The Killer Inside: A gripping serial killer thriller (Detective Jessica Daniel thriller series Book 1) Read Free Page B

separation.
    Christensen was seeing someone new, who lived in Bolton. He said he had been out with her on Tuesday night, playing snooker with friends on Wednesday, in with his partner on the Thursday, and then out again the previous night. He said he didn’t have a door key to his old house and, as far as he was aware, Yvonne and James were the only people who did.
    James Christensen was at Bournemouth University. It was a nine- or ten-hour round trip from Manchester and his father reckoned he had gone that far to get away from them, explaining that James had fallen in with the wrong crowd a few years before, when Eric and Yvonne had been arguing all the time.
    He asked if he could be the one to tell his son about Yvonne’s death. Jessica told him that was fine – but explained that an officer from the local area was going to need to speak to James as well, if only to make sure he still had his door key.
    When the room was empty except for the two officers, Cole looked to her and raised his eyebrows. ‘What do you reckon?’
    ‘His alibi will check out. He was too specific for it not to.’
    ‘I know. The son seems unlikely, too. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find that he took out a huge life insurance policy in her name last week?’ Cole winked at her. ‘Nice juicy motive.’
    ‘He didn’t give us much else to go on, did he?’ said Jessica.
    Cole was already starting to tidy up the room. ‘Are you heading home?’ he asked. ‘I wouldn’t have called you in if we weren’t short. Add it to time owing.’
    Jessica gave him the sideways glance. Time owing ? She was never going to get that back.
    ‘Is there anything else you want me to do?’ she asked.
    ‘No, I’ll call the higher-ups then get off myself. We’ve got officers going door to door and we’re not going to get any results from the labs through until Monday at the earliest. There’s not much more we can do.’
    Jessica said goodbye to the desk sergeant and asked him to call her mobile if anything interesting happened. And by ‘interesting’, she meant aliens invading. Anything less than that was not a reason to disturb her Sunday off.
    Her phone started to ring as she headed out of the station on her own. She figured it was the desk sergeant having a laugh.
    There was no name displayed, only a mobile number she didn’t recognise. She jabbed at the screen to answer. ‘Hello?’
    The man’s voice on the other end was slightly shaky. ‘Is that Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel?’
    ‘Yes, who’s this?’
    The person paused for a moment. ‘I’m calling to ask about the dead body you found this morning.’

Chapter Four
    G arry Ashford had already drunk a third of his pint when his friend Mark slid into the booth, plonking a full glass of beer on the table between them. They were friends largely because they lived close to each other. The pub was only two minutes’ walk from Garry’s flat and usually full of locals. Because it was away from the main street, the tourists didn’t really see it, though most would have opted for a significantly posher bar anyway. It was a mile or so away from the student district and whenever he went for a drink, Garry was convinced he was the youngest person there.
    ‘You all right, mate?’ Mark asked.
    ‘Not too bad, work and that.’ Garry’s tone gave his actual mood away.
    Mark had picked up his drink but put it back down to avoid spilling it as he laughed. ‘Blimey, it can’t be that bad?’
    ‘Bad week. You remember that reality TV girl who slept with that guy? The presenter bloke? It was all over the news.’
    Mark looked blankly at him and shook his head. ‘That could be anyone.’
    Garry shook his head. ‘Anyway, I went to interview her. She had a book she was supposed to be promoting but she talked in one- and two-word answers. If that’s how she spoke then God knows how bad the writing was. Aside from her own fingernails, she wasn’t interested in anything. After fifteen minutes of not