The Book of Dave (7 page)

'I don't fucking care where that tranche is, Beaky, put it in the other account, mix it up, shift it round – 'eathrow –' he flung
through the glass panel and then resumed: 'It's not a case of coverin' up, man, it's getting things done. I get things done
– you get things done, the whole whatsit moves … moves forward.' Dave could hear Beaky pecking to get in from the ether,
until he flicked the shift into drive and the cab lurched off through the unmanned police check and round the corner into
London Wall.

The fare couldn't stop talking as Dave threaded the cab down through the dark fabric of the City to the Embankment. He got
out his laptop and began linking it up to his mobile with a pigtail of cable, until this proved beyond him, so he just read
stuff off it to Beaky. Not that Dave was paying much attention, but this getter – young,
ferret face, lock of mousy hair on a voddie-sweat brow, fake
signet ring –
didn't care if he listened or not. The driver was only another part of the cab's equipment for him, like the reading light
or the fan heater. Dave obliged him – he had his own thoughts for company.

Fifteen up West, fiver from those old girls, airport run'll score me thirty
or forty. Rank up in the feeder park and 'ave a snack at Doug Sherry's,
run back into town – if I'm lucky – and I'll call it a night.
Globular old lamp-posts with fat fish curled round them stood along the Embankment, while above the drooling Thames cast-iron
lions sucked their dummies. The Millennium Wheel slowly revolved on the South Bank, its people-pods ever threatening to dip
into the silty wash. Dave hugged the river, zoning out as the cab puttered up through Olympia, until they hit the Cromwell
Road, where life-sized mannequins of business-class travellers advertised intercontinental seat-beds.
Not real, toyist
…

Not toys, son,
Dave's father said,
machines for entertainment.
They were in the lounge bar of the Green Man out at Enfield Lock; nicotine was smeared on Paul Rudman's hair and fingers like
toxic pollen. The week's take for the slot machines was racked out on the table in little pewter columns. Vince Bittern, the
ex-old Bill who ran the boozer, wasn't too bothered with exact calculation. He put his flabby forearm down the middle of the
table and curled it round a rough half of the stacks.
Orlright, Paul?
he demanded.
No
bother, mate, no bother,
Dave's father acquiesced, lifting his wine glass of Bells to his wet lips so that the rim rattled on his denture. Dave sat
in the corner, his face
cherried-up with shame – Dad was so
weak, so bloody hopeless …

Not toys,
Dave told Carl, who was sitting on the tip seat immediately behind him, sighting back along the road, asking interminable
questions – a tyrannical seven-year-old inquisitor.
They're real, son.
The boy howled with anger,
Nooooo, stop it! Stop lying! They're not
real, they're toyist.

Toyist.
Dave had taken the child's coinage for his own. On good days only obvious fake things were toyist, like the giant spine stuck
on a chiropractor's in old Street, or the big plug sunk into the wall of a block on Foubert's Place. But on bad days almost
everything could be toyist: the Bloomberg VDU on the corner of North End Road was an outsized Game Boy, the flaring torch
outside the new Marriott Hotel at Gloucester Road a lit match. The buildings themselves were so many CD towers and hair-styling
wands, while people walked the street with the jerky motion of puppets, visible strings lifting styrofoam cups to their painted
lips.

The fare was still at it when the cab reached the Hammersmith Flyover: 'I don't fucking care.' Beaky was still on the receiving
end. 'I know how to value a company, mate, an' I tellya everything counts, bloody everything. We look at everything – we wanna
drive down the asking price, we can dig as deep as we like … Yeah, yeah, I know they've sold a million bloody episodes
to Taiwan, and I know they look kosher, but I've heard things concerning that Devenish – '
Devenish?! What the fuck, it can't be, think back, episodes
… asking price – it figures.
'He's flash as it goes, lives in a fuck-off gaff up in Hampstead, spreads his money round like Lurpak … You can't tell
me, Beaky, that it's all off the back of
Bluey –
or whatever that stupid kids' show is called. Someone's buying into Channel Devenish, and I wanna make certain it ain't the
cunt who's selling it … I know, I know, mate, do the necessary, use who you want, put it on my research account.'

By the time – they were rolling up the Great West Road and Dave had the cab in overdrive for the first time in over a week,
he'd undergone an attitude change – from surly serf to willing servant. The fare was slumped in the back seat, phone cast
to one side, laptop to the other. The perspiration of bumptiousness and liquor had curdled into thick, fearful sweat on his
hollow temples and tight forehead. 'Y'know what, mate?' he served up through the hatch.

