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flicked through the three flimsy sheets of paper which it held.
    ‘Bad news?’ Francis enquired.
    ‘It’s the preliminary forensic report.’
    ‘Indeed. Were there any fingerprints on the knife?’
    ‘No. Nor were there any on the window latch. The site team is now dusting all three rooms. They’ll catalogue each print they find.’
    ‘And work through a process of elimination,’ Francis said. ‘The only trouble with that is, the prints belonging to all Justin’s friends will quite legitimately be found in there.’
    ‘That’s somewhat premature, isn’t it?’ Neill Heller Caesar said. ‘You’ve no idea how many unknown prints they’ll find at this stage.’
    ‘You’re right, of course.’
    I could tell how troubled Francis was. I don’t know why. He must have been expecting negatives like that in the report: I certainly was.
    ‘You have a problem with it?’ Neill Heller Caesar asked him.
    ‘No. Not with the report. It’s the way Justin’s friends are all saying the same thing: he had no enemies. Indeed, why should he? A young man at university, what could he have possibly done to antagonize someone so?’
    ‘Obviously something.’
    ‘But it’s so out of character. Somebody must have noticed the reason.’
    ‘Perhaps they did, and simply aren’t aware of it.’
    Francis nodded reluctantly. ‘Maybe.’ He gave the detective a glance. ‘Shall we continue.’
    Interestingly from my point of view, Neill Heller Caesar elected to stay in the interview room. Maloney didn’t have any family representative sit in with him. Not that the Maloneys lacked influence; he could have had one there with the proverbial click of a finger. It made me wonder who had made the call to Neill. I scribbled a note to ask the police later. It could be guilt or, more likely, anxiety.
    Alexander Stephan Maloney was by far the most nervous of the interviewees we’d seen. I didn’t consider it to be entirely due to his friend being murdered. Something else was bothering him. The fact that anything could distract him at such a time I found highly significant. The reason became apparent soon enough. He had a very shaky alibi, claiming he was working alone in one of the laboratories in the Leighfield chemistry block.
    ‘Number eighteen,’ he said. ‘That’s on the second floor.’
    ‘And nobody saw you there?’ Gareth Alan Pitchford asked, a strong note of scepticism in his voice.
    ‘It was quarter to eleven at night. Nobody else is running long-duration experiments in there right now. I was alone.’
    ‘What time did you get back to your rooms?’
    ‘About midnight. The college lodgekeepers can confirm that for you.’
    ‘I’m sure they will. How did you get back from the laboratory to the college?’
    ‘I walked. I always do unless the weather is really foul. It gives me the opportunity to think.’
    ‘And you saw no one while you were walking?’
    ‘Of course I saw people. But I don’t know who any of them were. Strangers on a street going home to bed. Look, you can ask my professor about this. He might be able to confirm I was there when I said I was.’
    ‘How so?’
    ‘We’re running a series of carbon accumulators, they have to be adjusted in a very specific way, and we built that equipment ourselves. There are only five people in the world who’d know what to do. If he looks at it in the morning he’ll see the adjustments were made.’
    ‘I’d better have a word with him, then, hadn’t I?’ the detective said. He scrawled a short note on his pad. ‘I’ve asked all your friends this question, and got the same answer each time. Do you know if Justin had any enemies?’
    ‘He didn’t. Not one.’
    There was silence in the interview room after he left. All of us were reflecting on his blatant nerves, and his non-existent alibi. I kept thinking it was too obvious for him to have done it. Of course not all the suspects would have alibis: they didn’t part after their dinner believing they’d