The Brothers of Baker Street (9 page)

“And because of that short absence, and … well, if I … if I may say so, because he has been out of criminal practice for some time, I believe, my learned friend may perhaps be unaware of our recent attempts to streamline the committal process?”

“Well, indeed we are trying to do that, aren’t we?” said the magistrate, nodding.

“My lord, yes,” said Reggie now, “But recent changes to the Criminal Procedure Act notwithstanding, it is still within your discretion to hear the case read, and I think you will find it will take only a moment of your time.”

“Well, a moment is rather a subjective measure, though, isn’t it? How long a moment do you mean, Mr. Heath?”

“Two minutes, my lord. I will be astonished if my learned friend can drag it out any longer than that, no matter how many well-placed hesitations he includes, because the prosecution’s case is quite that short.”

“Really?” said the magistrate. “Two minutes?”

“At most,” said Reggie. “That’s how little substance there is to the charge.”

The magistrate pushed back the edges of his left sleeve and looked at his watch.

“I have two minutes,” he said. “Mr. Langdon, do you?”

Langdon cleared his throat. “My lord, yes, of course. I will … do my best to condense it, if I may.”

“No condensing necessary, Mr. Langdon. Spill it all, and if Mr. Heath’s estimate proves to be wrong, that will be something for me to remind him of when he next appears in my court.”

“Very well,” said Langdon. “I shall start then with the forensic examination of the scene, although it may not be within my skills to cover it in so short a time—”

“My lord?”

“Yes, Mr. Heath?”

“The defense will stipulate to the facts shown in the forensics reports as currently provided by the prosecution, for none of those facts implicate the defendant in any way. Nothing was found at his home, nothing in his cab, and nothing that directly tied him to the scene.”

The magistrate looked over at the prosecutor.

“Mr. Langdon?”

“Well … my lord, yes, it would be correct to say that the prosecution does not base its case on the forensics of any of those locations. Other than, of course, the forensics that establish that two unwitting tourists from the States were horribly killed, and the time at which their deaths occurred.”

“That much is known. But on what does the prosecution base its case that it was the defendant that did it?”

“On eyewitness statements, my lord. Two of them. Highly credible and mutually corroborating.”

“Then let’s spend our two minutes on those, shall we?”

“Of course, my lord.”

Langdon now recounted both of the witness statements that Reggie had already seen, investing them with as much high drama as could be done in reciting the numbers of a license plate. He included the significance of the barman’s
WHAMU1
mnemonic with much emphasis. He carefully delivered the very damning evidence that the second witnesses had called in the sighting the moment after it occurred, and that call was captured on a police recording that indisputably established the time of it. And then Langdon delivered the coup de grace:

“My lord, in the entire registry of Black Cabs in London, there is only one license that contains the characters
WHAMU1
, and that is the license of the Black Cab that belongs to the defendant.”

Langdon stopped on that. Reggie said nothing. The magistrate checked his watch.

“One minute and forty-five seconds,” he said. “Well done, Mr. Langdon. Brief and to the point. To just one single point, admittedly, but with no contradiction, it is sufficient to go to trial. Mr. Heath, do you have anything to say?”

“Yes, my lord. My learned friend has forgotten to mention the CCTVs, which the police went to some pains to collect.”

“Mr. Langdon?”

“My lord, yes, CCTVs were collected, but as they revealed nothing conclusive, I did not think to mention them.”

“How many of these tapes are there?” said the magistrate.

“Eleven in all, from various locations, covering more than a hundred hours,” said Langdon.

“More than a hundred hours,” said the magistrate, drumming his fingers. “Mr. Heath, if you attach some importance to the CCTV tapes, I believe it will have to wait until trial at Central Criminal Court. The Old Bailey has much better AV equipment anyway.”

“My lord,” said Reggie, “I attach significance to only one of them. The tape for Lower Clapton Road. I would guess it is the third one down in the stack of cassettes that Mr. Langdon still has on his trolley. All the others simply demonstrate that despite their best efforts, the police found no CCTV tape to show that my client’s cab was anywhere near the scene of the crime when the crime occurred. But the Clapton Road tape shows where my client actually was at the time the crime was occurring. In other words, it irrefutably establishes his alibi. We need not review the whole thing; simply fast forward to—oh, say—11:45
P.M.
on the night of the alleged crime, and go from there?”

The magistrate stared for a moment at the witness transcripts before him. “That’s just five minutes after the sighting in Chelsea.”

“Exactly,” said Reggie. “And several minutes prior to the earliest possible time of death as established by forensics. If my client’s Black Cab appears on the tape at Lower Clapton Road at that time, then it is completely impossible for it to also be the one that drove the unfortunate Americans to their demise on Lots Road.”

“And does it appear there, Mr. Heath? Are you certain what the CCTV will show?”

“I’m asking that the court take five minutes to find out.”

Langdon started to say something now, but the magistrate motioned for silence. He thought about it for a moment longer, and then turned to the bailiff.

“Queue it up. Let’s hope it is worth the fuss, Mr. Heath.”

Langdon sighed.

The bailiff now spent several minutes getting the tape into the player, and getting the portable television configured to display it at such an angle that the magistrate could see it clearly.

Finally it was ready. The bailiff started the tape, then fast-forwarded, showing quite some proficiency, to the time in question.

The magistrate leaned in earnestly to look, and after perhaps thirty seconds, his eyes grew wide and he leaned in closer.

“Stop there. Back up a bit, please. There. There, you have it.”

The magistrate sat back in his chair, and on his gesture the bailiff turned the display for the lawyers to see.

