The Baker Street Translation (17 page)

A Mini Cooper. Clean, precise, and no-nonsense. If Reggie had to guess, he would have said it was what Mrs. Winslow would drive.

Reggie went to the storage unit door nearest that car. Yes, a small metal sign identified it as Elgar Imports.

The door was closed but not locked; the padlock lay open on the ground a couple of feet from the bottom of the door.

Reggie grabbed the handle and raised the door with a loud metallic clatter.

He looked inside.

Completely dark.

He called out.

No response.

Reggie ran his hand along the side wall until he found a light switch.

And the switch worked, but it was just one sixty-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling at the entrance; it barely illuminated the front of two rows of long storage shelves, each about eight feet high. The corridor between the rows extended some twenty yards to the dark recess of the unit, with a break about halfway.

Something was making a repetitive whirring notice—like a small electric motor, but with interruptions—at the far end.

Reggie walked down the middle corridor toward that sound.

He reached the intersecting corridor, the sound quite close now. He looked around the corner.

And there it was: On the concrete floor of the warehouse, waddling insistently up against the storage shelves but making no progress at all, was a toy duck like the one Mrs. Winslow had shown to Reggie earlier—about the size of a real one, but made of white plastic, with a yellow bill and a red-white-and-blue Union Jack on its back.

“One, two, buckle my shoe,” said the duck, the words clearly audible over the whirring of its little electric motor. Its eyes lit up—apparently a feature activated only when the motor was engaged, because the one at Mrs. Winslow's home hadn't done that—shining green in the dark warehouse.

Just a couple of feet from the duck was an opened cardboard shipping box. Directly above the that was an empty shelf where, Reggie guessed, this duck and others like it must have been stored.

A yellow carbon shipping list was tacked to the wood shelving. Reggie could just make out the addresses in the dim light. Three of them.

One of them was the largest souvenir store in Piccadilly. He had never been in, but he had driven by it often—including just the other night, when he'd parked near the Soho alley where they had found Mr. Liu.

Reggie looked in both directions along the storage aisle. Surely she was still here.

“Mrs. Winslow?” he called out loudly, but there was no answer.

“One, two, buckle my shoe,” said the duck again. And again. Apparently, the recording was synchronized with the mechanical waddling mechanism. It was getting annoying.

Reggie couldn't help it. He put his right foot against the duck and gave it a little kick, sending it in a plastic clatter to the other end of the aisle.

The acoustics of the place were surprising; the clatter seemed to echo.

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,” said the duck now.

Now Reggie was annoyed with himself. Mrs. Winslow had not asked him here to damage the goods. He walked to the dark end of the aisle and bent down to pick the bloody thing up.

And then, where the meager light illuminated the shiny white plastic of the duck, he saw the woman's pale hand.

She lay outstretched on the concrete, on her side, her eyes still open, and the fingers of her hand pointing at the duck as if in accusation.

“Bloody hell.”

Reggie knelt by the still body, felt for a pulse at her neck, found none, and this time when he flung the duck away, it was with enough force that it hit the back wall. The toy didn't break, but mercifully, it did shut up.

For a moment, just silence.

And then the hairs on the back of Reggie's neck stood.

He heard someone breathing—at an accelerated, adrenaline-pumping rate in the darkest back corner of the unit.

Reggie didn't turn his head; he tried not to let on that he could hear it, but no one was being fooled now, not Reggie, and not the presence at the back of the room.

Reggie tried to spring to his feet, but at the same moment, the figure in the back made its move. There was only one way out, and that was past Reggie, and someone ran now for all he was worth.

Reggie lunged forward at the torso of the fleeing figure in the dark.

But the man was too quick; Reggie couldn't get his shoulder into the tackle. For a moment, he had a grasp, or thought he did, on both sides of the man's mac. But the man wrenched free; a coat pocket tore away where Reggie had grabbed on. Then an elbow landed hard in Reggie's face, and he fell back.

