1949

It's early in the morning - cold and abrasive air, damp darkness and empty streets save for the few stragglers who are still making their way home from the last bars to close. It's so early, it's late.

The taxi rumbles on down the road, skittering over the wet and slithery cobbles on its way out of town. Making idle conversation with his solitary passenger - me - the driver keeps glancing behind him and shows inordinate interest in the baggage that I have at my feet. There are three small cases, each made from shiny hard leather and fastened with gold locks. It's clear from the effort it took to get them into the vehicle that they are all very heavy, so he figures that whatever I have in them must be valuable. Odd reasoning I know, but that's a taxi driver for you.

His conversation is wearying and thoroughly uninteresting; endless witterings about the trials and tribulations of being a taxi driver in a French city where the mandatory certificates for public transport are high and the statutory insurance crippling. I grunt a few replies back at him, but make little effort to show any form of interest in him at all, which is hardly difficult. His English is good, but it's peppered with colloquialisms that he doesn't know how to use, along with some occasional phrases in his own language that he looks to me to translate. Or perhaps he is seeing if I am listening. Maybe this is what they call 'audience attention sampling'.

In a sudden show of dramatic change, he swings the taxi hard to the left and takes us off the route to the railway station where I have so far been destined, and instead leads us down a narrow road that runs between two high buildings. I say nothing, because I am fairly confident that I know where this is all leading, both physically and metaphorically.

He jams on the brakes and turns round, sliding open the hatchway and looks right at me. I am aware that he is pointing a handgun at my face. I sit still and stare back at him.

- Give me the cases, he says in his thick Marseilles accent. - Give me the cases or I will shoot you.

I say nothing but reach into my coat pocket and pull out a packet of cigarettes. I knock one out of the packet, stick it in my mouth at a lugubrious angle and fetch my lighter from my shirt pocket. - You know, this might seem to be a little crazy-sounding to you, I say to him as I light the cigarette, - but this is not the first time today that someone has pointed a gun at me. In fact, it's the third time. Same person did it twice to me, but you get the idea.

- Give me the cases or I will fucking shoot you.

- Can't do that. For one thing the stuff in the cases isn't mine to give away like that, and for another I don't tend to do what I am told by sons of whores who point guns at me and make demands like that. Now if you ask me I will let you see what is in the cases and then you'll realise what a silly thing it was to demand of me that I hand it over to you, then you'll drive me to the railway station where I'll get out and we'll never see each other again. And we both know that I won't be paying you.

- You don't understand... he begins. I cut him off.
- No, you are the one who is not showing any understanding. That's because you are a fucking idiot. Do you understand what that means? Good. Now, did you or did you not understand what I just said to you?
- Of course I understood. Now hand over the cases or I will shoot you.
- Tell you what, I'll hand over one case for you to look at. Then we'll be settled and you can drive me to the railway station for nothing.

I lift one of the cases up. It really is very heavy indeed, and is hard to control in these awkward and cramped conditions. He slides the partition window fully open and accepts it with one hand, dropping it onto the seat next to him. - Don't try anything funny, he says to me. I open my hands out to show that all I intend doing is smoking my cigarette. I lean back into the rear seat and watch him closely. He flips open the catches and lifts the lid. He stares into the case, then looks back at me. Then back into the case. His eyes are wide, his face a mixture of disbelief and fear.

- You see? I cannot give it to you because it isn't mine to give.

He has started perspiring. - Whose...whose is this?
- That really isn't for me to say either. Not that it exactly matters, does it?
- I never thought I would...I never... He starts shaking his head. His free hand hovers over the open case as though he wants to touch its contents, yet knows that to do so would mean his immediate death. His mouth his hanging open. - Oh sweet Jesus above, he mutters. - Who the fuck are you?
- Maybe you should have thought about that sort of thing before you decided to wave a gun in my face.
- I can't do this, he says. I notice that the hand holding the gun has dropped out of sight behind the front passenger seat where the case is presumably lying open. - I can't do this.
- I know. I blow smoke into the air. - So now you are going to shut the case and drive me on to the railway station.
- Who the fuck are you?
- You don't know me, I say to him - but you will have heard of me. And you will certainly know who my boss is. It's his, you see.

I see the gun emerge from behind the seat and get jammed between his loosely hanging jaws. - Aughschweejeezz, he says, this time in a cry. It is the last thing he ever says. He pulls the trigger and fires a bullet up through his palate, into his brain and out through a large hole it conveniently makes in the back of his head. The noise is deafening. He is blown backwards against the driver's door and rests there, blood streaming constantly down his face as it spouts from the jagged crimson mess under his hair. I get out of the car and open the door, checking the street as I do so. Some homeless person is sleeping in a doorway further down the street. No one else around. He half falls out of the car, so I pull him out the rest of the way. There is blood everywhere. Cursing his stupidity I drag his bleeding corpse out of the vehicle completely and leave him in a doorway. The gun is still clenched in his hand, his face still showing the signs of distress his last words clearly revealed. He starts twitching. I hate it when they do that.

I get into the car, trying to avoid sitting on pieces of skull and brain matter and drive it down to a street close to the railway. I abandon it there, pick up the case in the front seat and the two in the back and wander into the station where I am grateful to find a trolley which takes the strain off me.

This day has started off being very strange and shows no signs of changing.