The Brothers of Baker Street

by Michael Robertson

  “He did,” said Reggie, “but prosecuting barristers always manage to leave something out. What should I know that isn’t in the file?”

  “If it isn’t in the file, I’ve no idea,” said Wembley. “But what is in the file is that we have identified the suspect by his cab number, and he has no verifiable alibi. We don’t withhold facts, Heath, you know that.”

  “Yes,” said Reggie. “But if all this happened according to the prosecution’s theory, wouldn’t you expect there to be substantial evidence in the Black Cab itself?”

  “You might,” said Wembley. “Unless the perpetrator had it properly cleaned after. Which appears to be the case.”

  “Still seems to me the prosecution is rushing this one a bit,” said Reggie.

  “No comment,” replied Wembley. But then he actually turned his attention from the sports screen and looked over at Reggie.

  “All I can suggest is that you think about the victims for a moment.”

  “Bloody rot; you don’t need to remind me to have empathy for victims, Wembley.”

  “That’s not what I meant, Heath. I only meant, think about who the victims were. Their profile.”

  Reggie did so.

  “American tourists,” said Reggie after a moment. “And it’s still high season.”

  “Spot on,” said Wembley. “And this isn’t the first of the crimes. So before you get yourself too deep in this, consider it from the City’s point of view.”

  “Spell it out for me.”

  “The Black Cabs are known throughout the touristy world as the most reliable and crime-free mode of transportation devised by man.”

  “Perhaps a slight exaggeration,” said Reggie.

  “No, it’s a fact. They’re safer than your mother’s baby carriage. Nothing is more risk-free. There has not been a single crime or allegation of a crime associated with anyone’s ride in a Black Cab in more than twenty years. I can tell you that for a fact. No rape, no robbery, no murder, no nothing.”

  “A credit to all of London,” said Reggie, nodding.

  “But in the past two months,” said Wembley, “there have been seven.”

  Reggie waited for a moment, then asked.

  “Seven what?”

  “Assault, robbery, and now murder.”

  Reggie said nothing. He was astounded.

  “Seven of each?”

  “No, no—I mean seven total incidents.”

  “I see. A sort of variety pack, then.”

  “A cab driver bopping about London and harassing American tourists is like having that shark roaming around offshore in—where was it, Nantucket?—in Jaws. Bad for business. You don’t really want anyone to know about it. But once it hits the papers and everyone knows about it, you want it over with, right quick. Especially when someone dies. Really, Heath, you need to learn to appreciate the politics of things. Read the daily rags once in a while.”

  There was a chorus of outraged shouts at the wide screen now, and Wembley looked back over his shoulder to join in.

  “Bloody hell, will they ever red card that wanker?”

  Then he turned back to Reggie.

  “I mean,” said Wembley, “if you can get past all the ink they’re devoting to yourself. And to Miss Rankin.”

  “That’s a red card, Wembley,” said Reggie, and then he put down his beer and left the pub.

  5

  Despite Wembley’s endorsement of tabloid reading, Reggie had had enough of the daily rags. He hoped that the private investigator’s report would prove to be more useful. It arrived at chambers the following afternoon, and Reggie had just enough time to review it before setting out to meet Darla Rennie at the crime scene.

  But the report had little that was helpful.

  The investigator had interviewed both the barman at the pub in Covent Garden and two Chelsea residents who said they saw the cab some twenty minutes later. All of the witnesses acknowledged that they had not been in a position to get a look at the driver’s face. If it went to trial, Reggie would hammer on that.

  But the identifications of the license plate were another matter. The barman distinctly remembered the letters in the middle of the license number—WHAMU1—because they happened to form an acronym for West Ham United, a popular football club. A jury would believe his reason for remembering those letters.

  The second sighting was on King’s Road, near Chelsea Harbor, where the cab had apparently rounded the corner in a hurry, narrowly missing two middle-aged women who had just stepped into the street, splashing both of them from the recent rain—and to such an extent that they wrote the number down and actually called in a complaint to the police.

  Reggie knew he could argue that the second witnesses might have written the number down incorrectly, but their call to the police established a solid time line—and the number they wrote down included the same acronym that the barman recalled so clearly.

  On top of that, the private investigator had taken the time to check all the current Black Cab license numbers in London—a check that the prosecution would surely do as well—and there was only one cab in the city with that acronym in its license number, and that was the one owned by Reggie’s client. That could not be a good thing.

  Reggie took the turn now from King’s Road in Chelsea. He drove down a narrow street, lined with trendy out-of-the-way furniture shops, to the abandoned power station at Lots Road, on the north bank of the Thames.

  He passed two large, sooty redbrick buildings, one with a thirty-foot smokestack on top; between those buildings, a dozen feet below the little bridge where Reggie crossed, was Chelsea Creek—some twenty feet wide and lined with concrete to contain the changes in water level from the Thames.

  There was razor wire all around the perimeter of the structures, but in some places it was not in good repair, and Reggie guessed there would be spots where it could easily be traversed. If you wanted to do something away from the public eye in Chelsea in the middle of the night, this would be the spot.

