The Brothers of Baker Street (20 page)

Or they would once it got washed. At the moment it was still covered in dirty brown residue from the dried Thames water.

The forensics team had opened the driver’s side window. The sergeant allowed Nigel to stick his head through for a look.

“Won’t be much to see, I’m afraid,” she said cheerily. “Do try not to sneeze.”

And she was right. Any items of evidence had already been removed. And the same dry muddy haze that coated the exterior also coated the seats and floorboards and sidings of the interior, punctuated by the small areas where forensics had done its sampling.

“Let’s have a look at the other, then,” said Nigel.

The sergeant escorted Nigel past another dozen or so vehicles, either stolen or impounded for other reasons, until they got to the only other Black Cab in the garage.

This was the cab that had been taken from Walters’s home upon Reggie’s arrest.

And, presumably, it was also the cab that had been examined by the police earlier when they arrested Walters.

Nigel walked around it. This cab was nearly spotless. But to all appearances, aside from the dried Thames mud on one of them, both vehicles were exactly the same: same make, same model, same black paint (unadorned with the adverts that were just now beginning to appear on some cabs), and most important, the same license number.

Nigel walked back to the first cab again to confirm, and he wished the forensics team had lined them up side by side for that purpose, but there was no question. They were identical.

“Someone went to a lot of trouble,” said Nigel.

“Just a bit,” said the sergeant. “It’s a common model.”

“What about the engine numbers?”

“They’re different,” said the sergeant. “But that doesn’t tell us much, because no one checks the engine number when a taxi license is issued.”

“How often do you see vehicles with forged number plates?” asked Nigel.

“I’ve seen it before on private vehicles,” said the sergeant. “You see it in insurance scams, and for passing off stolen cars.”

“But on a Black Cab?”

“That’s a first, I suppose,” she said. “But it was bound to happen, wasn’t it? Everyone trusts them. Sooner or later, someone takes advantage.”

“Yes,” said Nigel. “But if your only purpose is to pretend to be a Black Cab driver so that you can pick up trusting victims, why go to the trouble of matching the exact same number as another cab? Why do you need to make your fake cab identical to someone else’s real one?”

She shrugged, unconcerned. “I can show the vehicles to you,” she said. “But for the whys and wherefores, I’m afraid you’re on your own.”

Nigel thanked the sergeant and left New Scotland Yard. He took a taxi to Camden Town, to the maintenance center that had supposedly cleaned Walters’s vehicle the day after the Chelsea murders.

The driver proceeded past the garage entrance where cabs lined up for maintenance and cleaning, and stopped just outside the front office.

“Told you Caledonia Road would be blocked,” said the driver, cheerily. “It’s all up here,” he added, pointing to the side of his own head.

“Yes, you were quite right,” said Nigel, getting out. “I’ve been away for a while, is all.”

Nigel got out of the cab and found an attendant, a man in his twenties, in the office.

Nigel asked him about the cab Walters had brought in.

The attendant laughed. “Do you know how many cabs we clean in a day?”

“I don’t. Fifty?”

“Twice that.”

“This is one the police may have asked you about as well.”

“Ahh,” said the attendant. “Right. The police were here, true enough. A few days ago.”

“Then you remember the cab?”

“Just that we cleaned it.”

“You did a bloody good job of it, too,” said Nigel. “Forensics couldn’t find so much as a hair.”

The attendant nodded. “Think I could get a quote from the cops on that? It would make a fine advert.”

“Ask for an Inspector Wembley,” said Nigel. “I’m sure he’ll oblige. Do you remember who brought the cab in?”

“The bloke who was leasing it brought it in,” said the attendant, in a tone that meant it was a foolish question.

“Was he a regular?”

“Pretty much.”

“Always the same time of the week?”

“Sometimes. Not always.”

“Notice anything at all different or unusual about him on this particular occasion?”

“Same thing I told the police: I didn’t notice anything about the cab, and whether that meant there was anything to notice or not about the driver on that day, I can’t say. But you know who might?”

“Who?”

“You see the pub across Caledonia Road, just at the corner?”

“The Flounder and Dab?”

“Yes. The local cabbies go there. There’s a bloke who’s been a driver since the beginning of time. Bill Edwards. Knows everything, worth knowing or not, about every driver. If you’re lucky, he might tell you some of it.”

Nigel walked across Caledonia Road to the Flounder and Dab pub.

When he opened the door he heard a chorus of shouts and groans that meant either televised football or live darts.

He looked to his right and was pleased to see it was the latter; like Reggie, he hadn’t cared much for football in a long time.

There was a dartboard at the far corner, with half a dozen patrons, all drivers by the look of them, and all probably with money on the match. There were murmurs now as the next contestant stepped up to the line.

Nigel went to the barman, requested a pint, and asked which of the darts enthusiasts was Edwards.

“None of ’em” said the barkeeper. “He’s in the back room.” Nigel looked in that direction—at a door at the opposite end from the darts—and the barkeeper nodded.

Nigel took his pint with him and entered the back room.

He heard no noise when he entered. Instead there was a hushed, suspenseful silence, enveloped by floating clouds of tobacco smoke and accompanied by the scents of chalk dust, leather, and felt.

Nigel knew immediately that he had entered a snooker room. And that was even better than darts.

In the center of the room was a full-size mahogany-and-slate snooker table, with deep, leather-mesh pockets, and green felt that had seen so much action over so many years that it was beginning to look just a little faded in the area of the racking dot, like the top of the heads of the older men in the room.

There were two men well past sixty; the other three were much younger. There was one young woman, who stood leaning into the embrace of one of the younger men, seated at a bar stool along the wall. Another of the younger men was involved in a contest at the snooker table with the oldest man; everyone else was watching.

