OFF THE STREETS

We turned into Warwick Road from the St. Pauls roundabout.
‘I was parked here once,’ he said, ‘and a girl came up to me and asked if I was looking for some fun and I said, “I’m having fun already.”’
He laughed and looked over at me.
‘They work here,’ I said.
‘It used to be City Road,’ he said.
‘I remember,’ I said. ‘Now they work along here and up Stapleton Road and Fishponds Road a bit further on,’ I said.
He waved at someone who waved back from outside CC Tyres.
‘You know the taxi driver got stabbed down there?’ he said as he drove us down Warwick Road.
‘By the Old Fox?’ I said.
‘He was a friend of mine,’ he said.
‘Oh yeh?’
‘The man who did it stabbed him from behind through the back of the seat all the way into his heart dragged him out onto the road went through his pockets and left him to die.’
A wait at the junction…one…two cars, a van, a bus…
‘He was wearing a tag when he killed him,’ he said, ‘and they caught him using the mobile phone he’d stolen and wearing the man’s baseball cap. I mean,’ he said, ‘he was wearing a tag.’
‘He’s doing twenty-six years,’ I said remembering the photograph in the paper.
‘I know,’ he said, ‘but you got to keep them off the streets.’