Delete-Man: A Psychological Thriller (8 page)

Ironically, it was Josie who had
seemed to bring Vicky out of her shell. Who got her trying the
things she read about in books for real. Who gave her cds and books
from another world. I was more optimistic then. It had felt like
Josie would guide her in those things I could never understand, and
eventually I trusted Josie to do that. Now it was like Josie had
opened the door and Vicky was running through it and away from
me.

How could anyone who knew these
things think Josie had committed suicide? I felt almost angry when
I considered the notion. Angry, then angrier still when I thought
about who had taken her away unnecessarily. That thought stuck in
my chest like a stake. That, but for someone out there, Josie could
still be here. That everything could be better, for me and for
Vicky.

Numb from the shop lights and
self-pity, I paid for my shopping and left the supermarket. In my
self-absorbed mood I almost didn’t noticed the sudden, strange
gesture across the street. It happened in my periphery, and I
turned to it immediately. For a split second I made eye contact,
before some instinct pulled my head away and told me to act
naturally.

As I made my way down the
street, I tried to recollect where I had seen that face before;
what was familiar about it. A few blocks down I remembered: The
thin guy that Bianca had pointed out at the café. Was it the same
guy? All I could really remember was the tall, gaunt frame, and
what seemed like lank, black hair. The guy I had just seen
certainly had that look. I walked on, conscious of not turning
around, hopeful that he might follow me—if indeed he was following
me. Was I being paranoid? I had read once that most sensations of
coincidence or de ja vu occurred not because of strange or similar
circumstances, but actually because we just remembered them that
way. At that point, numb from the sickly bright supermarket, and
hopelessly depressed, it was entirely plausible that my mind was
playing tricks on me.

After making my way to the end
of the street, I stepped into a cornershop. The window was almost
entirely full of posters, phone card tariffs, and adverts. He
wouldn’t see me as I leant over the ice-cream freezer, and peered
out through a gap in the posters. At first the street seemed empty,
then I noticed a figure standing in a doorway, a little further
back from where I’d approached the shop. I couldn’t make out a
face, but his hair was lank and black.

Had the tall man been wearing a
green jacket like that? I wasn’t sure, but something was definitely
wrong. He looked around anxiously. I thought I noticed him look
over at the shop. He reached into one of the side pockets in his
green jacket, pulled out a small notebook, and intensely wrote
something down in it before shoving it hurriedly back into his
pocket.

I pulled away from the freezer.
Was it possible that I was being followed? I ambled through the
cornerstore so as not to draw attention from the shopkeeper,
wracking my brains to think of who and why anyone would be
following me. I remembered the stoic but deliberate way Bianca had
pointed the man out to me in the cafe.

“He was watching us since we got
here.”

I had seen him then, but only
vaguely. A shabbily dressed figure in the rain that turned and
walked away. I was usually pretty sharp at noticing stuff, and I
felt like I could read people well, but I had always been bad at
remembering faces.

After circling the store twice,
pretending to look at tin cans and sweets, I resolved to go and
simply ask whoever it was. I made for the door before realising I
had what was probably fifteen kilos of shopping bag in my hand. If
the guy had been following me, he might not take kindly to a
head-on meeting, and with all that weight he would no doubt get
away easily. It was, perhaps, an unnecessary measure, but I put my
bags down beside the counter.

“Can I leave these bags here for
a second? I’ve just got to go make a call.”

The shopkeeper glanced at me
with a furrowed brow before noticing my arm.

“You won’t be long?”

“No, I’ll be back in a few
minutes. Thanks.”

I peeked out of the window
again. He was still there, with that anxious, nervy look. A few
drops of rain fell onto the window, and the heavy, grey, midday sky
hinted at more to come. I swung the door open and walked briskly
towards him.

