The Getaway

The Getaway.
By
Martin Griffin

He watched the pale red display change from 3:39pm to 4:00pm. An
agonising minute that seemed to last forever. The display inside the
Hackney Carriage had been a constant companion for the last hour. Time,
slowly prevaricating like a child ordered to bed. He wanted to rest, to
get a little shut-eye before his shift, but he couldn't. He worried far
too much for sleep to come. Outside the comfort of his Cab the air was
thin and wet. The atmosphere of a drab and drizzling winter night, tiny
specs of rain like a million pin pricks that seemed to constitute
nothing, but could leave you soaked to the skin in no time. There was
only one other car in Mill Row where he was parked. A blue, beat-up old
Ford, barely discernable in the murk of nightfall, the rear number
plate broken. He closed his eyes again, a need to rest he thought to
himself. Seeing the figure enter the street in an instant, he feigned
sleep, one eye open on the world, following the new arrival into his
dark and dingy surroundings. The figure approached the Ford dragging
the two heavy sacks at its side. The click of the door as the Ford
opened and the figure jumped in, the bags discarded for the moment on
the saturated road. Silence. Then a curse. A slammed door. Then
shuffling as the bags were dragged slowly towards the cab. Then a tap
on the window. Denny Phillips opened his eyes and stared at the figure
outside his cab. A bedraggled face looked back. Thick eyes, heavy
forehead and a nose that had seen better days filled his vision. He
reached across winding the window down.
"Yes mate?" Said Denny.
"I need a cab, now" Said the stranger irately. The voice breathless
with the faintest hint of excitement.
"Sorry mate, I'm off the road at the mo"
"No you don't understand mate!" The figure rejoined sternly. He reached
into his damp rain smattered coat. " I need a cab. I need your cab and
I want it now, you have a problem with that?" As he spoke he pointed
the nostril-like ends of the sawn-off shotgun through the Taxi's
window. They looked cold and unwelcome. A brutal interruption to the
quiet of the unlit street. Denny was at a loss for reasoned
argument.

"Just drive, I'll tell you where were going when we get there" The man
gasped after heaving himself into the rear of the cab. His manner terse
and business-like.
"But what direction?" Denny shivered, outwardly perplexed and
panicked.
"No questions, just go, get out of here."
Denny gunned the engine. The tell-tale tap of the Taxi's diesel motor
spluttered to life. He paused to calm himself, running a hand through
his soaking hair. The gun-man had commanded him rather abruptly out of
the cab moments before. The shot-gun thrust into his ribs and back if
he tried to speak. The male forced him to load up the rear cabin with
the two heavy sacks that he had been dragging. They were indeed heavy,
and Denny was keen to know their contents.
He turned right from Mill Row and joined the evening traffic, just
another Taxi heading for home in the build-up to a snarling rush-hour
which would soon grip the city with its iron fist.
Ten minutes passed in complete silence, then he heard groaning from the
gun-man. He adjusted his rear-view mirror and saw him bent double on
the seat.
"You okay?" Denny asked.
"Just drive. Just drive and you'll live" The gun-man snarled back at
him, the sound of his voice strained, clipped as if through clenched
teeth.
Denny ignored him. "What happened back there? You look hurt"
Silence followed, then,
"I got shot, here in the side, but the pain is all around the
front."
"You got shot!? How? Why?" Denny screamed. "My god why me? What the
hell is going on?" The cab lurched across the wet road as Denny served
around in his seat. The night air filled with the horns from other
motorists as they protested against the cab's sudden and unexplained
lurching.
"Okay, okay just calm down." Shouted the gun-man over Denny's
panic.
"How the hell can I calm down?" Voices raised.
"If you don't want to get hurt as well, you had better start helping
me get out of this mess, so chill out, do as your told and you can go
home to your wife ok? OK?
"Okay, okay" replied Denny sucking in deep breaths as he spoke. "What
do you want me to do?"
"I don't know yet, just give me some time, I need to think, got to
think."
Denny looked back to the road. This was bad. This was very bad.

