Dead Girl Walking

by Christopher Brookmyre

  Because of her accent, I thought the woman had said ‘old days’. She’d said ‘Wall days’.

  Zoo Station.

  Dark Station.

  Berlin.

  Crack Paraphernalia

  ‘Let me just run through my script again,’ Mairi said as they neared the pharmacy.

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ Parlabane assured her. ‘It’ll sound more natural if you’re not word-perfect.’

  ‘Yeah, but I’m scared I’ll forget the major details. My father’s feeling ill back at our hotel and he’s forgotten his heart medicine – was that it?’

  ‘Precisely. And the stuff he normally takes is…?’

  ‘Fruzamode.’

  ‘Close enough. Furosemide. They’ll know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘But will they give me it over the counter?’

  ‘They will if you’re convincingly gormless, and I have to say I’ve every faith in you on that score.’

  ‘Why ever would somebody try to push you under a train, Jack?’

  His mobile rang, cutting off Mairi’s chance for procrastination. He beckoned her to head off inside, indicating that he had to take this call, which was no lie.

  ‘I need it in Mac iOS 7,’ Parlabane told the caller.

  ‘It shouldn’t take too long to port,’ came the reply, relayed in a modified female sat-nav voice. It would be quite an understatement to observe that the speaker was protective of his identity. ‘There’s already an iOS 5 version for the first-gen iPad.’

  ‘Yeah, but the crucial part is it has to be in German.’

  ‘I know someone who can translate.’

  ‘No, it can’t be a translation: it has to be the precise German wording on the interface.’

  ‘Understood. When do you want it? At a pinch I could probably manage Friday, long as nothing comes up the rest of this week.’

  ‘I need it by tomorrow lunchtime.’

  ‘You never disappoint, Jack.’

  ‘Just make sure you don’t either.’

  He disconnected the call and glanced through the window. The pharmacist was holding out a small white cardboard box and Mairi was nodding with anxious gratitude.

  It was on.

  They stayed in that night, cautiously opting to remain inconspicuous and to reap the benefits of an early bed after the previous evening’s trials and exertions. They dined together in the hotel’s small and cosy restaurant, Mairi remaining wigged up as a precaution, the large windows affording passers-by a clear view of the diners from the street. She insisted Parlabane reciprocate by wearing the glasses he had bought for further obscuring his face the next day.

  ‘In a certain light you look like Colin Firth,’ she told him. ‘That being the light you get in the abyssal plains under the ocean, where the angler fish hang out.’

  ‘Thanks. Now that we’re into the cloak-and-dagger stuff, I’m thinking your blonde-wig look is more Kate Mara in Shooter.’

  ‘Kate O’Mara? I hope this was an eighties crush you’re harking back to, and you don’t mean I look like her now. She’s dead.’

  ‘Wrong one. No O. Just Mara. And let’s not talk about eighties crushes.’

  Shit. That had slipped out, like an in-joke he had momentarily forgotten she wasn’t party to.

  ‘Why not?’ she asked, swooping on it with a falcon’s speed and alacrity.

  ‘If I told you, we’d be talking about it.’

  He managed to conceal the specific nature of his embarrassment, selling her the notion that this was merely a general area of cringe.

  ‘Okay,’ she conceded. ‘So let’s talk about cloak and dagger. This Westercruik business you’re being investigated for. Let me get this straight: there’s this laptop that belonged to Sir Crusty Tofftrouser.’

  ‘Sir Anthony Mead.’

  ‘Right. And you, shall we say, acquired it by undisclosed means.’

  ‘I didn’t say I stole it.’

  ‘Okay, you didn’t steal it.’

  ‘I didn’t say I didn’t steal it.’

  ‘Jesus,’ she laughed, her spoon splashing down into her soup. ‘Regardless, however you came by it, it had top-secret MoD stuff on it, right?’

  ‘I thought it did, anyway.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Evidence of a false-flag conspiracy, though that’s putting it rather broadly. It doesn’t matter, because that’s not what was on there. It was a trap. The conspiracy thing was just the bait.’

