In the Bag

by Jim Carrington

  ‘Where’s Joe?’

  There’s no answer right away, just more background noise. Car doors shutting, mumbled voices, a moan. ‘He’s right here,’ the voice says.

  ‘What have you done with him?’

  There’s more noise in the background, another moan. It sounds like Joe, like he’s in pain or something. I look across the room at Rabbit. He’s just staring back at me.

  ‘Now it’s time for you to listen to me,’ the voice says. ‘It’s time to stop fucking about. Time to stop playing your stupid little games. Someone’s already been hurt. And if I don’t get the rest of my money and my skunk back soon, someone might just die. Do you understand?’

  I take a deep breath. ‘What do you mean, someone’s already been hurt?’

  ‘Your friend. Joe.’

  ‘What have you done to him? Is he all right?’

  ‘He’s alive. He’ll survive. As long as I get what’s mine.’

  ‘Let me speak to him,’ I say. ‘Please.’

  There’s just background noise at the other end of the phone again. Two muffled voices, not Joe’s, though. The gruff voice comes back on. ‘All right,’ he says. ‘You got ten seconds.’

  More background noise.

  ‘Ash?’ says Joe. He sounds distant. Terrified. Like he’s crying.

  ‘Joe,’ I say, ‘are you all right? What have they done to you?’

  Joe doesn’t answer right away. He breathes shallow breaths, like he’s in pain. ‘They shot me.’

  ‘What? They shot you? Where?’

  ‘My foot,’ he says. ‘Listen, Ash. Do what they say, please. Whatever they say –’

  And then there’s a clunk and Joe’s voice is gone.

  ‘Joe?’

  ‘You’ve had your chance to listen to your boyfriend,’ says the voice. ‘Now it’s time for you to listen to me. If you want to see him again, you better do exactly what I say.’

  ‘OK. What do you want us to do?’

  Rabbit sits down on a box, still staring at me. He cups his face in his hands.

  ‘First thing, kid,’ the voice says. ‘No cops. If you even think about calling the cops, your friend, little Joe, dies. Do you understand me?’

  ‘OK. No police.’

  ‘Good. Now, when you gave me my bag back, there was nearly three grand and a big bag of skunk missing. I want them back.’

  ‘Right,’ I say. ‘Where d’you want us to bring it?’

  There’s no answer. I can’t hear anything at the other end. Not even Joe moaning. The guy must have his hand over the phone or something. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘I’ll give you half an hour to go and find the rest of my money. And then you deliver it to me at nine thirty p.m. There’s an industrial estate in Fayrewood. I want you to go right to the end of it. There’s an empty unit. Number twelve. I’ll be parked outside it in your friend’s shitty brown car. You bring the money in a shopping bag and I’ll give you your friend back.’

  ‘OK. We’ll be there.’

  ‘You better be,’ the voice says. ‘And you better have every penny of my money. Your friend’s life depends on it.’

  And then the phone goes dead.

  I put my phone back in my pocket. Rabbit stares at me, waiting for me to say something. How do I tell him what I’ve just heard?

  ‘What is it? Is Joe all right?’

  ‘No, they’ve got him. He’s shot.’

  Rabbit looks at me, wordless, shocked. He runs his hand through his hair. ‘Let’s call the police.’ He takes his phone back out of his pocket.

  I shake my head. ‘Put your phone away,’ I say. ‘They said they’d kill him if we call the cops.’

  Rabbit slowly puts his phone in his pocket. ‘What do we do, then?’

  I shrug. I feel useless. I feel like crying. ‘They want the money. All of it.’

  ‘We gave them the money already, though,’ Rabbit says. ‘Didn’t we?’

  I shake my head. ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘What the fuck?’

  I take a deep breath. ‘Me and Joe spent some of it,’ I say.

  Rabbit kind of stamps his foot and turns round on the spot, like he can’t even look at me. After a second he turns back. ‘How much?’

  ‘Nearly a grand,’ I say. ‘Plus the money I gave my mum.’

  ‘But . . . you said there was five hundred in the bag?’

  ‘I lied.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Rabbit says. ‘I don’t believe this. So how short are we?’