'What?'

'I can't stand flying, can't bloody stand it.'

'Nor me, nor me.'
Ah, poor iddle kiddie, iddums scaredums?

'Yeah, puts the kibosh on my whole bloody day.'

'Where're you off to, then, guv?'
Keep him talking, I want his card.

'New York.'

The cab was rollicking along the Chiswick flyover past fifteen-storey corporate conservatories.
What's through the arched window
tonight? Another bank of blinking screens, another coffee machine, another
yucca, another polish cleaner? There are more Poles in Ealing than fucking
Cracow – at least that's what they say.
'Eye of the storm, then … do us a favour willya and see if you can persuade a few of 'em to come back this way.'

'Business bad, issit?'

'Bad, I tell you it's fucking diabolical.'
Diabolical, he'll like that,
he finks e's a leading actor an' 'e wants the rest of us to be supporting
ones.

'Yeah, well, it's not been too clever in my line either.' And so it went on, the two men bantering as the taxi canted down
off the flyover, then bumbled along the motorway.
Heston Services. Moto 1
and 32. Since when has this been a Moto Services? Used to be Granada
I think. Moto? Moto? Bloody stupid name for a motorway services. Bloody
stupid logo as well
… A man, lying back, arms behind his head, a sort of crown on his head, an atomic swirl of lines in the region of his
supine belly
like 'e's bin fucking gutted.

All the way up to the second Heathrow exit Dave sought a way to get the man's card out of him, but after years of minding
his own business intrusiveness didn't come easily. The rain started up again as they hit the motorway spur. 'That's all I
need,' said the fare; 'must make it ten times worse for those bastards in the cockpit.'

'Yeah,' Dave drawled, 'specially if their wipers ain't working.' The fare laughed gratefully – the cockney chitchat made it
possible for him to let go of his nerves, get back in character.

Toyist Heathrow, a confusion of
up-ended Rotadexes and fax-machine
terminals.
The cab pulled up to the drop-off at Terminal 3. The fare got out and stood in the damp sodium night of jet screech and taxi
mutter adjusting his suit and overcoat, getting out his wallet. He gave a tenner's tip; Dave thanked him, then said, 'Receipt?'
And when the fare took it and thanked him in turn, Dave went on, 'Giss yer card, mate.'

'What?'

'Give us your business card: the radio circuit I'm on are doing a raffle-type thingy for our customers. If your card gets
drawn you get two hundred quid's worth of free travel in the new year.' The fare dug his card out and passed it over. Dave
thanked him, wished him a merry Christmas and flicked the shift into drive. '
'Course I'm
not on the fucking radio circuit, am I, haven't been for years, I'd rather
be a straightforward musher than bother with that malarkey.
He looked at the card: the lettering meant nothing to him – CB & EFN INVESTMENT STRATEGIES, STEPHEN BRICE, CEO EUROPE – but he was one step closer to nailing Devenish now,
pulling him off of Michelle with
his wet dick gleaming in the dark, rolling the wanker over and grinding
a boot into his fucking smug face.

Dave drove back out through the long, fume-filled tunnel under the runway, pulled round the roundabout and up on to the peripheral
road, where there were hotels so large other hotels could have checked into them. He turned into the cul-de-sac that ran behind
the police station to the taxi feeder parks. He pulled into the first one and parked up; it was a quarter full – not at all
heavy for a mid evening in late December. Doug Sherry's, the taxi drivers' cafe, looked cheery enough,
if you think any joint full of these mugs can be
cheery.
The windows and eaves were draped with tinsel, and when he'd locked up the cab and strolled into the lobby, there was a Christmas
tree propped by the bins full of the drivers' free rags:
Taxi, Call Sign, London Taxi Times
and
HALT.
Tacked to the bare brick wall was a laminated poster showing a
cheeky chappy cabbie's
grinning mug. '233 Sexual Assaults and 45 Rapes' the caption read, 'So What's He Got to Laugh About?'

