A/N - Sorry about the delay. I took time out from crunch-time postgrad work to get this chapter out, so any feedback would be really appreciated. It's tough working up the time, energy and effort of writing when you feel like only four people are reading anymore. xx
"Derrick," Sherlock heard John say over his shoulder. "Tell me that baby's alive."
Derrick looked down at the little girl, but flicked his tongue over his lips and made no reply. Maisie's head hung back limply against his arm, her eyes shut. Sherlock had a sudden memory: If Sadie and Maisie are dead, this weather won't be bothering them at all…
"Take your first two fingers and hold them under her jaw, Derrick," John was saying. "Tell me she's got a pulse."
John could shoot Derrick Rice dead. If Maisie was dead, Sherlock knew he would. And that was going to make for a messy court case, with less than ideal timing for the Watson family. "John," he said. "Sadie's down in the cabin somewhere. Find her. Find her and help her."
John didn't move.
"I said go, John."
Finally, Sherlock heard a light clunking sound as John put the gun back into his belt. He cleared his throat, passed behind Sherlock to the galley stairs and descended out of sight. Sherlock watched him edge out of the corner of his eye, keeping his own gaze on Derrick Rice.
"You have nerves of steel," he remarked finally, relaxing his shoulders. He thought briefly about folding down his coat collar, then decided against it: too obvious a ploy.
"Nerves…?" Derrick looked at him blankly.
"Keeping yourself together, knowing what you knew the whole time. Having seen what you saw." Sherlock left off: doing what you did. Even if the charges against Derrick Rice were manslaughter, a jury was going to have a hard time swallowing that he then accidentally dismembered his best friend's body with an axe. Derrick didn't need to know that. He needed to think he had something to lose. "In another world," he went on, "I daresay you'd have made a good police officer."
Police officer. Lestrade and the others would have barely had time to make it to the Ship Inn before he and John had left the shop. All it would take was just one of them to glance back over their shoulder, and they would see what was going on. To his right, Sherlock heard John's voice, muffled by the deck: Sadie… Sadie, can you hear me…?
"How is she?" he called out, for Derrick's benefit rather than his own. If Sadie were either dead or fully conscious, John wouldn't be trying to rouse her.
"Alive," John said. "Just."
"Derrick." Sherlock turned back to him, trying to keep his voice steady. It wasn't easy; the night breeze was frigid. "Derrick, listen to me, and listen carefully. We know killing Brett was an accident, and anyone can tell that you love Sadie. Because you love her, you're going to have to do the best thing for her. Give yourself up. Let us take Sadie and Maisie to hospital."
The boat rolled in the swell and Derrick backed up, shifting Maisie's weight in his arms. Her head smacked against the crook of his arm. She did not flinch, but Derrick did.
"It's over," Sherlock said. "There's nowhere you can take Sadie and Maisie where they'll be looked after."
Where had Derrick been trying to take them, anyway? Ireland? France? Not important, under the current circumstances. It was all too likely that Derrick didn't even know.
"You'd be apprehended the second you stepped on shore, and by then it might be too late to save them anyhow. They wouldn't last the journey…" Sherlock braced against the roll of the boat, grabbing onto the nearby guard rail at the last second, and glanced at Maisie again. She was so close. Almost arm's length away. Close enough to snatch.
Behind him, somewhere up near the main road, he heard a hoarse male shout, then the flap of heavy running footsteps.
"It's clear you're not familiar with me and my work," he said to Derrick, in tones that aimed to sound disappointed. "But I'll give you an insight, if you like: I can quote the period table in order, but I can't tell you how a mother might feel about her child. I rarely guess, but in this case, I have to: I'm going to guess that if there's anything Sadie would be begging you to do right now, it's to save her baby."
"Sherlock!"
Sherlock barely glanced over his shoulder: Jake Dyer. He'd made it first to the end of the sea wall, with Donovan and Lestrade almost on his heels. But the boat had drifted wide with the wind and undertow, and there was no way Dyer could make that jump now, leaving him dithering on the edge.
"Derrick," Sherlock continued. "Give Maisie to me."
"So you can shoot me?" Derrick's voice cracked.
Sherlock half-smiled. "I'm disappointed," he said. "You should know more about me. I'm never armed. That's John's job." And please, God, don't let it be Lestrade's. Greg had a legally licensed Glock 21; Mycroft had made sure of that long ago. But he rarely brought it, even on a case, and by his own admission had only shot at someone once since 1996. "Manslaughter," he went on. "You'll do as little as five years, if recent sentences for similar offences are anything to go by." He ignored the implication that Derrick would also be charged with kidnapping, perverting the course of an investigation, and half a dozen more crimes at the least. "Murdering a toddler, on the other hand," he said, "that will get you a file marked Not Eligible for Parole. And I doubt you'll survive long in prison. I assume you know what prison inmates do to men who hurt children."
Behind him, Sherlock heard Sally Donovan on the phone: Bloody hurry up. McMannis and Cornwall's finest were on their way.
"How did you know?" Derrick asked him. "How did you know it was me?"
Sherlock did not smile. "I had my suspicions from the first time we met," he said. "Lestrade told you Brett was dead, and you said these words exactly: 'How can you know that? I don't know anything about that.' It was more or less a confession that you killed him. But the way you reacted when I accused you of raping and murdering Sadie told me that you hadn't. Curling up on the floor and slow-breathing is standard operating procedure for a man who was at one time been in anger management counselling…"
Derrick's right hand moved to his pocket, and in the lights from the main road, Sherlock caught a metallic glint. His heart jackhammered. He'd ordered John away, and the only three Metropolitan detectives who halfway respected him were too far away to help him navigate this one. A careless word was all it would take.
