The Brothers of Baker Street

by Michael Robertson

  He heard background noise from the street, and then the sound of the passenger door shutting. And then he heard the passenger speak.

  “Elystan Street in Chelsea,” she said to the driver.

  The voice was clear as truth and unmistakable.

  It was Laura.

  The cab driver may have said something in response to her, or he may not have; Reggie couldn’t tell, the audio configuration, like the video, was clearly focused on the passenger.

  And now the cab was in motion.

  Laura had settled back in the passenger seat, and though the camera angle still did not show her face at the moment, it did show part of her profile.

  Reggie could tell by the tilt of her chin that she was perturbed at the moment. But she was not in active distress either; she was not physically afraid.

  Of course not. She had no reason to be. She was in one of her trusted Black Cabs.

  Reggie could see her taking something out of a white paper sack from the Indian takeaway. Then she held it up toward the partition window, as though the driver had said something to her.

  “It’s quite spicy,” said Laura. “Would you like a bite?”

  Apparently the driver did; Reggie saw Laura lean forward with the tandoori and then back again.

  And then, after the driver said something, Laura responded, “Oh yes, I know what you mean. When I haven’t eaten Indian food in a while, it is indeed as though I’m tasting it again for the first time.”

  The cab came to a stop at an intersection now. Laura was looking from one side to the other.

  “Are you quite sure you know the way to Chelsea?” she said.

  The driver didn’t answer.

  “Get out of the cab,” said Reggie, under his breath.

  The signal changed, and the cab was about to start moving again.

  “It’s very pleasant having a woman driver,” Reggie heard Laura say now. “I’ve quite had it with trying to talk sense with any man of late, at least any that I know. But really, I think you have your direction wrong.”

  “Get out of the cab!” Reggie shouted at the terminal display.

  But Laura heard nothing, remained in place, and the cab continued.

  “Not to worry, miss,” said the cab driver, and Reggie froze at the sound of the driver’s voice. “I know exactly where we’re going, and it’s no good saying I don’t.”

  “Get out of the cab!” screamed Reggie, recognizing the voice immediately. “Get out of the cab!”

  But it was all one-way; he was receiving audio but could not send, and Laura was not responding.

  And then, suddenly, Reggie caught a glimpse of the driver. The angle of the camera had changed, though Reggie was not touching any control, and now he could see the back of the driver’s head—her jet-black hair not quite covering a shining silver headset—as she touched something next to her ear.

  And then he heard Darla’s voice again, so softly that Laura could not hear it, but Reggie through the audio feed could.

  “What you value most, Mr. Holmes.”

  And now the video display went dead.

  For several heartbeats, Reggie had absolutely no clue what to do.

  There was no landline phone in the house. The XJS was keeping company with the sheep. He had seen no e-mail system on any of the terminals, and while there might be something a hacker could do, he was no hacker.

  Then he remembered: Trimball’s phone.

  Reggie ran up the stairs and through the corridor. In the dining room, under the glass table, he found the mobile phone that he had thrown at Dillane.

  Had Dillane’s face cushioned the impact enough?

  Reggie flipped the phone open. It flickered for a moment, and then the display lit fully. Wonderful.

  And then, as Reggie knew it would, it demanded Trimball’s password again.

  With the phone in hand, Reggie ran out of the house and into the rain, across the crunching gravel drive, and then back down the muddy road toward Trimball’s crashed Audi.

  It was half a mile. It seemed longer. Reggie had no idea how long it took him, running in the nearly pitch dark; it felt like forever. The thick mud pulled at his feet; pits and potholes, invisible in the dark, twisted his knees.

  With his lungs burning and gasping for more air, Reggie finally reached the Audi. He waved his arms wildly to scatter the fresh murder of crows that had gathered, and then he opened the door on the driver’s side.

  He reached in Trimball’s pocket. The address book was still there.

  Surely it would be on the very first page. It was Trimball’s own pass code, he would not identify it, he would just write the numbers on the very first page.

  Reggie looked at the top of the first page, peering in the light from the open car door, and yes, he saw five carefully hand-printed numerals. He flipped the phone open again, got the prompt, and entered the number.

  “Welcome, Larry!” said the phone.

  Thank God.

  But the battery light was blinking. Reggie knew he had only seconds.

  The hell with 999. He rang Nigel.

  27

  As Nigel sat with roughly six-score Black Cab drivers in the Carriage Office meeting hall on Penton Street, he was beginning to worry that he had made the wrong choice—he should not have insisted that it be Reggie who would go to the Bath Mental Health and Recovery Center. He probably should have gone himself.

  And this was not simply because Nigel’s excursion to the Black Cab meeting was turning out to be a bust—the meeting should have started twenty minutes ago, and the techno geek still had not shown up to make his final pitch.

  And it wasn’t because Reggie wouldn’t be just as capable as Nigel of prying information out of the group therapist or whomever else he came in contact with. Reggie could certainly handle it; Reggie could handle anything. That had always been the case. Anyone (and that included Nigel himself) who had a brain and knew the Heath brothers would have the good sense to send Reggie to do everything and let Nigel remain in the pub quaffing ale and shooting snooker. Reggie would always get the job done.

