Free The Killer Inside: A gripping serial killer thriller (Detective Jessica Daniel thriller series Book 1) by Kerry Wilkinson

byline on both articles had been ‘Garry Ashford’. With the investigation not going anywhere, Jessica spent parts of her free time thinking up creative ways to make life miserable for the long-haired, tweed-jacket-wearing pain-in-her-arse.
    In a huge majority of murder cases, the killer was someone known the victim – a family member, or someone romantically involved. The clichés were true. But with Yvonne Christensen anyone they knew of who apparently fitted that description had been ruled out. None of them even had a slightly dodgy alibi. Everything was solid. The police had looked into everyone from the husband, to his new girlfriend, to the son, to the neighbours and even into Stephanie and Ray Wilson. They’d checked Yvonne’s bank accounts and phone records, all of which seemed normal.
    No one seemed to have a motive for murdering Yvonne and, even if they had stumbled across a reason, no one – least of all Jessica – had much of an idea how somebody could have got into and out of the locked house. There must be another key out there – but where?
    With all of that running through Jessica’s mind, she drove home in the rain with a clear plan for the evening: take her shoes off and relax in the living room with a glass – or bottle – of wine.
    Jessica and Caroline’s flat was on the ground floor, with another above them which had been empty for a while. Unlike some in the area, it was an actual apartment and not a converted house. They had a small garden at the front, but it had been paved over before they moved in and they never did anything in it.
    The flat overall might not have been anything particularly special, but the living room was the definition of cosy and relaxing. The sofa was nicely worn in – and could pretty much swallow Jessica. She had fallen asleep on it on far too many occasions, and she was looking forward to curling up on it with her wine tonight, ready for a good session of TV-watching. Caroline had plenty of DVD box sets, but Jessica only really watched the news and late-night reruns of trashy morning talk shows. Not that she would have admitted the talk-show watching to her colleagues, of course. Still… who could resist a good DNA test reveal?
    But when she arrived home and opened the door to her living room, there was a man there who Jessica didn’t know, drinking from a can of lager and sitting on her and Caroline’s sofa, in the precise spot where Jessica had been looking forward to parking her backside.
    ‘Er, hello?’
    ‘Oh, hi…’ he replied. ‘Jessica, right?’
    ‘Are you psychic, or do you know me?’
    He offered a hand. ‘Randall.’
    ‘Ah… The boyfriend.’
    They shook hands.
    Caroline had re-entered the main room at the sound of the voices. ‘I was just changing,’ she explained to Jessica. ‘I hope you don’t mind Randall coming over. I wanted you both to meet.’
    Jessica didn’t mind, not really – but it would have been nice to have been asked. She looked Randall over. He was decent-looking – close to six foot, shaven head, blue eyes, decent physique on show in a tight-fit T-shirt. There was some kind of spiky-lettering tattoo on the lower half of his right arm, but Jessica couldn’t figure out what it was. She didn’t particularly go for guys who spent so much time working out – and tattoos and piercings had never been too appealing to her. Caroline, however, could barely take her eyes off him.
    Although she preferred the sofa for comfort, Jessica left it to Randall and Caroline to share as she took the recliner. The three of them half-watched some nonsense game show, laughing at the contestants’ lack of knowledge, while Caroline tried to get her best friend and boyfriend to interact with each other. A bottle of wine, opened and shared between the two women, certainly helped.
    ‘So, you met over shoes…?’ Jessica asked, after an hour or so of small talk.
    Caroline and Randall looked at each other and giggled, then had a