In the Bag by Jim Carrington Read Free Book Online Page B

either.’
    Joe turns back to me again. ‘You know what I mean,’ he says. ‘Look, we both know that this money isn’t just someone’s life savings that they lost by accident. No normal person carries that much cash and a big bag of weed on them, do they? It must have belonged to someone dodgy.’
    ‘Right. So?’
    Joe sighs. ‘I can’t explain . . .’ he says. ‘We got lucky when we found it, but maybe we should use it to do some good instead, not just spend it all on ourselves. Do you see what I mean?’
    I nod slowly. I think I see what he’s getting at. Although, to be honest, I’d rather spend the money on myself.
    ‘You know what karma is, don’t you?’ Joe says.
    I nod. ‘Yeah, I think so.’
    ‘If something good happens to you, you should go and do something good in return. And if you do that, more good things will happen. But if you do something bad, then bad things will happen to you.’
    I nod. But I don’t believe in it. ‘We’re already doing more good with it than whoever had it in the first place,’ I say. ‘It’s not like we’re gonna use it to fund a criminal empire or anything. We’re not gonna do bad things with the money.’
    Joe looks at me, his right eyebrow raised. ‘Don’t you see what I’m saying?’
    I sigh. ‘You want us to give the money to charity or something,’ I say.
    Joe shrugs. ‘Not necessarily,’ he says. ‘But I think we should think carefully about what we use it for. We shouldn’t just use it to buy loads of stuff we don’t need.’
    I nod. ‘OK,’ I say. Even though I fully intend to spend the money on things I don’t need.
    The football from the kids’ game rolls over towards us. Joe jumps down from the bench, runs over to the ball and kicks it back over to the kids. Except instead of going straight to them, it curls over to the right, so they end up having to chase after it. He comes and sits back down.
    ‘What you doing tonight, J?’ I say.
    Joe’s shoulders kind of droop. ‘Family meal,’ he says.
    ‘Why don’t you come over to mine, then?’ I say. ‘My parents are gonna be away all night. I’m gonna invite Rabbit and Dylan too.’
    Joe sighs. ‘Can’t,’ he says. ‘Mum says I have to look after my dumb cousins.’
    ‘Bring them round.’
    He shakes his head. ‘Nah,’ he says. ‘You’d understand if you’d ever met my cousins.’
     
    We go home the back way. Mainly cos I wanna check out the place where the car was last night. Joe took a little bit of persuading, but now we’re on our way through the woods. Because it’s Saturday afternoon, there are loads of people out for a stroll or walking their dogs. And it makes me think: if we hadn’t picked the bag up yesterday, there’s no doubt that someone else would have found it by now. And the chances are that they’d have kept the money for themselves, just like me and Joe.
    We see the car up ahead, the silver Vauxhall Astra. Only we also see something we weren’t banking on. There’s a policeman there as well. We keep on cycling, trying not to stare too hard. We don’t look at each other, don’t say a thing to each other, just keep riding innocently as though we just happened to be cycling through that way.
    It’s not until the crashed car and the policeman are out of sight behind us that we finally speak.
    ‘What were the police doing there?’ Joe says.
    ‘Dunno,’ I say. ‘Probably just checking out the car crash, I guess.’
    ‘I s’pose,’ Joe says. He doesn’t sound too convinced, though.
    ‘Probably just putting one of those Police Aware stickers on it.’
    Joe nods. We cycle on for a bit, neither of us saying anything. We come out of the woods and out on to the main road.
    ‘You don’t think it had anything to do with the bag, do you?’ Joe says after a while. He sounds kind of anxious.
    I shake my head. ‘Nah. Relax, Joe. Probably some old codger was taking his dog for a walk and found the car, called the cops and then they had to come and take