The Brothers of Baker Street (28 page)

An odd sort of thing to find in an English psychiatrist’s cellar, though. Even if the therapist was inclined to put his case histories and such online, he would hardly need an entire computer lab to do it. This facility had some other purpose.

And the American in the ditch had come a long way if it was just to render simple tech support.

On the floor at the near end of the Formica counter was a three-ring binder—a logbook, probably—which looked to have been dropped hastily; the binder and its pages were askew. Reggie set it on the counter, and opened it.

The first spread of pages were a calendar—two months, the current and most recent, were marked. Dates were circled in red and were annotated. Something was familiar about them, and Reggie looked closer.

They were hearing dates. And if Reggie was reading the notations correctly, the hearings were for Trimball’s navigation system. They were spread out over several weeks, each of them progressively more final. One of them had been that morning—the hearing Nigel had attended. There was another circled for that evening, and the last date circled—tomorrow—was for the transport authority’s final decision.

But something else about the dates was familiar.

Reggie took a pencil from the desk, and on the same calendar, he put a check mark for each of the dates on which a Black Cab crime had been reported.

At first they did not seem to match up exactly, which, for some reason, seemed to Reggie a good thing.

But then he looked again. There was, in fact, a pattern.

Except for the very first crime, the flurry of Black Cab robberies and other rudenesses at the start had all been in the same week—just prior to the first hearing for the navigational software.

And then, from that first hearing on, the crimes had gotten increasingly serious and more high profile, culminating in the murder of the American couple just one night before the second hearing.

The Black Cab crimes were not random. They were a scheme. They were deliberately timed and designed to create a perceived need for Trimball’s software system.

But whose scheme was it? The software proposal was Trimball’s. But the logbook and the computer lab were in Dr. Dillane’s house.

Reggie began to flip rapidly through the pages of the logbook. The remainder of the calendar was blank, but in the log portion there were pages of handwritten notes with references to “C1,” “C2,” and “C3,” and routes in London for each.

Cabs, Reggie realized. The references were to Black Cabs.

From the nature of the handwriting, it was obvious that two different people had been making journal entries. But neither of them was Trimball; Reggie had seen Trimball’s address book, hand-printed in clean block letters. Both of the note makers in the book wrote in longhand; one was scrawled and almost illegible, like a doctor’s signature. The other was old-fashioned and clear, and … and Reggie knew he had seen it before. It was the same elegant handwriting he had seen in Darla Rennie’s briefing papers.

Reggie took a deep breath and sat down on one of the workbench stools. There was no doubt about it now—Darla and the woman Nigel encountered in Dr. Dillane’s therapy group were the same person. That person believed herself to be Moriarty, and almost undoubtedly that person was the Moriarty wannabe who had written the threatening letter to Sherlock Holmes.

But what else had she done?

Reggie moved to the center terminal, found an attached mouse, and moved it to see if the monitor display would react.

The power was on, but he got no reaction from the mouse or the keyboard.

He swiveled the chair over to the other PCs and tried each in turn.

Nothing.

Of course not. It had been too much to hope for.

He got up to leave the cellar; perhaps he could learn more from something upstairs.

And then he heard a beep.

The central computer had come on.

And then, simultaneously, both the other PCs came on as well.

Timers. Reggie checked his watch and saw that it was exactly the top of the hour; the entire configuration must be on a timer switch.

And now all three displays lit up.

Reggie knew he could not have much time. The timer probably meant that someone was due to return, and in any case, he had already tripped the alarm.

He sat down at the center chair as the main display began to define itself. He waited for logos and icons to appear.

But they did not. All he had was a blinking log-on screen, and the system was demanding both a user name and a password.

He was no hacker, and any decent security set up would freeze him out after a few wrong attempts. If he was going to guess, he would have to guess right.

Certainly Dillane would have a user name on the system, but Reggie had no idea what Dillane’s password would be. Trimball might have a user name on the system as well; after all, he had created it. That password might very well be noted somewhere in Trimball’s wallet or address book, but Reggie had left both of those in Trimball’s car.

But Darla also had made entries in the logbook. So she must have an account as well. For her, he could at least make a guess.

He typed in her initial and surname to log in. Good so far; the log-on screen was still blinking normally.

Now for the password guess. Reggie typed it in:

    M-O-R-I-A-R-T-Y

The log-on immediately disappeared, the entire screen display disintegrated into thousands of pixels, and then—a moment later—it all reassembled again.

He was in. The display had opened directly into some kind of video link. Whatever was on camera was not well lit; Reggie stared, trying to discern what he was looking at. It was dark and shadowy, and the sides of the image were curved—he had to be looking through a small camera lens. There was slightly more light in the center, and there was some sort of movement taking place; but it was all blurry, like peering through dirty glass.

Reggie got up and tried the terminal display to his right, with a similar result.

But now he tried right-clicking the mouse, with the cursor on the image. When he did that, the angle of the image shifted.

And Reggie realized that he was controlling a bloody camera remotely.

He panned to the left and could make out essentially nothing—he was looking at a surface that was dark, solid, and textured, and something above it that was smooth and reflecting like glass, but he could tell nothing more.

He panned to the right and saw more black textured surface—but also a square patch of yellow. He right-clicked, left-clicked, double-clicked, tried the center wheel control—and finally he was able to adjust the focus and bring the yellow portion in more sharply.

