It's been a month since the unsolved slaying of taxi driver Hiren Mohini. Catherine Masters spends the night shift with a veteran cabbie.
It's a quiet Wednesday night in the dark Auckland streets, so Marilyn - better known as Grandma among her cab driver colleagues - and I chew the fat.
Marilyn doesn't want her last name used in this story so we'll call her Grandma too.
She has three children and four
grandchildren and has been driving around Auckland for about 17 years, picking up strangers and occasionally, when her profession hits the headlines for the wrong reasons, getting a concerned call from one of her kids.
One of her sons asked her to be careful out there not so long ago, after the murder of Indian taxi driver Hiren Mohini, stabbed by a killer who has not been caught.
Grandma says she felt a little edgy after the murder but is mostly at ease behind the wheel again. She says you have to stay vigilant. But such a pointless murder could happen in any profession, she thinks, be it a bus driver or an office colleague who snaps one day.
For the most part, driving taxis is safe, says the Westie with a big heart.
At 56, she can barely recall having any trouble, despite being female and favouring the night shift when people are at their most drunken and, you would think, dangerous.
Actually, she says, her experience is the opposite. Most of her passengers are happy. They've been out having a good time and just want to get home.
But you have to know how to handle them. Grandma has honed her instincts over the years and, aided by training from her company Cheap Cabs, knows how to read body language and mood.
She knows when to stop and pick someone up and when to drive on by.
We spoke to some taxi drivers who are very nervous since Mohini's murder. One, who has children, has switched to the day shift since the killing but Grandma is a night owl and can't be bothered with the day-time traffic and stressed-out people always in a hurry.
She remembers once picking up two men from a dark street and feeling apprehensive, but she radioed a secret code through to dispatch and in no time another Cheap Cabs car had appeared behind her.
People can get boisterous and argumentative, but mostly they are nice - come out with me and see, she says.
We head first to Avondale to sit in a Cheap Cabs rank, chatting about life, the universe and everything while the radio sputters with calls for elsewhere but not much action around here.
There are so many scenarios as to what could have happened the night Mohini was stabbed, Grandma muses.
There could have been a fare dispute - she thinks that's when most trouble starts - but the perpetrator was carrying a knife to begin with.
Another cabbie I spoke to suggested sometimes immigrant drivers might not understand the driver-passenger dynamic which is so important in keeping trouble to a minimum.
Grandma doesn't buy this, though. She says most companies have good training these days, so drivers know what they're up for when they're out on their own.
She decides not much is happening so we head to another rank, not far away, outside Lynnmall.
About 11pm we get our first call and head off to pick up a person from outside a dairy.
When we get there a young woman is sitting on a seat outside the shuttered shop in the dark, deep in conversation with a young man.
Grandma asks through the window whether she called a cab and the young woman hesitates before saying, um, there was someone else here but they left. Grandma laughs as we pull away. It was definitely that woman who called, she says.
We decide they probably live up the road, have had a fight, she's rung a cab and he's come down to talk her back home.
* * *
Back at the rank outside Lynmall, we lean against the cab catching a bit of the cool breeze after one of Auckland's muggiest days and the talk turns to vomit.
This is way more common than assaults, though Grandma says she's been lucky there, too, and her cab has remained relatively chunder-free.
She laughs about the time she picked up a woman who was collecting her husband because he wouldn't catch a taxi home on his own.
"I found out why. She takes a sheet with her, a big sheet, in case he got sick so he could get sick in the sheet and he wouldn't mess the taxi.
"And he did. He actually got sick just before he got home, and nothing went in the cab. I thought, 'well, yeah, you've done this before lady... I wouldn't do that for anybody'."
Though in retrospect, she's very glad the woman did bring the sheet, and it saved the man having to pay the $100 defiling fee for cleaning the cab.
Later in the night, on the way home, I see another cab in the middle of the road with its hazard lights on and the door open while someone is being sick.
Grandma reads the drunks she picks up and will place them so that if they are sick they can vomit out of the window, or at least sit them so they will not suddenly open the door into the traffic.
