At a country police station, Sherlock and John don't run into quite the same trouble as they would in the city. As a matter of fact, rather than having to argue to have the rules relaxed, to gain access to a criminal suspect in custody – and with the landlady of the pub pressing charges, it's relatively serious – they're welcomed with open arms. Maybe evasive little words like 'consulting' and 'private' get lost on their way up from London. They wait like real officers in the interview room. The sheer volume of tea which is provided and promised ought to be telling them they've got something like celebrity status here.
The boy with the pierced ear is brought in. Last night's clothes are muddy and grass-stained from the struggle outside the pub. His own fault, really. You don't wear a white t-shirt when you go baying at windows, not even if it is made fashionable, even edgy, by being covered in charming blue spatter marks. He carries one arm folded against himself, braced under the other. But he is pushed too hard into his chair. Puts his hands out to save himself breaking a rib on the table, and the one he held against himself is snatched back.
Inside the same second John is out of his seat and round the table. When the hand isn't willingly given, he picks it up by force and studies the palm. Looking at the officer who brought the suspect in, he demands, "Your burn kit. You're lucky it's not infected, left overnight like that."
"He wouldn't let us at it-"
"Your burn kit." It is unequivocal and it invites no questions. The officer goes about it. John looks at the sullen, suspicious kid. The notes say he's twenty-three, and only just turned it. "What happened?"
Fowler doesn't intend to answer. Sherlock helps. "The shotgun barrel. It dropped into his hand when he saw me. It was still warm when I took it so-"
"You never got nothing off me," the boy snaps. "I let it go."
Sherlock shrugs. The burn kit comes, and Fowler falls silent again. Submits to medical attention, but that's all. Sherlock glances at the local police's file. "So is it James or some plebeian contraction?" Fowler doesn't so much as look up. Slowly, Sherlock leans over, placing himself squarely in his field of vision. "You're in an awful position. Even this deep in the countryside, nobody's all that mad about firearms, especially stolen ones, especially in the middle of the night. Of six possible charges, drunk-and-disorderly not the least of them, you stand a good chance of being convicted of four. At a glance? At least eighteen months inside. There are two people alive who are willing to listen to you and give you some other way out and they're both sitting in this room."
"Jamie," Fowler finally admits. "And it's three."
"Got yourself a lawyer already, do you?"
The boy shakes his head, almost sad. "Alice," he says. The name is soft. It's a prayer to him. "And I did it for her, so that's all that matters. I know you don't believe me and I know you were hired not to. I don't care. I did it for her."
John has stopped midway through soothing the burn. "Wait," he says. "Go back. Why do you think we're here?"
Fowler snarls, "You don't need to keep lying. Rucastle told me everything. He tried to crack it was Alice got in touch with you herself, but I know it was him. Here to get rid of me, out of his life, away from his little princess, well, let me tell you something, right? Alice is nobody's princess. She's her own person and he just can't take th-"
"Bastard," Sherlock mutters. He hears the word before he even knows it's coming from him. Bastard. He rarely swears, but when he does it's compulsive. It's meant, heartfelt. It's meaningful. Fowler stops, thinking it means him. John stops not knowing what it means, glances over his shoulder. Sherlock looks up to meet his eyes. "He's written us in. Rucastle. He's using us as part of his stories, the confusion." Just a thread in someone else's fiction. Sherlock burns. "Jamie, confirm for me – after we met on the road outside the house, at some point, you went back and asked Rucastle what he knew about my being in the village."
"I just thought, with him being a copper and you being a detective, it wasn't a long shot."
"Good. Incorrect, utterly spurious, but good. And Rucastle caught an opportunity. He doesn't know why we're around. He thinks this is a bloody couple's holiday-"
"-What?"
"Shut up, John."
"You corrected him, though?"
"-he told me as much, and-"
"Oh, for God's sake, Sherlock, I'm married. What do I have to do, get 'I'm not gay' tattooed across my forehead?"
