I run out onto the street ahead at right-angles and pelt across a sudden burst of traffic, horns blaring right and left as I leap a traffic island in one stride and spot a chip shop with a queue of people outside, a hundred metres away. I make the pavement, just dodging a Royal Mail van, which skids to a stop so close I have my arm stuck out and the grille nudges the flesh of my palm. I run for the chip shop queue, dodging between a few slowly walking people like gates on a downhill slalom course. The Royal Mail van races past to my left, the driver leaning out of the window, shouting that I’m a fucking wanker and backing this up with a gesture. There are two cars at the kerb just beyond the queue at the chip shop. I splash through a puddle. The rain is off, I notice. The cars beyond the chip shop are parked outside a little lit doorway and window with a cheap-looking sign above, glaring yellow-white above the pitted brickwork and spelling out the two most beautiful words in the most beautiful language in the universe: Mini-Cabs.
I slow and look back just as I get to the queue but there’s no taxi anywhere to be seen, and nobody running. I straighten my jacket, run fingers through my hair and by the time I get to the first cab in the rank, nodding first to the guy in the doorway and then at the car, I’m actually whistling.
‘Well, do you ever look at the number of a cab when you get into one?’
‘Na,’ Craig admitted. ‘Who does?’
‘Phil, probably,’ I said. I’d called him on his mobile and home number but only got answer machines.
‘I still think,’ Craig said, ‘you should have gone to the police.’
‘Christ, man, I just wanted to get away.’
‘Yeah, but.’
‘Yeah but what? It was half eleven on a Friday night. The cops are going to be busy enough with fights and brawls and the usual weekend nonsense. And what exactly would I be ringing up to report, anyway? I think I was being kidnapped, I think somebody tried to spike my drink, but if you want any proof you’ll have to get another guy’s jacket and test it for the drug, if it’s still detectable. I think some violence was planned for me but I don’t know. I’m fairly sure I was chased but that’s not even illegal. Fucking hell, the only definitely criminal things that actually happened were the things I did; I smashed a cab window and I punched a woman in the face. I fucking hit a woman, man! Jesus Christ, that was something I had hoped to get through my whole life without doing, like breaking a major bone or changing a nappy.’ I sucked very hard on the J. I’d wanted a brandy or something but Craig had reckoned what I needed was a nice, mellow smoke.
My very first thought, once I’d got into the cab and told the guy to head for Basildon (this had to be east of wherever we were, so it meant we didn’t need to chuck a U-ey and go past the end of the road I’d been chased down), was to call Amy. She lived in Greenwich, which was feasibly in the area, and turning to her – and up on her doorstep – in an hour of need, on the run from heavies, might be just the sort of romantic ice-breaker required to shift our relationship onto whatever next phase might be on the cards (the last time I’d seen her had been on 11 September, when we’d all sat together in Kulwinder and Faye’s loft, watching the unbelievable unfold, until she’d been called away by her boss).
Then I thought of Celia. Christ; Merrial. Maybe he was behind whatever had almost happened back there.
I don’t know who I’d imagined might want to have me kidnapped and whisked off to the East End for… whatever, but of course Celia’s husband had to be a prime suspect. Why the hell hadn’t that been the first thing I’d thought of? Could this be anything to do with Celia and me? Had we been discovered? We thought we’d been so careful, but who really knew?
Oh shit. Should I use the mobile number she didn’t know I had, try to warn her?
But if it wasn’t anything to do with her, with us, and she discovered I’d taken her number without asking, without telling her…
Yeah, but if all this was about us then it was entirely possible a phone call could save her life.
‘I’m Ken, by the way,’ I said to the guy driving the mini-cab. He was a strapping white lad with a shock of red-dyed hair. I’d sat beside him rather than in the back. We shook hands.
‘Dive.’
‘Dave, I’ve a bit of a funny request.’
‘Yeah? Wossat?’
‘Can I use your mobile? I’ve got one of my own but I need to use a different one. Please? Add a fiver to the fare. It’s important. ’
‘Here you go.’
‘You are a saint, sir.’ I pulled out my own mobile, cursored through to Ceel’s entered but never used number, and clicked it into Dave’s Sony.
‘The mobile phone you are calling is switched off…’
Another couple of tries got the same response. No voice mail or message service available. ‘Thanks,’ I said to Dave the driver, handing him back his phone. ‘Never got through.’ I hesitated. ‘Listen, Dave; what I said about a fiver? Call it a tenner, but in the unlikely event a woman… anybody ever phones about a call made, like, now, just say you dialled the same wrong number or something.’
‘“You never saw me, I wasn’t here,”’ the lad quoted, grinning. ‘Used to work in a boozer, mate; lying to people on the phone looking for somebody they fink’s there is like second nature.’
‘Yeah, well, cheers,’ I said. I tried Amy next, on my own phone, but her mobile was switched to message and the land-line to her place in Greenwich was on answer, with a long beep-time of stacked messages before the tone. I sighed and rang Craig. He was in, sitting watching TV, about to go to bed.
‘Okay, Dave,’ I said. ‘Change of destination…’
I tried Celia’s mobile again from a phone box near Craig’s place in Highgate. Still nothing.
‘You should still go to the cops,’ Craig said again, looking down at the big old Geographia London Street Plan he’d spread on the kitchen table, to see if we could work out where it had all happened. Idiotically, I hadn’t thought to get the number or the name of the mini-cab company. The first thing I remembered from the drive was seeing a sign for Stratford station, off to our left as we’d headed in the general direction of Essex. ‘Report what happened,’ Craig insisted. ‘Because of what might happen.’
‘Because of what might happen?’ I echoed.
‘Supposing something else does, and it has to be something the cops get involved in; if what happened tonight comes out they’re going to want to know why you didn’t mention anything about it. You’ve got to report it, man. The cops might be able to find out if an old taxi gets its left window repaired over the next couple of days.’
‘I doubt that a kidnap that never really happened will be far up their list of priorities just now, plus I have said one or two unflattering things about the boys in blue, over the years,’ I observed. Dryly, I hoped. I was still shaking, and my leg hurt where I’d kicked the window out; I was going to have a splendid bruise in a day or two. There were various other mysterious aches, pains, grazes and likely bruises I couldn’t recall picking up in all the excitement, plus my hands and fingers were a little cut where I’d grabbed the window. Craig had handed me a bottle of TCP and some kitchen towel and told me to get on with it.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘But you still have to report it.’
‘What exactly is this stuff that might happen? What were you thinking of?’
‘I don’t know.’ Craig stretched his lanky frame back in the kitchen chair and put his hands behind his head. ‘You don’t have any idea who these people were?’
‘They were both white, south-east England, maybe London. There was somebody I didn’t see called Danny. The place I was being taken to was in the East End and the driver seemed to know the area. I’d guess he’s a proper taxi driver, done the Knowledge. It was…’ I gestured at the map in front of us. ‘There, somewhere.’