There has been a rash of horrific fatal accidents recently, and the kneejerk reaction of governments around Australia has been to increase fines and punishments in legislation. Seize the cars of persistent offenders and crush them. Lock the buggers up. Fine the daylights out of them.

The idea is that, knowing there’s a savage penalty in store, drivers will fall into line, obey the road regulations in every respect, and the problem vanishes.

As ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope said, announcing tougher laws, “We are sending a clear message to the community that Canberra’s culture of dangerous driving will not be tolerated.”

Government is out of touch. The accidents have been fatal. The crime of being stupid on the roads is one that is punishable by death. Drivers know this, so what possible notice are they going to take of any lesser penalty? A hefty fine for going around a corner too fast and sliding into a tree is nothing when you compare it to having a branch speared through your trunk.

Sending messages to the community and paying for advertising campaigns doesn’t work. Jon Stanhope could be sitting beside some of the morons on the road, reading out the regulations, and they are still going to slug down a six-pack and whip out on wet roads for a pack of fags.

When self-policing obviously isn’t working, you need to get real actual burly police out there on the roads doing the policing.

The point for the government is that police are expensive and fatal car crashes are free. Apart from replacing the odd light pole it’s a user pays situation.

Well, Chief Minister Stanhope, I’m about fed up with some of these public artworks you’ve been scattering round interchanges and motorways. A pile of painted rocks and twisted metal girders may be art in your book, and well worth a couple of hundred thousand dollars to the “artist”, but it’s another useless roadside obstacle for drivers to run into if they lose control on a wet road, and it’s the cost of a car full of policemen patrolling the streets to catch the lunatics driving dangerously.

And there are lunatics out there. I’m a cabbie. I see them every day and night. They don’t care about the death penalty, and they aren’t going to care if you ratchet the dangerous driving fine up to a million bucks. It’s not going to happen to them so why should they worry?

Well, make it happen. Get a couple of coppers in an unmarked car appearing out of nowhere when they least expect it. That’ll send a message.

His door window had vanished, Harley noticed when he walked back to his cab.

“I don’t suppose you ripped out the roof lining as well?”

“Duct tape is a marvellous thing,” Sharkey grinned, “but not even you can see through it.”

Harley nodded.

“It’ll do for a bit. I’ve got a mate’ll fix it up, good as new. And fit you a new window. I’ll give him a hoy tomorrow”

Harley nodded again, settling down behind the wheel. He took a sip of his cold HeartBake coffee and grimaced at the taste of fresh bullet, spitting the acrid liquid through the empty space to his right.

“Hey, Sharkey. You want to hear a good joke?”

“Sure.”

“So do I. You know any?”

Sharkey chuckled. “Knew we could cheer you up!”

Harley drove through Fyshwick’s deserted streets. One thing about the nightshift, there were never any traffic problems.

Cold Canberra winter nights, on the other hand…

He pushed the heater up to the maximum, but realistically there was no hope of countering the cold air pouring in through the empty window. Much more of this and his ear would freeze and snap off. As they accelerated onto the 80 km/h stretch along the Monaro Highway heading back to Campbell, the breeze became a blast. This trip would have to be his last for the night.

And fair enough, too. He worked insane hours to begin with, and tonight had been stressful in several ways.

The massage had worked to reduce the immediate tension of being shot at and having his cab damaged, but when the soothing hands had finished their work on his body, and it had become obvious to all parties that some body areas were anything but relaxed, he had balked at the range of solutions offered.

Not a prude, not inexperienced in any of the proposals – well, one or two, maybe, and he’d wonder about the sort of pressure that could be brought to bear by those magnificent breasts for some time – but the whole thing had seemed wrong.

It wasn’t as if he had a girlfriend to be faithful to, either. Just himself.

Sharkey sat beside him, perhaps privy to the problem, perhaps not.

Harley’s phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Mrgble whssssh?”