  ‘But presumably the laptop was password-protected? Military-level encryption.’

  ‘Of course. Yes. If something’s too easy to access, it’s not convincing enough to make good bait.’

  ‘So you broke the encryption? You can do that?’

  ‘No. But the software encryption level doesn’t matter because it still comes down to the meatware: ultimately any security measure is hostage to the intelligence and integrity of the human being setting a password. In the UK, that frequently means over-privileged and extremely over-promoted Etonian fuckwits like Sir Anthony Mead.’

  ‘What, was his password his mother’s maiden name or something? Is that why he’s under investigation? Oh no, that’s right: he had an affair. Did he tell it to his mistress? I read that she was being investigated as well.’

  Parlabane shook his head.

  ‘Westercruik is a hydra, with all of its heads looking in different places. They’re trying to find out who’s a leak and who’s just a liability. I was suckered in and used like a plaque-disclosing tablet to show up what’s rotten. They know what I did, but they’re still lost as to how.’

  He swallowed, finishing off a scallop.

  ‘People always concentrate on the wrong areas when they’re trying to work out how a trick is done. They’ve got theories that I broke into Mead’s home, or that I broke into his mistress’s place, that I used blackmail, that I hacked their mobiles, that I placed hidden recording devices. It’s none of the above.’

  ‘And would I be right in assuming you’re not going to tell me how you did it, sitting here over dinner.’

  Parlabane nodded.

  ‘You would indeed. I’m going to tell you tomorrow, when we crack Boris’s iPad using the same method.’

  She Sells Sanctuary

  There was a ghost at the feast that evening: Maxi showed up in the hotel bar as Heike and Mairi returned from the shoot. It was all the more unsettling him being here in Berlin, where Heike must have felt she’d left him far behind.

  ‘The curse of fucking easyJet,’ she muttered to me.

  But she was wrong. This time, instead of a writ, he claimed to be bearing gifts, though my old Latin teacher could tell you that wasn’t a guarantee of good intentions. Maxi was here, he said, because he was playing in Muse’s expanded tour line-up and they were at the Arena Berlin tonight. As we were in town as well we were all invited to an after-show party they were throwing.

  God, don’t ever make an enemy of this guy, I thought, aware of the sleekit way he had just undermined Heike. Not only had he set her off balance by pitching up before the show, but he had blown a dog-whistle to call everyone away from any plans she might have had for later. And to hurt her even more, he had subtly underlined the fact that hers wasn’t the biggest band in town that night. (If you wanted to give the knife a twist, we were not even the biggest British band.)

  A selfish part of me was happy, though. I knew Heike would retreat away from him, and I was the natural sanctuary. Everyone else would go to the party, and I would get her to myself.

  I wore the dress again. I had gone back to being comfortably covered in Zagreb, but the Brauereihallen, with its mix of the industrial and the classical, had a kind of steampunk elegance that complemented my costume, so I wore it for the video. Heike hadn’t asked me to: it just seemed right. I felt I was playing a part on stage, same as I’d done during the Tatler photoshoot. Later on, though, during the free show, I was wearing it for her.

  When we played ‘Smuggler’s Soul’ Heike and I threw our
selves into our dance with abandon, a true connection isolating us from everyone else on stage, our alliance celebrating its own survival.

  As I had predicted, she said she didn’t fancy the Muse after-show. Heike asked me quietly if I’d like to come with her to a place she knew, saying she’d understand if I wanted to go with Mairi and the guys.

  ‘I’m sure it’ll be a great party,’ she said.

  ‘So am I,’ I replied. ‘And the best thing about it is that we’ll know where everyone else will be: and where they won’t.’

  She smiled almost shyly, understanding what I was hinting at.

  ‘Oh, that wasn’t going to be a problem tonight,’ she said, though I didn’t follow why.

  We took a cab to a place called Frauen Frei, which turned out to be a bar rather than a club. It had a mellow late-night vibe, low lights and slow jazz. It looked like somewhere we could talk.

