Dead Girl Walking

by Christopher Brookmyre

  Heike strode out to the mic and began strumming the intro to the opener, ‘Western Pagodas’, her gaze lost in the black. She was more nervous than usual, sure of nothing right then, her thoughts no doubt as dark and shapeless as the crowd. I came in on the second phrase, stepping further downstage than I normally did at that point, catching the edge of her vision.

  She missed an up-strum in her surprise when she saw me, then gave me the best grin. There was gratitude in her smile, an acknowledgement of our solidarity. In between phrases, she turned to me and mouthed ‘Wow’. New energy lifted both of us as the rest of the band took up the song. It was going to be a great show despite everything we had been through today: we had just determined that, without saying a word.

  I wasn’t wearing the dress just to please Heike, and I think she understood as much. I was wearing it for both us, but I was wearing it for me first and foremost. I was wearing it because I knew I was going to feel naked out there tonight anyway. I was wearing it because there were men who wanted me to be scared and ashamed.

  I was wearing it because fuck them.

  Afterwards, I knew I should have been physically and emotionally exhausted, but when Heike said ‘Let’s go dancing,’ I found I’d got wings from somewhere. The last thing I wanted was to lie in my hotel room and go to sleep.

  We didn’t dance, though. We were happy to just sit there together, listening to the music, sipping our beers, watching the beautiful strangers all around us, holding hands out of sight beneath the table.

  I couldn’t say whether Heike reached to mine or I to hers; maybe they just kind of brushed halfway, hanging accidentally-deliberately in the space between us. What’s for sure is that once we touched we stayed in contact, our fingers slowly intertwining as though we were both afraid the other might recoil.

  Hacking Inquiry

  They checked into a hotel almost directly across from the building where Bad Candy had their Berlin bureau on the second floor. Mairi had not been enamoured of this suggestion.

  ‘He’s going to have people out looking for us,’ she protested, ‘and you want to move into a place on his doorstep?’

  ‘The fact that he’s going to be intently looking out for us is also the reason he won’t notice that we’re actually looking at him. Besides, we can’t stay where we are.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Like you said, they’re going to be looking for us, and I think they might have inside information. Ask yourself: was it a coincidence that Boris just happened to be behind me on the road to Kennacraig? It’s possible, but if somebody on a Bad Candy crew tipped him off after we were asking questions at the Altar State gig, then the same could have happened when I went to the Manchester Apollo. I went there because Prelude to the Slaughter had largely the same crew as the Savage tour – including the tour manager.’

  ‘Jan,’ she said, her tone indicating that it wouldn’t tremble the foundations of her beliefs if Parlabane suggested there was something iffy about the guy.

  ‘He lied to me,’ Parlabane said. ‘Made out he knew nothing about the incident on the bus. He was the one holding the fucking passports.’

  ‘He’s also the one who made the “judgement call” to cancel the show,’ Mairi reminded him. ‘I reckon he knew for sure that Heike wasn’t coming.’

  ‘If they’re out looking for us and they know why we’re here, it’s not a leap to think that the first hotel they’ll try is the one Savage Earth Heart were booked into when Heike disappeared.’

  Mairi needed less than a second to take in the implications.

  ‘I’ll start packing.’

  ‘Not quite yet,’ he had told her, before producing some of the purchases he’d made while she was getting dressed.

  They spent an hour dyeing Parlabane’s hair black, unrecognisable from the dirty-blond that was these days mixed with increasingly liberal sprinklings of grey. Not wishing to impose similar levels of sacrifice upon Mairi, he had bought her a wig.

  ‘I look like Julia Roberts early on in Pretty Woman,’ she observed, tucking stray strands of her own black hair beneath the peroxide bob he’d got on Kurfürstendamm.

  ‘I can’t think of any circumstances in which that could be a bad thing.’

  ‘How about circumstances in which I’m booting you in the nadgers for saying I look good as a whore?’