Upon scanning the street
nervously, as he had been doing since he’d stood there, his gaze
fell upon me, and I thought that for a split second I detected some
kind of fear in his eyes. As I continued walking towards him, he
seemed to suddenly realise it was him I was interested in, and
shifted his feet quickly. I got within about five yards of him and
raised my hand to address him. As if the gesture was some sort of
threat, he immediately sprung his heels in the opposite direction
and began to run. He did all this in such an awkward, unpredictable
manner that it took almost a full two seconds before I started
after him.

His tall frame had a long
stride, and he covered a lot of ground with his head start, but I
was confident I could catch him pretty quickly in a straight race.
He must have realised this himself. He swung his head round to see
how close I was, and I caught a look of extreme fear in the whites
of his eyes. I got almost close enough to think about jumping at
him when he suddenly spun off the main road and down into a
crowded, cobbled side street. It was a market street, with stalls,
shops, and arches; where shoppers walked at near standing pace and
in large groups, gawking at bric-a-brac and delicacies.

He found a gap on the side and
sprinted down it. I made to follow him and slammed straight into a
group of young women who had been staring into a shop window. They
screamed. I was thrown forward, hitting then skidding upon the
hard, rough stones. My knee, then my arm, then my jaw hit the floor
in quick succession, and huge bombs of pain exploded in my body. I
blacked out for a second, it took me another to gather my
awareness. The girls were sprawled over the pavement, still
screaming. I pulled myself up and continued running.

The marketplace got busier
further in, and I had completely lost sight of the tall man. I kept
running, shoving past people and taking advantage of every gap I
found; hoping that he wasn’t smart enough to stop in a doorway
somewhere and wait for me to pass. There was a line of cars parked
to one side of the road, and I leapt onto one of them. I took a
second to balance myself and scan the road from that high
viewpoint. I caught a small glimpse of fast moving green about
fifty yards ahead. Hoping that I wouldn’t slip, I leapt to the next
car roof. There were screams and shouts as I began running upon the
line of parked cars, my eyes fixed upon the place I had seen the
green jacket up ahead.

I reached the last car, dropped
down to street level, and continued running. The loud clanging I
had made running on the cars, coupled with the screaming of those I
was knocking into, had drawn attention to me. People dispersed in
front of me, presumably where green jacket had either pushed or
scared them out of the way. I followed in his slipstream until I
caught sight of his lank hair again.

We were almost at the end of the
market street, where the crowd thinned out. In the open space, I
gained ground fast. I was close enough to tackle him. He looked
back and I saw the white in his eyes again.

A split second before I jumped,
a saloon car seemed to materialise from thin air, and sent him
flying. The sound of squealing tires filled the marketplace, and
the car swerved off sideways, clattering into the corner of the
crossroads while the tall man flipped head over heels and landed in
an angular position on the other side. I skidded to a stop, the car
sliding uncontrollably mere inches in front of me. My eyes still
fixed on the stationary figure of the man I had been pursuing.

My first instinct was not to
check if he was ok, nor the driver of the car. The thought of
calling an ambulance didn’t even enter my mind. Instead, I ran over
to the prone figure and searched his pockets as all about me
screams and shouts erupted. I hurriedly stuffed everything I found
in his jacket and jeans pockets into my own then sprinted away. I
ran faster away from him than I had chasing him.

I ran until I couldn’t hear the
screams anymore, and until the brick walled commercial area turned
into an estate that I wasn’t too familiar with. I ran for a small,
dark alley and dropped against the wall. The second I stopped
moving I felt the pain in my body from the fall in the marketplace.
My jeans were ripped at the knee, and there was blood on my face.
It took a whole five minutes before I caught my breath, and once I
had, I pulled out what I had stolen from the tall guy. The
notebook, the pen, two scrunched-up pieces of paper, a card wallet
with some cash cards, travel card, a driver’s licence that revealed
his name was Karim Bedard, and a fancy mobile phone.

I opened the notebook, it was
full of gibberish; some language not even Latin, maybe Arabic, or
Indian. I couldn’t even recognise the characters. The two pieces of
paper were just receipts, but I kept them anyway. The mobile phone
was a fancy kind of touchscreen, I wasn’t any good with gadgets;
all I could figure out to do was find his contacts list. I scanned
a few of the names, there were over a hundred, and none of them
looked familiar.

