Seizure Read Online Free PDF

the wish wasn’t even a close option. Caffeine was going to have to be his crook for the time being.
    He grabbed Rik and propelled him towards a drinks machine from which Henry extracted a frothy, weak coffee that was billed as Americano, but was about as far away from that as the North Pole was from the South. He took a few sips of the burning hot liquid. Even though it was rubbish, it hit the spot quickly and fired him up a gear.
    They found the PC who had been assigned to remain with the injured guard sitting outside the operating theatre, bouncing his helmet from one hand to the other like a basketball. Clearly bored. He rose sheepishly when the two senior officers appeared and slid his helmet under his arm.
    Henry didn’t know the lad – which was all he was, a lad – but Rik Dean did.
    â€˜PC Berry, this is Detective Superintendent Christie from the Force Major Investigation Team,’ Rik made the introduction.
    Henry gave the young man a curt nod – he did not particularly like anyone today. ‘Any news?’ He almost added the word ‘son’ but managed to hold it on the tip of his tongue. Being called ‘son’ had always irritated him when he’d been a young scamp of a bobby and he promised himself he would never subject anyone, ever, to that patronizing epithet.
    â€˜Er, no sir. He’s been in hours now and there’s been a lot of doctors and nurses in and out, but none’ve spoken to me and I felt like I didn’t want to . . . y’know? Ask.’
    â€˜Yeah, OK,’ Henry said. He should have added it was a copper’s job to ask, but he couldn’t be bothered to go there. ‘When did you last have a break?’
    â€˜Dunno . . . since he went into surgery.’
    â€˜Go get yourself something and be back in twenty minutes.’
    â€˜Cheers, boss.’ The PC did not need asking twice and zoomed off for some refreshment.
    Henry paced the tiny waiting room outside the operating theatre, the doors to which had a red warning light above them, indicating surgery was being performed.
    â€˜What’s the relatives’ situation?’
    â€˜Wife contacted . . . I sent someone down to pick her up. Not landed yet. She lives in south Manchester.’
    Henry stretched, cricking his neck, then sat down heavily on a plastic chair. His eyes rose up to Rik, a man he had known for plenty of years. Rik’s brow creased. He detected something very clearly amiss with Henry.
    Henry could still not quite believe it.
    Earlier that day, at eight forty a.m. precisely, he had parked his new car, a top of the range Mondeo (having disposed of the rot-box Rover he had naively bought), on the car park near the tennis courts at Lancashire Constabulary Police Headquarters at Hutton, just to the south of Preston.
    He could still not quite get his mind around getting out of the car, walking down the side of the converted student accommodation block in the grounds of the Police Training Centre, now the offices of the Force Major Investigation Team (FMIT), tapping in the entry code at the door – a privilege denied to him not very long ago – and trotting up the steps to the middle floor and walking down the tight corridor to his office.
    The door had a new sign on it simply saying Detective Superintendent Christie – nothing more, but that was how he liked it. He unlocked the door with his own key, another privilege, entered and sat down behind his desk with an air of contentment.
    His desk, his office, were provided for him as co-head of FMIT, a job he shared with two other detective superintendents.
    It did not detract from his self-satisfaction, nor his cloud nine attitude, that his office had once been two separate student bedrooms that had been knocked into one several years before when the whole block had been commandeered for what was then the Senior Investigating Officer Team. It did not bother him that he vividly