The Brothers of Baker Street

by Michael Robertson

  And there was only one cab in this scheme that remained available for it. Reggie knew now what he was looking at. He could almost make up the Daily Sun headline himself.

  He was looking at a death cab driving through London.

  From the current camera angle, through the passenger window, he could not see the driver of the cab. He would be able to see a passenger, at least partly, if one got in, but at the moment there was no passenger.

  The cab turned left now. It passed more businesses and pedestrians. Through the limited angle of the window, Reggie saw a would-be fare trying to hail the cab. But the cab didn’t stop. Apparently the driver had a specific destination in mind.

  Another left turn. Then another.

  Now the cab turned again, and Reggie began to recognize shops that he had already seen—a typewriter repair store and an Indian take-away deli next to it.

  The cab was circling. And now, another man tried to hail the cab, but once again, the driver didn’t stop.

  It wasn’t a particular destination the driver was looking for, Reggie concluded. It was a particular passenger.

  Reggie manipulated the mouse and cursor, trying to get audio and another angle from the camera.

  But now there was the sound of heavy tires on gravel.

  Reggie jerked his eyes away from the monitor. This was a real sound, not a virtual one. It would be the security patrol.

  He got up from the terminal and went quickly up the stairs.

  His Jag was parked openly out front, so they surely knew someone was here.

  The best plan was to be found doing what he had been intending to do anyway—calling 999 for the crash down the road.

  He went down the corridor and quickly ducked into the home office he had seen earlier. He switched on the desk lamp and picked up the phone and dialed, while he waited to hear security knock on the front door.

  But bloody hell. The phone did not connect—it was a landline, not a mobile, but there was no dial tone at all.

  And, surprisingly, he still had not heard the security patrol rap on the door, not a sound from them at all after hearing their vehicle pull up. That was odd.

  Reggie parted the window shutters slightly and looked out toward the drive. Yes, there was a vehicle, a late-model Land Rover. But it had no official insignia at all.

  And now Reggie heard the annoying metal squeal of the sliding glass door.

  Reggie realized now what was happening—the binder on the computer lab floor, the back door ajar, and Trimball’s head injuries with no air bag deployed—he knew what it meant.

  He turned and went into the corridor—but too late.

  He found himself face-to-face with a man in a blue turtleneck and a tan sports coat.

  This had to be Dr. Dillane. No one but therapists and car salesmen wore that combination anymore.

  They were within a meter or so of each other, Dillane having apparently snuck around the back and come in through the sliding glass door.

  There was a moment while each of them sized up the other.

  They were equal in height. They were about the same age. Dillane had prematurely gray-white hair, but he looked fit. Still, Reggie would have liked his own chances better, if only Dillane had not been holding a semiautomatic Glock handgun.

  “Ahh,” said Dillane. “The XJS. The fancy barrister’s chalk stripe.” Now he gave a short, uneasy laugh. “I know which one you are. You’re Reggie Heath.”

  Reggie just glared back at Dillane and said nothing in response.

  “You’re trespassing, Heath. Didn’t your criminal clients teach you that’s not a smart thing to do?”

  “You’re right,” said Reggie. “I expect you should call the police.”

  “Yes,” said Dillane. “And I will do so, shortly.”

  “I’m sure the security service is already on their way, in any case,” said Reggie. “They’ve probably already found the accident you staged up the road.”

  Dillane raised an eyebrow. “And why would I have done that?”

  Dillane wasn’t even pretending he didn’t know what Reggie was talking about. Given which of them was holding the gun, Reggie considered that a bad sign. And possibly Reggie should not have opened the discussion with an accusation. But there was no point in holding back now.

  “Trimball discovered how you intend to use his brainchild,” said Reggie. “He saw your lab book, he realized what you are doing, and he wasn’t having any of it.”

  “And what is it that you think I’m doing?”

  Dillane’s voice was calm, patient, and smooth. Reggie found it annoying as hell.

  “You make too much money, Dillane. You couldn’t build this house on your NHS salary. You built it on your private celebrity practice. You made some money prescribing on demand to celebrities who need a fix. But you made even more with your inside knowledge of their lives, selling tips to the paparazzi about who is going to be doing whom, and where to catch them at it. But you overdid the prescribing; you created a celebrity overdose, and now all your famous and high-paying clientele have dropped you. You not only lose their fees, you lose all that bonus money you were getting by selling their private information to tabloid jackals.”

  Reggie paused. Dillane raised an eyebrow slightly, but he did not confirm or deny. Reggie continued.

  “But no worries. You have a fallback plan. You conceived it when Darla Rennie and the American tech geek showed up in your therapy group. Larry Trimball with his new vehicle tracking system, and Darla with her hatred of the Black Cabs, and the ability to modify what Trimball had created so that it not only tracked vehicles but also spied on everyone who rode in them—it was perfect. You created the overall scheme, and you got Darla to implement it for you. Nothing short of a wiretap into every phone line in London could give you so much personal and inside knowledge as knowing what is said and done in the back of every Black Cab. You’d be back in the information-selling business, and bigger than ever.

