Delete-Man: A Psychological Thriller (34 page)

“Sounds like a lovely business.
You must be very smart and very rich now. Why talk to me then, if
you’re so bloody innocent.”

“Do you think I’m trying to
prove I’m innocent to you? I’m just protecting my brand.”

“It’s not your brand.”

“Oh it’s my brand, Joe.”

McLeish entered the room again
and handed a coffee cup to King. He then placed a bottle of water
and a small plastic cup in front of me and circled around to take a
seat in the middle, opposite Buzzcut.

“You’re not the first person
I’ve had to talk to, Joe. And you won’t be the last. The only
reason you’re here is because you’re bad for business. Having
people become obsessive about your product is good, but having them
smash offices apart, beat people up, commit arson, and whatever
else you’ve got up to these past few weeks, is not good for
business. You can’t act like a lunatic then blame all of it on some
‘magic beans’.”

“I didn’t do any of that because
of the symbols. I did it to find Josie’s murderer. You.”

“In your case, having someone
accuse the head of a successful company of murder, in relation to
the brand, is also not good for business.”

“So you want to pay me off.”

“I couldn’t do that though,
could I, Joe?”

“No, you couldn’t. I wouldn’t
take a penny from someone like you.”

“You don’t need to. You’ve got
money.”

She looked at me calmly, but the
hint of a smirk appeared at the corner of her lips. She picked up a
thin pair of glasses from the table and turned to a folder. She
flicked through it and eventually pulled out a sheet of paper.

“Let’s see now. In
nineteen-ninety-nine you spent six months in a juvenile delinquents
centre for car theft and vandalism. Released in September... blah
blah blah… You became an apprentice at the manufacturing plant of
Wheeler and Son’s furnishings through the ‘jobs4life’ scheme… Bit
of a poor name, seeing as manufacturing was relocated to Asia four
months afterwards.”

“Where did you get that
information?”

“Hold on. I’m looking for the
juicy bits….Ah, here it is. One week after they announced the
restructuring and offered redundancy packages to the staff, you
lost your arm in an,” she looked at me, a full, knowing, smile
wrapped around her cheeks, “accident.”

“So what?”

“I’m not finished. The recorded
sum here is two hundred and seventy-eight thousand pounds. Although
I imagine a large percentage went to the lawyers, and soon
afterwards your mother bought your flat for eighty thousand—”

“Who told you this?”

“—But even sweeter, you put one
hundred thousand into a trust fund for Victoria Williamson days
later. Accessible to her on the day of her eighteenth birthday.
Pretty generous, considering she’d only been born ten months
previously. Out of curiousity, how much of that money is left?”

“Fuck you.”

“I imagine your mum is using
some of that money on her holidays. Let’s see… Here it is.
Turkey—nice country. Oh and she recently married a Serkan Azmet.
Sounds like a nice guy.”

I slammed my hand on the table
and stood up.

“Who the fuck told you
that?!”

King took off her glasses and
leant forward.

“I know everything.”

I leapt onto the table and went
for her. Buzzcut was fast and strong. He raised a massive arm and
swept me off the table easily, throwing me down into the side of
the room. My vision went blurry, King’s voice sounding tinny.

“Sit back down, Joe. We’re not
finished.”

On the third attempt, I managed
to stand up, my muscles straining and spasming as I limped back
towards the chair. I fell into it, and reached for the bottle of
water. The three of them watched me take the painkillers, and once
I was done, King continued.

“You look terrible. You probably
won’t take my advice, but I would suggest a long holiday
yourself.”

She turned to Buzzcut.

“Go a little easier on him if he
does it again, Clark. It’s not really a fair fight.”

“Don’t underestimate him, Ms
King.”

“True, although I think
everything’s beginning to catch up with him. I kind of pity the
poor boy.”

“Fuck you.”

“Indeed. Still some fight left
in you I see.”

“So you’re gonna blackmail me
now or something?”

“Not at all. Just proving a
point.”

