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Life of Crime: The gripping, epic new thriller from the No 1 bestseller
Kimberley Chambers
*You can pre-order No 1 bestseller Kimberley Chambers’ explosive new novel now*If you could get away with the perfect crime – would you?HEAVEN HAS NO RAGE, LIKE LOVE TO HATRED TURNED.NOR HELL A FURY, LIKE A WOMAN SCORNED.The new gritty standalone novel from the No 1 bestselling author. This is Kimberley Chambers at her shocking, page-turning best.‘Will have you on the edge of your seat from cover to cover’ OK
Copyright (#ulink_d3c8ba68-547a-5079-be2f-0cc4b30ee56e)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © Kimberley Chambers 2018
Cover photographs © Traven Milovich/Arcangel Images (warehouse), Stephen Carroll/Arcangel Images (figure)
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 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
Dedication (#ulink_8a3bab3e-b339-5763-a8d4-2f8790a1757e)
In memory of my dear friend Ronnie’s son
Lee John Richardson
1974–2008
Epigraph (#ua056036d-6ef9-5d5e-95a2-ef5b0180c7fb)
‘We are all in the gutter,But some of us are looking at the stars’
Oscar Wilde
Contents
Cover (#uebbe0cf3-87b6-598a-b905-34dca0b7082c)
Title Page (#uf20967b3-ecec-5e07-a559-a81606ad0be1)
Copyright (#u4ba13b3b-1b58-589e-abc1-3e65ac96350e)
Dedication (#u3469d6da-3881-5c07-ad89-22d1de1862d8)
Epigraph
Prologue (#ud84e4570-fd54-52cb-86df-4fa7ec02c834)
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 … (#u62eda1d9-4d4b-5ab4-9226-79f1a9803cf3)
About the Author
Also by Kimberley Chambers
About the Publisher (#ufcae1298-ddcf-5c29-958b-80db6c2f19c0)
PROLOGUE (#ulink_7a9602c6-7334-5a86-8979-0cc8fd04141c)
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.
My name is Jason Rampling and this is my story …
PART ONE (#ua056036d-6ef9-5d5e-95a2-ef5b0180c7fb)
CHAPTER ONE (#ua056036d-6ef9-5d5e-95a2-ef5b0180c7fb)
Spring 1994
Johnny Brooks glanced up from his newspaper and looked at his daughter inquisitively over his thin-rimmed reading glasses. ‘And where do you think you’re off to, young lady?’
