trowel and put it in my pocket.

  We go back through the house and out of the front door to get our bikes. Then we ride silently down my road, along the main road and into the woods.

  Once we’re in the woods we pedal for all we’re worth, going deeper and deeper into the forest. And all the time I’m completely on edge: sweaty palms, racing heart, eyes and ears on stalks.

  Eventually, when we’ve been cycling for about ten minutes, I put my feet down to stop myself. Rabbit does the same. We look around at the forest. We’re quite near this abandoned building in the woods that we used to call the Old House, where we used to play when we were younger. This would be a good place. You hardly ever see anyone round here; no dog walkers or runners. No one will find the gun here.

  I look over at Rabbit. ‘What about here?’

  He takes another look around us and then nods. ‘Yeah,’ he says.

  ‘Let’s walk into the trees a bit, though,’ I say, ‘away from the path.’

  We wheel our bikes over to the right, off the path and into the trees and the undergrowth. I let my bike fall among the ferns, so it’s hidden from view. Rabbit does the same. We start walking, dodging in and out of the trees, walking deeper and deeper into the wood, having to pick our way through brambles, bushes, long grass, ferns and fallen branches.

  After a bit, it feels like we’re far enough in, further than anyone else would ever think to walk. So I stop. And I notice something on a tree. My tag. Layzee Eyez. I did it years ago, when we used to spend all our time in the Old House. I scratched it into the tree with a penknife. It looks pretty crap. Carving things into tree trunks isn’t easy.

  I turn to Rabbit. ‘How about here?’

  He nods.

  I bend down and start getting rid of the weeds and ferns and stuff, so that there’s a patch of earth to dig in. When there’s a clear patch of earth, I plunge the trowel into the soil. It sinks in fairly easily. It’s easy to dig and soon the hole’s twenty or thirty centimetres deep and there’s a growing pile of soil beside it. I stop and look up at Rabbit. He’s holding the bag in his hand, staring down at me and the hole.

  ‘How deep do you think we should make it?’

  Rabbit looks at the hole and then at the bag, his face twisted into a look of concentration. ‘Deeper,’ he says. ‘We need to make sure no one ever digs it up.’

  So I carry on digging. And as I dig deeper, the soil gets harder to dig, especially since I’m using a stupid little hand trowel. I mean, you don’t ever see this in the movies, do you? When someone in a film buries something, they always have a big spade, and even though it’s always at night, they have the headlights of a truck or a car lighting everything up. The deeper I dig, the heavier the soil is; pale coloured and sticky, like clay. It’s a bugger to move with the hand trowel. By the time the hole’s about half a metre deep, I stop.

  ‘Deep enough now?’

  Rabbit nods, staring into the hole, a serious look on his face. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Move out the way.’

  I stand up and take a step back as Rabbit steps forward. He stands over the hole, takes a glove out of the bag and pulls it on, takes the gun out of the bag and lays it in the bottom of the hole.

  He takes the glove off and puts it in the plastic bag. ‘Pass me the trowel,’ he says.

  I pass him the trowel and he starts filling the hole back in with the soil.

  Joe

  As soon as I get back to the house, I switch the TV on and then go through to the kitchen and grab some biscuits. I take them back to the lounge. The TV is already on the news channel, showing the press conference about the fire in the flats and the dead body. I sit on the sofa and turn the volume up.

  There’s a couple of policemen in uniform sitting behind a desk and a man in a suit next to them. Across the bottom of the screen, there’s a little ticker thing, saying, DORSET POLICE REVEAL THAT BODY FOUND IN FLAT IS THAT OF A 35-YEAR-OLD MALE WHO WAS WANTED FOR MURDER. POST-MORTEM CONFIRMS THAT VICTIM DIED OF A SINGLE GUNSHOT WOUND.

  I shiver. It’s horrible to think that happened half a mile down the road.

  The news cuts from the press conference back to the studio. I put a biscuit in my mouth and start looking through the channels for something else to watch.

  Ash

  Me and Rabbit cycle back out of the forest and on to the main road. I feel very weird. I felt on edge when we cycled into the forest and when we were burying the gun, but now I just feel empty, vacant, as though the rest of the world is happening around me and I can’t quite get a grip on it. As though I’m standing in the middle of the road as the traffic zooms past me on both sides. And I don’t like it one bit.

  I let Rabbit lead the way, along the pavement towards town. We’re gonna get rid of the bleach and the cloth and the rubber gloves, put them in a bin somewhere, so they get taken away by the bin men. And then that’s it. Nothing left to incriminate us. Well, except the money and the drugs and the holdall. But they’re easier to get rid of than a gun.

