Chapter 7
KNIGHT REACTED ON instinct. He leaped into the street and knocked Lancer from the cab’s path.
In the next instant, Knight sensed the black cab’s bumper less than a metre away and tried to jump in the air to avoid being hit. His feet left the ground but could not propel him out of the cab’s path. The bumper and radiator grille struck the side of his left knee and lower leg and drove on through.
The blow spun Knight into the air. His shoulders, chest and hip smashed down on the vehicle’s bonnet and his face was jammed against the windscreen. He glimpsed a split-second image of the driver. Scarf. Sunglasses. A woman?
Knight was hurled up and over the cab’s roof as if he were no more than a stuffed doll. He hit the road hard on his left side, knocking the wind out of him, and for a moment he was aware only of the sight of the black cab speeding away, the smell of car exhaust, and the blood pounding in his temples.
Then he thought: A bloody miracle, but nothing feels broken.
The red taxi screeched towards Knight and he panicked, thinking he’d be run over after all.
But it skidded into a U-turn before stopping. The driver, an old Rasta wearing a green and gold knitted cap over his dreadlocks threw open his door and jumped out.
‘Don’t move, Knight!’ Lancer yelled, running up to him. ‘You’re hurt!’
‘I’m okay,’ Knight croaked. ‘Follow that cab, Mike.’
Lancer hesitated, but Knight said, ‘She’s getting away!’
Lancer grabbed Knight under the arms and hoisted him into the back of the red cab. ‘Follow it!’ Lancer roared at the driver.
Knight held his ribs, still struggling for air as the Rasta driver took off after the black cab, which was well ahead of them by now, turning hard west along Pont Street.
‘I catch her, mon!’ the driver promised. ‘Dat crazy one tried to kill you!’
Lancer was looking back and forth between the road ahead and Knight. ‘You sure you’re okay?’
‘Banged and bruised,’ Knight grunted. ‘And she wasn’t trying to run me down, Mike. She was trying to run you down.’
The driver power-drifted into Pont Street, heading west. The black cab was closer now, its brake lights flashing red before it lurched in a hard right turn into Sloane Street.
The Rasta mashed the accelerator hard. They reached the intersection with Sloane Street so fast that Knight felt sure they’d actually catch up with the woman who’d just tried to kill him.
But then two more black cabs flashed past them, both heading north on Sloane Street, and the Rasta was forced to slam on his brakes and wrench the wheel so as not to hit them. Their cab went into a screeching skid and almost hit another car: a Metropolitan Police vehicle.
Its siren went on. So did its flashing lights.
‘No!’ Lancer yelled.
‘Every time, mon!’ the driver shouted in equal frustration as he slowed his vehicle to a stop.
Knight nodded, dazed and angry, staring through the windscreen as the taxi that had almost killed him melted into the traffic heading towards Hyde Park.