By the time Lestrade emerged from the police station with Donovan and Dyer, he found both Sherlock and John busy with their phones. John was sitting on the low brick wall telling someone—obviously Molly—to stay where they were until he called back. Sherlock was pacing around restlessly, staring at his phone screen. He swiped once or twice at it with one fingertip.
"Anything doing?" Lestrade asked him.
Sherlock sucked in a breath through his teeth. "That phone hasn't moved in ten minutes," he said, without even looking up from the screen. "The co-ordinates place it by the side of the road next to the Church of Christ in Paul. Mycroft is never wrong. Your phone call, Lestrade, prompted Rice to drop the phone and run."
"Shit." Donovan dropped her shoulders and looked helplessly at Dyer.
"That's not a bad thing." Sherlock sounded almost serene, since the only thing he really feared was doubt. "Certainly not for Sadie, who, judging by his choice of Google search, is alive and having an alarming amount of seizures without her medication. Or at least, she was at nine o'clock this morning."
John terminated the call with an absent love you and hung up, looking at the darkened screen for a second before putting it in his pocket and looking up at Sherlock expectantly.
"What do you want me to do, Sherlock?" Lestrade asked him quietly.
"Contact McMannis," Sherlock said. "Tell him to get officers to check every shed, every barn, every stable, every toilet block between here and Paul."
"You think he's got them here?" Dyer ventured.
"'Here' or close enough. That's why he came back to Mousehole but wasn't interested in the search—he knew where they were and couldn't be away from Sadie for too long. Sadie, at least, didn't starve or dehydrate in the two days he was in London, which indicates she wasn't gagged and probably wasn't tied up. Imprisoned somewhere remote or seldom-travelled; somewhere nobody could hear her call for help." He screwed his eyes shut, and Lestrade wondered if something else had just passed through his mind—a memory of being imprisoned in the Eccles Rowing Club headquarters, bleeding and half-conscious.
"Donovan," Sherlock said. "Do you remember what the woman in the fish and chip shop told us about the Ship Inn?"
"… Her cousin. She said her cousin ran it. What's that got to do with anything?"
"Brian Crouch," Sherlock said. "Yes, we know that he was in the area poaching for the aquarium. But why? Why here, as if there weren't numerous places he could have been, ones much closer to London? He said himself that he wasn't expecting to net a shark in these waters so late in the season. You and I had to make up a charade as an excuse to be in the area, but what was his excuse?"
"Visiting friends or family. Who, though?"
Sherlock now looked at John. "Someone I pointed out was all but ready to accuse us of the murder," he said. "He runs the corner shop on the promenade. A perfect view to what happened in the early hours of Friday morning. We need to speak with him. Now."
Lestrade glanced in the car's rear-view mirror to check that Donovan and Dyer were still following behind in their own car. He could practically feel John's restless energy from the back seat, but Sherlock, seated beside him, hadn't said a word since they'd got in. He was used to following Sherlock's orders, but this one couldn't go through without questioning.
"Okay," he said, slowing down to give way at a stop sign. "I don't understand."
"The injury changes everything. Brett Holland's death was an accident."
"Oh, bollocks." Lestrade turned the car so violently onto the main road that he heard John hiss in protest. "Someone dismembered him with an axe-"
"Clearly dismembering Brett and abducting his wife and child wasn't an accident, but we were on the right track to begin with and derailed by the fact that the Marie Celeste was in pristine condition, and therefore the evidence pointed to a planned crime," Sherlock said. "In reality, what we were looking at was two completely different crimes—the scuttling of the Marie Celeste for insurance and the manslaughter of Brett Holland."
Lestrade glanced at him. "So they were scuttling it? But why-"
"Adrian's having gone to prison for an 'insurance job' put the idea of scuttling the Marie Celeste in Brett's mind, but he was neither stupid nor cruel enough to ask Adrian to repeat a crime he'd been imprisoned for. He asked his best friend, Derrick—a man he trusted."
"And that's why Derrick moved down here?"
"Precisely. He had no other reason to. It was probably what he and Beryl were arguing about in the corner shop the day before Brett was killed. Beryl had found Brett and Sadie, and she was furious—with them, and with Derrick Rice for helping them."
