'A thin line between success and failure'

Howse finally caught up with him in the tiny Cheshire village of Rainow, where the story’s bloody denouement occurred.
After a 50-minute long negotiation - with hostage Gill Moran’s life hanging in the balance - the tension broke.
“He shouted ‘right, your f***ing time is up’ and went for her,” said Peter.
“I tried to stop him and dived through the window of the car.
“Then one of the firearms officers shot through the back window.”
“It hit him in the back of head but amazingly didn’t penetrate his skull - it just made him more wild.”
After two more shots, another firearms officer moved to the driver’s side window and finally brought Hughes’ struggles to and end.
“Even that wasn’t a clean shot, said Peter.
“It went in at his shoulder but ended up entering his heart and killing him.
Either way, finally Hughes was dead.
The firearms officers who shot him had trained with the guns they used but never any more than that.
It was the first time Derbyshire Police had shot dead anyone in the history of the force.

After being debriefed by CID, Peter stayed in the area overnight before travelling back to Bakewell the next day.
His wife had been told he was well, but he was forbidden from talking about what had happened with any of his colleagues.
“When I went back in to work everybody just stopped talking immediately,” he said.
“Eventually, one by one they came up to my office to shake my hand.”
Looking back, Peter says many factors contributed to the ordeal ending the way it did.
A healthy portion of luck combined with good judgement meant that the criminal died - and Gill Moran survived.
But Peter says he has always wondered what might have happened if it had gone the other way.
“I wonder if I would have got the same support if Gill had died,” he says.
“It is a thin line between success and failure.”

After the inquest, there was understandably a lot of press interest.
Television, radio and press were all there wanting to talk to Peter about the heroic aspects of what happened.
But four members of Gill Moran’s family were dead - and she was left to pick up the pieces of her shattered life. 
“I actually met with her three months after it all happened,” said Peter.
“She had lost a lot of weight.
“We just chatted - she wanted to say thank you.”
Now 79, Peter retired from policing in 1992, having risen to the rank of Deputy Chief Constable in Norfolk.
He says when he tells people the story of what happened that night, they cannot believe he survived.
He is now in the process of writing a book about the case - and has sent two chapters of it to the Derbyshire Times, along with dozens of photographs.

As well as the story’s dramatic conclusion, the book covers the case in forensic detail, including the terrible events at the Pottery Cottage.
“Billy Hughes was a psychopath,” says Peter.
“He was awaiting trial for a rape and grievous bodily harm in Chesterfield and had told people in prison he wanted to go to Lancashire to kill his wife.”
With such a dangerous prisoner, Peter says transferring him from prison in Leicester to Chesterfield by taxi was madness.
As a category ‘C’ prisoner, Hughes was even allowed to work in the kitchen - giving him access to knives.
He used one of these knives to devastating effect on the prison officers in the taxi - stabbing them both in the neck.
From there, his violent rampage continued at the Pottery Cottage, where he killed four before fleeing again - this time with hostage Gill Moran in tow.