Blood on the Cowley Road (DI Susan Holden 1)

‘We went to visit Martin Mace’s house. In Bedford Street. A rather nice three-bedroomed terraced house. Well, that’s how an estate agent would describe it, though the third bedroom was very small and had been turned into an office-cum-shrine.’

‘A shrine?’ her mother said.

‘To Oxford United. Photos of players all over the walls. And scarves and football shirts displayed as if they were pieces of art. Or at least they had been. Only someone had been in and ripped a lot of it dow

n from the walls, and the drawers of the desk had been tipped upside down, and paper was scattered everywhere. Whoever it was had been round the whole house. Clothes were all over the bedroom floor, and the living-room was a right mess.’

‘Do you know what the intruder was looking for?’

Susan Holden uttered a sound that was somewhere between a screech and a laugh. ‘For God’s sake, Mother, if I knew that then the chances are that I would know who the killer was and I’d have arrested him – or her – and I bloody well wouldn’t be prowling round here like a cat on a hot tin roof.’

Jane Holden, untypically, went silent, stunned by the ferocity of her daughter’s onslaught. Susan, perhaps embarrassed by her own tirade, turned away and again looked out of the window.

‘Stupid question,’ her mother said apologetically. ‘Stupid, stupid question.’

‘Anyway,’ Susan said emphatically, now in control again, ‘after that we went round to Jake Arnold’s flat. I guess we should have done that before, but there always seemed to be more pressing matters to attend to, and of course it too had been turned over. Only the kitchen had survived largely unscathed, but elsewhere the floors were covered with clothes, papers and God know’s what. So, as you can see, it’s been a pretty bloody day.’

Mrs Holden smiled in sympathy at her daughter, and racked her brain for something positive and practical she could say. ‘Well,’ she said cautiously, ‘I suppose that does at least prove one thing.’

Her daughter looked at her sharply. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The two men’s homes have been searched. That as good as proves that their death’s are connected, in fact that they were killed by the same person.’

‘Or persons,’ Susan corrected.

‘Quite,’ she replied meekly, and waited for her daughter to say something else.

Susan turned back to the window and pulled the curtains across. ‘I need a whisky,’ she said, and began to walk over to the kitchen without waiting for permission.

It was only when they were both settled down to their drinks – Susan had poured herself a double on the rocks, while for her mother she had poured a bare single and then drowned it with soda – that Susan returned to the subject that was preoccupying all their thoughts.

‘The intruder, the killer in fact, must have been concerned that Mace and Arnold might have had something in their possession that would have linked them to him or her.’

‘You mean like a diary, or an appointments calendar?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you didn’t find one?’

‘No, but we’re pretty damn sure that there had been a calendar in Jake Arnold’s kitchen. There’s a nail there with nothing hanging on it.’

‘Let me guess!’ her mother said eagerly. ‘There was a square of lighter paint, and around it the wall was darker, from dust.’

‘Hey, you’ve missed you vocation!’ Susan said, genuinely impressed.

‘Well, I’m not a moron, you know,’ she replied firmly. ‘I’ve done enough cleaning in my time to know that!’

‘Of course you have,’ Susan replied, somewhat chastened.

‘But there was no such patch on any of Mace’s walls?’

‘No.’

‘Maybe he had a diary?’

‘Almost certainly, I’d say,’ her daughter agreed. ‘He was a self-employed lorry-driver, so he must have kept some record of what jobs he had when, but there was no sign of one so we are assuming it was found and taken by the intruder.’

‘Unless he kept it in his lorry?’