Dead Girl Walking

by Christopher Brookmyre

  When he did play, he would run through five or six of his own songs with an acoustic guitar, a loop station and a stomp box. Building up the loops and rhythms, it could sound like there was a full band backing him by the time the vocals started, switching between registers impressively.

  I had only managed to take in his performance a few times so far, but on each occasion I saw the charismatic player Heike had sparked off of back in their schooldays. It wasn’t hard to see the scorn he had been pouring upon Chvrches as a way of deflecting his regrets at pissing his talent up the wall in his adolescence instead of honing it like Heike, Scott or even me.

  He was humming something I recognised, and it took me a moment to work out that it was actually the song Heike and I had been jamming on the bus.

  ‘Lightning in a bottle,’ he said. ‘That’s what you’re trying to do: catch lightning in a bottle.’

  ‘Feels like that, yes,’ I said, agreeing just to keep the peace.

  ‘You can be brilliant and not get lucky, never catch the lightning. Or you can be super-lucky. One song on a fuckin’ telly show and suddenly you’re a fuckin’ millionaire.’

  He gave a tipsy laugh at this, but I sensed only resentment, and I was done putting up with his pissed self-loathing.

  ‘Catch on to yourself,’ I said. ‘If that were true, then every song that got used on a TV show would make its singer a millionaire. It takes a special song to have the impact “Do It to Julia” had. It takes a special singer.’

  ‘Oh, she’s special. Nobody knows that better than me. I’ve been in the passenger seat for most of the journey. But I’m just trying to warn you: she’s selfish and ruthless too.’

  ‘I’ll consider it noted,’ I said, picking up pace now that the hotel’s awning was in sight.

  ‘You’re not hearing me,’ he insisted, grabbing me by the sleeve and stopping me on the spot. ‘I’m telling you this because I’ve been where you were today. She’s the most manipulative person on the planet, and it’s when you think she’s not manipulating you that you’re truly in her control. She’s like the fucking … morning sun,’ he slabbered. ‘She’ll make you feel you’re harnessing power you never knew you had, that you can be so much more than you thought. But in the end she’ll take as much as she gives, and then she’ll take some more. She’ll steal from you. You think what you did today means you were writing together? Don’t you think Maxi did the same thing – jamming, improvising, suggesting. Don’t you think I did too?’

  His eyes were wild, his words drunkenly overemphasised like they were a new gospel.

  ‘Maxi says he’s got something up his sleeve, says he’s gaunny get his pound of flesh, but I don’t know. Damien’s been around the block, and he hitched his wagon to Heike because the minute he saw her, he knew she was a juggernaut. Heike will get wherever she wants to be, but she’ll leave bodies in her wake.’

  Lost Generation

  The Brauereihallen had an altogether more vibrant feel about the place upon their return. It was just after nine and there was a gig in progress in one of the larger halls. Parlabane reckoned it must be the support band’s rhythm section he could hear throbbing behind the heavy wooden doors, as there were dozens of people wearing the headline act’s T-shirts still milling around in the covered concourse.

  Mairi had made a few calls as they walked up Friedrichstrasse, getting someone back home to pave her way with the venue staff by vouching for her role as Savage Earth Heart’s manager. Fortunately that distinction had currency here, the band having left the Brauereihallen a couple of years back on better terms than they had Palast.

  Another factor in greasing the wheels and getting them both sorted out with passes was the fact that tonight’s troubadours, Altar State, were being chaperoned around the Continent under the Bad Candy imprimatur.

  Parlabane’s intention was to get the venue staff and road crew to have a look at Bawjaws’s photo, but Mairi insisted they stop for a bite to eat as she hadn’t had anything since Starbucks.

  ‘I had a Mississippi mud muffin,’ she told him. ‘Tastes exactly like it sounds. She mimicked a southern accent: ‘Unleash your inner fat-ass, with a Mississippi mud muffin. At the time I thought it would be weighing me down all day, but I’m glad I had it or I’d have faded ages ago.’

