heads that this was murder? It’s going to be a lot harder to convince them that it wasn’t.”
He sounded so easy and reasonable, all of us on the same side working it out together, I almost wished I could give him what he was after. “I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t a clue.”
“You’re sure. Because this isn’t the time to muck about.”
“I don’t. I’m not.”
Rafferty left that for a minute, in case I changed my mind. When I didn’t, he sighed regretfully. “All right. Then, like I said, we’ve got nothing to say whether it was accident, suicide or murder. Except we also found this. Near his right arm.” He swiped at his phone again and laid it on the table in front of me.
White background, a right-angled ruler in one corner. In the middle was a long, complicated black squiggle. It took me a moment to work out what it was: some kind of cord, tied in a loop at each end.
“What is it?” I asked.
He shrugged. “No way to know for sure. Any ideas?”
The first thing that sprang to mind was our childhood creations, complicated rigs for shuttling notes and supplies, hours of climbing and arguing and testing and one time a branch had broken and an entire illicit apple tart had landed smack on Susanna’s head . . . “We used to rig up ropes across the garden,” I said, “when we were kids. Like, to pass stuff between windows and trees and our tent? That could have, maybe that fell down the hole?”
Kerr made a faint noise that could have been a snort, but when I looked over he was doodling away. “Could have,” Rafferty said, politely. “Except if this went in there years before Dominic did, you’d expect it to be under him. Not up by his arm. Wouldn’t you?”
“Maybe. I guess.”
“I would, anyway. Any other ideas?”
“Maybe . . .” I didn’t want to say it but it was inescapable, the two loops— “I mean, it sounds crazy but handcuffs? Like, someone used that to tie Dominic up? Or he was planning on tying up someone else?”
“Not bad,” Rafferty said—thoughtful, rubbing one ear, cocking his head to examine the photo. “There’s about sixty centimeters of cord between those loops, though. That’s not going to restrain anyone too well. Unless—” His head snapping up, eureka, finger pointing at me, Can you get it?
“I guess it could’ve gone around his waist?” I said. “Or around, like, a tree or something?”
Rafferty sighed ruefully, deflating. “That’s what I was thinking, for a second there. Now that I look at it again, though . . . See the knots? For cuffs, you’d want slipknots, right? So that if he struggled, the cuffs would tighten. Those there, those are poacher’s knots. Very secure, won’t slide, won’t pull undone even on a slippery rope, won’t shake loose if they’re unloaded, won’t lower the rope’s breaking point. Someone wanted that cord to take a lot of strain, but they didn’t want the loops tightening.”
“It’s mad, the things you learn on this job,” Kerr said, leaning in for a look. “I’d never heard of a poacher’s knot before.”
“You need to spend more time on boats,” Rafferty told him, grinning. “I could tie a poacher’s knot by the time I was eight. You ever sail, Toby?”
“A bit. My uncle Phil and aunt Louisa, they’ve got a boat; we used to go out with them when we were kids, but I never really got into it—” I didn’t like the feel of this. “What is that thing?”
“No more guesses?”
“No. I’m all out.”
“Like I said, too early to know for sure. But personally,” Rafferty said, reaching out to delicately adjust the phone so it was exactly parallel to the table edge, “personally, I think it’s a homemade garrote.”
I stared at him.
“One of the loops goes around each of your palms.” He held up his hands, closed them into fists. “You cross your arms, like this. And then—” Out of nowhere, fast as a leopard, he lunged sideways behind Kerr, flung a loop of imaginary cord over Kerr’s head and jerked his fists apart. Kerr clutched his throat, dropped his jaw, bugged his eyes. The whole thing was so brutal and so astonishing that I sent my chair scudding back from the table, nearly going over sideways, before I could stop myself.
“Then if you can take him down backwards,” Rafferty said—over Kerr’s head to me, fists still clenched, arms taut—“even better. A kick to the back of