"That argument Rose said she heard Sadie having with Derrick," John said. "At his place, a day or two before the murder-"
"Yes. They made a plan that night to recover the fifty thousand pounds Beryl and Chris wanted. On the morning of the murder, Rice removed the Hollands from their boat to the safety of his, with a mind of wrecking the Marie Celeste, probably by damaging the hull. That's why everything was set up as if the couple had been suddenly interrupted - if they'd struck an object, that's exactly what would have happened. Rice's mistake was the boat didn't sink. Instead, a fight broke out before the finishing touches were made. It's likely Brett confronted Derrick on his feelings for Sadie, but his motive isn't important. Either way, the fight ended when Derrick lost his temper and killed Brett by hitting him with an oar."
"But wait," John broke in again. "They searched the Lady Marlborough. If that's where Brett was killed, how come nothing turned up with forensics?"
"Because he wasn't killed on the Lady Marlborough. Remember, Derrick seemed almost desperate to volunteer the information that he'd been on the Lady Marlborough when he found the Marie Celeste. I think it's quite likely that there's a second boat, unregistered, nondescript enough that nobody communicated with forensics that the boat registered to Derrick Rice, the one they were searching, wasn't even the one he'd used on that day. Why would anyone doubt him? It was the only boat registered to him."
Lestrade was now visibly puzzling this out. "So wait, you're telling us that when the Cornwall water police showed up, Derrick had Sadie and Maisie right there in the hull?"
"No. He couldn't guarantee that Maisie would be quiet—it's possible to scream through a gag, and she's too young to stay quiet on command, no matter what threat he made. Brett was killed at least two or three hours before we all thought, giving Rice enough time to dismember and dump his body, bring Sadie and Maisie to shore, hide them somewhere, take the Lady Marlborough back out to the Marie Celeste and call the police, reporting the occupants were missing."
"I guess that explains why sharks were hanging around that morning," John muttered. "Someone washing blood off in the ocean would do it."
"But what about the radio?" Lestrade wanted to know. "They had proof that Brett Holland made radio contact at—"
"No. They recorded that someone made radio contact shortly after seven-thirty that morning. They have no way of proving who it was. It was almost certainly Derrick, trying to establish proof that Brett was still alive and that he'd therefore had neither time nor opportunity to kill him."
Lestrade swore to himself. He should have known. He did know. Justin Flemming and the fake phone call that would have given him an alibi if it hadn't been impossible.
"We need to talk to people," Sherlock was saying. "Fast. Lestrade, get McMannis to send detectives to talk to Derrick's neighbour Rose, ask her if she saw anything unusual on Friday morning."
"What did she see?"
"She saw Rice returning to the house sometime in the early hours of the morning, before the Cornwall force was notified there was something wrong. Details—we need details."
Lestrade dropped Sherlock and John off close to the corner shop, before proceeding up to make enquiries at the Ship Inn with Donovan and Dyer.
"Do you think they'll get anywhere?" John asked as he followed Sherlock across the cobblestoned street toward the shop.
"Probably not," Sherlock said. "The reception desk there faces inland. At this time of year, anyone from the Ship Inn who saw anything had to be looking for it."
"Okay." John sounded resigned. He knew better than to ask if anyone at the Ship Inn had a reason to be looking out for Derrick Rice.
The proprietor of the corner shop was still diligently at his post, serving a bedraggled-looking blonde woman with a little boy on one hip. Sherlock barged his way through the shop door, setting the door wind-chimes clanking in protest. with John at his heels. One glance, and Sherlock discounted the man's customer. Local. Young child, so was possibly awake at the time of the murder on Friday morning, but there's no sign of salt or wind damage in her hair, which suggests she lives in one of the streets further away from the ocean. "Get out," he said to her.
"What?"
"Sorry," John said, going back over to the door and holding it open for her to go through. "Nothing personal, but something's come up. We're the police. Sort of."
The woman stopped in the doorway, glancing back over her shoulder at the man behind the counter. "The police?" she echoed. "Is this about that murder…?"
"I'm afraid I really can't say. Please, just… we're in a hurry; come on." John beckoned her out and closed the door behind her. Sherlock was now facing off the unimpressed proprietor.