  ‘Aye, if only they could cut out the fat as effectively as they cut out their tax liabilities,’ he muttered.

  Mairi ignored him and helped him order from a food stall. ‘Helped’ meaning she overruled his request for currywurst and chips, which he would have to confess he thought was the when-in-Berlin thing to order. He didn’t know what it was actually going to entail.

  ‘It’s disgusting,’ she assured him. ‘Almost no natural ingredients.’

  ‘You know, I thought it was one of the consolations of being separated that I wouldn’t have my dining choices dictated by someone else’s health obsessions.’

  ‘This is not about health, it’s about taste. If you want a giant sausage and chips, have a bratwurst or a paprikawurst if you like it spicy. Just don’t have the currywurst. Trust me on this: it’s like eating a sliced-up plastic dildo smeared in warm ketchup.’

  ‘And you would know this how?’

  She ignored that as well.

  They found places at the end of a trestle table otherwise bustling with noisy adolescent Altar State fans. Mairi had ordered them both something called flammkuchen, which seemed to be a very thin German version of pizza. He caught a glimpse of what he deduced to be currywurst in front of one of the lads further down the table, and decided he’d dodged a bullet there. Or dodged a sliced-up dildo, anyway.

  Their dining companions were cheerful and boisterous, and between the language barrier and the intent manner in which they were yelling all communication back and forth, the effect was to make Mairi and Parlabane’s end of the table seem private and secluded.

  Two girls in the middle of the group began singing one of Altar State’s anthems, belting it across the table into each other’s faces in accented and occasionally mistaken English.

  Parlabane stole a glance at them and must have failed to disguise a baleful look, which Mairi homed in on.

  ‘It’s shite getting old, isn’t it?’ she said, almost but not quite nailing what had been depressing him. ‘You see all these kids at gigs, and in your head you’re still one of them. Then you go to the loo and catch sight of yourself in the mirror.’

  ‘Aye, that’s the trade-off: part of you feels younger for being there, and another part gets made to feel all the more ancient by being around all these … children. It’s a price I’m willing to pay, though. I still love gigs: the smell of aftershave, perfume, make-up and spilled beer; plastic pint glasses flying; fashion calamities everywhere; and a group of incurable dreamers pouring their heart into every note up on the stage.’

  Mairi had a wistful smile as she nodded her agreement.

  ‘I love looking at the younger fans’ faces whenever a band takes the stage,’ she said, ‘wondering if it’s their first time seeing them, because I know what that felt like. It’s the closest you can get to feeling it yourself again. It must be like being a mother on Christmas morning, when the wee ones come into the living room and see what’s under the tree.’

  Parlabane took a mouthful of beer, ostensibly to wash down the flammkuchen, but really to cover the fact that she had just zeroed in on the true source of his angst when he had looked at those teenagers losing themselves in their singalong.

  Oh yeah, and throw in Christmas morning just to really stomp it into the carpet.

  He had long since made his peace with never being twenty-one again, but he’d been almost as long in expectation of that vicarious thrill Mairi was describing. One day he was going to be taking his kids to a show, he used to think. Wouldn’t matter who it was, how awful, how loud, he’d be happy about it. He had looked forward to being the old fart made to sit three rows away from junior and his mates even though he was the one driving them home afte
r watching Slipknot or Korn or whoever. Christ, even Prelude to the Slaughter, and if he had a girl, One Direction or whichever vapid boyband was cool with that particular intake of nine-year-olds.

  Fuck.

  Sarah had cheated on him, and they got past it. It was a one-night thing, but it got very public, unavoidably humiliating. They got past it. It was only sex. They got past a lot of things, and he had assumed that anything that went wrong in a marriage was fixable.

  Until they found out they couldn’t have kids.

  It seemed absurd that something they had managed perfectly well without for so many years could suddenly trump all other considerations now that they’d discovered it was unavailable. In that respect, this discovery appeared to be an injection of poison that went straight to the heart of their marriage, but only if you ignored the hidden untruth in the previous statement.

