The Brothers of Baker Street

by Michael Robertson

  He opened the laser-printed letter, gave it a perfunctory glance—and then paused. The first sentence caught his eye:

  Dear Mr. Holmes:

  I read much in the papers about that Black Cab driver and how he murdered that American couple. A most horrible thing.

  But I don’t see how he could have done it, Mr. Holmes. I read in the Daily Sun that the cab was in the West End near midnight. But I saw that cab myself at that very time in the East End at Lower Clapton Road. I saw the license plate WHAMU1 while waiting for a bus.

  I cannot come forward, Mr. Holmes. I am a married man, and I do not wish to divulge the nature of my business at that hour on that corner. I am writing to you because I know you can be discreet, as you were in “Scandal in Bohemia” and I expect in many scandals in other places that we never heard about.

  I am not so sure of that poor man’s barrister. But there are many television cameras in the East End now, as I’m sure you know. Please go to the corner of Lower Clapton Road and Newick Road. Look up. And then help an innocent man.

  A Concerned Citizen

  There was no return address. The postmark was from the previous day.

  Reggie, still standing, read the letter again. He read it once more again after that, and then he went into his chambers office, sat down with the letter on the desk in front of him, and read it yet again.

  An alibi. An alibi witness.

  But the preliminary hearing was scheduled for that afternoon. There was no possibility of tracking this anonymous letter writer down within the next five hours, if it could be done at all. And in any case, how much credence could be given to a witness who provided a tip by writing a letter to Sherlock Holmes?

  Still, none of that would matter if the tip in the letter was correct. With all the new CCTV cameras being put up of late, there might be some hope.

  Reggie picked up the phone and rang the Traffic Authority. He gave them his credentials and purpose, and after a few moments, he was connected with a traffic engineer.

  “You are asking for a CCTV location?” said the engineer.

  “Yes,” said Reggie. “Do you have a camera at Lower Clapton Road in Hackney?”

  The engineer took a moment to check, and then said that indeed yes, there was a camera at that location.

  “Is it operational?”

  “Yes.”

  “How far back does it go before recording over again?”

  “Seven days.”

  “Have you had a request in the last week from the police to pull the tape?”

  The engineer took another moment to check, and then said no.

  “Thank you,” said Reggie. “You will receive such a request shortly.”

  Now Reggie rang the prosecuting barrister.

  “Heath,” said Langdon, answering. “You’ve reconsidered? Not really going to contest the hearing, are you?”

  “Your disclosures said the police reviewed the relevant CCTV tapes.”

  “Of course.”

  “And found nothing.”

  “Nothing conclusive. CCTVs don’t capture everything, you know that. Lorries get in the way, buses, any number of things can obscure a vehicle that was actually there.”

  “Which routes did they check?”

  “Why, they checked the pick-up site at the pub, the location where the cab was sighted in Chelsea, and the entire route between those two points.”

  “Did they check the cameras along my client’s route home?”

  Langdon was silent for a moment. Then, in a small voice, “No. Seemed a waste of time, given that we already had witnesses that placed the cab across town—”

  “I’m asserting an alibi defense,” said Reggie, “and I want all the traffic tapes pulled on the route my client says he traveled to get to his home in the East End at the time in question.” This was a demand; Reggie knew the police were obliged to do this, and so did Langdon.

  “You mean simply in time for trial, correct?” offered Langdon, hopefully. “I don’t know all that much about such things, but I trust you don’t want to use the court’s time today to—”

  “Now, for the preliminary hearing,” said Reggie. “And if you think the court will be annoyed by the time it takes today, consider how unhappy the Crown Prosecution Service will be if I get the whole thing tossed out at trial because you didn’t check all the relevant CCTVs.”

  “Very well,” said Langdon. He was annoyed now, and the tone of false humility was beginning to fade. “You’ll have your tapes. Hope you know what you’re doing, Heath, for your sake.”

