Free Delete-Man: A Psychological Thriller by Johnny Vineaux Page A

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