Moriarty Returns a Letter (16 page)

Reggie just stared back at her for a moment, waiting for her to add a condition. But she added nothing.

“Very well, then,” said Reggie, exhaling, finally. “We’re done here, and thank you very much.”

The “thank you” was just a reflex courtesy; Reggie would have taken it back if he could. He stood.

“Wait,” she said.

Reggie paused.

“I need a lawyer,” she said. “I want you to recommend a solicitor, and I want you to represent me when it goes to trial.”

“Why in blazes would you want that?” said Reggie.

“Because you are the best,” she said, “and because it would mean you have accepted my apology.”

“I have accepted nothing from you,” said Reggie. “An apology is not sufficient for the things you have done and tried to do. But more to the point, I couldn’t represent you if I wanted to. I’m a material witness in your killing of the cabdriver six months ago. The killing that I was accused of, because you framed me for it. Or had you forgotten?”

“I had, actually. But only momentarily. I’ve remembered it all now. And I didn’t mean that I want you to represent me for any of that.”

“What are we talking about then?”

“Did you hear of the killing of a private fisherman down at Canvey? A Mr. Cheeverton?”

Reggie’s chest tightened; his pulse quickened just slightly. He had been carefully avoiding this topic of conversation; he indeed wanted to know what she had been doing in Canvey, but he wanted the statement to come from Darla Rennie on her own, not prompted by him. And it wasn’t just a legal strategy. It was instinct. He wanted to keep Darla Rennie at the greatest possible distance from Laura and himself.

“Yes, I’ve heard of it,” said Reggie, very carefully.

“I am accused of it.”

“I know. Your fingerprints are on the knife that killed him.”

“I used that knife in the kitchen.”

“Apparently so.”

“I mean to help prepare meals.”

Reggie looked directly at her and said:

“Your fingerprints are also on a tabloid account of Laura Rankin’s travel itinerary for the next week, hidden in the room where you were living. Explain that to me, please.”

Quite uncharacteristically, she fidgeted.

Then she said:

“When I first came out of the water, I did not know who I was. Mr. Cheeverton knew, but he did not tell me. He would always turn the telly off when the news broadcast came on, and he would never let me see certain sections of the paper he brought home. And so I knew there was something in the news. I began to read very carefully through everything that he did allow into the house. And one day I saw that article—about you and Laura Rankin—and that’s when I began to remember. I began to remember what I had done. And I began to track down who I was. And where I am from. There are some things that I still only suspect; there are some things that I want to prove, but cannot—not yet. But it was that article that made me begin to remember who I am—and what I have done. And that’s why I kept it.”

Reggie considered all that, did not believe much of it, and he said, “Even if the Bar Council would allow it, I wouldn’t represent you.”

“Why not?”

“Bloody hell, you tried to drive the woman I love off the Tower Bridge!”

She nodded.

“I know,” she said. “I mean, I don’t deny it. I remember now all the things I did while under the influence of my delusions—not the visceral substance of them, not how any of them felt at the time when I did them, or even clearly why I felt that it was acceptable for me to do them. But the fact that I did them? Yes. I remember that. I don’t deny any of it. But I’m back on my meds and I’m better now.”

Reggie sat down. He stared across the table at her, trying to suss out what she was doing.

“You’re preparing a bloody insanity defense,” he said.

“No,” she said. “Not anymore.”

“What?”

“I tell you honestly, I no longer believe that you are Sherlock Holmes or that I am a descendant of the fictional character Professor Moriarty. That part of me is simply gone.”

“Then you’re claiming temporary insanity,” said Reggie. “And I’m not buying it. Even if everything you just said were true, it would only mean that your delusion is gone. In my book, whatever actions you were willing to commit while under your delusion are also actions that you would be willing to commit with a full grasp of reality. The perception of reality might change. I don’t believe the moral choice does. You committed premeditated murder under your delusion. Given comparable circumstances in real life, without the delusion, you would make similar choices. You would kill again, and I will not handle your defense.”

Darla Rennie cleared her throat slightly; she looked about the room and down at the table. She raised her head to look at Reggie, then immediately lowered it again.