"John, please! You." He points and Fowler snaps to attention. "You're in love with Alice Rucastle."
There is no hesitation. There is no blush or youthful shame, no awkwardness. Jamie Fowler says, "Yes."
"You, from the look of your hands and the distribution of muscle, the vast array of scars and minor injuries, are a manual labourer and handyman. Judging by dress sense, body language, attitude, syntax, you have no job security or fear of the future. And based on the state of your eyes and all the times so far we've crossed paths, you habitually binge-drink. You're a walking catastrophe."
John, exasperated with trying to dress a hand which is trying to curl into a fist, "Where were you at his age?"
"And do you think Rucastle would have me for a son-in-law either?" Fowler hangs his head. "When were you going to run away, Jamie? How many hours between you making that plan and Alice vanishing into the ether?"
John gives the boy his hand back. Fowler sits looking at it, flexing his fingers and palm. Bitterly, he recalls, "About four? She was only supposed to pack a bag, and wait until was dark. Her dad would be at the back of the house letting that evil fucking animal off the chain and she'd be walking out the front. I was waiting for her on the road. I've been waiting for her most nights since, but she hasn't come out yet. I tried the police and everything; worse than fucking useless."
Back on the right side of the table, John is repacking the burn kit, reaching for his tea. He thinks about that and then, "The police know about this?" Sherlock cuts his eyes across. John is learning two things from this. Firstly that to any halfway intelligent detective, Jamie Fowler looks like a borderline psychopath with a dangerous grudge who knows how to use a shotgun. Secondly, and which option has given Sherlock himself something to fear, they're about to learn a lot about Jethro Rucastle from whatever Fowler says next.
"Took them ages even looking into it. Had to ask about three times before they took me serious. It was the middle of last week before they went anywhere near there. So they went up the hill, and they sat in that house and they had coffee, so they say, with Rucastle, and with Alice. Alice, so they say, was totally fine. A bit quiet, they said, but she always is. Alice was safe in that house and under no... whatever they call it."
"Duress," Sherlock fills in.
"Whatever they call it. Not being held hostage. But I'm telling you. You can believe it or not. If Alice is still in that house, it's not of her own free will, Mr Holmes."
His piece said, Fowler sits back from the table. His bandaged hand falls into his lap.
Sherlock knits his fingers and sets his forehead briefly against them. There's weakness in that pose, vulnerability. But for just a second he allows it, because with every passing second he likes this less and less. Violet. He keeps thinking her name. Violet. Violet is probably very close to knowing something she shouldn't. Violet should be found, and made safe, before it turns into a major problem for her. Banking on his assertion that Rucastle would never hurt his daughter, there's a little more time for Alice. Violet, on the other hand, doesn't have that.
They should leave. There's nothing more to learn here.
But it's important to him, before they do, that he finds Jamie's defeated, heartbroken gaze and tells him, "I believe every word of what you just told me. And tonight we're going to that house and whatever there is to find, we're going to find it."
Jamie believes him too. Jamie takes heart in it, and hope. When the officer comes to lead him away again, Jamie at least goes a bit more peaceably than he came.
The door shuts behind him. In the tiled, echoing room, with John waiting for his conclusions, Sherlock almost doesn't want to give them.
"Rucastle's going to leave," he says finally. "In secret, taking Alice with him. And he intends to leave behind so much confusion over what actually happened that no one will ever settle on a story to pursue."
"So what? He just starts again somewhere? Just like that?"
"With his Alice and no Mr Fowler."
"That's insane." Sherlock tosses his head. 'Insane' is a loaded and relative term. But yes. Yes, it is insane. "What about Violet Hunter?"
"What about her? I don't think she features in the grand scheme of things."
"But we saw her, in the cafe. She was out and around. Other people saw her, Sherlock. She can't just cease to exist."
"I don't believe anyone in that village ever knew she existed to begin with."