  The new hotel might be across the road from Bad Candy’s offices, but it was sufficiently further down the street that neither of their rooms afforded a direct line of sight. Mairi’s window did have a good view of the building’s main entrance, so she was given the more straightforward task of watching that. Two sharp eyes and her iPhone’s camera were going to be sufficient. Parlabane’s posting was more problematic.

  Mairi had seemed positively disturbed by some of the equipment he had brought along, laying it out on her bed as he briefed her on his planned surveillance.

  ‘It looks more like you’re planning to break into somewhere than photograph it.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ he told her, eliciting a look of relief. ‘That stuff’s still in my room.’

  Parlabane had found the service door to the hotel’s roof via a narrow stairwell adjacent to the lifts on the top floor. The door was locked but happily not alarmed. It was a pop-lock, a flimsy affair intended to prevent unauthorised access by curious or disoriented hotel guests. It took longer to get the picks in and out of his carry-case than it did to open the thing.

  From there he had walked on soft feet to the adjoining building, where he had to make a short climb as it was four or five feet taller than its neighbour. On the plus side, the greater angle of elevation meant that he was extremely unlikely to be spotted by anyone who happened to be looking out of the window over at Bad Candy.

  He was on the roof of an office building on Rosenthaler Strasse, his Nikon SLR perched on a Gorillapod that was gripping a ventilation pipe like some kind of futuristic parasite.

  He had patiently panned back and forth for the first half hour, looking for but not finding that jowly face. Parlabane familiarised himself with what he could see of the layout, determining where the bureau’s windows began and ended. Tour posters decorating the walls verified that he was at least looking at the right place, but whether Boris actually worked there was a question that a whole day’s surveillance may not answer. The guy might merely have contacts here, such as the bloke who’d been with him on Alexanderplatz, who, come to think of it, Parlabane hadn’t seen since. Or Boris could be based here, but spend most of his time out of the office, not to mention out of the city.

  Then Mairi made an excited announcement through the Bluetooth earpiece he was wearing. They had an open channel of peer-to-peer communication as his phone was still connected to the hotel’s Wi-Fi network.

  Their target had just walked down the street and in through the front door.

  Parlabane picked him up a couple of minutes later, striding to his seat. He had a room to himself, so he was a few rungs up the food chain from the folk two windows along, who appeared to spend all their time chained to their desks and talking on the phone. Boris made and took a lot of calls too, but mostly on his mobile rather than the landline. He tapped away at the keyboard in front of his monitor, but was just as busy on the iPad. This he kept in a leather satchel, an over-the-shoulder number like Mairi had suggested Parlabane consider in warmer weather.

  He had been there for two hours, and was grateful that they were doing this in June rather than February. The time passed quicker than most people would imagine. He entered an almost meditative state, calmly centred upon his subject, or upon the empty room his subject vacated whenever he got up from his desk.

  Parlabane corrected the focus by the tiniest of increments, each micro-twist of the lens having an exaggerated effect when the zoom was at this magnitude. He could see Boris sitting at his desk, a spreadsheet open on his monitor. It wasn’t his PC Parlabane was interested in, however.

  He snapped away intently every time the iPad bob
bed into view. There was no way he’d get the code at that distance – not from fingers on a touchscreen with the digits rendered as black circles – but he needed to be sure of the background wallpaper, lock screen and, of course, which build Boris was using.

  Mairi’s voice sounded in his ear again.

  ‘He’s on the move.’

  Parlabane watched him through a pair of compact field glasses, safe to risk while the sun was behind him and there was no danger of a give-away twinkle alerting Boris to the voyeur above. He reappeared after a few minutes, clutching a paper bag and a large coffee.

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘What?’ Mairi asked.

  ‘Well, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that there’s got to be some highly sensitive stuff on Boris’s iPad. He’s got a PC on his desk, so I’m guessing that’s for official Bad Candy business, while the Apple slab is for Boris’s business.’

