The Brothers of Baker Street

by Michael Robertson

“One of us has to, and I don’t intend to go back there any time soon. They’re much too welcoming. I have a feeling they might think I still belong.”

  “Understood,” said Reggie. “But it’s a three-hour drive. Why don’t you just give them a ring, keep your distance, and—”

  “I did try that, actually, but I couldn’t get through all the recorded options. And they are very tight-mouthed in the front office; you can’t just ring them up and have a chat. I can’t go myself in any event. I’m going to talk to this cab driver—sort of the senior statesman of cab drivers, as near as I can tell—who’s hinting that he knows something about your client.”

  “Then the one to go see him is me,” said Reggie.

  “You aren’t a popular figure where he takes his beer,” said Nigel. “Most of them still believe what they read in the papers, which is that you murdered one of their own. Also, they seem to respect a good snooker game, and mine is better.”

  “Ha!”

  “All right then,” said Laura. She stood from behind the desk, and addressed them both like a couple of schoolboys. “There are only three of us, and we’ve only got so much time, so let’s not sacrifice our chickens out of order. Nigel will go to the hearing and then interview this Yoda-of-Black-Cab-drivers person. Reggie will take a lovely drive into the country to see what the therapy center has to say about Darla Rennie. But first he and I have to take care of something else.”

  Nigel looked at Reggie, and then at Laura.

  “So I can go,” said Nigel, “but Reggie has to stay after?”

  “Yes,” said Laura.

  “Right, then,” said Nigel. He got up from his chair and went to the door, but on the way out, he leaned over to Reggie. “You’re in it now. Whatever you do, don’t mention Darla Rennie’s legs again.”

  19

  After Nigel exited, Reggie and Laura both remained seated in the chambers.

  Reggie was watching her, and waiting, in quiet suspense. He liked how the pale glow of her face was framed and contrasted by the dark sienna color of the chair, and how the exertions of the previous conversation had caused the top edge of her blouse to dip slightly past the freckle line on one side, exposing just a bit more unfreckled skin than she intended—probably—at the moment.

  That was just making the suspense harder to bear; he was certain that he was about to hear Laura declare something official about herself and Buxton. He didn’t want to hear it, but there was nowhere to run.

  But then, instead of taking a deep breath and starting out that she didn’t know quite how to say this, she reached down behind the desk and picked up—with some effort, because the thing was stuffed—the large paper shopping bag.

  She plunked it on the desk, and then, with a glance at Reggie that said he should have been helping her, she turned it over and emptied its contents—several dozen copies of the Daily Sun, the Globe, the Mirror, and assorted other daily tabloids—onto the broad mahogany desk

  “What’s all this?” said Reggie, standing, finally.

  “I’ve learned that your solicitor seemed to be paying a great deal of attention to something in the tabloids,” said Laura.

  “Interesting,” said Reggie. “When she first came to my office, she claimed not to follow them at all.”

  “I’m sure she made many claims.”

  Reggie offered no response to that. He leaned forward on the desk, looking at the newspapers.

  “What specifically was she interested in?” he said.

  “Black Cabs mostly, according to the servant girl.”

  “She might have been just following them to see what they said about the case we were handling.”

  “That would have been only about three days’ worth. What she had stacked up in the garden went back much further than that.”

  “So the idea is to sort through the papers and see just what it was that interested her about the Black Cabs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you get all these, anyway?”

  “From my aunt’s laundry room.”

  “Your aunt stacks old tabloids in the laundry room?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “Just concerned. Next step after that is to keep fifty cats in the parlor, isn’t it?”

  “She has no cats.”

  “This is your aunt we’re talking about, isn’t it? Not just someone related to her?”

  “My aunt, not me, and she happens to be a recycler. So let’s just focus, shall we?”

  “Fair enough.”

  “We’ll stack the hits right here—anything about the Black Cabs, from the oldest to the most recent.”

  They began leafing through each newspaper in turn, scanning the articles and setting aside anything mentioning the Black Cabs.

  After several minutes of sorting, Reggie began to move the Daily Sun editions—Buxton’s paper—into a separate stack. Laura looked up at that, but said nothing.

  Within half an hour, they had all the papers sorted.

  The stack of Daily Sun papers that Reggie had assembled was as large as that of all the other tabloids combined.

  Laura noticed.

  “All right,” said Laura. “I suppose you’ll tell me what you think that means?”

  Reggie did indeed have a theory, and he had already decided not to mention it. He had said something disparaging to Laura about Buxton once before, and the next thing Reggie knew, she was jetting off to a South Seas island to be in one of the man’s movies. There had probably been no connection between his remark and her trip, but Reggie was not taking chances.

  “Just sorting them, is all. Need to get them organized, do we not?”

  “But there appear to be far more Black Cab crime stories in the Daily Sun,” said Laura. “That’s why you’re stacking them separately, isn’t it?”

  “I’d say by two to one. Perhaps a bit odd, given the number of crimes available to be reported on is the same for all the papers.”

  “Well,” said Laura, “perhaps we should compare what they actually say before we jump to any conclusions?”

