The Knowledge: A Richard Jury Mystery (Richard Jury Mysteries)

by Martha Grimes

  “We’ve got twelve thousand miles of sewers under this city. What about that?”

  “That’s where you want us to go?”

  Jury charged out of the office.

  “Sir!” Wiggins called after him, down the corridor. “Wait while I get a car!”

  “We don’t need a car. We’re taking a cab.”

  Outside St. James’s Park Tube station Jury flagged one down as Wiggins caught up with him, saying, “People have been trying this for years, boss. It never works.”

  “Well, they didn’t have this, did they?” Jury mashed his ID against the driver’s window. The window lowered and the astonished driver said, “Yes, sir? Some emergency?”

  “The Knowledge. And don’t mess us about.” Jury jerked open the rear door and piled in, with Wiggins following.

  The taxi driver slid open the partition. “Sorry, sir, I didn’t get that …”

  “The Knowledge. You know what I’m talking about.”

  Both the engine and the driver idled. “No, sir, I don’t.”

  Jury said grimly, “What’s your name, driver?”

  “Ray Rich. It’s right there with my license, sir. Now, perhaps you can give me some idea as to what part of London this place you want is.”

  “If I knew that, I’d drive myself.”

  Still the driver hesitated. Then he said, brightly, “Ah, yes. I know.”

  “Thought you did,” said Jury as the cab took off.

  The driver asked cheerily, “Do you want to go by way of Covent Garden or cross the Thames—?”

  “You’re asking us, driver? We don’t know where you’re going, do we?”

  “Right, sir. I’d say Covent Garden, then, and along the Mall toward—”

  “Just do it,” said Jury wearily.

  “Sir,” said Ray Rich.

  They ended up in Whitechapel.

  “This doesn’t surprise me.”

  The cab pulled up in front of a pub … No, a strip club. The building was run-down, grotty, but then so was Whitechapel High Street, in which it stood.

  “What the hell is this, driver?”

  “Nag’s Head. Isn’t that what you said?”

  Jury gritted his teeth. “No, it is not what I said, and I think you know that.” When there was no response, Jury said, “I said Knowledge!”

  The driver looked apologetic, touched his ear. “Oh, sorry. My hearing’s not what it used to be.”

  That little hearing aid Jury could have sworn hadn’t been there before. He and Wiggins piled out of the cab.

  Wiggins told the driver to wait and slammed the passenger door. “What do you want to do, boss?”

  “Well, I don’t want to go to a strip joint. Bloody hell. Thinks he’s being clever, does he?”

  “That’s what these drivers do. When all of that stuff was in the papers years ago about this pub, I personally know half a dozen people who got in cabs and asked to be taken to the Knowledge and all of them wound up at places that sounded a little like it. One person got driven into the Home Counties, Essex or Surrey or one of them, to a pub called the Cow at the Hedge. Took two hours to get there, two to get back. But what’s the connection, sir?”

  “Connection? To what?”

  “To the Moffits’ killing?”

  “None. Come on, let’s go back to the Yard.” Defeated, Jury got back into the cab, told the driver to take them to New Scotland Yard, and did he think he could find the place, or did he need directions?

  The driver assured him he knew where it was and in the rearview mirror regarded Jury with what the Superintendent could only call merry eyes. He pulled out his mobile and hit Plant’s number. When Melrose answered, with what sounded like a merry voice, Jury said, “I want you to get out of there and go somewhere we can meet. Go to Boring’s. Nobody knows where that is, either.”

  Melrose protested that he wouldn’t be safe anywhere else in London.

  “Don’t be absurd. Even if you are being followed, which I doubt, nobody saw you arrive there, since nobody knows where it is, so nobody’s going to see you leave, right?” When this was met with silence, Jury went on: “Look, I’m a CID superintendent and I’m working on a case that involves these drivers. Wouldn’t they make an exception in my case?” Why hadn’t he thought of that before? “Ask.”

  Melrose turned from his mobile and, for a couple of moments, Jury heard various noises. Melrose’s voice returned. “I asked. They said no. Unanimous.”

