LAST month David Holden reflected on the dangers of newsgathering and wrote: “Thank God, I have never suffered either bullets or the steel tearing into my flesh, but I have felt the boots going in and I have heard the prison door close behind me; and I know how sickening the fear of such moments can be.”

A few weeks later he was found shot through the back, stripped of all identification, laid out beside a dusty road not far from Cairo airport, a victim of the hazards he had so often described. The best that can be said is that he would appear to have felt no sickening fear. His death, whoever may have been responsible, came, by all indications, as a surprise.

Last week a massive Egyptian police operation, mounted on the orders of President Anwar Sadat, got as far as identifying a car involved in Holden’s murder. Dozens of taxi drivers, visitors, fellow passengers and possible suspects had been held, questioned and mostly released. Robbery had been virtually eliminated as a motive and the crime ascribed to the category “political”.

Holden, at 53, was at the top of his profession. What little evidence we have suggests he was relaxed – and off guard – as he arrived in Cairo from Amman on Royal Jordanian flight RJ503. Instead of jostling on the pavement with other passengers for the long queue of registered Cairo taxis, he evidently turned right, walked the 30 or so yards to the public car park – and got into an unknown car.

Major Ahmed Mukhtar Faisal thought the man was asleep when he first saw him. Around 8am on the morning of Wednesday December 7, a student in the medical faculty of Al-Azhar University telephoned the police to say that the body of a European was lying by the highway that runs beside the campus. As chief of detectives at the local police station, Faisal drove to see.

Holden was on his back, left arm by his side, right arm flung out a foot or so. His hair was sleek, his expression calm. Only when Faisal looked inside the green and black checked sports jacket did he spot the second disconcerting touch. The label had been ripped off. And someone had emptied the pockets of the dead man.

The manner of death was methodical. Holden was shot once, from behind, by a short-cartridge 9mm automatic. The range was so close, perhaps as little as 2in, that his jacket was scorched just below the left shoulder blade where the bullet entered. But the killer aimed his weapon downwards as he fired. The bullet pierced the heart. Holden died at once.

Even the calibre of weapon was economically chosen. The bullet left the body through the chest, but with such little force that police found it lodged in the folds of the polo-necked sweater he wore.

Egyptian murders tend to fall into time-honoured categories: the restoration of male honour (by killing an erring wife or daughter) or crimes passionels (both homosexual and heterosexual). Even in those categories, however, non-Arabs are rarely killed. The death by shooting of an unknown European was, therefore, rare. One of the minor mysteries of the affair is why so little then happened before The Sunday Times raised the alarm.

How did Holden get into Cairo that night? Police have interviewed every taxi driver who picked up a fare at the airport. (A policeman logs every taxi number as it draws away.) Conclusion: he was not picked up by a registered taxi.

Did he drive away with someone he met on the plane? Every one of the 128 passengers on his flight who is still in Cairo has been traced and interviewed. Conclusion: nobody remembers Holden in conversation with anyone.

Was he picked up by friends in Cairo? Methodically, one friend leading to another, police have been piecing together the network of Holden’s friends and acquaintances. They have confirmed what his colleagues knew: that his private life was irreproachable. A killing in the course of or as a result of some romantic or sexual encounter is the least likely of all the possibilities.

If the motive was political, were there any signs of men leaving the country hastily in the wake of his death? A team of men have been combing through the stacks of entry and exit papers at Cairo airport looking for any such pattern. And so on and so on. But as one of the senior men in the hunt said last week: “We have not yet found the door.”

After more than 30 years Holden’s murder remains unsolved

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