The Brothers of Baker Street (10 page)

Reggie looked through the back window of the cab and saw that they had shaken their pursuit.

“Nice trick,” said Reggie to Darla. “How did you arrange it?”

“I had no idea of it,” she said. “I only called for the one cab.”

“Nicely done,” said Reggie to the driver now. “But they all know where Walters lives. They’ll just go directly there.”

“I’m sure they will,” said the driver. “And they’ll have a nice long wait for him, too. We’ll just drive him about for a time, have a pint and a chat, and bring him back when all the news mongers are too tired and hungry to care anymore.”

There was silence for a moment, as their cab mingled anonymously now among the traffic on the Embankment.

And then the driver said, as if they were just any fares that had gotten into his cab, “So where to, then?”

“We can drop you first, if you like,” said Reggie to Darla, “And then I’ll go back to chambers for my car. Where is your office?”

“Why on earth should I want to go back to my office? You can drop me at home, or we can go to the Seven Stars to celebrate. Those are the options.”

“How far is home?”

“Not far, if it’s one way.”

Reggie looked at her and pondered her expression for a moment, but he wasn’t quite certain she had meant what he thought she might have meant.

In any case, he decided that he wasn’t taking chances.

“A rain check?”

She laughed a little at that. “If it makes you feel safer,” she said. She smiled as she said it. Reggie looked away from her for an instant, looked back, and she was still directing that smile at him.

“The Seven Stars,” she said to the driver. And then, to Reggie, “Alone if I must.”

The Seven Stars was only blocks away. They were there within minutes, mercifully.

“A rain check, then,” she said to Reggie as she got out, still with the smile.

The driver turned to look back at Reggie.

“Blimey, mate, if I were you—”

“Bloody hell, just drive,” said Reggie quickly. “Dorset House on Baker Street.”

The driver complied, and several minutes later they pulled up.

Reggie started to get out of the cab without having paid.

“Forgetting something, mate?”

Reggie stopped, halfway out of the cab.

“Sorry.” He paid the driver.

“I suppose you were expecting a free ride, for what you did in the courtroom today?”

“What? No, not at all.”

“That’s good. ’Cause you’re not likely to get one. Not from me, not from any Black Cab driver.”

Reggie paused outside the cab and turned back toward the driver.

“What’s your point?”

“The last thing in the world we want is one of our own out whacking people. Bloody hell, people trust us with their frail old grand mums. What’s going to happen if they think they can’t anymore?”

“Point taken,” said Reggie. “But have you considered that he didn’t do it?”

“Better not have,” said the driver. “And if the police don’t soon put away who did … well, I know blokes who aren’t above taking care of it themselves.”

On that disturbing bit of bluster, Reggie shut the cab door and went to his car.

8

The next morning, in the garden of the Edwardian town home in Mayfair, Ilsa brought a full breakfast—deliciously greasy singed bacon, with stewed tomatoes and baked beans, and all the juices intermingling. Her employer was quite hungry, having worked hard the day before.

With the meal, Ilsa she again brought the
Daily Sun
.

“Page one,” said Ilsa: “‘Balmy Barrister Bails Black Cab Killer.’”

“Really?” said her employer. “Page one?”

“Yes.”

“I like that. I presume we have a photo or two?”

“Yes.”

“Let me see.”

Ilsa unfolded the paper so that they both could look.

The grainy
Daily Sun
photos showed the defendant getting into one cab—and the lovely leg of the solicitor as she got into the other cab—and the villainous visage of Reggie Heath as he got in as well.

“Is that him?” asked Ilsa. “The barrister?”

“Yes,” said her employer. “An evil man, thwarting Londoners in their legitimate desire to be free of the Black Cab menace.”

“Is that in the editorial page? What you just said?” The phrasing sounded quite journalistic to Ilsa.

“Not yet. But it should be, shouldn’t it?”

“He does look mean,” agreed Ilsa.

“Indeed, he does.”

Ilsa’s employer sat back with a satisfied sigh, then said, “Ilsa, do you know what the binomial theorem is?”

“No,” said Ilsa.

“Neither did I, until just recently,” said her employer. “I paid so little attention to mathematics in school. But I’m rather catching on now. These things run in the family, you know. Perhaps some day I’ll write something about it myself.”

Ilsa nodded. “Yes,” she began, agreeably, and then her employer quickly interrupted her.

“You may now address me as Professor.”

Ilsa hesitated, puzzled over that request. “I didn’t know that you are a professor,” she said, quite respectfully.

“Well, technically perhaps not yet. But soon, I expect.”

“I’m sure you can be one if you want,” said Ilsa. “Your doctor said that you are the brightest woman he has ever known.”

“My doctor is rather a fool,” said Ilsa’s employer, seizing a piece of bacon. “But he is right about that much.”

“Yes”—said Ilsa, and then, quite carefully—“Professor.”

9

Reggie stopped at Audrey’s Coffee and Newsagent across from Dorset House, to pick up a cold sandwich on his way to chambers.

Audrey’s had installed a small cappuccino machine more than a year ago, and the output from that was part of Reggie’s usual purchase at breakfast. But not so much recently.

He wasn’t on a budget. Not exactly. It was just that after the loss of his entire Lloyd’s of London investment, it made no sense to pay two quid for milk foam.

But all told, things were looking up. He had won his case. That was good in and of itself, but more importantly, it meant that if Laura called today, he need not necessarily feel like a complete loser when he spoke to her. That was a start. A step closer to being himself again.