“Remind me,” she said. “Tell me again what it was I did?”

Reggie began to recite her history:

“Your scheme for the Black Cabs caused the deaths of two American tourists.”

“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” she said. And then she quickly added, “But I know it was my fault.”

“And then you killed the Black Cab driver who was part of your scheme. You drank a glass of wine with him and then you put a kitchen knife into him.”

“Yes. He was trying to blackmail me.”

“And you were an accessory in the killing of the second cabbie.”

“Yes. Because of what he did. He wasn’t supposed to kill the American tourists.”

“In other words, he didn’t follow instructions, and so you were annoyed with him.”

She sighed, looked away, and then back at Reggie:

“You can put it that way if you like,” she said. “I’m not denying that one, either.”

“Well, God help us all if you get annoyed again.” Reggie stood and looked down at her. “You have now confessed,” he said.

“I know that,” she replied.

“I’m sure you’ll find some barrister who’ll help you plead whatever you want, but it won’t be me, and if there’s any justice at all in the British legal system, it won’t work.”

“Please. Help me,” said Darla Rennie.

There was a tone in her voice that Reggie had never heard, and he looked back.

She looked up at him, and she said:

“I nearly died in the river. And I’ve had months with nothing to do but think about my past actions and what they mean.”

“State your point,” said Reggie.

“Have you never thought back to something you did long ago and wondered how you could be so clueless, so ignorant of the consequences to other people, that you would have done it? And that you would never do such a thing again, now that you have become aware of it?”

“Yes,” said Reggie. “But we’re not talking about the crime of me standing up my first date at an adolescent dinner party out of sheer terror. The things that you did are at another level. You’re claiming your delusions are gone. Perhaps that’s true, but I’ve no way of knowing that you won’t go off your meds again. You also claim a life-changing experience. Repentance. I’m not the judge of that, but the first test of your sincerity is that you accept the responsibility and consequences for your actions.”

She nodded.

“I know,” she said. “I confess to all of it. I will not plead insanity or diminished capacity in any way. I will make no excuses and present no witnesses at sentencing. I will simply plead guilty and accept my sentence without complaint, knowing full well that I deserve whatever punishment the court dispenses.”

Reggie paused.

“Well,” he said. “All right, then. Good to know. But I still can’t represent you.”

It was time to restore the distance between them. He turned once again toward the door.

“I did not do it,” she said.

“I don’t care.”

“I didn’t kill the fisherman,” she said. “I did all the other things, and I will accept my punishment for them. I know I will not go free. But I did not kill the fisherman. Perhaps I would have done, if he had attempted to do what I know he was thinking about doing. But he didn’t, and so I didn’t.”

Reggie shook his head. “I still can’t help you. You must get someone else.”

Reggie exited the interview room and closed the door behind him. He went back to the observation area, where Wembley and an official from the Crown Prosecution Service had been watching.

Reggie joined them, and they all watched through the one-way window as a constable came in and escorted a quiet Darla Rennie from the interview room.

“Nice work,” said Wembley. “She admitted to each of her individual crimes. All on tape. All with the proper legal cautions. I knew there was a reason why we called you.”

“Be careful,” said Reggie. “She admitted to the Black Cab crimes, but you already had the evidence to convict her on those, so she undoubtedly knows that there’s no point in denying them. And none of her promises about how she’s going to plead at sentencing are legally binding. And she didn’t admit to anything regarding the fisherman in Canvey.”

“We’ll get her on that one as well, when Forensics is done. Her only hope on that was self-defense, and now that she’s admitted that he did not in fact assault her, we’ll get her for that murder, too.”

“Do whatever you need to do,” said Reggie. “But don’t let Darla Rennie back out on the street.”

16

Reggie returned to Baker Street Chambers. He had an early dinner date with Laura, he was running late, and he had not yet had time to even consider what he would tell her about what had just transpired at Scotland Yard.

And then, as he entered chambers, he saw her sitting there at his desk—which was good. But he read the expression on her face—and he knew that he had already bolluxed it up.