  I shrug. ‘Nearly three grand.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake. What do we do?’

  I shake my head, say nothing and think. ‘We’ll have to bluff them,’ I say. ‘Get together what we can and meet them. We’ll take the gun, just in case. What else can we do?’

  Rabbit doesn’t answer. He just stands there, terrified, and nods his head.

  Joe

  The taller guy gets out of the passenger seat. He leans in and pulls it forward. ‘Get out,’ he says to me.

  I look at him, trying to see if he’s serious. My foot’s pretty much hanging off – how the fuck am I meant to get out of the car? But he just looks back at me. He’s expressionless, emotionless, as though he’s doing something mundane like waiting for the kettle to boil, rather than kidnapping someone with a gunshot wound.

  I swing my legs forward, so my feet are hanging out of the car door. I grab hold of the door frame and the seat, pull my weight forward and then put my left foot – my good foot – on the ground. As soon as I do, pain shoots from my right foot up through my leg. I wince and nearly lose my balance.

  ‘I’ll tell you what, son,’ the bald guy says, getting out of the driver’s seat. ‘I hope you didn’t get any blood on your mate’s car seats.’

  The tall one laughs. ‘Yeah. Take it from me, son, blood’s a bastard of a stain to get out!’

  They both laugh while I stand there in agony, wishing I could die right now so I don’t have to be here any more. What are they going to do to me? The shorter guy goes round to the boot and opens it.

  ‘Get in here,’ he says to me.

  I don’t move immediately. I keep hoping this is some kind of joke, that in a second they’ll crack into a big smile and everything will be all right.

  ‘Get a move on,’ the bald guy barks at me.

  I hold on to the car and hop round to the boot. With each hop and each landing, my right leg cries out in pain. I grit my teeth so tightly that I’m sure I can taste blood in my mouth. But I make it round to the back of the car. I can feel my right foot pulsing in pain. I close my eyes and bite my lip for a second. Then I look in the boot. It’s tiny. And filthy. They can’t really want me to get in there. I look at them.

  ‘Please,’ I say, and my voice shakes like I’m gonna cry, ‘don’t do this. There must be another way to do this.’

  The bald guy shakes his head. He holds his gun up so I can see it. ‘The only other way to end this is with one of these,’ he says. ‘The choice is yours.’

  Then they both stare impatiently at me. I close my eyes and feel like crying. I wonder if I’m the first person they’ve ever put in a boot, even though I’m sure I already know the answer. And I wonder what happened to the others who they put in the boots of cars. I’m guessing that they’re not around to tell the tale.

  The taller guy puts his hands on my shoulders and half lifts, half shoves me over into the boot. I land on my shoulder. The two of them pick up my legs and push them into the car, almost fold me into the space. The boot slams shut.

  It’s pitch black and it smells kind of mouldy. My legs and arms are all squashed up. I try not to think about what this is doing to my foot. Outside, I hear muffled voices and then footsteps on the gravel as they walk to the front of the car. The suspension makes the car wobble as they get in and slam their doors shut. The engine starts with a whine and a splutter. A second later, the car lurches forward and I get thrown against the back of the boot. My foot smacks against the inside of the boot, sending another wave of excruciating pain
through my body.

  I feel sick. I think it’s the pain that’s doing it. Or maybe it’s cos I must be losing blood. I mean, my trainer feels absolutely soaked through. I wonder how long it will take before I just bleed to death if I don’t get to a hospital. And I start to panic. I think back to the first aid we did back when I was in the Scouts. They said you have to put pressure on a wound to try and stop it from bleeding, to slow it down. I guess my trainer is kind of doing that already, though it’s already saturated with blood. I rack my brains for something else that I can use. My hoodie. It was my favourite, but that hardly matters now. It’s gonna get covered in blood, but it might save my life. For a bit, anyway. Until Ash and Rabbit turn up without the money and the two guys kill us all for wasting their time.

  I struggle to get my hoodie off. It’s not easy cramped up in the boot of a car. I have to bend my arms into all kinds of painful positions behind my head. But eventually I manage. And then I reach right down to my foot. I put the body of the hoodie underneath and wrap the sleeves round and round, pulling it as tight as I can. And when I’ve done that, I tie the sleeves in a double knot on the top of my foot. Straight away it feels better, like I still have a foot. I could be just imagining it, being hopeful, but I’m sure it feels like it’s bleeding less.

