Coming, Ready or Not (D.S. Hunter Kerr Book 4) (7 page)

‘
What were my last words this morning?’ She spat out in her thick Scottish accent.

At a safe distance, on the opposite side of the desk, Hunter stood before his SIO, back
straight, hands down by his side. He’d already had his ears bullied with a tirade of vitriolic expletives for the past two minutes and he was wishing this to end.

‘
You made me look a right twat in front of the Firearms Commander.’

‘
Sorry, boss.’

‘
Sorry – sorry. Is that all you’ve got to say for yourself.’

‘
But it was a replica.’

‘
I don’t give a flying fuck whether the gun was a replica or not. You disobeyed an order.’ She pushed herself back in her chair. ‘And don’t you dare try to pull the wool over my eyes with that answer, DS Kerr. You couldn’t have known when you tackled him that the gun wasn’t real. You didn’t just put yourself in danger. You put a colleague’s life at risk as well.’

Hunter offered her his best contrite look. He just wanted to be out of here.
‘It won’t happen again, boss.’

She speared a finger towards him.
‘It had better not, because I’ll tell you here and now you’ll be off the team. Savvy? I want players not mavericks. I want people who can take orders. Do I make myself clear?’

Hunter nodded.

She took a deep breath. ‘Now get out of my office before I change my mind.’

Hunter turned towards the door.
As he opened it and stepped out onto the corridor his SIO called to him, ‘And you can make amends by doing your job and getting Adam Fields to cough.’

Hunter entered the office, faced flushed with embarrassment and smarting from his rollicking. He could feel all eyes on him as he sauntered towards his desk. As he sank down in his chair he aimed a glance across his desk to where his partner sat.

Raising her eyebrows, Grace offered back a
n ‘are you okay’ look.

Tight-
lipped, leaning across, he said in a hushed tone, ‘It’s a long time since I’ve had a bollocking like that.’

Grace shrugged her shoulders,
‘Are you surprised. If that gun had been real and given a different scenario you might not be here now.’

Dejectedly, he returned,
‘Yeah, okay.’

‘
And then I’d have been looking for a new partner. And I’ve only just got used to working with the crap one I’ve got.’

Hunter watched Grace
’s mouth curl up at the corners. He exchanged grins.

Grace picked up a file in front of her and flung it across
their desks to Hunter. ‘Come on, Sergeant, stop feeling sorry for yourself. We’ve got a murder to solve.’

Hunter and Grace checked in with the Custody Sergeant before they went into interrogation. They were informed that Adam Fields had been examined thoroughly by a doctor and had been given a clean bill of health. His only injuries were a chipped tooth, and severe bruising to his face, especially around his nose and eyes. They also learned that he had opted for the duty solicitor and was currently engaged in a privileged briefing session in an interview room.

Hunter always found himself getting wound up at this stage. This was where he knew the law prevailed but in his eyes Justice failed.

Hunter cursed beneath his breath, for he could visualise what was going on behind the closed interview room door
right now. The solicitor would be explaining in detail exactly what evidence they had against him and would be advising Fields on what precise answers he should give to the easy questions and that when things got difficult to merely state ‘no comment’; it was the rules of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, brought in to protect the Human Rights of the prisoner. In effect it prevented the police springing any surprises upon the suspect during interrogation. Hunter had done enough interviews throughout his career to know that villains were already well-schooled enough in the art of mendacity and it was his view that the last thing the guilty should be given was the protective cloak of any government legislation to help them evade prosecution.

The sudden opening of the interview room door brought Hunter back from his rumination
s. He caught Grace’s eyes, flicked his head sideways and set off down the corridor. As he swept into the uncomfortably warm room he was greeted by a strong smell of stale urine. He knew where it was coming from. Adam Fields had been in the midst of taking a piss when Hunter had steamed into him and he had wet his trousers. The pungent stench had nowhere to go in the small room. Hunter crinkled up his nose and looked across the table. His eyes were met by a basilisk stare from Adam Fields, who was pointing at his own face.

‘
Are you the fucker who did this?’

Hunter
saw that he was sporting two black eyes and his nose was red and swollen. Splashes of dried blood caked the front of a grey designer T-shirt. He fought back the urge to smirk.

‘
If I hadn’t done what I did, you and I might not be having this conversation. I saved you from getting shot, didn’t I?’

‘
It was a fucking replica.’

‘
A gun is a gun to a police firearm’s officer. In my book you got off quite lightly.’

Adam Fields gave a snort of derision
and then winced as the pain registered in his nose. Pushing his muscle-bound frame back in his seat he folded his arms in a gesture of defiance.

Hunter placed Gemma Cooke
’s case file on the desk and seated himself opposite Fields and his solicitor.

Grace took up the spare chair, next to the tape recorder.
Removing a pack of blank evidence cassette tapes from her pocket, she tore away the plastic film securing them and slotted the two tapes into the machine.

Unfastening the cuffs of his shirt, Hunter slowly
rolled back the white cotton to reveal his own muscular forearms, and then rested them over the blue evidence folder, entwining his fingers.

He opened,
‘You’ve already been briefed by your solicitor?’ He looked across and caught the nod offered by Adam Fields’ legal representative. He had met this solicitor during other previous encounters with prisoners and knew that he wasn’t one who would continually interrupt proceedings so long as he stuck to the procedures. That eased Hunter’s tension. He unlocked his fingers and flipped open Gemma Cooke’s file.

Grace switched on the recording machine.
A loud buzz resonated for a few seconds and then stopped, throwing the room into silence.