  We go right past the turning to my house and then on into town, past the police station and the fire station. We slow as we pass by the new flats on the other side of the road. They’re still taped off, still a couple of police on guard there. They stare at me and Rabbit as we cycle along the path. I look away from them, at the pavement in front of me. I feel as though they can tell what we’ve been up to, like they can read our mind
s. There aren’t many reporters out there, though. Just a couple standing around looking bored, waiting for something to happen. Someone should tell them that you can wait a long time in Fayrewood for anything to happen. Well, normally, anyway.

  We keep cycling, till the police and the flats and the reporters are well behind us and out of sight, and I feel a little better. I’ll feel better still when we’ve got rid of the stuff.

  We cycle past the rec, left at the mini roundabout, down to the supermarket. Rabbit turns to me as he’s cycling, points off to the side of the supermarket, where there’s a little covered walkway and a precinct of shops. We head straight towards it.

  We lean our bikes against the newsagent’s window and look around, check no one’s watching. There are loads of people about, but they’re all too busy pushing trolleys and loading up their cars to look at us. I check there are no CCTV cameras, either. There aren’t. So we walk along the precinct, right to the end and off to the right, behind the shops. There are five big industrial bins there.

  ‘Open it up for me,’ Rabbit says, standing at the nearest bin.

  I reach across and pull open the enormous lid of the bin. And immediately a rancid kind of smell hits me. I hold the bin open with one hand and use the other to cover my nose. Rabbit checks again that no one’s watching. Then he peeks into the bin, moves a few things around and drops the bag with the cloth, the bleach and the gloves in. He covers it over with a couple of bin bags and a box and then steps back. I let the lid fall. It closes with a thunk. And then we get out of there as quick as we can, round the corner and back to our bikes.

  We stop again when we get as far as the rec, where we go over to a bench. Rabbit sits down on the bench without saying a word and stares into space.

  ‘You all right?’

  He nods. ‘Yeah.’

  But I don’t think he is. He probably feels like I do: dirty, guilty.

  ‘Neither of us ever tells anyone what happened today. Understand?’ he says. ‘Not even Joe.’

  I nod. ‘Definitely.’

  We sit in silence for a while. I take out a cigarette and light it, smoke it to the filter and then throw it to the ground.

  ‘What are you gonna do with the rest of the stuff?’ Rabbit says eventually.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Just keep it, I guess.’

  ‘Maybe you should hide it somewhere,’ he says. ‘Get it out of your house in case anyone finds it.’

  I don’t answer right away. Cos he’s probably right. I can’t just go on hiding the money in my room. Imagine if Mum found it. But at the same time, I don’t want to let go of it. Twenty grand. Well, seventeen and a bit grand now. Where do you hide something like that?

  ‘I’ll talk to Joe,’ I say.

  TUESDAY

  Ash

  I get up before my alarm goes off. Which is not like me at all. And the first thing I think about is the bag. I guess that shouldn’t be such a surprise, seeing as it’s on my mind most of the time. I go over to my wardrobe and pull it down. I open the main part of the bag and take the clothes out. A navy blue sweatshirt, some jeans and a white T-shirt. They all smell of some horrible aftershave. I look at the labels in them. The T-shirt and the sweatshirt are both large and the jeans are a 36 inch waist. Whoever they belong to is much bigger than me.

  I put the clothes to one side and look at the money. I shake my head, like I still can’t quite believe that we found it. I think about the envelope full of money that I posted yesterday and I wonder where it is right now. And then, with a jolt, I think about the gun and I feel sick and nervous.

  I shove the clothes back into the bag and zip it back up. And I turn the bag round, open the end pocket. I take the phone out. And without even thinking about what I’m doing, I switch it on. It takes a while to come on, but as soon as it does, it makes a noise. There’s a message. I freeze. For a second I think about switching the phone off and putting it straight back in the bag. But I know I’m not gonna do that. I’d just spend all my time wondering what was in the message.

  So I open it.

  What have you done with my money? I will find you.

  I stare at it for ages, read it over and over again, look at when it was sent, look at the number that sent it. And I start to panic. What if whoever sent this message knows who I am? They could be waiting for me when I step out of the door.

  I try to compose myself, remind myself that nobody knows this bag is here. Just me, Joe and Rabbit. And neither of them would tell anyone else about it. There’s no way that anyone can know we have the money. No way. Cos if they’d been in the woods on Friday night, they’d have taken the money for themselves. And that’s the only time the bag’s been outside. Whoever sent the message doesn’t know who has the bag, otherwise they’d have it back by now. They’re just trying to scare me.

