The Brothers of Baker Street

by Michael Robertson

“Oh, Nigel, come off it.”

  “What?”

  “You’re telling me you can recognize a woman just from a photo of her legs?”

  “Some legs. Varies by the woman, what you remember.”

  Laura sighed, and she gave Nigel a look that said she didn’t believe him, but that if she did believe him, she wished she didn’t.

  Nigel squirmed just a bit. Then, for some reason—almost a sort of chivalry—he felt obliged to make a confession.

  “Do you still have three freckles, one dark, two lighter and smaller next to it, behind your left knee?”

  He tried to look her directly in the eye as he said it, but he couldn’t, he broke eye contact the moment she looked back in response. And so he didn’t get to see her blush.

  “All right, I believe you,” she said quickly. “But no more about my knees. Or my freckles. Or—”

  “Done,” said Nigel, even more quickly.

  “So where do you think you might have seen our enigmatic solicitor’s legs before?”

  Nigel hesitated. Now that it had come down to it, he didn’t really want to say.

  “I could be quite wrong about it. As you said, what could I possibly know just from seeing legs in a photo?”

  “There’s more to it than that, Nigel, or you wouldn’t have brought her up. So what is it?”

  “I’d rather not say just yet.”

  Laura stared at him. Nigel shifted uncomfortably and seemed to shrink back in his chair.

  “I’ve got the secretary tracking down her home address,” he said. “When she gets it, I’ll pay a visit, and we’ll know more.”

  “No,” said Laura, peering at Nigel and trying to discern the reason for his suddenly defensive posture. “I will do that visit.”

  “Why you?” said Nigel.

  “Because I don’t care about her legs, and therefore she won’t be able to handle me like putty,” said Laura. “Which, I’m beginning to suspect, is more than can be said for the Heath brothers.”

  Nigel took just a moment to analyze that remark. “You’re concerned that Reggie might like her, then?”

  “I didn’t say that,” said Laura, sounding now just a little defensive herself.

  “Fair enough,” said Nigel. “But if you and she get in a wrestling match, either tape it or ring me.”

  “Let’s just focus on the matter at hand, shall we?” said Laura.

  “Yes, let’s,” said Nigel.

  “Right, then,” said Laura. “Reggie said on the phone last night that we should be focusing on the tip letter and who wrote it.”

  “Very sensible,” said Nigel. “But I’ve been through the bundle Reggie got from the solicitor, and the police report, and Reggie’s own file. I’ve been through it all, and the tip letter isn’t there.”

  “He said it’s in his desk. The bottom drawer, I expect, because that’s the one that’s locked,” said Laura. “And that’s presenting a problem.”

  “Doesn’t Lois have a key?”

  “No; it’s a combination lock, and she doesn’t know it. I tried to call Reggie at the jail, but I couldn’t get through.”

  “First thing they do in jail is confiscate your mobile,” said Nigel. “But no need. We can do this ourselves.” Nigel came around to the other side of the desk to get access to the lock. “I’m betting you know the combination.”

  “Nigel, Reggie doesn’t give anyone the combination to his office desk.”

  “No, but between the two of us I’m sure we know it. When were you born?”

  Laura laughed. “And that’s relevant because?”

  “He wouldn’t use his own birth date; too obvious and on too many public documents.”

  Nigel looked at Laura expectantly.

  “So you think he used mine?” she said.

  “Of course he did.”

  “Well, I doubt it.”

  “If he didn’t,” said Nigel, “I’ll pay my own airfare when I go back to the States.”

  “Done,” said Laura.

  Nigel leaned in toward the locked drawer, and then stopped.

  “Well, go ahead, try it,” said Laura.

  He looked sheepishly back at her.

  “Nigel … you never took note of my birth date?”

  “I don’t think I ever knew the year.”

  “But the rest of it?”

  “Sorry.”

  “You’d better remember Mara’s.”

  “I do.”