  Reggie hung up the phone, hoping the same thing.

  7

  A cold rain had begun to fall when Reggie left Baker Street Chambers that afternoon, and he decided to take the precaution of a cab rather than drive his own car. The case had become high profile, and there would be parking issues. And the noise from the undercarriage of the Jag was getting more noticeable.

  The preliminary hearing had been moved to Horseferry Road Magistrates Court, a venue for high-profile cases, which this case now was. The earlier Black Cab crimes had been relegated in most newspapers to a few lines on the back pages. But those little blurbs had been building momentum, and the murder of American tourists was such a spectacular event that Reggie knew it would generate a media circus at the courthouse. If the case got to actual trial, it would be moved to the Old Bailey, and it would then become the largest of all circuses.

  But not if he could prevent it. If he did his job properly, this hearing would be the end of it, and his client could go home to Stepney and back to work.

  As Reggie’s cab approached the courthouse now, he saw that all the legal and most of the illegal parking spaces along Horseferry Road were already occupied—in almost all cases by Black Cabs.

  Quite an unusual number of Black Cabs, Reggie thought as his own cab double-parked to let him out, even for central London.

  Reggie approached the security entrance. He knew what his plan was. But something about the physical act of going through the courthouse security station made the extreme risk in his strategy begin to sink in. Was he making a mistake?

  He did not know who the letter writer was. He did not know for certain what the tapes would show. Perhaps they would show nothing. For all he knew, the letter was a red herring and Langdon himself had written it. It would be a brilliant and unethical ploy, if he had done. Reggie’s defense would be destroyed.

  Reggie showed his security credentials to the guard now, and he saw that Langdon had already arrived—just a few steps ahead of him.

  Langdon was pulling a small trolley that was stacked high with thick legal case books, several bundles of documentation, and—Reggie was pleased to see—perhaps a dozen black plastic videocassettes, of the size and type used in closed-circuit television, attached to the trolley, a bit haphazardly, by a bungee strap.

  Langdon hadn’t seen Reggie yet, and was just about to roll his trolley on past the security desk, when suddenly the bungee strap shifted for some reason, and the entire stack of videocassettes spilled out with an abrupt clatter onto the gray-tiled floor.

  “Oh, dear. I suppose I’ll never learn, will I?” announced Langdon, to no one in particular and to anyone who happened to be listening.

  The security clerk dutifully nodded, and Langdon got down to the floor and began to gather the cassettes together. Within a couple of moments he had all of them—or almost all of them—assembled on the trolley again. He struggled back to his feet—apparently not noticing that in the process he had inadvertently kicked one of the cassettes just out of sight under the security desk.

  Langdon said, “There. That should do it. My wife always tells me I’m never any good at packing.”

  “And quite right about it, too,” said Reggie.

  Langdon turned. “Oh. Heath. There you are. Well, you‘ve caught me making a fool of myself again, I’m afraid.”

  “No harm done,” said Reggie. “But I believe you missed one.”

  Witho
ut getting down on the ground, Reggie pointed one finger in the general direction of the cassette that Langdon’s foot had propelled under the desk.

  “Oh?”

  Reggie nodded, and pointed again. “Must have skidded a bit.”

  “Quite right,” said Langdon. He got down on the ground to retrieve the cassette. “You have sharper eyes than mine, Heath.”

  “Lucky thing,” said Reggie. As Langdon put the cassette back in the stack, Reggie noted its position and the date written on the label.

  And now Reggie breathed a sigh of relief. Langdon might be clever enough to try to sucker Reggie with a letter providing a false tip to unhelpful evidence. And he might be clever enough to try to temporarily lose a piece of helpful evidence on his way into the courtroom. But surely he was not clever enough to be doing both. Langdon was trying to hide the tape, so it certainly had to be both real and exculpatory.

  Or at least, probably so.

  “Did you say something, Heath?”

  “No,” said Reggie. “After you. Lead on.”

