concrete along the top. I fucked myself up big-time. Blood poured from my lacerated hand, but I knew Guy's was just a couple of minutes away. I ran all the way there. They did their stuff, and told me to go home. I didn't argue. After that I was forever grazing my knees and elbows and taking myself off to Guy's, then home for the rest of the day.
All I needed now were a few new sutures and some more antibiotics to counter any infection in the wound and the shit I must have swallowed. They'd do it, no trouble. This was south London. It wasn't like they didn't know how to treat gunshot wounds. Once they'd sewn me up and handed out some more antibiotics and painkillers, I'd be looking for Dom, and my first stop would be Tallulah and Ruby's. They were the real casualties. My arm would heal.
I stuck it out for another twenty minutes as old people vomited into plastic containers and called for their forty-something children, who were wandering round, trying to find out why their parents had been abandoned in the corridors.
It depressed the shit out of me, and reinforced my own plans for old age. I wasn't going to hang about. Once I started pissing in my pants, it was time to drop myself.
I got to my feet, picked up all my worldly goods in my Bergen, and asked the Polish builders to keep my seat for me.
At the coffee machine, I scrabbled in my pocket for change with my free hand, when a gravel-voiced Ulsterman piped up behind me: 'It's all right, boy, I'll get that.'
I didn't turn. I knew who it was. I could feel his roll-up tobacco breath against my ear. My heart sank.
'Shirley Temple, if I remember right?' A worn brown leather-covered arm brushed past my face and a big freckled hand threw a quid into the slot and punched 'white no sugar' with a nicotine-stained forefinger.
25
Sundance saw the expression on my face. 'Don't worry, boy, we're not carrying. We're not going to hurt you.'
We? Where there was Sundance, you also got Trainers. I looked round and, sure enough, he was sitting a little further down the corridor. He was there to block a getaway, but he seemed more intent on checking out the nurses, cleaners, female patients, anyone with a pair of tits. His forearms rippled below his short-sleeved shirt as he worked a roll-up. His Red Hand of Ulster tattoo had just been lasered off last time I saw him, and all traces of it had now disappeared.
I didn't care what Sundance said. I was fucking concerned. They had kicked the shit out of me once before just because the Yes Man, the arse-hole they worked for, felt in that kind of mood. He'd given me a brief to kill a kid, which would send a warning to his father. I hadn't complied, so Sundance and Trainers had introduced me to the Yes Man's alternative brief: go to Panama and kill the father. If not, Kelly, a child who was my last remaining link with the human race, would die.
I'd nicknamed him Sundance because of his thick, blond, side-parted hair and Robert Redford looks, back in the days when Bob was young enough to play Paul Newman's mate. The years hadn't been kind. His face had dropped an inch or two, and the parting had widened to take in much of the top of his nut.
And Trainers? He'd got his name because he wore them all the time and they were the first thing I'd seen of him when they were kicking me to shit.
They'd obviously kept hitting the weights since their days in the H Blocks, but still looked bulked-up rather than honed. With their broken noses and big barrel chests they wouldn't have been out of place outside a nightclub in ill-fitting dinner jackets and Dr Martens. But they were in the Good Lads' Club now, and worked for the Firm.
Sundance nodded down at my arm as the cup dropped on to the tray. 'Had a bit of a rough time there, eh? I saw it on the news. Hit a bone?'
I shook my head. He glanced up again as the cup filled. 'Fucking chaos out there, eh?'
As if he'd know. Guys like him were just muscle, not two brain cells to rub together. They stayed local, within the M25. These days, they were probably used to fight the new enemy – anyone with a