Dead Girl Walking

by Christopher Brookmyre

  He had another sip of espresso. I hoped he had managed some sleep after his controversial tryst, as there was no way he’d be catching forty winks on the bus having necked that much caffeine.

  ‘Christ, listen to myself,’ he said. ‘Getting as bad as Heike for overdramatising. I’m just a wee bit raging about getting painted like I’m Jimmy Savile purely because I got lucky last night.’

  As far as I was aware, Rory had got lucky quite a few nights on this tour, and I guessed luck had very little to do with it. He struck me as a smooth and accomplished operator: he had an eye for the kind of girl who might respond, and as the singer put it on a track Damien was playing on the bus the other day, he knew how to ask the question more than one way.

  He was attractive: he looked younger than he was, friendly and uncomplicated. Whether the girl from last night was seventeen or eighteen, she probably thought he was closer to her age than was the case. I didn’t think he was deliberately misleading her to get what he was after. If a girl was interested, Rory shouldn’t have to show his ID any more than he should be asking to check hers.

  ‘It just tends to be younger girls that are interested in me,’ he explained. ‘I think older women must assume I’m younger than I really am, or think I’ll be immature. It was murder at work, because I was a teacher who looked barely older than some of the pupils, and a few of the lassies got really flirty with me.’

  I had seen this exact same thing happen when I was in fifth year, girls in my class toying with a young maths teacher. They started to sense the power they had, but didn’t yet understand it. They meant him no harm, but they didn’t give much thought to what they were putting him through.

  ‘That must have been tricky. One lapse in judgement and you’re on the front page of the Daily Record.’

  ‘Yep. And older women thinking I’m immature? I’ve been through trial by fire and come out the other side. Which is why it’s nice to be off the leash. Now, if some nubile seventeen-year-old wants to throw herself at me I have no reason not to oblige.’

  So she was seventeen.

  I wondered about him being already divorced, and if he had had trouble keeping it in his pants.

  ‘You were married, weren’t you?’

  I knew he wouldn’t like me bringing this up, but he had been sounding a little too pleased with himself.

  He nodded, eyeing me, wary that I had just declared I wasn’t going to be one of the lads over this.

  ‘Too young,’ he said. ‘A lucky escape for both of us.’

  ‘Did you cheat on her?’

  He looked at me as though I had no right to ask, then seemed to realise that, like it or not, his sex life was already on the table.

  ‘It was more the wanting to that told me it wasn’t going to work. It was painful, but I’m glad I ended it before I really hurt her. I am still very fond of her, but…’

  He sighed.

  ‘We were close growing up. Known each other since we were kids. Kind of childhood sweethearts. Then bang, one day you’re an adult and you realise your perspective has changed. The future doesn’t look the same as it did when you were seventeen and making plans: the horizon just became so much wider, you know? And they suddenly seemed such very small plans.’

  I poured myself more tea. I didn’t want it, but I needed to busy myself with something while Rory was looking so intently at me, silently asking if I understood.

  ‘She wanted kids, suburbia, visits to Ikea on a Saturday afternoon. She would have been entirely content to live in this neat wee capsule and leave the world outside completely unexplored. Do you know what I mean?’

  I knew fine what he meant.

  I was disappointed but not surprised by Keith changing his mind about flying down for the Manchester show. I was starting to believe that he wanted to deny my being in the band was happening, so actually turning up to watch me play would have messed that up completely. Any time he called me before the tour kicked off, he kept referring to rehearsals as session work, like something casual and temporary.

  ‘It’s your choice to go off with that band for weeks at a time,’ he had said.

  I wasn’t with that band. I was in that band. A band that were big news, but Keith seemed to be blanking them out.

  He had happily come to plenty of my orchestral performances, usually in the comfortable company of proud relatives. Our families had been friends for generations.

  Keith and I were close growing up. Known each other since we were kids.

  Kind of childhood sweethearts.

  Police Presence

  Hiding in plain sight was the only camouflage Parlabane still had available to him.