  Nigel willingly moved aside now, and Laura swiveled Reggie’s chair in closer to the desk drawer. She entered her birth-date numbers into the combination lock. She looked up at Nigel before pulling the drawer, daring him to be right.

  “Well? Last chance to save your airfare.”

  “Go ahead.”

  She pulled on the drawer. There was an obstinate metallic clunk. It didn’t open.

  “See?” she said. She was more disappointed than she allowed her voice to show.

  “Try it again,” said Nigel. “Use four digits for the year.”

  Laura tried it again.

  Again, the annoying mechanical clunk.

  Laura sat back from the drawer, unhappy, but quickly covering. “I win. You can pay me back for your flight in installments.”

  Nigel regarded the desk with a perplexed look. “It should have worked,” he said. “The desk combination is something Reggie uses every day. He would choose a number of something else that was important to remember, and he would use the desk combination to remember that other number.”

  “If you say so, but I knew he wouldn’t use my birthday.”

  “You’re wrong,” said Nigel. “He would … unless there was another number more important.”

  “Well, that’s comforting. When you learn who it is that has the more important birthday, do let me know. Or, better—don’t.”

  “I guess we don’t have time to figure it out. Paper clip—one of the large ones?”

  Laura found a paper clip in a container on the desk and gave it to Nigel. Nigel twisted the paper clip into a more useful shape and knelt down by the drawer.

  “Reggie won’t like it if I scratch his mahogany desk,” said Nigel.

  “Scratch away,” said Laura, sounding only a little cross.

  Nigel inserted the paper clip and picked the latch. He pulled the drawer open, reached inside, and then stood.

  “Here it is.” He had pulled a single sheet of paper from the drawer. He read it quickly. “This is the anonymous tip letter. The letter to Sherlock Holmes that told Reggie about the CCTV alibi.”

  Laura thought Nigel sounded almost disappointed.

  “What’s wrong?” she said.

  “I was hoping it would be typewritten, matching the letters to Sherlock Holmes from the person who believes himself to be Moriarty.”

  “Why?”

  “It would simplify things,” said Nigel.

  “I think you need to forget Mr. Moriarty and concentrate on the letter at hand. Anyway, if it’s not typewritten, what is it?”

  “Laser-printed, or high-quality ink-jet, hard to tell.”

  “So are all the papers in the solicitor’s bundle,” said Laura, picking them up.

  “So you think she sent the tip letter?”

  “It’s a possibility,” said Laura.

  Nigel put the tip letter out to compare.

  “They’re a different font,” said Nigel.

  “But you can choose different typefaces when you print on these things, can’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Nigel, still comparing the two sheets. “But it’s different paper as well. Even the ink looks different.”

  “Well, all right then,” said Laura. “Perhaps the solicitor didn’t send it. It was just a thought.”

  “Why are you so determined that Darla Rennie sent the tip letter?”

  “It would simplify things,” said Laura, repeating Nigel’s words from a moment ago.

  “In what way?” said Nigel.

  Laura just shrugged.


  “Well, in any case, I don’t see anything in common in the documents,” said Nigel. And we’re overlooking the most obvious possibility.”

  “Which is?” said Laura.

  “That Reggie’s client, Walters, sent the tip letter. That he set the whole alibi up for himself in advance.”

  “Clever man if he did,” said Laura. “But if he was committing the crime in Chelsea, then who drove the cab that we see on the CCTV at Clapton Road?”

  “You’re right,” said Nigel. “Perhaps Walters did the killings in Chelsea. Perhaps he also killed the victim whose body was pushed over the bridge. Or perhaps he did neither and has been framed. But someone was driving the alibi cab in the East End when the two American tourists were getting murdered in Chelsea. Two Black Cabs in different places at the same time takes two Black Cab drivers.”

  “Let’s hope the frame theory turns out to be the case,” said Laura. “For Reggie’s peace of mind, if nothing else.”

  “I think we need a closer look at the cabs. I’ll go to New Scotland Yard and have a look at what they fished from the Thames.”

