Sure enough, the radio crackled.

“Anyone free at the mo?” Ellis said.

Hassan picked up the radio. “Yes, I’m just heading into the city centre.”

“Hassan? Okay. There’s three lads who want to go from 27 Hounslow Street to The Drain.”

“What drain?”

“The night club.”

“Where’s that?”

“Somewhere in the city. You’ll have to ask them.”

Hounslow Street wasn’t too far from the city centre. They could have walked it in under fifteen minutes. Hassan knew what kind of lads to expect.

When he arrived at Hounslow Street he spied the house numbers then stopped in a parking space and beeped the horn. The door of number twenty-seven opened and before a light went off inside, Hassan saw three silhouettes emerge into the night.

The three lads peered through the windscreen and waved. They laughed. Then they opened the door. Their noisy banter poured into the car before they did.

“Who’s going in the front?”

“You said you’re paying.”

“Fuck off! I already said I need to get some cash-back from the bar.”

“You cheap bastards!”

“You know it.”

In the end they squeezed into the back together, and promptly burst out laughing. They had snorty laughs. They were about twenty, Hassan decided. Two of them were English, and they were all drunk.

“Where are we going?” Hassan asked.

“The Drain,” said the one Scot.

“Where is that?”

The three lads looked at each other.

“Off Market Square Avenue.”

“Oh. Right.” Hassan knew the place now.

“We get a student rate, right?” said one of the English lads.

“If you’ve got student ID.”

The other English lad sighed and reached into his pocket for his wallet. He slapped his NUS card against the plastic pane between them and Hassan.

“Okay.” Hassan started the engine.

“Wait. I want to see yours.”

The other two lads started snorting with laughter again, but the English lad was serious. Hassan frowned and showed them his licence. The English lad nodded and made himself comfortable.

Hassan released the hand brake and pulled out into the middle of the road. As he was turning the corner onto the main road, he heard something the English lad probably expected the plastic barrier would muffle. Except he was drunk, and his quietness was only relative.

“I just wanted to make sure the guy hadn’t, y’know, hijacked this cab.”

The other two had hysterics.

Hassan pretended he hadn’t heard, but all of a sudden his shirt collar felt tight. The roads into the city centre were surprisingly unbusy so Hassan pushed the speed limit. He tried not to listen to what the lads were saying and for the most part this wasn’t difficult. They were increasingly slurring their words, helped no doubt by the little hip flask they swigged from and passed around.

They were in the city centre now, less than half a mile from the Market Square Avenue turning. Hassan kept looking at the lads in the mirror. Suddenly he skipped an amber light turning red and sped across a junction. At first he didn’t think the lads had noticed, but then they turned round and looked out the back window.

“Careful,” said the second English lad. “Slow down. Wouldn’t want you to crash us into any buildings.”

Then all three had hysterics again.

Hassan was glad to pull into Market Square Avenue moments later and stop the car. He saw The Drain. He could hear the thumping bassline emanating from the place, even from inside the car. It sounded like bombs going off. There was a long queue of people waiting to go in.

“It’s £8.10,” Hassan said.

“Pay it,” said the Scot.

“I haven’t got any fucking money!” one of the English lads cried.

The other English lad groaned and rammed a folded tenner through to Hassan. He held out their change and they took all of it. Hassan was not surprised.

NOTES:
This is the second character called Hassan. The first was the shop manager in Brixton. This wasn't intentional, but when you've got such a large dramatis personae (over fifty narrators, plus all the characters they encounter en route, so well over a hundred in total), such things do happen.