Innocent until proven innocent

The day did not turn out quite the way we were expecting.

It was supposed to be filled with writing a story, getting ready for work, and continuing with the copper pipe artwork, with the possibility of some hoovering if one of us got really bored.

Every single plan exploded into fragments when the council rang us this morning.

The taxi inspector wanted to see both of us, at the police station, no less, in company with a police officer, this very morning.

I need not tell you how shockingly troubling this was.

This was not some customer whingeing about double time on Bank Holiday and being charged extras as well. This was not some drunk who had been required to exit the taxi in consequence of being an objectionable idiot. 

This was potentially an interview about a crime, potentially involved both of us, and was potentially very horrible indeed. The suspension of our taxi licenses during an investigation would have meant the death knell to our entire lives. You cannot pay bills and a mortgage without an income, worse, without two incomes.

We were dreadfully worried. We took the dogs for an anxious trot around the Library Gardens and racked our brains for anything we might have done. 

This is not always as easy as you might think. People complain about all sorts of rubbish when it comes to taxis, and sometimes, frankly, they make things up. I have in the course of my career been accused of all sorts of stuff that I haven’t done, usually by customers who were themselves drunk, abusive and scary. It is not difficult to get a taxi driver into trouble, because everybody knows that we are rascals and villains of the first degree, and will always believe the customer’s word against ours.

We could not think of a single thing.

We considered absolutely everything, from exceeding the speed limit at three in the morning, of which we were undoubtedly guilty, but unlikely both to have been caught, to not paying our council tax, of which we most certainly are not guilty, they have milked enough cash out of our household to pay for the Chief Executive’s Porsche and have some change for a tank of fuel.

We had no idea. We got ourselves changed into some marginally more respectable garments and dashed off.

We hovered about outside the police station uncomfortably, entirely aware that every passing taxi would take note of our presence and ply us with questions later. It was a relief when we were allowed to come inside.

When they told us, we were horrified.

It is all still being investigated, so I can’t tell you the details, but it would seem that some customers in a taxi have done horrid things to some other customers, encouraged and supported by a wicked taxi driver.

The description given was of a bald chap with a beard, but the taxi description was of a scruffy van with a crooked top sign. This description, and the CCTV, could have fitted only one taxi in the area at the time, which was mine.

Obviously I am not a bald chap with a beard, even in my least-groomed moments, although the taxi was undoubtedly me. I noted the screech of tyres and the high-speed take-off on the CCTV, there was no doubt about who it was.

Mark is a bald chap with a beard, but was demonstrably in his own taxi at the time.

I never let Mark drive my taxi. He fiddles about with the radio and the position of the seats, leaves his rubbish lying around, eats my chocolate and loses my place in my book. 

We discussed this with the police, and the taxi inspector, who were more than prepared to accept our lack of guilt, especially when we bethought ourselves to discuss methods of payment. The customers in question were going a long way, but apparently the driver had not asked them for cash up front, or indeed gone to any lengths at all to arrange any kind of payment whatsoever. Also he had gone the wrong way to reach the destination in question, and the likelihood of one of our local pirates going the long way round with no guaranteed cash just seemed ridiculously improbable.

We were all in agreement that no taxi driver in Windermere would be so stupidly gullible, and thought that in fact it could not possibly have been a real taxi, but somebody in disguise. 

This was almost worse than if it had been a taxi. Somebody must have been in Bowness masquerading as a taxi driver and upsetting people.

The whole thing was horrid. We sloped off out of the police station with sighs of relief, back to Mark’s taxi which we had prudently parked some way away in case the taxi inspector should be looking out of the window and observed that it was in need of some ablutions.

We occupied the whole of the rest of the day pondering it, worrying and troubled. It was more than clear that it was nothing to do with us, but we are up to our necks in all things of a taxi-related nature, and it had been very shocking.

We stopped on the taxi rank later and told one of the other drivers all about it. 

He raised his eyebrows and said that he had taken the some of the customers in question home, and none of the above had happened at all. He even showed us on a Tracker app on his phone. He showed us how they had paid, where they had got in, and where they had gone.

It looked very much as though they had made the entire thing up.

We have left a message for the police to tell them what we have found out, but the whole thing has left me very badly shaken indeed.

If we had not been able to give reasonable evidence for our innocence we could both have lost our licences, at the very least whilst the whole thing was investigated. Our reputations could have been ruined, our characters blackened, and Mark, since he fitted the description, could have faced criminal charges for something that had never even happened.

I am still cold and sick from thinking about it.