Reggie breathed a sigh of relief, and he felt a little tingle of victory go down his spine.

Darla looked as though she were about to dance in her chair.

Langdon stared at the screen for a moment longer, said nothing, and then began to pretend that he was looking for something important among his documents.

“Mr. Langdon,” said the magistrate, “I believe what we see is a Black Cab with the
WHAMU1
license number your witnesses reported, at the time they reported it in Chelsea, but it is obviously not in Chelsea—it is on Lower Clapton Road in Hackney, some forty minutes away. Would you agree?”

“I … it would appear so, my lord.”

“Have you any explanation how that can be?”

“Not … quite yet, my lord, but I’m sure something will turn up.”

Now the magistrate’s tone showed some annoyance: “And have you any explanation why this tape was not specifically called out in the prosecution’s bundle of discovery documents, so that both the court and defense would know of its significance?”

“I can only say that there were many hours of tapes, and little time to prepare, and the police are only human, my lord.”

The magistrate nodded, but with a frown. For several seconds he stared at the video display, rubbing his forehead with his fingers. Then he looked up.

“Be sure everyone takes a little more time if you try again, Mr. Langdon. I am dismissing without prejudice; you may refile when and if you think you’ve got it right. In the meantime, the defendant will be released forthwith.”

There was an audible murmur now from the gallery behind Reggie, but just what it meant he could not tell.

The judge stood, and in spectacularly anticlimactic fashion exited the courtroom.

“I knew there was a reason I chose you,” said Darla, smiling up at Reggie. “No matter what anyone said. I’ll collect our client and meet you at the side exit?”

Reggie nodded.

Darla looked back over her shoulder, her face glowing from the victory, and smiled at Reggie again as she exited.

Reggie left the courtroom now himself and he went to the barrister’s cloakroom to pack up his wig and gown. Then, as he exited the cloakroom, he encountered the prosecuting barrister in the corridor. Langdon’s usual put-on self-effacing manner was gone.

“Congratulations, Heath,” he said. “You have not lost your touch, it seems.”

“Thank you.”

They were about to continue in opposite directions down the corridor, but Langdon turned.

“It was a bit of luck, though, wasn’t it?” he said.

“In what way?” said Reggie.

“CCTVs are quite imperfect. So many things can prevent a CCTV camera capturing the license of a vehicle as it passes by. Lampposts. Double-deckers. Pedestrians with large umbrellas. You had no time to review the tapes. How did you know what you needed would be there?”

“I knew it when I saw you kick the cassette under the desk,” said Reggie.

Langdon thought about that for a moment, then shook his head in the negative and laughed. “But that really was just an accident, Heath. There was no time for me to review them either. I had no idea what the tape would show.”

“A bit of luck on my part then,” said Reggie.

Langdon nodded very slightly in the affirmative at that and then, looking at something past Reggie’s shoulder, he said, “Good evening, Heath.”

“Good evening.”

Langdon walked away in the opposite direction down the corridor.

Reggie turned now and saw that Darla and Walters had come up behind.

“I wondered how you knew that, too,” said Darla.

Walters said, “I’m just bleeding glad you knew to do it. Thank you, Mr. Heath, thank you.”

Reggie just nodded and shook the man’s hand. It still seemed unwise to acknowledge to anyone that he had been relying on a tip letter written to Sherlock Holmes.

They reached the end of the corridor now, and an usher opened the door at the side exit of the courthouse. Reggie stepped out first, into a heavy rain, and he took a quick look about.

At least two news vans from the BBC, along with perhaps a dozen reporters and photographers from the paper media, were assembled at the far end of the street, waiting at the main exit on Holborn.

At the near end of the street were five parked Black Cabs—oddly parked, facing the wrong way. But in any case, all of them had their out-of-service lights on. That was not good.

Reggie opened an umbrella, attempting to shield Darla and Walters from both the rain and the news hounds on Holborn, and hoping to find an active cab and be gone before anyone knew. But the media were vigilant—a scout at the intersection was watching, saw the side door open, and shouted out. Cameras and reporters began to hurry toward them, in a flock of black umbrellas; the news vans began to turn around. It was not looking good.

But now the five out-of-service Black Cabs—all purely black, with no adverts to distinguish any of them—started their engines and turned on their lights. Then each pulled into the narrow street.

One cab stopped in the middle of the street, blocking a news van approaching from Holborn.

The other four cabs all pulled up curbside in front of Reggie, Walters, and Darla.

“I’ll take this one,” said Walters, jumping into one. “He’s a mate. You take another, and we’ll lose them.”

Passenger doors opened in all four cabs. Reggie began to hustle Darla into one, just as the reporter in the lead position of the running flock—a young woman, with short blond hair and fresher legs than all of the other reporters apparently, and flashing a
Daily Sun
badge—shouted out to Reggie, loud enough for all on the street and the BBC cameras to hear, “What technicality did you use to get your client out, Mr. Heath?”

She was accompanied by a photographer, close on her heels. She had not identified herself, but Reggie had an idea who she was. And although he knew better than to respond, he could not resist. He paused just for a moment before following Darla into the cab. “The technicality that he was twelve miles away when the crime was committed,” he shouted back. Then, with cameras flashing, Reggie jumped into the cab, and shut the door.

All five cabs now took off down Ellis Street. The running reporters—even the young blonde woman—gave up the chase, and now there were only two BBC news vans to deal with.

At the intersection, the lead cab stopped and remained in place, and the other four split off in pairs in opposite directions. At the next intersection, the pair split off as well.