Free Delete-Man: A Psychological Thriller by Johnny Vineaux

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