In the Bag (27 page)

Ash

We cycle along the main road without a single word or even a look at each other. What is there to say now?

We pass the wall where all the chavs usually hang out. Only they’re not there tonight. For a second, I wonder why not – they’re always there – but then I remember the party. It’ll still be going at Rabbit’s house. It’ll probably have gone crazy there by now. Everyone will have trashed the place. Not that it matters. Nothing does really. Only what’s about to happen.

We go straight over the mini roundabout, past the turning to the supermarket on the left and keep going out of town on the main road. A little way up the road we see the sign pointing off to the right: Fernside Industrial Estate. I stop by the side of the road and turn to look at Rabbit. He looks as nervous as I feel. He’s white as a sheet.

Without a word, we check the traffic and pedal across the road into the industrial estate. As soon as we’re in, we stop by a big brown sign that has all the units listed on it – unit number and name of the business. Next to number twelve there’s a blank space where the company name should be.

My brain kind of freezes. All I can think is that I don’t want to do this. I want to turn round before they even see me and cycle as far away from here as possible. I want to escape from everything. To start running and never stop.

But Joe’s with them and he’s been shot. I can’t leave him. I got him into this mess. If it wasn’t for me he’d be at Rabbit’s party right now, off his head on half a cider and a couple of tokes off a spliff. But he’s not.

I put my hood up as we start pedalling again along the empty road that runs through the industrial estate. All the units are shut up. There are street lamps on, bathing the pavement in a dim orange light. There’s no one around. I look at the numbers on the signs outside the units as we pass them. 2 . . . 4 . . . 6 . . . 8 . . . 10 . . . And then number 12.

Rabbit’s crappy car is parked on the forecourt outside the unit. As I cycle across the road towards it, I feel the gun in my pocket. It makes me feel weird, makes me realise how serious this situation is. But it’s reassuring that it’s there. Just in case.

I stare at Rabbit’s car as we approach it. The two guys are squashed up in the front seats like the car’s too small for them. They watch us as we get closer, their faces set in stony stares. I can’t see Joe, though, and it’s difficult to tell whether he’s in the back of the car or not cos the two guys are blocking my view.

I put my foot down on the ground to brake when I’m just a few metres away. A couple of seconds later, Rabbit pulls up alongside me. We let the bikes fall to the ground. And then we stand and stare at the guys in the car, who just stare straight back at us. You can tell from their eyes that they mean business. They’re cold and emotionless. But still, I stare back at them. I don’t back down and neither do they. Nobody gives an inch.

Inside the car, the bald guy says something and then both guys move to open their doors. They get out slowly, stretching, adjusting their belts, dusting the arms of their coats, like they’re stopping at a service station for a toilet break rather than holding a hostage. The bald guy coughs then spits on to the ground in front of him. I look at them both, at their hands, expecting to see a gun. But their hands are empty. Their guns must be hidden. In their waistbands, probably. I wonder if they know I’m armed. I put my hand in my pocket, feel the pistol, put my finger on the safety catch. I pause for a second, feel the catch between my fingers. For a second I think of flicking the safety off, but then the thought goes through my mind that the gun could go off as I walk and blow my leg off. I take my hand out of my pocket.

The bald guy steps towards Rabbit and me. He smiles. A false smile. ‘So, which one of you is Mr Lazy Eyes?’ he says. He laughs to himself.

I nod ever so slightly. I say nothing. I stare back at him, trying not to let on that I’m shitting myself here.

Slightly behind the bald guy, the other one just stands there. He folds his arms. The expression on his face is the kind that says he’d snap our limbs into tiny pieces in a second if we were to try anything.

‘You know, you’re lucky I’m a patient sort of man,’ the bald one says. ‘You’re lucky I haven’t killed you after the runaround you boys have given me.’

I still don’t say anything. I just breathe deeply. I shift my feet slightly and the gun rubs against my leg. I could pull it out right now and finish this in a second. Two shots. But I don’t move. I keep my hands by my sides, the rolled-up carrier bag full of torn-up paper and banknotes and weed in my left hand.