  “But Trimball was never in on that part of the scheme. He thought he was just marketing his navigation system. When he realized that all the Black Cab crimes occurring at the same time as his adoption hearings could not be coincidence, he came here to confront you. When he did, you killed him, and staged the accident.”

  Reggie stopped there and looked for Dillane’s reaction.

  Dillane glared back for a moment, and then spoke, with the calm in his voice rapidly vanishing.

  “Well. What do I say now? Good job? You do indeed have a bit of it. But what if I do make a call to the paparazzi now and then? If these people want to be in the public eye, and I make a bit of money by helping them be even a little more in the public eye than they intended, who are they to complain? And if they want drugs, and I prescribe what they crave, and it isn’t necessarily the best thing for them in some ways, whose choice is that?”

  Dillane began to get animated now. He still had the gun pointed at Reggie, but he was moving about. Reggie shifted his position as well, as subtly as he could, until he was standing next to the mobile phone he had seen on the dining table.

  “But this is just a start,” Dillane continued. “Once the Black Cabs set the precedent, all the livery services will adopt this system. Stretch limo, Black Cab, minicab, it will make no difference—all of them will adopt the navigation system, unaware of the surveillance system embedded within it. I will know everything that is going on in the city. It will be a gold mine of information. But the politicians with their plots, and the stockbrokers with their tips, all the petty crimes and peccadilloes that everyone thinks they are discussing in private—all that will just be a bonus. The real bliss will be helping my new tabloid friends shoot down one or two of my former celebrity friends every month, and get paid for it in the process. If I can’t make my money servicing them, then I’ll make my money embarrassing them, and quite honestly, embarrassing them is more fun.

  “But you are wrong about one thing,” Dillane continued. “The security service is not actuall
y on their way here.” Dillane was settling down now, regaining his focus. “The alarm just goes directly to my own mobile phone. I’ll call them myself in a bit. And what I’ll tell them is that the crazed London barrister from the Black Cab cases cut my phone lines, broke into my home, and I had to shoot him.”

  “Why don’t you just tell them now?” said Reggie. He picked up the phone off the table as he said it, and he quickly pressed 999. If Dillane was going to squeeze the trigger, might as well get it over with now.

  And then the phone beeped in error, and the display showed these words: “Hi, Larry. What’s the password?”

  Bloody hell.

  “Trimball’s phone, isn’t it?” said Dillane. “Bad luck, that. Not much use without the pass code.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” said Reggie. He resignedly closed the phone, transferred it to his left hand as if to place it on the counter and then, in a backhand flick, threw the ten-ounce device at Dillane’s face.

  The gun went off.

  Reggie didn’t wait to see if he had been hit. He leaped headlong at Dillane, grabbing for the gun with his left hand, and for Dillane’s throat with his right.

  Reggie shoved Dillane backward onto the dining table, slamming the gun hand against the heavy glass. Dillane let loose of the gun. But Reggie’s own momentum, and a last-minute push from Dillane, propelled Reggie over the table.

  Reggie scrambled across the floor, grabbed the Glock, and stood with it leveled at Dillane.

  Dillane stood. He looked at the gun in Reggie’s hand, looked at Reggie, and then nodded slightly, as if it were no big deal. Then he began offhandedly putting the collar of his shirt back in order. “Your brother did say you were always good in a scrum,” said Dillane.

  “I had him to practice on,” said Reggie.

  “Yes, I know. I should have kept it in mind, but he mentioned so many sibling things of that nature, I guess it just got lost in the whole bag of them. I know everything your brother told me about his life, you see, and as it happens, that includes a good deal about yours.”

  “I doubt that,” said Reggie. “And keep your hands where I can see them.”

  “Of course. For example, I know why you became a lawyer—why you both became lawyers, in fact—which might include something you yourself didn’t know; that like you, your brother went into law because of the injustice done to your father. Surprised?”

  “No,” lied Reggie. “I knew that.”

  Dillane smiled, in a doubtful and very annoying way.

  “I know the guilt you carry,” he continued, “thinking it was your fault things turned out the way they did at the football match, that if you had not gone, hadn’t proudly insisted on wearing the cap, none of it would have ever happened at all. And so you became a lawyer, and you took on criminal clients, because you thought if you represented other defendants falsely accused you could balance things somehow. Erase the injustice of it. But you failed utterly in making things right. You merely got a guilty man released, making it possible for someone else to be killed. I can’t imagine any failure that could be more complete. Failure is so wonderful when it comes as the result of what you thought would be your success and redemption.”

  “Balls,” said Reggie, for lack of a better response.

  “And I know your brother dated the woman in your life—Laura Rankin, isn’t it—before you met her.”

  “That was years ago.”

  “Of course. I know that isn’t news to you. But would you like to know just how far their relationship had gotten?”

  “No.”

  “Now, that’s just denial. I’m sure you’d like to know more. Why don’t you sit down, we’ll talk; perhaps I can tell you about it.”

  “I don’t think so. Move over against the wall.”

  Dillane had been subtly shifting his position while he talked; Reggie now put one hand on Dillane’s chest and pushed him back against the wall.