It took a moment to register, but then he knew exactly what he was looking at: it was the interior of a Black Cab. The yellow square that had finally come into focus was the identification plate on the passenger door, and on that plate was the license number for the cab:
WHAMU1

Reggie knew those numbers. They were ingrained in his memory from the court briefs. He was looking through a remote camera, tucked away somewhere inside a Black Cab—and, according to the numbers, it was his dead client’s Black Cab.

Reggie stared point-blank at the screen.

Why in hell did Dillane have a remote camera set up in a Black Cab?

Reggie turned back to the monitor. He panned the camera up, down, left, right, and finally was able to get a view through the driver’s side window. He could make out a plain gray concrete wall with black lettering on it, and now he knew exactly where the Black Cab was.

It was in the evidence garage at New Scotland Yard. He was looking through a remote lens so well disguised that the Scotland Yard team hadn’t discovered it yet.

Reggie moved immediately to the next terminal, and repeated the same process. It was another camera in a Black Cab, and from the angle on the garage lettering, it was clearly a different Black Cab—but it had the same license number.

Both of the Black Cabs from Reggie’s case were sitting in the Scotland Yard garage, just waiting for the surveillance devices to be discovered.

Well, give them time. They would get to it eventually.

Reggie went back to the central terminal, and knowing the controls a bit better now, quickly brought the display into focus.

It was a Black Cab. But this one was different. It had a different license number. And but this one wasn’t in the Scotland Yard impound garage.

This one was in motion. It took a moment, but Reggie realized he was looking through the passenger window of a Black Cab as it moved through traffic.

Reggie stared at the screen, at fleeting, blurry images of London shops and street signs and pedestrians, and considered what this meant.

The Carriage Office would make its decision tomorrow. If the pattern Reggie saw in the logbook calendar held true, then there would be a new, and spectacularly high-profile Black Cab crime tonight—almost certainly another murder.

And there was only one cab in this scheme that remained available for it. Reggie knew now what he was looking at. He could almost make up the
Daily Sun
headline himself.

He was looking at a death cab driving through London.

From the current camera angle, through the passenger window, he could not see the driver of the cab. He would be able to see a passenger, at least partly, if one got in, but at the moment there was no passenger.

The cab turned left now. It passed more businesses and pedestrians. Through the limited angle of the window, Reggie saw a would-be fare trying to hail the cab. But the cab didn’t stop. Apparently the driver had a specific destination in mind.

Another left turn. Then another.

Now the cab turned again, and Reggie began to recognize shops that he had already seen—a typewriter repair store and an Indian take-away deli next to it.

The cab was circling. And now, another man tried to hail the cab, but once again, the driver didn’t stop.

It wasn’t a particular destination the driver was looking for, Reggie concluded. It was a particular passenger.

Reggie manipulated the mouse and cursor, trying to get audio and another angle from the camera.

But now there was the sound of heavy tires on gravel.

Reggie jerked his eyes away from the monitor. This was a real sound, not a virtual one. It would be the security patrol.

He got up from the terminal and went quickly up the stairs.

His Jag was parked openly out front, so they surely knew someone was here.

The best plan was to be found doing what he had been intending to do anyway—calling 999 for the crash down the road.

He went down the corridor and quickly ducked into the home office he had seen earlier. He switched on the desk lamp and picked up the phone and dialed, while he waited to hear security knock on the front door.

But bloody hell. The phone did not connect—it was a landline, not a mobile, but there was no dial tone at all.

And, surprisingly, he still had not heard the security patrol rap on the door, not a sound from them at all after hearing their vehicle pull up. That was odd.

Reggie parted the window shutters slightly and looked out toward the drive. Yes, there was a vehicle, a late-model Land Rover. But it had no official insignia at all.

And now Reggie heard the annoying metal squeal of the sliding glass door.

Reggie realized now what was happening—the binder on the computer lab floor, the back door ajar, and Trimball’s head injuries with no air bag deployed—he knew what it meant.

He turned and went into the corridor—but too late.

He found himself face-to-face with a man in a blue turtleneck and a tan sports coat.

This had to be Dr. Dillane. No one but therapists and car salesmen wore that combination anymore.

They were within a meter or so of each other, Dillane having apparently snuck around the back and come in through the sliding glass door.

There was a moment while each of them sized up the other.

They were equal in height. They were about the same age. Dillane had prematurely gray-white hair, but he looked fit. Still, Reggie would have liked his own chances better, if only Dillane had not been holding a semiautomatic Glock handgun.

“Ahh,” said Dillane. “The XJS. The fancy barrister’s chalk stripe.” Now he gave a short, uneasy laugh. “I know which one you are. You’re Reggie Heath.”

Reggie just glared back at Dillane and said nothing in response.

“You’re trespassing, Heath. Didn’t your criminal clients teach you that’s not a smart thing to do?”

“You’re right,” said Reggie. “I expect you should call the police.”

“Yes,” said Dillane. “And I will do so, shortly.”

“I’m sure the security service is already on their way, in any case,” said Reggie. “They’ve probably already found the accident you staged up the road.”

Dillane raised an eyebrow. “And why would I have done that?”

Dillane wasn’t even pretending he didn’t know what Reggie was talking about. Given which of them was holding the gun, Reggie considered that a bad sign. And possibly Reggie should not have opened the discussion with an accusation. But there was no point in holding back now.