  “I’ll go with you,” said Laura.

  “They won’t let you. The Yard will only give me access, as Reggie’s solicitor. Although I suppose you could try invoking celebrity rank.”

  “No, you go ahead then. But I’ll want a full report later.”

  “Done,” said Nigel. He got up and moved toward the door. Then he stopped and looked back. Laura hadn’t budged. She was still keeping Reggie’s chair warm.

  “You’re not going to just stay here, are you?” said Nigel. “This may take a while.”

  “I’m waiting to hear about Reggie’s bail.”

  “Two million pounds? Not possible, is it?”

  “It might be,” said Laura. “If I’ve called in the right favor.”

  “What favor would—”

  “Go along, Nigel,” said Laura. “I’ll just be here for a bit before I get some lunch.”

  Nigel knew the tone in her voice, and he knew better than to ask another question.

  “Right, then,” he said, and he exited the chambers, carefully closing the door behind him.

  Laura remained seated after Nigel had gone. She had not quite told the truth to Nigel. There in fact wasn’t any real need to wait to hear about Reggie’s bail. Robert Buxton had said that he would get it done, and he certainly had the wherewithal to make it happen.

  She was indeed thinking about Robert, and about Reggie, but she wasn’t waiting to hear about one getting the bail for the other. She was just waiting to make up her mind, and all the events of the past two days weren’t giving her the opportunity to do that.

  She turned to looking out the window again, for quite some time, watching the rain and the traffic and the pedestrians on Baker Street, as she had been doing before Nigel had arrived, without really seeing any of them.

  And then there was a knock on the chambers door. It opened, and there was Reggie’s secretary.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Lois. “I thought Nigel would be here. I have the address he wanted.”

  “The solicitor’s address, you mean?” said Laura.

  “Yes. Is Nigel gone already?”

  “Yes,” said Laura, “but no problem. I’ll take care of it.” And with that she took the written address from Lois’s hand, eagerly, without even quite waiting for polite consent.

  Lunch could wait. And so could deciding.

  16

  Nigel walked past the revolving sign that announced New Scotland Yard, and toward the steel and glass structure of the police station behind it.

  As he entered the building, he began to feel odd that he would be representing himself as Reggie’s solicitor. This had nothing to do with his license still being in suspension; no one would likely bother to check. But it did feel odd, because traditionally in the Heath family, Reggie had not been the one in need of anyone else’s intervention. Reggie had been early to take on responsibilities as a child; Nigel had been late. For Reggie to be the one who needed Nigel to rescue him from dire straits seemed … well, odd to Nigel.

  Of course, no one here had reason to know or care about that. From the front desk, Nigel successfully negotiated through two levels of authority and three different departments, and eventually got access to the evidence impound garage.

  A young police sergeant escorted him to see the two impounded Black Cabs. “Forensics has not quite finished with them,” she said, “I can let you look. But you still can’t touch.”

  They started with the cab that had been pulled from the Thames.

  It was a Fairway; a make and model that had dominated the streets of London some ten years earlier, but which was now giving way to metro cabs and TXIs and IIs. Still, it was a classic—a shape that any Londoner, or for that matter any person who knew of the existence of London, would immediately recognize as a Black Cab.

  Or they would once it got washed. At the moment it was still covered in dirty brown residue from the dried Thames water.

  The forensics team had opened the driver’s side window. The sergeant allowed Nigel to stick his head through for a look.

  “Won’t be much to see, I’m afraid,” she said cheerily. “Do try not to sneeze.”

  And she was right. Any items of evidence had already been removed. And the same dry muddy haze that coated the exterior also coated the seats and floorboards and sidings of the interior, punctuated by the small areas where forensics had done its sampling.

  “Let’s have a look at the other, then,” said Nigel.

  The sergeant escorted Nigel past another dozen or so vehicles, either stolen or impounded for other reasons, until they got to the only other Black Cab in the garage.

