A/N - Thanks again for reading. Your reviews have been deeply cherished, even if I'm horrible at remembering to reply to them personally! Xx

Sherlock and Lestrade arrived in Lamorna Cove before dawn. Lestrade, who'd slept solidly on the back seat the entire way there, barely woke up for long enough to get out of the car, retrieve his luggage and shuffle into the resort, a sort of extra-large house nestled in the cliffs above the cove. During summer, he thought blearily, the place probably did a roaring trade. But nobody would choose a holiday by the sea in the cold and rain, and the Metropolitan Police had rented the entire house, both as accommodation for the London detectives and as a base and research centre. The closest police station was in Penzance, and too far away to be particularly practical, Detective Jake Dyer explained, meeting them in the car park to help take their luggage in. As they reached the doorway, Donovan also met them. She was wrapped in her dressing gown and it was obvious she'd just woken up.

"Room four, sir," she said, handing over a set of keys hanging off a pink plastic ID tag. "DI McMannis will be here for a briefing at eight. Mel didn't come with you, then?"

Lestrade took the keys from her and drew up his sleeve to check his watch. Quarter to five. Sherlock Holmes could drive like a demon, apparently. Looking across at Sherlock, who was also taking a set of keys from Donovan, it occurred to him that he hadn't slept the night before. Well, they could tag-team it. "She's testifying in court tomorrow." He stifled a yawn into his hand. "The Sacco case. Looks like it's going to be a doozy. Anything new to report?"

"Not sure we can cover it right this minute. Short story is 'no'," Donovan said, more to Sherlock than to Lestrade. "We went out to the Holland's house yesterday afternoon… calm down, there wasn't much evidence to wreck. They've had new tenants in since Brett and Sadie moved out."

Sherlock hissed under his breath in disappointment. "You didn't see anything significant?"

"Well, the landlord's clearly a lazy bastard, because the damage to the floor and walls hasn't been repaired. We'll take you there to have a look at a decent hour."

"What did you make of it yourself?" Sherlock persisted.

"Domestic violence of some kind, possibly caused by drugs or alcohol," Donovan said, shrugging her dressing gown tighter around her shoulders. Even up in the cliffs, the sea breeze was icy. "Makes me wonder, though. Forensics already did the works, as much as they could with a new couple's DNA all over the place. I know they pulled up the floorboards and carpet looking for bloodstains and didn't find any."

Donovan had worked in domestic violence before moving on to the murder squad, and an unconscious tendency to jump to that conclusion in the absence of fact.

"Have you been seen in Mousehole?" Sherlock asked her.

"Well, yeah," she said, tones dripping with sarcasm. "What do you think we've been doing all this time?"

"The local residents. Would they recognise you as a detective?"

"The Penzance officers have been doing most of the local interviewing, but probably they would," she said, sounding a little irritated, as if she hadn't thought of this before. "There was a big song and dance routine when the suitcase was found yesterday—seemed like half the village showed up for a gander. I didn't know I was supposed to be here undercover."

"Let's both pray you're now too recognisable to use undercover." Sherlock brushed past Lestrade and hurried up the front steps.

"Why?"

Sherlock turned. "Because," he said, "I haven't been seen yet, and I need to explain why I'm here without revealing I'm part of the investigation team."

"You're not part of the investigation team," Donovan said spikily. "You're a bloody freelancer, Sherlock. What's got into your head now?"

"Logically, the best idea would be that you pretend to be my mistress."

With that, Sherlock continued on up the front steps and into the lobby. Lestrade, glancing back at Donovan as he followed, had never before seen her look so utterly baffled.

Dr. John Watson had put in barely an hour's work at the hospital—middle ear infection, gastroenteritis, broken arm—when the ward administrator had tapped him on the shoulder and drawn him into one of the consultation rooms to announce that he was now off the clock. Detective Lestrade had requested him and Molly be freed up from work for the next week. After that, there was pretty much no hope of finding Sadie or Maisie alive anyway, John thought with a pang as he scrubbed out.

After a quick phone consultation with Molly, he promised to be home at midday and ready to leave by one p.m. In the meantime, he'd go upstairs and see how Siobhan Frost was doing. Almost as soon as he stepped out of the second-floor elevator into the ICU, he caught sight of Detective Inspector Tobias Gregson standing across the waiting area near the water cooler. At six feet four inches tall, Gregson was difficult to miss.

