The Brothers of Baker Street

by Michael Robertson

  Darla accelerated.

  “You can’t get across,” Laura shouted. “It won’t work!”

  But the cab drove forward with everything it had.

  The metal gate had now swung far enough to block half the roadway and was still moving. Beyond the gate, the two spans of the bridge had begun to rise.

  Without slowing, Darla swerved the cab to try to go around the end of the gate.

  There was almost enough room—but not quite. The front of the cab made it past, but the rear bumper of the cab, at full speed, clipped the end of the metal gate.

  The cab spun forward, caroming up the rising span of the bridge, just as both halves of the span reached enough height to begin to separate in the middle.

  Then the cab came to a stop.

  For just a moment, everything inside was completely silent. Laura was dizzy from the two revolutions the cab had completed, and she was breathing rapidly, but it felt, strangely, as though they were now quite safe and secure.

  And then she heard the metal undercarriage of the cab groan; in the same instant she looked out the window and realized, both from what she could see and what she felt happening beneath them, exactly where they were.

  The cab was straddling the gap as the bridge span continued to open. The front wheels of the cab were on the parting edge of the southern span; the rear wheels were on the parting edge of the northern span, and in a contest between the hydraulic engines of the bridge lift and the undercarriage of the Black Cab, there was no question which would win.

  The gap between the spans was straining to grow wider. The cab was about to be torn in two.

  The front windshield cracked, and then burst.

  But now the passenger-door locks sprang open with the stress; Laura pushed through the door, and without time to think, jumped out of the cab.

  Her feet slid on the increasingly steep angle of the bridge span; she flung her arms out, grabbing for whatever she could.

  She realized in a moment that she had not fallen. Her face was against the flat metal-joining edge of the road, at the end of one of the two parting spans. She had both arms over that edge from the elbows up, and it was just enough leverage to pull herself up.

  She looked down. Below was the Thames.

  She looked to her left. The Black Cab was not yet completely separated; the running board that ran the whole length of the cab was still in place, at least for the moment.

  And clinging to the running board with both hands, with the rest of her body dangling straight down toward the Thames, was Darla Rennie.

  The woman was desperately looking back and forth, from one span to the other, as the only thing she had to hold on to was being torn apart.

  Only now, fully seeing her face for the first time, did Laura realize how young she was—younger than Laura—and, at this moment at least, how incredibly vulnerable.

  Laura herself was now as secure as was possible, which was to say not terribly secure, essentially straddling the edge of one of the spans of the bridge as it continued to rise higher. But she pulled herself closer to the cab, and reached her right arm out toward Darla.

  “Take my hand!”

  Darla turned her face toward Laura. She was clearly terrified, but she hesitated.

  “Take my hand!” Laura screamed as loudly as she could, her voice getting lost in the whirring from the bridge engines and the shriek of tearing metal from the cab. But she made her intent clear, and she stretched her arm out even further.

  Now, finally, Darla let go of the cab with one hand and reached for Laura’s.

  And then there was one more terrible metal shriek, and the frame of the cab separated into two. The running board broke, the two halves of it slanted steeply downward—and the hand that Laura was reaching for slipped away.

  Laura was vaguely aware of other sounds now, distant shouts. That was probably a good thing; some assistance would indeed be useful. But she did not have the strength to turn and look. And the last thing she saw before losing consciousness herself was Darla Rennie plummeting into the Thames.

  29

  TWO DAYS LATER

  Wembley was sitting in the barrister’s chair in Reggie’s chambers office. Nigel, seated in a client chair, was listening, and trying to remain patient.

  Nigel had a plane to catch. The time difference and the expense had made his transatlantic calls to Mara too short and too infrequent. He was anxious to get back to Los Angeles.

  So he hoped Wembley would not take long. Reggie had warned him that the man liked to talk, which presumably was why, at least in part, Reggie had ducked out already that morning, on the pretext of getting in a run—as if he hadn’t had enough of that—before the day got too far under way.

  “We caught up with the good doctor at Folkestone,” Wembley was saying. “Where he was trying to board the Eurostar with a false passport. I love that about the Chunnel; it’s the first place every fugitive runs to, and it makes my job that much easier.”

  “Did he confess?” asked Nigel.

  “He wouldn’t have if he could have avoided it, I can tell you that. But forensics has been all over his house and the crashed A3, and there’s a Russian servant girl in Mayfair who filled in a bunch of pieces for us. We’ve already got so much on Dillane that he gave it up. We have him on murder of the American entrepreneur, accessory for the others, and more conspiracies to commit than I can keep track of. ”

  Wembley had his feet on Reggie’s mahogany desk. Nigel considered telling him to remove them, but decided that if Reggie was going to leave this to Nigel, Reggie’s desk could fend for itself.