“The camera makes you look old,” said the clerk at Audrey’s.

“Excuse me?”

The clerk nodded at the news rack—the one close at hand by the register, with the cheap daily rags like Buxton’s.

Reggie saw the
Daily Sun
story. It was page one; it could not be missed. And it was another Emma Swoop byline.

Reggie was in the foreground of the largest photo, scowling villainously back at the press, and at an angle that made it look like he was developing a bit of a paunch.

The solicitor Darla Rennie was visible only in the flash of a shapely bare leg.

It seemed unlucky, and possibly bad form, to buy the paper and take it with him. But a queue was building in the little shop, and the woman behind him kept peering around Reggie’s shoulder at that front page and then glancing up at Reggie’s face.

Reggie bought both the paper and the sandwich and hurried out.

Once again he was entering the Baker Street lobby with the lowest form of journalism tucked conspicuously under his arm.

He got in the lift, pressed the button, and as the doors began to close, he opened the paper and followed the story onto page two.

But the lift doors hadn’t closed yet; a slender hand caught them before they did, and the same tall brunette from a few days before stepped inside. Reggie acknowledged her presence with a quick nod, but stayed focused on the story.

As the lift went up, the woman’s eyes shifted to the outward-facing front page—with Reggie’s photo—and then she craned her neck ever so slightly to see the interior pages Reggie had opened to: page two and, once again, page three with that day’s bare-breasted lass.

“You’re making progress,” said the woman, as the doors opened on Reggie’s floor. “One more page, and you’ll be right up against her.”

Reggie couldn’t take the time to even think about a response. He got out and headed quickly down the corridor toward chambers.

Once safely inside, he opened the
Daily Sun
again and read the article about how he had used insidious legal trickery to get an obviously guilty killer released.

It was complete rubbish. But Buxton owned the paper. He would have the last word, and there was nothing Reggie could do about it. Or almost nothing.

Now the phone rang, and Reggie dismissed, for the moment, the fantasy of going to Wapping to punch out Buxton again.

He picked up. It was Laura.

“I should like to speak, please, to a cynical champion of the dark dregs of society. Is there one available?”

So she had seen the tabloids.

“A dreg or a cynical champion?”

“Can I get both in one?”

“Any time you like.”

“I would like an early dinner and a chat, then,” she said. And then she added, “She has fine legs, Reggie. But shouldn’t proper solicitors wear opaque tights or the like to court?”

“I … I told her exactly that myself,” said Reggie.

Laura laughed again. “It doesn’t matter, Reggie, really.”

“What time shall I pick you up?”

There was a short pause. “Why don’t we just meet?” said Laura, too brightly. “I know you’re quite busy.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “The Olde Bank pub at four?”

“Do they still serve shepherd’s pie?”

“So I’m told,” said Reggie.

“Brilliant,” she said.

Then she was off the phone.

Reggie was worried the moment she had hung up.

What was all this about a chat? Why did she not want Reggie to pick her up? And why did the flash of the lady lawyer’s legs not matter?

Reggie pondered these things until the late afternoon and then took a cab to the pub to meet Laura.

The Olde Bank on Fleet Street was as large and ornate as a pub could be and still be a pub and not a cathedral doubling as a boozing convention center. Pints were drawn from a bar in the center, and in concentric circles around that were three levels of standing areas and tables and booths for the public, and at the top level, a closed room for private functions.

The place had a smattering of tourists in the booths, but was mostly populated by dark-suited barristers standing at the counter of the center bar.

Many of them turned to look as Reggie and Laura walked by. Some just shifted their eyes, or tried to subtly twist their necks, but those on their third pints took no such precautions and overtly turned to look.

Reggie knew almost all of them from court.

“I think your peers are surprised to see you here,” said Laura.

“Peers is a good description for them at the moment. But it’s not me they’re staring at.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s me; the movie hasn’t even come out yet.”

“It’s you. I’d tell them to borrow cameras from the tourists and take a picture, but some would probably do it.”

At least Reggie hoped they were just tourists. One of the patrons near the front of the bar—conspicuously not staring, but in Reggie’s opinion, stretching his peripheral vision to the limits—had a camera bag that looked pretty high end.

“Let’s keep on to the back,” said Reggie.

They went up the steps to the next level and found an isolated back corner booth, just across from the closed private function room.

“I thought you never came in here,” said Laura as they sat down. “Although I’m not sure you’ve ever told me why.”

“Tonight is an exception,” said Reggie.

“Why?”

“Why an exception, or why I rarely come in here?”

“Let’s do the whole bag of them: why it’s an exception, why I’ve never known you to come in here even once, and why you’ve never told me why.”

Reggie knew he should have been communicating more. Perhaps it was time to rectify that.

“They wouldn’t let me in once.”

“Really? When did that happen?”

“When I was twelve.”

“You couldn’t get a pint when you were twelve, and you’re still annoyed?”

“I didn’t want a pint. I wanted a word with one of the barristers.”

Laura laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“Any other twelve-year-old boy is annoyed that he can’t have a pint with the grown-ups. But not the twelve-year-old Reggie Heath. He’s annoyed that he can’t go and argue with them. But go on, tell me why.”

“For my twelfth birthday my father took me to a professional football match. It was in the finals, between Chelsea and Manchester United, and the tickets cost a small fortune. It was just me and my dad, who was a huge fan; my mother didn’t care for the sport, and Nigel was still too young to bring along, though it was a job telling him that.