Delete-Man: A Psychological Thriller

by Johnny Vineaux

  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.

  “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 th
ose 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.”