The Brothers of Baker Street

by Michael Robertson

  The judge looked at him and asked, “Is there more?”

  “Only, perhaps, that of which we are not aware,” offered the prosecutor, rather desperately.

  “I believe that means ‘no,’ my lord,” chirped Langdon.

  “I believe so, too,” said the judge. “But perhaps you will now give us your list, Mr. Langdon.”

  “My lord?”

  “The strong ties you were referring to. What are they?”

  “The defendant has been a practicing barrister in London for fourteen years.”

  “So I understand. Although I believe his chambers are not actually in the City of London proper, is that correct?”

  “Umm, true, my lord. His chambers are in Marylebone, on Baker Street.”

  “Rather unusual.”

  “Unusual, but not prohibited,” said Langdon.

  “And he is at present the only barrister at Baker Street Chambers, is that also true?”

  “Well, yes, he is at this moment a sole practitioner.”

  “Somewhat reduces the strength of his connections with the legal community, in my view,” said the judge. “But go on.”

  “My lord?”

  “Ties to the community in general? Family?”

  “Both parents deceased, my lord.”

  “Does he have children?”

  “Ahh … I’m not…”

  For some reason—probably to avoid craning his neck at the upward angle to look over at Reggie—Langdon looked at Laura, who thought about it, and then shook her head rather uncertainly.

  “We think not, my lord.”

  “A wife?” The judge was still addressing Langdon, and not Reggie.

  Laura shook her head emphatically and Langdon relayed that to the court.

  “Any family contacts at all?”

  “A brother, my lord,” offered Langdon. “Nigel Heath.”

  “Ahh, yes,” said the judge. “I’ve heard the name. But not here in London, is he?”

  “No,” said Langdon.

  The judge breathed a sigh of relief at that, but Laura noticed his reaction too late. She had already whispered a correction to Langdon.

  “Correction,” said Langdon to the judge. “Nigel Heath is, in fact, now in London.”

  “Is he?” said the judge. “Nigel Heath has returned?”

  “Yes.”

  The judge frowned. Laura looked over at Reggie, who seemed to be holding his breath.

  The judge settled back in his chair to think about it a bit, then cleared his throat.

  “So, in London at this moment,” said the judge, “we have one Heath brother who is accused of murdering his own client, and another who, if memory serves, had his license suspended in a row over an attempt to return a client’s tort fee to the opposing litigant.”

  The judge still looked at Langdon, not Reggie. Langdon shrugged meekly. “My lord?”

  “Perhaps you can tell me, Mr. Langdon. Are the Heath brothers genetically inclined to despise their own clients? Or is it the legal system in general they object to?”

  Langdon hesitated in responding, and finally Reggie could bear it no longer.

  “My lord, I’m certain that our attitude toward our clients is no different than the attitudes you will hear expressed by any of the barristers at the Wigs and Briefs after their third pint.”

  The judge paused and looked at Reggie in astonishment, and Laura realized that Reggie must have spoken out of turn.

  “Or at the Seven Stars, on Chancery Court Lane.”

  The judge was clearly gathering himself for a rejoinder.

  “Or at the Crown and Penance on Fleet Street.”

  “Enough,” said the judge. “I did not address a question to you, Mr. Heath. In any case, we are all familiar with their locations, and I, for one, will not apologize for a Foster’s at the end of the day. Though any lawyer who cannot hold his tongue in a pub should not be allowed a pint at all. But at the moment, sir, your ties to the community are looking a little thin. As is your capability to post bond, should I decide to grant it. Nevertheless, as Mr. Langdon points out, the court recognizes some need for you to assist—or totally destroy, as the case may be—your own defense. Bail is therefore set in the amount of one million pounds.”

  “Might as well just remand, if you’re going to do that,” said Reggie.

  “Well put,” said the judge. “Let’s make it two million pounds. Have that on you, do you? No? Then this hearing is adjourned, and the defendant is returned into custody.”

