Noye admits always carrying a knife

Kenneth Noye, who claims self-defence in the stabbing to death of Stephen Cameron, 21, "always" carried a knife, hiscounsel acknowledged at the Old Bailey yesterday.

Avalet told the jury how he found a flick knife in Mr Noye's Land Rover Discovery just a week before Mr Cameron's killing. He also found another knife in a Mercedes E saloon belonging to Mr Noye.

Mr Noye, 52, from Sevenoaks, Kent, was driving the Land Rover when he became involved in a violent "road rage" altercation with Mr Cameron off the M25 at Swanley, Kent, in May 1996. Mr Noye, who stabbed Mr Cameron through his heart and his liver, pleads not guilty to murder.

Karl Simcox, who worked for a valet company at Dartford, Kent, said: "I saw a flick knife about six inches long and one-and-a-half inches wide, black, with a silver button in the middle. It was always in the driver's door of the Land Rover." In the Mercedes he found another flick knife of a similar size.

Stephen Batten, for the defence, said: "May I make it absolutely plain... we quite accept Mr Noye will always have a knife with him and would leave it when he went to the gym."

Mr Batten said Mr Noye habitually carried a lock knife, however, not a flick knife. Mr Simcox said: "It appeared to me to be a flick knife."

The court was told that after the killing of Mr Cameron, Mr Noye made and received 17 calls on his mobile telephone.

The next day, Mr Noye, clutching a briefcase full of cash, was flown by helicopter from near Bristol to a golf course in Normandy. The following day he was flown by a private jet to Madrid. Mr Noye flew on to Cadiz, where he was arrested two years later.

The trial continues.