Trina shook her head. ‘I suppose no one thought to tell him. Or they did, but he decided he didn’t want to interfere. One of the guests raised the banner and dropped it, and we were off. I took the lead straight away, but Hightower was keeping up. We were about halfway around when it happened. We were driving through a channel between the shore and an outcrop of rocks, the setting sun in our eyes, and boom.’

Trina clapped her hands together. The top joint of the middle finger of her left hand was missing, the stump capped with a silvery scar.

She said, ‘I spotted the skiff and turned hard to starboard. Nearly heeled over. Hightower either didn’t see it or tried to swerve and didn’t make it. When I turned back I saw the bow of the skiff going under, and crab pots bobbing on the chop. I jumped in and found the two bodies.’

‘Both were dead,’ Ysbel said, thinking about Goodwill’s suggestion that Clemency had drowned rather than being killed outright.

‘By the time I found them,’ Trina said. ‘It wasn’t easy. There was a fierce current.’

‘Did Joyous Hightower help you in any way?’

‘He helped me get the bodies aboard my boat. One, from the look of his injuries, was beyond saving. I tried and failed to revive the other.’

‘Clemency,’ Goodwill said, the word as heavy as stone.

‘Yes, Clemency. I cleared his airway and gave him mouth-to-mouth, pounded his chest. Worked for I don’t know how long, but he was gone. It was growing dark, so we headed back to the dock.’

Ysbel said, ‘Did you know that natives fished the waters around the island?’

‘I knew that Firststar leased the island from the local community; I didn’t know about fishing rights. But the race was my idea, so I suppose,’ Trina said, looking directly at Ysbel, ‘that I must share some of the blame.’

‘The bailiff’s interviews with the other guests and Firststar’s servants confirmed her story, and I checked her background,’ Ysbel told her boss. ‘And she does have an impressive history of messing about in boats. Started out in dinghy-sailing competitions at age eight, graduated to speedboat racing and won the championship three years in a row, then took up ocean sailing. Made several long solo voyages, including one from the Gathering Place to Australia that gave new life to the argument for colonisation.’

‘I remember it,’ Mitkos said. ‘It was ruled that it should be left for the natives to find, but the vote was very close. So her story about the accident holds up – she tried her best to save the victims – and she’s admitted she should share the blame. What about the bailiff? Where is he going with this?’