They walked towards the restaurant with a brisk pace, pulling their coats tighter around them against the bitter wind that had suddenly picked up. The sky was still as cloudless and clear as it had been earlier, except now it was littered with sparkling stars. John walked closely beside Sherlock, much closer than usual, their hands occasionally brushing against each other as they walked. On John's other side, Rebecca was desperately trying to initiate a conversation with him, flicking her hair suggestively over her shoulder.

"How unprofessional," whispered Sherlock, and John quickly supressed a smirk.

It wasn't that John was being deliberately unresponsive, he had simply realised that he wasn't interested in her. To his credit, he didn't completely blank her, but it was rather difficult to concentrate on what she was saying when the touch of Sherlock's hands on his sent frissons of excitement down his spine.

As Rebecca had said, the restaurant really was only a five minute walk away from their B&B, and so they subsequently arrived far too early. Rebecca dragged John off to walk around the harbour, while Sherlock and Lestrade sat on a bench outside the blue and cream exterior of the Harbour Light Restaurant. Sherlock was unaware that he was staring after John until Lestrade mentioned it.

"You've been watching him for a while. Is there something I should know?"

Sherlock glanced sideways at him and shook his head. "There's no reason."

Lestrade snorted derisively. "Oh pull the other one, Sherlock."

The other man decided not to reply, thinking that it would probably be best to wait until after the case before mentioning anything about John and himself. Lestrade opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off by Rebecca and John returning.

It was now ten to 7, so they entered the restaurant through the already open wooden door and walked up the red, thickly carpeted stairs. At the top of the stairs was a cash desk and two rooms, one on the left, and one on the right. A woman emerged from the room on the left at the sound of their voices. She was about 5'2, with short brown hair pushed away from her face with what appeared to be a headband designed for ten year olds. She wore plain black trousers and a white top and walked with a limp, which Sherlock quickly realised was due to the fact that one of her legs was shorter than the other.

"Hello, can I help you?" she asked, an unnatural smile creeping onto her face.

Rebecca stepped forward. "Hi, yes, we've got a table booked for four under the name of Brown?"

The other woman checked in the diary on the cash desk. "Oh yes, here you are. Follow me."

She led the way into the room on the left and to a four-seater table with a view out to the sea. She took their coats and returned with menus, before disappearing behind a partition where a group of young waitresses were standing.

Sherlock non-conspicuously scanned the room, taking in the three rows of tables, the bar at the opposite end of the room to the partition, the low-hanging ceiling beams and the five other occupied tables.

A waitress approached them, obviously uncomfortable in her white shirt and apron, black bowtie, black vest and trousers, and Sherlock momentarily pitied her. He conceded that she couldn't be more than eighteen years old.

"Good evening," she said. "Can I get you anything to drink?"

"I'll have a pint of lager, please," said John.

"Is Peroni okay for you?"

"Fine, thanks."

The waitress hastily wrote it down on her pad of paper, and then turned to Lestrade, who ordered the same drink.

"I'll just have a glass of water, please," said Sherlock. "With ice and lemon." He answered the waitress' unasked question.

Rebecca ordered a gin and tonic, and the waitress hurried off to get their drinks, returning a few moments later. She took their food orders; all of them had decided to take advantage of the fact that it was Paignton police force that would be paying for their meals, given that it was, after all, a police investigation.

"So, how are we going to play this?" Rebecca asked, leaning forwards in her chair once the waitress had taken their menus away. "What's our strategy?" They all looked to Sherlock, who had his fingers steepled underneath his chin once again.

"We'll sit through the meal and act completely normally," he said. "Observe as best we can, but not be too obvious. Stay for as long as we can without drawing loads of attention, and then, when most of the other customers have gone, I'll have a little snoop around in their money records."

"How do you plan to do that?" Lestrade asked.

"You'll create a distraction for me, and I'll go off for a wander," replied Sherlock. "It'll be easy, don't worry." He looked over at John and offered him a reassuring smile.

Thinking about it, it probably hadn't been the best idea to sit opposite Sherlock, John thought, as he felt the other man's leg resting carefully against his own. Risky, he thought. Especially given that Rebecca was evidently trying to continue flirting with him on his right hand side. He looked up at Sherlock and realised that everything he was doing was completely intentional.

"Bastard," he mouthed across at him, and Sherlock grinned in response.