The Taxi continued into the West End. Denny made sure he skirted the
major routes, avoiding the patrols of early evening Police cars. He
skipped over the river by Lambeth and right onto the Embankment. The
Thames arcing away to his right. The dancing fairy lights of the South
Side looping along the dock as if tipping a hat towards the
river.
"Right" Came a thin groan from the back. "Get me to a hospital in the
East, that will be far enough away."
Denny had to asked, "Listen man, are the cops going to be looking for
you?"
The gun-man laughed. "Are the cops going to be looking for me? I should
think so, I've got about Seventy thousand reasons in these bags for
them to be looking for me"
"Seventy grand! Where did that come from?" Said Denny, clearly
excited.
The gun-man looked up, forgetting his pain for a moment, he let out a
light chuckle.
"Sometimes mate, you cabbies ask some stupid questions." He let out
another laugh.
"Yeah but I'm caught up in this, I don't want to get nicked as well"
Reasoned Denny.
"And you won't if you do as your told." His manner was almost mocking,
despite his pain he was happy to talk. "Believe it or not, getting
nicked is not the first and foremost thought in my mind either." The
gun-man clutched his stomach again, groaning loudly as he finished his
words.
Denny fixed back to the road. As he drove, he stole glances at his
passenger through his internal mirror. His head was like that of a
Rottweiler. Heavy, square and thick set. Enough to compress the neck
into muscle. The heaving body rose and fell with the each painful gasp
of air being sucked in over the punctures to his weighty torso. He
caught a glimpse of the red stain, like spilt claret down the front of
the white shirt his passenger was wearing, a glistening slick caught in
the lights that lined the Thames in the rich gloom.
"What's your name, son?"
"Denny" he replied after a pause.
"Well Denny, I think you'd better step on it, I think this is getting
worse."
Denny looked back. "How bad is it?"
"Well, put it this way, your gonna have to hose the back of your cab
down when I'm gone."
"I just had it cleaned and all" he smiled, attempting the joke, his
wits on end.
He let the sentence hang in the air, an ice breaker? He hoped so.
"So, what happened?" he winced, hoping his second try didn't wind his
cargo up too much.
Another pause. "Look mate," He continued, cautiously, "Whatever has
happened, my lips are well and truly sealed. I don't want any trouble,
just let me get you some help and I'll be gone. But I'll be honest,
it's killing me not knowing what you did back there." His eyes never
leaving the mirror as he spoke.
"I did a bookies" The voice from the back finally whispered.
"A what?"
"A bookies. A betting shop. Where you were parked, that's the back door
to the betting shop. that was my car, Bloody kids. The bookies, I held
it up. Friday night, just before closing, the tills are loaded to the
brim of losers wagers and punters cash."
"And you've got seventy grand in your bags?" Denny let out a long
whistle. "Not bad for a nights work, not bad at all."
"Yeh but bloody kids have smashed the ignition on my car while I was
doing it, that's how you got roped in, cheeky beggars" He shrugged
ironically.
"You can buy a new car now pal". Said Denny.
"Not if I don't get this seen to, and fast." He clutched his stomach
under his wide arms.
Silence descended again as the cab coasted passed the Mint on towards
the Highway. A left turn would take them to Whitechapel, and the London
Hospital. Denny cast an eye into the rear, and flicked the indicator
into a right turn.

Wapping was dark. Wapping was Dank. Hell... Wapping was a depressed
clustering of the old world that renovation had forgotten. The flash
expanse of the Docklands rejuvenation had sprouted from every pore of
the sweating East-End in the last 10 years, some of Wapping had rode in
on its luck. Prices had rocketed as the companies moved their workers
in. But the main body, the heart, it still pumped putrid traffic like
dirty blood around its filthy veins. Wapping was decay. Denny new the
streets like the back of his hand. He'd worked the East End for a long
time. Now his job took him to the West End. Only a few miles over, but
where it counts, well, we're talking different planets. The nights were
neon Up-West, the soul to the East-Ends heart. Flocking masses of
tourists who would petrify if they ever saw the East. Spending, eating,
drinking and spending some more. Here in the East, spending only
happened in the pubs. They weren't even good enough to call them bars.
They were pubs and that was that. Of course the East End had tried to
escape its mantle of doom. The yuppies and developers had given it a
fair crack of the whip. But it all seemed to fold inevitably in on
itself. It just wasn't that kind of place. Downtrodden stayed
downtrodden in the east, unable to gel like the Fulhams and the
Hampsteads where estates could not be described as Council, estates
there were an inheritance.

