Flesh Wounds Read Free

they knew.
    In Tony’s case, the linchpins of his strategy were bent polis. They had made him bombproof once upon a time, and they had played their part in putting him back on the map in jig time once his stretch was done.
    However, those veteran managers could eventually get found out. They became too reliant on the tried-and-tested formula, and their recipe for success became their weakness. Something that predictable would eventually expose a vulnerability if you watched and waited long enough, though only if you had the means to exploit it.
    Stevie hadn’t, until now.
    He might have turned forty-nine today, but his birthday present had come early. Out of nowhere he’d been offered precisely what he needed to change the game in this city. And like all the best deals, the vendor didn’t have a clue as to the true value of what he was selling.
    Unlike the others, Stevie wasn’t going to let his zest for the present become sapped by the soporific temptations of nostalgia. The future was opening up before him, and it was going to make his past look like a pre-match warm-up.
    He drove the Bentley into the car wash, waved to a space between islands that once housed petrol pumps by a teenager in grey overalls and a Metallica T-shirt. He didn’t know the kid’s name but the kid knew his. He signalled to his mate and they jumped to it, leaving the woman in the Ford Focus at the next wash station wondering what was the script.
    Funny he should be thinking about Tony as he drove to use this place: in a way it was the first sign, way back when, that Stevie was outgrowing him, and that the rules were changing in ways Tony couldn’t grasp. The older man didn’t understand why Stevie was putting money into running a car wash, even after he had explained that it wasn’t just cars that were going in dirty and coming out clean.
    There was some heavy metal rubbish playing from a pair of puny speakers perched on the water heater that fed the cleaning lances. Stevie cranked up the Bentley’s stereo and let the sub-woofer take care of the noise pollution. Bit of Simple Minds:
Sparkle in the Rain
. That didn’t count as nostalgia; just a basic matter of it being better than any of the shite that was out nowadays.
    The kid in the Metallica T-shirt knelt down and began squirting some stuff on his alloys, while a biker-looking bloke in what most closely resembled fishing waders hefted the lance. He gave the car a once-over with some hot water to start with, then began coating it in foam.
    The windscreen got it first, then the entire vehicle was insulated in a layer of white bubbles. As always, this part made Stevie feel a little uncomfortable, blind and isolated in what suddenly seemed a cramped wee capsule. There was only a thin film between him and the outside world, but he felt suddenly very detached. It was easy to imagine what it would be like to be inside a car buried in an avalanche. He recalled a dream he’d had, two or three times in fact, about being engulfed in a different kind of snow. It piled up around him, higher and higher until he couldn’t escape. That was before he quit sampling his own merchandise.
    This bit never lasted long, however. They’d start with the brushes any second, though they seemed to be taking their time this morning. He considered rolling down the window a little to ask what was keeping them, but thought better of it, as chances were a brush would come right along it at just that second.
    Instead he relaxed, deciding to enjoy the isolation, alone with his thoughts and his music.
    A hole suddenly appeared in both the foam and indeed the windscreen itself, a spiderweb of crazing extending like ripples from its centre. The bullet that shattered the glass carried on through Stevie’s chest, bouncing off a rib and spinning end on end through his heart. It was liquidised midway through its final beat, but his brain had still enough oxygen for him to look through the dissolving suds and glimpse a tall