Shadow of the Beast: A DS Hunter Kerr Novel

by Michael Fowler

  ‘But deliberate... Who would do this to him? It’s a long time since he’s been front line.’

  ‘The only thing we can think of at the moment is the drugs related murder across in Parson Cross. I just reviewed it the other day. Michael played a key role in that, especially with the media. I don’t know if you’ve seen any of the TV news lately Hunter, but it was Michael who announced that the police were openly declaring war on the drug gangs following the shooting. And since then there’s been a massive police crackdown in Burngreave, where info tells us is where the perps live. Dozens have been arrested, and loads of drugs and assets have been seized, and although they’ve not yet charged anyone with the murder, it’s certainly curbed their activities and created lots of anger and tension there.’

  ‘So Traffic are looking to see if it’s linked to that enquiry. Do they need any help?’

  ‘Any help?’

  ‘I used to be in drug squad. I’ve still got my contacts.’

  ‘It’s a nice gesture Hunter. And I know, like me, you want to get to the bottom of this, but I’m going to leave it to Traffic.’

  ‘I really want to help with this. I’ll make some enquiries. Do some digging around.’

  ‘No you won’t Hunter. You’ll leave it to Traffic. You’ve got enough on with this job.’ Her voice was sharp. She took a long pause, switching her look to Michael.

  Hunter followed her gaze locking onto the swollen and bruised face of his former boss thinking about what Dawn Leggate had just said to him. He couldn’t just do nothing. Someone’s going to pay for this! He owed his former boss that.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  DAY FOUR

  Hunter stood before the bathroom mirror smoothing a hand over his freshly shaved face, at the same time casting his eyes over the grey hairs attacking the temples of his dark brown hair. He was sure their numbers had increased these past twelve months. You’re showing signs of age Hunter Kerr!

  Scooping up two handfuls of warm water from the sink, he closed his eyes and washed away the remains of shaving foam. As he straightened to check himself again he felt a pair of cold arms wrap themselves around his bare waist. The sensation made him flinch. He snapped open his eyes and caught Beth’s image in the mirror, her chin resting on his right shoulder.

  ‘I never heard you come back.’

  ‘Sneaked in to see what you were up to.’

  ‘Are the boys okay? I heard them earlier. They sounded lively this morning.’

  ‘Football practice tonight after school.’

  ‘You should have given me an extra nudge. I’d have got up with them and taken them to school.’

  ‘I could see you were fast on.’ Lifting her head from his shoulder she added, ‘Anyway, I can see you need your beauty sleep.’ She broke into a grin.

  She always had a beautiful smile. It brought back the memory of the first time he’d set eyes on her. During his uniform period he had escorted a prisoner to the hospital following a pub brawl; the felon had needed treatment after having a bottle broken over his head by the wife of the man he was fighting with. While waiting for the doctor to stitch up the wound he had spied Beth. She had been a student nurse in A & E. They had briefly chatted while the doctor sewed up his prisoner and, on its completion, he had walked out of the hospital with a very sorrowful man nursing a sore head and her phone number. Two years later they had married. Now, with eleven-year-old Jonathan, and nine-year-old Daniel, they had just celebrated their lace anniversary and the excitement he felt whenever he saw her was exactly the same as that first time fifteen years ago.

  Beth unlocked her hands and dragged her fingernails across his stomach. He felt his muscles tighten.

  ‘Like my six-pack?’ he said looking back at her.

  ‘Six-pack,’ she replied with a hint of sarcasm. ‘You’re going to seed Hunter Kerr.’ Snatching away her hands she smacked his bottom.

  He turned to grab her but she sprang away. ‘You know what you are Beth…’ he responded and chased her into the bedroom.

  * * *

  Hunter got up for the second time that morning – this time in more buoyant mood. He had been feeling down since returning from the hospital the previous evening. Seeing his former boss in that state had shaken him. He’d tried to watch television when he got home but he had found himself unable to concentrate and when he had gone to bed it had taken him an eternity to drop off. Making his way to the bathroom, the smell of bacon frying from the kitchen greeted him. It urged him on and he jumped into the shower, towelled quickly, threw on a pair of joggers and a T-shirt and hurried downstairs. When he reached the kitchen Beth was just dishing up cooked bacon onto thick crusted bread.