  They hadn’t managed perfectly well. Thus, this discovery was not an injection of poison but more like a trace agent that showed up how many fault lines were already running through their relationship, ready to crack. The thought of a child had been like an invisible glue, as though they both knew they were growing apart but they each secretly imagined a better future that would happen once the dynamic changed, when they became parents rather than just partners.

  Lucky escape for the wean, anyway.

  And what about Mairi, he wondered. What was in that look as she talked about what it must be like as a mother at Christmas? Was there sadness and regret hidden there? Not that he could detect. She had to be forty-two, so she couldn’t be kidding herself that there was plenty of time left yet. Besides, she was already playing mummy to Savage Earth Heart and sundry other charges, and right now one of them was very late for her tea.

  ‘Did you have any luck speaking to Monica yet?’ he asked, aware that as mother hen she hadn’t quite kept all her chicks in line.

  Mairi frowned.

  ‘Still nothing.’

  ‘Quite a huff. Do you think she’d come out of it if we told her Heike is missing?’

  ‘Undoubtedly. But there’s a chicken-and-egg problem. I’m not leaving that kind of information on her voicemail.’

  ‘Just how much did you upset her? I need the truth, Mairi.’

  ‘Everything’s out of proportion when you’re Monica’s age,’ she said, a reply but not an answer.

  The venue manager, a tall and rangy young bloke called Hannes, came over and sorted them out with backstage passes, but upon Mairi’s instruction, they waited until Altar State were playing before venturing into any of the protected areas. The immediate run-up to the show was the worst time to ask anybody for a moment of their time, and they wouldn’t win anybody’s goodwill by getting in the way.

  In the meantime they showed the image of Bawjaws to the bar staff, waiters, venue security and even the merchandising people. Mairi was the one who presented them with Parlabane’s phone, so that he could watch their faces as they looked at the image. He wanted to note who even just thought they recognised this guy, as well as who appeared to recognise him but claimed they didn’t.

  He got barely a glimmer. It was a long, slow procession of furrowed brows and apologetic shakes of the head, though at least Mairi was getting better at pronouncing the German for ‘Do you know this man?’ as Hannes had taught her. Parlabane tried not to think about how the likelihood of them getting a bite was worsening with every blank response, because if Bawjaws showed up with any frequency in this place, his face would surely have rung a bell with someone by now.

  With Altar State in full cyber-rock flow, they made their way backstage in Halle Vier, where it was a delicate matter of choosing their moment. In the narrow pit behind the crush barrier, security staff stood vigilantly attentive upon the audience: there would be no speaking to them right now. Ditto the sound and lighting engineers.

  Others stood in the wings, less occupied than merely on standby. Mairi knew their roles, and who it was safest to disturb. Once again, nobody said they recognised Bawjaws, but this time there were two men who reacted to the image. Nothing dramatic, but there was a difference between the studied neutrality of their responses and the blankness he had been witnessing so far. Parlabane took note of who they were, and on a hunch made an enquiry of Hannes the next time he spotted him breezing past: permanently busy, lolloping in his stride, but somehow always able to spare a second.

  Parlabane asked him to indicate who was venue staff and who was road crew. Then a brief blether to Altar State’s guitar roadie established who else was on the band’s permanent payroll.

  That made it official: both of the guys pretending not to recognise Bawjaws worked for Bad Candy.

  They watched the rest of the set from the floor rather than the wings so that they could show the image to a few more front-of-house personnel. They got more blanks, then waited by the sound desk after the encore while the staff ushered everybody else outside and the roadies immediately got busy taking the kit apart. Mairi showed the phone to the sound engineer, a bloke called Stan whom she seemed to vaguely know. Finally they got a hit, if not a positive ID.

  ‘I’ve seen this guy,’ Stan said, concentration etched on his face as he tried to place him.

  ‘Here at the Brauereihallen?’ Mairi asked.

  ‘No. It was when I was out with Famous Blue Raincoats towards the end of last year. Saw him a couple of times. He was in Milan, and I think I saw him in Cologne as well, though it could have been Frankfurt.’