His first trick was discovered with a scream, abruptly and
suddenly.
"What the?" Yelled the gun-man. "Stop, stop now."
Denny stamp hard on the brakes, his passenger tumbled onto the floor of
the cab with a scream as high as a woman's. He knew what it was.
Cobbles. He'd driven into a cobbled street, the ferocious juddering had
woken his passenger from his painless sleep.
"Get out" The gun man roared.
"What?"
"I said get out, get out now." He pushed the shotgun's spout towards
the back of Denny's head.
"Alright, alright. Don't shoot, please, Don't shoot!"
"Do as your told, get out now, or your history!" Still shouting, more
like a bark.
Denny scrambled at the door and spilled out into the street. Tripping
he landed on his backside. The wet cobbles saturating his jeans. The
gun man was out in a flash, quickly taking in his surroundings, a
painful grimace splitting his ruddy, clammy face in two. "What's going
on Denny?" He said.
"I, I don't know what you mean?"
"Bullshit!" He snapped, "Where the hell are we? I told you to get me to
the Hospital, where the hell is this?"
"I know, I know" Bleated Denny "Please listen to me. I am taking you.
But I've got to be careful. I'd hoped you would understand." If it
sounded like he was begging for his life, well he was. He watched the
gun-mans eyes for a sign. Nothing.
"I was trying to stay off the main roads." He felt he needed to
clarify, was he waiting for more? Was he going to shoot? He tried to
calm down. " Look man, you look pretty bad. Your turning so pale. Jesus
you looked like a corpse in the back there already. If the old Bill
catch a look at you like that, we're both history. I was trying to stay
off the prime routes, that's all." He raised his eyes again, focussing
on the figure stood over him. His shape silhouetted against a dim
flourescent street light battling with the gloom. The sawn off still in
his face. Still pointed at his head. The two barrels staring coldly
into his eyes. He watched rain water trickle down the spouts and fall
from the grooved valley running down the muzzle's centre.
The gun-man looked around. The night sky buzzing with the noise of
crowded traffic. The Highway above them. A thick, clogged artery
spewing the City's populus out into the rest of London's sprawl.
"So where are we going then?" The gun-man asked.
"I thought we'd get out of the City, maybe a little further away, just
to be safe."
The gun-man bent double, the sawn-off slung across his stomach as a
fresh wave of pain tore through him. Denny was up, in a flash. Holding
him, by the arms. Leading him back to the rear of the cab. If the
gun-man thought Denny was going to fight him he didn't show it. He
willingly allowed himself to be led back to the sanctuary of the
dry.

When Denny climbed in his seat, he sat in silence.
"Ron" said the gun-man. "My names Ron, well that's what you can call
me."
"Okay Ron, your in charge, What now?" Said Denny, his back
turned.
"I've got to get this seen to, that's for sure" Said Ron looking down
at his reddened shirt.
"Let's have a look" Denny said opening the door. He went up the side of
the cab and pulled out the first aid kit he always kept in the boot.
Slowly he opened the side door, and got in.
Ron stared at him, and for the first time Denny noticed the desperation
in his eyes. It reminded him of a weakened baby fawn. It looked
unnatural across the lived in face of his passenger. The eyes were wide
open, but soulless and empty. Like a man who knew his time was up.
Denny scanned the interior of the cab. It was indeed covered in the
gun-mans blood, the floor streaked and congealed at the same
time.
"Holy shit Ron, what the hell has happened to you?"
Denny opened the first Aid box and pulled out some bandages. "You'd
better let me see what we've got here mate, open that shirt would you."
With a grunt, Ron obliged revealing a broad chest, the hair matted in
wet blood. A dozen puncture wounds, the size of mini ball-bearings
pitted his stomach, drops of fresh blood wept from each orifice and
with each breath.
"Who shot you?" He asked without looking up, tearing a length of
gauze.
"It was me wasn't it." he said almost apologetically. " I pulled the
shooter out at the cashier and this geezer jumped on me from behind.
One those have-a-go-hero types, you know em', thinks he's invincible.
Anyway, as he drags me on the floor, I turn the gun on him and try and
shoot, but most of the pellet hits me, I think some got him, cos' he
lay on the floor screaming like a trapped cat."
"You shot someone?" Denny screeched. Even in his sorry state, Ron took
a moral high ground.
"Don't preach to me mate, this is my job. I know what to expect before
I do it. You do yours, get me to the hospital, and leave me to worry
about this." His mood change was sudden. Denny kneeled back, wincing,
hoping he hadn't pushed Ron too far.
"Okay I will, but take this", he handed the gauze to Ron. "Press really
firmly on as much as you can."
"I've tried that, when I press on some, the others bleed more, the
area's too big."
Denny raised his eyes and if Ron was watching, he may have seen a
flicker of a smile, but he wasn't. Denny returned to the drivers seat
and set the engine tapping again.