  Everyone stood up, as the judge exited in one direction and Reggie was hustled away in the other by the sergeant.

  Langdon turned to Laura. “Doesn’t have it, does he?”

  “Might as well ask if he can retire the whole bloody national debt.”

  “I’m sure the judge will demand just that, if Heath opens his mouth again.”

  They went into the corridor, heading toward the courthouse side exit. Laura thought Langdon seemed just a little uncomfortable walking with her, which she attributed to his reputed shyness.

  “I thought he took it fairly well, though,” Langdon said, awkwardly.

  “I thought he looked like a fish just now hauled onto dry land,” said Laura.

  “We can appeal the bail amount at the next hearing, before a different judge,” said Langdon. “That won’t be for a week. But I’ll do the appearance for it, no charge, and we’ll hope for a better result.”

  They stepped out to the pavement.

  “Thank you,” said Laura. “I hope he keeps for that long.”

  Now, a long white limousine pulled to the curb in front of them. This was happening frequently, and Laura was no longer surprised by it.

  “Must be yours,” said Langdon, with an awkward laugh. “I’ll be in touch.”

  Langdon walked on. The limo door opened.

  Inside was Robert Buxton. He had a portable computer opened on his lap, and although he had reached over to open the door for Laura, he allowed the driver to come around and hold it.

  “I’d have taken a cab,” said Laura, getting in. “It doesn’t all have to be a production.”

  “They aren’t safe.”

  “You believe too much of what you print.” She wasn’t sure why she was annoyed with Buxton at the moment, but she was.

  It didn’t seem to register with him, though. That’s good, she thought, as they drove on through the city toward Wapping. At least in some ways it is.

  The limo drove past the walls of Buxton’s secure publishing compound to the gate, which immediately opened. Buxton was on his mobile the whole way, but he shut it off when they pulled up in front of the main entrance to his headquarters.

  It was just at the end of the business day, with most of the employees of Buxton Enterprises still exiting the building. Laura expected that she and Buxton would take a side entrance, for some minimal privacy—but they didn’t. They walked through the lobby, her arm in the crook of his, Buxton setting a pace that was almost a stroll, while he grinned and nodded at the exiting journalists who had the temerity to make eye contact.

  They got in the lift; that, at least, was private. As they rode up to the penthouse, Laura pondered why the walk through the lobby seemed to remind her of the prerace parade at Royal Ascot.

  And by the time the lift doors opened at the top of the building, she had realized who the prize mare was.

  Not entirely a good thing, she thought.

  A short time later, in the early evening, lights were beginning to reflect on the Thames. Laura and Buxton sat down to dinner on the rooftop patio of the Buxton Enterprises building, with its hothouse, its authentic Spanish pavers, and its bubbling hot tub. Buxton was a man of such wealth that he was not limited even by the London climate.

  It was spectacular.

  Looking out across the Thames, Laura could see Reggie’s much smaller rooftop flat, on the opposite bank of the river at Butlers Wharf—with no lights on, naturally, given where he was at the moment.

  B
uxton turned his mobile off now and put it down on the white linen tablecloth. He opened a bottle of champagne, working the cork out himself, and saying something about the year of it. A household servant brought plates of scallops on black pudding, which Laura knew Buxton knew was her favorite (except for shepherd’s pie, which Laura knew Reggie knew was her favorite). The warm scent of the current meal brought her back to where she was now, as opposed to what she was thinking about across the river, and she began to pay attention to something Buxton was saying about the champagne.

  Then a mobile phone rang.

  Laura made a displeased face.

  Buxton picked up his phone, but the ringing continued.

  “Oh,” said Laura. “Sorry.”

  She took her own mobile out of her bag and answered it. She watched Buxton watching her as she took the call.

  It was Reggie.

  “Oh, no, not all,” she said into the phone. “You didn’t catch me at a bad time, I’m having rather a good time actually.”

