Delete-Man: A Psychological Thriller (33 page)

I kept my speed, bowling through
a number of people who had littered the corridor to try and stop
me. Hitting the double doors shoulder first again sent a tinkling
thud into the air, and a slam of pain into my body. I pulled back a
few steps, and attacked the doors again. Again they thudded, and
the click of something cracking under duress spurred me on once
more. I raised my foot, and with an instinctual roar brought it
down with all the force I had in me. The doors split open, one of
them disconnecting from a hinge to sharply jut forwards and hang
limply.

Another hand grabbed my
shoulder. I turned my head and bit it.

“Shit!”

“Fucking animal! Stay back!”

“Call the police!”

I ran through the broken doors
into King’s office. A low, black leather couch set off a wide glass
table and matching chair to one side. On the other, a simple black
shelf of books and a series of large prints, jarring and bright.
Directly in front of me, beyond a gulf of space in the middle of
the room, was a simple, black desk. Two wide, thin monitors, a few
papers, and behind them a big, black leather chair. Empty.

I rushed forwards, grabbed at
the papers, saw they were blank, and tossed them aside. Sweeping
around, sure I had missed something, I saw a mass of people begin
to enter the office. They approached me slowly, fanning out at the
other end of the room.

“Do something!”

“Take him down!”

They stepped closer cautiously,
fronted by a couple of security guards.

“Calm down there. She’s not
here.”

“Get back! Don’t come near
me!”

“You’ve got nowhere to go now.
What you gonna do? Just calm down.”

I turned back to the desk, put
my palm against one of the monitors, and swept it as hard as I
could at the crowd. It flew up, just missing the head of the
security guard who had spoken, and smashed against the ceiling.
Strips of light metal and glass shattered onto the crowd.

“Jesus!”

“He’s fucking crazy! Get out!
Leave him here!”

“Everyone get out!”

“No! Take him down! Rush
him!”

“Just stay here. The police are
on their way. Just don’t let him escape.”

They backed away slowly. I paced
around the room, looking for something to help me get out. Behind
the desk was another frosted window. I slapped my palm against it.
The clunk was deep, the window was inches think. I turned back to
the crowd, they were about four deep at the doors now. I braced
myself to run through them.

“Oh shit, he’s gonna fight!”

“Don’t move! He can’t get
through.”

“Stop! Stop! Let me
through!”

The last voice came from the
girl with the plastic flower. She squeezed past the crowd and
emerged in front of them. The room went silent.

“I have Ms. King on the
line.”

She held the phone to her ear,
and pinned a finger in the other.

“Yes. He’s in front of me now.
Yes. In your office. He broke the doors, nobody could stop him. I
tried to te—yes he wanted to see you. No, he called before
but—”

She looked at my arm.

“Yes, the right one.”

She extended the phone towards
me, stretching as much as she could to keep as far away as
possible.

“She wants to speak to you.”

I took the handset. The girl
snatched her arm away and stepped back into the crowd.

“Joseph?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Caroline King. I—”

“Where the fuck are you?”

“If I’d have known I would have
stayed there. I’ve been meaning to speak to you for a while
now.”

“Well come on down here
then.”

“Better yet, why don’t you come
here?”

“Just tell me where. I’ll be
there in seconds.”

“No need, Joe. I’ll send a car.
That alright?”

“Don’t call me Joe.”

“Whatever you say.”

I threw the phone back towards
the girl. She didn’t move, her eyes still fixed upon me, and the
phone tumbled at her feet. A security guard beside her picked the
phone up and brought it to his ear.

“Ms King? It’s Jorg Shulze,
security administrator. You shouldn’t get close to this man,
he’s—yes I know. Yes, Ms King. I understand, but we’ve contacted
the—Yes. Of course, I’m sorry.”

He meekly handed the phone back
to the flower girl who brought it quickly to her ear.

“Yes, Ms King. Right away.”

She clicked the phone off and
gestured to me.

“Come with me then.”

