A Shot in the Dark

By Sid Cooper

The peacefulness of the small quiet town is disturbed in the middle of the night when a shot rings out but when the police come to investigate, at first, there are no signs of violence.
Then, a trace of blood is found and it is human. There is no body, no cartridge case from the bullet, no-one is brought to hospital with a bullet wound and no-one is reported missing.
Detective Sergeant Rob Cording is put in charge of the case and he sends his men door to door to gather information from witnesses.
When, a week later, a body is fished out of the sea, Cording begins to fit the clues together and the trail leads from the country where the crime was committed (which is never disclosed), across an ocean to Columbia, Venezuela and Holland

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Jun 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483660998

Sid Cooper

Sid Cooper was born, grew up and was educated in London. He now lives in Hod Hasharon in Israel and teaches English in a primary school and privately. This book was written for the benefit of his students and it was they who pressed him to publish it.

Book preview

Copyright © 2013 by Sid Cooper.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2013911595

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-4836-6098-1

                Softcover       978-1-4836-6097-4

                Ebook            978-1-4836-6099-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 06/24/2013

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-800-455-039

www.Xlibris.com.au

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Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

CHAPTER 1

A shot rang out in the small hours of the night.

Startled, Katy Watts sat bolt upright in bed.

What was that? she said.

Jim, her husband was a retired army officer; he knew exactly what it was.

Their young daughter, Emma, ran crying into her parents’ bedroom.

She sobbed Mummy, I heard a noise!

Jim looked at the clock. It was just ten past three in the morning.

I’d better phone the police, he said and picked up the telephone and dialled, but the line was busy. He tried a few times more before he succeeded in getting through. The duty officer answered Yes, I know; we’ve had a lot of calls. We’re sending a car now to find out what’s happened.

It was a small town, not much more than a village really, and nothing exciting ever happened there, so naturally, the shot in the middle of the night became the main topic of conversation in the community but the police patrol car which went to investigate the incident, found no sign that anything unusual had taken place. Nevertheless, Detective-Sergeant Rob Cording was put in charge of the case.

In the early morning, as soon as there was daylight, he went to the area where it was estimated the shot was fired. There was no body to be seen and he could find no blood stains. He scoured the streets, looking for signs of damage to any of the buildings which a bullet might have caused.

Then he went back to his office in the police station and contacted all the other police stations in the county and all the hospitals in the vicinity but nowhere was there a report of anyone with a bullet wound.

Returning to the area, he chanced to encounter Harry Pearce with his dog, Rex, out for his morning walk. In the usual way of dogs, Rex sniffed at every tree and lamppost and left his own identifying mark; but then, he paused at some almost invisible mark in the road. He sniffed at it and continued to sniff and to paw at it. Then he moved slowly along the road, sniffing all the time.

His actions attracted Rob’s attention. What have you found, Rex? he asked and went to investigate. Bending down, close to the road surface, he was just able to make out a trail of dark reddish-brown stains.

He followed the trail for some distance and then it suddenly stopped. Taking out his penknife from his pocket, Rob carefully scraped up some of the stain and inserted it into a small polythene bag. This was the first clue he had discovered in the case and, with a sense of satisfaction, he returned to police headquarters and sent the sample stain to the police laboratory for analysis. It was subsequently confirmed that the stain was blood… and it was human. Now, a new importance was placed on the investigation.

CHAPTER 2

It was generally a law-abiding community. Detective-Sergeant Rob Cording had dealt successfully with a gang of drug dealers who tried