  ‘The way to a man’s heart,’ said Hunter, leaning in and kissing her neck. She was wearing a short wrap. Black. It caressed her curves. The images of half an hour ago cascaded into his inner vision. He picked up one of the sandwiches and bit into it.

  ‘Delicious,’ he said chewing.

  ‘Just like me.’

  ‘This is better than you.’

  Beth shouldered him. ‘I’ll take it back.’

  He pulled away and, holding onto his bacon butty as if it was a prize, said, ‘Fight you for it’ and took another bite.

  ‘What are you doing today?’

  ‘I’m not on till two. I thought I’d go down to the gym and do a session with my dad before going into work. I haven’t seen him or done any boxing training for over a week. What are you doing?’

  ‘I’ve got a baby clinic at eleven. It’ll be manic. In fact, all day will be. I looked on the computer before I left last night. My day’s pretty well booked up with patients. Your mum’s picking up the boy’s after practice. Will you be home at ten?’

  ‘Should be, I’m not planning on going to the pub.’

  ‘How’s the job going?’

  ‘Slow start. Not got any positive leads at the moment. Still don’t know who the girl is. We think she might be a prostitute.’ He gave her a brief synopsis of his and Grace’s conversation with Gordon Jennings.

  ‘Sounds complicated.’

  ‘Aren’t they all? We haven’t had an easy job for ages,’ he said wiping the crumbs from the side of his mouth. ‘As long as we get our man I ain’t bothered.’

  * * *

  For the second evening running Hunter was alone in the MIT office. He was working through the items of evidence pertinent to the Braithwaite investigation. There were at least a dozen files to go through, plus crime scene photographs, and an exhibits list and he wanted to conduct most of the initial reading in relative silence.

  Evening briefing had revealed no new leads, though the HOLMES team had narrowed down the missing persons list to two possible candidates who could be the victim since they had widened the search to include West Yorkshire’s Missing From Homes. Grace had tracked down relatives of both missing women and left them a telephone message to contact her. When she had left earlier there hadn’t been a response from either of the families. Retired PC Gordon Jennings had come up with the date of the major fire in the chapel and the names of the teenagers he had interviewed in relation to it, and actions had been allocated to trace and re-interview those people.

  Hunter lifted his gaze from the dozens of sheets of paper that lay across his desk. He had already moved some of the piles of documents he had read and pushed them across onto Grace’s desk. He was currently going through the victims’ witness statements. From those he was moving onto the suspect interview notes. He was hoping that by the end of the evening he would have gleaned enough information from the case files to enable him to present a thorough account of Terrence Arthur Braithwaite’s rape and killing spree at next morning’s briefing. As he eased away his tie from his shirt collar and cast his eyes on the next statement he had chosen, he hoped to God this wasn’t a pointless exercise, especially as he was the person pushing Braithwaite to the fore of the enquiry.

  Hunter had just turned the first page when he became aware of heavy footsteps soundin
g outside in the corridor, heading his way. He lifted his head just as Barry Newstead drifted into the office.

  Barry stopped in his tracks. ‘Hey ‘op mucker. You still here? Haven’t you got a bed to go to?’

  Hunter kept his finger over the paragraph he had started. ‘I’m just seeing if I can get through the majority of this lot so I can brief the team tomorrow.’

  He watched Barry walk to his desk. Hunter noticed he was wearing a suit he hadn’t seen before, but whether it was new or not was debateable – it was so badly creased that it looked as if he had slept in it. Hunter knew that his size had something to do with it – Barry had always been big, and slightly overweight, yet for years he had carried it off, presenting himself as a man not to be messed with. However, of late, Hunter thought that Barry had lost his swagger. Especially these past six months. The bull neck he once had now showed signs of shrivelling and his jowls were starting to drop. He knew he’d not long had his fifty-seventh birthday but Hunter couldn’t help but think he looked older, especially since he had stopped dyeing his hair and moustache. His rumple of thick curls and bushy moustache was now a mass of dark grey.

