The Brothers of Baker Street (31 page)

“It isn’t?”

“No.”

“What is his name then?” said Laura.

“Sherlock Holmes.”

“I see,” said Laura, quite carefully, with no inflexion whatsoever.

Now she heard a soft thunk in the cab doors on either side of her. She knew what it was. The doors had just now been locked by the driver, and only the driver could unlock them. That could not be a good thing.

She was going to have to improvise.

“The man in the typewriter shop told me an interesting thing about a letter that I showed him. Would you like to know what it was?”

Silence for a moment from the driver. Then, “Tell me.”

“He said that the typewriter that typed it was brought in for repair a while ago by a young woman named Darla Rennie. That would be you, wouldn’t it?”

The driver did not respond for a long moment. Then she said: “You may call me Moriarty.”

“That’s fine,” said Laura. “I’ve always believed in the right of anyone to choose their own formal name. We have so little control these days over what other people call us. But just so I understand—you prefer to be called Moriarty because—”

“My great-great-grandfather was James Moriarty.”

“On your mother’s side.”

“Yes.” Darla said that, paused, and then said, “He was killed by the man called Sherlock Holmes, and I shall have my revenge.”

“It’s a lovely name, Moriarty,” ventured Laura. “Quite popular. In fact, not uncommon at all. And even adding the given name James to it is hardly unique.”

Laura paused for a moment to see if Darla would get the point. But there was no response, so she continued.

“What I’m trying to say is—is there any possibility at all you might be mistaken? That perhaps your great-great—however many greats—grandfather was some other James Moriarty—perhaps one that actually existed? And it can be so difficult to extract revenge for the injustices done to one’s family, even the real ones. Reggie could tell you that.”

“His name is Sherlock Holmes,” Darla stated again, quite emphatically. “He is a despicable person and I shall make him pay for what he has done.”

“I’m so relieved to hear that you feel that way,” said Laura. “I know him just as Reggie, of course, but I was afraid for a while that you rather fancied him.”

Darla actually glanced back at Laura on the remark, but then quickly got her eyes on the road again.

“Certainly not,” she said.

“Which would be very foolish on your part, because if you haven’t noticed, Reggie is quite stodgy, even for a barrister. Everyone says so. And getting more so every day. What he’ll be like at sixty I shudder to think, but I’m sure you would be quite bored with him.”

Through the window partition, Laura could see Darla becoming quite upset. That was unfortunate; perhaps Laura had chosen the wrong tack. But it was too late for that now.

“His name is Sherlock Holmes, and I hold him in complete contempt.”

“I’m so glad,” said Laura. “There was quite a fire sale on Heath brothers there for a while, but I’m afraid they’re all out now, right down to the store fixtures.”

Now the Black Cab that had been behind them pulled up alongside, rolled down its window, and the driver started to shout something.

Darla took a sudden turn, cutting across a lane and narrowly missing a double-decker.

“His name is Sherlock Holmes,” Darla stated again, quite emphatically. “He killed my great-great-grandfather. And I will have my revenge.”

They were on the Strand now, approaching the Tower Bridge. A new Black Cab had taken a position alongside and just in front of them, eliminating one possible change in direction. And now another pulled in behind them.

“I’ve taken from him his reputation,” said Darla. “I’ve taken from him his self-respect. And now I will take from him what he values most.”

Laura was about to respond to that. But now a loud siren began to wail. It was coming from the Tower Bridge.

They had arrived at the bridge entrance from the Strand. All the other traffic had come to a stop; there were gaps between the lanes heading onto the bridge, but there was really nowhere to go—because the bridge was about to be lifted. A high-masted vessel was approaching on the river; the siren was already blaring, and red warning lights at the foot of the bridge began to flash.

“I hardly think you’ll do that,” said Laura. “What he values most is me.”

Darla turned her head now and looked back directly at Laura.

“Exactly,” she said.

And then she floored the accelerator. She drove right past the flashing lights and onto the bridge, heading toward the north tower, and weaving around the other vehicles that had already stopped.

Laura knew that within seconds the span of the bridge just beyond the north tower would begin to rise. Surely Darla knew it, too. The spans on either side of the bridge would rise and separate, and there would be nothing at the end of their road except a plummet directly into the Thames.

The metal gate in front of the tower was already in motion, and it was about to completely block the road in front of them.

Darla accelerated.

“You can’t get across,” Laura shouted. “It won’t work!”

But the cab drove forward with everything it had.

The metal gate had now swung far enough to block half the roadway and was still moving. Beyond the gate, the two spans of the bridge had begun to rise.

Without slowing, Darla swerved the cab to try to go around the end of the gate.

There was almost enough room—but not quite. The front of the cab made it past, but the rear bumper of the cab, at full speed, clipped the end of the metal gate.

The cab spun forward, caroming up the rising span of the bridge, just as both halves of the span reached enough height to begin to separate in the middle.

Then the cab came to a stop.

For just a moment, everything inside was completely silent. Laura was dizzy from the two revolutions the cab had completed, and she was breathing rapidly, but it felt, strangely, as though they were now quite safe and secure.

And then she heard the metal undercarriage of the cab groan; in the same instant she looked out the window and realized, both from what she could see and what she felt happening beneath them, exactly where they were.

The cab was straddling the gap as the bridge span continued to open. The front wheels of the cab were on the parting edge of the southern span; the rear wheels were on the parting edge of the northern span, and in a contest between the hydraulic engines of the bridge lift and the undercarriage of the Black Cab, there was no question which would win.

