THE SKIN CODE an absolutely gripping crime thriller with an astonishing twist by STEPHEN WILLIAMS

Author:STEPHEN WILLIAMS [WILLIAMS, STEPHEN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joffe Books crime thriller, mystery and suspense
Published: 2022-06-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 29

Luke scanned the street. Years of living by his wits had made him fine-tuned to everything and everyone in his environment. With a final look at the empty thoroughfare, he slipped into a tiny alley between two council houses. In the warm night, the streetlights were barely visible, just a weak glow against the background of the toxic air. Luke didn’t care. He was just pleased it wasn’t raining and the garden outside the council house was dry. Because dry meant no footprints. Footprints left by his trainers. Trainers that could be identified by distinguishing nicks and areas where the soles had worn down.

Always thinking.

He opened the side gate and entered the garden, glancing first at the dead eyes of the house’s windows, then at the pink-and-yellow plastic playhouse set against the fence at the end of the garden. Inside was a plastic bag full of drugs worth more than Luke’s life. The first time he’d done this run he’d been in bits. Wondering if anyone from the house would see him. Or from a neighbouring house. Wondering what would happen if one of the kids who lived there ever found the drugs. Took them, maybe, if they were nice-coloured pills and looked like sweeties.

But then he’d got wise. There were no kids. The whole thing was a beard — a shell house with the paying tenants set up somewhere else. Whatever. Not his concern.

All he ever did was pick-ups and deliveries. The drugs were left in the playhouse, and his job was to scope out the area and, if it was safe, to take the stash and distribute to all the postcodes on the schedule. Business was so good that it was easier for rival gangs to let a neutral roadman be the post-boy than fight among themselves. Everybody happy.

As Luke reached down for the playhouse door, he could hear, several streets away, the tannoy of the DLR station announcing the arrival of one of its Noddy trains.

He opened the plastic door, crouched down and stepped in, letting the door close behind him. Inside the tiny house, his large frame felt claustrophobic. Closed in. Luke didn’t like enclosed spaces. That’s why he spent most of his time on the road. That was why, once he’d got enough coin, he was going to sack London and move to somewhere wide open. Australia, possibly. Or Canada. Somewhere he wasn’t known. Somewhere he had no history.

He lifted the lid of the little play-desk in front of him. Inside were tightly wrapped bricks of plastic, containing thousands of pounds’ worth of pills and powders. Snake remedies of the modern world. Instant karma. Immediate salvation. Do not pass go, do not collect any fucking experience that is real.

Luke sucked air in between his teeth and shrugged off his backpack. Not his problem. Everybody happy.

He began transferring everything to his backpack, careful to preserve the order. Each package was marked with a code. As he packed, he kept a mental image of the route he would take.

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