‘The blokes at the abattoir compete for who has the biggest blade, but they’re harmless. It’s the jobless pricks on ice you gotta worry about. Angry, paranoid lunatics slash anything that moves.’

Manolis paused in thought. ‘And where was this found again?’

‘Stickin’ out of a tree.’

‘She wasn’t cut?’

Sparrow shook his head. ‘Not from what I saw.’

Manolis made one final examination of the knife before placing it back on the desk. He wondered why it had been left at the scene.

Sparrow wheeled in the shopping trolley. ‘From the supermarket. Same place what sells the tape.’ Like the rocks, the trolley bore no distinguishing features. It was metal, slightly rusted, with swivel wheels. ‘They even left their dollar coin in the lock.’

Manolis bent down, leant in, squinted. ‘So they have.’ He tried to pull it out but couldn’t.

‘Jammed tighter than a nun’s nasty,’ said Sparrow.

‘Did you fingerprint the trolley?’

Sparrow shook his head. ‘No point. It’d be covered. We found some long strands of hair twisted around the bottom, probably hers. But that’s it.’

‘Was she carrying anything, any personal belongings? Purse or wallet or keys or phone?’

‘Nope.’

Manolis stopped. ‘Doesn’t it seem strange she’d go out without at least one of those items?’

Sparrow thought a moment. ‘Not really, I wander round town all the time without any of those things. Maybe it’s only strange in the city.’

‘And you say someone pushed her to the oval in the trolley? She was probably drugged, unconscious or semiconscious.’

Sparrow nodded. ‘There was a trail of flattened grass from her body to the trolley, which was tipped on its side.’

Manolis paused. He knew the answer but still asked the question. ‘What about DNA samples, can we collect those?’

Sparrow gave a small sarcastic laugh. ‘Sure, mate. Absolutely we can. I’ll send them down to the boys in our forensic lab, chop-chop. They’ll work around the clock to get us an answer.’

Manolis considered the resources at his disposal in the city: controlled laboratory conditions, microscopes, sequencers, all state-of-the-art machines, cutting edge. He was certain that evidence from regional homicides was usually sent to the city for DNA testing. But it was likely a lengthy process, and Sparrow, in a roundabout way, was right: the trolley could have been contaminated with half the town’s prints and DNA.

‘So, that’s it?’ Manolis asked. ‘That’s all there was?’

‘The rest was as nature intended,’ Sparrow replied.

Manolis picked up the thin manila folder that he’d carefully balanced on one corner of the desk. He opened it and saw a collection of square photos of poor quality, randomly arranged in different orientations, some on their side or upside-down, others backwards.

‘What’s this?’ He squinted. ‘Are these… are these Polaroids?’