Delete-Man: A Psychological Thriller (13 page)

“I’m looking for a Karim Bedard.
I’m a workmate of his. He had an accident a few days ago and nobody
has heard from him. Please, I just want to see him and make sure
he’s ok.”

“Are you sure he’s at this
hospital?”

“Pretty sure, yes. The accident
was nearby.”

“Are you a relative?”

“Sort of.”

“Please wait over there.”

I stood to the side of the
hospital waiting room and watched patiently as the receptionist
spoke to a few more people waiting in line then checked something
on the computer. I wondered if the guy in the blue saloon had
followed the bus I had taken to the hospital. I scanned the lobby
for his buzzcut.

“Sir?”

“Yes.”

“If you go to the emergency
department at the end of this corridor they’ll tell you where to
go.”

“Thanks.”

I gave the lobby one last scan
and made my way down the corridor. Upon asking a nurse at another
desk I was directed amongst the beds to one in a corner. At first I
wondered if it was the right one; beneath the head bandages and
tubes it was difficult to make out a face that I barely knew
anyway. The only indication I had the right bed was the dark skin
and lank hair that peeked from the top of the cotton wraps.

The nurse fetched me a chair and
I sat beside the bed. She touched his arm gently.

“Mr. Bedard. Mr. Bedard. You
have a visitor.”

His lips parted and his eyes
opened slowly. The nurse promptly left, and I watched his thin,
brown eyes adjust to reality.

“Did you have a nice dream?”

He turned his head towards me
and groaned. In a thick accent he said:

“I knew you come. I wait for
you.”

“Where are you from?”

“Algeria.”

“Is that in Africa?”

“Don’t ask stupid question.”

I looked over at the other bed;
in it there was someone only a little less bandaged up than Karim.
He looked a little overweight, and in his thirties. He spoke at the
ceiling, waving his arm as if talking to some imaginary audience. I
got up and closed the curtain around Karim’s bed.

“He talk about me.”

“How do you know? I can’t hear
him.”

“I can tell. Racist.”

“So why were you following
me?”

“You give my phone. You take my
phone.”

“Why were you following me?”

“Give me phone.”

“I have your phone right here.
I’ll give it to you when you answer.”

He groaned and shifted slightly,
he looked deeply uncomfortable.

“Who told you to follow me, and
why?”

“I didn’t follow you.”

“Why did you run then? When I
came to talk to you?”

“You fucking crazy.”

“I saw you watching me outside a
café near Cowley street, and you followed me when I was
shopping.”

“Leave me!”

He squirmed in the bed,
seemingly in pain. He began to moan loudly.

“Are you ok?”

He kept squirming, as if trying
to escape the bandages. I thought about calling a nurse.

“Hey Karim. You want me to do
something?”

He wailed louder, and I realised
he was saying things in his native language.

“My phone! Bastard!”

I scrambled around in my pockets
until I found his phone then held it in front of him.

“Look. It’s right here. Calm the
hell down.”

He tried to snatch it with his
arm but flinched back in pain. I grabbed his arm, held it down, and
put the phone in his hand.

“There. You got it now. Stop
wailing.”

“My brother, I call him.”

“The battery’s dead.”

He began to moan again in his
language, I would have bet money he was swearing. I watched his
hysterics hoping he would get it out of his system, but he only got
louder and wilder. It didn’t seem like he was going to calm down
any time soon. I stood up to take a look behind the curtain. Nurses
were passing by the other end of the ward without even glancing
towards us. I guessed that it wasn’t the first time Karim had
thrown a fit in the hospital.

I checked that no nurses were
approaching, then drew the curtain fully around the bed and
returned to the bedside. I leaned over him. He was speaking so
vehemently I could see the spit flying from his face. I grabbed a
handful of his bedsheet and stuffed it into his mouth, muffling his
cries. I pressed some more in and held my hand over it until I
couldn’t hear anything. He tried to wrench his head away but I had
a firm grip. His weak, injured arm could only scratch at my
side.

“Look at me.”