  “You’re on the verge of losing her, aren’t you?” said Dillane. “Your brother predicted it, you know. He talked about it. He said he was afraid it would happen. And now it is, isn’t it?”

  “Tell me about the remaining Black Cab.”

  “I’ve no idea what you mean.”

  “Two cabs are locked up in New Scotland Yard. You’ve got one left. Tell me what it’s doing. I know it’s on the road in London. Where exactly is it going? What is it doing?”

  “No,” said Dillane, “I don’t think I will tell you that. Shoot me if it will make you feel better. But I will tell you this much: You thought you would get Laura Rankin back? You won’t. It’s already too late, and you have failed, utterly. Once again. Lovely woman, though. And so is Ms. Rennie. Both of them are, actually. And both of them so useful.”

  Reggie had heard enough.

  Though instinct told him this was exactly what Dillane wanted, he swung at Dillane’s face with his free arm—and in the process, just for an instant, the weight of that motion caused Reggie’s gun hand to shift to the left.

  Reggie’s punch connected, but Dillane was already in motion, it was only a glancing blow, and Reggie had not put his full force behind it. With the gun off target, Dillane threw a hard elbow directly at Reggie’s face.

  Dillane connected at a lucky angle, and Reggie fell back. For a short moment he could not see a damn thing. Dillane had caught him between the eyes, right at the bridge of the nose, and as his vision cleared, he saw the open front doorway. Dillane had fled.

  Reggie got up and ran in pursuit, ignoring the pain in the whole center of his face and the blood that was beginning to pour down from his nose, and the fact that he had dropped the gun on the dining-room floor.

  Reggie got to the doorway and saw Dillane’s Land Rover roaring out of the drive.

  It was full-on night now. Rain was coming down in torrents. The gravel drive was under water, the road that it led to had now turned completely to mud, and the surrounding pastures were rapidly becoming a shallow marsh.

  Dillane was driving the Land Rover across the muddy road and out into those spongy fields.

  Reggie drove the XJS directly after him, chasing the red taillights in the dark. The undercarriage of his XJS slammed hard in an expanding pothole as Reggie crossed the road, but he did make it across, and managed to maintain traction, at least at first, heading across the field.

  The Land Rover was roaring along, sending out its own spray into the rain as nicely as in a television advert, and bouncing over little gullies.

  And now Reggie struck two shallow washed-out gullies, one right after the other. The XJS took a bounce. The front axle came down in one washout, the rear axle in another, and the undercarriage of the Jag, with its shallow clearance, was actually now in contact with the ground, with the front wheels spinning and the engine screaming in vain.

  Reggie got out, cursing like bloody hell, blood and rain streaming down his face. For just a moment, he watched Dillane’s vehicle escaping over the fields.

  And then he turned and began running for all he was worth back toward the house.

  25

  Laura exited the Indian takeaway on Portobello Road, carrying a paper sack with a container each of tandoori chicken and tandoori shrimp. She was famished. If it turned out that she finished it all off before she even got home, then so be it.

  She tucked the sack into the crook of one arm and managed to get out her mobile phone. She was eager to call Reggie to let him know. The man in the typewriter shop had confirmed it now: the typed characters on the threat letters from the presumed Moriarty matched exactly the characters produced on a very old typewriter that the shop had repaired for one Darla Rennie, of Mayfair—Reggie’s client’s solicitor.

  So Reggie had gone to court in the company of a woman who believed herself to be the descendant of Professor James Moriarty and who believed Reggie to be Sherlock Holmes, and who wanted to do something horrible to him—exactly what, apparently, was still to be determined—because of it.

  Laura took
out her mobile now and rang Reggie. No response; she got his mobile answering service. She left a message, but it was cut short—her battery had run down, which was annoying. Now he wouldn’t be able to return her call.

  She walked toward the curb looking for a cab; she could see one approaching already from down the street. She’d had quite good luck today getting cabs, but she hoped the driver wouldn’t be a talker. She didn’t really want a long conversation. There was still too much to think about.

  26

  Soaked and muddy from his dash across the field, Reggie reached Dillane’s house. He ran directly down the stairs to the cellar computer lab.

  All the screens had gone dark. He sat at the central terminal and tapped a key; thank God, the displays appeared again.

  Reggie stared at the main display, trying to get his adrenaline under control and to focus. In a moment he knew what he was looking at, and it was what he wanted—he was looking once again through the interior camera of the active Black Cab.

  It was still on one of the same streets. Reggie recognized the shops. Apparently the cab had continued circling all this time.

  But now it came to a stop. It held its position there in the street, in front of an Indian takeaway and a typewriter repair store.

  And now the driver’s arm reached over and tapped the meter on. Someone was approaching the passenger-side door.

  The door opened. Reggie could not see a face, but he knew immediately it was a woman getting in.

  Suddenly, and for the first time since he had sat down at the terminal, Reggie felt like a voyeur. But he could not look away. The woman was lovely: a nice length of red hair just visible over one shoulder, and long legs, with freckles behind the left knee that—

  Reggie began frantically to work the controls, trying to get a view of her face, but he couldn’t.

  And then he right-clicked the correct corner of the display, and all at once he had audio.