Read Online Criminal Revenge by Conrad Jones - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Conrad Jones
Tags: FICTION/Crime
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she would have to get used to, whether she liked it or not. Lana thought about waking up Ashwan to tell him, but he would probably laugh and say, “That’s my boy,” or something equally macho and crass.
Lana crept downstairs and walked down the long, wide hallway into a large open kitchen area. Their home was huge, and the kitchen was bigger than most people’s gardens. The floors were tiled with Egyptian white marble. It felt cool beneath her feet. She opened the American refrigerator and took a glass from the cupboard, filling it with milk and sipping it as she debated what to do. She leaned against a granite worktop and chewed her manicured nails as she debated in her mind. Finally she decided to ring Mamood on his mobile, after all, that was why he had it. To let them know where he was, and to keep in touch. If she was worried, it was his own fault for not letting them know that he would be late.
Lana dialled the number from memory. It clicked straight onto voicemail. She tried again, just in case. Voicemail. She bit her lip as she replaced the handset, remembering the nightmare she’d had before she woke. Lana tiptoed back to bed and slid gently under the warm covers, next to her husband, scolding herself for being overprotective of her child. She tried hard, but she could find no peaceful dreams that night.
Chapter Twelve
Abdul – Present Day
Abdul Salim ground a cigarette butt into the pavement. A steady evening rain had started to fall, but he did not go inside to shelter. Salim was a teenage drug dealer, and there were customers to serve, rain or shine. He was tucked between two empty shop units situated beneath a gargantuan tower block. A service alleyway snaked between them, connecting the lockups to a delivery bay behind them. The tower blocks had once been the architect’s solution to overcrowding and a simple method of providing state housing, but they had actually become vertical human zoos. The tenants were either unemployed or in low-paid jobs, easy pickings for drug dealers and loan sharks.
Across the street, two police cars passed by, their uniformed occupants straining to look out of the steamed-up windows. Salim watched as they drove off down the street. The police knew what he was doing. Sometimes they left him alone, sometimes they didn’t. He always carried just enough drugs to qualify as being for personal use, never more. The rest of his stock, his takings and his weapon he kept stashed with a young runner. Like his parents before him, Salim was an Asian pioneer, but instead of settling down to the hard-working toil of previous generations of Asians, Salim and others had blazed a new trail into the violent world of drug dealing. Hard drugs had arrived in Britain’s Asian communities, rapidly creating a social problem of spiralling crime rates and increased numbers of addicts. It had led to the emergence of Asian drug gangs, willing to use violence to carve out territories and defend the enormous profits the trade could bring. On the streets of some northern towns, gang shootings had led to public killings, executions and a climate of fear that the drug dealers were only too willing to encourage.
Salim knew that it was not a problem confined to the north of the United Kingdom. The previous year, police in London had smashed a huge crack and heroin dealing operation in the East End of the capital city that had controlled a trade worth millions of pounds. The gang, based on several large Asian families, had run a twenty-four hour operation supplying drugs to thousands of the capital’s users. Tower Hamlets with its large and deprived Asian community had slowly become the ‘heroin capital’ of the country. If he could progress through the ranks of the organisation and make money for his boss, then he would eventually be given his own area to manage. Drugs were everywhere, and where there were users, there was money to be made.
Successful Asians left the rundown areas, as did the
Lana crept downstairs and walked down the long, wide hallway into a large open kitchen area. Their home was huge, and the kitchen was bigger than most people’s gardens. The floors were tiled with Egyptian white marble. It felt cool beneath her feet. She opened the American refrigerator and took a glass from the cupboard, filling it with milk and sipping it as she debated what to do. She leaned against a granite worktop and chewed her manicured nails as she debated in her mind. Finally she decided to ring Mamood on his mobile, after all, that was why he had it. To let them know where he was, and to keep in touch. If she was worried, it was his own fault for not letting them know that he would be late.
Lana dialled the number from memory. It clicked straight onto voicemail. She tried again, just in case. Voicemail. She bit her lip as she replaced the handset, remembering the nightmare she’d had before she woke. Lana tiptoed back to bed and slid gently under the warm covers, next to her husband, scolding herself for being overprotective of her child. She tried hard, but she could find no peaceful dreams that night.
Chapter Twelve
Abdul – Present Day
Abdul Salim ground a cigarette butt into the pavement. A steady evening rain had started to fall, but he did not go inside to shelter. Salim was a teenage drug dealer, and there were customers to serve, rain or shine. He was tucked between two empty shop units situated beneath a gargantuan tower block. A service alleyway snaked between them, connecting the lockups to a delivery bay behind them. The tower blocks had once been the architect’s solution to overcrowding and a simple method of providing state housing, but they had actually become vertical human zoos. The tenants were either unemployed or in low-paid jobs, easy pickings for drug dealers and loan sharks.
Across the street, two police cars passed by, their uniformed occupants straining to look out of the steamed-up windows. Salim watched as they drove off down the street. The police knew what he was doing. Sometimes they left him alone, sometimes they didn’t. He always carried just enough drugs to qualify as being for personal use, never more. The rest of his stock, his takings and his weapon he kept stashed with a young runner. Like his parents before him, Salim was an Asian pioneer, but instead of settling down to the hard-working toil of previous generations of Asians, Salim and others had blazed a new trail into the violent world of drug dealing. Hard drugs had arrived in Britain’s Asian communities, rapidly creating a social problem of spiralling crime rates and increased numbers of addicts. It had led to the emergence of Asian drug gangs, willing to use violence to carve out territories and defend the enormous profits the trade could bring. On the streets of some northern towns, gang shootings had led to public killings, executions and a climate of fear that the drug dealers were only too willing to encourage.
Salim knew that it was not a problem confined to the north of the United Kingdom. The previous year, police in London had smashed a huge crack and heroin dealing operation in the East End of the capital city that had controlled a trade worth millions of pounds. The gang, based on several large Asian families, had run a twenty-four hour operation supplying drugs to thousands of the capital’s users. Tower Hamlets with its large and deprived Asian community had slowly become the ‘heroin capital’ of the country. If he could progress through the ranks of the organisation and make money for his boss, then he would eventually be given his own area to manage. Drugs were everywhere, and where there were users, there was money to be made.
Successful Asians left the rundown areas, as did the
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