Sunday morning and work was a madhouse. Under normal circumstances the detectives here would be involved in a range of activities from cheering the kids on at sports, to absorbing the Sunday paper, to snoring. A murder had upped the ante. A considerable amount had been done in the twenty-four hours since Rose-Marie Bateman’s body had been discovered, all of this while I was swanning around on my pointless, poxy pursuit at the whim of DI Johns.

Police and CIB had been out canvassing the streets, door-knocking around Rose-Marie’s flat, and the houses and flats that backed on to where she was found. They had set up stands at the Gore Place entrance and at the Botanic Garden, hoping to jog the memory of any passers-by. The story was big news on radio, but, as the Otago Daily Times didn’t do a Sunday paper, we’d have to wait until tomorrow’s issue to put out a public plea for information. It was all go, and it seemed to be going without me.