  “I agree,” said Reggie.

  “I’ll read the Daily Sun,” said Laura, “and you do the others. Here’s the first; it goes back a few weeks: ‘Black Cab Bully Bludgeons Broker.’ It’s on page two of the Daily Sun. What about the others?”

  “Page five, or later,” said Reggie.

  “A few days ago there was ‘Taxi Drivers a Terror to Tourists?’” said Laura. “Page four, a sort of summary of Black Cab crimes.”

  “None of the others have anything like it,” said Reggie, a bit conclusively.

  Laura looked up at him. Reggie realized he was beginning to lapse into the tone that he used when proving a case in court. He knew that wouldn’t do.

  “Let’s look at the actual murder story,” said Laura, eyeing him warily. She read it aloud. “‘American Couple Killed: Cabbie Caught.’ Page one, of course, but I’m sure the others put it there as well, didn’t they?”

  Reggie picked up the other papers to compare. “Yes,” he said at first. Then he stopped and looked over at Laura.

  “What is it?” said Laura.

  “What’s the date on the Daily Sun story?”

  “The twenty-sixth.”

  Reggie put each of the other papers down on the table for Laura to see.

  “All of the others are on the twenty-seventh,” said Reggie. “A full day later, which is what you’d expect, given when the police report came in. But the Daily Sun story is barely six hours after the body was discovered.”

  Laura considered it. “Couldn’t that just mean their news deadline is later in the day?”

  “Not that much later. All of these papers are morning editions, with similar deadlines. For the Daily Sun to have picked this up before all the others, they had to have had a tip. They had to have been on the scene almost as soon as the police to get anything into that day’s edition.”

  “A tip from the police?”

  Reggie thought about it. “I d
oubt it. It’s Wembley’s investigation. He does what he is obliged to do for the press, but he doesn’t cut them any favors, and he’d lop off the head of anyone on his staff who does otherwise. So the Daily Sun has a source the others do not, and I don’t think it’s the police.”

  Reggie stood. He could restrain himself no longer.

  “I’m going to have a word with him.”

  “With who?”

  “Your fiancé.”

  “Prospective, and you’ll do no such thing.”

  “Laura, if he has inside knowledge of what has been happening with these Black Cab crimes, then someone’s got to—”

  Now Laura stood.

  “Yes, someone does, and it will be me.”

  “No,” said Reggie. “I’m the one who’s facing jail, and I’m the one who’s got the most to—”

  “Yes? The most to just what, exactly? Reggie, you can’t control yourself. If you go there, one of you will end up in a big geranium pot and the other will be off to jail. You aren’t being rational about this.”

  “Of course I’m being rational about it.”

  “Really? Then how did you miss this?”

  She slapped each of the Daily Sun editions down in front of him, pointing to the byline of each in turn. “There. There. And there.”

  Reggie stared. She had a point. Each story in the Daily Sun was by the same reporter. Emma Swoop. The same one who had done the story about Reggie’s trip to Los Angeles, and the same one who had shown up so early at the crime scene at Lots Road.

  Reggie realized he had done it again. He had been so annoyed with Laura’s relationship with Buxton that he had made assumptions and was ignoring the more obvious connection.

  Probably the reporter was the contact point. Perhaps it might be Buxton himself. It was impossible to know that—yet. What he did know was that he did not want this confrontation at this time with Laura.

  “You’re right,” he said.

  “Am I, then?” said Laura.

  And then she stopped. She wasn’t quite sure what to say next. Reggie had agreed much too quickly.

  “Quite,” said Reggie, picking up his mac. “I’ll have a word with Ms. Swoop before I take my drive in the country.”

  And with that, he left the chambers.

  Laura, still at the desk, watched the door close behind him.

  That conversation hadn’t gone at all as expected.

  Perhaps there was something to this alpha-male thing after all. That was worrisome.

  But worry wasn’t productive. She sat back down. She started looking through the papers again, reading all the accounts of the Black Cab crimes, each in turn, from first to last.

  Then she repeated the process, but this time comparing not the accounts of the crime itself, but the coverage of the hearings.

  When she had finished doing that, she remained seated for several moments, staring at the stacks of the Daily Sun.

  Then she got up, left the chambers, exited the Baker Street building, and caught a cab for Wapping.

  20

  Reggie entered a small pub on Fenchurch Street, looking for Emma Swoop.

  He had called her as he left Baker Street Chambers, using the number from the TELL EMMA SWOOP hotline that had been appearing in adverts on pretty much every double-decker in London in recent months.

  The number went to a calling service, of course, but he was put through immediately when he gave his name, and then Emma herself picked up the line, quite pleasantly. And eagerly—like a young and energetic spider with a fly tripping on its web.

  This pub was her suggestion—a location far enough from both Wapping and Fleet Street that they could meet without necessarily every other reporter in the city knowing about it. She always protected her sources, she said, and for the moment Reggie had allowed her to believe that he was about to become one and that they would be talking about him and what he knew, rather than—so far as he was concerned—the other way around.

  And besides, she said, she had skipped breakfast, was starving for it, and this pub served it late into the day.

