The Brothers of Baker Street by Michael Robertson

large, sooty redbrick buildings, one with a thirty-foot smokestack on top; between those buildings, a dozen feet below the little bridge where Reggie crossed, was Chelsea Creek—some twenty feet wide and lined with concrete to contain the changes in water level from the Thames.
    There was razor wire all around the perimeter of the structures, but in some places it was not in good repair, and Reggie guessed there would be spots where it could easily be traversed. If you wanted to do something away from the public eye in Chelsea in the middle of the night, this would be the spot.
    A police officer opened a rusty metal gate (which now had a shiny new lock), and Reggie drove inside. He parked at the far end of the main building, near the river.
    It had rained overnight. The afternoon sky now was gray, and a cold wind off the river greeted Reggie the moment he opened his car door.
    He saw that Darla was already there, chatting with an officer who looked quite eager to cooperate with her.
    When Reggie approached, she handed Reggie a copy of that morning’s Daily Sun .
    “I see that you agree with me,” she said. “About a little publicity, I mean.”
    Reggie accepted the paper from her. She had it open to page two, with this headline: “Balmy Barrister to Defend Death Cab Driver.”
    “I thought you didn’t read this trash,” said Reggie.
    “A friend alerted me to it,” she said. “But no harm done, that I can see.”
    Reggie glanced at it. It was a short, one-sided account of his excursion the day before to Buxton’s compound, followed by a note that he was now representing the notorious suspect in the “Black Cab Killings.” It was no worse than he had expected. He folded the paper and tucked it away.
    “Let’s take a look at something real now,” he said.
    “They say there won’t be much to see,” Darla volunteered as the officer escorted them to the crime scene. “What with the rain last night.”
    “It wasn’t covered up?” said Reggie to the officer.
    “No need,” said the officer. “Forensics completed their work before it started. Photographed every square inch. We’ll send the pics over, if you like.”
    “Yes, I should like,” said Reggie. “But you’d expect Scotland Yard could afford a tarp. It rained the night of the crime as well, didn’t it?”
    “Yes,” said the officer. “I believe it did.”
    “So, no footprints were distinguishable?”
    “Don’t know that, sir; you’ll have to ask the forensics team.”
    “I will do, but I expect that’s why forensics didn’t bother protecting it—whatever footprints there were, if there were, and tire tracks as well, if there were, had already been obliterated by the time the police arrived.”
    “Was that a question?” said the officer.
    “No,” said Reggie. “Where were the bodies found?”
    “This way,” said the officer.
    The building ended at about ten yards from a concrete sea wall, about three feet high, with an opening where the old power station had received deliveries by boat at some time in the distant past.
    They walked on for the width of the building, until they reached a flimsy metal fence. The fence was in serious disrepair and had been flattened down at several points; whether from sheer neglect, or deliberate activities of the demolition crew, or some other force, it was hard to tell.
    The office stepped over one of the flattened sections.
    “They were found down here,” he said. “But it was low tide then.”
    Reggie and Darla joined the officer and looked down at Chelsea Creek. The Thames flowed into this channel at high tide, and ebbed from it at low. At present it was filled with dark river water.
    “How low was it when the bodies were found?” said Reggie.
    “It was just mud in the creek, if that’s what you mean.”
    “Were they weighted down with anything?”
    “No. But they didn’t float out into the Thames, because they were caught up on that jutting rebar you see down there.”
    “Caught up