  Hunter watched him flop down in his seat and unfurl a clump of papers he was holding. Barry flashed him a smile. He returned the gesture. There’s still fire in those eyes though. He had first come across Barry Newstead when the detective had interviewed him following the murder of his sixteen-year-old girlfriend Polly: A murder which had recently been resolved. Then, when he had joined the police, he had been reacquainted with him in 1994, when he joined CID. Barry became his mentor and they had formed a remarkable partnership. Barry was one of the best thief takers he had met and a brilliant interviewer, he’d quickly learned so much from him, although there had been occasions when some of the tactics he employed to get confessions had disturbed Hunter. Nevertheless, he had always supported him, and it was Hunter who had invited him to take up the post of Civilian Investigator within the team eighteen months ago.

  Barry waved the batch of papers he had just unfurled, ‘Well I’ve got some more reading for you before you go home.’

  Hunter’s eyebrows knitted, ‘What are those?’

  ‘Copies of the newspaper reports about The Beast of Barnwell. Makes for good reading actually. When I first went into CID it had only been two years since Braithwaite had been caught. Most of the guys in there had been involved in the investigation and besides football and shagging it was all they ever talked about.’

  ‘Do you recall much of that conversation?’

  Barry threw him a puzzled look. ‘Depends on what you mean. As I say there was always someone in the office who, at some stage, would bring something up about the case.’

  ‘I’m thinking about the rapes he was charged with and the murder. Remember Gordon Jennings said he didn’t think one of the rapes had been investigated properly. In fact, his words were that it had been knocked. What I’m getting at is, are you aware of any outstanding rape cases from your time in CID that could’ve been down to him? And any undetected murders as well. David Simmons, our historian friend, said that there was a rumour that Braithwaite was responsible for more.’

  ‘I can certainly confirm that they thought he’d done more than what he’d been charged with. They were looking at a couple of indecent assaults locally on women that were pretty similar to his MO, and there was an unsolved murder of a prostitute found on waste land, just outside Sheffield city centre, from the early seventies, that they were looking at. Apparently, a van of a similar type and colour as his had been seen in the area where she was found and was never eliminated from that enquiry. I know for a fact he had at least two prison visits by us, but like every other interview he refused to talk. If you want my thoughts I certainly think we’re onto something with Braithwaite. Using the armrests of his seat he pushed himself up, ‘Do you want to take a shufti at these while I get us a drink.’

  ‘Go on then. It’ll give me something different to look at. I’m starting to get eye-strain with all these statements.’

  Barry reached across and dropped the curled sheets of paper over the statement Hunter had been reading, stepped from behind his desk and ambled to where the tea making facilities were where he picked up two mugs. Holding them up he said, ‘I’ll just nip down the corridor and get these cleaned.’ Then, he made for the door.

  Hunter picked up the papers. They were A4 photocopied sheets of headline reports from the Barnwell Chronicle newspaper. They recounted the guilty verdict against Braithwaite. back in 1973. for the murder of Glynis Young, his escape and capture in 1984 and his subsequent release to freedom three years ago. He began to read.

  Hunter had just finished the last report when Barry returned and placed two clean empty mugs on top of Hunter’s paperwork.

  ‘I’ll get us a real drink shall I?’ Barry said, and walked back to his desk where he brought out a bottle of blended whisky from his bottom drawer, held it aloft for a second as if seeking Hunter’s approval, but without waiting for a nod pulled out his chair from behind his desk and wheeled it next to Hunter. Unscrewing the cap of the bottle he arranged the mugs and engaged Hunter’s eyes. ‘Would sir like ice?’ he cracked a grin as he sat down.

  Hunter laughed.

  Barry poured them each a generous measure and picked up his mug and cradled it as if it was an expensive malt in a crystal cut glass tumbler.

  Hunter picked up his own mug and took a swig, holding the whisky in his mouth a few seconds before swallowing. The warmth of the liquid tumbled down his throat leaving him with a satisfying afterburn. ‘Just what the doctor ordered Barry.’

