maths, if I am one eight millionth of a city what does this make me in percentage terms? Do the maths, divide and . . .
“Where is Ngwenya’s hat?”
“He’ll . . . he’ll . . . he’ll . . .”
“Mr Pinner will flay you alive, yes,” breathed Oda softly. “Of course he will. But the thing is this. You’ve been shot in the stomach. Right now, the contents of your bowels are spilling into your bloodstream. Faeces, gastric juices, stomach acids, digestive enzymes. They’re going to get into your veins, and start eating. The acid is going to burn you from the inside out, the enzymes are going to gobble away at your body until there’s nothing left for them to chew on, digest you from the inside out, the faeces spilt from your stomach are going to turn your blood to sewage. If you’re fortunate, septic shock will take you out before the worst of it. If not, then having the skin peeled from your bones will seem the balmy mercy of the Almighty compared to the death you will endure. And that’s just the start. Damnation awaits you, Alderman. I cannot say what manner of suffering it will be. That is a secret that will be shared only by you and the Devil, and he does not care for reason. Where is the hat? Anissina? Where is the traffic warden’s hat?”
“H-H-Harlun and Phelps,” she whispered. “Boom Boom took it, didn’t r-r-realise its power, what it m-meant. I hid it in Harlun and Phelps. I th-th-thought they would n-never . . .”
Oda stroked Anissina’s chin with the end of the gun. “God loves you,” she whispered. “Remember that, when the Devil comes. God is suffering as you suffer, crying out when you cry out. He loves you. He weeps for you. He sees that there is only one way for you to learn.”
So saying, she leant down, and carefully planted a kiss on Anissina’s forehead. She stood up briskly, looked down at me and said, “Are you still not dead?”
“Still alive,” we replied. “Ta-da!”
“Do you want to end this?” she asked.
“Depends on what you mean.”
And for a moment, Oda, psycho-bitch, almost smiled.
“Lucky man,” she said, and bending down, helped to lift us up. “He must love you too, in His own special way.”
She pulled me to my feet.
I felt things moving beneath my skin that shouldn’t have been moving, and we bit so hard on the scream that we caught our tongue between our teeth and for a moment, the pain was almost a welcome relief.
Anissina whimpered, “Swift? Help me?”
We looked down at her.
“Remember Vera?” we asked.
She didn’t answer.
Oda helped us limp away.
Hackney Marshes.
Running. There was blood running between my fingers, blood running down from my side, too fast, too hot. I hissed, “Shot . . .”
“I know. Come on.”
Grass and bumps and sticky wet mud and little flowing streams that sunk up to our ankles and reeds that pulled at our legs and I couldn’t see magic here, now, not tonight, but there it was, the bright neon glow of the city, so close, just a little more and there it would be, electric fire!
“Nearly . . . there . . .” we breathed.
“I know. Come on!”
She’d stolen a car, a Volkswagen Passat, the most boring car manufactured by man, parked it on the edge of the marshes. She opened the back door, threw me in, stepped into the driver’s seat, turned on the ignition, handbrake down, clutch up, boy-racer to the full. I groaned and rolled onto my back in the passenger seats, fumbled for a torch in my pocket, found it, shone it down onto my own abdomen. Something small and angry had torn a jagged smile in the upper-left side of my flesh, just below the floating ribs, and blood was now merrily dribbling out from the grin. I cursed and swore and threw in a bit of blasphemy just in case, groped in my satchel, found the first-aid kit, unravelled pads and bandages and pressed them in, but no sooner was one white pad applied than it had turned scarlet with blood and had to be tossed aside.
“Oda,” I croaked.
“I know,” she snapped. “You’re losing plenty of blood, which probably means it grazed your spleen. You’ll get anxious, your heart rate will pick up, your breathing will accelerate. Then you’ll lose more blood and get calmer, but that won’t be a good thing. Your blood pressure will plummet, your head will spin, your peripheral