A Burning Lie: An utterly gripping and totally twisty crime thriller you won’t be able to put down by Claire Sheldon

Author:Claire Sheldon [Sheldon, Claire]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Choc Lit Psychological Thrillers, Suspense and Crime: A Joffe Books Company
Published: 2024-04-24T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

DI Chris Jackson

Chris was sitting in his office licking his wounds. His head hurt and his vision seemed to be playing up again, so much so he couldn’t focus on the computer screen. With the fall earlier, he was beginning to doubt everything: his job, his ability, what everyone must be thinking — especially with Sergeant Gillroy’s arrival to find him crumpled on the floor with a uniformed officer offering to help him up.

‘Chris,’ Superintendent Gray said as he knocked on his open office door.

‘Sir?’

‘Are you free?’

‘Of course, sir,’ Chris said, standing up and moving to the front of the desk. ‘Is everything okay?’ he asked cautiously, wondering why on earth the Sup had come down to his office.

‘I was speaking to Sergeant Gillroy earlier . . .’

This is it — the end of my policing career. The prick had gone running to his boss to tell him about Chris falling over earlier. The Sup knew Chris had been attending regular hospital visits since last year, and here he was coming to tell him he needed to step away from the case and go off sick as he clearly wasn’t well enough to be in work, never mind investigating such a high-profile case. Chris braced himself.

‘I asked him why he hadn’t passed on the information to you and DI Shufflebotham about the incident at Flavor.’

‘Sorry, sir?’ Chris questioned, now confused more than anything.

‘You’ve gone rather pale. Chris. Are you sure you’re okay?’

‘Yeah, yeah. Sorry. I think I just misheard you or something.’

‘I came to tell you that I’ve had a word with Sergeant Gillroy about not sharing the information with the team about what happened at Flavor on Saturday night,’ he repeated.

‘Oh, right . . . okay,’ Chris replied, scrunching his eyes up and feeling his way around his desk back to his seat. ‘Take a seat, sir.’

‘I’m not stopping, thank you, Inspector. Sergeant Gillroy has promised to write up his notes and feed back to you and DI Shufflebotham.’

‘Great. Thank you, sir.’

‘Not a problem. Personally though, Chris, it might be worth you taking a trip to Flavor yourself and speaking to the staff instead of relying on someone else’s notes. Plus they might have more of an idea now about what went on themselves.’

‘I’ll grab Julie now and we’ll head over there.’

‘Good plan. Everything okay otherwise?’ The Sup paused for a second.

‘Yeah, yeah, all is good.’

‘Well, you know where I am.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Chris said, standing up as the Superintendent made his way out. There were so many questions going round in Chris’ head: Why had the Sup asked him if he was okay? Had Sergeant Gillroy told his boss about his fall when he asked about Flavor earlier? Chris found himself wishing that he and Sergeant Gillroy had gotten off to a better start when they’d first met. It seemed it would have saved Chris a lot of trouble . . .

* * *

‘Right, team, tell me what you’ve got,’ Chris said as he strode into the office later, head held high with a slightly forced smile on his face.

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