Dead Girl Walking

by Christopher Brookmyre

  Mairi rolled her eyes. He couldn’t decide whether this was in disdain at his weirdness or in irritation that his weirdness had just proven justified.

  They joined a short queue at a ticket machine, both of them rifling through their pockets for coins as they waited for the old punter at the front to finish his purchase. Parlabane was glancing over his shoulder, checking his six, and seriously thinking of offering the bloke some of his own change if it would get him moving.

  ‘Why did you photograph him on Islay?’ Mairi asked.

  ‘It wasn’t actually on Islay, it was on the ferry to Port Askaig. I thought he was a cop. He’d been following my car all the way from Inveraray. It’s happened a few times recently: low-level harassment from the Westercruik Inquiry.’

  Mairi collected their tickets from the machine and they rejoined the human flow through the entrance hall and down towards the U5 platforms.

  ‘That’s the business with the stolen laptop.’

  ‘Yes,’ Parlabane confirmed, unsure whether Mairi was taking the piss. There was something unnervingly guileless about the way she so succinctly referred to the situation that was currently ripping apart his career and might yet see him back in jail, making it sound trivial or incidental.

  ‘So had you assumed he was a Brit?’

  ‘Right up until I heard him talking on the ferry. I clocked the accent, and given he was asking somebody about distillery tours I assumed I’d read it all wrong. Sneaky bastard must have been trying to throw me off the scent, cover up the fact that he was following me.’

  ‘Can I see?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Parlabane took out his phone and swiped through the gallery until it showed the image he had taken in the ferry’s forward lounge. She took the phone in her left hand, pausing to punch their tickets at a validation post on the westbound platform.

  Mairi looked at the shot from the ferry, then verified Parlabane’s identification when she scrolled forward to the most recent pic.

  ‘You photographed the receptionists at our hotel?’ she asked with fading incredulity. ‘The bellhop too?’

  ‘That hotel was one of the last places Heike was seen. Somebody there might know something. I asked if they still had CCTV footage of the lobby from that time and the receptionist said she’d look into it.’

  ‘Actually look into it look into it, or yeah, that’ll be right look into it?’

  ‘That remains to be seen. I was quite charming and tried not to come over as a goggle-eyed paranoid freak, but who knows what’s in the eye of the beholder.’

  An eastbound train rumbled into the station, a pale yellow lozenge cutting off his view of the opposite platform and its wall of glossy green tiles. The two tracks ran side by side in the centre, divided by a row of matching green-painted steel columns. Up above, the chamber was lit by parallel rows of semi-spheres, the bulbs of which he imagined must be a bugger to change. Underfoot was a black line of floor tiles two feet back from the edge, but he and Mairi seemed to be among the few treating it as an imaginary barrier. The locals were polite, though, it had to be said. The platform was fairly filling up, and in London he’d have been getting nudged forward at this point, black line or no black line.

  ‘What if he is a cop?’ Mairi said, handing him back the phone. ‘I mean a German cop, looking for Heike.’

  ‘He bailed the moment he realised I’d recognised him. Cops don’t do that, especially if they’re en route to hearing what someone with a phone-in tip might have to tell them about a missing person.’

  Parlabane felt a hand on his back as the westbound train came clattering in from the tunnel. He assumed it was someone steadying themselves as the throng on the platform moved forward in response, but then he was driven sharply from behind and found himself tripping over a foot that had been placed in front of his own.

  He sprawled headlong over the edge as the train bore down on him. There was no way to correct his balance, only air to push against. He heard Mairi scream, then her voice was lost in the sound of steel on steel and a shriek of brakes. Even as he tumbled, his mind was making calculations, too fast to be rendered in conscious thought. Decisions drove his limbs via altogether more ancient neural circuitry. There would be no time to climb back up. He needed a survival space. Unlike London or even Glasgow, there was no channel beneath the middle of the tracks, and thus no option to lie flat. Dead ahead, the eastbound train was only just beginning to move, so there was no route clear of the westbound track.