  ‘And what’s the bad news?’

  ‘He doesn’t let it out of his sight: didn’t even leave it on his desk to go down the street for a snack.’

  ‘Not to mention that it password-locks after about twenty seconds,’ Mairi added. ‘Guess we can forget about finding out what’s on it, then.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t say that…’

  Postcards from Another Life

  We worked together for hours as the bus wound its way to Zagreb, the time disappearing once again as our attention stayed so intently focused. When we stopped at a services area near Trieste, it came as a jolt, as though we could have been anywhere and were surprised to discover ourselves on this vehicle and not in a studio or rehearsal space. It was the same song as had been taking shape since Barcelona, and now bore the title I had suggested in that café by the museum: ‘Gods and Mortals’. Heike’s lyrics were still only fragments, gradually coming together as the music took shape. Mostly she would hum the vocal part, getting a feel for the metre.

  I played in two contrasting styles: smooth and low, under the assured voice of the god; then high and staccato to suggest the nervous, trembling human. What’s weird is that I don’t remember consciously deciding to do this. It just evolved out of the process, like there were things I instinctively understood about what Heike wanted, ways I could only play because I was playing with her.

  We’re catching lightning in a bottle, I thought. Then I remembered where I had heard the phrase.

  ‘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.’

  I wondered, Should I get it out there, in the open? Should I ask Heike, Are we writing this song together?

  But I couldn’t. It felt like it would corrupt the chemistry that was making this happen. If she said yes, it might seem like I was being protective or needy, or worse, insulting her by implying I thought she was as dishonest as Maxi’s lawsuit said she was. But most of all, I was afraid of what would change if she told me no.

  That night I made sure to watch Angus do his opening set.

  The venue was a club called Mocvara, a claustrophobic little joint compared to some of our grander recent gigs, and with a punkier crowd than we normally attracted. Heike had got the measure of the place during the soundcheck and swapped in a couple of more upbeat numbers to replace the mellow and stripped-down ‘Square of Captured Light’ and ‘It Meant Nothing’. We were still doing ‘Dark Station’, but she wanted to build up more momentum before we got there.

  Under the circumstances, I thought Angus had a thankless task going out there alone, while the place was just beginning to fill and the audience were more interested in getting a few rounds in. But he looked like he didn’t care whether there was even one person listening. He was playing for himself.

  To be honest, I was paying closer attention than before because I was listening out for similarities between his songs and Heike’s. I couldn’t help myself, even though I knew it was like staring at clouds: soon enough you start to recognise shapes as your mind finds patterns. Every so often I’d hear a chord change or phrasing that seemed familiar, but if I’d been listening for similarities with any other singer I’m sure I’d have heard them there too. Anyway, I had no idea when these songs were even written.

  Then Angus announced a song as one he and Heike had come up with together when they were both fifteen, and its chord structure was definitely a pre-echo of ‘Western Pagodas’. It was like an early sketch for a great painting: one was a much more accomplished piece, but the other did form a vital stage in its creation.

  To me, the big difference was that Angus might have helped draw the sketch, but he could never have painted the picture.

  Between the soundcheck and the show itself, Heike changed her hair. She turned up with her head shaved to maybe a number three, and dyed back to her cream-blonde. It looked like a DIY job, which I supposed made it all the more punkish. It seemed a radical step for the sake of one gig, so I guessed there was more to it than that. The change reminded me that I never did find out what her straggly pink look had meant, and I wondered if this return symbolised something as well.

  Two days later, I stumbled upon the answer to both.

  We were in Berlin, but not for an official part of the tour. We were shooting a video for ‘Zoo Child’ at a venue called the Brauereihallen. Heike had raved about playing there on previous tours, but it was unfortunately too small to cope with the demand this time. We were slated to play the much larger Palast instead at the end of the tour, with both nights long since sold out. The Brauereihallen was, however, the perfect size for shooting a fake live performance in front of a packed crowd, whose enthusiasm never wilted despite hearing ‘Zoo Child’ about twenty-five times straight. As a thank-you to the volunteers, and as part of a deal with the venue, we were going to play a free and unadvertised set later on.

