He gave me a bum shove that sent me sideways. ‘Not even going to grace that one with an answer,’ he said. ‘She could have been a too-significant other, or perhaps not. Perhaps we’re putting too much weight on relationships here. What about her cellphone records? Was she texting anyone other than friends, family and her boyfriend?’

‘No, no messages to an unidentified lover, unfortunately. But that doesn’t mean anything. Hell, lots of people have two phones now, using different networks. She could have had a second phone, dedicated to him, for all we know. He could have taken it when he killed her.’

‘I suppose that’s possible.’

‘Well, I’m certain it had to be someone she knew, someone she knew intimately. There’s no other signs of a tussle, other than at the end, so whoever it was lured her down to the river with no resistance.’

‘What if they’d carried her down? What if she was already tied up and unconscious and they carried her to that place to dump her?’

‘For a start, someone would have noticed. The walkway is often used by students or joggers, and it would be too far to carry someone. You haven’t been to the crime scene, have you?’ Paul shook his head. ‘She was a standard-sized girl, probably around sixty kilograms, so even someone with your build would find it difficult to carry her the hundred metres or so from Gore Place to the spot at the river. And it would be too risky. The evidence all points to a struggle at the end, skid marks in the grass, head smashed on the rock, that kind of thing. She was murdered there.’

There were simultaneous sighs. We looked at each other and exchanged smiles.

‘Where to next?’ he said. I was pretty sure he wasn’t asking about the case, but I wasn’t ready to address that other issue right now.

‘Look at the circles she was moving in, where she could have met this man.’

‘You’re still assuming it’s a man.’

‘Honey,’ I said to him, in a jokey voice, ‘if it was a woman lover, she was hardly going to need the contraceptives, was she?’

‘So I’m your honey now?’

‘No,’ I said and moved back to the point. ‘She was involved with the university, her church and her friends and flatmates. I think I’ll let someone else tackle the walking on eggshells involved in finding the possibility of a lover in her church.’

‘Yeah, that would take a special kind of subtlety you lack.’

I gave him a thump on the arm for being so rude. ‘That’s ripe coming from Mr Overt Flirt. You wouldn’t know the meaning of the word subtle.’

‘It worked on you.’