I pulled out a tissue and held
it to my face. The stinging pain was getting worse, and by touch I
guessed I had some kind of cut there. The threat of rain came good,
and the random drops that had come and gone all day turned into a
consistent shower. I pulled myself up and tried to find my way out
of the estate.

As soon as I found a road I
knew, and began heading towards home, I remembered the shopping I
had left behind. It was well past midday, and though my face was
hurting pretty badly, my knee getting more painful with every step,
it had been a long time since Vicky had had a proper, filling,
meal. I turned around and walked back towards the shop, careful to
take a route that went nowhere near the market street.

By the time I arrived home it
was almost three. I dropped the shopping in the kitchen and went
straight to the bathroom, knowing that the next time I sat down I
wouldn’t want to to get up for quite a while. All kinds of pain
were pulsating through my knee, and it was so swollen I could feel
the blood pumping around it. I looked in the mirror and underneath
the caked blood made out a scar that went vertically across my
jawline. My search for plasters turned up nothing, and I made do
with washing it up a little. The stinging sensation was almost a
relief from the torturing throb of my knee. I put the shopping that
needed to go in the fridge away, and sat on the sofa. I tried
different positions, but none of them made the pain any easier.

With a little effort I reached
over and picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hey Sandy. It’s Joseph.”

“Oh hiya, Joseph. You good?”

“Yeah, you?”

“Can’t complain.”

“Could you do me a little
favour?”

“You want me to pick Vicky
up?”

“Yeah, if you could. I’d really
appreciate it.”

“Sure, no problem hun.
Today?”

“Yeah.”

“No problem. You alright?”

“Yeah, yeah. I just can’t make
it in time today.”

“Oh that’s alright. How’s Vicky,
she good?”

“Yeah.”

“Still doing those guitar
lessons?”

“No, no, I couldn’t find a
teacher.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right. It was
Cassie’s kid who was doing them. She kept telling me about it at
the gates. You should have asked her for the teacher.”

“Yeah, I might.”

“I was going to get my Davy to
do some, but he just doesn’t sit still long enough. He’d drive the
teacher mad! My youngest would love it though, she loves singing
and all that. Very creative, you know. Next year I’m gonna start
taking her to ballet.”

“That’d be good.”

“That place down the street, you
know it? Gosh, what’s the name… They keep saying they’re gonna do
classes at the school, but they can’t sort out their elbows from
their arses down there. Remember those karate lessons they did?
What? All of three weeks then they had to shut it down because the
instructor got in an argument. My God, what a joke that was.”

“Yeah, what was that all about?
Anyway, let me know when you start taking Rachel to ballet, I was
thinking of taking Vicky. Thanks for that, I owe you one.”

“It’s that place… God, I’m
useless with names.”

“It’s alright, I’ll see you soon
anyway, thanks Sandy.”

“Ok, take care then babe.”

“You too. Bye.”

I put the phone down, glad with
the relatively short conversation. Sandy was a kind woman, and
lived in the same block, so Vicky could come home after playing
with her kids at will. But she had a tendency to talk quite a lot.
I was more than happy to sit still and play listening post on most
occasions, but the events of the day had burnt me out a little.

I pulled out the fancy mobile
I’d taken from green jacket and played with it a little more.
Eventually I figured out how to access the messages, and read them
intently. They were mostly just messages about meet ups and
times—nothing of any worth. I pulled out the notebook. More foreign
writing. I threw it at the TV in frustration and stretched out on
the couch.

I didn’t sleep so much as zone
out, coming to my senses when I heard screams around me. Vicky had
brought Sandy’s two boys to the apartment, and they were running
from room to room with toy guns. Shouting nonsensical words they
had probably picked up from some cartoon or video game.

One of the boys ran into the
room with Vicky and hid behind the couch I was lying on.