  Buxton smiled slightly, and rather smugly.

  “I didn’t know they allowed you to place calls from jail in the evening,” she continued, and now Buxton’s smile faded.

  “I see,” Laura continued. “Well, one is enough, I suppose, if it’s the right one. What do you need me to do?”

  Buxton sighed and sat back in his chair, visibly annoyed, as Laura took out a small notebook and a pen, and actually began to write herself a note.

  “Yes. Yes. Do you really think so? Well, yes, it’s certainly worth investigating. Right, then. But wait, wait—how are you? Are you all right? Are there rats? Are the showers really communal? Oh. Well, one hears of people who have heard awful stories.”

  Now there was a pause, as Laura listened to what Reggie was saying. When the moment came, she looked over at Buxton, with an expression that said he would just have to put up with what she was going to do next. And then she turned to face away from Buxton and spoke in her lowest voice into the phone.

  “Reggie, I do understand. Really. But everyone makes decisions every day—not just lawyers, but everyone—that impact someone else in some way. It seems to me you usually make the right ones, certainly you always try to do, and isn’t that all anyone can ask?”

  There was a pause, and then she turned back toward Buxton, but still talking into the phone. “Well, that’s my best speech anyway, so it will just have to do. Was there something else? Because there’s a very delicious second course on its way and—oh, I see. Yes. Yes. Do you really thinks so? Well, yes, it’s certainly worth investigating. Right, then. But wait, what about bail, don’t you want me to ask Robert if … well, I’m sure he would if … but it would be no trouble, he’s got just tons of … well, that’s just silly, no one’s trying to cut anything off at all, and you’re just being stubborn. Good-bye then.”

  Laura closed the phone and put it back in her bag, checked the note she had written to make sure she got it right, and then carefully put that away as well.

  “Holding up well, I hope?” said Buxton, quite casually.

  “You’d think he’d be worried about being in jail. But he isn’t. He’s worried about the possibility that he might have done the wrong thing getting his client released.”

  “Is he?” said Buxton, seeming genuinely interested.

  “Yes,” said Laura. “Does that make sense to you?”

  “Not in the least.”

  Laura was beginning to be impressed by Buxton’s evident level of concern. He was actually listening to her, and carefully so. “Well,” she said, “it’s just like him to—what is that?”

  “What is what?”

  “You were looking at something below the table.”

  Buxton shrugged and shook his head. “Nothing,” he said.

  Laura, suddenly alarmed, half stood from her chair and leaned across the table.

  “What is it that you have in your right hand?”

  “Nothing,” said Buxton, like a child with a stolen biscuit.

  “Robert, show me,” demanded Laura.

  Buxton, reluctantly, raised up his right hand and placed his mobile communicator on the dining table.

  “You were taking notes?” she cried out.

  “No,” said Buxton. “Well, just that last part. “About him thinking his client might be guilty.”

  “You were sending this to one of your reporters?”

  Buxton quickly pressed a button and closed the phone. “No,” he said. “Canceled. Nothing sent, Laura, I promise.”

  Laura sat back down, but was still staring across at Buxton.

  “Not one word,” she commanded Buxton. “Not one word I have ever said to you about Reggie Heath shall ever find its way into print.”

  Buxton looked back directly at her, and blinked.

  “Of course not,” he said.

  “Not one word. Ever. Not print, or any other form of media. Ever. Whether currently existing or as yet uninvented.”

  Buxton sighed.

  “Understood,” he said.

  Laura allowed herself to breathe now, and she sat back.

  “I don’t want him to get depressed,” she said to Buxton

  “No worries,” said Buxton. “I’m sure they take his belt away.”

  She showed no reaction to that remark. She took a sip of the champagne. Then she set the glass down and said:

  “Reggie says under no circumstances am I to ask you to stand surety for his bail. Apparently, it’s some sort of manhood thing. I think he’s afraid it will de–alpha male him, or something to that effect, though he expressed it in other terms. I don’t understand it. Do you?”