And he would hardly be hanging around Siobhan's hospital room unless there was something going on. In rising alarm, John now saw that Beryl Holland was sitting on one of the plastic chairs in the corner, whimpering. Chris sat beside her, one arm around her shoulders, and a police woman in uniform was kneeling in front of her and offering her a tissue. No sign anywhere of Adrian. Gregson beckoned John over to him.

"Oh God, did she die?"

"Regaining consciousness," Gregson said. "Not fully there yet—flickers her eyelids, seems to recognise people. Not talking in words, so, and her doctor's just kicked us out of the room."

"I'm not surprised," John said. "So half-conscious, but can't talk. That's… something. Make sure you keep your officers away from her and Adrian, Gregson. I know we need information on why she tried to hang herself and if there's anything else she knows about what happened to Brett and Sadie, but you can't rush it."

"Yeah, I've already heard the lecture from her own doctor," Gregson said sourly. "Anyway, I was going to ring you. Lestrade said you wanted information on who Sadie's neurologist was when she was living in London."

John hadn't been aware that following up on the details of Sadie's epilepsy was now his job, but it made sense. Still, he frowned to himself. What he really needed to do was speak with Sadie's neurologist in Cornwall, whoever that had been.

"Dr. Patricia Crew," Gregson went on. "Rooms in Donnelly Street. You got something to write the address and number down?"

John was still stubbornly what his wife referred to as 'old-fashioned'. It never crossed his mind to enter the information directly into his phone. Instead, he fished into his pocket for the stub pencil he usually carried with him and pulled an old receipt out of his wallet, scrawling the number Gregson read out to him on the back. "Patricia Crew," he muttered to himself.

"What?"

John flinched. Most people said Sorry? Or— his mother's favourite— I beg your pardon? "Nothing," he said, realising he'd been biting on the end of the pencil. "I think I know her. Or I used to, anyway. Might come in handy."

"Okay," Gregson said, as if this was the most pointless thing he'd heard all week. "If you get anywhere with it, let me or Parnell know, right?"

"Right. Thanks, I'll be in touch." John hatched immediate plans to text Greg, asking for Lucy Parnell's direct mobile number. He wasn't going to have any more chit-chats with Gregson if he could help it. Since Gregson didn't seem to be interested in further conversation, he put the scrap of paper back in his pocket. Then, sparing a glance toward the still-sobbing Beryl Holland, he wandered back in the direction of the lifts.

Crew…

It would be a hell of a coincidence if Dr. Patricia Crew was not, in fact, Trish Crew from Kings College, University of London.

Bit more than a friend, though never officially a girlfriend. Not beautiful, but there was something incredibly attractive about her, and it wasn't just that she'd had a mass of red-gold curls that, when she occasionally wore her hair loose, reached halfway down her back. Clever and opinionated. Smelled like cinnamon. Deft, cunning hands.

John had spent New Year's Eve of 1999 at a party at her flat in Shepherd's Bush. He remembered sitting with her on the staircase, passing a bottle of red wine between them. Too drunk to go find some glasses, then, or they couldn't be bothered. Her hair tumbled over her bare shoulders. The music was up way too loud—Lenny Kravitz's 'Fly Away'—so the conversation they'd had about what the hell they were going to do with the rest of their lives was shouted at a distance of two feet. Neither of them had a clue. Trish wasn't particularly interested in neurology, and while John was fairly sure Sandhurst was on his horizon, 9/11 was still almost two years away. Afghanistan was a place he associated with rugs and dogs.

Later on, Trish had taken him into her room for sex, shutting the door and shoving him against it with a strength that almost gave him whiplash. It was as if she were half-feral. She'd shredded his back with her fingernails. He'd pulled at handfuls of her hair. She'd bitten his shoulders and neck hard enough to draw blood. Downstairs, someone was playing The Goo Goo Dolls' 'Iris.'

After that night they'd had sex regularly, on and off for eight months, until she'd started seriously dating another student named Garabed Magarian and John had floated back into dating girls who liked it slightly less rough. He'd lost touch with Trish long before being deployed.

