Play@YSDC

Its clear from the non comital answers that although some people know her by face, no one is really friends with her.

Liz turns back to Greg and returns to the browser on her laptop. "Let's see if she's got a webpage," she says, fingers flying across the keyboard as she searches for Shauna WIlcox. "Maybe she's on Facebook too."

Shauna has a facebook page and a flikr account, the facebook page however is fairly locked down.

Liz learns what she can from the Facebook page, then looks through the flikr account for anything of interest. "She's smart not to put too much out in public on Facebook," she comments. "Not that that does us much good."

The Flickr account is pretty innocent Shauna is in the college netball team and there are some photos from a couple of training sessions and games and from what looks like a recent holiday/college trip which includes a bunch of students and what Liz assumes are proffessors the pics are titled "Bugaa's in Malta "

"Malta, huh?" says Liz. "Maybe that trip had something to do with the Maltese Fragments." She searches online for information about the Bugaa's in Malta, starting with Wikipedia.

Greg is enjoying the pint, not really indulging in alcohol too often. He has moved his seat closer to Liz so he can watch as she does her thing and smiles. "Bet you could find anything on that thing," he commented rhetorically admiring from the side. Then he glances about to see if John has shown up yet and gives a quick glance at his watch.

After a few minutes of "googling" Liz realises 'Buggas' is probably a pun on the abbreviation of the "Brichester University's Geography and Archaeology Society" and the word buggers. The society does indeed have a project going on in Malta (now in its third year), although it doesn't seem to be directly related to the Maltese fragments (i.e. they are not working at known writing people/fragment sites etc)

At this point Greg and Liz are joined by the young Irishman John Kneesdown, who armed with a pint of lager plonks himself down on the table in front of Liz and Greg.

"Hello Greg frankly I wasn't expecting to see you again."

"Hullo," says Liz, smiling as she looks up from her laptop to focus on John. "I'm Liz, Dr, Hammer's research assistant."

Greg smiled as John joined them. He was too slow with the introduction, but he did manage to squeeze in for the return intros... "Liz, this is John Wheelsdown. He helped me the last time I was in town with some particularly strange tattoo research I was doing at the time."

Looking back to John, Greg said, "I would like to thank you for joining us, and we couldn't help but overhear about the terrible tragedy that befell Professor Gosshamm." He shook his head and fell silent a moment. "Can you tell us what happened?"

Greg shook his head and frowned. "Do you think it was a random mugging, or maybe a racially motivated act of violence?" Greg leaned in and said, "We've heard he may have been having a fling with one of his students. Perhaps they were relatives?"

Greg's eyes darted over to Liz a moment, then back to John. "Well... yes, sorry. It's just that my research and his were on parallel paths on occasion it seems. I'm concerned those people might come after me next." He leaned back and shrugged, "But then again, I've got nothing to do with Malta, and maybe it was all about the fragments." He gauged John to see if the man had any reaction to that statement. "As for the tattoos, have you learned anything about their symbolism?"

"Is there a particular Albanian subgroup that the tattoos are from?" asks Liz.

"Well as to Symbolism the tattoos are ethnic Albanian, probably Verbti, but I can't really tell you much about symbolism, I don't think the Verbti go into ritual tattooing like say the Polynesians or Maori. I'm afraid tattoos isn't really my thing."

John looks at Greg a bit strangely as though he's only just registered what Greg said "What makes you think the Professor's death had anything to do with Malta? If you know anything you should go and talk with the police, especially after all problems with the archeology department"

"We haven't found any direct connection," says Liz. "We did discover that the murderers are Albanian, Verbti to be precise, and bear tattoos much like the ones you've seen. The only link to Malta is that the tattoo designs look oddly similar to the Maltese Fragments."

"Like I said, you need to take any information you have to the police, I'm not sure they've got any real leads at the moment..." He pauses in thought. "I know the Prof's current paper was drawing in some of his more outlandish theories, about the Maltese fragments, but I can't see it as being any reason to kill him"

Greg asked, "What sort of other problems have there been in the archeological department?" He nodded to the man about the suggestion of going to the police, and nodded again in turn to Liz' response about having no real leads. "Maybe we might be able to take some time looking through his information on the fragments to see if there is anything definite we could take to the police? I'd love to help them bring the criminals to justice." No... it wasn't a direct lie. He just didn't think it was a realistic end to the situation.