The crowd parted and I followed
the girl through it, out through the offices, and towards the
entrance. Her phone beeped, and she glanced at it for only a
second. She kept her eyes forward and walked briskly. We reached
the entrance, and she held the door open for me, standing
consciously out of arm’s reach as I passed through it.

A sleek, black car, expensive
and German, with blacked-out windows and the understated elegance
of a resting puma, pulled up in front of the entrance. Its engine
let out a soft, comforting hum. Within seconds of it stopping, a
suited, dark-skinned man had left the driver’s seat and was holding
the passenger door open.

“Mr. Williamson.”

“Yeah?”

He said nothing, but his manner
encouraged me to step inside. Before I had even settled, the back
seat door was closed, and he was already in the driver’s seat
again, pulling out into the road.

There was something pacifying
about the car. It’s soft, large seat felt better than my couch, and
the interior was made of elegantly finished leather, chrome, and a
few wood panels. The ride was smooth, barely noticeable. I gazed
through the blackened windows, the world seeming dimmed and distant
through them.

“Where are we going?”

“We’re going to Ms. King’s
conference room.”

“Where’s that?”

“The city, sir.”

I tried to think of another
question, but the plush surroundings invited me to rest my head.
The wave of tiredness I had been pushing back and ignoring, fuelled
by adrenaline, swept over me like a soft warm wave, pushing me
down; deeper down into sleep.

“Sir? Sir? Please wake up sir.
We’ve arrived.”

The driver was holding the door
open, and it was the cold, whipped rain that hit me on my face
which woke me more than his mild calls. I looked out at him, my
eyes still blue from the sleep, and then everything came flooding
back. I felt ashamed that I had let my guard down and
overcompensated by jumping out of the car and shoving the driver
aside. He closed the door and I noticed he was extending an
umbrella over my head.

“What are you doing?”

“Keeping you dry, sir.”

I grabbed his hand and shoved it
back towards him so the umbrella was over his head.

“Keep it. I like the rain.”

“Thank you, sir. This way
please.”

We were standing in front of a
tall, sharp skyscraper. I craned my neck back and saw the shiny
reflections soar up high into the grey clouds. I rarely went
through the city, let alone inside its giant glass structures.
There was nothing for me there. The driver led me to the entrance
where he then exchanged a glance with another man who approached
and greeted me.

“Afternoon, Mr. Williamson.
After you.”

The driver nodded, turned on his
heels, and left.

“Who are you?”

“I’m David McLeish. Ms. King’s
secretary. Nice to meet you.”

He was broad shouldered, tanned,
and groomed, like some American soap actor. We entered a round lift
and began to ascend. I looked at McLeish, waiting for him to say
something. He feigned not noticing, but eventually broke.

“Was your drive here pleasant,
Mr. Williamson?”

“Fuck you.”

We kept rising in silence. I
turned around and saw the London cityscape fall away. It made me
breathless, as if the ground itself was crumbling into space. I saw
the Thames, Tower Bridge, and in the other direction a litter of
distant council estates peeking through the rain. The lift
continued to pull us upwards to an impossible height.

The doors eventually opened, and
we stepped out into a corridor of metal, plastic, and glass. It
felt cold and impersonal, a place of smooth surfaces and sharp
angles, where the people themselves looked out of place, despite
their uniformly smooth and sharp clothing.

McLeish turned down a quiet
corridor, with marble flooring and even less softness. We passed by
large rooms on the other sides of glass walls. Eventually we
reached a matte-black door.

“Come on in.”

He opened the door and stood
aside for me to walk through. I stepped inside, and McLeish whipped
the door closed behind me. The room was larger than the others, and
instead of glass walls looking out onto the corridors, it had two
huge walls made of triangular panes that revealed the entire
southern skyline. In the room’s centre was a long glass table, with
two large leather seats at either end, and two either side. I
walked forward, turned around towards the door, then turned back to
look out at the skyline. Nobody was there, and I was beginning to
feel intimidated. I was on foreign territory and all the more
vulnerable for it.

I stood at the window,
hypnotized by the skyline, struggling to gather my thoughts. I felt
the bottle of painkillers in my pocket and pulled off the top. The
door behind me opened.