  ‘Remember when we did this regularly?’

  Hunter nodded. ‘Not seen as the done-thing now mate.’

  ‘The job’s changed.’

  Hunter thought about what he’d said. ‘To be fair Barry, it had to.’

  ‘The fun’s gone out of it.’

  Hunter studied his face. The laughter lines he always recalled him having had now been replaced by deep creases. Hunter wondered if it was simply age or the stress of being diagnosed with angina a few months ago. He said, ‘Does that sound as if you’re thinking of putting your ticket in again?’

  ‘No chance.’

  Hunter remembered Barry’s initial retirement seven years ago. It hadn’t been his choice. He had been forced out by the newly promoted District Chief Inspector, who, following a complaint by a prisoner that Barry had planted evidence, had entered a packed CID office, called him a dinosaur and likened him to Gene Hunt from Life on Mars. When Barry had retaliated by telling him he was proud of being likened to a ‘real copper, and not someone who’d been arse-wiped all through his career, and wouldn’t know a villain even if one’d slapped him in the face,’ the Chief Inspector had made it known that he was going to nail him for his unorthodox and illegal methods and get him the sack. Following that outburst Barry had been advised by his DI to take retirement and he had reluctantly done so.

  ‘Why did you come back Barry? Okay, I know I suggested it when I was working on the ‘Demon’ case, but you could have turned it down. You were well into retirement. Why come back to even worse bureaucracy and more restrictions than when you left?’

  Barry’s mouth tightened. ‘I should be saying because of Jean dying, and I was lonely, and needed focus, but the bottom line is that even if she was alive today I would have still jumped at the chance following your invite. This isn’t a job it’s a way of life.’ He lifted his mug, saluted Hunter and took a drink of his whisky. Nursing his mug and relaxing back in his seat he said, ‘Pretty bad about Mike Robshaw eh?’

  ‘I went to see him last night. He looked in a bad way. They’ve kept him sedated.’

  ‘Do you know how he is today?’

  ‘I tried to ring the gaffer but my call went to her voicemail. I’m going to call in on my way home again tonight.’

  ‘If he’s awake give him my regards.’

  ‘Yeah, of course.’

  ‘He was a good boss Hu
nter.’

  ‘That’s a real compliment coming from you Barry. Especially given your thoughts about bosses.’

  Barry smiled. ‘No, he was Hunter. His feet were always on the ground. He was old school. He’d been there and done it.’ He took another drink. ‘Do you remember the time we were interviewing that prisoner for a spate of distraction burglaries on elderly people. Mike came in while we were writing down his confession and asked us how we were going on and the prisoner accused us of fitting him up. Mike asked him what he meant and he told him that we’d bet him a tenner that we’d get him convicted. Do you remember? Mike first looked at him, then at us, and then put his hand in his jacket pocket, slowly took out his wallet and said, ‘I think I’ll have a tenner on that.’

  Hunter broke into laughter. ‘I’d forgotten about that Barry. Yeah I remember.’ He stared into his mug, became thoughtful for a moment, then, lifting his gaze said, ‘I hope he pulls through.’

  Barry drained the last of his whisky. Putting down his empty mug he said, ‘Fancy another nip?’

  Hunter looked once more at his mug’s contents. He still had quite a bit of whisky left. He shook his head. ‘I’d like to say yes, but I’ve quite a bit to get to get through before I knock off. And now I’ve got these newspaper reports to summarise and fit into my briefing.’ He switched his look back to the photocopied headlines Barry had dropped over his paperwork. His eyes settled on the report relating to the capture of the Beast following his escape after his wife’s funeral during the 1980s. He glimpsed at the date of the article and suddenly the hairs at the back of his neck bristled. From his top tray he picked out the sheet of paper that contained the information about the two West Yorkshire women missing in the 1980s. Snapping up his head, wide eyed, he stared across the desk at Barry, ‘Thanks to the date on one of these newspaper reports I think I might have just found out who our victim is.’