  Heike went to the bar to get us some drinks, and when she put them down she found that I had placed a Christiane F postcard on the table.

  She nodded, saying nothing, maybe not able to at that point, as her eyes were brimming. I reached out my left hand and she took it in her right, resting both in her lap.

  Heike took a sip from her bottle, blinking away tears. She gave a self-mocking smile, rolling her eyes to heaven, or maybe just to her hair.

  ‘You worked it out? When?’

  ‘I only found this today, in a bookshop. I’d never heard of it before.’

  ‘You’re too young. So am I, really. I dyed my hair because … I don’t know. A gesture of affinity or something. Whatever it was, it didn’t feel right after Milan.’

  She ran a hand over her blonde hair.

  ‘This is just as much of a gesture of affinity. Symbolises the fact that I’m a whore too.’

  I took a drink of my beer as it let me swallow back my instinctive response. Having had time to think it over, I decided to say it anyway. If I couldn’t tell her what I thought, what I felt, then I was kidding myself about what was going on here.

  ‘Bollocks. Catch on to yourself, Heike. You’re living the dream.’

  Her eyes opened wide in surprise, then she started laughing.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Bursting that bubble. Calling me on my bullshit.’

  ‘You’re welcome. It’s true, though. You’re a role model, a heroine. You can do a lot more good that way than, you know…’

  I didn’t need to elaborate.

  ‘Your star is on the rise too,’ she said with a grin. ‘I looked online, and half the shots from our Milan show are of you in that dress. The Tatler cover will be out soon too. You’re on your way to bona fide rock chick status.’

  ‘Yeah, so treat me right or I’m going solo, bitch.’

  ‘Hey, don’t get ahead of yourself. You had any Twitter rape threats? Because believe me, you’re nobody in this business unless you’re getting those.’

  ‘No, but if I wanted to boost my profile, I know some guys who could leak some nudie pictures of me.’

  Even as it was passing my lips, I couldn’t believe I was saying that.

  Heike gasped, but it was out of delight. We both broke down in hysterics, the threat of the photos finally disempowered by my joking about them.

  When we had both recovered she took a long, slow drink of her beer, looking me in the eye as she did so. She put the bottle down on the table and sat up straight, ready to make a pronouncement.

  ‘I want to kiss you,’ she said, her tone matter of fact, almost businesslike.

  She held up a hand before I could say anything.

  ‘Just to be clear, I’m not making a pass, I’m making a statement, so no need to panic. I just want you to know that it’s how you make me feel. Consider it, I don’t know, a compliment. A way of saying, if things were different … You know?’

  I squeezed her hand, holding her gaze.

  ‘I won’t run away,’ I said.

  A moment passed in silence, her eyes slightly scared.

  I leaned into her and we kissed: softly, as though there was something fragile here that we both needed to protect.

  When I opened my eyes again I felt suddenly conscious of my surroundings, afraid of who might have been looking on. A scan of the bar showed only women, which was when I realised what this place was, and what Heike had meant when she said the guys weren’t going to be a problem.

  I shed my fears and gave in to a longer kiss, losing myself in Heike’s touch, reassured there were no unwelcome eyes upon us here. She had taken us to a place where we couldn’t be more private, where we couldn’t be more safe.

  And where, it turned out, we couldn’t be more wrong.

  Tablet Recipe

  At around two-thirty in the afternoon, Parlabane was buzzed into the building across from the hotel, and made his way up the stairs to the Bad Candy Berlin office. He carried a cardboard eggbox-style tray bearing four coffees, a box of twelve mini-doughnuts and his very own man-bag. He was all tricked out for subterfuge.

  Mairi had chosen the bag, and had picked out the rest of his outfit too. He didn’t merely need different clothes from the ones Boris had previously seen him in, but an altogether different look. The alacrity with which she had seized upon this task on Kurfürstendamm suggested that she considered such a transformation to be a pressing need even without the requirement for disguise.