  The central pillars. They were his only chance.

  He sprung to his feet and righted himself side-on against one. The westbound train screeched to an emergency stop, the metal of its carriages inches from his face. Behind him, the accelerating eastbound service was so close it jetted air up his shirt. He was grateful for Sarah’s years of insisting on healthy eating: a few too many haggis suppers and he’d have been getting spun and shredded right then.

  He stared through the windows towards the platform from which he had fallen, looking for who had pushed him. His view was obscured by shocked faces staring back from inside the train, mere inches away. Beyond them was a further host of onlookers: curious, frightened, anxious, confused. He wondered whether there was at least one who was disappointed.

  ‘I just lost my balance,’ Parlabane said.

  They were sitting in a small office off the ticket hall, the station manager unwilling to let them leave until she had ascertained that he was unharmed and, more importantly, that the police had logged the incident and a proper investigation was under way.

  Mairi was looking wan, her natural grace finally failing her after she had rushed around to the eastbound platform, breathless and slightly teary with shock. She hadn’t seen what happened, and he wasn’t filling her in just yet.

  An irritatingly young and even more irritatingly handsome uniformed police officer was standing opposite, asking questions in slow but precise English.

  ‘You were too close to the edge?’ he enquired.

  Parlabane wasn’t sure whether there was a hint of accusation in this, or whether it was simply a projection of his own prejudices.

  ‘The platform became very busy,’ he answered. ‘I think I moved forward a little without realising.’

  Eventually the young cop seemed happy that he could consider the incident dealt with, though the station manager still appeared far from content. Her English wasn’t great, but Parlabane guessed that wasn’t the only reason she didn’t seem satisfied with his answers. Accidents evidently weren’t allowed on her watch, so she wanted a better explanation for what happened than he’d been able or willing to give her.

  ‘Jeez, she was a bit intense,’ Mairi said after the station manager had personally escorted them safely aboard a westbound U5 train. ‘I think she must take it personally, like any accident impugns the integrity of her station-running protocols.’

  ‘No,’ Parlabane replied, ‘she just couldn’t see how my story added up. Which is understandable, seeing as it didn’t.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Someone pushed me, Mairi. Hard. Deliberate. Unmistakable.’

  She gaped, uncomprehending.

  ‘Why did you tell them you tripped?’

  ‘Because it’s going to be a lot harder to find out what’s happened to Heike if we’ve got the German police all over us. If I made an accusation, the first thing they’d do is look into why someone would want me dead. It will take them one phone call and about five minutes to discover that I am currently being investigated regarding my role in a possible conspiracy to steal secrets from the MoD. There might be an arrest warrant for me by now, but even if there isn’t, from that moment on it will primarily be me the German cops are interested in. They’ll be watching my every step, and I’m not very comfortable with that.’

  ‘Are you comfortable with the fact that somebody just tried to kill you?’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ he told her, grinning. ‘There’s a rather perverse side of me, to whom that p
art feels like coming home.’

  ‘I’d heard you have a sick sense of humour. To be honest, I think the word “deranged” really sells it.’

  ‘You have to look at the evidence dispassionately. At least this means we’re on to something.’

  ‘That part isn’t reassuring,’ she replied, folding her arms.

  Parlabane let her simmer.

  He hadn’t told her the whole truth about why he didn’t want to involve the cops, as it entailed the possibility that what had happened wasn’t about Heike at all. As he was climbing back up on to the eastbound platform, his brain racing to analyse the implications, it had occurred to him that Mairi’s earlier suggestion that the thick-necked jowly bastard was a polisman might be right: just not a German one.

  What if Bawjaws was following him, and it was nothing to do with Heike, but with the Anthony Mead business? It would be an effective cover for a British cop – or a British something darker – to pretend to be foreign on that ferry when he was concerned about having been made. Parlabane had dipped his toe in some very murky waters with that MoD thing, and he had no idea whose agendas he might have disturbed, or who might be moving against him.