The journey passed through the Limehouse link unmolested. As they
emerged from the tunnel a scream of Police sirens echoed around them.
The tell tale wash of Blue strobes engulfing the taxi's interior. Denny
looked around feverishly, the last thing he wanted was to be found like
this, the absolute last thing. He glanced back to Ron.
"It's ok, it's not for us, It's not for us."
Ron sat low in the seat, Denny adjusted the mirror to find him, he lay
there shivering.
"I'm freezing" his voice now weak and frail, so unlike the powerful
boom of an hour ago in the quiet alley behind the Betting Shop.
"Not long now mate," said Denny. "Not long now." His smile was wider
now, and far from clandestine.

The back of the cab was cold. So very cold. Shapes flew in front of his
eyes. More blurs than reality. A kaleidoscope of dreams, nightmares and
untruths. A life of violence and hate twisting his vision.
These hallucinations began to visit Ron as he lay dying in the back of
Denny's Taxi. The interior behoved of metal bars. Solid and thick like
the doors of a cage. Beyond that the sounds from the unseen guards,
mocking him. Only one thing to do. He screamed. He saw the driver
flinch. He wanted to ask him to stop. What was his name? Don? Danny? He
was forgetting things now. Just a pallid cloud in his foggy mind. The
pain ravaging his chest making it hard to breath, hard to focus,
difficult to live. He'd spent the larger part of his life inside. In a
cell of one form of another. Even as a child he'd made a cell for
himself to feel protected. As he'd listened to his brutal father beat
his mother to a pulp he had cocooned himself in the sanctuary of his
bedroom. Whimpering like the child he was, petrified to intervene in
the atrocities of the marital Chamber. His father had died suddenly. A
heart failure. The irony was sick. He'd not possessed a heart in the
first place. Mother was a drunk without him. Ron was the bread winner
now. No more school. As the kids cycled through the estates with their
smart blazers, new satchels and polished shoes, he was catching a bus
out to the suburbs. Rich pickings from the empty homes. Rich pickings
from the luxuries of the 'haves', necessities for the 'have-nots'. But
it was never enough. The middle men made the profit. Risk takers
scraped by. Ron wanted to be bigger. Violence was his key. In and out
of jail for shot-gun offences and a string of Armed robberies to his
name, he had looked on it all as risk management. He was a thief. It
was part of his job description to spend time behind bars. That's just
the way things are. Everything he did was for the future. It all
amassed to an elaborate retirement plan. But now he was in trouble. He
couldn't feel his arms. His chest leaked his precious life giving blood
and his healthy lungs were unable to gather air. The demons were
developing in front of him. Sepia images of undescribable horror.
Darker than night. Floating like a dream but as real as a hand clap.
Then it was time to rest. He closed his eyes for the last time, and the
shapes, along with his retirement plans, disappeared in the dark.