  Moments later Reggie took his seat in the courtroom, at a long oak-veneer table that gave him more room than he really needed. There was a chair available at his table for an assistant, but Reggie had none, and a chair for the solicitor as well—but she had yet to arrive.

  To Reggie’s left was a similar but separate table for the prosecution. This was just the preliminary hearing, not the trial, and so Langdon, like Reggie, was working without an assistant. He was making full use of the table space though. At the far end he placed a large, open binder containing photographs and diagrams of the crime scene. But that was almost certainly just for show, given how little the crime scene investigation had yielded. The prosecution’s only real case was the witness statements. Langdon had the transcripts of those directly in front of him.

  The CCTV cassettes, however, remained on the trolley next to Langdon, behind the table.

  Reggie glanced over his shoulder at the spectator’s gallery. The magistrate had opened it to the public, but there were no cameras allowed. No doubt there would be a media frenzy outside to make up for that. There were reporters present, most of them in the front row with their note- or sketchbooks in hand, but after studying the gallery for a moment, Reggie concluded that most of the spectators—the back three gallery rows—were neither reporters nor members of the general public. They were cab drivers.

  Now all the faces in the gallery turned, and Reggie turned to look as well. The defendant had been brought in. He was escorted into the dock and stood there, looking about apprehensively. It was the correct look. Given a choice, you really didn’t want a client in the dock who looked like he was accustomed to being there.

  Walters now looked in Reggie’s general direction, and at the same moment there was a soft hand on Reggie’s arm. He turned. Darla had arrived.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said. “The security guard got very chatty.” Walters had caught her eye, and she nodded very slightly back in his direction before she sat down.

  Reggie leaned over and whispered to her. “If it goes to trial, you won’t want to be seen doing that. It will look like coaching.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  Now the bailiff, the court recorder, and the magistrate entered; Reggie, Langdon, and Darla all stood and remained standing until the magistrate had assumed his place.

  The magistrate read the case number, and then Langdon stood and matter-of-factly read a statement charging Reggie’s client with murder in the first degree.

  “Very well,” said the magistrate, not looking up. “I see that the Crown has properly delivered initial discovery documents to the defense. No need to waste time. Do I hear any objection to a trial date two weeks hence at Central Criminal Court?”

  “You do, my lord,” said Reggie, standing.

  Now the magistrate looked up.

  “I do?”

  “Yes, my lord. The defense contests the committal to trial and requests that the prosecution’s prima facie evidence be read now into the record.”

  The magistrate frowned.

  “Heath, is it?”

  “Yes.”

  The magistrate looked at the case schedule in front of him.

  “Reggie Heath?”

  “Yes.”

  The magistrate lowered his spectacles and peered over them at Reggie.

  “I don’t think I’ve seen you in my court before, but your name rings a bell for some reason. Something to do with a shrubbery.”

  “My lord?” said Langdon helpfully. “If I may. My learned friend Mr. Heath has been out of the country recently. You may have seen his name in connection with some minor matters that gained public attention overseas, or perhaps locally regarding an indoor planter at a certain publisher’s compound near Tobacco Dock. I’m really not quite sure; I’ll admit, I have difficulty keeping abreast of such things … as it were … but none of that, I’m sure we all agree, has any bearing whatsoever on this case.”

  Langdon looked over at Reggie as if to accept thanks for having done him a great favor. Before Reggie could formulate a properly cutting response, Langdon continued.

  “And because of that short absence, and … well, if I … if I may say so, because he has been out of criminal practice for some time, I believe, my learned friend may perhaps be unaware of our recent attempts to streamline the committal process?”

  “Well, indeed we are trying to do that, aren’t we?” said the magistrate, nodding.

  “My lord, yes,” said Reggie now, “But recent changes to the Criminal Procedure Act notwithstanding, it is still within your discretion to hear the case read, and I think you will find it will take only a moment of your time.”