“Sorry Mr. Williamson. Ms. King
will be with you in a minute. Would you like anything? Coffee?
Water?”

“Just tell her to hurry up.”

“Of course.”

He whipped the door closed
again, but not quick enough for me to miss the repulsed sneer he
couldn’t resist making. I walked towards one of the leather chairs
and sat down, leaning back and resting my sore leg against the
table.

I watched the door, rocking
gently back and forth. Josie’s murderer was about to walk through
it any second. The moment had arrived. Everything I had done, all
the sacrifices I had made, the bruises I’d gathered, the punches
I’d thrown—it had all been for this moment. To come face to face
with her murderer, and to get rid of that thorn that had burrowed
into my side the day she died. I clenched my fist, my blood
pumping, and my muscles tensed.

The door opened. Buzzcut stepped
inside and held it. I got up. Caroline King stepped into the room
and saw me.

“Hey there, Joe.”

Chapter 24

I threw myself at her, swinging
my fist around as fast as I could. Seconds later I was on the
floor, my arm twisted behind me, and what seemed like two tonnes of
weight pressed into the small of my back.

“Calm down, there.”

“Fuck you! I’m gonna—”

My arm twisted even further, and
my shoulder felt like it was about to dislocate.

“Get off!”

“Ok, Clark. Leave him now.”

The weight lifted, and a second
later I realised that my arm was free, but too numb to move. With
excruciating effort I rolled slightly and got up.

“Take a seat, Joe.”

“I told you not to call me
Joe.”

“So you did.”

King sat down, oblivious to me.
She shuffled a bag off her shoulder to the floor and rummaged
around in it. Buzzcut stood behind me, ready to pounce. I looked at
him and saw a focused hardness in his eyes.

“Go on, sit down.”

I shook some blood into my arm
and took a seat at the other end of the table. Once there was some
distance between me and King, Buzzcut sat down to the side between
us.

After laying out some folders on
the table in front of her King looked up at me. She looked to be in
her thirties, but the wrinkles around her eyes, and vague streaks
of grey in her curled, brown hair hinted that she was older.

“Let’s talk.”

“I know everything.”

“Do you?”

“You murdered Josephine
Baird.”

“Hmm.”

“And you’re using dangerous
symbols to make money.”

King brushed some hair behind
her ear.

“Joe, I brought you here to tell
you one simple thing: People believe what they want to
believe.”

“It’s not belief. It’s the
truth.”

“I have the truth right here,”
she tapped at one of the folders gently, “but first I want—”

The door opened and McLeish
stepped inside.

“Sorry Ms. King. There was a
problem with the parking permit. It’s fixed now.”

“David, could you get me a
coffee?”

King pointed a nonchalant finger
at Buzzcut, who shook his head. She turned it to me.

“Coffee?”

“No.”

“Get some water just in case,
David. Ok?”

“Sure. Won’t be long.”

McLeish left the room quietly
and King took a moment to stretch her back before continuing.

“First things first: There are
no ‘dangerous’ symbols making me money. No magic, or hypnotism, or
voodoo, or whatever else you would like to believe. They’re just
logos for a series of products.”

“You haven’t got a clue.”

“It’s advertising, Joe. You
won’t know much about it. It was my agency that spread those ideas,
to turn a bunch of random emblems into gold. Which we did.”

“Rubbish.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah. There’s evidence, in
history, that those symbols are dangerous.”

“Not evidence; stories. Just
like there are stories in history about witches. And werewolves,
vampires, big foot, Loch Ness, the Roswell alien, Merlin, fucking
unicorns–Need I go on? I think you get the point.”

“That’s got nothing to do with
it.”

“Of course it does. Because
that’s all there is to it. I took some images that had connections
with magic, and decided to play both angles. Use them in commercial
product, and spread some interesting stories in the right
subversive channels to get a buzz going. That’s all. Do you
understand now?”

I looked for a sign in her face
that she was lying. I couldn’t tell whether she was genuinely in
denial, too stupid to understand, or feeding me a nice line.