Kimberley Chambers - Life of Crime - The gripping, epic new thriller from the No 1 bestseller

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2018

Copyright © Kimberley Chambers 2018

Cover photographs © Traven Milovich/Arcangel Images (warehouse), Stephen Carroll/Arcangel Images (figure)

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2018

Kimberley Chambers asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008144739

Ebook Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 9780008326418

Version: 2018-08-15

In memory of my dear friend Ronnie’s son

Lee John Richardson

1974–2008

‘We are all in the gutter, But some of us are looking at the stars’

Oscar Wilde

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Part Two

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Part Three

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

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

Part Four

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Kimberley Chambers

About the Publisher

I was thirteen the first time I ever got arrested and can remember it as though it were yesterday. I was driving a stolen Ford Escort MK 2, my feet barely able to touch the pedals, yet I’d still been able to handle that car like a man.

Cigarettes, I’d been caught with. Illegal ones that’d been brought into the country from Belgium via France. Yet no matter how hard the Old Bill interrogated me, I never admitted to where I’d really got those fags from.

‘One of life’s losers, that’s what you are. You’ll never amount to nothing, you stupid little bastard,’ my mother bellowed when the Old Bill brought me home.

‘Only fools break the law. You’re an idiot, boy,’ my schoolteacher hissed in my ear the following Monday morning.

Well, I’ve got news for them. I ain’t no loser, neither am I a fool. A bastard perhaps, thanks to my embarrassment of a mother having no idea who my father is. But I’m a winner, and ever since that day I’ve been determined to prove all the doubters wrong.

I was gifted with charm, good looks, the gift of the gab and intelligence – all the tools a man needs to make it to the very top. And if I need to trample on a few people’s lives and feelings to get there, then so be it.

Well, that’s what I used to think, anyway. But I’ve since learned different.

Sometimes in life – especially when it’s a life of crime you’re involved in – things don’t go to plan.