After a few more attempts to
twist out of my grip he stopped struggling and stared at me with
wide, fearful eyes.

“You were following me, weren’t
you?”

After a second’s pause he
nodded.

“Did somebody ask you to follow
me?”

Another second and another
nod.

“Was it Sebastien? Or any of
Josie’s family?”

It took longer this time for him
to process what I had asked, and eventually he moved his head down
a bit in what seemed to be an attempt at a shrug.

“How long have you been
following me? One week? Two weeks?”

Again the shrug.

“More than two weeks?”

A shrug and a nod. Tears were
forming in his eyes.

I heard a nurse talk to one of
the patients in a nearby bed and leaned in closer so as not to be
heard.

“Look. I don’t have time to mess
around. I have to go pick my sister up soon. If you just tell me
what I want to know I’ll give you your book and your stuff back and
leave you alone. If you start wailing again, and don’t answer me,
I’ll come back tomorrow and every day until you do. I’ll make sure
you stay in here until you tell me. Ok?”

He closed his eyes in an
expression of pain, and nodded.

“I’m gonna take my hand away
now. Don’t make a sound.”

I let go of his jaw and yanked
out the mouthful of bedsheet. He choked a little and gasped for
air, his chest throbbing, but he remained quiet. When he had calmed
down enough I spoke.

“So who asked you to follow
me?”

“I didn’t follow you.”

“Yes you were.”

“No, I follow your
girlfriend.”

I felt my heart beat a few
times.

“Why?”

He composed himself before
speaking. It was obviously a struggle for him to talk English, and
he would pause before complicated words.

“Is long story.”

“You’re not going anywhere soon
though.”

“Ok, I tell you. My brother live
with me, here in the London. One time, he go out, and don’t come
back. One day, two day, three day. I think maybe he find
girlfriend, or maybe they find him for visa. I call him, but he
never answer. I ask friends ‘where he go? What he do?’ They say he
go with stupid people, do stupid things, drugs, party, painting
walls.”

“Painting walls?”

“With can paint, spray, you
understand me?”

“Graffiti?”

“Yes. Stupid thing. Everywhere.
On the houses, on the big houses, work houses, you understand
me?”

“Office buildings you mean?”

“Yes. Everywhere. One time, I
come from work – very late, in the night. I see one people in
street, painting like this. I follow. Your girlfriend.”

“She was the one you saw doing
graffiti?”

“Yes, doing graffiti. Every
night. Everywhere.”

“Are you sure it was my
girlfriend? Josephine?”

“I don’t know name.”

“Blonde hair, short, green
eyes.”

“Yes, yes. Your girlfriend. I
see you always together. I don’t find her now, I follow you
so.”

“She died.”

“I think maybe. Yes.”

I pulled out the notebook filled
with foreign writing that I had taken from him. I waved it in front
of him.

“So this is what you found out?
From following Josie?”

He looked at me, bemused.

“My girlfriend. You know where
she go?”

“Yes, yes. I know everything.
Where she go, who she meet. I find many places, and I go ask for my
brother. I think maybe she go one place where he is.”

“How long did you follow
her?”

He grimaced and made a tiny
gesture that seemed like a shrug.

“One month? More than a
month?”

He thought for a second.

“More one month. One month
before she go, she die. You understand me?”

“Yeah.”

I flicked through the notebook.
None of it was in English, but I could tell by the uneven,
unorganised writing that it wasn’t very coherent anyway.

“What did you find out? Where
did she go? What did she do before she died?”

“She go with you all the
time.”

“I know. What else?”

I could see his face screw up
slightly beneath the bandages. It seemed like even thinking caused
him physical pain.

“She go school.”

“Of course. Where else?”

“Many, many places.”

“Come on! Tell me where?”

“She go everywhere! I don’t
remember!”

I waved the book in front of
him.

“But you have addresses, yes?
People she met, dates, things she did? In this book?”

“No.”

“What did you write in here
then?”

He looked away. Tears welled up
in his eyes.