"Not long now mate, hang on in there" Said Denny without looking
back.
"Ron?" This time he searched the rear view mirror.
He stopped the cab by the near curb and killed the engine. Twisting
around in his seat he glanced over the divider. Denny was no doctor,
but he knew a dead man when he saw one.
"About bloody time" He said out loud. He jumped out of the seat and
into the street. Opening the boot of the taxi he reached in for the
blankets and went round to cab. Unceremoniously, he pulled the corpse
of his ex-captor onto the floor and tossed the blanket over the dead
shape, making sure to cover the whole of the vehicles blood soaked
floor as he did. He quietly closed the door.

As he drove he scanned well ahead on the busy roads. The red display
said 7:43pm. He had been driving Ron around in a giant circle for
nearly four hours. Four hours, just waiting for him to die. The road he
was looking for loomed up on the right. He swung off at the junction
then first left into the road marked as a dead end. Docklands loomed up
in the distance. An imposing new city of wealth and hope for a dreaded
future. To his left the Dome sparkled like a fallen star, its ugly
reflection rippled on the river. A flat image of the same future that
had failed to impress. Ignoring the 'Road Ends' signs he drove on. The
surface became rough and broken as the smell of the city drifted away
in his nostrils, fish and salt powerfully filtering in its place from
the market further down in the docks.
The dilapidated jetty was easy to find, he'd been there before,
recently. The gentle swish of the Thames lapping around the rotting
wooden stakes seemed too gentle for the time of year. Things were
quiet, even in the rain which by now was no more than a light spittle.
Denny heaved the body of the ex- gunman from the taxi and dragged him
out. The body was heavy. A dead weight even. He dragged it over to the
wooden rails and then to the edge where he stopped. Retracing his steps
back out to where he'd parked the car he lifted a rock which he had
seen earlier by chance. Good it was heavy. He hauled it with both hands
down to where Ron was lying and wrapped the body and the rock in the
blanket. Ron's head was pale and lifeless. It flopped awkwardly as the
weight shifted. Without so much as a blink he rolled the corpse into
the black ink flowing below him. The load floated for a second then
sank, the face looking up towards the heavens, a wishful glance maybe,
but hopeless. It left the night without a sound. From his pocket he
produced the knife. Unused. What a stroke of luck that Ron had been
shot in the scuffle. From his other pocket he produced the ignition
barrel he'd smashed from the steering column of the Ford, without
looking he tossed both as far into the middle of the Thames as he could
with a huge heave.

He drove carefully back to Holloway. He had a cargo of cash and a cab
full of blood. Being stopped now would be a very bad thing to happen to
him when he was so close.
It had worked beautifully. The car had been there just like the
Informant had said. Blue Ford a little battered. Right on time, Ron had
showed up. But the bonus was his wounds. Denny had planned everything.
Every dark detail about how he was going to dispose of one Ronald
Heaver, date of birth 20th February 1957, currently living in Peckham.
But finding him presenting himself with a stomach full of shot and lead
waste was even better, he'd done the worst part of the job himself.
There Denny's plan had altered and it was just a matter of time before
nature took it's course. The Informant had been right about the money
too. Seventy grand in notes.
It was eight thirty. Time to get the cab cleaned up and back on the
brother in laws driveway before they got back from Spain.

Nine forty.
"Alright Denny" Said the officer at the front desk.
"Can't complain Mick," Said Denny matter of factly. "Let us in, would
you." With a click the door to the station opened up and Denny pushed
through into the office. He was tired now. The night shift was his
worst enemy, always. He couldn't stand the hours of quiet in the sleepy
station. Tonight he would try and sleep at his desk. The congealed
blood had sluiced out easily from the floor of the cab. A couple of
runs through a car wash and it looked as good as new. It was now safely
tucked up in the Garage he had driven it from this morning.
The sacks of stolen money were also safe. Locked away in his wardrobe
back at his one bedroom flat in Wood Green. Seventy grand. He'd never
earn that in years never mind one day. Ten of it was for the
information. His Informant needed to be paid handsomely for his work.
With the promise of more to keep his mouth shut. He would. Denny knew
his sort. Like a lap dog keeping his master happy, he would .
The phone rang. Its shrill chirp tearing him from his thoughts. He
picked it up and tried not to sound to cheerful. "DC Phillips, CID. Can
I help?"
The End