"On the morning of the 16th, the sailboat that circumnavigated Sansha Island returned to Hong Kong between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. on the 17th. The outbound journey takes forty hours, and the return journey takes only twenty-four hours, and that's because the south wind turns into a tailwind.

Xiao Long's sailboat was much later than scheduled, and the club members were very worried. At that moment, he staggered back with the Seabird in a feeble steer. Everyone was in a mess, and when Xiao Long, who was weak and weak, was lifted from the sailboat onto the trestle, he said that his partner Tian Lang fell into the water due to a violent turn of sails, and as soon as he said the location of the fall, he immediately fell to the ground and passed out. "

After listening to Director Yuan's explanation, the criminal policemen continued to ask: "You said that the sailboats became messy when they came to the open ocean, and at that time, could they still see the sailboats at close range to each other?" ”

"The participants are all 20-foot sailboats, and the sails on the mast are about seven meters high. As a result, sailboats in close proximity can see each other's white sails. But after four hours, even the shape of the white sail was no longer visible. Even the seven-meter-high white sails could not be seen clearly because of the high waves. This is very different from sailing on quiet water, especially when the 70-hour round-trip course between Ping'an Port and Sansha Island takes 70 hours! "

"So, even if one of the sailboats has an accident, the others don't necessarily know, right?"

"Yes, not necessarily, as happened this time, although the Seabird sailing boat turned its sail violently, the other sailing boats were still not aware at all!"

When Director Yuan said this, he gave a detailed explanation of the violent turning of sails that even a layman criminal police could understand.

"Was the accident caused by the wrong way to steer the wheel?" Tian Chunda asked.

"That can't be generalized, the steering in order to change direction, as I said earlier, is because the mainsail that protrudes outwards is subject to a sudden headwind that is suddenly violent, and it may be caused by force majeure."

"Although it may be caused by force majeure, there is some slight mistake in the steering."

"Maybe there is, but it can't just be said to be a mistake, because the helmsman can't expect a sudden headwind."

Director Yuan emphasized this, as if he was deliberately protecting the possibility of steering mistakes.

"After the sailboat Seabird caused a violent sail turning incident, causing Tian Lang to fall into the sea, you said that Xiao Long hurriedly manipulated the sailboat to carry out search and rescue around the place where he fell into the water. Then it takes a lot of time to find it. ”

"As I said, you can't install engines during sailing races. In this regard, it does make it more difficult to steer and handle the sails. Xiao Long also reflected afterwards, and at that time, it was the best policy to directly control the sailboat to return, and notify the rescue boat to quickly sail to the place of the accident as soon as possible, but seeing that Tian Lang fell into the water and returned to Hong Kong without rescue, it was morally intolerable. "

The conversation quickly shifted to the body of Tian Lang, who had fallen into the sea due to a violent turn of sail, and two days later the body had drifted to the end of the peninsula, just a kilometer south of the port where the sailboat would be the decisive point.

"It is said that Tian Lang has a wound on the back of his head, which was caused by the rebound of the white sail lower truss due to the violent turning of the sail?" Officer Tian Chunda asked.

"Yes. The mainsail spun violently against the headwind, and the thick trusses that held the mainsail together rotated, and the person who was hit head-on was vulnerable. The director replied.

"Did the medical examiner say after the autopsy that the back head injury was a fatal blow?"

No, he said the wound wasn't necessarily fatal. After Tian Lang fell into the sea, he was most likely drowned because he was forced to drink a lot of seawater, and he was unable to move his hands and feet after suffering such a serious injury, and even if he was not injured, few people survived when he fell into the sea on that occasion. "

"The sail boom of the Seabird is broken, right?" Tian Chunda asked.

"We checked the boom, but it wasn't broken, but there was a crack!"

"Can that rift be artificial?"

"Artificial? Unreasonable, whether it is a natural flaw caused by a violent sail turn, please ask an expert to know the reason at a glance! ”

"How many years has Xiao Long been at the helm of sailboats?"

"For more than three years, his technique is intermediate, but his steering wrist is undoubtedly outstanding among novices."

"So, he's at the right helm."