  I switch the phone off, put it in the bag and then put the bag on the wardrobe shelf. I go back to my bed and lie down, stare at the ceiling. I definitely have to talk to Joe today. I want to get the bag out of my house.

  Joe

  Me and Ash have been friends for ever. We met at playgroup (though obviously I can’t really remember much about that) and then we were at the same first school and middle school. Now we’re at the same high school. Except, I guess, soon we won’t be at high school any more. I know where I’ll be next year: back here in the sixth form, doing my A levels. I don’t know what Ash is gonna do. He says he doesn’t want to be at school any more. He hates teachers and being told what to do. To be honest, so do I. Doesn’t everyone? But it’s something you have to do if you want to get a degree, get a decent job and all that stuff. And I want to do that.

  But I’m getting away from the point. The point is that me and Ash have always been close. When we were little, we were inseparable. We hung around together in school, swapped stickers and football cards and all that. And then as soon as school was over, we’d go round to each other’s houses to play. It helped that we live so close to each other, but I’m sure we’d have been good friends anyway. We just got on well, without having to try.

  When we were in Year Eight, a new kid started at our school. Kurt. His parents had moved to Fayrewood from London. God knows why you’d want to move to Fayrewood from London, but there you go. Anyway, when he started school, everyone thought he was just about the coolest person they’d ever met. He had everything that people wanted. He always had the best trainers, new football shirts, loads of sweets and he had a cool haircut. And he just happened to be the best footballer in our year at school as well. All that stuff sounds so crap now, but back then it meant everything.

  It didn’t take long for him to figure everyone out, to work out who else was cool and who wasn’t. And straight away it was obvious that he wanted Ash to be his best friend. So the three of us hung out together for a little bit, maybe a week. But like everyone knows, two’s company and three’s a crowd. And as far as Kurt was concerned, I was the one who was making things crowded. So he started treating me like a joke. And me being me, I didn’t stand up to him, I just let him go right on ahead and make me feel like shit.

  It was just little things, like Ash and Kurt would sit next to each other in class so I was on my own. And they’d have all these in-jokes that I was never in on. Which hurt, because it used to be Ash and me that had those in-jokes.

  It sounds weird – it sounds kind of gay (which it isn’t) – but I was lost without Ash. I had no one to back me up. I hated it.

  But as much as I tried to keep my head down and ignore it, I couldn’t. And one day, it came to a head. It was during a PE lesson. A football lesson. Our teacher, Mr Watson, picked two teams, gave us a ball and left us to it. I was on one side, Ash and Kurt were on the other.

  Their side scored first. Kurt tackled someone – I can’t remember who – on the edge of his own area, and then set off on a run. He went past loads of players. He was really showing off, like he always did. On the edge of our box he passed it to Ash, who looked up and passed it
first touch back into Kurt’s path. Kurt walloped it and scored. 1–0.

  After that, their side scored another one. I think it was Mark W, who played for the school team. And we thought we were in for a real hiding. As the game went on, they went close a couple of times, but they didn’t score again. And my team started to get back into it.

  I was playing on the wing. And the ball came out to me. I went tearing up the wing, went past a few players and then cut inside, into the box. And Kurt was in front of me, watching the ball, waiting for the right time to tackle me. I tried a couple of tricks, trying to make him commit himself. But he just watched the ball. Finally, I decided to play the ball past him and run. As I ran, after the ball had gone, Kurt stuck out his leg and brought me down. A clear-cut penalty.

  ‘Bollocks!’ Kurt said. ‘He dived.’

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to get into an argument with him. I knew I wouldn’t win that. But the rest of my team did argue the point. And even though Kurt kept insisting that I’d dived or fallen over, we claimed a penalty.

  Robbie stepped up and smashed it into the back of the net. And we were back to 2–1. As we celebrated, I caught a glimpse of Kurt looking at me, giving me evils.

  For the rest of the game, any time I got the ball, Kurt would be there, trying to hack at my legs. It kind of got to the point where I didn’t even want the ball to come to me.

  But just as the lesson was about to finish, I couldn’t avoid it. The ball dropped at my feet in the opposition team’s penalty area and I suddenly found myself one on one with the goalie. I can remember how fast my heart started to beat. I had the chance to level the game. I tried a stepover and sent the keeper the wrong way. Suddenly I had an open goal. All I had to do was roll the ball over the line. I swung my leg and kicked the ball. The ball hit the post and bounced back out. The keeper dived on the ball. And that was that. I’d missed an open goal.