  No, Nigel’s worry now was simply that he wasn’t at all sure that it was a good idea to have his older brother talking to the therapist who had spent twenty days, four hours per day, listening to all of Nigel’s own deepest darkest concerns.

  Of course, it was all completely confidential. Surely there was nothing to worry about.

  Still, Reggie had a way of prying information out of people—

  Now Nigel’s worrisome train of thought was interrupted. The man from the Carriage Office had stepped to the microphone, for the third time since they had arrived, probably to announce yet another delay.

  The Carriage Office apologizes, said the official. Mr. Trimball still had not arrived. The Carriage Office accepts full responsibility for the apparent glitch in scheduling, but for now, the meeting is adjourned. Then he scampered off the platform as quickly as he could.

  There were annoyed murmurs from the audience of cab drivers, many of whom were not going to be satisfied with just leaving after the long wait.

  “Bad move on their part,” said Edwards, sitting next to Nigel, “if they want to get this thing accepted.”

  “I agree,” said Nigel. “You would think they’d want to … Excuse me, one moment.”

  Nigel’s mobile was ringing. There was a setting on the bloody thing to mute it, but he still hadn’t figured it out.

  He flipped the phone open and took the call.

  It was Reggie. He was talking rapidly, and in a stressed pitch that was so unlike him that Nigel at first thought it must be someone else.

  “Laura’s in the Black Cab. I’m hours away. Track Wembley down, tell him about Laura, get him to send out an alert, and give them this license number—”

  “Reggie, what in hell are you—”

  “Write down the bloody number before my connection goes out,” said Reggie.

  Nigel took down the number.

  “But w
hy do we need an alert about Laura being in a Black Cab?”

  “Not a Black Cab, the Black Cab. I’ve identified the cabs being used in the crimes. There’s one left. Something bad is going to happen tonight, to the passenger in that cab, and the passenger in that cab is Laura.”

  “Got it,” said Nigel. And just in time, because in the middle of an adrenaline-rushed bloody-something statement, Reggie’s connection went dead.

  Nigel immediately punched in the numbers for Inspector Wembley. But all he got was an official New Scotland Yard recording. He shut that call off and punched in 999 instead.

  “I want to report a … a … kidnapping.”

  “Who is it being kidnapped, sir?”

  “Laura Rankin.”

  “Your name?”

  “What bloody difference does—”

  “Your name, sir?”

  “Nigel Heath.”

  “And who is doing the kidnapping, sir?”

  “I don’t know. Someone in a Black Cab. The driver of a Black Cab.”

  There was a short pause.

  “Did you witness this … Laura Rankin … being forced into the Black Cab.”

  “No.”

  “Did she communicate to you in some way that she is being kidnapped?”

  “No, I … it’s not like that; she may have gotten in voluntarily, the point is—”

  “Sir, people get in Black Cabs every day, do they not?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Typically they are simply going from one place to another. They are not being kidnapped. Do you understand that?”

  “Of course I … now look here, just forget that I said anything about her being kidnapped, the point is—”

  “Then you are not in fact reporting a kidnapping?”

  “No, but she is in danger. You need to put out an all-points bulletin; I will give you the cab number; it’s—”

  “I’ll transfer you to my supervisor, sir,” said the operator, and now the line went silent.

  “Bloody hell,” said Nigel. “You’d think I’d get something right.”

  “Problem?” said Edwards, still sitting on the chair next to Nigel. Clearly he’d heard most of it.

  “Bloody hell, yes,” said Nigel, punching in Wembley’s number again. Then, as he got another recording, he turned back to Edwards.

  “How many drivers in this room?” asked Nigel.

  “Something over a hundred,” said Edwards.

  “So there are a hundred Black Cabs, and Black Cab drivers, right here, at this moment?”

  “At least,” said Edwards. “And I can double that with a call to the dispatcher.”

  Nigel wrote down the cab number Reggie had given him over the phone.

  “I take it you still want to find who is behind the Black Cab crimes?”

  “There are a lot of lads here who’d give their right arm to do that,” said Edwards, “and at this moment, they’re just itching for something useful to do.”

  “Find that cab, and that driver, and you’ll have who you want,” said Nigel. “But save the passenger inside.”

  “Just give us the cab number then, that’s a good lad,” said Edwards, “and Bob’s your uncle.”

  28

  Laura looked up from her tandoori and noticed where they were.

  “Really, there’s no question about it. You missed a turn,” said Laura.

  “Oh no, ma’am,” said the driver. “I always know exactly where I’m going.”

  “I’m sure. But where I’m going is Chelsea. You can take the next right onto Park Lane, and it will be fine, or at least nearly so.”

  The driver made no response, but Laura wasn’t concerned.

  Until Park Lane came and went, and they were still traveling east.

  “You missed the turn,” said Laura firmly. “Take Regent Street. I’ll direct you from there.”

  The driver made no response. Regent Street was approaching, and the driver was not getting in position to take it.

  Either the driver had no sense of direction whatsoever, or else she had her own destination in mind. Or it might even be both those things.