“I write what I say to my
brother. When he come back.”

“Are you kidding?”

He began to cry.

“Fuck! This is useless
then!”

I threw the notebook at him on
the bed and began to pace around him.

“So you followed her all this
time, everywhere she went, and you don’t remember?”

I grabbed him by the collar.

“Nothing? No strange places? No
weird things that happened? ”

“Fuck your girlfriend! I just
want find my brother! He too young for this! All this crazy thing.
I hate this country! This fucking shit!”

I shook him.

“I’m gonna find out where she
went if I have to reach into your brain and pull it out
physically.”

“Fuck you!”

“No, fuck you!”

I let him go and paced around
his bed again, filled with tense anxiety and racing thoughts.

“You find my brother.”

“What?”

“You find my brother, I tell
you.”

“I don’t give a shit about your
brother.”

“Fuck you! You put me here! Look
my leg! Look this tube! You take phone, you try kill me! You
fucking asshole! You deserve find my brother for me!”

I sat down again.

“I follow you. All the time
fighting, smashing the windows, making trouble. Always fighting.
You bad person. Angry. You must make something good, for deserve.
You know speak English, you find him fast. I help you, then you
help me. Everything bad for-“

“Alright! Enough. Fine, I can’t
promise I’ll find him, but I’ll try. If you tell me everything you
know about what Josie was doing, I’ll ask about him too. Ok?”

“You will find him?”

“I’ll try.”

“You promise me.”

“Yeah, I promise. What’s his
name?”

“Abdi Bedard. Abdoulaye.”

“What does he look like?”

“I have photo on phone. I show
you.”

“Can your phone email?

“Email, internet, films,
everything.”

“Ok, I’ll give you my email
address.”

“Thank you. What is your
name?”

“Joseph.”

“Like your girlfriend?”

“Yeah.”

“Strange thing.”

I opened the drawer of the
hospital bedside cabinet and found a pen. I tore some pages from
his notebook, and after handing him a scrap with my email address
on it, I put the pages on my knee ready to write.

“Ok, now tell me everything you
can about what Josephine did.”

After fifty minutes of patiently
gazing at Karim’s grimacing, thoughtful face; jogging his memory
with every place, name and event from my own memory, I was finally
satisfied that he had recalled everything. It turned out that he
hadn’t followed Josephine everywhere at all, and had only been able
to follow her when he wasn’t working. Even then, most of the time
she had been with me. Much of what Karim told me was stuff I
already knew, or wasn’t important. From the list of places he gave
me, I recognised the meeting with Sewerbird in East London,
multiple meetings with Bianca (a couple of times at her address,
which Karim gave me a vague indication of), and Wednesday
appointments at the psychiatrist.

What I hadn’t expected were the
frequent visits to Mixed Sources. In particular, to see a bald man
with thick-rimmed glasses there. Karim told me the two had met up
quite a lot away from Mixed sources as well, and I thought perhaps
the bald man was Claude Packard—Sewerbird perhaps connecting the
two. Then there was the painting; Josie had apparently been
obsessive about it, painting walls and objects any time she left
the house. I wondered why she had never told me anything about it,
or done it in front of me. I had never even noticed a spray can in
her house.

The most bizarre discovery of
all, however, had occurred just days before she died. In the middle
of the night, Karim had followed Josie to a park, where she had
jumped the locked fence carrying a camera, and seemed to be in
hiding herself. Karim had kept his distance and not followed her
inside. He didn’t see her come out. I asked him if she had gone
there more than once, but he told me that was the only time he had
stayed out that late to follow her.

I shoved the notes in my pocket
and checked the time.

“Oh shit!”

“One thing more.”

“I should have picked Vicky up
an hour ago! Shit!”

I swung the curtains open and
ran out of the hospital.

“Another man follow you!”

“Vicky! You home? Hello?
Vee?”

I pushed open all the doors and
checked the balcony. Vicky wasn’t there. The school had been empty
by the time I reached it, and I had hoped Vicky would have made her
way home by herself—it would have been the first time.