Too much noise in the cab for speakerphone. Harley pulled the handset out of its cradle and held it to his ear. No cops around this time of night.

“Hello?”

“Harley, this is Olivia here. Are you anywhere close?”

“Five minutes.”

Bugger. He didn’t really want to do another job and risk his brain freezing. But he couldn’t refuse Olivia.

“I’ll be at King O’Malley’s. I’ll be the one freezing her tits off.”

Harley laughed. “Always ready to help a damsel in distress! See you soon.”

Harley turned up Blamey Crescent instead of Monash Drive, dropped Sharkey off just around the corner from Erstwhile Garden, waving aside the proffered twenty, and headed into Civic.

The King O’Malley Irish Pub was inside the Civic bus interchange, and until midnight, off limits to taxis except from the Bunda Street cab rank. But it was far more convenient to make the right turn into the interchange from London circuit, rather than wade through the turns and traffic lights to get in legally. Besides, there were never any police there this time of night.

Harley pulled up outside the pub. Olivia and a companion detached themselves from an alcove and bundled into the back seat. Harley got a glimpse of a skinny young woman with short blonde hair – another officer cadet, obviously – before the door closed and the light went off.

“Turn the heat up, would you, Harley? It’s a fridge in here!”

“Sorry. My window’s broken.” He turned the cab and took the easy but illegal way back out onto London Circuit.

“How’d you do that?”

“Stuck my elbow though it.”

Olivia giggled. “Right.”

London Circuit to Constitution Avenue, turn onto Parkes Way at Coranderrk Street. As they passed the Convention Centre, the zebra crossing lights shone into the back seat and Harley automatically checked the mirror, wondering why Olivia wasn’t riding her usual shotgun beside him.

“Eyes front, driver!” The other cadet was glaring at him, before returning her attention to Olivia, who hadn’t been distracted.

“Don’t worry, Rose, he’s a darling.” Harley heard Olivia’s sigh.

Silence from the back seat, apart from the soft embracing sounds that every night cabbie hears. Harley kept his eyes front and his eyebrows raised.

Flashing red and blue lights on Parkes Way beside the ASIO site. Half a dozen police cars, officers in reflective vests, orange wands. Random breath test. They never pulled cabbies over – a taxidriver would have to be insane to drink on a shift.

But a policeman was waving him to the side.

“Random breath test. Just turning the meter off,” Harley informed his passengers. He always did this if a delay was his fault or outside the limits of normal traffic.

Both cadets were sitting upright now, he noticed. Seatbelts buckled, two respectable young women at opposite ends of a wide back seat.

“Taxi 377?” A policeman leaned in through the empty window. Gold badges and a fancy cap.

“That’s me.” As if it wasn’t visible on the number plate.

“Mister Barnardo?”

“Right.”

“Did you leave a parcel at Canberra International Airport this morning?”

“No.” Oh, hang on. Maybe he had.

“Sure about that? A book with a picture of a bomb on the cover?”

“Uh, yeah. Forgot about that. You found my book, then?”

“There’s a few people would like to speak to you about that, Mister Barnardo. I’ve been asked to request that you attend the Civic police station tomorrow at nine AM. Be there. These are the kind of people you don’t want to upset even more.”

The officer rapped the roof of the cab twice and Harley indicated, pulling back out onto Parkes Way.

“Your pet cabbie’s a terrorist, Liv!”

Harley sniffed. There was a new fragrance in the cold cab. Warm and musky and penetrating directly into the bit of him that had wanted to say yes to the suggestions made to him in Fyshwick.

“Sorry about that.”

Harley reached down to the console and took another automatic sip of his coffee. He gagged at the taste and launched the whole cup out of the window.

“And a litterbug!”

“Home, Harley, and step on it!” Olivia was holding the hand of her slender blonde companion, sliding back across the seat.

“Eyes front, Osama bin!”

Copyright © 2009 Peter Mackay