  One of the reasons the golden rule never to let yourself become the story was particularly applicable to investigative reporters was that it didn’t serve to be recognisable. For him, that ship had long since sailed, something he had tacitly acknowledged when he accepted the nomination to be rector of a university. He had already become the story several times before that, not least when he ended up in jail, so his days of playing the undercover reporter were done long before his picture was splashed across all those front pages gleefully reporting a rival title’s embarrassment.

  He had grown more conscious of being recognised: signals that he’d have previously ignored as insignificant or coincidental could now reasonably be interpreted as evidence that someone was quietly taking an interest in him. Consequently, he had developed a sharper awareness of when he was being watched, and this had kicked in as he took the train back from meeting Spammy in Paisley.

  He wasn’t just being watched, in fact. He was being followed.

  He had noticed the guy in the nondescript grey suit as he stood on the platform at Gilmour Street. He hadn’t quite gone so far as to write ‘COP’ across his forehead with a Sharpie, but the signs were legible if you knew what to look for. The way the suit hung on him, for one thing: there were people who looked natural in a suit and people who looked conspicuously constrained by it, forced into the thing by diktat. Cops, in Parlabane’s experience, tended towards the latter: proper cops anyway. The ones who looked most comfortable in a suit were also likely to be most comfortable behind a desk.

  Merely spotting a cop, of course, didn’t mean he was under surveillance. The clincher was spotting the inevitable second one, who emerged from behind a pillar as the train pulled in, stepping on to the carriage one in front.

  Parlabane pretended he didn’t notice, blithely staring out of the window and checking his phone during the short journey to Central. Partly for confirmation and partly for his own amusement, he strode out of the station via the Hope Street exit, the opposite direction from his intended next destination. This meant that when he saw them again at Queen Street Station, having looped around to get there, he had subtly let them know he was on to them.

  This was no great triumph, any more than he could congratulate himself on having made them back in Paisley. These guys were here because of Westercruik, and he was only seeing them because they wanted him to. It was just a little reminder that the eyes of the law were still very much upon him, a bit of passive intimidation intended to make him contemplate the simple action that would make it all go away.

  They followed him on to the next train too, though as he was going back to Edinburgh, they should probably have bought their tickets at an advance saver rate. Nonetheless, he still had a final twist for them, as he had one more meeting scheduled that day. He couldn’t exactly call it a ‘fuck you’; more a flicking the Vicky.

  He got off at Haymarket rather than staying on to Waverley as they’d have perhaps expected, then walked the short distance to the Police Scotland offices at Torphichen Place. If nothing else, at least it would confuse the buggers.

  He was there because he still had at least one friend on the force, though he wished he’d made a point of getting in touch sooner upon his return from London. It wouldn’t sound quite so sincere to say he’d missed her if the first time he showed up, it was cap-i
n-hand.

  Jenny Dalziel came down to the lobby to greet him, and he was surprised when she pulled him into a hug, particularly in front of fellow officers. He was also surprised by the level of affection in it. It was as though he had forgotten there were still a few folk out there who liked him, but that was what mass vilification did to a person. It was a lot easier to be thick-skinned when you still had people whose judgement you respected applying balm to your wounds.

  ‘It’s great to see you, Jenny,’ he told her, worried for a moment that he was going to fill up.

  She led him to her office. He had met her when she was a young suede-headed and sharp-tongued Detective Constable. Nobody called her Jenny any more. She was Jennifer in most of the circles she now moved in, and in this building she was generally addressed as ‘ma’am’.

  ‘Thanks for seeing me at such short notice,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not that short. Soon as I heard you were back in town I knew the clock was running on you turning up and asking me for a solid.’

  Yeah, there it was.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch sooner. I’ve been back in town a few weeks, but I’ve been keeping my head down. I kind of assumed people wouldn’t be in a hurry to meet up with me and my big bag of awkward.’