‘So,’ says the bald one, ‘is that my money or what?’ He isn’t smiling any more. He has the same deadly serious look on his face as the other guy.

I nod. ‘Yeah,’ I say. My voice chooses this precise moment to make me sound like I’m a thirteen-year-old with a breaking voice. I clear my throat. ‘What have you done with our friend?’

The bald one smiles again. ‘He’s safe.’

‘Where is he? I want to see him.’

The taller guy shakes his head. ‘Nah,’ he says. ‘You give us the money then you see your friend. Understand?’

I don’t answer. I turn and look at Rabbit. He stares back at me, frozen in fear. I look at the two guys again, trying to work out whether I believe them or not. Whether this is a trick. Whether they even still have Joe.

No one says anything for what feels like hours. The wind gusts across the industrial estate, blowing leaves and litter around. From the main road I hear a souped-up engine accelerate and then slow back down again with a roar and a splutter.

‘Right, stop fucking around. I want my money,’ the bald guy says. ‘Then we can all go home. Give it here.’

I shake my head. ‘Not till I see my friend is safe,’ I say. ‘I don’t believe you’ve got him.’

‘For fuck’s sake,’ the bald one says. ‘Who do you think you are? Some kind of gangster?’

He beckons for us to walk round to the back of the car. Me and Rabbit follow. The bald guy opens the boot slowly. It’s dark and I can’t see a thing in there to begin with. But as the dim orange light makes its way in, I see a body lying curled up, and I feel like vomiting. It’s Joe. For a second I think he’s dead, but then he tries to sit up. He looks out at us all. He looks awful. His face is pale and drained. And then I notice his foot. He’s wrapped it in a jumper, but the blood is soaking through it.

‘Fuck, Joe! Are you all right?’

He nods and grimaces. ‘Have you brought everything?’

‘Yeah,’ I say.

Joe looks at me with a confused expression. And I know what he must be thinking:
how have you got their money when we spent it?
But then he closes his eyes and grimaces again and his hand shoots down to his foot.

‘
Are you OK, Joe?’

He nods and opens his eyes again. He looks kind of vacant, as though he’s gonna lose consciousness. And I know that what he needs is a hospital. Fuck the rest of this. The most important thing is that he could bleed to death if he doesn’t go to a hospital soon.

I look at the bald guy, who’s still holding the boot open.

‘Can we get him out of there?’ I say.

The bald guy shakes his head. He pushes Joe back down and shuts the boot.

We walk round to the front of the car. And as we do, I put my hand in my pocket again. I put my hand on the gun and flick the safety catch. Off.

‘He needs to go to hospital,’ I say. ‘He’s gonna die if he doesn’t.’

‘Well then, maybe you should hurry up and give me my fucking money before it’s too late for your friend.’

I take a deep breath. It sounds stupid to even say it, but I suddenly realise that we’ve been so naive. All this time we’ve been trusting some gangsters who have already killed someone to give us back our friend, to let us go safely. And there’s no way that’s gonna happen, is there? They’ll kill us all. They know that if we take Joe to the hospital with a gunshot wound, the police will be on to them. They’re gonna make sure we don’t speak to anyone. They’re gonna stop us the only way they know. With a gunshot. The only way out of this situation is in a coffin. Full stop.

I turn and look at Rabbit for a fraction of a second. He still looks terrified, like he can’t deal with this.

The bald guy makes a movement, which I see out of the corner of my eye. I turn to see him pointing a gun at me.

‘Let’s stop playing now, kids,’ he says. ‘Give me my money and we can all be on our way. You can get your friend to a doctor, and I can get out of your lives for ever. No one else gets hurt.’

I nod my head. In my pocket I feel my phone start to vibrate. I try to ignore it, take a couple of deep breaths, take a second to think. I hold up the carrier bag for them to see.

The two gangsters follow it with their eyes. ‘Give it to me,’ the bald one says. He still has the gun pointed at my head. Only now his eyes are looking at the bag and not at me.

I toss the bag at them, throwing it high so they have to look up to follow it. And as they’re watching it fly through the air I pull the gun from my pocket and aim at the bald guy. Without stopping to think I pull the trigger.

