Mesmerised by this marine ballet, Sébastien Moralès quickly grabbed his rod and bucket and hurried towards the solitary angler.
Moralès and Lefebvre made their way down a staircase at the rear of the building and found themselves in the forensic-science laboratory. The place was small but well equipped, and impeccably clean. The two forensic technicians Moralès had spoken with when the men in the Roberts family brought the Close Call II back to shore were standing at a stainless-steel table, examining the severed rope that had been attached to Angel Roberts’ legs, the anchor chain, the bright-red lobster trap and the blankets inside.
Lefebvre was happy to let Moralès take the lead. Given the choice, he would have stayed in his office.
‘Where do we start?’ the detective asked.
‘Hmm. The rope,’ said one of the technicians.
‘Tied at the front, quite tight, around the calves, with what you’d call a bowline.’
‘A bowline?’
‘A common sailor’s knot.’
The younger of the technicians pulled out a rolling chair, sat and slipped a length of rope, similar to the one on the steel table, behind his legs.
‘Could she have tied it herself?’
‘Hmm.’ The technician stretched his legs out, pulled on both ends of the rope and tied the said knot with dexterity and ease.
‘Good job,’ said Lefebvre as the other technician gratified his colleague with a proud smile.
Moralès peered at the knot. ‘Do you have to be a sailor to be able to do that?’
‘Or a climber. One thing’s for sure, you’d have to know that knot well to be able to tie it under pressure – in other words, if it’s pitch-dark, you’re on a boat in the rolling swell and you’re about to kill a woman.’
‘Hmm.’
‘Especially as it’s not a slipknot.’
‘Which means?’
‘It won’t slip.’
‘Hmm.’
Moralès didn’t understand.
‘It won’t tighten when it’s pulled. With a knot like that, someone who didn’t know what they were doing might easily make the eye too big, and then the rope could have easily pulled right off whatever it was tied around – in this case, the victim’s legs.’
‘OK. So we should assume a certain familiarity with that knot.’
‘Hmm.’
‘Could she have tied it herself?’
The young technician nodded. ‘I’m sure she did. There’s a direction to this knot. The victim was sitting on the deck of the lobster trawler, on the port side, leaning against the wheelhouse. Logically, a killer would have been crouching in front of her. In which case the knot would have been tied in the other direction.’
The technician passed the rope to Moralès. He saw what the man meant. The knot looked like it had been tied the same way as the one on the table. Either Angel had tied the knot in the rope herself before putting her hand behind her back, or someone deliberately tied the knot that way to make it look like she’d killed herself. The detective turned back to the table. The technician stood and followed.
‘Right, now the anchor chain. Nothing to flag there. It was probably already attached to the anchor line with this swivel. The line and chain were taken from the anchor well. The lobster trap had never been used before that night. The paint on the trap is the same as we found on the hull. The ropes of the funnel inside the trap were cut with a knife to make space for the three blankets. All three are old catalogne blankets. You know, the traditional kind woven from rags.’
‘Hmm,’ the older technician said.
‘We wondered why the victim would have used the lobster trap instead of the anchor,’ the younger technician continued.
‘Perhaps the anchor was too heavy,’ Moralès suggested.
‘We thought about that, but the trap was weighted with a cement block and it’s more cumbersome.’
‘Hmm. I think the trap has a sentimental value.’
The younger technician turned to his colleague to acknowledge his contribution.
‘Perhaps. Now, as well as the chain, there was a frayed length of thin cord attached to the top of the lobster trap. The other day, we found the other end of that cord on the lobster trawler. Attached at the stern.’ He pointed to both lengths of thin cord on the table. ‘It snapped under stretching force.’
‘What do you mean?’
The two forensic technicians exchanged a knowing look.
‘We think the trap was suspended from the stern of the boat, over the water, with this cord. It stayed there until the seawater soaked into the blankets. When they got wet, the material became heavier…’
‘And the cord snapped,’ Moralès deduced.
‘Hmm.’
‘We’ll have to go back to the boat to test that theory. We need to know the height of the gunwale to see how it compares to the length of the cord.’
‘We can go there now,’ Moralès said.
‘OK. And regarding the dress, we didn’t find any signs of tearing, other than the scrap at the back that snagged on the bolt heads.’
As the technician spoke, he and his colleague had gathered their equipment and were eager to get going. ‘Are you ready?’
Lefebvre looked at his watch. ‘Listen, Moralès, I’m going to leave you to it. I’ll take care of the lab report and see you at dinner time, all right?’
Moralès took a photo of the trap and blankets with his phone. Then he called Jacques Forest to see about borrowing his key to the lobster boat, and followed the forensics technicians out the door.
Moralès was surprised to see his son’s car was the only one parked by the Grande-Grave wharf. Then he noticed a familiar pickup truck beside the kayak rental shack. The rain had stopped, but the sky was far from inviting. The detective parked his own car and got out. He made his way over to the figures on the wharf, who were watching the seals cavorting in the water.
‘When they’re thrashing around like that, it’s usually a shoal of mackerel,’ the other angler told Sébastien.
Suddenly, one line pulled tight, then the other. The anglers swiftly reeled them in.
‘Look at that, son, what did I tell you? There’s a shoal of mackerel down there! You’ll see, they’re a solid and skittish kind of fish, they’ll tug at your line. I’ll have to take you out for a canoe in the bay. When you paddle through a shoal like that, the fish bash themselves up against the fibreglass, it’s quite something.’
Son. That’s what he had said. As he approached, Moralès found himself envying the man who was sharing this moment with his son. Fishing like this looked fantastic. The mackerel had silvery blue stripes, and the unexpected appearance of the sun on this greyest of days made them dazzling, even below the water’s surface. They looked like shards of shimmering glass as they flirted with the lines. Joaquin reflected that the men were pulling glimmers of light, not just fish, out of the sea.
‘Hi, Dad! Are you coming fishing?’
Jacques Forest greeted him in turn.
‘I can’t. I’ve got the forensic technicians in tow. We’re going aboard the Close Call II.’
Forest nodded as Sébastien tried to unhook his first mackerel with a pair of pliers. With such an abundance of food, the seals had let him get away with one.
Moralès walked up to Forest and turned his phone towards him. The deckhand, encumbered by the line he was holding in one hand and the key to the boat in the other, set his rod down.
‘Is that the lobster pot and the blankets that were on board?’ Moralès asked.