Dave took his place in the queue for the serving counters and checked out his peers.
Fat, thick, racist, ugly, rotten wankers. In their
dumb fucking zip-up jackets carrying their stupid little change bags, giving
it this, giving it that, and saying fuck all.
Dave didn't like many cabbies at all, but he reserved his special derision for the estimated half of London licensed taxi
drivers who did nothing else but work the airport.
With their stupid bloody gang names . .
. The Quality Street Gang, the Lavender Hill Mob …
and their stupider nicknames
… The Farmer, Gentleman Jim, Last Chancer, Musher Freddy …
Sitting out here ranked up for half their fucking lives, tootling up West
with a fare, then putting their lights out and tootling back again. Too
bloody scared to ply for hire like a real cabbie, too fucking fond of their
fishing and their golf, their cards and their sweepstakes. Fancy themselves
part of some stupid elite, following the 'cabbies' code', when half of them
are faces on the fiddle, putting foil over their computer discs before they
go into the feeder park to bilk a few quid, or going down on to the
terminals to steal fares, pretending they're picking someone up on the
radio if they get pulled. Makes me sick.

And always had, which is why Dave avoided the airport as much as he could. This evening he was
bilked by a fucking pork chop
that looked succulent under the bright lights of the servery, but, once he'd borne it over to one of the blue melamine tables,
turned out to be dry and solid. Meat to murder with. He wouldn't have minded plunging it like an ice axe into the red neck
of the cabbie who stood feet away, leaning his elbows on a table, sticking his fat arse in the air and slamming down dominoes
with Caribbean vigour. He might have done, if the back hadn't turned to reveal a face he knew: 'Wot you doin' aht 'ere ven,
Tufty?' the other cabbie asked and Dave grunted, 'nuffing, I 'appens to trap a flyer.'
Yeah, a flyer, a fucking
'eretic … some scumbag who's lost his faith in London.

Dave's eyes wavered over to the wood-panelled wall that was hung with photographs of dead cabbies: 'Sid Greenglass, always
early, now he's late, 1935-1986', 'Chancer Ross with the one that didn't get away, 1944-1998' (this one featured a rod, a
reel and two fishy faces), 'The Maida Vale Marauder, Terry Groves, 1941-1997'. Their lives seemed shorter than average, fifties
and sixties mostly. It could have been the selection that was made when the new cafe was built and the photos transferred
over from General Roy's – but Dave doubted it. Cabbing was always an unhealthy occupation, sitting on the shuddering seat,
all the dreadful humours gathering in your belly and legs as the stress flowed in through ears and eyes and hands on the steering
wheel.
Piles – that's what you get from all
that sitting … piles … that's why they're such arseholes. Cabbies aren't
anything much anyway
–
they think they're professionals, but they
aren't. They're mostly ex-something else, ex-coppers, ex-army, ex-crims,
ex-bloody-boxers
–
and then they end up here on the wall at the airport,
ex fucking everything.

A screen was wedged high up in the corner of the dining area showing the lane movements in the second feeder park. This was
bigger than the one outside the cafe, thirty lanes wide, each one with thirty-odd cabs lined up in it. When a driver had inched
his way through both these cattle pens a screen told him which terminal he was to go down to. On a good day it could take
a couple of hours, on a slow one a lot longer. Then there was no guarantee you'd get a fare into the middle of London; you
might just get a transit passenger, marooned for the night, who wanted to go to the Holiday Inn at the end of the motorway
spur. Or worse still because at least with a run under five miles you didn't have to rank up again – you'd get a full load
of Southall grannies, saris flying, all with
bundles of shmatte from Pakkiland,
all needing your capable assistance, who'd scrape the
poor old Fairway up and down the speed
bumps
to No. 47, Acacia Avenue, then pay the meter and
not a bloody
penny more.
Two hours waiting, twenty minutes driving, twenty minutes portering
and all for eight bloody quid, you're better off flipping
Big Macs.

Dave abandoned the pork chop long before he had to pull over to the second feeder park. Better to sit in the darkness of the
cab polluted with air freshener, tangy with diesel and rank with old cigarette smoke – than bear the hateful company of his
own kind. The cab – he'd spent half his adult life in it.
It's not juss a motor – it's
almost fucking human …
He thought pointedly and with great fervour of the sleeping pills by his bed and the bottle of Scotch alongside them. He rasped
his stubble with a quick-bitten thumb. When his turn came, it was a relief: he drove across the road, divvied up his ticket
and joined the next metal anaconda worming its way towards the money prey. Eventually he got to the front and the screen flashed
up 'No. 47304, Terminal 2'.