  “They rejected the proposal, you know,” Wembley continued. “This one, anyway.”

  “Why? Just because of the spyware, or for other reasons?”

  “Because it was put in without disclosure, of course. And also because the head of the company is deceased. That particular group won’t be back. But that doesn’t mean a rejection of the whole concept altogether. I’m sure it will be the way of things. A device that tells you how to get where you’re going? Excellent idea, of course, and not just for cabs. I think they’ve got them already on some American cars. An added feature that notifies emergency authorities if you are in a wreck? Also a good idea. But recording everything said and done in the cab and sending it back to a database? That’s a bit over the top. Even for my tastes.”

  “I believe the phrase for that is, ‘too much information,’” said Nigel. “And I’m sure what Reggie really wants to know is, what is the status of the charges?”

  “Against him, you mean?”

  “Of course.”

  “Oh. Yes, naturally. Well, the Crown Prosecution Service is dropping those. Given the circumstances that have come to light, we’re satisfied that Darla Rennie killed Walters. We found quite a bit of cash deposited in his account between the time of his arrest and the time he was killed. Apparently he got greedy.”

  “Yes,” said Nigel. “He wasn’t in on the original scheme, but after he was arrested, I expect he realized why it was that he’d been driving all around the East End every night for a fare who had no destination. I’m sure he wanted money to keep quiet about it—that, and a guarantee that he would get released, of course.”

  Wembley nodded. “And then they went looking for a barrister good enough to get the charges dropped. I sort of get why they wanted your brother for that. And I know he wouldn’t have taken it on if he didn’t believe his client was innocent of the murders.”

  “Which he was.”

  “Understood. But what I don’t get is how they persuaded your brother to pick up a criminal case again at all. That had to take some doing. And some personal knowledge. How did they know which buttons to push?”

  Nigel looked at Wembley, then away, and shifted uneasily in his chair. “I suppose it helped,” said Nigel finally, “that Reggie had a brother blabbing away on family issues in the solicitor’s therapy group.”

  “Oh,” said Wembley. Then he nodded, almost symp
athetically. “Very subjective stuff, that. Personally, I don’t go in much for that touchy-feely sort of thing. I prefer forensics. Which is tying things up nicely in this case.”

  “You found her fingerprints, then?”

  “Yes.” Wembley seemed to want to not say any more about it, but Nigel wasn’t satisfied.

  “Where did you find them?”

  Wembley cleared his throat. “On the detergent box.”

  “But surely not on the outside of the box itself?”

  “No,” said Wembley. “That of course had been wiped clean. As had everything else. We found the print—as you had suggested—on that annoying little tab that you have to either push in or pull out of the box in order to get the stuff to pour properly.”

  Nigel was so satisfied to hear Wembley acknowledge that the suggestion had been correct that he didn’t even bother to point out that it was Laura who had first thought of it.

  “And what of the other victim?” said Nigel. “The bloke that was unceremoniously pushed over the railing and into the river?”

  “It took both Dillane and Darla Rennie to do that. She arranged the meeting and Dillane pulled the trigger; then they did their best to make him look like another Black Cab victim—when in fact he was their original Black Cab perp, doing all the robberies and killing that American couple. But once it all started to go down the crapper, they couldn’t have him hanging about to get caught and testify about their plot. And according to Dillane—easy to say now, but it’s what he says—the wanker was never supposed to kill anyone to begin with. The idea was just to make the Black Cabs appear unsafe, not to remove all their customers through sheer attrition.”

  Now there was a knock on the door, and Lois entered.

  “Oh,” she said. “Should I come back later?”

  “Not at all,” said Nigel. “We don’t keep secrets from Inspector Wembley. I mean, not this afternoon, anyway.”

  “Well, I finally got a call back from the typewriter manufacturer. You know, the one used for the letter from … well, you know.”

  “And?” said Nigel.

  “They found the original purchase record. It was bought in San Francisco in 1891 by an American.”

  “And?”

  “That’s all they had, sir. There’s no record of it at all after that, until it was taken to Standard Typewriter here in London for repair—just last month—by Darla Rennie.”

  Lois stopped talking after that, but she clearly had something else to say.

  Nigel looked at her suspiciously. “What is it that you’re not telling us?”

  Lois hesitated, finally she spit it out: “The name of the American who purchased it in 1891 was James Moriarty.”

  Nigel shrugged. “There were plenty of James Moriartys in England and Ireland and America then, as there are now.”