  “This is ridiculous. I want to talk to you. This case—there are bits and pieces starting to fit together and I want to run them by you. All that time you spent in Kenya and Tanzania, and you’re the one who talked to Masego Abasi. You and Patty Haigh.”

  “Who you just want to worm the address of this place out of.”

  “I do not. Look, you don’t think that guy at the airport—you’re not really in danger, are you?”

  “No, but she does. I’m humoring her.”

  Jury heard cheering, whistling, feet stomping. “Sounds more like they’re humoring you. What’s going on there?”

  “It’s one of their musical nights. Clive Rowbotham is singing something from Gypsy and taking off his clothes.”

  “That’s the sort of thing London’s finest get up to?”

  “You’re London’s finest.”

  “No, we’re the Filth. Come on, Melrose. Get the hell out of there. I’ll send you a police escort.”

  “Oh, I can hardly wait to tell them. Hold on.”

  Jury heard a brief mumble and then a bray of laughter.

  “Still unanimous. This place is a lot of fun and I’m really popular. We’re all taking turns buying rounds.”

  “I’ll bet you’re popular! Every round you buy for a dozen cabbies, they buy you one.”

  Melrose was indeed popular. He had upward of five million pounds (not on him), and a Black Card (on him).

  “You’re not going to give me one lousy clue, then?”

  “You’re never good with clues.”

  “Bloody hell!”

  Wiggins jumped in his seat. They drove for another fifteen minutes, then, as they pulled up in front of New Scotland Yard, he watched Jury yank out his wallet and count his money. He paid the driver and they got out.

  Jury stood there, saying, “I’ve got over two hundred quid. Here. You take a hundred, I’ll take a hundred. You take that side of the road, I’ll take this.”

  “For what, sir?”

  “We’ll start hailing cabs. Don’t tell me there isn’t a bent driver in London. There’s a bent everything else.”

  “Oh, come on, sir!”

  “It’s worth a try.”

  No, it wasn’t.

  For twenty minutes, Jury and Wiggins managed between them to stop ten cabs and offer the driver of each a hundred quid to take him to the Knowledge. There was the usual “misunderstanding,” the usual “Beg your pardon?” and the usual “Hard of hearing.”

  “Look, I’m a detective superintendent at Scotland Yard!”

  “Sir, you could be the commissioner, and I still wouldn’t know this place.”

  So in the end it was always, “Sorry, mate.” Unanimous.

  The City and Islington, London

  Nov. 8, Friday night

  35

  Jury made one last attempt to buy off the black cab system, getting into the one that pulled up before St. James’s Park Tube station and offering the driver fifty quid to be taken to the Knowledge. Before the cabbie could respond, Jury leaned toward the open glass panel and said, “And I don’t mean the Borage or the Cow at the Hedge.”

  The driver laughed. “Cow at the Hedge, sir? Never heard that one.”

  Jury gave him his Islington address and added, “But I’m sure you’ve heard others.” To his surprise, the driver didn’t automatically deny it.

  “Dozens, sir. Fares are always asking to go to that damned pub. Demanding, that is. Prince William got into Clive Rowbotham’s cab—he’s a friend of mine, Clive, not William—with t
wo security guards and commanded old Clive take him to the Knowledge. Of course Clive denied knowing anything about it. William asked him if he’d consider an OBE. Joking, everybody assumed, except Clive. Clive knew a serious offer when he heard one.”

  Jury’s laugh was freer than it had been in days. “Would the Queen have complied?”

  “Rumor is she tried it on herself a few years back. In disguise, of course.”

  “That I don’t believe.”

  “Me neither. God, the stories you hear about people trying to con cabbies into taking them to that pub. Especially tourists. My favorite story is the one about Brad Pitt. He and that wife of his—what’s her name? Angela something?—got into a cab and Pitt offered the driver a thousand quid to take them to the Knowledge. So when Roy, the driver, says, ‘Sorry, sir, I don’t know it,’ Brad Pitt tells him that he’s making a new movie and he’s got a contract in his pocket and he’ll sign the cabbie for a speaking part then and there if only he’ll take them to the Knowledge. Then Roy, he says, ‘All due respect, Mr. Pitt, and I do admire your acting, but that last film of yours didn’t gross much.’”

