‘I hear you two don’t want to work with me any more. That right?’
King took a deep breath.
‘No. That’s not right. Not exactly.’
‘We were told you might not be safe,’ Daley said.
‘And the job? You cutting me out?’
‘No, Joe,’ Daley said. ‘You ain’t in or out. We’re not doing the job.’
‘Because of me?’
‘What does it matter?’ King said.
‘It matters.’
‘We’re not doing it,’ Daley said, ‘because something smells fishy. No offence, Joe. We gotta take precautions.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘But that doesn’t mean we think you’re a scalper. Nat said that was bollocks soon as he heard it.’
‘Right,’ King said.
‘Besides, we didn’t think you’d want to surface for a while. Certainly not to do a job.’
‘What do you mean?’
King picked up the cue ball and put it down again. Daley shook his head and said, ‘Fuck’s sake, Joe. You can’t hit a man like Cole and not expect any shit to come down on you.’
‘Cole? Bobby Cole?’
‘Of course Bobby Cole. The casino job.’
‘That was Cole’s casino?’
‘Didn’t you know?’ King said.
‘No.’
Robbing Cole was madness. He wouldn’t rest until he had us all strung up. Maybe he’d killed Simpson. And Beckett. If he had, why didn’t Kendall realize it? But then, maybe he did. Maybe he was distancing himself from the whole thing.
‘Who told you I wasn’t safe?’ I said. ‘Was it to do with the Ellis thing?’
‘We didn’t hear it from Ellis,’ Daley said. ‘That was just bad luck, even Ellis says so. He blames Caine for that.’
‘It was Dave Kendall told us,’ King said. ‘Last week. Said he was worried about you, wouldn’t be putting any more work your way.’
Kendall. That explained his behaviour earlier, why he’d felt he needed a bodyguard. He must’ve thought that I’d heard he was throwing shit on my name.
‘I never liked Kendall,’ King was saying. ‘Never trusted him. He talks too fucking much.’
One of Daley’s kids, a small blonde thing, ran into the room and stopped dead when it saw me. It stared at me with huge eyes and mouth agape. Then it remembered it had legs and turned and ran from the room.
Daley said something to me about the kid’s name meaning something or other in Dutch.
‘My mum was Dutch, see,’ he said.
Something King had said was getting caught somewhere. It didn’t fit. When Daley finished giving me his family history, I said to King, ‘Last week?’
‘Huh?’
‘You said he told you this last week.’
‘Yeah. After I saw you that time in the gym I called him up and told him we wanted you for the jeweller’s.’
‘This was before the casino job?’
‘Yeah, of course.’
I felt a weight in the back of my head.
‘Did you tell Kendall that you’d seen me about the jeweller’s?’
‘No.’
Kendall.
Available now
About this Book
Ex-boxer, ex-paratrooper, Joe once had meaning in his life. People who cared for him, people who needed him. Then he lost everything, and now he is a hitman for London’s most vicious criminals.
Brenda was the only woman who ever loved him. The only woman who believed he could escape the underworld. She died protecting others: now Joe wants revenge on her killers. With nothing left to lose, Joe prepares for the fight of his life...
This is a poignant thriller about love, revenge and redemption from a superb new voice in British crime.
About the Author
Photo credit: Jenny Quiggin
PHILLIP HUNTER has a degree in English Literature from Middlesex University and an MA in Screenwriting from the London Institute. He was also part of the team that sequenced the human genome.
About this Series
1 – To Die For
A BROKEN MAN
Joe was a British soldier, then a bare-knuckle boxer.
Now he’s a gangster in London’s East End.
Once, long ago, he fell in love.
But people like him don’t have happy endings.
A BROKEN CITY
Hackney’s most vicious gang is hunting
Joe down. He doesn’t know why.
All he knows is that until he kills them,
he’s a dead man walking.
A RAY OF HOPE
A twelve-year-old runaway, Kid, needs Joe’s protection.
Life has made Joe a machine.
Can this little girl make him human again?
To Die For is available here.
2 – To Kill For
Ex-boxer, ex-paratrooper, Joe once had meaning in his life. People who cared for him, people who needed him. Then he lost everything, and now he is a hitman for London’s most vicious criminals.
Brenda was the only woman who ever loved him. The only woman who believed he could escape the underworld. She died protecting others: now Joe wants revenge on her killers. With nothing left to lose, Joe prepares for the fight of his life...
This is a poignant thriller about love, revenge and redemption from a superb new voice in British crime.
Book 3 will be released in Winter 2015
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The story starts here
First published in the UK in 2014 by Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © Phillip Hunter, 2014
The moral right of Phillip Hunter, to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
9 7 5 3 1 2 4 6 8
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (eBook) 9781781853405
ISBN (TPBO) 9781781853382
eBook converted by Palimpsest
Head of Zeus Ltd
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Table of Contents
Cover
Welcome Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Preview
About this Book
About the Author
About this Series
An Invitation from the Publisher
Copyright
To Kill For Page 27