  I should try and think about something else apart from the pain. That way I might be able to fool my body that this isn’t happening, that there is no pain. I think about how I could get out of this situation. If there is a way out. The two guys took my phone and didn’t give it back. They’re not stupid. Anyway, even if I did have my phone, I wouldn’t know where they’re taking me. Which makes me think. If I concentrate on the movement of the car, I might be able to work out where the car is taking me. Right now we’re still in the forest, I’m sure of it. It feels bumpy. And the wheels sound like they’re crushing stones underneath them. Every now and then the car turns right or left and I try and picture where we are. After a couple of minutes, it stops. Just for a second or two. When it starts moving again, it wheel-spins and turns sharply to the left. I get thrown around the boot again and knock my foot. I wince.

  But instead of focussing on the pain, I focus on the movement of the car. The engine of Rabbit’s car whines as it accelerates, but the ride is much smoother now. We must be on tarmac. On the main road, I reckon. We must be on our way to the industrial estate, like the bald guy told Ash.

  I wonder what’ll be waiting for us there. Whether Ash and Rabbit have phoned the police. They could be there right now, waiting to ambush us. I kind of hope they are. It’s got to be the best chance we have. The police’ll know what to do in a situation like this. Whereas me and Ash and Rabbit . . . well, we’re just kids. We’re rabbits in the headlights. We can’t handle this. We’ll get ourselves killed.

  And I start thinking about what they said, about the missing money – three grand. I start to work it out in my head, how much I spent and how much Ash spent. And at the absolute most, I reckon it works out at five or six hundred pounds. And I don’t know what to think. Are they trying to get more money out of us? Cos if they are, none of us are gonna have that sort of money lying around. Or maybe there’s something that Ash hasn’t told me. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  I feel the car go round a bend in the road. Another surge of pain in my foot as it gets bashed against the inside of the boot. I try and imagine where we are. Maybe the bend in the road near the petrol station, going out of town. Or maybe the mini roundabout. It’s hard to tell. I’ve completely lost my bearings. It’s hard to concentrate on anything when your foot feels the way mine does.

  I start thinking again, to keep my mind from the pain. And I wonder what would happen if Rabbit and Ash called the police – whether we’d get into trouble for what we’ve done. We did some stuff we shouldn’t have, sure. Illegal stuff. But nothing that bad, really. It’s not like we killed anyone. All we did was find a bag and make some bad decisions. Everything the two guys have done surely outweighs all the bad stuff we’ve done. They take that sort of thing into account when they decide whether to press charges against you. Or at least, they do on TV.

  But the more I think about it, the more I think that Ash wouldn’t call the police. Calling the police, asking for help isn’t the kind of thing he does. Even in a situation like this. A situation where we might all die.

  The car goes round another bend. I manage to brace myself just in time to stop myself from getting thrown against the side of the boot. That one must be the mini roundabout. Which means that we’ll be at the industrial estate any minute now. There’s a knot in my stomach. I feel like I might throw up. Is this how everyone feels before they die? I thought you were supposed to see angels, or find the answers to all life’s questions, or something. But not me. I just feel like curling up in a ball and crying. I want my mum and dad. Even my sister.

  I start to think about what they’ll think when they find out what happened, the secrets that I’ve kept from them. They’ll be disappointed in me. And they are gonna find out now, aren’t they? One way or another. Everything’s gonna come out now. There’s no way I can hide this – the fact that I have a bullet hole in my foot – if I even get out alive.

  The car turns another corner. Another jolt of pain sears through my foot, my leg. And then another turn almost straight after. And another. The car reverses, turns again. And then it stops and the engine is switched off. And then nothing. The car just sits there.

  Ash

  We come out the other side of the woods and on to the main road. A car goes past with its lights on as me and Rabbit run along the side of the road.

  ‘I need to stop at my place,’ I say to Rabbit. ‘I should be able to find most of the money and I’ve still got a lot of the skunk.’

