Uncle Phil made a ridiculous parody of checking his invisible calendar. ‘Yes, you’re right, here it is under Saturday the twelfth, national Pick-on-Sam-Shephard Day.’

‘Well, there you go. There’s nothing like coming home from a hard day at work, dealing with dead people, and dumb-nuts, and then getting bullied in your own home.’ I took a dramatic swig of my wine.

‘Bravo, bravo, dinner and a show,’ said Aunty Jude, giving me polite applause.

‘Thank you, thank you, now pass me the bottle.’

‘Must have been a bad day.’ Maggs got the understatement-of-the-day award. ‘So it was a university student, is that what they’re saying?’ she asked, bringing the conversation back to more serious matters.

‘It looks that way.’

‘What was her name? I hope she wasn’t one of mine.’ Phil lectured in Social and Preventive Medicine at the Medical School. It seemed almost everyone in town had some connection to the university. It swelled the local population with nigh on twenty thousand young, exuberant, and, it seemed, often drunk students every year. It was one of those love-hate relationships between the city and the students. The city loved them for the vibrancy, knowledge, culture and income they brought with them, but they hated them for some of the yahooism, excessive rubbish, broken glass and the occasional sofa-burning.

‘Her name hasn’t been released yet, probably later on tonight now the next of kin have been notified.’ That had to be one of the hardest jobs in the force. I’d had to do it on occasion and it never got any easier with experience. That was one aspect of the Mataura job I didn’t miss. There was no such thing as a gentle way to shatter someone’s world.

‘I do hope she’s no one you know, or me for that matter,’ Maggie said. ‘Everyone seems to know everyone else at the uni – or know someone who knows them. Degrees of separation and all.’

‘Ha ha, very funny,’ I said. Maggie looked confused. ‘Degrees,’ I said.

She grinned at her own cleverness. ‘Oh yeah, I am funny, and I don’t even have to try.’

‘Well when you’ve finished congratulating yourself on your wondrous humour, bearing in mind that as she was a student, along with half the population of Dunedin, it seems, we have an awful lot of people at the uni to talk to. You never know, I might end up questioning you, and you too, Uncle Phil.’

Maggie, with great flair, and intake of breath threw her hands up to her cheeks.

‘Oohh, the prospect of being interrogated by you makes me very, very nervous. I’ll have to go work out my alibi.’ Aunty Jude placed a platter of delicious-looking chicken and roasted cubed potatoes in the middle of the table, to go with the café-trendy salad already waiting. ‘But that might have to wait until after dinner.’

6