The Brothers of Baker Street (5 page)

He said that with evident pride.

“Drivers keep score about that?” said Reggie.

Walters shrugged. “I do.”

“Anyone see you after you got home? Did you go out, buy groceries, have friends over?”

“No. I mean, on some other Saturday I might have had a bird there. I do all right, if you know what I mean.”

Reggie made a mental note that Walters should avoid that sort of bragging if this went to trial. Jurors might start inferring things all on their own about what caused the robbery to go fatally violent.

But that was assuming Reggie decided to take the case at all.

“You’re single and you live alone then, and you had no company that evening?”

“Right,” said Walters. Then he seemed to feel obliged to add something more, and he leaned forward earnestly.

“I have no alibi Mr. Heath … but I did not do it.”

“Do you know why the police think you did?”

“Because I drive a Black Cab.”

“Because you drive a Black Cab, and because witnesses say it was your license plate number.”

“But I was on the other side of town driving home, wasn’t I? I couldn’t have done it when they said it happened. I was in the East End, driving home.”

“Can anyone vouch for that? Did you have a passenger?”

Walters looked surprised by the question.

“To Stepney at that time of night? No one in my neighborhood takes a cab home, Mr. Heath. We’re not lawyers.”

Reggie nodded slightly.

“No offense meant,” said Walters, scrambling quickly to correct himself. “People there just can’t afford it, is all.”

“Yes,” said Reggie. “I know.” Now Reggie was silent for just a moment, and Walters seemed to take that as a sign that he still needed to bolster his case.

“Mr. Heath, ever since I was a child, I’ve never wanted to do anything else but be the driver of a Black Cab. And it’s no easy thing, I can tell you.”

“Why is that?” said Reggie.

“Well, for one thing, there’s getting the Knowledge, and then there’s the chats with the examiners, which you have to do every three months and they just get harder each time, and you have to go to the Black Cab school, and you learn all the routes and at which times of day, and the location of every pub and theater and courthouse in the city, and by description, or what your fares think are descriptions, not just by addresses.”

“Doesn’t sound easy,” said Reggie.

“Because it isn’t.”

“Did it make you wonder if it was really worth the trouble?” said Reggie.

“Oh no. It’s worth the trouble, all right. Not everyone is capable of becoming a Black Cab driver, Mr. Heath, and even capable ones don’t always get to do it. At least not until they’ve jumped through all the hoops to join the club.”

He paused with that, and then for some reason seemed emboldened.

“Sort of like becoming a barrister, you might say.”

“No, it’s not at all like—” Reggie stopped himself. “Well, I suppose if all apprentice drivers must eat a prescribed number of bad meals in the same halls, just to force a sense of camaraderie and exclusivity on novices who might otherwise prefer to be seeking out more pleasant company than each other, then yes, it would be exactly like becoming a barrister.”

The cab driver gave Reggie an appalled look.

“They make you eat together?”

“At the beginning, yes. And not just eat, but converse, as well.”

“Doesn’t sound easy,” said Walters.

“It isn’t,” said Reggie.

“But then, you get paid very well.”

“Sometimes,” said Reggie.

Now Walters looked worried. “I have limited…”

“Your solicitor told me,” said Reggie.

“I’ll be paying for my cab for the next ten years,” added Walters. “And there was the tuition at the Taxi Knowledge School. And then the moped.”

“The moped?”

“You can never hope to learn all the routes on foot; it would take a lifetime. And doing it by car would cost too much just for the petrol.”

“So you bought a moped.”

“Yes. Everyone does.”

“You owe significant money on the cab and the moped?”

“Yes. And some on the Knowledge School, too.”

“I see.”

“Is that a problem?”

“The prosecution thinks it’s motive.”

“Well, that would be a lousy reason to kill someone, for a few dollars, wouldn’t it?”

“Agreed.”

“Anyway, I’ve paid some of it already. My dad gave me my start. He had some savings. I got it when he died. It wasn’t much, but he always made sure he gave me everything he had. He worked even harder than I do for it.”

“He was a cab driver, too?”

“No. He was a housepainter.”

“Really?” Reggie sat back in his chair.

“Yes. All his life. He had strength in his forearms you would not have guessed. He could hold a full gallon of paint steady in one hand, from the bottom of the can, as if it were nothing, while he used a brush with the other.”

For a moment, Reggie said nothing and just studied the client. He liked it that Walters’s father was a housepainter. But he didn’t like coincidences.

Still, it was not an uncommon occupation for East Enders—so perhaps not so surprising that Walters’s father had the same line of work as Reggie’s.

The silence seemed to make Walters think that Reggie was unimpressed.

“Do you know how much a full gallon of paint weighs when you have to hold it like this for hours?” said Walters, extending his left arm out from the elbow, palm up.

“Yes,” said Reggie. “I know exactly.”

“My dad told me it was no kind of life. He said the fumes would kill me if the ladders didn’t. He told me to make a better life for myself.”

Reggie nodded, intending nothing more than acknowledgment. But Walters seemed to take it as something more.

“Did yours tell you that, too?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Reggie, too surprised at the question not to answer.

“And so you did, didn’t you?”

Now Reggie did not answer, and it wasn’t just because he wasn’t the one who was supposed to be revealing his background. It was because he wasn’t sure of the answer.