  Both Jury and the driver laughed. “Pretty rich, eh?”

  “Would you have refused Pitt?”

  Brilliant pause, simulating thinking, and the driver said, “Not if I’d known where the place was, that’s for sure.”

  They had left the Embankment and were driving through the City of London, when the driver spoke again, “I’ll say this, though. There ought to be a pub by that name, considering all of us have to go through that god-awful test and considering what we know about London.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.” As they came into Clerkenwell, Jury thought about Joey and that dark doorway where he’d found the starving dog, and the cabbie who’d known where an animal hospital was. “Saved my dog’s life, you did, a little while ago.”

  “Is that right, sir? Well, I’m glad to hear it.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, you should all get OBEs.”

  The City was known as London’s “Square Mile.” As they drove through Clerkenwell, Jury thought it was his own square mile, considering the time he’d passed through and into it. Up there, along the Farringdon Road, the big red “Z” atop the Zetter Hotel, where he’d first encountered Lu Aguilar. The murder of Billy Maples. The bar called Dust.

  “Isn’t Barts Hospital near here?”

  “In Smithfield, yes, not far back.”

  “Is it in the City?”

  “Barts? Not quite.”

  Not quite was near enough. Barts was where Lu had lain for weeks in a coma.

  “You know where Tower 42 is?” An absurd question; of course the driver knew.

  “Yes, sir. Right near the Gherkin, that’d be.”

  The Gherkin. How wonderfully silly Londoners could be. An architectural wonder of dark green glass and they called it a pickle. “There’s a bar on top of Tower 42—” said Jury.

  “That’d be Vertigo. Always did like that film. Never been to the bar. A bit pricey for me.”

  “Are we near Snow Hill?”

  “We are, sir. Snow Hill police station’s right up there.”

  City Police. Inspector Mickey Haggerty. Jury would never get over that.

  “You like the City, do you, sir?”

  “No, I don’t like the City. It’s too—unprotected.” The Artemis Club. Even Kenya had walked into the City of London and shot it.

  “You think so? You don’t feel the City of London Police do as good a job as the Met?”

  Jury laughed. “Better, I’m sure.”

  “Oh, no police is better than the Metropolitan.”

  Jury smiled at that and then said, “Did you know there are still dragons marking the places where the gates in the wall of London once stood? I’ll bet you know them all.”

  “The dragons?”

  “No. The gates.”

  “Well, let’s see … There’s Ludgate, Newgate, Aldersgate. Then there’s Aldgate, Moorgate … Bishopsgate …”

  They were through Clerkenwell now and into Islington. “One more,” said Jury, who then realized he was being allowed a leftover gate to name.

  “We’re in Islington, sir. Ain’t that a dragon?”

  Off to the right, a winged dragon near the Angel Tube station. Jury had actually not made the connection before. “Cripplegate. I’ll be damned. So this would have been outside the wall.”

  “Only just barely.”

  They drove along Upper Street toward Camden Passage, where he’d first seen Jane Holdsworth. Now he saw her ghost.

  The past was weighing on him like cement. This trip had been a ride along the Boulevard of Broken Dreams.

  They were passing a little fish stall that advertised mussels and Jury was reminded of that dinner in Fells Point he had shared with Plant and Wiggins and Ellen Taylor. That trip had been the occasion of a three-part murder, one of the victims a homeless man who shoved his goods around in a supermarket cart, muttering to passersby, “I got the doin’s, I got the doin’s.”

  Jury smiled. His smile grew broader as they left Upper Street and drew close to his own street. He took the little notebook from his inside coat pocket, found a blank page and wrote a message. He tore out the page, folded it, and as he wrote Plant’s name on the outside, he said to the driver, “Tell me, do you consider yourself a good driver?”

  “The best, sir,” said the cabbie without hesitation.

  “Good enough to lose a car following you?”

  “Done it more than once, I have.”