  “Completely,” said Buxton, showing interest again. “How much will it take?”

  15

  At quarter of nine the next morning, Nigel arrived at Baker Street Chambers to meet Laura. He was uncharacteristically early for their appointment—he was concerned about the solicitor’s lack of an actual business address, and he had been unable to reach Laura by phone in the evening to tell her about it.

  But as early as he was for their appointment, Laura was there before him.

  Lois pointed toward Reggie’s closed chambers door. “She said she didn’t want to be disturbed.”

  “Yes,” said Nigel, “but she didn’t mean me, did she, or she wouldn’t have flown me out here?”

  “Oh,” said Lois, in an uncertain voice.

  “I need Darla Rennie’s home address,” said Nigel, before opening the door to the chambers. “If it’s not in the files, try some public documents. Or see if you can get it from her mobile provider. Tell them you are her and you’re changing your billing address. They get very anxious about that sort of thing.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Worth a shot, anyway.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Oh,” said Nigel, “And the typewriter face? On the Moriarty letters?”

  “Still working on it.”

  “Let me know,” said Nigel.

  Now he opened the door to Reggie’s chambers and looked in.

  Yes, there was Laura. She was sitting in Reggie’s leather barrister’s chair; she had scooted it over to the exterior window and swiveled it to face the street. She did not look up when Nigel came in; she seemed lost in thought.

  Nigel, still standing in the doorway, decided to get directly to it.

  “The solicitor who engaged Reggie to take this case,” said Nigel, “may not exist.”

  Laura immediately swiveled the chair to face Nigel.

  “What exactly do you mean by that?” she said. “And just because you caught me staring out a window doesn’t mean I want us to get metaphysical.”

  “Her office address is a front,” said Nigel, “and I checked for her name in the Law Society records.”

  “And?”

  “She doesn’t exist. At least not by the name Darla Rennie, not as a licensed solicitor in the London area. There is no official record of her.”

  “How could she bring a cli
ent to Reggie, then? How was she able to practice at all?”

  “A magistrate’s court can be quite informal when it gets busy. If you get past security—and most of the smaller courts don’t have any—and know half of what you’re supposed to do and say, you’re in, and you can come back and do it again the next day, too.”

  “So you’re saying she’s not a solicitor at all?”

  “It’s possible,” said Nigel. “It’s also possible that she has or did have a practice, but under another name.” Nigel moved from the doorway now and pulled one of the smaller guest chairs up to the desk, opposite Laura. “But either way, something is wrong about her. Have you ever actually seen her in person?”

  “No. But Reggie has, of course. And anyone who was in the court with them.”

  “If anyone took notice. The barrister is the one who stands up and does all the talking. Right now, so far as the prosecution is concerned, Reggie might just as well have made her up.”

  “They can hardly say that, Nigel; there was a photo of her in the papers. And of Reggie. Very explicit—very clearly, both of them together.”

  Nigel peered across at Laura, trying to get an accurate reading on her tone.

  “That’s good,” he offered.

  “Yes,” she said. “Of course it is.”

  “Do we have that paper?”

  Laura hesitated; then she reached into her purse and pulled out a copy of the Daily Sun, from the day after the Black Cab hearing. She put it on the desk in front of Nigel.

  Nigel leaned in closer for a better look.

  A very long look, it seemed to Laura.

  “I can’t make out her face,” said Nigel, still staring at the photo.

  “You’re certainly giving it a good try.”

  “All you can see is her legs.”

  “Well, that is the angle the paparazzi seem to prefer.” She paused. “You can stop ogling now.”

  “Sort of rings a bell,” said Nigel, trying to push the tabloid and its photo away, but then looking back at it again.

  “Oh, is that what we’re calling it now?”

  “I mean, I think I’ve seen them before. Those legs”