  ‘There’s no way he’s going to recognise you now that you look like a person who’s been shopping in the twenty-first century,’ she told him.

  He had to admit that the clothes she had chosen looked a lot better on him than his usual wardrobe, but he couldn’t shake a childhood echo of being dressed by his mother for a family occasion.

  He reached the half-landing just short of his destination and took a moment to get his game face on. He was on edge, but in a way he liked. A way he had missed.

  ‘Final check before going in,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Fine this end. Are you getting me okay?’

  ‘Loud and clear.’

  Mairi’s voice was a little shaky. It was a timely reminder that he had somebody riding shotgun on this venture, someone who wasn’t going to be getting off on the adrenaline buzz. They said the thrill for the gambler was not what he might win, but what he might lose. Mairi’s stake in this was different, and he didn’t want her to be watching through her fingers.

  She was positioned on the roof where he had perched yesterday, monitoring the office through his field glasses. She had eyes on Boris, and it was her task to give Parlabane a running commentary of all that was happening outside his own line of sight.

  For the first time in his life he was grateful to all those twats who had Bluetooth earpieces clamped to their lugs while going about their daily business, such as queuing at the bank or pushing a trolley round Tesco. It made him look less suspicious to have one attached right then, though he had refrained from sharing his belief that the duds Mairi had chosen also lent themselves to the authenticity of his new image as the type of guy who would go around wearing such a device.

  A woman met him at the front door. She was tall, smiling and smartly turned out: definitely more from the boardroom and convention centre side of Bad Candy than the box-humping and unblocking a tour-bus toilet end of the business.

  ‘I’m Helena Koenig, we spoke on the phone.’

  Parlabane was working on the principle that Boris and his associates’ clandestine enterprise was like a parasitic organism attached to Bad Candy, and that any such parasite was inextricably reliant upon its host. Mairi had called up her friend Charlene, who worked for Altar State’s record label, and got her to contact Bad Candy’s publicity department, telling them that there was a journalist writing a major piece on how a tour is put together, top to bottom.

  Parlabane knew that Bad Candy’s corporate PR people would be on the blower to the Berlin bureau immediately, instructing them to extend all courtesy regardless of the short notice, and
so it had proved. Helena Koenig had phoned him within an hour of Mairi’s initial call to Charlene, saying he should feel free to drop by. Parlabane said he’d be there as soon as he finished up the interview he was working on right then, which was his cover for the fact that he wasn’t going to make a move until they verified that Boris had shown up for work.

  Parlabane put down his cardboard tray on the reception desk so that he could shake the hand Helena was politely extending.

  ‘Alec Forman,’ he said.

  ‘Lots of coffee,’ she observed.

  ‘Yeah, I find that if you’re interrupting people’s work, they’re more forgiving if you at least buy them a latte. You want one?’

  ‘No, I just had lunch, but I’ll see who else might like one and I’ll introduce you to everybody.’

  ‘Actually, before you do that, do you mind giving me your Wi-Fi password?’ He showed her the iPad that was sitting snugly inside his man-bag, another of this morning’s Ku’damm purchases. ‘I have some files I need to send.’

  ‘Oh, no problem.’

  Helena went behind the desk and handed him a laminated card with the code on it. He was keying it into the iPad when he heard Mairi’s voice in his ear.

  ‘He’s on the move.’

  A moment later, Boris emerged from his office off the hall.

  Helena spoke to him in German as he approached. He gave Parlabane a cursory glance, not flickering a hint of recognition, which was gratifying. Less so was the fact that he grumbled something in reply to Helena and headed for the door, his iPad-bearing satchel slung over his shoulder.

  Shit.

  At least she hadn’t offered him a coffee. It had been Parlabane’s intention to have only one left by the time he introduced himself to Boris, one he would doctor to give a little more kick than just caffeine.

  ‘Who was that?’ Parlabane asked.

  ‘That’s Bodo Hoefner. He is in charge of logistical support. Bodo is the one who guarantees the show stays on the road by making sure our personnel always have whatever they need.’