Jack-knifed (ebook)

Argumento de Jack-knifed (ebook)

?Jack-Knifed? is the first novel featuring DCI Martin Phelps and his team, based in the world-famous and vibrant Cardiff Bay.

Mark Wilson, a decent, well-liked gay man, lives alone in a beautiful house in Cardiff. One Saturday evening, his closest friends go to his house for an evening of drinks and catching-up.

Finding no answer, the concerned friends break in ? to a horrific murder scene. For Mark Wilson has been brutally, sadistically murdered in his own home.

As DCI Phelps investigates, Mark?s traumatic early life is revealed. Was his killer someone from his past? Was his sexuality a motive? What about his violent, homophobic father ? a man who has already killed more than once ?

Meanwhile, Mark?s estranged sister Amy broods on the hatred she has for her brother, blaming him for turning their father into a killer. As she sinks further in to the depths of drug addiction, who?s to say what her next move will be?

As the body count rises, Phelps and his sergeant, Matt Pryor, soon realise they are on the trail of a serial killer ?

Paula Williams finished doing her make-up, put on her probably-too-high platform heels, and donned the long, lightweight multi-coloured coat she had bought in the January sales. She wore a blue sleeveless top and white linen trousers, and didnt really need to wear a coat at all in the warm spring air, but shed fallen in love with one of the few designer labels she had in her wardrobe and was determined to wear it as often as she could.

The weather had been scorching over the past week or so. According to Derek the weatherman, temperatures in the city had reached the high 20s, but as Paula was fair-skinned she could justify covering up: even the evening sunshine turned her skin bright red.

She had inherited her colouring from her father, and her mother had often said that Paulas naturally dark chestnut hair and olive-green eyes were the only good things her father had left behind when hed buggered off and left them. Paula couldnt be considered an outstanding beauty, but she was certainly attractive, and her friendly, outgoing nature drew people to her as shed sometimes found to her cost

She locked the door of her flat in Claude Road carefully, and felt very angry that one of the other residents in the house had once again left the main front door on the latch. There had been a spate of break-ins in the surrounding streets, so many in fact that the local police had made house-to-house visits and posted leaflets in an attempt to get home owners to become more security conscious.

Paula adjusted the lock and slammed the door loudly, hoping that the message would get through to the other tenants, but the mixture of loud, tuneless music and drunken laughter from various parts of the house told her she was wasting her time.

To be fair to her neighbours, she hardly heard a sound from them during the week when, as they were all students, she assumed they were either at one of the colleges or sleeping behind their forever-closed curtains. It was usually around 6 p.m. on a Friday that the house woke up, and stayed awake and rocking until the early hours of Sunday morning.

Still, she would be happy when she could afford to put down a good deposit on a home of her own, and her recent promotion to manager of the travel agency she worked for on Albany Road had brought that day nearer. Paula had been saving every penny she could manage since her acrimonious split with Chris almost nine years ago. Even now, though, simply remembering him caused her to feel anxious, and she realised that she was breathing faster than she had been a few minutes ago.0