Blood on the Cowley Road (DI Susan Holden 1)

It wasn’t the reporter.

‘Mother!’ she replied.

‘Is this a bad time?’

‘No!’ she lied. Three unexplained deaths, two of them unquestionably murder. Several leads, but no clear pattern to them. Junior staff looking to her for inspiration and guidance. Of course, it was a bad time! But, curiously, Holden found herself relieved to hear her mother’s voice.

‘We’ve been thinking about you, Doris and I have.’

‘Well, that’s good of you,’ she replied.

‘And praying for you, of course.’

‘Of course,’ her daughter echoed. She didn’t believe in prayer – not really – but it was ridiculously comforting to know that these two old women had been spending their time praying for her. After all, what sane person would not like to be prayed for?

‘So, any progress, then?’ her mother asked eagerly.

‘If you mean by that, have we arrested anyone, or are we about to arrest anyon

e, the answer is no. There’s been no spectacular break through.’ She spoke firmly, as if she was a parent lecturing a somewhat dippy child. But of course the thoughts of stern parents do not always match their outward demeanour. And tapping away inside her head was a question that was becoming more insistent by the minute. What about Blunt and Sarah Johnson?

‘Well, there will be,’ came the confident reply. ‘We have asked the Lord to show you the truth, and he will not refuse the prayers of those who cry out in faith to him.’

‘I am busy, Mother,’ her daughter said hastily, suddenly keen to disengage. A born-again Christian mother. God, was that what she had been landed with?

‘Remember what I said this morning,’ Mrs Holden said, ignoring her daugher’s alleged business. She had never been a woman to be swayed from her objective. ‘Mace and Sarah Johnson. They are the key to the mystery. I just know they are.’

‘Is that what God told you?’ her daughter replied waspishly.

From the other end of the phone there came a gasp that was fully audible to the younger woman, and she felt immediate shame at the cheapness of her own remark. There followed only silence, as each waited for the other to make the next move. Eventually it was the older woman who spoke.

‘We will continue to pray for you,’ she said firmly. ‘Goodbye!’

‘Guv! We’ve found a link.’

It was a bare two minutes since Holden mère and Holden fille had terminated their conversation. The latter looked up at the intruders, irritation and mayonnaise smeared across her face. Her right hand brandished two-thirds of a tuna mayonnaise sandwich, the first third of which was wedged irrevocably inside her mouth. Talking was briefly out of the question, so she waved the two young puppies that stood eagerly in her doorway towards the chairs.

‘We could come back in a few minutes,’ WPC Lawson said in an only slightly apologetic tone. The cat that got the cream, Holden decided, as the animal analogies came thick and fast. She shook her head, returned the uncommitted part of the sandwich to its plastic triangle, and concentrated several seconds on chewing. Then a sip of coffee, and she looked up again at Lawson and Wilson.

‘OK,’ she said, ‘Tell me about it.’

‘As you know, Guv,’ Wilson started, ‘we’ve been searching the homes of Sarah Johnson, Martin Mace, and Jake Arnold. Mace was a dyed-in-the-wool supporter. Went to nearly every home and away game. The two guys you interviewed at the Kassam stadium before the game, Sam Sexton and Al Smith, they were his best mates and it looks like they always sat together. In the case of home games, that was always in the Oxford Mail stand. He kept a programme from every game he went to, and the tickets. He missed just four games last season, two in early September – holiday we reckon – and two in early December – more holiday, or maybe he was ill. However, Jake is a very different story. He went to just six games. One in January and one in February, both home games. Then Leyton Orient away in March. Two more home games in April. And lastly the away game at Wrexham on 5 May.’

‘And did he sit in the Oxford Mail stand too?’ asked Holden.

‘No, Guv. The South Stand. The connection isn’t with the home games.’

‘So they sat together at the away games, then?’

‘One moment, Guv,’ Wilson said, trying to wrest back control of the story. ‘We found just three programmes in Sarah Johnson’s flat. For the same two home games in April that Jake Arnold went to, and the away game at Wrexham in May.’

‘So Jake and Sarah went to the same games,’ Holden summarized. ‘So they maybe went together.’

‘That seems likely. We know Jake bought two tickets for those April home games, whereas he bought only one ticket for the games he went to in January and February.’

Holden leant back and surveyed Wilson and Lawson. Was this all they had? Was this what they meant when they had said they had found a connection, because she sure as hell needed more than a pattern of Jake and Sarah building up some sort of relationship over football. She needed something, if not concrete, then at least solid.

‘That Jake and Sarah had some sort of personal relationship isn’t exactly news,’ she said quietly.