And it wasn’t that he was late for dinner. Laura had already adjusted to that. She’d gotten yesterday’s bag of mini-burgers from the hotel out of his cooler and had it open there on his desk.

“I thought we had agreed,” said Laura.

“We did,” said Reggie. And then, “About what?”

“Lois gave me this just now,” said Laura. She stood, and held up a sheet of paper. “Apparently, it is our new travel itinerary.”

“Ahh. Yes,” said Reggie. He had forgotten that he had done that. The shock of actually seeing Darla Rennie at Scotland Yard had quite pushed it out of his mind. “I asked Lois to see if she could make a few changes. Nothing major, though, I’m sure.”

“Reggie, I had us booked on a nice, leisurely train trip through Cornwall,” said Laura. “I had us in the top-floor suite of a quaint little bed-and-breakfast, with a view of the garden and the lake and the apple orchard.”

“Yes,” said Reggie. He began to worry.

“You have us driving back roads through the Dartmoor National Park, with a stay in the Marylebone Super Slumber—which was formerly a combination convenience store and petrol station, and which now has four lovely one-hundred-and-fifty-square-foot studio units, one of which was still available, which will be ours, and will be the one closest to the motorway on-ramp. Which is convenient, I suppose, since we are now driving, rather than rocking and rolling happily along on the train.”

“Yes. Well, you see—how do you know we have the room closest to the motorway on-ramp?”

“I know these things because I think to ask. This is why I have good luck with hotels and you have bad. It’s because I plan ahead and then I ask.”

“Yes,” said Reggie. He had always known this about Laura, this careful-planning thing. He was not sure whether he loved her because of it or in spite of it, and undeniably it was sometimes useful—but either way, it was putting him on the spot at the moment.

“Yes,” he said again. “But there is a reason.”

“A reason to book close to the on-ramp?”

“No, I mean there was a reason why I asked Lois to change the reservations.”

“Yes, I know—a clipping of our itinerary at a murder site. But we discussed that. It’s nothing at all to worry about. And we agreed that we would proceed as planned.”

“Yes,” said Reggie. “But that was before we knew who the clipping belonged to.”

“Well, all right, then,” said Laura. “I’ll ask if I must. Who did it belong to?”

Reggie hesitated, then said:

“Darla Rennie.”

Laura stared at Reggie for a moment.

“That young woman is dead,” said Laura.

“No,” said Reggie. “She fell from the bridge, but she did not die. She survived.”

Laura sat down.

“When did we discover this?”

“The Yard found her fingerprints everywhere in the house—in the loo, on the kitchen utensils, on fast-food wrappers … and on the clipping of our itinerary. So I asked Lois to change the itinerary. And we got professional help to do it, too—the manager from the Marylebone Grand Hotel. She pulled strings to get our reservations at this late date.”

Laura thought about all this for a moment.

“All right,” she said finally, nodding. “If I have to stay at the Super Slumber to avoid a felonious twenty-five-year-old obsessed with my fiancé, I’m willing to do that.”

“I think the relevant thing is that she tried to drive you off the Tower Bridge and into the Thames.”

“Well, yes—but it was you she was obsessed with, Reggie, not me. I’d have been fine if she didn’t want to jump your bones. I know a rival when I see the claws come out, and she was one. Or was trying to be. It’s a good thing I’m so secure, or I’d be worried now that she’d be ringing you up for a pint and a shag.”

Reggie tried not to confess that Darla Rennie had indeed, in effect, rung him up.

“You’ll be happy to know that she’s in custody at Scotland Yard at this moment,” he said instead. “And for more serious crimes than allegedly wanting to jump my bones.”

“Under arrest, then?”

“For the murder of the fisherman and for everything she did before she went for her little swim in the river.”

“Well, that is good to know. The Yard is sure they have the right person?”

“It’s her. I’ve seen her myself.”

“You mean she
did
ring you?”

Reggie stammered for a moment, then found his voice:

“No,” he said. “She did not ring me. Well … at least not technically. It was the Yard that rang me.”

Laura absorbed that.