Reggie was down only for an instant, but it was too long. The man was fast, and he toppled an entire shelving assembly into the narrow aisle as he fled.

Reggie scrambled past the boxes and debris to the warehouse entrance. But too late. His quarry was gone from sight. Whether the man had hopped the fence to the car park, or gotten all the way out onto the street from the alley, it was impossible to tell. But there was no catching him now.

Reggie went to his car, got his mobile, and rang Wembley at Scotland Yard.

Then he returned to the warehouse unit.

He knelt once more by the body of Mrs. Winslow. But there was nothing to be done.

Then, still at ground level, Reggie saw something on the floor beneath the adjacent storage shelf. Two things, actually—two pieces of paper. In a place where they might have fallen in the struggle between Reggie and the suspect—or even in an earlier confrontation between the suspect and Mrs. Winslow.

Reggie reached under and pulled them out.

One was a single sheet of paper with multiple folds. The sheet was just like the one Mr. Liu had showed Reggie at Baker Street, with rhymes in English and French and Chinese. But there were handwritten changes on this one—in the same lines where Mrs. Winslow had reported errors.

This had to be the original source she had referred to. She had wanted to show it to him. It proved that Mr. Liu's translations had been correct.

For whatever that was worth now. Reggie put the document into his coat pocket.

He looked at the second item: a greeting card with a pastel-colored birthday greeting on the front. Marketed by a company called Fleur de Lis, according to the label on the back, which claimed to be a purveyor to the queen. Nothing remarkable about any of that, but the card was crumpled at one end, as if it had been gripped tightly in someone's hand—Mrs. Winslow's hand, Reggie supposed—and then yanked out by the suspect with force.

Quite some greeting card, thought Reggie, if it was the reason for her murder.

Reggie stood; he didn't open the card, just carefully held it by the edges—it could be evidence—and he went back to the shelves where he had found the duck and the packing boxes.

There were no more ducks. But there were other novelty items on the shelves: plush toys, windup toys, fancy and useless plastic pens and pencils, custom stationery.

And a box that, according to its label, had contained a set of Fleur de Lis birthday greeting cards.

Reggie checked a tag on the box. They cards apparently hadn't come from Mr. Liu; they had been imported from India. But like the toy duck, the cards had been brought in by Elgar Imports.

The box was empty now. But sometimes things fall out. Reggie pushed the box aside, peered into the recess behind it—and yes, one more card.

Reggie reached back and got it just as the entrance to the warehouse was bathed in glaring light, and he heard the sound of vehicles coming to a stop in the alley.

Reggie put the unopened card in his pocket, held on to the crumpled one by its edges, and went to the entrance.

Detective Inspector Wembley had arrived. He had brought just one officer with him.

“I thought you'd bring a full team,” said Reggie.

“I did,” said Wembley. “Meachem here, right now, is my full team. Go ahead, Meachem, tape it off.”

The young officer took a roll of emergency tape and went to do as instructed.

“You brought just one officer,” said Reggie. “No one from Forensics. And yet you came to the scene yourself?”

“It's called ‘triaging,' Heath. Emergency arrangement of priorities. MI5 and the royal protective services are getting worried about a new anarchist. The fellow has been venting on the Internet, but he's got some other special way of communicating with his fellow gits, and until MI5 figures out how he's communicating and what he's up to, they'll keep tapping my division at the Yard for extra protection on the royals. Half of my detectives have been pulled off their usual cases.”

Wembley paused briefly to note whether the new officer was getting by all right with the roll of tape. The lad seemed to be struggling.

Wembley shook his head at that, and then he resumed: “I'd love to tell you that we're doing all humanly possible about your murdered translator in Soho, and that we'll give equally as much attention to the crime scene here. I wish it were so. But the fact is, I just can't afford to put resources right now on anything that isn't a genuine royal emergency.”

“We all have our own concerns, I guess,” said Reggie. He quickly considered—then as quickly rejected—the notion of mentioning anything to Wembley about Laura or about Buxton's kidnapping. Bumbling Scotland Yard rookies who should have been on traffic patrol were not what Reggie wanted for that.

