‘I wish I could tell you that, but no, not yet. We’ve taken the photo files of them off your camera card, so we’ll be able to pick them out at the university easily enough.’ If they were regular troublemakers, the Proctor would know them by sight. Otherwise, I didn’t mention the reality that there was probably no way in hell the university would let us have access to the students’ identification photographs for a misdemeanour as minor as hassling a big cat. It came into the pushing-steaming-smelly-stuff-uphill-with-a-rake category.

I handed the camera card over to him. He didn’t look all that grateful.

‘If I’d known it was going to take you guys this long, I would have gone down and found them myself. God Almighty, we end up having protesters here accusing us of being cruel to animals, then they ignore the stupid buggers who tried to kill one of them by feeding it a can of Coke. Some people live in bloody fantasyland.’

‘How is the lion?’ I asked. ‘Did they do it any harm?’ I imagined the poor beast had enough hassles in its highly restricted life without being stressed out by drunken students.

‘Yeah, he’s fine. Fortunately, he’s got more sense than those stupid buggers, and left the can alone. Lucky for them.’ The implied threat didn’t need elaboration.

‘Well, let’s hope the rest of your stay here is uneventful and you can get on with the business of putting on a show. No more visitations other than the paying kind.’

8

If this was modern policing at its best, it was a farce. My sense of peeve at being shuffled from one pointless task to another had been heightened by the fact I’d had to wait for almost an hour just to get near a bloody computer. DI Johns, in yet another transparent effort at keeping me from anything useful, had put me on to the riveting job of checking through the open murder enquiries nationwide, to see if there were any connections. Okay, maybe it had a small degree of usefulness to it, but bloody hell, an hour to get to a computer? Even the local kindergartens had a better computer-to-kids ratio than we had here. I bet the Minister of Police didn’t have to share with four others.

I also knew that at this moment, while I was swanning around on the dross, Smithy was interviewing Dr Penny Hawkins and I would very much have liked to sit in on that one. The whole idea of a female killer was somehow thrilling, in a sick kind of a way. The likelihood was zilch, but you never knew. Smithy would have to give me a full report later – he wouldn’t be allowed home until he did.