"Your name," he demanded. "And don't lie. Too many people in this village can contradict you, and so can a quick police check."
The man chewed the inside of one cheek for a second. "Crouch," he said. "Graham Crouch."
"In the early hours of last Friday morning, Mr. Crouch," Sherlock said, "your cousin Brian… cousin? Or is he your brother?"
"Cousin," Graham muttered.
"He was about a mile offshore with some of his colleagues from the Metropolitan Aquarium, doing a nice bit of poaching. Since you were here preparing to open the shop, you saw everyone who came and went that morning. Your desire to protect Brian's racket is admirable, but your willingness to conceal evidence of a murder isn't."
"I didn't see any murder!"
"No. That took place off-shore, and I don't think even Brian would have seen or heard anything he understood. What you did see is someone coming in from the water, probably between about six and seven o'clock in the morning. Tell us everything. Now."
"There's nothing to tell you," Graham protested. "You don't reckon if I'd seen someone doing something really dodgy I'd have said something? That bloke of Rice. He came onshore about half-six. Moored the boat, got into a car, and left. I didn't see what direction. You can only get to the main road by the ramp anyway."
"Nobody else with him?"
"Not a soul."
"Was he carrying anything?"
Crouch considered. "Something over one shoulder," he said. "A bag. I don't know what colour—it was dark. Didn't look heavy. It certainly didn't have a bloody body in it!"
"What do you know about-"
"Sherlock," John said.
Sherlock possessed a prodigious talent for ignoring John's admonitions, to the point where he genuinely didn't register some of them. Other times, though, a single word stopped him dead in his tracks. Turning around, he saw that John was standing vigilant near the windows looking out onto the marina. He rushed over to him.
"What? What is it?"
John didn't answer, but put his hand against the windowpane. The only thing moving out in the darkness was a small boat, lights dimmed, making its way out to open sea.
~~o0o~~
Sherlock scrambled for the door, pushing it open with both hands and spilling out onto the cobblestoned road, breath coming in sharp puffs of vapour. He crossed the road, not bothering to check either for oncoming traffic or for John behind him, and legged up onto the plinth of a Great War cenotaph for a better view of the dark harbour.
"It's him, isn't it." John, down beside the plinth by this time, was still following the progress of the little boat, one hand shading his eyes, as if out of long habit.
"Nobody else has a reason to leave the harbour in a blacked-out boat." Sherlock scrambled down onto the grass again. "Of course it's him."
The marina was kept sheltered from the sea by the same stone seawall that Donovan and Dyer had walked along to view the suitcase containing Brett Holland's body, and any boat passing in or out of it had to navigate the gap between the north end of the cove and the wall. There was no chance of a pursuit by sea; in his more confident moments Sherlock might have attempted to hijack one of the boats moored in the marina, but there wasn't time.
He set off instead, feet pounding on stone, breath bursting out of his lungs, and reached the end of the sea wall a couple of seconds after Rice's boat reached the point of open sea. There was nothing else to be done but jump for it.
Sherlock dropped onto the narrow little foredeck, going over hard on one ankle. He drew in a sharp breath through his teeth, but nothing in his ankle snapped; as he struggled to his feet a clatter behind him indicated John had also successfully made the jump from the sea wall.
"Derrick," Sherlock said, holding both arms up, palms out. "Stop. It's over."
Rice was only a few feet away at the cockpit, staring him down like a feral cat ready to strike.
"You didn't really think you were going to hide Sadie and Maisie forever?" Sherlock took a second to get his breath back. "We know it was an accident, Derrick. We-"
Rice ducked down to the vestibule at his feet, and before he could react, Sherlock heard a heavy click over his left shoulder.
"Stand up," John barked. "Now. Hands where I can see them."
In the silence that followed, Sherlock could hear his pulse thudding.
"Don't shoot me," he heard, but it was barely above a whisper. "I… I can't put my hands up…"
Rice staggered to his feet. Peering into the darkness, Sherlock expected to see a gun or a knife in his hands; perhaps the oar that had taken Brett Holland's life or the utility hatchet he'd used to dismember his still-warm body. But the only weapon Derrick Rice held was a limp, white-faced toddler.