The gap between the spans was straining to grow wider. The cab was about to be torn in two.

The front windshield cracked, and then burst.

But now the passenger-door locks sprang open with the stress; Laura pushed through the door, and without time to think, jumped out of the cab.

Her feet slid on the increasingly steep angle of the bridge span; she flung her arms out, grabbing for whatever she could.

She realized in a moment that she had not fallen. Her face was against the flat metal-joining edge of the road, at the end of one of the two parting spans. She had both arms over that edge from the elbows up, and it was just enough leverage to pull herself up.

She looked down. Below was the Thames.

She looked to her left. The Black Cab was not yet completely separated; the running board that ran the whole length of the cab was still in place, at least for the moment.

And clinging to the running board with both hands, with the rest of her body dangling straight down toward the Thames, was Darla Rennie.

The woman was desperately looking back and forth, from one span to the other, as the only thing she had to hold on to was being torn apart.

Only now, fully seeing her face for the first time, did Laura realize how young she was—younger than Laura—and, at this moment at least, how incredibly vulnerable.

Laura herself was now as secure as was possible, which was to say not terribly secure, essentially straddling the edge of one of the spans of the bridge as it continued to rise higher. But she pulled herself closer to the cab, and reached her right arm out toward Darla.

“Take my hand!”

Darla turned her face toward Laura. She was clearly terrified, but she hesitated.

“Take my hand!” Laura screamed as loudly as she could, her voice getting lost in the whirring from the bridge engines and the shriek of tearing metal from the cab. But she made her intent clear, and she stretched her arm out even further.

Now, finally, Darla let go of the cab with one hand and reached for Laura’s.

And then there was one more terrible metal shriek, and the frame of the cab separated into two. The running board broke, the two halves of it slanted steeply downward—and the hand that Laura was reaching for slipped away.

Laura was vaguely aware of other sounds now, distant shouts. That was probably a good thing; some assistance would indeed be useful. But she did not have the strength to turn and look. And the last thing she saw before losing consciousness herself was Darla Rennie plummeting into the Thames.

29

TWO DAYS LATER

Wembley was sitting in the barrister’s chair in Reggie’s chambers office. Nigel, seated in a client chair, was listening, and trying to remain patient.

Nigel had a plane to catch. The time difference and the expense had made his transatlantic calls to Mara too short and too infrequent. He was anxious to get back to Los Angeles.

So he hoped Wembley would not take long. Reggie had warned him that the man liked to talk, which presumably was why, at least in part, Reggie had ducked out already that morning, on the pretext of getting in a run—as if he hadn’t had enough of that—before the day got too far under way.

“We caught up with the good doctor at Folkestone,” Wembley was saying. “Where he was trying to board the Eurostar with a false passport. I love that about the Chunnel; it’s the first place every fugitive runs to, and it makes my job that much easier.”

“Did he confess?” asked Nigel.

“He wouldn’t have if he could have avoided it, I can tell you that. But forensics has been all over his house and the crashed A3, and there’s a Russian servant girl in Mayfair who filled in a bunch of pieces for us. We’ve already got so much on Dillane that he gave it up. We have him on murder of the American entrepreneur, accessory for the others, and more conspiracies to commit than I can keep track of. ”

Wembley had his feet on Reggie’s mahogany desk. Nigel considered telling him to remove them, but decided that if Reggie was going to leave this to Nigel, Reggie’s desk could fend for itself.

“They rejected the proposal, you know,” Wembley continued. “This one, anyway.”

“Why? Just because of the spyware, or for other reasons?”

“Because it was put in without disclosure, of course. And also because the head of the company is deceased. That particular group won’t be back. But that doesn’t mean a rejection of the whole concept altogether. I’m sure it will be the way of things. A device that tells you how to get where you’re going? Excellent idea, of course, and not just for cabs. I think they’ve got them already on some American cars. An added feature that notifies emergency authorities if you are in a wreck? Also a good idea. But recording everything said and done in the cab and sending it back to a database? That’s a bit over the top. Even for my tastes.”

“I believe the phrase for that is, ‘too much information,’” said Nigel. “And I’m sure what Reggie really wants to know is, what is the status of the charges?”

“Against him, you mean?”

“Of course.”

“Oh. Yes, naturally. Well, the Crown Prosecution Service is dropping those. Given the circumstances that have come to light, we’re satisfied that Darla Rennie killed Walters. We found quite a bit of cash deposited in his account between the time of his arrest and the time he was killed. Apparently he got greedy.”

“Yes,” said Nigel. “He wasn’t in on the original scheme, but after he was arrested, I expect he realized why it was that he’d been driving all around the East End every night for a fare who had no destination. I’m sure he wanted money to keep quiet about it—that, and a guarantee that he would get released, of course.”

Wembley nodded. “And then they went looking for a barrister good enough to get the charges dropped. I sort of get why they wanted your brother for that. And I know he wouldn’t have taken it on if he didn’t believe his client was innocent of the murders.”

“Which he was.”

“Understood. But what I don’t get is how they persuaded your brother to pick up a criminal case again at all. That had to take some doing. And some personal knowledge. How did they know which buttons to push?”

Nigel looked at Wembley, then away, and shifted uneasily in his chair. “I suppose it helped,” said Nigel finally, “that Reggie had a brother blabbing away on family issues in the solicitor’s therapy group.”

“Oh,” said Wembley. Then he nodded, almost sympathetically. “Very subjective stuff, that. Personally, I don’t go in much for that touchy-feely sort of thing. I prefer forensics. Which is tying things up nicely in this case.”