  “Yes,” said Lois. “And that’s why it’s taken me so long; there were too many Moriartys who were not relevant, and I had to get into a bit of genealogy. But I do finally have it. Darla Rennie is indeed the great-great-granddaughter, on her mother’s side, of the James Moriarty who purchased the typewriter. That James Moriarty was an American, who traveled to Switzerland in 1891, where he died in a railway accident. He left a considerable fortune to his heirs, which they apparently increased over the years, mostly during the American Prohibition, by importing British and Irish whiskey.

  “Darla’s parents—she has dual citizenship, British on her father’s side, American on her mother’s—both died in an automobile accident just less than a year ago. Darla inherited the estate, including, along with everything else, that typewriter, which her great-great-grandfather had owned before he died.”

  “Fair enough,” said Wembley. “But it doesn’t explain why she thought her great-great-grandfather was the Professor James Moriarty.”

  “Well, she was already schizophrenic,” said Nigel. “Perhaps the death of her parents—and the discovery of something that her ancestor had owned—was enough to push her toward that particular delusion. That and the unfortunate coincidence of where and when he died. Perhaps she didn’t even know about any of it until after her parents died; that would have only increased the impact of learning it. And then when Dillane took her off the meds for his own purposes, the delusion was reinforced.”

  “Well,” said Wembley, getting up from Reggie’s chair. “If we ever manage to fish her out of the Thames, perhaps we’ll ask her.”

  “What?” said Nigel. “You haven’t recovered the body?”

  Wembley shook his head as he went to the door. “Given time and the tides, we might still. Or we might not. It’s a big river, and anything is possible.”

  “You’ll let us know?’ said Nigel.

  “If you like,” said Wembley. “But if we do find her, I’m sure you’ll read about it in the papers in any case.”

  Wembley exited.

  Nigel checked his watch. “I have a plane to catch,” he said to Lois. “Was there anything else?”

  “Just these,” said Lois. She showed Nigel a large mailer, stuffed with letters. Nigel looked inside.

  It was filled with letters to Sherlock Holmes.

  “I think Reggie was intending to mail them to you. But if you’ll take them now, I suppose we could save on the postage?”

  30

  Laura got out of a Black Cab at the entrance to the pedestrian path at the north end of Regent’s Park.

  She was wearing long runner’s pants that did not completely disguise her shape, but did cover all of her skin. Most of London had seen enough of that two days earlier. So although the weather would have permitted, she decided against runner’s shorts.

  She wasn’t sure why she had blacked out momentarily just as the separating edge of the bridge span had reached its apex. What she did know—what she learned shortly after the fact—was that nearly all the cab drivers and half the bobbies in London had been waiting, arms linked, at the base of the span to catch her as she slid. And right behind them were any number of paparazzi.

  She just wished she had not worn a skirt that day.

  Today she set out on the Regent’s Park path with the intent of running to the south end, where the park bordered on Baker Street, and if things went according to plan, she would be rewarded with lunch and a nice quiet row on the lake. She was actually rather eager for it, and she started out at a quick pace.

  Then, after a few moments, she slowed the pace just slightly. No need to make things too difficult. Not if she wanted the pleasant row on the lake.

  At the west end of Regent’s Park, Reggie was running north on the circular path. He was nearly in full stride; he had started at the south end some minutes earlier, and though his legs were still quite sore, he could feel them beginning to loosen up. He knew he could complete the entire circuit.

  The soreness was, mostly, from his desperate run in the Cotswolds two days earlier. After running at full tilt back to Dillane’s house, and then to the crashed A3 to ring Nigel, he had then run four miles back down the little country lane, through the rain and mud, until he managed to get picked up by a lorry carrying half a dozen sheep. That had gotten him to Bath, and then a taxi took him from Bath to London—just in time to find Laura in the hospital, getting checked out, surrounded by police and reporters.

  Now Reggie completed the curve at the north end of the park. He was on the straightaway, heading south toward the Baker Street gate, and in the far distance he saw a woman running, her red hair swaying back and forth. It looked like a long way, but he wasn’t worried. He was only moments behind. He was almost certain of it.

  ALSO BY MICHAEL ROBERTSON

  The Baker Street Letters

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A THOMAS DUNNE BOOK FOR MINOTAUR BOOKS.

  An imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.

  THE BROTHERS OF BAKER STREET. Copyright ©
2011 by Michael Robertson. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.thomasdunnebooks.com

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  ISBN 978-0-312-53813-2

  First Edition: March 2011

  eISBN 978-1-4299-6806-5

  First Minotaur Books eBook Edition: March 2011