  A police officer opened a rusty metal gate (which now had a shiny new lock), and Reggie drove inside. He parked at the far end of the main building, near the river.

  It had rained overnight. The afternoon sky now was gray, and a cold wind off the river greeted Reggie the moment he opened his car door.

  He saw that Darla was already there, chatting with an officer who looked quite eager to cooperate with her.

  When Reggie approached, she handed Reggie a copy of that morning’s Daily Sun.

  “I see that you agree with me,” she said. “About a little publicity, I mean.”

  Reggie accepted the paper from her. She had it open to page two, with this headline: “Balmy Barrister to Defend Death Cab Driver.”

  “I thought you didn’t read this trash,” said Reggie.

  “A friend alerted me to it,” she said. “But no harm done, that I can see.”

  Reggie glanced at it. It was a short, one-sided account of his excursion the day before to Buxton’s compound, followed by a note that he was now representing the notorious suspect in the “Black Cab Killings.” It was no worse than he had expected. He folded the paper and tucked it away.

  “Let’s take a look at something real now,” he said.

  “They say there won’t be much to see,” Darla volunteered as the officer escorted them to the crime scene. “What with the rain last night.”

  “It wasn’t covered up?” said Reggie to the officer.

  “No need,” said the officer. “Forensics completed their work before it started. Photographed every square inch. We’ll send the pics over, if you like.”

  “Yes, I should like,” said Reggie. “But you’d expect Scotland Yard could afford a tarp. It rained the night of the crime as well, didn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said the officer. “I believe it did.”

  “So, no footprints were distinguishable?”

  “Don’t know that, sir; you’ll have to ask the forensics team.”

  “I will d
o, but I expect that’s why forensics didn’t bother protecting it—whatever footprints there were, if there were, and tire tracks as well, if there were, had already been obliterated by the time the police arrived.”

  “Was that a question?” said the officer.

  “No,” said Reggie. “Where were the bodies found?”

  “This way,” said the officer.

  The building ended at about ten yards from a concrete sea wall, about three feet high, with an opening where the old power station had received deliveries by boat at some time in the distant past.

  They walked on for the width of the building, until they reached a flimsy metal fence. The fence was in serious disrepair and had been flattened down at several points; whether from sheer neglect, or deliberate activities of the demolition crew, or some other force, it was hard to tell.

  The office stepped over one of the flattened sections.

  “They were found down here,” he said. “But it was low tide then.”

  Reggie and Darla joined the officer and looked down at Chelsea Creek. The Thames flowed into this channel at high tide, and ebbed from it at low. At present it was filled with dark river water.

  “How low was it when the bodies were found?” said Reggie.

  “It was just mud in the creek, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Were they weighted down with anything?”

  “No. But they didn’t float out into the Thames, because they were caught up on that jutting rebar you see down there.”

  “Caught up on which side of it?”

  “Not sure, I expect forensics will have photos.”

  There was nothing more to see. Darla walked up close to Reggie as they headed back toward the gate.

  “This is good, isn’t it?” she said in a low voice. “They have no footprints. Nothing to indicate he was at the scene really, do they?”

  “So far. But I would like things better if it had not rained, so that the prosecution could offer no logical explanation for why our client’s footprints are not present.”

  She thought about that for a moment, then said, “You said on the phone that the motive seems weak. Why? What’s weak about it?”

  “It takes years of effort to become a Black Cab driver. It’s almost as tough as becoming a barrister,” said Reggie, and then in a quick afterthought, “Or a solicitor. You wouldn’t expect anyone to jeopardize all that for a simple robbery. Or even a string of them.”

  “I see,” she said. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. Then we’re in decent shape, with low motive and little or no forensic proof?”

  “No,” said Reggie. “They still have the ID on the cab. Without a verifiable alibi, that will be enough for the indictment to stand. Our client says he was driving home at the time in the East End, but we have only his word for it. The prosecution, on the other hand, has two witnesses who reported seeing his cab, and its license number, thirty or so minutes away in the West End. If we can’t overcome that—and right now I don’t see how we do—this will go to trial, and if it goes to trial, anything can happen.”

  “We’ll think of something. I have full confidence in you.”

  “Noted and appreciated, but we have just two days to think of it.”

  “Perhaps a pint would help?”

  Reggie turned and looked at her. What he heard was a purely casual invitation between two lawyers working the same case, and not at all inappropriate, even though they had already hashed out all the lawyerly issues they could for the moment. But her emerald eyes were glimmering and she was standing quite close, as if she wanted to tuck herself inside his raincoat, making him at first highly inclined to accept the invitation, and at second thought, concerned about the consequences of doing so.

  He was not prepared at the moment for a determination on this subject. He decided to ask for a continuance.

  “Save the pint till after?” he said.

  “Done,” she said.

