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DOA (1990)

JC was at a party. It was late, too late for JC. The smell of tobacco polluted the air. It was past midnight and JC was as drunk as a lord. He was in fact so drunk that after one more sip of liquor he passed out. As he was going out the host called him a taxi to take him home to his flat. That was the last thing he heard. He never woke up!!

The taxi driver, presuming him to be still asleep, dumped his body near the door of his flat. He was found by his flatmate Axel in the morning. Axel gave a cry as he recognised his friend. He called to his other flatmates Karl and Val. Val knelt beside the body and felt for a pulse. There was none. Jason "JC" Carter was dead!!!!

Karl called the police who took the body to a nearby morgue. The young men were anxious to know what had happened to their friend, so they called the host of the party to find out.

The host, Rik Jones, said that JC was "stoned" when he left, and there was no indication of him being dead.

That and the post-mortem ruled out illness or heart attack. That only left two conclusions: suicide or murder. Val, Karl and Axel decided that it was not suicide as JC led a happy life. The police disagreed, so it was up to them to find out.

The first thing that they did was to try and find a number 10 taxi, like the one JC had been taken away in. They found out that there had been a taxi strike yesterday in their area. This meant the taxi driver had been an imposter!!!!

Axel worked near the taxi place and he looked at all the taxis and discovered that there was no No. 10 as it had been stolen the previous month. The taxi place owner told them that the probable thief was a man wanted by the police nicknamed "Tom the Taxi Nicker."

Now the object of the game was not to find out what had happened to JC, but to find out who killed him.

****

Their quest seemed impossible, but a few days later Val spotted a No. 10 taxi driving up his road. He jumped onto his motorbike and set off after the taxi. He caught up with it and peered in. Alas! It was Val's mate Johnny the Cabby. The taxi place must have got their taxi back.

Nevertheless Val stopped the taxi and asked Johnny what had happened. He told Val that the taxi had been found in a back street outside the pub "Kinky Nigel's Booze Up." Val rang Axel and Karl and they hurried to the pub.

The pub was old and unpopular, they were the only people there. They asked at the bar about the taxi, the man said he knew nothing then went through a passage behind the bar for no apparent reason. As he came back they heard a car pulling out of the drive and leave.

On the way back Axel's mind started to put things together.

"Don't you think it's kinda strange?" he asked.

"What? Val said.

"Well when we asked that bloke about the taxi he ran off in that passage."

"So?"

"Don't you see? He must have been hiding someone. He told someone that we were here, and that car was that someone going."

"Yeah."

"Let's check it out!" Karl said. They agreed that they should keep watch on the pub for the person who had left. Maybe, they thought, it was the mystery taxi driver.

The very next night, they saw the car drive up outside the pub. They recognised the person who got out as Tom!!

Nigel came out of the pub and began talking to Tom. The friends made their move! They grabbed Tom and Nigel and hauled them down to the police station.

Tom broke down and confessed: "I didn't mean to kill 'im. I was nicking the taxi and then there was this bloke wot I drove past called me an' then I had to take that drunk kid 'ome. He woke up an' recognised me so I 'it 'im an' then dumped him by his flat. I din' know he was dead, honest."

Tom was arrested, charged with manslaughter and many other crimes, and Nigel was convicted of assisting in a dangerous crime and he was put in jail too. Axel, Val and Karl won Community Trust Action Awards for their part in bringing a dangerous criminal to justice.

Night

Robin Tamblyn (author)