Joe

My first reaction is to say, ‘Fuck you. I’m staying here.’ Cos I’m still pissed off about earlier, about the gun and about Rabbit knowing what happened on Friday night, about the mobile phone and the text message Ash didn’t show me. I don’t feel like seeing him or talking to him right now. I want him to know that I’m pissed off with him.

But I also want to know what’s happened to the bag. I have to know that it’s been taken, that it’s out of our hands. It’ll set my mind at rest. So I grab a jumper, go downstairs, out of the front door and get on my bike.

When I get to the end of the road, Ash is already there. He’s sitting on his bike, leaning back, his hood up over his head.

‘Hi, Joe,’ Ash says as I brake and stop just in front of him.

I make a point of not making eye contact, not answering. I just nod my head once.

We cycle in silence, turn left on to the main road and cycle out of town, take the turning down towards the common. The road is clear, which makes me feel better. At least whoever it was that Ash spoke to on the phone earlier isn’t sitting there waiting for us. We cycle along the road till we come to the entrance to the common. We get off our bikes and lean them up against the fence, look around us. Ash adjusts his hood and then we go in. We head straight off, round the gorse bushes, almost running.

I can see before we get to the pit that the bag isn’t there any more. The sheet of corrugated iron has gone and the pit’s empty. Ash walks up to it and peers down inside. I hang back, look around the common. There’s no one here. And now that we know the bag’s gone, I’d rather not be here.

Ash turns on his heels. ‘Well, that’s the end of that then,’ he says. He doesn’t sound happy about it. He sounds kind of angry.

I nod. ‘Yeah. Come on, let’s get out of here.’

‘Hang on a minute,’ he says. ‘Come and help me.’

He starts walking off round the pit, where the sheet of corrugated iron has been thrown. I follow him. We pick it up and take it to where it was before, to the patch of light-coloured, flattened grass. We put it down and then we get away from the common as quickly as we can.

When we’re back on the main road, cycling home, Ash takes his hood off and looks at me. For a second I think he’s gonna say something, like maybe, ‘Sorry about lying to you.’ But he doesn’t. He looks ahead again and keeps on going.

We get to the top of Ash’s road without exchanging a single word. We both stop. We sit on our bikes. A few moments pass without us looking at each other or even speaking. It feels sort of awkward. I look up at Ash. He’s kind of slumped over the handlebars of his bike, looking down at the tarmac. He looks totally pissed off. I feel like I should at least say something to fill the silence, if nothing else.

‘Do you think they’ll notice there’s stuff missing from the bag?’

Ash looks up all of a sudden. ‘What?’

I stare back at him. There’s a weird look on his face and I don’t know what it means. ‘The money,’ I say. ‘We spent some of it. Do you think they’ll notice?’

He keeps looking at me with that weird expression on his face. It’s like he’s accusing me of something. Then he looks away again, at someone’s front garden. He shakes his head. ‘Who cares?’ he says. ‘They don’t know who we are, so they can hardly come and ask for it back, can they? It’s over.’

I suppose he’s right. I hope so. I put my foot on the pedal and my hands on the handlebars and I go home.