Maybe this is not such a nice topic, but tiddly to paralytic drunks are big users of taxis in the wee small hours. They can be happy, sad, comatose or argumentative.
Attitude is everything at the end of the day, says Grandma. "Don't provoke them and if they carry on, go to the nearest gas station. Number one, you've got cameras there so if there is any trouble you've got them on camera and you've got the staff at the station."
Her company's policy for male drivers is if they have a drunk female who goes to sleep, they are not allowed to physically wake them up.
She tells those drivers to make sure they get not just the street address but the house number because usually there is someone at home who can come and wake the passenger up.
You don't want a female to wake up with some guy leaning over her - and you don't want the driver getting false allegations, which can happen.
She knows of a case where a woman accused the driver of assault because she didn't want to pay the fare.
As the night proceeds, we head closer to the central city where the action is.
Not so long ago, people headed out for the night at 6pm and went home at midnight or 1am.
Now they're heading out at 11pm and partying through the night, sometimes until dawn breaks.
As we cruise along K Rd a lot of the action centres around the late night bars open mid-week. Outside one a drag queen dressed in shocking pink entertains the bouncer with a story as the music pumps.
Cabbies have to be open-minded, Grandma says, because you see and hear it all.
* * *
In Queen St, hordes of young people queue to get into a bar in Elliot St.
We marvel at their ages, though Grandma is not surprised to see them.
Wednesday is student night and the drinks are cheap, she says.
There are groups of girls, some of whom surely look like they are on fake IDs. They're not wearing much, tops as low cut as they can be with short skirts, or sparkly dresses as short as they can get away with. Some are already swaying or staggering as they queue up to get more drinks.
Grandma parks and hops out of the cab to wait, but doesn't have to wait for long.
A young man aged about 20 approaches and asks her if she will take him to the North Shore for $20.
She agrees and he sits in the back.
Grandma asks up front if he has the money.
This is her tactic - make sure they have the money so there's no trouble at the other end.
He has and we head away over the Harbour Bridge. He's slurring a little, but not too drunk. He's been having a good night, he says, but he wants to go home.
You can get $4 drinks on Wednesdays, he says, "it's pretty alright."
We arrive at his destination and the fare comes to more than the agreed price, but Grandma sticks to the $20 deal. This is where you have to be careful, she says.
If you quibble about a few extra dollars when you have agreed a price, the dynamic can change in a flash.
Not that it would have with this young man. He has been polite and relaxed, just as people are 99 per cent of the time, she says.
Later, we pick up one of Grandma's regulars, a young woman who works late at the Warehouse in Kingsland. Once she discovered Grandma, she won't let her go, she tells me. "It is safe to have a female driver, it's nice because she picks me up almost every day, it makes me feel safe."
We roam around and by 3am are back in town where the young people are more drunk and staggering around, groups of girls weaving about on the pavement and the odd young man full of drink and yelling.
As we drop off a young man we have picked up from the North Shore a young woman leaving the Viaduct flashes her boobs at him, to his delight.
But there has been no sign of nastiness and no trouble.
I leave Grandma, who has had a slower night because I'm in the cab, and say "be safe".
No worries, she nods, driving off into the night.
DRIVING SAFE
Veteran cabbie Marilyn's checklist for staying safe at the wheel:
* If you're unsure, check at the start of the journey that the customer can pay the fare - this saves trouble later on.
* If you've quoted a price, stick to it. Trouble mainly starts over fare disputes.
* If someone is argumentative, let them rave, just nod and agree, why provoke things.
* If you're worried, pull into a garage where there are cameras that will record any trouble, and where there are lights and other people.
* If someone wants advice from you, watch what you say because sometimes it can be the wrong advice and can backfire.
* If a male driver appears to be eyeing up the lone female in the back of the cab through the rear view mirror, he may not be being sleazy. He may be watching for other things - how drunk is she, will she vomit, is she falling asleep, because if she does he needs to find a female who can get her out of the cab (he doesn't want false allegations made against him).
