Joe grinned. ‘S’good to have you back, mate.’ He paused and grimaced, as though making a difficult decision. ‘Tell you what, I’ll see Bob when he’s next on. He doesn’t like to work long hours, and, if you made it worth his while, he might be up for some extra cash.’
7
On Monday, Nick turned in at the cab office just before three, hungover. He had been drinking with Joe for the second night running. After all those years off the booze, Nick wasn’t used to it. His brother had been at the office since nine, and showed no sign of wear. He was chatting to the daytime switch operator, Nasreen, a Pakistani in her early twenties.
‘Nas, this is my brother, Nick,’ Joe said. ‘He might be doing a little work here on the q.t.’
‘Like that guy who . . .?’
‘Right.’ Joe didn’t let her finish. ‘No questions asked, but I want you to look after him.’
‘My pleasure,’ Nas said, flashing Nick a flirtatious smile.
Nick gave her a sheepish grin. He wasn’t used to Asian women coming on to him so unabashedly, but maybe there had been some rapid changes in their sexual mores while he’d been away. Nas wore western clothes that showed off her figure: well-cut jeans and a sweater tight enough for him to imagine the contours of her small breasts. She was Nick’s type. Except for the wedding ring. Nas might flirt like a western woman, but Asian women didn’t play away.
Nas answered the phone and Joe called Nick over to him.
‘Bob’s not been in yet.’
Nick picked up that day’s evening paper and turned to the story of some guy who’d got out on appeal after being cleared of a double murder. Then Bob arrived. He had a big paunch and facial hair sprouting in every direction. A clump here, a twisty bit there, a moustache that extended over his lips and began to curl upwards, the whole thing a salt and pepper combination with occasional bursts of brown. Beneath the beard, he could be any age from forty to sixty. Joe introduced them, explained what he wanted. They agreed a price.
‘I tend to knock off a bit later than this,’ Bob said, ‘after the school runs. Say I meet you here most days, between three and four. You drive me home. The car’s yours until you drop it off outside mine that night. Deal?’
Nick would spend his first hour every day driving for no pay then get caught in rush hour. But he was unlikely to get a better offer.
‘Deal.’
Nick’s insurance position was dodgy. They talked it over with Joe. He promised Bob he’d see him right if there was any kind of trouble. Bob, in turn, offered to leave Nick the flick knife he kept beneath his seat for awkward customers. Nick told him that carrying a weapon was too big a risk. He’d rely on the brawn he’d picked up in prison. He would carry a pair of round, metal rimmed glasses, like Joe’s, only with plain lenses. The two men looked enough alike to convince anyone checking the ID. Despite many years living in the same city, he and Joe had never had mutual friends.
The next afternoon, Nick got in early and had a go at chatting up Nas. Wouldn’t hurt to get in some practice at talking to a woman other than his sister-in-law. Whatever flirtation he’d picked up yesterday wasn’t there when it was just the two of them on their own. It had been a long while, but didn’t that usually work the other way round?
He picked up the only paper on the small, stained table by the door. When he saw which one it was, he nearly put the thing down again. The Sun held little Nick would describe as news, and this copy was, anyway, several days old. The headline was NEW LABOUR TOTTY TO MARCH. Nick glanced at the large, colour photo on the front page. The woman wearing evening dress was disturbingly familiar. He didn’t know who Jasper March was, but the Labour MP looked like a glammed up version of his ex, Sarah. He turned inside for the full story and his heart sank. The heading was: Sexy Sarah Gives Top Tory a Boner.
When asked about his relationship with sexy Sarah, March said ‘no comment’. Bone swore at photographers, but our picture tells its own story. Sarah wouldn’t be the first female MP to have the hots for the Tory heart-throb, who is separated from his wife. But she is the first from the Labour benches. What will Tony say when he finds out?
Nick had to read the story twice before he took it in. Sarah had become an MP. In Nottingham. When Joe arrived, he showed the paper to him.
‘Did you know about this?’
‘I don’t follow politics. Didn’t even vote last time. Here’s Bob.’
Nick nodded at Bob before going on. ‘This is my Sarah, the one I went out with for two years. And she’s an MP just down the road?’
‘I thought she joined the police,’ Joe said. ‘Isn’t that why you dumped her?’
‘She’s my MP,’ Bob interrupted. ‘Got in at a by-election two years ago. Nice lass. She came to the door. I voted for her. Won’t last though. Nottingham West has always been Tory. I’m a Tory myself, but I fancied a change.’
‘Fancied her you mean,’ Joe said. ‘As for not telling you, Nick, I never knew your Sarah’s surname. And, let’s face it, she was mousy in those days, little glasses, didn’t show off her chest. Whereas here . . . I’m surprised you recognised her.’
Sarah used to dress down. Political women did in the 1980s. Nick was always encouraging her to grow her hair, with limited success. In the photo in the Sun it was long and wavy, perfectly styled. Nick felt a surge of he-didn’t-know-what: some kind of reverse jealousy the Germans would have a word for. Sarah had finally become the woman he had always known she had the potential to become. That didn’t surprise him. What did surprise him was that she was fucking a Tory frontbencher.
Nick did a school run followed by calls to Carlton and Top Valley, on the edge of the city, to and from the Meadows, then Hyson Green, which had Nottingham’s biggest black and Asian population. Evening came quickly. Nick was tempted to pick up one of the punters coming out of the pubs, but only licensed city cabs were allowed to pick up on the street and in the taxi ranks. They paid for the privilege. An unlicensed driver would get a fine if the police spotted him. A beating, if he cut up a licensed cabbie who’d had a bad day. Even so, everybody did it, especially on quiet nights like this. But Nick was keeping his nose clean.
One good thing about working nights, there wasn’t time for heavy drinking. Nick would have to cut down on the dope, too. He wasn’t a kid any more and he was on probation. From now on, he would only take calculated risks and the fewer of those, the better. He wasn’t going back.
He kept a low profile around the taxi office. Anybody, at any time, could grass him up: to the dole or the probation. He’d been grassed up once already. He’d refused to believe that at the time, putting his arrest down to a combination of bad luck and good police work. Inside, he’d learnt that the idea of police investigatory work was a nonsense: the drugs squad relied on grasses and confessions like every other detective. And Nick hadn’t been stupid enough to confess.
The will for revenge eats at the souclass="underline" that was another maxim he’d made up for himself inside. Let it go. But this was a hard one to stick to. Nick wanted to know who’d put him inside. Revenge might’ve been their motive, too. Best not to keep that wheel turning. He’d like to be sure, though, so he could put it behind him. There was a modern cliché saying success was the best form of revenge. Nick ought to devote himself to becoming a success. That wasn’t going to happen when he was driving a crappy cab for his brother.
At one in the morning he stopped for diesel. He always left more in the car than when he borrowed it, but if he’d had a bad night, the fuel, on top of the car hire, might mean him working for only a couple of quid an hour. Tonight he’d worked long hours, though, done pretty well. He got out of the car. At night you had to pay at the front of the petrol station, through a small gap in the window – another change while he’d been inside. The cashier’s voice through the grille was disembodied.