Black & Blue: Where it all began…… (D.S Hunter Kerr) by Michael Fowler Page A

it was expedient to bend the rules to achieve a desired result.
     

     
     

CHAPTER ONE
     
    Taking refuge in the doorway of a furniture store on High Street, Police Constable Hunter Kerr gazed out over the sodden street. The rain had halted, but the night sky still rumbled and threatened as the storm of twenty minutes ago petered away into the next valley. The deluge had left behind oily black pools upon which irregular rainbow patterns played along the surface.
    In the distance the church bell struck twelve o’clock.
    Hunter’s thoughts were drifting.
    A hand tapped him on the shoulder bringing his senses back to the moment.
    “Come back into the shadows, you’ll never catch anyone standing out like that.” Roger Mills voice was almost a gruff whisper.
    Hunter stepped back and brushed shoulders with his Tutor Constable. He said softly, “It’s quiet.”
    Roger nudged him with his elbow. “That’s the third time you’ve said that in the last hour. Wash your mouth out with soapy water, young Kerr. You’re risking fate saying that. Believe me once you’ve had a few years of Friday and Saturday night’s under your belt, you’ll saviour moments like this.”
    Out of the corner of an eye Hunter took in his mentor’s features. Craggy-faced with dark short cropped hair, Roger Mills was an ex-paratrooper, who had served in Northern Ireland, before becoming a cop fourteen years ago, and he still paraded himself with all the bearings of a military man. It was his fifth shift with his tutor and he’d already learned from others on his group that he couldn’t have wished to have been teamed up with anyone better.
    “It’s usually at this time when I start asking all my student officers why on earth they joined this god-forsaken job , but then I heard you telling Andy Sharp the other day, that you were going to go to university but changed your mind. What made you do that? You could have joined later and gone into the fast-track system.”
    Hunter pulled back his gaze and stared at the glistening wet pavement. “My girlfriend was murdered .” He felt a lump emerge into his throat. He swallowed. “I promised her parents I’d catch who’d done it.”
    Roger was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “ Wow! I didn’t expect that for an answer. When did this happen?”
    Hunter bit down on his lip “Almost three years ago.”
    “And that comment you made about promising her parents you’d catch who’d done it. It’s obviously not been detected?”
    “ Nope.”
    “What was your girlfriend’s name?”
    “Polly. Polly Hayes.”
    Out of the corner of his eye, Hunter caught Roger whipping his head sideways in his direction.
    “Bloody hell! I was on that day when the job came in. I was one of the officers who went out searching for her. We found her up near the woods. That was her wasn’t it?”
    Hunter nodded in the darkness. Suddenly, ghost-like, a vision of Polly drifted inside his head. She gave him one of her mischievous smiles. It was a fleeting glimpse and then she was gone again. The flashes of Polly coming back to visit him were becoming less frequent. He wondered if there ever would be a time when he could no longer imagine her. He stared out across the glistening tarmac. A gush of wind ripped down the street creating small waves across the puddles.
    “That must have been a real shocker?”
    Roger’s words brought him back from his reverie. “It was. It’s not something you ever imagine happening to you.”
    “You still think about it then?”
    “All the time.”
    Roger was silent for a few seconds then he said, “I wasn’t kept on that job. Our shift got involved in the initial search, and I spoke to a couple of people who’d been in the vicinity at the time, but that was all. There was no main suspect if I remember.”
    “No there wasn’t. In fact me and my mates got grilled quite a few times over it.”
    “You mean as suspects?”
    “Yep.”
    Roger let out a quick laugh.”
    “It’s not