The Brothers of Baker Street (12 page)

And then he replayed through his mind the sight of Buxton’s white limo driving off with Laura inside, and he asked himself whether it actually mattered what he chose at this point. With that in mind, he said nothing, and in a few moments he was once again walking into the Olde Bank pub with a woman that any of the male barristers, and possibly some of the female ones, would gladly give up their wigs for.

“Why is everyone staring?” asked Darla, as they sat down in a booth.

“Not sure,” said Reggie. “I don’t come here that often.”

“I thought all lawyers did,” she said. “Why don’t you?”

“I’d rather not talk about it,” said Reggie.

“Oh. All right then.” She took a very small sip of her drink, and then set it down.

“You don’t like what you ordered?” said Reggie, looking for an excuse to change the subject.

“I ordered it out of habit,” she said. “I used to think I liked crème de menthe. Recently I discovered that I don’t.”

“Do you often discover that you don’t like things that you thought you liked?”

“Yes, and the reverse. I’m a very changeable person. Or so I’ve been told.”

Reggie noticed that her green eyes were changeable as well—going from emerald to beryl in an instant—depending on the light, apparently.

Those eyes were flirting with him. And so was the rest of her. He knew that. And the knowledge alone was beginning to produce a reaction.

Reggie decided that he needed another pint. He excused himself and went to the bar.

As the pint was being drawn, Reggie looked back toward the booth and saw a couple of lawyers stopping to chat briefly with Darla. Then, as Reggie headed toward the booth with his fresh Guinness, they moved on.

Reggie sat down, and Darla said, “They thought you might want this.” She held out the umbrella Reggie had left behind earlier.

“Good of them,” said Reggie, accepting it. Then Darla said, “Is it socially deficient of me not to know who this Laura Rankin is that they are so on about?”

“No,” said Reggie, “but you may have seen her in Covent Garden once or twice in the past six years or so.”

“An actress, then, is she?”

“Of course.”

“I didn’t get to the theater much six years ago. I was too occupied with my A-levels.”

That meant she was no more than nineteen at the time, and she seemed to want Reggie to know it.

Reggie almost said something defensive about how young Laura was when she first debuted at Covent Garden. But he didn’t quite. The Guinness he had just finished was pleasantly warm, so was the voice of the woman who had been concerned about her A-levels just six years ago, and there was no need to be confrontational.

“I’m sure you aced them,” he said instead.

“I did indeed,” she said. She smiled as she said it, leaning forward, and somehow wiggling her whole body in the same motion, as though the A-levels were just yesterday.

Reggie put down his empty pint glass, and reached into his pocket.

“Are you getting another Guinness?” she said.

“I’m calling a cab,” said Reggie. “One or two of us have had enough.”

“I think it’s you. But you’ll give a lady a ride home, I hope?”

Moments later they were in a radio-dispatched Black Cab. The passenger seat, as in all Black Cabs, was wide and smooth, with plenty of leg room, and nothing in the middle to impede easy access between one passenger and another. It made the trip excruciating. Her knees bumped into his with just the slightest imperfections in the road, and she allowed her hips to slide across to his with every curve. When the cab took a left turn and came to a stop on a street in Mayfair, she ended up pretty much in Reggie’s lap.

“Well,” she said, as the vehicle came to a stop. “And here we are.”

“Yes,” said Reggie. “We very much are.”

She paused before she got out of the cab.

“You know, you really shouldn’t be driving all the way from Baker Street to Butlers Wharf in your condition.”

“What condition?”

“Your obvious condition. I can propose an alternative, if you like.”

Reggie concluded that she wasn’t merely suggesting that he go back to Baker Street and sleep on a chair at chambers. And once again, as he considered her invitation, the image of Laura getting into the limo and riding off recycled through his mind.

But perhaps the jury was still out on that. Or perhaps the jury was back, but there was still opportunity for an appeal.

And perhaps it was best to act as though there were still hope, even if it seemed there was not.

“I’ll just take the cab home,” said Reggie.

“If you insist,” said the solicitor.

Reggie saw two expressions cross her face now: First, a smile to suggest to Reggie all that he would be missing, and then, for an instant, a flash of annoyance just as she shut the cab door.

Reggie returned to chambers. There were two calls from the reporter Emma Swoop. There was another fax from Nigel about the Moriarty letter. But there was no message from Laura.

Reggie briefly considered returning Emma Swoop’s calls to let her know what he thought of the coverage she’d been giving him. But he thought better of it. He ignored everything and went home.

10

Well on toward three in the morning, a smallish figure in a hooded mac stood at the far end of an isolated dock in the Limehouse district. The wooden base of the dock was dark brown-gray, the Thames beneath and beyond it was slate gray, the hooded mac that cloaked the figure was medium gray, and the fog that had begun to steal in around the pilings was light gray, almost white gray, almost pleasant to look at as it swirled gently up, over the planking of the dock. Standing at the end of the dock and looking out, one could almost see shapes, like small animals, leaping up out of the dark gray river into the light gray fog, darting chaotically about, swirling in cat curves and then vanishing, out of focus, like lost thoughts.

Then there was a sound.

A hulking man at the land end of the dock had put one foot on the boards, but now he hesitated. The fog was bone-chillingly cold, and probably he did not want to go farther out, farther into the wet gray mist; his knee-length black leather coat would not be sufficient protection.

But he could not turn back now; he had been seen, and he had no choice but to proceed.

