“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 his knee, or just a good pull”—miming it, Kerr following along—“and he’s going down, his chin’s folding over the cord, his whole body weight’s added to the pressure. And just like that . . .”
Kerr let his head drop limply, tongue lolling. “The end,” Rafferty said. He opened his hands and relaxed back into his chair. “Quick, quiet and effective. The victim can’t even shout for help.”
“And no blood,” Kerr said, reaching for his water glass, “not with a cord that thick. A wire would cut his throat, you’re left with a whole mess to clean up, but that cord’s just going to block off the air flow. Might take a minute longer, but less hassle in the long run.”
“The best part is,” Rafferty said, “you don’t have to be bigger or stronger than your victim. He could be a horse of a man, but as long as you get the jump on him and you’ve got half-decent upper-body strength, he’s fucked.”
They both smiled at me, across the table. “Honest to God,” Rafferty said, “I’m amazed people aren’t garroting each other every day of the week. It’s easy as pie.”
“But,” I said. My heartbeat was going like a woodpecker, high in my throat. “You don’t know for sure that that”—the photo—“even has anything to do with, with Dominic. It could be from when we were kids. Maybe it got snagged on a, something inside the hole—”
Rafferty considered that, turning the phone between his fingers, frowning at it. “You think that’s likely?”
“Well. It’s got to be more likely than a, a garrote. All the stuff you said there, I didn’t have a clue about any of that. Most people wouldn’t. How would anyone even think of it?”
“True enough,” Rafferty said, nodding. “Fair point. One problem with it being part of your kiddie games, though.”
Swiping at the phone again, long fingers, easy economical movements. “See this?”
Me leaning back against that tree trunk, cheerfully grinning away. Rafferty tapped the screen. “There’s a drawstring on your hood. Black, looks like paracord. But here . . .”
Swipe. The hoodie they’d taken away, spread on its white table. “Notice anything?”
He waited until I said it. “There’s no drawstring.”
“There isn’t. And”—swipe: the squiggle of cord—“black paracord. The length is consistent with a standard hoodie drawstring.”
There was a silence. Something had happened to the air in the kitchen: it felt magnetized, charged, humming with a buzz like a microwave’s. It took a few seconds for it to sink in: I had gone from a suspect to the suspect.
Rafferty and Kerr were both looking at me, peaceful expectant looks with no urgency, like they could wait all day to hear whatever fascinating things I had to offer.
I said, “Do I have to keep talking to you about this?”
“Course you don’t,” Rafferty said, surprised. “You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, but anything you do say will be taken down in writing and may be given in evidence. You can tell us to bugger off any time you like. Only why would you?”
If you’re ever uncomfortable with what they’re asking, my father had told us all, Phil had told us, over and over, if it ever sounds like there’s even a chance they might suspect you of anything, if they ever caution you, stop talking straightaway and ring one of us. But if there was anything else these guys might give me, anything at all, I needed it.
“Because,” I said. “It sounds like you’re saying I, that you think I killed Dominic. And I didn’t. I never touched him.”
Shaking his head: “I’m not saying you killed him. I’m saying your hoodie string was used to kill him. You can see how we need to hear what you think about that.”
I felt light-headed and utterly unreal, as if my chair and the tiles under my feet had dematerialized and I was rocking amid that humming air. “But,” I said. “But that’s all guessing. You don’t know that drawstring came from my hoodie. You don’t know it was meant for a, a garrote. You don’t know anyone used it on Dominic. And even if someone did, that doesn’t mean it was me. Because it wasn’t.”
“True,” Rafferty said, nodding. “All fair points. We don’t know anything for definite, not at this stage. Luckily for all of us, though, most of that is stuff we can prove, one way or the other. It might take a bit of time—”
“I nudged the lab,” Kerr said, aside to Rafferty in a carefully judged undertone. “They said probably this week.”
“Ah, lovely,” Rafferty said. “Not that much time, so. The way it works, right? if that cord was wrapped tight around Dominic’s neck, he’ll have left skin cells on it, all along the center length. That means DNA. It’ll be degraded, obviously, after being down a damp tree for ten years, but our techs are first-rate; they’ll still get there, it’s just taking them that bit longer. And if someone was pulling on those loops, same thing: he’ll have left skin cells all over them.”
“Hang on,” I said. I wanted just a second where I could think without their eyes on me. I wanted a smoke break. “Wait. If that was my hoodie cord, if, then my, my skin cells would be on it anyway. On the ends. Right where the loops are.”
“And,” Rafferty said, ignoring that, “we’ve tracked down the hoodie manufacturers. They’re finding us the specs on the cord they used for that model, so we can see if it’s consistent with what we’ve got. If it’s not, that doesn’t mean much either way—maybe there was one odd batch, or maybe the cord got replaced along the way—but if it’s a match, that’s interesting.”