“What point?”

“That I could have crushed you
any time I wanted to. Insurance companies are only too keen to
investigate if they think they can get their money back, and it’s a
tiny bit illegal to take care of a child in a house which isn’t in
your own name, and whose mother is on what seems to be a permanent
vacation. Not to mention you’ve been on a bit of a crime spree the
past few days. If you think about it, Joe, I’m being pretty kind to
you.”

“Kind like you were to
Josie?”

“I don’t want to intimidate you,
Joe. That wouldn’t benefit me. You’re not easily scared, and you
obviously hold grudges. No. I’m going to take a different tact with
you. I’m going to make you understand.”

“I understand enough.”

“Tell me. What do you
understand?”

She crossed her hands and tilted
her head slightly, like a patient teacher waiting for an
answer.

“Either you’re too evil to care,
or too stupid to know, but those symbols you’re using are causing
chaos. They’re making people do crazy things. Josie knew it, and
she was telling people about it. You probably found out through
Packard, right? So you decided to get Hughton on your side, and get
him to give Josie the pills which killed her. You probably killed
Packard too, once you learnt he wasn’t properly on your side
too.”

“That’s a fairly well-rounded
story, actually. I can almost understand your suspicion now,
although exactly how easy it is to bribe a psychiatrist I’m not
sure. I imagine fairly difficult; certainly impossible to invoke
one to commit murder. It would also be a little too reactionary,
and rather illogical, to murder someone in order to stop them
spreading bad publicity. Look at what it provoked you to do. Not to
mention Josephine was hardly singular in that regard.”

“You can say that now, but Josie
was the one who started all this. She was asking the right
questions to the right people. She even had an answer to your
symbols, another symbol that dampened their effects. If you didn’t
kill her she would have destroyed your business eventually. Even if
she had to do it alone.”

“How would she have managed
that, Joe?”

“Her book. It was all in
there.”

“Ah, yes. Her book.”

King opened her folder and took
out a thick wedge of pages. She flicked through them casually as
she spoke, and I noticed there was a lot more than the few parts I
had read previously. I hid my surprise.

“It’s quite a story. If she was
deciding to publish I’m sure she’d have had an audience.
Conspiracies are very much the zeitgeist now.”

Amongst the pages she flicked
through were images, and I realised I hadn’t recovered everything
she had saved to her laptop; the referenced images, the later parts
of the book. You idiot, Joseph. I should have let Vicky poke around
in Josie’s computer a bit more. All that proof and now King was the
only one who had it. I was overcome with an urge to dash over the
table and grab the file, but a glance at Buzzcut put me off. He was
still watching me intensely.

“Is that why you smashed up my
apartment to get your hands on it?”

King opened her mouth to say
something and paused instead. I had her. She was good at remaining
composed, but Buzzcut and McLeish weren’t. They turned to her with
brief expressions of doubt, as if she were acting
uncharacteristically. I decided to push her further.

“You’re not that convincing for
an advertiser. You didn’t really put those stories out there. Maybe
you heard about the histories, and decided to stir them up after
the fact, but you had no idea what those symbols were about. If you
think you have a lid on this, and that you’re the one controlling
it then you’re the most ignorant person involved in this whole
thing. Too late though, Josie’s book is out there now. Someone’s
going to bring it all crumbling down eventually—if it isn’t
me.”

In the silence that followed a
rush of wind lashed raindrops against the window. The noise
subsided back to a rhythmic patter. King slid one of the folders
towards Buzzcut.

“Hand that to him, would you
Clark.”

He took the folder and placed it
in front of me with his massive arm, not even needing to lean
forward in order to do so. King nodded at the folder. I opened it
up and began flicking through its contents. Police reports, medical
records, photos, bios, and even birth certificate copies. Every
name I had heard or come across over the past few weeks was in
there.

“What is this?”