  Until he could at least find out what he was dealing with, it seemed wisest not to make himself the focus of a police investigation.

  ‘So what do you suggest?’ Mairi asked as the train arrived at Brandenburger Tor.

  ‘I’d liked to get an ID on Bawjaws back there.’

  ‘Where are you hoping to come by that?’

  ‘Same place we got his secretary’s phone number.’

  Tall Poppies

  The Valencia show that night felt special, maybe because I had feared Heike might be off-form and subdued. Her first few songs had borne this out before she came to life on ‘Who Do You Want Me to Be’, and started throwing everything into her performance. I used to think it was a song about coming out, but after what she had confided today I got that its darkly funny anxieties were saying something much more complicated. After that, she seemed to be pouring herself out into the microphone and into a joyous sweat-lashed thrashing of her chords.

  I got the impression she was losing herself in the show, like she had set about losing herself in our work together on the bus, and had the sense that she was giving everything she had because what would be left over wasn’t going to be worth much anyway. So it was no surprise when she headed straight back to the hotel and an early bed.

  When I’d worked out the time difference I figured it wasn’t too late to give Keith a call, and managed to catch him on what I intended to be the final try after several failures before the show.

  ‘Monica!’

  He sounded delighted to hear from me, energy and enthusiasm in his voice igniting the same in me.

  ‘I hope it’s not too late to call. We just got off stage.’

  ‘No, I was really hoping you’d ring. I got a promotion.’

  ‘That’s brilliant.’

  ‘I know. All those extra hours paid off. They’re starting a new department to develop … well, never mind the technical stuff: they want me to head it up.’

  ‘Fantastic. You must be really juiced.’

  ‘I’m minted is what I am. This is going to be worth an extra five grand a year basic, but it’s the opportunity that matters. It’s a platform for my personal career growth. We can really start planning for the future.’

  ‘How about planning a holiday?’ I said.

  ‘Well, yeah, of course. With the promotion under my belt, I was thinking we could go to Thailand in the autumn, like you always said you wanted.’

  ‘God, yes. That would be amazing.’

  ‘It would give us the chance to take a step out of things and take stock, look to the long term. I’ve got real stability now.’

  We spoke for ages, almost until my battery was out. I kept to myself the fact that the autumn dates he was talking about were already being pencilled in for more touring to build on the expected momentum around the new album.

  The sound of his voice only made me realise how lonely I felt when I finally hung up, so I was in the mood for some company. I joined Scott, Damien and Angus for some late-night tapas, red wine and, for some, dangerously flowing Spanish brandy.

  When I asked where Rory had got to, I got awkward looks and half-answers, suggesting another of his solitary pursuits that they assumed I would have a problem with. I wasn’t judgemental towards Rory, I just couldn’t help wondering why he didn’t have any concerns about the desperate girls throwing themselves into one-night stands with him.

  I was sitting on a banquette beside Damien, with Scott and Angus opposite. Damien ordered for everybody, talking comfortably and, as far as I could tell, flirtily in Spanish with the waitress. I wondered how he became so fluent.

  A few bottles and a lot of dishes in, we went around the table on the subject of best and worst live acts we had seen. It had been Scott’s suggestion, and he spoke with evangelical enthusiasm about Augustines before dumping a bucketload of scorn upon some X-Factor Live abomination he had been obliged to attend with his then girlfriend.

  Angus cursorily praised Green Day but had considerably more enthusiasm for ripping into Chvrches.

  ‘Fucking sell-out electropop shite. Two miserable cunts standing behind synths like it’s the fuckin’ eighties.’

  His words were a bit slurred, and in his drunken bitterness I detected more than a hint of jealousy.

  Damien held forth on the consistent merits of the Manic Street Preachers, but wouldn’t choose a worst, resulting in serious protest.

  He wasn’t having it, though.