No one was looking at Nigel as he closed the door quietly behind him, and no one was speaking. The only number ball left on the table was the seven, the final ball, and exactly the same color, and pretty much the same glossiness, as the Black Cabs. The younger man had a shot at it—but a very long shot—from the opposite end of the table.

The older man was close to eighty, or perhaps even a few years past. He had not quite a full head of hair, but he still had most of it; it was salt and pepper, mostly salt, but carefully slicked back. His trimmed mustache was like something out of a twenties Errol Flynn movie; he wore a long-sleeve shirt, crimson and black, in a narrow-stripe pattern that looked like it had been in style about a hundred years ago; his cuffed, slightly overlong gray trousers were held up by suspenders, not a belt.

He was leaning back against the wall, arms crossed patiently, eyes fixed on some point on the snooker table that apparently only he was aware of, as the younger man took a shot—a tentative, uncertain roller—that missed, with the black seven ball ending up flat against the green side-cushion.

“Didn’t want it,” said the older man, unfolding his arms and stepping over to the table. “You just didn’t want it.”

He lined up the shot with no apparent effort, leaned over the table slightly, and banked the seven firmly and cleanly into the opposite corner pocket.

The three younger men groaned, the girl laughed, and money was paid to the other older man, who sat on a bar stool and smiled.

Nigel smiled at it, too. And now with the game done, he knew he was allowed to speak.

“Bill Edwards?” he said, addressing the man who had just won the game.

The man nodded, said that Nigel looked like someone who could play, and offered that the table was open for the next challenger.

Nigel shook his head. “Perhaps when I was nineteen and foolish,” said Nigel. “But not now. People say you know more about the licensed Black Cab drivers in London than all the databases at the Carriage Office.”

“What people tell you that?” asked the older man, though he did not seem surprised at the assertion. He put a triangular wooden frame on the table and began to rack up the red snooker balls for the next victim.

“The bloke at the steam clean,” said Nigel.

Edwards nodded. “He might be right.”

“What can you tell me about Neil Walters?”

The man stopped, with the frame still on the table. Everyone else stopped what they were doing as well; one of the younger men stood up from his bar stool, snooker cue in hand, as if ready to turn it into a cudgel. All eyes were on Nigel.

“Why are you asking?” said the older man.

“I intend to clear Reggie Heath of his murder,” said Nigel.

Now the room relaxed a bit, but just a bit. Apparently, among cab drivers, the jury was still out on Reggie Heath. Which made perfect sense, as Nigel considered it. They probably didn’t know whether to regard Reggie as the inventive barrister who cleared their fellow cabbie’s name, even if only temporarily—or as the duped and annoyed lawyer who killed his own cab-driver client.

The older man at the table, looking thoughtful, went back to racking the balls, as everyone else waited for him to speak. Now he lifted the wooden frame from the felt, with the balls in perfect formation.

“If Walters did what the police say he did,” said Edwards, “then I hope your brother did drive a knife into him.” He looked Nigel in the eye as he said this, to see if he had guessed right on the relationship. Nigel nodded slightly.

“And twisted it, too,” said one of the younger men.

“Our reputation is our livelihood,” Edwards continued, completing the rack by placing a red ball down perfectly in front of the six, “and anyone—even one of our own—who does anything to harm it will have me to deal with.”

“Bloody well right,” said the other younger man, tapping the base of his snooker cue on the ground for emphasis.

Edwards continued. “But I don’t believe Walters had it in him to murder anyone. He’s a big enough guy to have done it, all right. I’ll give you that. But I’ve seen him deal with snockered toss-pots and fare-jumping yobs who flipped him off on the way out of his cab, thinking he couldn’t catch them, and then when he did, he was as gentle as Gandhi.”

Edwards moved on toward the other end of the snooker table as he said this, and Nigel wondered if that move was an evasion. He followed.

“So, it must have been the other driver who did it?” suggested Nigel.

“What other driver?”

“The driver of the other cab.”

Edwards shook his head, and continued, unhurried, to place each numbered ball on its own spot on the green felt. “I don’t believe there was another cab driver. Not a real one. Two Black Cabs driving about London at the same time with the same license numbers? Perhaps, perhaps for just a short time without me hearing about it. But two different drivers learning the streets of London and passing the Knowledge, the years it takes to do that, and then driving those two identical cabs without me knowing of them?” Edwards walked to the opposite end of the table now and put the seven ball down on its spot, with just a bit of emphasis. “Not bloody likely,” he said.

“All right then,” said Nigel. “If there aren’t two Black Cab drivers, and Walters didn’t do it, then what’s your answer?”

Edwards started to chalk up his queue.

“Who said I had an answer?” he said calmly.

Now the door to the general pub area opened, and before Edwards could get a challenger for the next game, or Nigel ask his next question, one of the dart-playing cab drivers entered.

“They moved the time up, mates. It starts in an hour.”

“Imagine that,” said Edwards, calmly. “Who would have thought they’d change the schedule on us?” He and the other drivers in the room immediately put away their cues and picked up their macintoshes.

“You can ride along if you like,” he said to Nigel.

Five minutes later, Nigel was riding in the back of one Black Cab in a procession of at least twenty Black Cabs, all of them heading toward the north end of Caledonia Road—so many shining Black Cabs all in a row that even for London it was a bit unusual, and pedestrians turned their heads to look.

“Where are we headed?” asked Nigel.

“To defend our livelihoods,” said the driver. This cab driver was one of the younger men from the snooker room; there seemed to be something of a pecking order, and Nigel apparently wasn’t of sufficient importance to ride in the cab with Edwards.