  ‘Could he be with Bad Candy?’ Parlabane asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t see him at gigs: I saw him in hotels. There were always girls with him: young, very glam. I thought he was a Russian oligarch. Or a porn baron.’

  They made their way back out to the covered courtyard, where a queue had already formed outside Halle Ein, inside which something called Club Clash was kicking off. The food stalls were still doing a brisk trade from those whose appetites had been worked up by a hard night’s moshing, and by those grabbing a bite before hitting the club. Parlabane wondered how many beers were required to make currywurst seem like a good idea, and reckoned it was roughly the same as a doner kebab or a half-pizza supper.

  He became aware of someone sidling up to them as they stood against a wall, trying to stay out of the way. Parlabane recognised him as one of the Bad Candy blokes who had reacted to the image but told them otherwise.

  He had a concerned look: very serious, very sincere, and very much like someone who didn’t want to be seen talking to them.

  ‘This man you showed me,’ he said, his accent local. ‘I have a friend who may be able to identify him. Can I show her the phone?’

  He held out his hand close to his side, keeping the gesture subtle, like a drugs hand-off.

  ‘It will take two minutes,’ he added.

  ‘Can’t you take me to her?’

  ‘She is in a restricted area in Club Clash. It would take me longer to get you a pass than to just show her the phone.’

  Parlabane eyed the waiting hand and shook his head.

  ‘I’m sorry mate, but I’m not letting my phone out of my sight.’

  The roadie’s face darkened, incredulity mixed with offence.

  ‘Hey, fuck you, I’m not a thief,’ he said, before walking away in the huff.

  ‘Well played, Jack,’ said Mairi. ‘Slick. Why didn’t you just give him the phone? You know who he is: his name was on his laminate. Karl something. It’s not like he could steal it and act as though nothing happened.’

  ‘Well, actually, that’s precisely what he could do. And I don’t care if I know his name. Would you hand over your phone just like that?’

  ‘My whole life is on this phone,’ she admitted, by way of conceding the point. ‘My existence runs on iOS.’

  A few moments later Karl reappeared, still acting like he was concerned about who might be watching.

  ‘Hey, I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘I overreacted. I wouldn’t hand over my phone to a stranger either. It’s jus
t, you make an offer to help, you don’t expect to get it back in your face, yeah?’

  ‘Sorry. No offence intended,’ Parlabane replied.

  ‘Why don’t you Bluetooth me the photo,’ he suggested, producing his own phone.

  ‘Sure thing.’

  ‘We really appreciate it,’ Mairi added.

  Parlabane transferred the image of Bawjaws and as soon as it appeared on his screen Karl hastened off in the direction of Club Clash.

  They remained against the wall, waiting patiently as Karl’s estimated two minutes crept up closer to twelve.

  ‘Just so we’re clear,’ Parlabane said, ‘we’re now about eight minutes past the point at which I’d have started to worry had I handed that guy my phone.’

  ‘Wait a minute: you’re getting in an “I told you so”, even though we didn’t take the course of action you disagreed with?’

  ‘I’m just saying.’

  Mairi stared at him a moment, then nodded to herself.

  ‘Separated, aren’t you, you and your wife?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with…’

  ‘I’m just saying.’

  Karl finally returned before it could further degenerate. His face was darkly purposeful.

  Result.

  ‘She knows who this is.’

  They waited for him to give them a name, but none was forthcoming. Parlabane realised Karl wasn’t here to relay the information.

  ‘So are you going to take us to her now?’ he asked.

  Karl shook his head, briefly but intractably.

  ‘She will talk to you, but not here. Not where people know her. She says this guy is very bad news. She wants to meet somewhere less public.’

  ‘Where, then?’ Mairi asked.

  Karl handed over a piece of paper with an address written on it.

  ‘Where Bodestrasse meets Am Lustgarten,’ he said. ‘In front of the Alte Nationalgalerie.’