  ‘Thing is, I’ve been down pretty low in this business. I know how much effort it takes to put on any show, and I know what depths you can plumb just to stay in the game, just to be playing. I mean, once upon a time, sure, there was almost nobody I didn’t believe I was better than, or would one day be better than. But when this game teaches you humility, it doesn’t pull its punches.’

  ‘How low are you talking about?’ I asked, now all the more anxious to avoid my own contribution, as I didn’t feel I had yet earned the right to slag anybody off.

  ‘I spent nine months playing in a show at a theme park here in Spain,’ he answered. ‘This hideous eighties and nineties hair-metal pastiche about vampires and zombies. Three performances a day in high season, inside a Mayan-themed amphitheatre with a bloody rollercoaster shaking the stage every three minutes. When I was in Discolite and The Descendants, it was a real buzz when a stranger recognised me. But at the theme park it was my biggest fear that somebody might come up and say: “Hey, last time I saw you, you were playing the Barrowlands.”’

  He was laughing as he spoke, but I could tell he was talking about his personal long dark night of the soul.

  ‘It was a total brass neck, but it was a gig, the only way I could still get paid to play at that time. That’s what I told myself anyway, but there comes a moment when you wonder whether there’s more dignity in admitting it’s all over. In my case it was playing in low season in front of nine people, four of whom left after ten minutes because their toddler got scared by the noise. I’d like to say I left at that point, but I hung on another three months.’

  Bored of Damien’s gloomy confession, Scott and Angus started pouring more venom on despised targets.

  ‘How did you last nine months?’ I asked Damien.

  ‘There was a girl involved,’ he said, turning a little in his seat to face me more directly. ‘This dancer called Natasha, from St Petersburg. We were in the same show, and very much the same boat. We were both past thirty, and we both knew we were there on the way down. We were very close, but…’

  He sighed, toying with a piece of bread, soaking up the last of the sauce from a dish of patatas bravas.

  ‘Maxi got in touch and said he was in a new band that was looking for a lead guitarist. He told me Heike was something special. I had three days off and spent two of them getting over to Glasgow and back: hor
rible flight connection times because it was high season and everything was full. I was barely in town long enough for the session, or audition, as I suppose it was. It was long enough, though, for me anyway: one afternoon playing with Heike and I knew that was my ticket out for sure – if she wanted me.’

  Damien tipped half his brandy into his mouth and let it sit there for a few moments before swallowing and inviting the burn.

  ‘Maxi phoned me on my mobile at Luton, ninety minutes into a six-hour transit, told me I was in. The check-in wasn’t even open for my next flight, so I just went to the desk and booked myself and my guitar on to the first plane back to Glasgow, and I was in Maxi’s flat before my flight to Spain would even have taken off.’

  ‘You never went back?’

  He shook his head, an apologetic yet firm look on his face, like he knew I wouldn’t approve but he’d make the same decision every time.

  ‘Natasha knew why I was going to Glasgow, and what that meant. That’s how it was between us. If I had come back we’d have gone on same as before, nothing said. I wish I could have taken her with me, but I guess we all wish we could rescue somebody. We both knew that if either of us got a chance of something better there would only ever be room on the lifeboat for one.’

  Still unable to compete with how little sleep my bandmates could get by on, I left at around two, and was surprised to be joined on the short walk back to the hotel by Angus, of all people, normally one of the hardiest insomniacs in the party. He had seemed pretty hammered as he cackled over the table, so maybe he did actually know his limits. Had I downed what he’d skulled over the past few hours, I’d have vomited my own bodyweight.

  The air must have sobered him up a little, as he seemed a bit less slurred of speech. But I was wary of him, as his mood was still pretty dark, and I found his archness even more unnerving because he normally came across as completely happy-go-lucky.

  I had watched him early on in the evening, playing his solo opening set. He did it when the schedule permitted, which meant the opportunities were very much in Heike’s gift. There was an obvious correlation between, for example, Heike catching him and Scott doing coke in Newcastle, and the soundcheck overrunning that night so that there was only time for the main support act once the house doors were open.