Hunter fractured that stillness by clearing his throat and introducing himself and Grace
and followed that up by voicing the customary preamble to taped recorded interviews. He ended his opening sentence by reminding the prisoner that he was still under caution.

Adam Fields
’ pumped up arms were still clamped firmly to his chest.

With
a forefinger, Hunter slipped out a written statement from amongst the paperwork and then locked eyes with Fields.

‘
Adam, I first want to talk to you about your relationship with Gemma Cooke.’

‘
What about it?’

‘
Well, would you consider that you and she were an item?’

‘
We were till that nosy cow of a neighbour and you lot stuck your oar in.’

‘
That neighbour and the police, and using your phrase, stuck their oar in, because you assaulted Gemma.’

‘
That’s what you say. I’ve already been questioned about that and given my statement. Gemma fell down when she was pissed.’ His mouth creased into an unctuous smile.’

Hunter eyed him for a few seconds.
If truth be known he wanted to reach across the table and wipe that supercilious smirk off Adam Fields’ face with the back of his hand and he could feel his fingers wrestling one another as he fought to keep control of his emotions. He took a deep breath and said, ‘The medical evidence we’ve now got would say different, but I don’t want to dwell on that for now, Adam. That’s for later when you go to court. I want to talk with you about other matters. Would I be right in saying that a week ago, following an incident involving your girlfriend Gemma Cooke, you were ordered not to go back to thirty-four Manvers Terrace.’

‘
You know I was. It was your lot who said I couldn’t go back there after you’d nicked me.’

‘
Just to confirm then, Adam, you were arrested by us for assaulting your girlfriend Gemma Cooke, and then given bail to your parents’ address, and as part of the conditions of your bail were told not to go near her, or contact her. Am I right?’

‘
You never gave me a chance. You’re all the fucking same.’

‘
I’ll take that as a yes, shall I?’

‘
Take it whichever way you want.’

Slowing the pace of his questioning Hunter said,
‘The next two questions I’m going to ask you Adam, I want you to think very hard about the answers you give me.’ Hunter stared out his prisoner. ‘Did you contact Gemma after you were bailed?’

He shook his head,
‘No.’

‘
I’m going to ask you that question again Adam?’

‘
The answer will still be the same. Are you fucking thick?’

‘
Well, that is interesting because I have a statement here which contradicts what you’ve just said. And that statement is from a close friend of yours. It relates to an incident on the night of the seventeenth of this month when Gemma got a threatening text from a mobile. We’ve traced that number to the person who gave us this statement.’ Hunter paused and stabbed a finger at the handwritten document in front of him. ‘He tells us that on that night he was out with you and several mates drinking in town. And that in one of the pubs you asked him if you could borrow his phone, which you used to send a text and then joked with everyone you were with, and I quote, “that’ll shit the bitch up, making a statement against me.” Do you remember that, Adam?’

Fields
’ face coloured up. He eased forward, dropping his elbows on the desk. Jutting out his chin, he said, ‘No comment.’

‘
Well, I’m entitled to infer that you did if you won’t give me a proper answer. Anyway I’ll leave that awkward question for now and move on a bit.’ Hunter fingered out another statement from the folder. ‘As I’ve already said we know that on the night of St Patrick’s Day, you were out drinking in and around town and that you went in various pubs. We know that because we’ve now spoken with every one of those mates you were out with and they’ve all given statements. Just as a matter of interest can you remember which pub you finished up in?’

‘
Course I can remember. The Horseshoe. Where you did this to me this dinner time.’ He unclamped his arms and pointed to his face again. ‘I’m suing you, you know? You’re not getting away with this.’

Unfazed, Hunter asked,
‘And what time did you leave?’

He dropped his hand
. Cockily he replied, ‘Don’t know. Midnightish I suppose. I’d had a skinful.’

‘
And did you go straight home?’

‘
Course, I was pissed.’

‘
When I say go straight home, I mean to the address where you had been bailed, because thirty-four Manvers Terrace was out of bounds for you, wasn’t it?’

‘
I went to a mate’s house.’

‘
Where was that address?’

‘
Just a mate’s. That’s all I want to say. I don’t want to get him into any trouble. I know I should have been at my mum and dad’s.’

‘
Okay, does this mate live in Barnwell?’

‘
Yeah, course he does.’

‘
Humour me, Adam, just give me a rough area where that is, if you don’t want to tell us the exact address at this moment.’

Adam Fields looked sideways at his solicitor.
They exchanged glances and the solicitor nodded his head. Fields returned his look to Hunter. ‘The Wood Estate, that’s all I’m going to say.’

‘
Okay, fine. And by my calculations the Wood Estate is roughly a mile away from Manvers Terrace. Would you agree?’

‘
Yeah.’

‘
And in the opposite direction to the last pub you were in?’

‘
Yeah. I know where the Wood Estate is, dumb shit.’

‘
So you had no reason then to be anywhere near Manvers Terrace in the early hours of the eighteenth?’ Hunter caught a flinch in Adam Fields’ face.

Fields
blinked his look away and snapped back, ‘No. I went straight to my mates.’

Teasingly,
Hunter slid forward Valerie Bryce’s witness statement. ‘Then how come we have a statement from Gemma’s next door neighbour, to the effect that she was woken at just after ten past two in the early hours of the morning of the eighteenth, by a man shouting the odds and banging on Gemma’s back door. She recognised that voice as yours, Adam and so dialled nine-nine-nine. Then she heard glass breaking and a loud banging noise, and a few minutes later saw you running past her window in the direction of the industrial estate.’