  “Well, a moment is rather a subjective measure, though, isn’t it? How long a moment do you mean, Mr. Heath?”

  “Two minutes, my lord. I will be astonished if my learned friend can drag it out any longer than that, no matter how many well-placed hesitations he includes, because the prosecution’s case is quite that short.”

  “Really?” said the magistrate. “Two minutes?”

  “At most,” said Reggie. “That’s how little substance there is to the charge.”

  The magistrate pushed back the edges of his left sleeve and looked at his watch.

  “I have two minutes,” he said. “Mr. Langdon, do you?”

  Langdon cleared his throat. “My lord, yes, of course. I will … do my best to condense it, if I may.”

  “No condensing necessary, Mr. Langdon. Spill it all, and if Mr. Heath’s estimate proves to be wrong, that will be something for me to remind him of when he next appears in my court.”

  “Very well,” said Langdon. “I shall start then with the forensic examination of the scene, although it may not be within my skills to cover it in so short a time—”

  “My lord?”

  “Yes, Mr. Heath?”

  “The defense will stipulate to the facts shown in the forensics reports as currently provided by the prosecution, for none of those facts implicate the defendant in any way. Nothing was found at his home, nothing in his cab, and nothing that directly tied him to the scene.”

  The magistrate looked over at the prosecutor.

  “Mr. Langdon?”

  “Well … my lord, yes, it would be correct to say that the prosecution does not base its case on the forensics of any of those locations. Other than, of course, the forensics that establish that two unwitting tourists from the States were horribly killed, and the time at which their deaths occurred.”

  “That much is known. But on what does the prosecution base its case that it was the defendant that did it?”

  “On eyewitness statements, my lord. Two of them. Highly credible and mutually corroborating.”

  “Then let’s spend our two minutes on those, shall we?”

  “Of course, my lord.”

  Langdon now recounted both of the witness statements that Reggie had already seen, investing them with as much high drama as co
uld be done in reciting the numbers of a license plate. He included the significance of the barman’s WHAMU1 mnemonic with much emphasis. He carefully delivered the very damning evidence that the second witnesses had called in the sighting the moment after it occurred, and that call was captured on a police recording that indisputably established the time of it. And then Langdon delivered the coup de grace:

  “My lord, in the entire registry of Black Cabs in London, there is only one license that contains the characters WHAMU1, and that is the license of the Black Cab that belongs to the defendant.”

  Langdon stopped on that. Reggie said nothing. The magistrate checked his watch.

  “One minute and forty-five seconds,” he said. “Well done, Mr. Langdon. Brief and to the point. To just one single point, admittedly, but with no contradiction, it is sufficient to go to trial. Mr. Heath, do you have anything to say?”

  “Yes, my lord. My learned friend has forgotten to mention the CCTVs, which the police went to some pains to collect.”

  “Mr. Langdon?”

  “My lord, yes, CCTVs were collected, but as they revealed nothing conclusive, I did not think to mention them.”

  “How many of these tapes are there?” said the magistrate.

  “Eleven in all, from various locations, covering more than a hundred hours,” said Langdon.

  “More than a hundred hours,” said the magistrate, drumming his fingers. “Mr. Heath, if you attach some importance to the CCTV tapes, I believe it will have to wait until trial at Central Criminal Court. The Old Bailey has much better AV equipment anyway.”

  “My lord,” said Reggie, “I attach significance to only one of them. The tape for Lower Clapton Road. I would guess it is the third one down in the stack of cassettes that Mr. Langdon still has on his trolley. All the others simply demonstrate that despite their best efforts, the police found no CCTV tape to show that my client’s cab was anywhere near the scene of the crime when the crime occurred. But the Clapton Road tape shows where my client actually was at the time the crime was occurring. In other words, it irrefutably establishes his alibi. We need not review the whole thing; simply fast forward to—oh, say—11:45 P.M. on the night of the alleged crime, and go from there?”