  Laura thought about it. No reason to panic. She just needed to know what she was dealing with.

  “Read the papers much?” she said quite casually.

  “Every day, ma’am.”

  “That’s quite something about that barrister over on Baker Street, isn’t it?”

  “You mean the one who got the cab driver acquitted and then murdered him?”

  “Oh, I don’t think it’s quite settled that he did that second thing. And he had some help with the first.”

  There was silence for a long moment. As Laura waited for a response from the driver, another Black Cab came up quite close behind them. It flashed its headlamps.

  Now Laura’s driver said, “It’s a ruse, you know.”

  “What is?”

  “Oh, he’s a barrister, all right. But he’s not just that. And Heath is not even his real name at all.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “No.”

  “What is his name then?” said Laura.

  “Sherlock Holmes.”

  “I see,” said Laura, quite carefully, with no inflexion whatsoever.

  Now she heard a soft thunk in the cab doors on either side of her. She knew what it was. The doors had just now been locked by the driver, and only the driver could unlock them. That could not be a good thing.

  She was going to have to improvise.

  “The man in the typewriter shop told me an interesting thing about a letter that I showed him. Would you like to know what it was?”

  Silence for a moment from the driver. Then, “Tell me.”

  “He said that the typewriter that typed it was brought in for repair a while ago by a young woman named Darla Rennie. That would be you, wouldn’t it?”

  The driver did not respond for a long moment. Then she said: “You may call me Moriarty.”

  “That’s fine,” said Laura. “I’ve always believed in the right of anyone to choose their own formal name. We have so little control these days over what other people call us. But just so I understand—you prefer to be called Moriarty because—”

  “My great-great-grandfather was James Moriarty.”

  “On your mother’s side.”

  “Yes.” Darla said that, paused, and then said, “He was killed by the man called Sherlock Holmes, and I shall have my revenge.”

  “It’s a lovely name, Moriarty,” ventured Laura. “Quite popular. In fact, not uncommon at all. And even adding the given name James to it is hardly unique.”

  Laura paused for a moment to see if Darla would get the point. But there was no response, so she continued.

  “What I’m trying to say is—is there any possibility at all you might be mistaken? That perhaps your great-great—however many greats—grandfather was some other James Moriarty—perhaps one that actually existed? And it can be so difficult to extract revenge for the injustices done to one’s family, even the real ones. Reggie could tell you that.”

  “His name is Sherlock Holmes,” Darla stated again, quite emphatically. “He is a despicable person and I shall make him pay for what he has done.”

  “I’m so relieved to hear that you feel that way,” said Laura. “I know him just as Reggie, of course, but I was afraid for a while that you rather fancied him.”

  Darla actually glanced back at Laura on the remark, but then quickly got her eyes on the road again.

  “Certainly not,” she said.

  “Which would be very foolish on your part, because if you haven’t noticed, Reggie is quite stodgy, even for a barrister. Everyone says so. And getting more so every day. What he’ll be like at sixty I shudder to think, but I’m sure you would be quite bored with him.”

  Through the window partition, Laura could see Darla becoming quite upset. That was unfortunate; perhaps Laura had chosen the wrong tack. But it was too late for that now.

  “His name is Sherloc
k Holmes, and I hold him in complete contempt.”

  “I’m so glad,” said Laura. “There was quite a fire sale on Heath brothers there for a while, but I’m afraid they’re all out now, right down to the store fixtures.”

  Now the Black Cab that had been behind them pulled up alongside, rolled down its window, and the driver started to shout something.

  Darla took a sudden turn, cutting across a lane and narrowly missing a double-decker.

  “His name is Sherlock Holmes,” Darla stated again, quite emphatically. “He killed my great-great-grandfather. And I will have my revenge.”

  They were on the Strand now, approaching the Tower Bridge. A new Black Cab had taken a position alongside and just in front of them, eliminating one possible change in direction. And now another pulled in behind them.

  “I’ve taken from him his reputation,” said Darla. “I’ve taken from him his self-respect. And now I will take from him what he values most.”

  Laura was about to respond to that. But now a loud siren began to wail. It was coming from the Tower Bridge.

  They had arrived at the bridge entrance from the Strand. All the other traffic had come to a stop; there were gaps between the lanes heading onto the bridge, but there was really nowhere to go—because the bridge was about to be lifted. A high-masted vessel was approaching on the river; the siren was already blaring, and red warning lights at the foot of the bridge began to flash.

  “I hardly think you’ll do that,” said Laura. “What he values most is me.”

  Darla turned her head now and looked back directly at Laura.

  “Exactly,” she said.

  And then she floored the accelerator. She drove right past the flashing lights and onto the bridge, heading toward the north tower, and weaving around the other vehicles that had already stopped.

  Laura knew that within seconds the span of the bridge just beyond the north tower would begin to rise. Surely Darla knew it, too. The spans on either side of the bridge would rise and separate, and there would be nothing at the end of their road except a plummet directly into the Thames.

  The metal gate in front of the tower was already in motion, and it was about to completely block the road in front of them.