I spread the papers out in front
of me. There were dozens of photos: Monika and I at the zoo, Bianca
outside the café, at the park at night, even with Sewerbird on the
roof. Some of the photos weren’t even of me. I glared at a shadowy
figure until I recognised Josie’s curled hair, spraying a giant
stencil on a building. One eye-catching photo showed her destroying
a billboard by throwing paint at it.

“Information.”

I peeled my eyes away to look at
King.

“How did you get these?”

“Same way you get information,
Joe. Hard work and brutality.”

“I don’t get it.”

“What don’t you get?”

“Why do you have all of this?
Why are you following all these people?”

“We don’t follow them. Not
unless it’s necessary, such as in your case.”

“So how then? How did you… This
is Vicky! You took pictures of Vicky!”

“It’s advertising. It’s my job
to know things, and to apply that knowledge. It’s the business of
knowing people more than they know themselves, Joe. Of knowing what
they want, and what they don’t want. Of understanding their dreams
and fears. To do that, I need data. This kind of data. I know
everything about you, Joey. What websites you go to, the TV shows
you watch, what foods you like, how you spend your free time. I
know how much money you have, what percentage of that you’re
willing to spend, and the limits of value you place on pretty much
any product. I know your emotional states, and what induces them.
It’s my job to compile a lot of data and predict, with good
accuracy, how you will react to things.”

“Where do you get this data? It
can’t be legal.”

“You’re right, most of what
you’re looking at there isn’t legal. That’s why I invited you here
to show you. But nevertheless, information is information. It’s
easily hidden, easily transferred, and the human element always
brings weaknesses to any security.”

“You have files like this on
everyone in the country?”

“Hah! That would be far too much
work, even for me. No. We focus-test, employ psychologists, perform
studies. There’s a lot of business to be made in information, Joe.
It generates a lot of money, and that money goes back towards even
more effective uses: Such as studying people in real life. It’s an
important part of our philosophy at Mixed Sources. Case studies.
You, and Josephine before you, were case studies. Good examples of
demographics we needed more information regarding.”

“What are you telling me all
this for?”

“It’s not a secret.”

“That you intrude into people’s
lives, trying to find out how you can manipulate them better?”

She leant back into her seat, as
if relaxing.

“Let’s be honest, Joe. You don’t
really care about any of this. Advertising, data, brands, magic
beans; that’s not what interests you, is it? There’s only one
reason you’ve done everything you have done, one question you
wanted an answer to.”

King stared at me with cold,
serious eyes.

“Did Josephine Baird kill
herself, or was she murdered. That’s all you really want to know,
isn’t it?”

I rubbed my eyes and looked out
into the slanted rain.

“Yes.”

“The truth is all there, Joe. In
those files.”

She pointed at a piece of paper
I had shifted to the side.

“That medical record to your
left contains the tests performed on her corpse. They indicate that
she did, indeed, die from an overdose, and that the prescription
given to her was the same one she had been given several times
previously this past year. Clipped behind it is her psychological
profile, compiled from the files of Dr.Hughton and her previous
psychiatrists. In it, you will see a history of bipolar depression,
multiple references to suicidal tendencies, and even a record of a
previous attempt.”

I rubbed my eyes. King waited
for a few moments then continued.

“There should also be cctv
images amongst those photos that track her movements throughout the
day of her suicide. Her only excursion being a trip to the
pharmacy, despite the fact she was meant to work that day at a dog
shelter. After buying the medication, she returned straight home.
We attained ISP records that say she browsed for forty-seven
minutes on topics including overdoses and suicides, only an hour
before her estimated time of death.

“Monika, at this time, was
working at a client’s house where she spent pretty much the entire
day, until a presentation which took place at approximately seven
in the evening. After the presentation she visited a bar with
colleagues, and arrived home to find the body just after
eleven.”

I tried to speak but my throat
was dry. I gazed at the sheets in front of me until they went
blurry.

“It’s not what you wanted to
happen, but your girlfriend killed herself. It was her own
decision, and she went through with it. That’s all there was to
it.”

“No.”