"Of course! His steering skills are reliable, because he is participating in ocean sailing competitions, and we have all fully discussed whether he is qualified or not. ”

In short, after listening to the above introduction by the director of the club, whether it is Xiao Long's sailing boat or his partner's unfortunate death, there is nothing unnatural.

According to the analysis of the criminal police, the time of the crime may be the two periods when Xiao Long operated the sailboat at sea and was hospitalized in the ward. In the face of the above situation, it seems impossible. Detective Tian Chunda and Detective Hao Dong had to completely give up their slim expectations.

The investigation of Wu Ying's murder had to be put on hold because it stopped.

Officer Tian Chunda and Criminal Officer Hao Dong returned to Nanguang City listlessly. According to the answers of the two parties, although they had planned to interrogate Xiao Long, they didn't even have the courage to face it directly.

Tian Chunda kept thinking: The married woman who opened a room in a hotel in Dongyang with her extramarital lover said goodbye to each other on the second night, and left a suitcase in the guest room, but when she returned to Nanguang City, she became a corpse and appeared in the woods, is this possible?

At the time, her newly divorced husband, Xiao Long, was sailing the 20-foot-long sailboat Seabird, and she and her partner, Tian Lang, were watching the sloping horizon and hearing the sound of the sails, while enjoying a droplet shower from the waves. What happened to each of the two sides, although the time is highly consistent, is separated by a space of absolute distance.

No one knows where Wu Ying was at the time of the unfortunate accident when the sailboat operated by Xiao Long hit Tian Lang and fell into the water due to a violent turn of sail at sea, but it is certain that she was on land, and there is an unreachable space distance from the Seabird sailboat.

Even so, Officer Tian Chunda and Criminal Police Hao Dong still had dark clouds floating in their hearts that could not be dispersed. Although Director Yuan's easy-to-understand explanation was understandable even to the laymen, his mood was still not as fundamentally clear as the sunny weather.

The reason for this is that they both realized that there was a vague strange connection between Wu Ying, who disappeared from the rooftop square, and the Seabird sailboat accident where Tian Lang fell into the sea and died.

Inside, they are repeatedly experimenting with unnatural and unreasonable steering movements, repeatedly searching for the adhesive on it.

Director Yuan of the sailing club said that the violent turning of the sail is force majeure, and he is also a club executive, of course, he wants to comfort the sailing players. Despite that, he tactfully hinted to the police that the violent sail spinning was also the result of a few percent steering errors.

Steering errors can also be human-caused. And it was on the sea that no one could see, and there were only two parties on the sailboat......

The two detectives set their eyes on this, and they were not completely hopeful and expectant, so they thought slowly.

Despite this, no one can determine whether it was complete negligence or complete forgery, because there were no eyewitnesses, and judging from the state after the accident, no matter which case is inferred, it is Xiao Long's own words, and he will not give an explanation against himself.

Officer Tian Chunda thought: Can't you speculate from the perspective of Tian Lang's corpse that it is caused by which circumstance? So he led the young Hao Dong criminal police to Ping'an Port again.

The Heian Port police keep all the photos of the bodies that died in the recent accident, and there are photos of Tian Lang's body in the file. Tian Lang, who was lying on a straw mat, was naked and photographed from all angles. The most important thing is the photo taken from the back, where there is a laceration on the back of the head caused by a violent bump, like a headscarf wrapped around the front side of the back of the head. Although the two detectives did not know much about the identification of corpses, it was clear at a glance that the bump was not caused by a simple blow with a wooden stick.

Police in Ping'an Harbor said that the bump did not cause fatal injuries, and that his vital signs were normal when he fell into the sea, and the cause of death was drowning. This is a more detailed confirmation than the commentary I've heard before. Of course, it is impossible to tell from this photo whether the violent sail turning that led to Tian Lang's death was caused by Xiao Long's negligence in steering or forgery.

The young criminal police officer Hao Dong was still staring at the photo of Tian Lang's body. Officer Tian Chunda left the file shelf where the corpse's photo files were kept, and walked towards the window, looking out the window at the seemingly cool blue sky, as if he was tired and rested.