Seizure Read Online Free PDF Page B

recalled using these bedrooms almost thirty years before on his probationer training courses; that he’d peed in the sinks (now removed, of course), been sick on the floor (now recarpeted), and had snuck a female colleague into his room and in his eagerness as a young stallion had, much to the young lady’s disappointment, prematurely finished before he’d even reached home and had splattered the floor with what then felt like a bucket of man-juice. Lovely memories.
    None of that bothered him because today he was a detective superintendent and this was his office. The stains of his past seemed only to add to its ambience.
    He gave himself a little pinch just to prove he wasn’t dreaming, allowed himself a couple more moments of self-indulgent reverie, then got down to the tasks of the day. These included progress checks on two domestic and easily solvable murders, a stranger rape that was dragging on far too long, and a couple of nasty armed robberies that had come his way even though they had been committed in east Lancashire. It was an area of the county he rarely covered. And that was just the tip of the iceberg.
    He logged on to his computer, plugged in and replenished his coffee machine, and swept up the phone on his desk before the second ring had been completed.
    Hell, he was raring to go.
    â€˜DCI . . . Sorry, Detective Superintendent Christie . . .’ The words and rank hadn’t yet sunk in and he still stumbled over introductions.
    â€˜Henry, it’s Kate . . .’ Even in those brief words, he picked up the tone and knew something was very, very wrong. He braced himself.
    â€˜What is it, love?’ All the things it could possibly be swarmed through his brain.
    â€˜Henry, it’s your mum . . .’
    He knew she was going to die. He blinked back a tear at the thought, sat back in the uncomfortable chair and felt his stamina drain out like water down a plug hole. He rubbed his eyes, which squelched with a noise that turned Kate’s stomach. They were tired and gritty and he realized he needed to get them checked. His vision had deteriorated noticeably over the past twelve months. Somehow he had to find time to get to an optician. But it was one of those things he constantly deferred, maybe because it was a tip and a wink to his own ageing process.
    Which brought him right back to his mother propped up in a bed in the cardiac unit at Blackpool Victoria. The warden of the sheltered housing in which she lived had found her face down in the bathroom and had called an ambulance. With a suspected heart attack, Henry’s mother had been rushed to A&E, then up to the specialist ward – still alive, obviously, but very ill.
    Now attached to a machine that ‘pinged’ occasionally, she was sleeping open-mouthed, drugged up and, Henry was certain, very close to the end of her life.
    On receiving the phone call from Kate, Henry had made some immediate calls to colleagues, asking them to cover for him. Then he’d hurried to the hospital, met Kate there and found his mum being treated in the cardiac unit, having been transferred from A&E.
    He had heard her voice before actually seeing her. High pitched but croaky – and insistent: ‘I think I’d know if I’d had a heart attack, don’t you?’ She was clearly annoyed and upset. As Henry pulled back the cubicle curtain, she said to the doctor treating her, ‘I don’t need a drip, thank you.’ He was fiddling with a needle on the back of her left hand, trying to find a vein. She saw her son and breathed, ‘Henry,’ in relief. ‘Would you mind telling this . . . this man of colour I’m here under false pretences?’
    Henry stepped into the cubicle, a little embarrassed by his mother’s ingrained racism. The doctor turned and Henry introduced himself, then looked sternly at the woman who had borne him. ‘Mum, you were found collapsed on