  Reggie found her in a back booth.

  She smiled broadly and pushed aside an empty plate as Reggie approached. He caught the scent of bangers and stewed tomatoes.

  “Very nice to see you again, Mr. Heath.”

  Reggie paused, still standing, and looked about. “No photographer this time, I trust?”

  “Of course not.”

  He sat down opposite her in the booth.

  “I have a letter I’d like to show you,” said Reggie. “And then I have a question to ask.”

  “I have some questions as well,” she said.

  “No promises regarding that,” said Reggie, “but in return for answering my question, I’ll show you a letter.”

  “The letter first, then,” she said.

  Reggie took the tip letter—the one written to Sherlock Holmes—out of the pocket of his mac and put it on the table in front of Emma Swoop. Then he sat back to watch her reaction.

  She began reading. Her eyes widened, and she read it again from the beginning.

  Then she put her hand to her mouth, as if to stifle a laugh. She looked up at Reggie with amusement.

  “You make my job much too easy. So now you’re actually getting tip letters people write to Sherlock Holmes? And about your own cases?”

  She took out a pen and began to scribble a note for herself.

  “Not necessarily,” said Reggie. “Perhaps just a tip letter from someone who knows that if she sends it to Sherlock Holmes, I will receive it.”

  Emma stopped scribbling.

  “She?”

  “A guess.”

  “Fine, I’ll take your word for it. Anyone specific in mind?”

  Reggie gave her the straight-on look he used for grilling a hostile witness.

  “Did you write it?”

  She laughed.

  “Why on earth would you think I wrote it?”

  “Three reasons. First is that you have an interest in stirring things up.”

  “Nonsense. People do gobs of stupid things all on their own—you included. I find it quite unnecessary to encourage anyone.”

  “Second reason is that you know my chambers address receives letters sent to Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Tons of people know that.”

  “Yes, because you told them all in the Daily Sun.”

  “Right, it’s my job. So what? Point still is, tons of people know.”

  “Third reason is that your stories in the Daily Sun show more knowledge of the crime than anyone else’s. And you made deadlines the other papers missed.”

  “Thank you. I do try.”

  “It almost seems you’ve had knowledge of the crimes before they occur.”

  She gave a derisive laugh at that.

  “It might seem. But I haven’t though, have I? I’d have a duty to report it if I had. But I only learn about them after. It’s a big difference, knowing after and knowing before.”

  “But to know so soon after, you must have an informant.”

  She shrugged.

  “Who is it?” said Reggie.

  “I’m not saying I’ve got an informant, but if I have, I’ve no obligation to reveal him, her, or it.”

  Reggie shifted fully into his barrister mode.

  “This has got nothing to do with your bloody rights as a member of the bloody press. This is not a corporate whistle-blower or a government informant exposing what needs to be to the light of day. This has to do with murder and you wanting to scoop the competition and make a reputation.”

  She bridled at that, and Reggie could see her searching for a defense.

  “I take it you have a problem with ambitious women?”

  “No,” said Reggie, “I do not.” But he decided to throttle it back a bit; he would get nothing if all he did was make her angry.

  “I imagine you get fan mail,” he said.

  She hesitated.

  “I do,” she said afte
r a moment.

  “Fans who are so enthused about you that their life’s ambition is to send you something that shows up in a story with your byline?”

  “Occasionally. It’s no secret; I’m sure you’ve seen my advert.”

  “Fan mail about your Black Cab series?”

  She sat back in the booth and was silent for just a moment. Reggie knew he was guessing near the mark.

  “All right,” she said. “A little over two months ago I saw in the police blotter that a woman was drugged and fondled in the back of a Black Cab—by the driver. I thought it was a hot story, and I wrote it up right. A week after that story came out, I got a letter saying how wonderful it was and to keep up the good work, that the Black Cabs are overrated and an actual menace, and offering to help in any way possible. Which was a bit weird, but only a bit, compared to other stuff I get. And I thought that was all there was to that.

  “But a few days after that fan letter I got an anonymous call, saying the police are on a robbery involving a Black Cab at Piccadilly. I got there straightaway, and sure enough, there has been a robbery, the police are there, and the victim is saying that the perpetrator was a Black Cab driver. I was the only reporter on the scene; I got good stuff that didn’t get broadcast over the police radio, and so I had the best story and the Daily Sun gave it plenty of space the next day.”

  “Did you bother to wonder at all about the tip you received?”

  “Not a bit. It could have been anyone at the scene: one of the local shopkeepers; bystanders in the street; someone passing by in a double-decker.”

  “But then it happened again after that, didn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then, again,” said Reggie. “The murder on Lots Road in Chelsea. Another lucky tip from a bystander?”

  “People read the paper. They know who to call when they see something happening. Nothing unusual about that.”

  “It was a different person that called each time, then?”

  The reporter hesitated, shifting uneasily. If it was the same person, she won’t want to admit it, thought Reggie. She probably hadn’t even admitted it to herself yet. It was one thing to have a Deep Throat contact embedded in a political scandal. It was quite another if the contact was a participant in bloody street crimes.