This was going to be an awkward reunion.

After another hour's sleep in the hotel bed and a hot shower, Lestrade felt almost human as he joined Sherlock and other members of the investigative team in the resort dining room for breakfast. A decent cup of coffee, and he might be able to actually function like a human being.

He'd decided that Sherlock Holmes, on the other hand, really must be some kind of robot. It wasn't bloody fair that after being up for twenty-four hours and driving across half the south of England all night, Sherlock could stroll into the dining room looking like he'd walked off the pages of an Oxford Street catalogue. Lestrade made his way over to him.

"Where's McMannis?" Sherlock asked him.

"Good morning to you, too. Not here yet, I don't think." Lestrade scanned the room. It was mainly made up of draft-ins from the Cornwall force, it seemed, though Donovan, Halloran and Dyer were sitting at a table opposite the buffet. It was stacked with enough to feed the entire populace of Mousehole, from stacks of white and wholemeal toast and bright platters of fruit to trays of sizzling bacon and sausages. The Met detectives were already hoeing in as if they were starving.

"I think you've traumatised Donovan." Lestrade looked impish. "What was all that, about pretending she's your mistress?"

"I can think of no other plausible reason for a pair of strangers from London to be in this village in November," Sherlock said smilelessly.

"Why not just tell people you're—yeah, okay," Lestrade conceded. "They won't trust you if they think you're here to interrogate them. Still, you might rethink pretending to be in an actual relationship, Sherlock. Not sure even you could pull that one off."

Sherlock gave him a withering look. For a second, Lestrade wondered if he might even be offended.

"Come on," he said, trying to change the subject. "I'm starving."

They picked at the buffet—Lestrade more so than Sherlock, who restricted himself to toast and coffee, as usual—and went over to sit with the other Met officers. Donovan, with her mouth full, could barely manage a thumbs-up of greeting and Halloran had started briefing Lestrade on the events of the day before when the latter jumped. Someone had just clapped a hand over his shoulder.

"Ah, Detective Lestrade!"

Lestrade dropped his napkin and got to his feet. McMannis, of course. A white-haired, raw-cheeked, cheerful sort of bloke, but one who took a lot of liberties, apparently. Lestrade had never met him before.

"Detective McMannis," he said, unsure of who was deferring to whom. But McMannis offered his hand first.

"Your fame's preceded you, Lestrade," he said.

Greg blinked. "My fame?"

"You were the one who got Justin Flemming, weren't you? The phone call that couldn't have happened."

Lestrade felt a warm flash of appreciation. Justin Flemming had killed his mother, a middle-aged, wealthy widow, in St. Werburgh's in 1999. He'd been Detective Sergeant Lestrade then: married to Julie Clarke, one and three-quarter kids, working out of Bristol CID. According to Flemming, his mother had called him at 2am screaming about an intruder in the house. Then, Flemming had said, the line went dead and he immediately called the police. Both parties rushed over to find Mona Flemming had been stabbed to death on her bedroom floor. One back window was found broken, and the house had been ransacked. Justin Flemming's alibi checked out—he'd been with a girlfriend at the time—and apart from his mother's money, he had no known motive. But Lestrade hadn't been satisfied, for all that. Flemming struck him as a slimy, unfeeling bastard, all fake crying and revelling in his bereaved status. Why would Mona call him, and not the police, if she were being attacked?

Then, when they'd been about to scale back the investigation, Lestrade had had a revelation: If Mona's landline had "gone dead" after calling him from her side, the line would have been open for a few minutes, and it would have been impossible for Justin to have immediately called the police like he'd claimed. From there, it had been a case of convincing Lisa Willard, the girlfriend, that Justin was cheating on her, and that was that. She testified that her initial alibi had been false, and Justin was still serving time in Pentonville.

And he'd done that without Sherlock Holmes's help, thanks very much. He owed Colin McMannis a pint once this was all over.

Embarrassed, he introduced Sherlock. McMannis's memory for old cases was, apparently, near-encyclopedic, and his skill with stroking fragile egoes impressive. After praising several of Sherlock's private cases to the point where even he was embarrassed, McMannis went to get some food, bringing it over and sitting down beside Halloran.

"So," Donovan said. "Parnell called a couple of minutes ago, about alibis."