  This was the cab that had been taken from Walters’s home upon Reggie’s arrest.

  And, presumably, it was also the cab that had been examined by the police earlier when they arrested Walters.

  Nigel walked around it. This cab was nearly spotless. But to all appearances, aside from the dried Thames mud on one of them, both vehicles were exactly the same: same make, same model, same black paint (unadorned with the adverts that were just now beginning to appear on some cabs), and most important, the same license number.

  Nigel walked back to the first cab again to confirm, and he wished the forensics team had lined them up side by side for that purpose, but there was no question. They were identical.

  “Someone went to a lot of trouble,” said Nigel.

  “Just a bit,” said the sergeant. “It’s a common model.”

  “What about the engine numbers?”

  “They’re different,” said the sergeant. “But that doesn’t tell us much, because no one checks the engine number when a taxi license is issued.”

  “How often do you see vehicles with forged number plates?” asked Nigel.

  “I’ve seen it before on private vehicles,” said the sergeant. “You see it in insurance scams, and for passing off stolen cars.”

  “But on a Black Cab?”

  “That’s a first, I suppose,” she said. “But it was bound to happen, wasn’t it? Everyone trusts them. Sooner or later, someone takes advantage.”

  “Yes,” said Nigel. “But if your only purpose is to pretend to be a Black Cab driver so that you can pick up trusting victims, why go to the trouble of matching the exact same number as another cab? Why do you need to make your fake cab identical to someone else’s real one?”

  She shrugged, unconcerned. “I can show the vehicles to you,” she said. “But for the whys and wherefores, I’m afraid you’re on your own.”

  Nigel thanked the sergeant and left New Scotland Yard. He took a taxi to Camden Town, to the maintenance center that had supposedly cleaned Walters’s vehicle the day after the Chelsea murders.

  The driver proceeded past the garage entrance where cabs lined up for maintenance and cleaning, and stopped just outside the front office.

  “Told you Caledonia Road would be blocked,” said the driv
er, cheerily. “It’s all up here,” he added, pointing to the side of his own head.

  “Yes, you were quite right,” said Nigel, getting out. “I’ve been away for a while, is all.”

  Nigel got out of the cab and found an attendant, a man in his twenties, in the office.

  Nigel asked him about the cab Walters had brought in.

  The attendant laughed. “Do you know how many cabs we clean in a day?”

  “I don’t. Fifty?”

  “Twice that.”

  “This is one the police may have asked you about as well.”

  “Ahh,” said the attendant. “Right. The police were here, true enough. A few days ago.”

  “Then you remember the cab?”

  “Just that we cleaned it.”

  “You did a bloody good job of it, too,” said Nigel. “Forensics couldn’t find so much as a hair.”

  The attendant nodded. “Think I could get a quote from the cops on that? It would make a fine advert.”

  “Ask for an Inspector Wembley,” said Nigel. “I’m sure he’ll oblige. Do you remember who brought the cab in?”

  “The bloke who was leasing it brought it in,” said the attendant, in a tone that meant it was a foolish question.

  “Was he a regular?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Always the same time of the week?”

  “Sometimes. Not always.”

  “Notice anything at all different or unusual about him on this particular occasion?”

  “Same thing I told the police: I didn’t notice anything about the cab, and whether that meant there was anything to notice or not about the driver on that day, I can’t say. But you know who might?”

  “Who?”

  “You see the pub across Caledonia Road, just at the corner?”

  “The Flounder and Dab?”

  “Yes. The local cabbies go there. There’s a bloke who’s been a driver since the beginning of time. Bill Edwards. Knows everything, worth knowing or not, about every driver. If you’re lucky, he might tell you some of it.”

  Nigel walked across Caledonia Road to the Flounder and Dab pub.

  When he opened the door he heard a chorus of shouts and groans that meant either televised football or live darts.

  He looked to his right and was pleased to see it was the latter; like Reggie, he hadn’t cared much for football in a long time.