"What are you going to do with that?" he asked Derrick.
No answer. Expected. Derrick Rice hadn't the faintest idea what he was going to do with the knife he held – a utility knife, if the glimpse Sherlock had got of it had told him correctly. Something more suited to cutting twine and cable than human skin.
"Are you married, Mr. Holmes?" Derrick asked him.
"No."
"Divorced?"
"No. Marriage really isn't my area." Sherlock let out a breath. "You… wanted to marry Sadie?"
No answer, which was an answer.
"It must have been difficult for you," Sherlock said. "To see Brett and Sadie so happy…"
"They weren't happy," Derrick snarled. "Brett told me once, he goes, 'the people at the fertility clinic have done five million tests and they don't know why we can't have kids'."
"And it must have occurred to you," Sherlock said, "that you and Sadie might be able to have children together."
"They were wrong for each other, Mr. Holmes. Oil and water. And Sadie's the one coming to me, crying on my shoulder when Brett's being an arse. Can you believe that? Coming to me to cry because she'd fucked up her life, when she could have had me instead and been happy?"
Quickly, Sherlock rifled through a number of responses to this. All of them were either going to anger Derrick, whose grasp on his temper was so weak; all of them were going to prolong the stand-off and delay Sadie and Maisie getting the help they needed. Maisie had still shown no signs of life. Below deck, Sadie was making a low retching sound.
"John?" he called out.
"She's still seizing," was the terse response. "Four minutes now. I can't do anything until it stops."
Hearing this, Derrick swallowed hard, clutching the limp toddler against his chest.
"Derrick," Sherlock tried again. "Please. Please give Maisie to me."
For a few seconds there was no sound but the lapping of waves against the hull and the eerie rasps of Sadie Holland below deck. Then, holding her out in his arms like a sacrificial offering, Derrick Rice lay Maisie on the deck at his feet. But as he straightened up, Sherlock caught again that glimpse of metal in his hand.
"No-"
Sherlock lunged forward, but it was too late. Derrick staggered back a step, one hand at the gaping, bleeding wound across his throat, and went over the deck railing. There was a muffled splash.
And then another. Sherlock glanced back over his shoulder and saw that Lestrade was no longer standing on the sea wall.
He caught Maisie up in his arms, checking for her pulse the way John had instructed Derrick. With the rocking of the ship and the beating of his own heart, it was difficult to say if she was still alive. John appeared again at the head of the gallery stairs.
"What-"
"In there," Sherlock, struggling under Maisie's dead-weight on one shoulder, pointed to the dark water. There was now no sign of anyone in it.
"Come on, come on," Donovan muttered, scanning the water as well as she could with the wind whipping her hair into her eyes. Derrick Rice had just used a kid as a human shield, so he could drown or bleed to death for all she cared. But the best man she knew had just jumped in after him, barely remembering to ditch his shoes and jacket before he did. And, as far as she could see, he hadn't surfaced anywhere. "Come on," she said. "Where the fuck are you?"
Dyer laid one hand on her arm. "If I call-"
"Backup's not going to get here any faster if you keep ringing them," she snapped at him. For a detective, Dyer could be remarkably thick sometimes. She reached down and started pulling at the laces of her boots. "Tell me if you see him," she said. "Look everywhere-"
She heard a heavy splash, much closer to hand than expected. Looking up, she saw that Dyer had disappeared from beside her.
Shit.
She yanked off her boots, then, at the last second, remembered to do the same with her jacket before launching herself off the sea wall, plummeting feet-first, legs pumping, until the water stung like acid and the darkness flooded in.
She kicked down, seeking purchase, but her feet touched nothing. Now only guessing which way the surface and the sky were, she frog-stroked her way up until her head broke the surface and the freezing night air slapped her in the face. Looking around, she could only make out the lights on the promenade and a few dimmer ones that marked the outline of the boat. Pushing her hair out of her eyes, she could see John on the deck, crouched over something. The little girl, Maisie. Sherlock was standing at the rail, looking out into the dark water.
"Where is he?" she called to him, voice shrill as the cold seized her chest. She'd meant Lestrade; but after a second she realised she had no idea where Dyer was, either. Sherlock did not respond for a few seconds; then he held one arm out, pointing further out to sea. She could dimly make out Lestrade, at least, treading water against the outgoing tide, clutching Derrick Rice across his chest with one arm. Derrick was alive and literally kicking, grasping, scratching against Lestrade, who seemed to be trying to tend his throat with his free hand. She submerged and swam over, until she was close enough that Derrick, purposely or not, rammed one elbow into her cheek. She grasped at his arm and held it down under the water; at the same time she curled one leg up and pulled off her sock, then used it to staunch the bleeding wound on Derrick's throat. He growled at her – a reassuring sound, since he couldn't have made it if it'd severed his vocal cords or carotid artery.
Stupid prick can't even off himself properly.
"Hey," she barked at him. "Cut it out or I'll break both your arms. And stay with it. I didn't just jump into the Atlantic so you could bloody die on me."
Another growling noise, but whether it was cold or blood loss, Derrick was winding down like a child's toy. His fingers, trying to pry Lestrade's arm off his chest, were clumsy and weak.
"Donovan," Lestrade got out through chattering teeth. "Dyer. Where is he?"
But she was already looking around for Dyer, as well as she could in the darkness, with the salt sea burning her eyes. No sign of him.
"Jake!"
How far could he have gone? He'd jumped in at the same spot she had, and every Metropolitan detective had to prove themselves a competent swimmer.
And then she remembered. Marvin the Mako shark, drawn by the smell of human blood, had been caught less than a week ago in Cornish waters. These waters.