He walked forward, hesitantly in the first few steps, but then in long, rapid strides, as if to convey confidence.

The strides were a bluff, and he stopped several yards off.

“You exceeded your authorizations,” said the cloaked figure.

“You said to raise the stakes,” said the man.

“True.”

“I … raised them.”

“You murdered a woman.”

The man hesitated. “If you had said specifically what you wanted me to avoid—”

“Some things should be apparent.”

“I presumed you saw my history.”

“Yes. That makes it my mistake, of course. But no matter.”

The man began to relax just a little, and ventured, “I should like very much to remain in your employ.”

“Don’t worry. I still need you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the man, feeling just a bit reassured.

“You may call me ‘Professor’ now.”

“Yes,” said the man quickly. “Professor.”

Professor Moriarty was smiling; the light on the wharf was shadowy and she was wearing a small hooded mac, but it was still possible to see her smile, and it was almost enough to counter the man’s first impulse, which had been to run from the pier as fast as possible.

“You can go now,” said Moriarty.

“Right then,” said the man. He took a step back, saw that Moriarty was still smiling, and then, with something that was almost like a quick smirk in response to that smile, he turned around and began to walk away.

That smirk might have been the fatal error, or perhaps it made no difference at all.

But the man did not walk far.

11

At Butlers Wharf, something woke Reggie out of a very pleasant dream, so real that he had to turn and look to be certain that there was not in fact a woman lying there with him.

There was not. Perhaps that was just as well this morning, because although the dream had been about Laura, his memory of the night before was clearing, and if a woman were there, simple logistics said it would have been someone else.

The heaviness in his forehead said three pints of Guinness, or perhaps four, which would have been nothing in his Cambridge days, but lately was beginning to have some after-effect.

He took aspirin with water, walked out to the garage to get in the XJS, and realized that his car was still at Baker Street. He stood in the cold wind at the base of Butlers Wharf to get a cab, and then, as he rode across the bridge, he reviewed the events of the night before to make sure he indeed recalled them all accurately.

There was the dinner at the pub with Laura, followed by her riding away in the limo with Buxton. The sight of that still ached.

Then there were the pints with the young female solicitor—bloody hell, had that been at the Olde Bank as well?—and clear signals from her, and then the cab ride home. And yes, he was certain that she had indeed gotten out at her home, somewhere in Mayfair, surprisingly—must be family money—and then he at his. Thank God for that. No damage done. If there was still a relationship left with Laura to be damaged.

By the time Reggie’s cab dropped him at Baker Street, the dull ache in his temples had dispersed into all the junctions in his body, turning what had been a nicely localized pain in the head into a more generalized sense of not-well-being.

He stopped at Audrey’s Coffee and Newsagent. He bought an Americano—two shots of espresso cut by a bit of boiling water. The clerk offered the
Daily Sun
.

“No,” said Reggie. “I’m back to the
Financial Times
.”

“You’ll want the
Sun,
” said the clerk. “Looks like they’re the only ones who got the story.”

“What story?”

The clerk just gave Reggie a look and handed him the paper.

Reggie glanced at the front page.

“Black Cab Killer Casts Body over Bridge.”

Bloody hell.

A crowd was gathering behind him. Reggie tucked the paper under his arm and made a dash into the Dorset House lobby.

Once in the lift, he immediately opened the tabloid and turned page three inside out, so that the day’s bare-breasted nymph would confront anyone who got in with him. With luck, the distraction would prevent gawkers from asking about the sensational Black Cab headline. And it pretty much worked; three Dorset House employees, one male and two female, rode up in the lift with him, but Reggie managed to exit without any of them saying a word. He made it all the way to his secretary’s desk.

But Lois looked up as he approached, and she reacted to the paper under his arm.

“You’ve seen the headline?” she said, quite genuinely concerned.

“Yes,” said Reggie. “No need to worry yourself over it.”

“Of course.”

“Any briefs this morning?”

“No.”

“Well, that will soon change. Nothing gets the clients rolling in like the possibility that ours was guilty and we got him acquitted.”

Then Reggie went into his chambers and closed the door behind him.

He folded the page-three girl back to her usual position and read the story on the front page.

Shortly after three that morning, according to the reporter’s account, a Black Cab had pulled over on Blackfriars Bridge. The driver and another individual had gotten out, opened the passenger door, and shoved a body over the railing and into the Thames, violating any number of ordinances in the process. There were witnesses and the police had already recovered the corpse. And now, wondered the reporter in print, for just how long would cunning and unscrupulous barristers like Reggie Heath be allowed to manipulate the system and turn known murderers loose upon the unsuspecting citizens of London?

The story was short on details and long on hyperbole. It offered no reason at all to think it was Reggie’s client who had done it.

Reggie checked the byline: It was Emma Swoop once again.

But now the phone rang. It was Wembley.

“Morning, Heath. Just thought I’d see if you happen to know the whereabouts of your client.”

“Which one?”

“Well, you’ve only got one at the moment, haven’t you?”

“If you want to get technical about it, at the moment I’ve got none. The case was dismissed, and my work is done.”

“He may have need of your services again. Quite soon. Be aware that we would like a chat with him. I’ve already spoken with his solicitor.”

Reggie knew Wembley was waiting for him to ask.

“Why? What’s happened?”

“You haven’t heard?” Wembley related the same account Reggie had seen in the paper.