BANG!

I judder backwards with the force of the shot. And I can’t believe what I’ve just done.

The bald guy collapses to the ground, a bullet hole ripped through his leg. The gun drops from his hand and clatters as it hits the ground. And in that same second – as he watches his partner collapse to the floor – the taller guy reacts and reaches for his own gun. I aim again and pull the trigger.

BANG!

The bullet hits him in the side, in the stomach. He falls to the ground next to the bald guy.

I stand and stare for a fraction of a second, not believing what I’ve just done, wishing I could suck the bullets back out of them. But then something in my head snaps me out of it. I run straight over to the two guys, kick their guns away from them, behind me, towards where Rabbit is. They fly across the concrete, making a metallic scraping noise.

I take a step back, keeping the gun aimed at them all the time. They lie there, slumped, bleeding. I concentrate on moving my gun through the air, pointing it at one of them and then the other. They stare straight back at me, their eyes cold, like they’re storing the image of my face away for future use.

‘Put the gun down, kid,’ the bald guy says in a croaky voice.

I sense something behind me. I turn my head. It’s Rabbit. He’s got his head in his hands. He looks like he’s ready to pull his hair out. ‘Fuck,’ he says, staring at the bodies on the ground. ‘What did you do that for? You shot them.’

I look back at the two of them, slumped against each other, leaking blood over the concrete forecourt.

‘Phone the police,’ I say to Rabbit.
‘
And an ambulance too. Do it now.’

Joe

As the boot slowly opens, I can’t bear to look. I close my eyes, say a prayer in my head that this will be quick, that I won’t feel anything.

Then I hear a voice. ‘Joe, come on, let’s get you out of there.’

I open my eyes and see Rabbit standing over the boot. A wave of utter relief washes over me. ‘You’re alive,’ I say.

Rabbit doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t smile or nod or anything. He just moves round to the side of the boot, grabs me under the arms and pulls me up. I scream as pain surges through my leg. Rabbit stops for a second and looks at me, still saying nothing, before he pulls me again. I grind my teeth, close my eyes as he drags me out. I try and put the weight on my good leg, put my foot down on the ground.

In a couple of seconds I’m out. Straight away I lie down on the concrete, eyes closed, biting my lip so I don’t scream. I wait a few seconds for the worst of the pain to pass. I sit up.

‘What happened?’ I say.
‘
Are you OK? I heard shots.’

Rabbit nods. He looks at my foot, at the jumper covering it. He undoes the knot and examines it. I look away. I don’t want to see what my foot looks like. It feels like it’s pretty messed up. ‘We’re OK,’ he says.

I look around. We’re on a forecourt in the industrial estate, by the look of it. It’s dark. There are street lamps on, casting a kind of dim glow around the place. And then I see Ash, standing a couple of metres from the car, pointing a gun at the two guys who were in the BMW. They’re both lying kind of slumped against each other and Rabbit’s car. There’s blood leaking from them both, forming into glossy pools on the concrete. One of them is saying something to Ash. I can’t hear what, but he looks angry and he keeps grimacing in pain.

Rabbit ties the jumper back around my foot and then stands up. He stares across at Ash, at the two guys, like he can’t believe it either. He looks scared.

‘What happened?’

Rabbit looks at me. His eyes look weird, like he’s not really there. He rubs his face with his hands and gets a smear of my blood on his forehead.
‘
Ash did it,’ he says. ‘He shot them.’ Rabbit shakes his head. He paces around for a few seconds. He looks like he doesn’t want to believe what’s happened. ‘Fuck, man. They pulled a gun. They were going to shoot us. He had to shoot them first.’

And we sit on the concrete in silence, in the orange light of the street lamps. The whole time, Rabbit doesn’t look up. I look at Ash pointing the gun at the two guys, ignoring what they’re saying. And I can’t work out whether I feel grateful that he shot the guys or not. Maybe he saved our lives, but maybe he just screwed the rest of our lives up. After a few seconds, though, I have to lie down again. I feel weird, like I’m gonna pass out or something.