“So just exactly what brought
you
here, Heath?” asked Wembley.

“Mrs. Winslow asked me to meet her here to look at something regarding Mr. Liu's translation. I came here and found her like this. And then I encountered a fellow lurking in the back.”

“Description?”

“I never saw his face at all. I'd say just under six feet, about one hundred and eighty pounds. Strong grip. Callouses. And he smelled like vanilla.”

“What?”

“I'm just saying … I caught a whiff of something. Vanilla.”

“Did you see his attack on her?”

“No,” said Reggie. “Of course not. I'd have stopped it.”

“So what's your theory? She interrupted a burglary?”

“Possibly. Or she was already here when he arrived, and he wanted something so badly that he'd kill her for it.”

Wembley looked around at the shelves of paper and mailing boxes.

“What do we have here that would be worth killing for?”

“I've no idea. For what it's worth, I believe the suspect had this on his person when I struggled with him. I believe Mrs. Winslow had it earlier—and he took it from her.”

Reggie handed over the crumpled birthday card.

“He murdered her to steal a greeting card?”

“I'm not saying that. But I think it came out of his pocket when I tried to grab him.”

Wembley opened the card.

The card responded with a tinny rendition of “Happy Birthday.”

“I hate these things,” said Wembley. “If you open it in a public place, everyone knows it's your birthday.”

“Humpty Dumpty took a great fall,” said the plastic duck.

“What the hell was that?” said Wembley, closing the card. “Happy Birthday” stopped.

“A toy duck,” said Reggie. “I believe it was originally in a packing box over here by the workbench. There's still some of this same packing tape on the scissors. I think Mrs. Winslow was unpacking it there, and then she heard something, maybe, so she walked over here to investigate, carrying the box, and then our assailant struck her.”

“Then I make it a garden-variety burglary that went wrong,” said Wembley. “He wasn't expecting anyone to be here. She got here before hours to meet you. She surprised him; he whacked her to get away, and then he did the same to you when you arrived.”

Reggie nodded. “Possibly.”

“Hmm.” Wembley nodded. Then he motioned for his officer to come over.

“Meachem, get this to Forensics.” Carefully holding the mashed card by the edges, Wembley handed it to Meachem.

Meachem promptly opened it up. “Happy Birthday” began again.

“Don't play with it,” said Wembley. “Put it in a nice plastic bag to make it look like you know your job, and get it to Forensics for fingerprints. Tell them they can ignore yours.”

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,” said the toy duck, and it began to whir and move its feet.

“Yes, guv,” said Meachem. “Just human nature to open up a card when someone hands it to you, I guess.”

“You're not a human; you're a member of the Metropolitan Police,” said Wembley. “Try to remember that.”

“Yes, guv.” Meachem tucked the card inside a Ziploc bag.

The duck continued to whir, waddling up against the shelf where Wembley and Reggie were standing.

“Damn, that thing's annoying,” said Wembley. “Can't you make it stop?”

“You press its bill to make it start,” said Reggie. “It tends to stop if you throw it against a wall, but maybe there's a better way.” Reggie picked up the whirring duck and put it on the workbench. “Ah, here's the switch.”

Reggie clicked the switch; the duck stopped moving and went completely silent.

“Good job,” said Wembley.

“I've seen a duck like this before,” said Reggie.

“Of course you've seen it before. We've all seen toy ducks before. I don't recall them being so bloody noisy when I was three, but we've all seen them.”

“I mean, this is the toy that Mr. Liu was translating instructions for. I saw one like it at Mrs. Winslow's house earlier, before she asked me to come to the warehouse.”

“And so you're thinking it means something?”

Reggie shrugged.

Wembley motioned for his assistant to return.

“Meachem!”

“Guv?”

“Take this duck to Forensics, too.”

Meachem hesitated.

“What's wrong?” asked Wembley.

“I don't have a bag that big,” said Meachem.

Wembley sighed. “Just put it in the car and take it along.”