  Jury wrote “Lord Ardry” beneath Melrose’s name and got some money out of his wallet. “Okay, now, if there was a pub called the Knowledge and you happened—”

  “As I said, I’m not—”

  “I know. For the sake of argument, of supposition, hypothetical and theoretical: if you happened by chance to find this pub tonight, I’d very much appreciate your finding this person, a friend of mine—” Jury turned the scrap of paper, behind which a fifty-pound note was perfectly evident, “and giving him this message. The money is yours. See if you can convince him you can get him to where he wants to go without incident.”

  The driver read the bit of paper. “Lord Ardry? He’s a peer, is he?”

  “Indeed. If you can convince Lord Ardry that you could get him to Mayfair without his being set upon by men with guns, he’ll be very grateful and I know will pay you well. The note is for him. The fifty is for you, no matter what happens. And here’s my card, too.” Jury included one of his CID cards, writing his home number on it.

  “Well, I’d certainly be glad to do this for you, sir, but I strongly doubt he’d be—”

  “—at this pub? Why’s that? I’m willing to bet fifty quid you might just stumble on it and him.”

  “And where in Mayfair will I be transporting him?”

  Jury noticed the driver’s slip of the tongue: “will I be,” not “would I be.”

  “A club called Boring’s.”

  “I’ll consider that. We can be glad of one thing, sir.”

  Jury was happy there was one thing.

  “We’re neither of us the bloody Lord Mayor.”

  “Right.” They’d pulled up in front of his building. “But there’s also an official called the remembrancer. Do you ever feel like him?” Jury was out of the cab and handing the fare in through the passenger’s window.

  “Wasn’t aware of that, sir.”

  Oh, sure you were. “Thanks, driver.”

  The cabbie was reaching his hand toward the open window. “Here’s my card, sir. Name’s Ben Churchill. Now, if you ever find out a bit more about that place they’d never take Brad Pitt, you just ring me. I’d be glad to take you there.”

  “The Knowledge?”

  “That pub. Just ring me. ’Night.”

  “’Night.” As the black cab pulled away, Jury stood looking down at Ben Churchill’s card and felt, for a moment, happy. It had sounded almost like an invitation.

  It had so
unded as if he’d put one over on Brad Pitt.

  If one were to take the hot pink top as position and the orange skirt as velocity, Carole-anne’s outfit sent the uncertainty principle south. One could certainly measure them simultaneously. The two were one and the one was standing in the doorway of his flat.

  But, then, he was not looking at a microcosm when he looked at Carole-anne Palutski. “What I can’t understand,” he said, deep in medias res, “is how anything on a microscopic level could influence our day-to-day existence.”

  “Huh?” said Carole-anne, unprepared to discuss quantum mechanics. “Saw you get out of a cab.”

  “Come in,” he said, despite Carole-anne’s already being in. She had got from Jury’s doorsill to his living-room sofa without his having been aware of it. That must have something to do with quantum theory. Superposition, that was Carole-anne in a nutshell.

  “It’s early yet. Let’s go have a meal. Did you hear about that new restaurant in Upper Street you can’t get into for a month? Bruschetti, or something like that.”

  “No good trying there, then, is it?”

  “We could go to the Mucky Duck.”

  “Can’t tonight. Sorry.”

  Disappointed, she sighed and inspected a hot pink–polished fingernail that must have been defective.

  “Tea?” He was holding his old earthenware pot.

  “You mean leaves?”

  “That’s generally where tea comes from.”

  “As long as it ain’t Earl Grey.”

  “It ain’t.” He carried the pot into the kitchen, added a few teaspoonsful of Ceylon and when the kettle screamed, filled it with boiling water.

  “Steeping.” He sat down again in his worn easy chair and watched her apply Hotsie Totsie polish to the fingernail. The hand that wielded the tiny brush was wearing a ring he hadn’t seen before. It was a deep blue. “Is that a sapphire?”

  “This? Fat chance. My mum gave it to me. It’s some piece of junk jewelry she picked up in the Portobello Road or some other flea market.”

  “It’s not tanzanite, is it?”

  “What?”

  “Tanzanite. A blue gemstone from Tanzania. I’ve just got it on the mind. May I see it?”