‘Exactly. The college has convinced companies not to hire people without degrees, so they can squeeze tens of thousands of dollars out of parents who don’t want their kids to be unemployed. It’s a scam.’

‘Uh-huh. How would you like to get open-heart surgery from a doctor without a degree?’

‘Doctors learn at actual hospitals,’ I say. ‘The university only provides the piece of paper.’

Thistle glares at me. ‘I learned a lot at college. Made some friends for life, too.’

I want to remind her that those friends had parents who could afford the tuition fees. The kinds of friends I never got to meet. College is where the walls go up, stopping the rich and poor from ever knowing one another in more than a superficial way. But it looks like I’ve already pushed her too far.

‘Your view might be coloured by your personal experience,’ Thistle says. ‘Or lack of it.’

I feel a stab of disappointment. She was supposed to be on my side. We both grew up poor in the foster system, before she was adopted out. I knew she’d made something of herself since then, but I didn’t think she’d forgotten what it was like to be hungry.

‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘Sorry. I was just wondering if there might be a money angle to this. What’s Biggs’s salary?’

‘Eighty-eight K.’

He’ll never be a billionaire, especially not now that he’s dead. But his income was well above the average in Texas. Maybe someone thought he was worth robbing.

We reach the math department, which looks more like the art department. A garden of native shrubs surrounds the building, the windows have frosted patterns, and a teal sculpture shimmers out the front, metal twisted into smaller and smaller spiral patterns. I get the feeling that the shapes might represent fractals, but I only half know what fractals are.

Thistle leads me upstairs towards Biggs’s office. The building is quiet—I can feel how dense the concrete walls are, under a coat of pale yellow paint.

We pass a row of study nooks in the corridor. A stunning woman hovers near one of them talking to a female student. She looks like she just came from a photo shoot with Vogue. Thirty-something, her porcelain face partially curtained by gleaming blonde hair, her Barbie-doll figure wrapped in a high-waisted grey skirt and chocolate blouse. She bends over like a 1950s flight attendant, straight spine, hips back, showing a picture on her phone to the student. The student seems unable to resist a peek down the woman’s cleavage.

The woman glances at me then quickly looks away, alarmed. We’re about the same age, but I’m withered by hard living and missing a thumb—I feel suddenly guilty for even occupying the same dimension as her.

Thistle and I walk past her. When we’re out of earshot, Thistle says, ‘Was she your type?’