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

firm to his story. Unable to glean anything new Hunter drew the interrogation to a halt and returned him back to the Custody Sergeant, where the decision was agreed to detain him while they consulted with the local CPS.
    As they sauntered down the corridor, back to the MIT office, Grace turned to Hunter. Her face masked with a veil of concern.
    ‘ You said you thought there was something funny about Tom Hagan didn’t you?’
    Hunter tightened his mouth, ‘I did, though I hope to God, Grace, it’s not what I’m thinking.’
    - ooOoo -

CHAPTER FIVE
    Day Four : 21st March.
     
    Hunter awoke with a woolly head. He had hardly slept. He had tossed-and-turned most of the night, wrestling with his thoughts, repeatedly mulling over the interview with Adam Fields, attempting to analyse the content of what had been said. He had tried to tell himself that Fields was in fact a very convincing liar, and that his story about how he had found Gemma dying in the kitchen, after he had kicked in the back door, was completely false. And yet somehow Hunter’s experience was telling him the way he had poured out his confession, that what he was saying was the truth. So no matter how many times he had scrutinised the conversation he had still come back to the same conclusion, DC Tom Hagan was somehow involved. And he knew that he wasn’t alone in his cogitations. He had seen the strained faces of the team, at the previous evening’s briefing, when he had revealed the facts of his and Grace’s interrogation.
    As he vigorously showered he told himself that he had enough on his plate without worrying about DC Tom Hagan. That problem was Detective Superintendent Leggate’s and not his. He had other priorities to focus on that morning. Prior to leaving work last night, on the directions of CPS, he had charged Adam Fields with assault occasioning actual bodily harm upon Gemma, threatening behaviour towards her, possession of an imitation firearm and also with breaking the conditions of his bail. CPS had requested the convening of a special court later that morning; Fields was being put before Magistrates with an application for a remand in custody, and it was his and Grace’s job to put together the remand file. He knew that the first few hours of the day were going to be full-on and that he would need to be totally focussed.
    Following his shower he dried off in the bedroom. Glancing at the bedside clock he realised he had plenty of time before the morning’s briefing and so donned his training top and jogging bottoms instead of his suit; a steady run into work would freshen his head as well as his body, he told himself.
    After a quick breakfast of toast and tea he left home by the rear conservatory, yomped down the garden, and stepped through the bottom gate, entering the fields of the old racecourse, which bordered his property. Before him a landscape of winter-ravaged barren fields stretched out all across the Dearne Valley. He shuddered. Immediately to his right were the remains of the mile home straight of the old racecourse, once the training ground for the Earl of Fitzwilliam’s horses. This morning, with a sky full of uniform grey clouds, the countryside was monochromatically stark. And it was cold, though the air was still.
    Just the right conditions for running, thought Hunter , as he pulled up the hood of his training top. Slotting the micro headphones of his iPod into his ears he switched his track selector to shuffle. As the first chords of Guns n’ Roses rendition of ‘Live and Let Die,’ reverberated against his eardrums, he stepped onto the home straight, and with a smart burst began his run into work.
     
    For the second time that morning Hunter showered and changed. Leaving the station’s ground floor changing room feeling revitalised, he bounded up the rear stairwell and entered the MIT office in a better mindset than the one he had woken up with an hour earlier. Now, he was ready to face the day.
    Mike Sampson was