Free Coming, Ready or Not (D.S. Hunter Kerr Book 4) by Michael Fowler

with my client?’
     
    Outside the interview room Hunter and Grace stood at the far end of the corridor, out of earshot from the conversation that was going on in the room between the duty solicitor and prisoner. They exchanged glances from time to time but neither of them said anything.
    Hunter was wrestling with his thoughts; going back through the interview inside his head, dissecting Adam Fields’ last set of comments. None of it seemed to make any sense.
    After ten minutes of waiting the solicitor opened the interview room door, hooked his head around and informed them ‘that his client wished to make a statement.’
    Hunter and Grace returned and began the interrogation process as before; preparing a fresh set of blank tapes for recording and switching on the machine.
    Hunter opened things up by reminding Adam Fields he was still under caution. He continued, ‘Adam, you’ve spoken with your solicitor and I think you want to tell us about the night of the seventeenth of March, going into the early hours of the eighteenth. Am I right?’
    ‘ Yeah.’
    ‘ In your own words then, go ahead.’
    There was a nervous inflection in his voice , which took a few minutes to subside but once he had worked through his awkwardness, in a clear voice, Adam Fields narrated his story. He began by admitting he had lost his temper with Gemma on several occasions over the past six months and that a week ago he had punched her in the face during an argument, which he had instigated, because he suspected her of having an affair. Without encouragement he also admitted using his friends mobile to send the threatening text on the evening of the seventeenth. He said he had done it because he’d heard rumours that she was seeing someone. And he also wanted to scare her for ‘grassing him up to the cops.’ He went on to say that after that he had carried on drinking, ending the night in The Horseshoe, where they had a lock-in and didn’t leave until about one thirty a.m. On his way back to his friend’s flat, on the Wood Estate, he had received a phone call from someone he knew on Manvers Terrace. That person told him that he had just seen Gemma on the street with another man and had seen the pair going into her house. Fields said, ‘I was fucking furious. I asked him if he knew who it was, but he didn’t so I asked him to describe the bastard to me, and I swear it, the guy he was describing fitted that CID guy who nicked me down to a tee.’
    Hunter i nterposed, ‘DC Tom Hagan?’
    ‘ That’s him.’ He licked his lips. ‘I thought, the bastard. He persuades Gemma to make a statement against me, nicks me and then moves in on her himself. I wanted to fucking deck him, so went straight round there.’
    ‘ And what happened next?’
    ‘ When I got there the kitchen light was on. You lot had taken my keys off me so I started braying on the back door. Shouting to Gemma to get that bastard out of her bed right now. I was gonna sort him. When she didn’t answer I just got madder and madder and started booting the door in. That’s when I found her like that. Stabbed.’
    ‘ Gemma?’
    ‘ Yeah. On the kitchen floor. To be honest I knew something had happened the instant I pushed open the door. There was blood everywhere. Scared the fuck out of me, I can tell you. That’s when I legged it.’
    ‘ So you’re telling me that when you’d kicked in Gemma’s kitchen door, you found her on the floor and she’d already been stabbed.’
    ‘ Yeah, straight up. I swear on my mum’s life. I didn’t do it. I’m telling you it must have been that guy she went home with. The one that I thought was that detective who’d nicked me.’
    ‘ And that’s why in the first interview you went on about being stitched up and insinuating that we were covering up.’
    He nodded vigorously, ‘Yeah, his description fitted that CID guy.’
    For the next twenty minutes Hunter cross-questioned Adam Fields on everything he had told them, but he remained