It was absolutely true, his father had done everything in his power to be sure that Reggie and Nigel would have better livelihoods than his own. And Reggie had, in fact, grown up with that expectation. The next generation would always do better.

But there is more to life than livelihood, and in recent weeks Reggie had found himself comparing his own life to his father’s. At this same age, Reggie’s father had a wife whom he loved, two sons full of potential if not common sense, and a hope that everything could only get better in the future. These days, Reggie only hoped he would be able to equal that, and of late, he felt some of that hope slipping away.

Now the potential client, getting no answer from Reggie, continued speaking, and Reggie refocused.

“I know I’m not educated like you, Mr. Heath, but I’m smart in some ways. I know how to get from this place to that one, and if I don’t already know, I only have to do it once and then I remember forever. I knew I could be a Black Cab driver, if I applied myself. And my dad told me I could, too. It’s all I ever wanted to do, and I wouldn’t give it up for the world.”

The guard rapped on the conference-room window now, and pointed at his watch.

Reggie nodded back at the guard. “It’s all right. I’ve heard enough.”

Walters looked up, at once both hopeful and alarmed.

“I’ll call your solicitor tomorrow with my decision,” said Reggie.

“My life is in your hands, Mr. Heath.”

“We’ll hope it’s not as dire as all that,” said Reggie.

Reggie left the jail and took a Black Cab back toward Baker Street.

He had not yet made his decision. He knew this case could not be the financial salvation of his chambers. Payment would come from the public-defense program and would be minimal.

But that wasn’t the real issue. The real issue was whether he believed Walters.

Reggie’s instinct from the interview was that Walters had not done it. But he wanted his decision to be based on more than just that instinct—even though this was a form of introspection that he knew a practicing criminal lawyer should not engage in.

Everyone understood how the system worked: the barrister is not the judge and jury, and it is not necessary or expected that he believe in his heart that the client is innocent. It is only necessary that he not know for a fact otherwise. Any lawyer who could not accept that as the operating premise should not be practicing criminal law.

But that was exactly why Reggie had stopped practicing it years ago.

He needed this client to be innocent. In some ways, the idea of defending Walters felt like the idea of defending Reggie’s own family honor. The only real question was whether he believed the man.

The cab was headed up the Embankment now. It would be a few minutes before he reached chambers. He could make his decision at that time.

At the moment he still had other issues.

He took out his mobile and rang Laura.

She picked up. Her voice sounded vaguely sleepy. But it was not her woken-out-of-a-deep-sleep voice. It was relaxed and lazy, like an afternoon nap in the shade.

“Reggie,” she said. “What a nice surprise.”

In almost every memory he had of this voice, she was wearing either nothing or something very near to it.

“Where are you?” he said.

“In Phuket, of course. You know that.”

Reggie knew that. And he knew he shouldn’t be wondering about where she was or what she had just been doing more precisely than that.

“Yes,” he said. “How are things going? Are you enjoying the satay? Is the peanut sauce all that it is supposed to be? Everything on schedule?

“A bit salty, but I like it. We shoot all day until four, and then I put on fifty-weight sun block, my widest hat, sunglasses the size of grapefruits, and I sit under an umbrella and pretend I’m getting sun. It’s great fun, and I’m paler than ever. You know how I hate sunburn.”

“You certainly don’t want to get overexposed.”

“No, of course I don’t…” Then she paused. “Ohhh,” she said, and then she laughed. “
That’s
what this is about.”

“What is?”

“You saw the
Daily Sun
.”

“Never read it. Something of interest this week?”

“You saw it, Reggie. Don’t lie. I know that miffed tone.”

“I could hardly avoid it,” said Reggie, unable to stop himself from taking on just exactly that tone. “Everyone in London is going out of their way to tell me about it.”

“Really?” she said lightly. “I never knew we were that much of an item.”

Reggie hoped the “we” she referred to was herself and Reggie—even though she had used past tense—but he wasn’t certain.

“For him to publish that photo in his own paper—”

“It’s harmless, Reggie, really. I don’t mind it.”

“Laura, it’s his hand and your breast in his own bloody tabloid!”

Reggie had not intended to say that out loud, and the silence now from Laura confirmed the mistake. In the three long seconds that followed, he took the precaution of checking that the lever that activated the intercom between the cab driver and passenger was off.

“Reggie…” began Laura.

Then she paused. Gathering herself, probably. He knew he was in trouble.

And now she said: “Yes, it is his newspaper, and it is my breast, and you don’t own either of them, so why is it a problem for you if one does some lighthearted coverage on the other?”

“Quite right,” said Reggie, retreating. He wanted to say it was the lack of coverage that was the problem, but he managed to hold that remark in check.

Reggie noticed now that the cab driver, for some reason, was shaking his head.

“Reggie,” said Laura now. “Please don’t go defending my honor or doing anything similarly rash.”

“Certainly not.”

“Promise.”

It took Reggie a moment. “I promise,” he said finally.

There was another long pause. Reggie was trying desperately to think of a way to start the conversation over, but nothing came to mind.

They said their mobile-phone good-byes, awkwardly.

And now the cab driver, who before had contented himself with just an occasional glance in the mirror, actually turned his head.

“Mind a bit of advice, mate?”

“What?” Reggie looked over at the small red lever just above the right passenger door. “Is the intercom off, or not?”

“Broken,” said the driver, matter-of-factly. “In the on position.” Then he held up a copy of the
Daily Sun
. “This the one, is she?”