"And?"

"Neither the Frosts nor the Hollands have one," she said through a mouthful of toast. "In fact, Adrian Frost had last Thursday and Friday off work, which seems pretty dodgy to me, but he saw his GP at eleven-thirty on Thursday morning and got a certificate saying he was sick. No sign of what Sadie or her parents were doing during this time."

"Bank records?"

"Nothing withdrawn outside of London— no cash, no EFT. But that's the thing, isn't it? Nothing at all is a bit dodgy itself. I use my debit card to buy coffee most days. They seem to have withdrawn more money than usual for the past month or so, too. Nothing huge. Twenty quid here and there. But if they were planning to go down to Cornwall and confront Brett and Sadie on the money thing, they might've been smart enough to squirrel away cash so they wouldn't leave a withdrawal trail."

"And if they were planning that far ahead," Lestrade said, "odds are, they weren't planning a nice, friendly chat."

"Yep. They don't own a car, so they had to have come down by train. If we contact-"

"All this is boring," Sherlock suddenly said. "Let's not get bogged down in things like alibis; you're asking the wrong questions and approaching this case from the wrong place. It's not who could have done it. It's who would have done it."

"A number of our suspects have some kind of motive, Mr. Holmes," McMannis said.

Sherlock raised one eyebrow. "I know," he said slowly. "Which is why I haven't solved the mystery yet."

"Okay," Lestrade broke in, before this could become a squabble. "Let's take our suspects from the top in terms of motive, then. Brian Crouch?"

Chris Halloran, who had been in charge of following up Brian Crouch's personal history, shook his head. "No evidence he ever saw the Hollands in his life," he said.

"We know he and his team were in the area, poaching for the aquarium," Dyer pointed out. "If the Hollands had caught him, maybe tried to stop him… well, I reckon he could have killed Brett in a panic and then not known what to do with Sadie and the kid. He's not off the hook."

"Bit drastic to go from collecting sea-life illegally to murder," Halloran said.

"Bit drastic to go from anything to murder, really," Lestrade muttered, then stopped himself. Chris Halloran had a bad tendency towards wilting when he was corrected by his superiors. Not likely to be promoted any time soon.

"We know he was there, we know he was there in a boat, and we know he was already doing something dodgy." Dyer reached across for his coffee. "People do stupid things when they panic."

"Plus, he's a sad, angry little wanker," Donovan remarked, stabbing at some bacon with her fork. First he'd called her a bitch, then he'd had the hide to whine to Lestrade that she'd been mean to him? Pathetic. If he wasn't a murderer, she'd decided he was still going down for removing the shark from the wild. She knew people who'd love to string him up for that.

"Jacky and Jimmy Monash can be eliminated," Lestrade went on. "Perfect alibi—we know they were in Kenya. The tech crew are still pulling records, but seems as though all of their emails and phone calls to Brett and Sadie have been normal. Nothing to indicate anything was wrong. If you ask me, we should be centred on Beryl, Chris, Siobhan and Adrian. They've clearly got something on their consciences, and none of them can explain where they were on Friday. If Adrian got a medical certificate on Thursday morning, he could be in Cornwall well in time to murder Brett on Friday morning."

He looked at Sherlock, seeking some approval for his theory. But Sherlock was strangely silent, shoving toast crumbs around his plate with the tip of one finger.

"Why, though?" McMannis asked him. "It's not like he'd let the Monashes borrow any of his money, and he wouldn't benefit much from Brett's death, unless he's left Siobhan a little. It's not common to leave your siblings much if you've got a family of your own, is it?"

"Well, who are you gunning for?"

McMannis considered. "I'd say Derrick Rice," he said. "The problem I have with that, though, is similar to yours, Lestrade. He just doesn't have a motive."

"If he had a thing for Sadie—"

"There's another suspect none of you have even considered," Sherlock broke in, pushing his plate away, as if in disgust. "Not one of you has ever mentioned them, and I find that remarkable."

A short silence. Lestrade and Donovan exchanged a look. "Go on, then," Lestrade said. "Who?"

"Sadie Holland."