  ‘All right,’ he says. He looks at his watch. ‘We have to be quick, though. We don’t have much time.’

  A minute later and we’re outside my house. There’s no car in the drive. The curtains are all drawn and through them I can see the glow of the downstairs lights.

  I turn to Rabbit. ‘Wait out here,’ I say. ‘Won’t be a minute.’

  I take a deep breath, step up to the front door and unlock it. As soon as I get inside, I walk straight through to the kitchen to the bag for life where Mum keeps all the carrier bags. I grab one and turn, and suddenly Dad’s there in front of me, coming through from the lounge, gripping a half-full tumbler of whisky. The side of his face is red and scratched.

  ‘Ashley,’ he says. He sounds surprised.

  ‘I haven’t got time,’ I say. ‘Where’s Mum?’

  Dad shrugs. He’s pissed. ‘I was gonna ask you the same question.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know where she is,’ Dad says. ‘Crazy bitch hit me, packed a bag and then took off with my bloody car. She’s not answering her phone.’

  I stand there for a second and stare at him. Fuck.

  ‘I need to talk to her, Ashley,’ Dad says. ‘Why don’t you call her on your phone? She’d answer your call.’

  I shake my head, barge past him and run upstairs.

  ‘Ashley, come down here this instant!’ Dad shouts.

  I ignore him and go into his and Mum’s room. I stand and stare for a second. It’s a mess in here. Mum’s clothes are all over the floor. I try and work out where she would have put the money I sent her. She would have hidden it somewhere, I’m sure. I go over to the chest of drawers near the window. Most of the drawers are already open. I search through them, but there’s nothing there, just Mum’s clothes. So I go over to her bedside table and rummage around. Still nothing. I try the built-in wardrobe, look among the shoe boxes stacked at the bottom.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Dad says.

  I get up and turn round. ‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘Leave me alone.’

  Dad stands there, staring at me. ‘Get out of my wardrobe!’ he says.

  I sigh. ‘Have you seen an envelope?’

  ‘An envelope?’

  I n
od. ‘Yeah. Mum got it in the post the other day.’

  Dad shrugs. ‘What kind of envelope?’

  ‘Forget it,’ I say. I’m not gonna find the money now. I don’t have time to search everywhere. Maybe Mum’s taken it with her anyway.

  Dad moves unsteadily out of my way as I leave his and Mum’s room. I hear him follow me out along the landing. I go into my room and slam the door closed. I swing a kick at my drum stool. It falls over, smacks into the bass drum. For a split second I look at the snare drum, sizing it up for a kick as well. But I manage to stop myself. I don’t have time to waste.

  I go over to my desk and grab an A4 pad of paper, tear it into quarters and then stuff it into the carrier bag. When I’m done, I open the drawer of my bedside cabinet and take out the money that I kept aside. Four hundred pounds in fifties, twenties and tens. I pile it on top of the ripped-up notepad paper. I frown. It’s not gonna fool them. Not for long anyway. But maybe it’ll buy us some time. Maybe.

  I grab the rest of the skunk and put it in the carrier bag. Then I roll up the bag so it’s just like a small package, hide it in my hoodie and go back out of my door, along the landing and on to the stairs. And below me on the stairs is Dad. He’s looking straight at me. I stop where I am.

  ‘Come downstairs and talk to me,’ Dad says. ‘At least let me explain, Ashley.’

  I shake my head. ‘I’m going out,’ I say. And I start walking down the stairs again.

  Dad moves into the centre of the stairs, blocking my way. ‘Ashley, please,’ he says. ‘This is more important than going out with your mates. This is your family.’

  I snort with laughter. ‘Like you’d know about family,’ I say. ‘Like you give a shit. Get out of my way.’

  I step down. Dad still doesn’t budge. He spreads his arms across from the banisters to the wall. I try and stay calm.

  ‘Ashley?’

  I look down at the stairs for a second, then close my eyes and take a deep breath. But it doesn’t help. Instead, anger surges through my body into my chest and then my throat. And before I can think about what I’m doing, I push Dad in the chest. He falls down the stairs – four or five of them – and lands at the bottom in a heap, still clutching his glass, his face wet with spilled whisky and blood from the scratch on his face.