Nobody Walks

Informationen zum Autor Mick Herron  is a British novelist and short story writer who was born in Newcastle and studied English at Oxford. He is the author of six books in the Slough House series ( Slow Horses ,  Dead Lions ,  Real Tigers ,  Spook Street ,  London Rules , and the novella  The List ) and four Oxford mysteries ( Down Cemetery Road ,  The Last Voice You Hear ,  Why We Die , and  Smoke and Whispers ), as well as the standalone novels  Reconstruction,  Nobody Walks   and  This Is What Happened . His work has won the CWA Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel, the Steel Dagger for Best Thriller, and the Ellery Queen Readers Award, and been nominated for the Macavity, Barry, Shamus, and Theakstons Novel of the Year Awards. He currently lives in Oxford and writes full-time. Leseprobe 1.1     The news had come hundreds of miles to sit waiting for days in a mislaid phone. And there it lingered like a moth in a box, weightless, and aching for the light.     The street cleaners’ lorry woke Bettany. It was 4:25 am. He washed at the sink, dressed, turned the bed’s thin mattress, and rolled his sleeping bag into a tight package he leaned upright in a corner. 4:32.             Locking the door was an act of faith or satire—the lock would barely withstand a rattle—but the room wouldn’t be empty long, because someone else used it during the day. Bettany hadn’t met him, but they’d reached an accommodation. The daytime occupant respected Bettany’s possessions—his toothbrush, his sleeping bag, the dog-eared copy of Dubliners he’d found on a bus—and in return Bettany left untouched the clothing that hung from a hook on the door, three shirts and a pair of khakis.             His own spare clothing he kept in a duffel bag in a locker at the sheds. Passport and wallet he carried in a security belt with his mobile, until that got lost or stolen.             Outside was February cold, quiet enough that he could hear water rinsing the sewers. A bus grumbled past, windows fogged. Bettany nodded to the whore on the corner, whose territory was bounded by two streetlights. She was Senegalese, pre-op, currently a redhead, and he’d bought her a drink one night, God knew why. They had exile in common, but little else. Bettany’s French remained undistinguished, and the hooker’s English didn’t lend itself to small talk.             A taste of the sea hung in the air. This would burn off later, and be replaced by urban flavours.             He caught the next bus, a twenty-minute ride to the top of a lane which fell from the main road like an afterthought, and as he trudged downhill a truck passed, horn blaring, its headlights yellowing the sheds ahead, which were barn-sized constructions behind wire-topped fences. A wooden sign hung lopsided from the gates, one of its tethering chains longer than the other. The words were faded by weather. Bettany had never been able to make them out.             Audible now, the sound of cattle in distress.             He was waved through and fetched his apron from the locker room. A group of men were smoking by the door, and one grunted his name.             “Tonton.”             What they called him, for reasons lost in the mist of months.             He knotted his apron, which was stained so thick with blood and grease it felt plastic, and fumbled his gloves on.             Out in the yard the truck was impatient, its exhaust fumes spoiling out in thick black ropes. The noise from the nearest shed was mechanical, mostly, and its smells metallic and full of fear. Behind Bettany men stamped their cigarettes out and hawked noisily. Refrigerated air whispered from the truck’s dropped tailgate.             Bettany’s role wasn’t complicated. Lorries arrived bearing cattle and the cattle were fed into the sheds. What came out was meat, which was...

Product details

• Authors: Mick Herron
• Publisher: Soho Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• EAN: 9781641294997
• ISBN: 978-1-64129-499-7
• No. of pages: 336