  Jenny slid into her seat behind an impressively large but intimidatingly cluttered desk, gesturing for him to pull up a chair opposite.

  ‘Given your position,’ he went on, ‘I didn’t think it would have done you many favours to be seen fraternising with me. That’s why I’m all the more grateful for you fitting me in.’

  Jenny fixed him with a steely look.

  ‘Self-pity isn’t a good fit on you, Scoop. You were always sexier when you were being an arrogant wee prick.’

  There was once a time when he’d have replied with a remark about her never finding him sexy because she only had eyes for his wife. There would be none of that today, for any number of reasons.

  Jenny was as striking as ever, growing into her elevated new role as much as he felt he had shrunk from his old self.

  ‘You’re looking very well,’ he said.

  ‘Still would?’ she asked, her tone gently mocking.

  He felt himself blush.

  ‘That’s what I thought. Nae luck. You’re still one Y chromosome over the limit.’

  ‘Not to mention that it would be cheating,’ he observed. ‘For one of us anyway.’

  Jenny gave him a sad little laugh.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said softly. ‘What happened there?’

  Jeez, women just came right out and asked this stuff, didn’t they?

  ‘Nothing I can summarise,’ he replied, and he’d given it some thought, aware people such as Jenny were likely to ask. ‘Even if I tried, it would be like a time-lapse photo sequence of a process that was so gradual and incremental that we didn’t realise it was happening until it was so far on as to be irreversible.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Jack. I know you’ve been through the wringer.’

  ‘How about you?’ he asked, keen to hear all was well and hoping to Christ she wasn’t about to tell him her relationship was falling apart as well. ‘Maggie still…?’

  Jenny nodded, an uncertain smile on her face: the smile of someone who was happy to report good news but knew she couldn’t take anything for granted.

  ‘Still in the clear. Due another follow-up in a couple of months, but so far so good. Apart from being one tit down on the whole deal.’

  Parlabane laughed, though he wasn’t sure it was appropriate. Actually, he knew it wasn’t, but that was why Jenny said it. God, he’d missed this woman.

  ‘So what can I do for you?’ she asked. ‘Is it about getting these Met wankers off your back, because that’s out of my jurisdiction.’

  ‘No. Had two of them follow me here today, though, as it happens. Can you lift them for stalking?’

  ‘’Fraid not. Anything else?’

  ‘Yes. It’s concerning Heike Gunn. You know who that is?’

  ‘What are you insinuating?’ Jenny fired back, mock-defensive. ‘Dykey Heikey? Did you come to me with this just because I’m a lesbian? Watch your step or I’ll slap you with an order to attend a four-week awareness-training course.’

  ‘She’s missing,’ Parlabane told her, feeling a bit of a dick at having to bring down the serious.

  Jenny’s features sharpened.

  ‘How missing is missing?’

  ‘Missing enough for her manager to have hired me to look into it, but not missing enough for anybody to be allowed to know. It’s very delicate.’

  ‘What do you need from me?’

  ‘Apart from your silence, I was wondering if you could get the Border Agency to confirm whether she re-entered the UK. She was last seen in Berlin, and I’d like to at least know which haystack I’m looking in.’

  Jenny wrote something down on a notepad.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Thanks, Jenny. I really appreciate it.’

  ‘There’s a quid pro quo,’ she told him. ‘I could actually use your help in locating a missing person myself.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Jack Parlabane. If you see him, tell him there’s a sad-sack miserable bastard going around using his name.’

  Warrior Women

  Heike was dressed in Roman battle gear, complete with helmet and breastplate, her legs bare beneath a red knee-length tunic, her feet criss-crossed by the leather straps of her sandals. In her right hand she held a microphone stand like a spear, an acoustic guitar at her left side instead of a shield.

  We were standing in the main courtyard of the British Museum in Bloomsbury, Heike between two Roman columns while the photographer and his staff adjusted collapsible reflectors, umbrellas, lighting stands and flashes. Hair and make-up artists buzzed around Heike, never quite happy with what they were seeing.

