Chapter Six

Okay, so maybe I am driving too fast. But look at my situation here. I’m driving a stolen taxi with a trussed-up female child on the rear seat. Police station or hospital first, that is the question. I do not want to delay in alerting the police but what if the child has internal injuries? I can alert the hospital which in turn can alert the police and the little girl can suffer no further delay than is strictly necessary. So hospital it is. Right, foot down, even faster I go. Shit. Fuck it, ignore the red light, and that jack-ass trying to flag me down. Wish I knew how to turn of the “for hire” light. It’s probably simple – don’t look, Jack, keep your eyes on the road – ssshhhhhiiiittttt!!!!

I haul down on the steering wheel  left, then right, swerving the taxi  around the person in the road. But the thunk of fleshy body against  metal body tells me that either I didn’t swerve soon enough or wide enough. My foot slams down on the brake pedal. The taxi’s wheels lock and there’s the smell of burning rubber as the taxi continues its’ forward momentum for a few feet longer.

***

Hilda Batty, a large plump black woman, woke up that morning feeling that it would be the last morning that she would ever do so. She didn’t like the word “gifted”, didn’t really hold with that sort of nonsense, and yet she couldn’t deny, not when she was being honest with herself, that she did see things happen before they did. It was, purely as an aside, how she knew that what you saw on the news or read in the newspaper, was more often than not a pack of lies. When she read a newspaper it was as if someone had been there first and highlighted all the lies for her. It got that she rarely bothered to pick up a newspaper any longer, she didn’t see the point. Being uninterested in lies and generally seeing things before they happened it sort of rendered them moot.

So Hilda awoke that morning feeling that it would be her last. She had seen a taxi in her dreams hurtling along too fast, the driver’s eyes though on the road in front were not really on the road, not seeing the road, his mind distracted with too many thoughts all cascading together. But she also saw that it, her death caused by his taxi – no, not his taxi, the taxi he’s driving – is the beginning of the end for him. As the result of that accident he stops, goes to her, sees that she’s gone, that he’s become a murderer – or, rather, a manslaughterer, if that’s a word. He turns back to the taxi, sees a small crowd of neighbours, some dressed for work, others still in nightwear. A child has looked inside the taxi and is now running back to his mum. The message spreads quickly, the man can see it spreading, watching the expressions on the neighbour’s faces changing from neutral to hostile. And so, even though he is not guilty of any crime and certainly not of the one that is in the minds of those neighbours, he runs. He runs away from them, turns and bolts it, urging his legs to move faster, no that’s not fast enough, move faster, dammit!