To Kill For Read online

  ‘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

  www.headofzeus.com

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  We hope you enjoyed this book. We are an independent publisher dedicated to discovering brilliant books, new authors and great storytelling. Please join us at www.headofzeus.com and become part of our community of book-lovers.

  We will keep you up to date with our latest books, author blogs, special previews, tempting offers, chances to win signed editions and much more.

  If you have any questions, feedback or just want to say hi, please drop us a line on [email protected]

  @HoZ_Books

  HeadofZeusBooks

  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

  Clerkenwell House

  45-47 Clerkenwell Green

  London EC1R 0HT

  www.headofzeus.com

  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
r />   Chapter Twenty-Four

  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