  Reggie drove back to chambers. He rang Laura on his mobile along the way, but he got no answer. The message service picked up—but he wasn’t quite certain what he wanted to say. That he thought the young female solicitor was hitting on him? No, probably not a good subject for conversation. That he had finally acquired a new case, the first since he had returned from Los Angeles, but that it wasn’t going particularly well? No, probably not that either. In fact, it was probably a bad idea to leave any message at all. He shut off the phone.

  Half a moment later, it rang. It was Laura.

  “Did you call?”

  “Yes,” said Reggie.

  “Why didn’t you leave a message?”

  “I … didn’t have all that much to say, really.”

  “You are allowed to call without an agenda.”

  “Noted. Just thought I’d mention that I got a new brief, actually.”

  “That’s wonderful,” said Laura brightly. “What sort is it?”

  “Robbery homicide.”

  There was a pause.

  “Well, double homicide, actually,” added Reggie, in a tone that was halfway between bragging and apology.

  “I thought you didn’t do criminal,” said Laura, with just a slight note of concern.

  “Circumstances are … exceptional.”

  “I see. Well, I am glad you rang … or that you sort of did at any rate, because I was just about to ring you.”

  “You did just ring me.”

  “Oh, of course,” she said with a laugh, and as awkward as Reggie was sure he sounded a moment ago, now it was Laura who seemed just a bit flustered.

  “I just wanted to let you know I’ll be back in town tomorrow.

  “I thought you had another two weeks on the shoot.”

  “There’s a short break. A good time for us to talk, I think.”

  Now she did not sound flustered; now she just sounded tense and formal. Chills went down Reggie’s spine.

  “Of course,” he said. “Just give a ring.”

  “I will,” she said. “Have to go. Must pack.”

  That was all.

  When Reggie returned to the Baker Street building after that call, he once again went straight to his chambers as a refuge.

  There was something wrong in Laura’s sudden need to visit. He did not want to think about what it was, but in any case, he had a great excuse not to do so. He had a hearing to prepare for.

  He pulled the police files and the private investigator’s report out of his desk and pored over them once again. All of it confirmed his initial impression: it just didn’t make sense that a dedicated Black Cab driver would jeopardize his career by committing a string of low-yield robberies—much less a murder.

  But Reggie’s gut feeling carried no weight in court, and he knew he did not have enough to get the charges tossed at the preliminary hearing. As overeager as the Crown Prosecution Service appeared to be, it only needed a prima facie case to get an indictment. And if Reggie contested that indictment at tomorrow’s hearing and failed, he would not only annoy the court, he would be prematurely revealing and seriously undermining the defense that he would need to present at trial.

  Reggie got up from his desk. He would sleep on it. In the morning, if no other strategy came to mind, he would have to call Langdon and initiate a retreat, and accept a trial date.

  Reggie exited chambers, but he had to pause at Lois’s desk; the fax machine was screeching and blinking.

  Reggie picked up the fax as it creaked out. Perhaps Darla had come up with something.

  But it wasn’t from her. It was from Nigel, and it said:

  READ THE BLOODY THING!

  Reggie picked up the next page that came through, and when he saw it, he had to laugh.

  It was a fax of the same typewritten letter that had fallen from the top of the stack the day before. The letter from Moriarty. Apparently, Nigel was taking it seriously.

  Which Reggie found amusing—because any halfway decent evil genius wouldn’t use a manual typewriter, which might well be traceable and
reveal your location. He would go to the library and use a common laser or ink-jet. Even ink analysis could reveal no more than which brand.

  Reggie crumpled the fax and tossed it into the wastebasket. He had no time to deal with a letter from a fictional villain to a fictional detective, threatening or otherwise.

  6

  Reggie returned to chambers the next morning and saw Rafferty, just ahead of him, heading for the lift.

  Reggie slowed his pace, but it was too late—Rafferty had seen him. Rafferty held the doors open, and Reggie could not turn away without seeming to flee.

  “Hear you have a new brief,” said Rafferty.

  “Word travels fast,” said Reggie, not adding that it was also traveling farther than he preferred.

  Rafferty just smiled and nodded—and he said nothing more, until the doors opened on Reggie’s floor.

  “Letters under control, I presume,” said Rafferty then.

  “Of course,” said Reggie.

  Rafferty nodded, as if to indicate that perhaps he would take Reggie’s word for it. Reggie quickly exited the lift with no further discussion.

  As he approached his secretary’s desk, Reggie looked back over his shoulder. At least Rafferty wasn’t actually following him. That was something.

  “Any new posts this morning?” he asked Lois.

  “Um … by new posts , do you mean, well … addressed to whom, exactly?”

  “To me, of course.”

  “No. Sorry.”

  Reggie nodded and proceeded toward his office.

  “But there was this,” Lois called out.

  Reggie paused and came back to her desk, puzzled and hopeful.

  “Yes?”

  With some trepidation, she handed Reggie the one letter from the in-basket. From the look on her face, he realized now to whom the letter must be addressed.

  Mercifully, there was only just the one. There was no need to send another package off to Nigel and then have to deal with more faxes. Given it was just one letter, Reggie could send the form response for this one himself, and keep Rafferty at bay.