Some time passed. A male voice said quietly, ‘Is that him gone?’
‘Yeah, I think so,’ said Raine. At least I thought it was her. Her voice sounded different. ‘We nearly there yet then?’
‘Nuvver five minutes.’
That was weird, I thought, behind my closed eyes, with my chin somewhere near my chest. Had I dropped off? Just a little. But why was Raine asking the driver if they were nearly there yet? Didn’t she know the way home? Maybe she’d just moved in.
But what did the driver mean when he asked her, Is that him gone?
‘Just check he’s out, will ya, doll?’
Check he’s out? What the fuck was that about? I felt a hand stroke mine, then pinch the skin. I didn’t react. ‘Ken? Ken?’ Raine said, quite loud. I stayed just as I was. My heart had started to speed up. Then she said, ‘Yeah, he’s gone.’
‘Roight.’
What was going on here? What the fuck was going on? Where were we going, anyway? Had she given the driver an address as we got in? I’d kind of assumed she’d told him her home address while I was getting in and smacking my head off the top of the door frame, but had there been time? Wouldn’t I have heard something? I couldn’t remember. Shit, I was drunk; of course I wasn’t going to remember stuff like that. But then the taxi had appeared really fortuitously, too. Just rolled up, in the damp midst of a wet Friday some time between theatre and bar chucking out time. On Shaftesbury Avenue. Just appeared, its yellow For Hire light already off, if my hazy memory served me right, ready and waiting at the kerb, just like that. And it had seemed as if she’d been looking for it. But then she would have been; looking for a taxi, any taxi. But then we came back to this Check he’s out/Yeah, he’s gone shit. What the fuck was all that about? He’d expected me to be out, to be gone, to be unconscious…
Sweet Jesus H. Christ; the whisky. There had been something in the whisky. What was that date-rape drug? I couldn’t remember. But something like that. The drink she’d insisted she’d get, then watched me drink, or thought that was what she was watching while I suppressed a giggle and played my silly game and anointed Phil’s jacket with the stuff instead, distracting her, making my Adam’s apple go up and down, smacking my lips and doing everything but wipe my mouth on my sleeve; look, I’m drinking it! See? It’s gone! She’d put something in it. She must have. What was that date-rape stuff? Euthymol? No, that was a toothpaste, wasn’t it? A fucking Micky fucking Finn in this fucking day and fucking age and I’d fucking fallen for it! Or would have, if I hadn’t been determined to salvage some dregs of sobriety from my drunken stupor for the purposes of, hopefully, fucking.
Oh shit.
I’d sniffed it. The whisky with the date-rape drug or whatever it was; I’d breathed it in. How powerful was that stuff? Some must have stuck to my lips when I pretended to drink it. Was I falling into a drugged sleep now? No. No definitely not me, no-how, no-way. Very awake and horribly, edgily, tensely sober with my heart hammering so hard I’m astonished that Raine, if that’s really her name, can’t hear it, that she can’t see my entire body shaking with each thudding, crashing, flailing tremor of it.
‘You aw-wight?’ the driver asks. For one idiotic moment I think he’s talking to me, and for a totally deranged micro-moment I’m actually about to answer him.
Then the girl says, ‘Yeah,’ quite casually, as though she’s bored.
I open one eye very slightly, the left one, away from her. Where are we? I have a vague feeling we’re somewhere in the East End but I don’t know. My head is down and I can’t see much without raising it. How long did the driver say? Five minutes? Yes, it was five minutes. But how long ago was that? One minute ago? Two? Four?
I can see the little red tell-tale light on the door at my side, near the handle. Of course; cab doors lock while the vehicle is in motion. Safety device, allegedly. Stop you doing a runner, more like. Doesn’t matter. I can’t just make a break for it when we slow down. Have to wait for a complete stop. Shit. We slow down here, and I start to get sweaty palms, thinking about grabbing the door handle and sprinting off… but then we speed up again.
I use the acceleration as a plausible excuse to let my head fall back, my neck over the back of the seat now and my view through my half-closed eye a bit better. I sense Raine looking at me. I start snoring. Through the trembling blur of eyelashes, I can see a lightly trafficked road and low-rise buildings. I must really have dropped off. We’re well away from the West End here. We take a left into a darker, quieter road. What look like low warehouses and light industrial units line the road. I see plentiful graffiti and billboards with old, torn, rain-sodden posters flapping in the cold wind. We go under a bridge, engine echoing off the rivet-studded undersides of massive black girders.
‘Nearly there,’ the driver says.
‘Mm-hmm,’ says Raine.
We slow. There’s a brighter, noisier road ahead. And traffic lights.
‘Just over these lights.’
Turning amber.
‘Right.’
Thank fuck.
‘Yeah, I fink that’s Danny there I can see.’
Turning red.
‘Uh-huh.’
Oh yes. Oh yes, just stop right here on the far side of the busy traffic from wherever it is we’re going, from whoever the fuck Danny is.
The cab stops, engine idling noisily. The little red light by the door handle should click and go off now. Now. There’s a click. I wait for the little red light to go off. It doesn’t.
Something in my bowels makes a terrible trembling course through me, squeezing cold sweat from every pore. The driver; taxi drivers can override the door-locks’ stationary off-switch, keeping it on. He’s locked us in.
I’m fucked. These people can do whatever they want to me. I may be about to die. The lights are still red but the traffic crossing our path has just stopped. The driver is reaching for the gear stick.
I sit up suddenly. Raine looks at me and her mouth starts to open as her eyes finish widening. I click my seat belt unlocked and swing my right leg as hard as I can at the window to my left. It shatters first time. It feels like my leg does too, but the window’s gone in an almighty bang, falling spraying to the street outside and the rubber-matted floor of the cab in a thousand square-edged little jewels glinting sodium in the street-light.
The driver’s shocked face turns towards me. Raine grabs my arm and I do something I’ve never done before, ever; I hit a woman. Punch her square in the nose and send her head whacking back against the door window on her side.
Then I’m out of the smashed window on my side so fucking fast John Woo would be proud of me, turning on my back, hands to the top of the frame and levering myself out with just some kicking, flailing footwork to spoil the balletic beauty of it.
I land with a wind-expelling whumpf on the road, just as the taxi jerks forward and then screeches to a stop again, nose dipping. I’m rolling on the broken glass and bouncing to my feet, starting to run. There’s shouting behind me and a door slamming. More shouting from further away. These both male. Female screaming now. The road ahead is broad and almost deserted. Some parked cars, one or two Transits and Lutons. I angle for the pavement, to put some of the parked stuff between me and them. More shouting and screaming.
The wind roars in my ears as I run. Engine noise back there now. I’m near the end of the street. The engine behind me whines, caught in the low gear of reverse, then the engine seems to cut out, there’s a squeal of tyres, a moment of silence, and the engine screams. Handbrake turn.