Read Online Sing Like You Know the Words by martin sowery - Free Book Online Page B

us, and even if
they did, they couldn’t prosecute without evidence. And there is
none, provided we all stick to the same story.
    -The car is evidence.
    -Not if it’s burnt out and it’s
pointing the opposite way to the way we were going. That’s what
joyriders do with cars when they’re finished with them. They set
them alight.
    -You’ve got tears in your eyes
David. You’re upset or you wouldn’t be talking like this. If we set
the car on fire it’s another crime, and it’s dangerous. We’re not
the sort of people who do things like that.
    -Any sort of people can do any
sort of things, David snapped. It’s a question of deciding to do
them and it’s a question of will, but we have to decide together.
Me and you. Don’t worry about him. He’ll do whatever we tell him.
For you and me, it’s a simple choice: whether we want to wreck our
futures or live with one lie on our conscience.
    -I’m not a liar, David.
    -Nor am I, believe me. I’m
someone who is meant to make the world a better place. I have
things to do: important things. And I am not going to give them up
because of this stupidity. So this is what we are going to do.
We’re not so far from home, not much more than three miles. We can
easily walk it before light. There’s a smell of petrol around that
car already. It won’t need much to help it on its way. We just take
off the filler cap and light a rag soaked in petrol. It will go up
in seconds I suppose. There’s no-one around to see at this hour
unless we are really unlucky. No-one’s come past all the time we’ve
been here. After, we go home, we go to bed, and forget about it. If
anybody asks questions, we went to the party in Tim’s old Ford, and
anyone who remembers different is mistaken.
    -What if they don’t believe
us?
    -What matters, so long as we
stay calm, is what they can prove.
    -But David, we might have
injured someone. They could be lying out there somewhere.
    -Or they could be dead, in which
case we can´t help; or that person could be an animal, or might
only exist in your imagination, which is most likely. Or are you
telling me that you definitely saw someone?
    -I just don´t know.
    -I´m going back to the car.
    Ali Abbas was terrified that
David would set fire to himself, or that the car would explode, but
in the end, everything turned out exactly as David had said it
would, except that the walk back was more than three miles. Tim
revived a little as they walked, but a look from David told him to
keep quiet and after that he slouched along a little way behind the
other two.
    Ali Abbas was uncertain how he
would react if he was ever asked questions about that night.
Whether he would be able to maintain the lie, he didn’t know. But
he never needed to find out, because they heard no more about the
car or the accident. He supposed that the car had been reported as
just one more stolen vehicle, not interesting to anybody. He never
checked the newspapers or tried to find out if there had been a
person injured on the roads that night. He was fairly confident
that David didn’t search the news either.
    David never spoke to him about
that night; never contacted him at all. At first Ali Abbas was
resentful that his own complicity was taken so much for granted.
There should be some kind of meeting of conspirators, he thought.
But then, what would they have to say to each other?
    But for years afterwards he had
a dream in which some obscure and forgotten guilt was coming back
to him from an imaginary past. As the dream progressed the lies
unravelled and his part in whatever awful crime had been committed
came to light. He would wake up half believing that he really must
have done the evil thing that was being exposed in his dream and
that he had somehow made himself forget the awful things he had
done.
    It was a dream that never left
him entirely, even when it went away for months at a time. The
dream that took many forms but it always involved some hidden guilt
that was gradually