  Mairi, our manager, had flown in to make sure everything was all right with the shoot. In her world, making sure a video got safely into the can was obviously more worthy of her hands-on attention than the actual welfare of band personnel on tour. She would only be here for a night, then she was back off to London. Heike was always going on about what a mover and shaker Mairi was. All I saw was a middle-aged woman dressing ten years too young who was obsessed with the bottom line.

  The director needed the full band for most of the shoot, then Heike stayed on alone for close-ups.

  It was obvious she was going to be there a while, and though I’d have liked to stay and keep her company, Mairi was hanging around, talking business and generally acting territorial.

  I went out for a walk along Friedrichstrasse instead. I spotted a bookshop and went inside in search of postcards. It was a habit I had got into after passing through so many exotic cities with little chance to take them in. Sometimes I would send them to my mum or to Keith, but I always kept at least one for myself. The part of me that worried ‘this may never happen again’ wanted to be able to thumb through these yellowed and faded treasures when I was ninety. Sometimes I found them in cafés or newsagents, but bookshops were the best place if you wanted something more than the iconic or outright clichéd.

  I found the rack in a quiet corner near the guidebooks, my attention immediately drawn to a selection of old-fashioned cinema lobby cards and miniature movie posters. I thumbed through postcards of German-language ads for familiar cult films – Pulp Fiction, Eraserhead, Betty Blue, The City of Lost Children – then I gasped. I was staring at an image of a vibrant young girl posed in the street, her hair dyed a pinky-red. It was a movie still, not a poster: there was no text on the front, so you were supposed to recognise what it was, like the shot of Uma Thurman as Mia Wallace right next to it.

  I flipped it over and read the name: Christiane F. I hadn’t heard of it.

  I took the card and showed it to the woman at the till, asking if she knew this movie. Maybe she didn’t speak much English, as she came out from the counter and led me to
the back of the shop and a tall cabinet of DVDs. She ran a finger across the spines two shelves from the top and then handed me a case. The cover showed the same girl, but this image wasn’t one for decorating your bedroom. She sat slumped against what looked like a toilet wall, her pink hair draped either side of the home-made tourniquet she was using to shoot up.

  The title read Christiane F: Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo.

  ‘You can select English subtitles,’ the woman said, proving she did speak English after all.

  ‘Can you tell me what this means?’ I asked, pointing to the title.

  ‘It means “We Children of Zoo Station”. You don’t know this movie?’

  Zoo Child. How had I missed this? I started running the lyrics through my head, hearing them anew. It was a song about junkies, and I had never thought it was any more significant than that.

  ‘No. I have a friend who is … interested in it.’

  ‘It was a big deal when I was growing up: we all watched it a dozen times on videocassette. It was based on a book by some journalists published in the late seventies, a true story. This girl, Christiane, became a heroin addict when she was just thirteen.’

  I could think of only one reason why Heike had adopted this look. I recalled the Polaroid of her mother, looking so young; maybe even younger than I had supposed.

  ‘Thirteen. Jesus.’

  ‘It’s more shocking than that: she became a prostitute to pay for her habit. Nor was she unique. She had friends younger than her who were turning tricks, and friends younger than her who died. Bahnhof Zoo was the heart of a big heroin scene, big prostitution scene too. In the old days it was the main station, before they built their big new Hauptbahnhof.’

  I realised how stupid I’d been not to see it sooner.

  Now I understood why Heike had been on her crusade. I knew why she had shaved her hair back and dyed it blonde again too. To her mind, Jan had offered her a choice, and she had chosen rock star. She could no longer make her tribute to Christiane F, someone whom she probably knew more about than her real mother.