Back in 1980, when I was a young man, I lived in the north of England with my two pals, Dave and Phil. We were the Three Musketeers and got up to all sorts of mischief together, as young people often do.

I was working as a Buyer in a shoe making factory and Dave worked as an Office Manager. Phil however seemed to have the world at his feet. He was a very good looking and athletic guy, with a beautiful girlfriend. He was also a Karate black belt and very capable of looking after himself. He worked in a gun shop, was a director of the company and possessed all the trappings that went with it: nice house, great sports car, good standard of living. Life couldn’t be better.

One quiet and peaceful Sunday I spent the day at a gliding club, having recently gone solo in both gliders and powered aircraft, fully intending to join the Royal Air Force in the very near future. Upon my return home that evening, I found a message on my answering machine that was to completely change my life: Phil was dead, murdered by a crazy man.

He had gone into work on the Saturday morning to open up shop and prepare for the weekend’s trading. About an hour later, when there was no one else in the shop, a motorbike pulled up in the road outside, the pillion passenger alighted and came into the gun shop.

The man, a dirty, scruffy-looking individual whose name it turned out was Michael Ward, then asked Phil to show him some of the shotguns from a chained gun rack near the till. As Phil handed him one such weapon, Ward immediately took two shotgun cartridges from his pocket, loaded the gun and without further ado, fired both barrels at point blank range into Phil’s chest, fatally wounding him.

Evidenced by the bullet holes in the shop’s front window, Phil was amazingly still able to take a .357 magnum handgun from behind the till area and return fire, even as he was slumping to the ground, hitting Ward in the right elbow. Ward then calmly left the shop, returned to the motorcycle and instructed his accomplice to drive him directly to the Infirmary because he had been hurt. Passers-by alerted the police and Ward was quickly arrested by armed officers, whilst still at the hospital.

Later sentenced to life whilst in Rampton High Security Hospital, Ward stated that voices from God had instructed him to shoot Phil.

As a direct result of this very sad event, both Dave and I immediately put wheels in motion to join the police and that is how I came to spend a lifetime as a detective in the Police Service, putting the bad guys behind bars.