The Cleaner

He went back to the table and took off his shirt, using it to mop the blood from around the wound. He sat in the wooden chair, adjusting the lamp so that its light fell on the wound and then turning the mirror so that he could stare right into it. A neat hole had been burrowed out, blackened around the edges and scabbed in parts with partly congealed blood. He grimaced with pain as he reached his left hand back up to his left shoulder and then gasped as he used his forefinger and thumb to spread the edges of the wound, opening it so that he could look a little way inside.

He took the knife and, biting down hard on a dish cloth, prodded the hot and sharp tip into the wound, digging deeper until he saw the silver sparkle of the bullet, lodged like a spiteful tumour an inch deep in his flesh.

He took a deep breath and pushed the knife further into his flesh, the sharp point sliding through the skin and into the muscle beneath. The pain yanked him back to wakefulness and then kept climbing; every millimetre of progress, every nudge and tap, was rewarded with a lance of agony that seared into his brain.

He thought about Elijah and Sharon.

He thought about Rutherford.

He felt the tip of the blade touch against the bullet and, with the pain and his weakness shimmering like heat haze before his face, he pressed down harder and then prised the blade back, levering the slug from its burrow and pressing it out until it dropped from the wound and onto the table.

The pain flared once, a crescendo that Milton met by slamming his fist against the table, and then slackened off.

Halfway there.

He swallowed another two ibuprofen and reached over to the hob for the spatula. Closing his eyes and pressing his teeth together, he took the blade and pressed it against the wound, the skin sizzling as the red-hot metal cauterised it. Milton gasped at another vicious wave of pain, clenching the edge of the table until it, too, passed. He inspected the seared, puckered flesh in the mirror. A huge, purple bruise had already bloomed around the wound but the bleeding had stopped. He had done a decent job.

There was no time to pause.

Milton went upstairs and stripped off, taking Twelve’s Sig Sauer into the bathroom with him and showered in the en suite bathroom. He dried himself, daubing antiseptic gel onto the clean wound and then dressing it with the gauze pad, fixing it in place with the roll of bandage. He went into the bedroom and tore through the wardrobe, finding a t-shirt and jeans that fitted him and putting them on.

He had noticed a key fob on the radiator cover in the hall. The fob was attached to a leather swatch decorated with a BMW badge. He left the house through the front door, his revolver hidden beneath a leather jacket he had taken from where it had been slung over the end of the banister. He aimed the fob at the line of parked cars and pressed. There came the familiar double blip and the illumination of the courtesy lights of a large black BMW X5 that had been parked a little way down the road.

Milton opened the door and slid inside. He put Twelve’s revolver on the passenger seat and pressed the engine start. The display reported a full tank of diesel. He let the handbrake out, put the car into gear and pulled slowly into the quiet road.

EPILOGUE

57

Pinky took a seat on the see-saw and looked around. They were in the playground next to Blissett House. He looked up at the fifth floor. The fire had been contained there, but Elijah’s old flat and the ones on each side had been gutted. Black ash and soot was everywhere, the windows and doors had been boarded up, the damage sticking out like an ugly bruise on the concrete face of the block. Pinky didn’t have strong feelings about what had happened. Elijah and his mums had brought it on themselves. What else was Bizness supposed to have done, the two of them sending that man after him like that? Pinky had no sympathy for them.

He had sent messages to the other boys and they had been waiting for him when he had arrived five minutes earlier. They were all there: Little Mark, Chips, Kidz and a couple of the primary school kids from the Estate who had been hanging around with him for the last week. Time they got promoted, Pinky thought, time they had something useful to do. The boys were spread out; Chips and Kidz sat on the swings, Little Mark leant against the chain-link fence, the youngsters kept together, eyeing the older boys with a mixture of bravado and nervousness. The older boys were smoking from the joint that Pinky had rolled and passed around.

It had been a crazy few days and Pinky had not slept much. It didn’t matter, though; he still felt good. There was no point in pretending that he hadn’t been frightened, but nothing had happened to him and now he was in the clear. He had searched the studio after Milton had left; he figured he had a little time before the Feds came and he knew that there was bound to be stuff worth taking. He had been right about that: he had found more than ten grand in a holdall and dozens of little bags filled with cocaine, ready to be distributed to Bizness’s dealers, the network of shotters that he had on the street. Pinky had put the Mac-10s and the drugs into another bag he found and left the studio by the fire escape at the back.

It had been hairy getting back. London had been a war-zone that night, police cars and vans speeding through the back streets under blue lights, but he had not been stopped. He had stored the guns and money under his bed at home, hiding it beneath his empty trainer boxes and dirty clothes. His Mums had given up trying to get him to keep the room tidy long ago and she had stopped going inside. He knew they would be safe there for a day or two until he could think of somewhere better.

Pinky cast his gaze around the group. They all knew Pops was gone but no-one had said anything about it. Pinky guessed that they had heard that he was responsible, and, while he was not stupid enough to admit that it had been him, he was happy for them to speculate. He would not own up to it, but he would not deny it, either. A little bit of fear was a good thing, especially with what he had pla

Pinky reckoned that he had been given an opportunity. After always being second best, now he had a chance to really do something with his life. Make a name for himself, make some money; he wasn’t going to fuck it up, no way.

He got up from the see-saw. “Aight,” he said. “First things first. I’m in charge now. Anyone have a problem with that?”

No-one spoke.

“Didn’t think so,” he gri

58

Group Fifteen had its own private medical facilities attached to a well-known London teaching hospital. State of the art facilities, the best doctors in the country, absolute discretion. Control watched through the window as the surgeon bent low to examine the damage that had been done to Twelve’s knee. The man — and his three colleagues — were wearing green smocks, their faces covered by surgical masks and latex gloves over their hands. Twelve had been anaesthetised and was laid out on the operating table, covered by a sheet with a long vertical slit that allowed easy access to his right leg. The surgeon had already sliced open his knee, a neat incision that began just below the quadriceps and curved around the line of his leg. The opening was held open by medical clips and a miniature camera on an articulated arm had been positioned overhead, its feed visible on the large screen that was fixed to the wall in the observation suite. Milton’s bullet had ruined the knee, smashing through the anterior and posterior ligaments and shattering the patella. They had examined the damage with an arthroscope first and determined that repairs were not possible; a full arthroplasty was necessary. The surgeon had removed what was left of the patella and had shaved the ends of the femur and tibia so that he could fix the replacement joint. One of his colleagues was preparing the bone cement while the other was checking that the prosthesis was ready to be implanted.