Justice, for a change

It's not often that you get your money back from a fare evader. Normally, the poor mug cabbie is the one who's taken for a ride and left feeling like a mug.

Last week, I copped one such passenger. A young, drunk truckie who hailed the cab at Chapel Hill to take him home to Bellbowrie, on Brisbane's western outskirts -- a fare that ought to run to about $24 or so.

As we approach Bellbowrie, he tells me that he might have a bit of trouble paying the fare, so I started to reduce my potential loss by stopping the meter at $19.

At the shops, we went through a pantomime show of him trying to get money out of the ATM, only to have his card rejected -- then the same happened at the bottle shop and again at the taxi.

Now, at 9.30pm, the nearest open police station is Indooroopilly's -- about 10 miles away -- and I didn't particularly relish the prospect of driving that distance late at night with a drunk and increasingly angry truckie beside me. So I played the mug and took him home for free.

At his house, we went through the whole routine of him trying to pay the fare yet again. Either he was genuine or a bloody good actor: I found myself wanting to think he was genuine, so I gave him the company's address to send his cheque to pay the fare later in the week.

He got a week's grace, and eight days later (Saturday 4 November) I tootled down to the local police station.

Today, a rather perplexed admin officer from the taxi company rang me, to say the the young truckie's mum had sent them the money for the fare.

Methinks he'd got a visit from the local constabulary on Guy Fawkes' Day.

It's nice when things go right.