Trish Crew still wasn't beautiful, though she kept herself well. Still had that splended mane of hair, though it was coiled up in a tortoiseshell comb and greying slightly at her temples and along the part-line. She wore a grey wool jumper and skirt, and the fingernails that had once gouged down John's back were trimmed modestly and painted into a French manicure. Discreet makeup and low heels. She looked like a teenager's mother. Very likely, John thought, she was.

"It's good to see you again, John," she said warmly, shutting the door behind them and gesturing him into a chair. She had a thick manila file on the desk, tattered with notes of various ages. On the front, someone had written "Sadie Jacqueline Monash" on it in biro, then crossed out "Monash" and written "Holland" with a black Sharpie. John half-expected Trish to sit on the desk, but she pulled up her office chair and picked up the file. She opened her mouth to begin, then John's left hand caught her eye.

"Oh," she said. "You got married?"

John twisted at his wedding ring. "Yeah," he said, almost embarrassed. Worldwide Watson hadn't won any Most Likely to Get Married awards at university. "Just over two years now."

"Got kids?"

"Three girls," he said, amazed at how easily he'd included the twins.

"Aww, lovely," she said, though she was clearly going through the motions. Probably not mother to a teenager, then. "And you're still in medicine?"

"Yeah, 'course. Over at Hammersmith A&E."

"Shit, John, you're keen," she said, half-groaning. "I wouldn't work in a hospital again if you tripled my pay… but then, you were always chasing an adrenaline rush."

So were you. John decided not to mention his military service. Time and place. A two-year-old and a sick woman were missing.

"I've only been here for twelve years," Trish went on apologetically, all business. "And I haven't seen Sadie Holland in a long time. But I have her file here."

"Who'd she see before you?"

"Dr. Peter Sheppard," she said. "Horrible handwriting. And unfortunately, I can't confer with him about his notes… without using a Ouija board, anyway. He diagnosed Mrs. Holland with Epilepsy with Generalised Tonic-Clonic Seizures when she was twelve."

"That's a normal onset age?"

Trish nodded. "For that type of epilepsy, yes. It can be brought on or exacerbated by puberty, which is probably what happened in Sadie's case. Seizures are triggered mainly by sleep deprivation or alcohol consumption, and the most common time for a seizure is on waking up. No family history, according to Sheppard's notes, but there isn't always."

"But you personally treated Sadie."

"Yes, twice or three times a year from the time she was twenty-five… so she'd be, what, thirty-seven now? She was on lamotrigine when I took over the practice, but in the last eighteen months that she was my patient, she reported three seizures, one of which caused her husband to call an ambulance."

"What happened there?"

She shrugged. "Nothing, from the notes from the University hospital. They went to the A&E, but by the time they actually saw a doctor, Sadie was already recovering. There's not a lot you can do after a seizure's passed, except rest up. Still, it was obvious that the lamotrigine wasn't working for her anymore, so I changed her over to sodium valproate— Epilim's the brand name. She reported no more issues after that time."

"Okay. And she was on what dose…?"

"600mg a day, to begin with," she said, reading from her notes. "But by the last time I gave her a prescription, it was a lot lower. One 200mg tablet every three days."

John breathed a sigh of relief. Assuming Sadie had taken her medication on Thursday or Friday morning, she'd only missed one or two doses, not five.

"Just a standard check-up, that one," Trish went on. "She reported no recent seizures, and I gave her a three-month prescription. Nothing in my notes indicating she was thinking of moving away, or that she asked to be referred to a neurologist closer to Penzance."

"When was it?" he asked. "Her last appointment with you, I mean."

"February 17th, 2014."

At this, John paused. "You're sure?"

"Definite," Trish said. John saw a flash of anger in her eyes, something of the girl who'd literally drawn blood. "My notes wouldn't be out of whack like that. Why?"

"Because," John said slowly, still running calculations in his head, "Sadie gave birth in October of 2014. Assuming she carried to term, she would have been between, say, two and six weeks pregnant the day you gave her that prescription. She didn't say anything about it?"

Trish frowned deeply. "No," she said.

"Sure?"

"Positive." Trish shut the file with a thump, then flicked through it with her hands, reminding John of a bristling cat. "There is no way in hell I'd prescribe Epilim for a woman who was pregnant, John," she said. "Birth defects while using it can run to nearly 40%. It's more dangerous than Thalidomide."