  I was sitting a few feet away on a folding stool, my violin in its case at my feet, wondering why Heike had asked me to bring it. I was only supposed to be here for company and moral support. She didn’t look like she needed that, as she was confident in the spotlight, but she had seemed a bit nervy in the cab over, so maybe she was good at putting a calm face on it. The shoot was for Tatler, for God’s sake. I’d have been in bits.

  Heike had natural grace. There was no other word for it. She didn’t have supermodel looks, but there was just something pleasing about her face, a timelessness, I guess, that made it easy to picture her in any era. Maybe that was what the photographer had seen when he came up with the concept for the shoot. It was obvious from the way they were talking that he had worked with Heike in the past, or at least had met her before. His name was Steff Kennedy. I had heard of him, but for some reason thought he would be English or American. It turned out he was from Motherwell.

  He snapped away at her for about ten minutes, then got his assistants to start moving kit again. He and Heike spoke quietly, almost conspiratorially to one another, then I noticed him glancing towards me. Maybe I was to play now: I couldn’t see what that would add to the shoot, but what did I know? Besides, one of his team was videoing the whole thing for their website.

  ‘We think you should be in the shot,’ Heike announced.

  I thought she was messing with me, then I glanced at Steff and saw that he was totally sincere; worse than that, determined. He was about six foot seven with long hair, and beneath the Roman columns he looked like a warrior or a pagan god. Either way, I wasn’t sure I could defy him. I felt horribly trapped.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ I said weakly.

  ‘No, seriously,’ Heike insisted. ‘Steff thinks it will be more dynamic to have both of us.’

  ‘But I’m not good in front of a camera. Trust me, I’ll ruin the shot.’

  ‘You’ve got more than you give yourself credit for, and you’re only going to see that once you get to look through someone else’s eyes. Besides, I already did the interview, and half of it was about you joining the band, about
how it’s changed us to have two women at the heart of things. The magazine really wants both of us in the spread.’

  I made a face, but I could see one of Steff’s assistants already holding up a costume and gesturing me towards the changing area they had set up using stands and drapes.

  ‘Just give it a shot. Come on, if you can get up on a stage in front of two thousand people, you can pose for a photo.’

  That sounded like an okay comparison, as long as you ignored that it would be seen by ten times that number, and that wasn’t even including the internet. I was thinking to myself, I didn’t sign up for this, when I realised that I actually had, by joining the band. I just hadn’t thought it through.

  Steff’s assistant handed me a tunic that looked like it was made of thousands of leather scales, and a headpiece she called a khepresh. I thought for a moment whether these were from the museum, worrying about damaging them. Then I noticed the scales weren’t real leather and kicked myself for being stupid: like they’d be letting us play dressing up with priceless archaeological artefacts.

  I stripped to my underwear and put the tunic on, grateful that it sat high and tight around my shoulders. I didn’t think a visible bra strap would be acceptable and I really didn’t fancy what this thing would do to bare nipples.

  I stepped out barefoot, feeling a bit of a lemon, and the hair and make-up girls promptly sat me back down as they got to work. Heike took a seat beside me, while Steff got busy taking light readings and moving gear around.

  ‘Couldnae see this working with your last fiddle player,’ he said.

  ‘No, he wasn’t as pretty as Monica,’ Heike replied. It sounded like a deflection.

  ‘Or as obliging,’ Steff said, batting it back but looking at me with a smile.

  ‘Yeah, I heard he wasn’t the most reliable,’ I offered. I felt I was on the spot and expected to make some kind of a response.

  There was a sudden alertness to Heike’s face, like she needed to be on guard.

  ‘What else did you hear?’

  I felt guilty about what I knew, like I had been caught snooping into something personal that was none of my business. This was daft, though: I was in the band. If that meant I was dressing like an Egyptian charioteer, then it also meant that Maxi was my business. But I didn’t want to seem coy, or leave Heike wondering how much I really knew.