Dead Girl Walking

by Christopher Brookmyre

  They climbed the stairs to the second floor and rang the bell, Mairi giving it a long, firm press to make sure it was heard over the music.

  The cello ceased, and a few moments later the door was opened by a young woman in deck shorts and a No More Page Three T-shirt, clutching a bow. She had long, flowing but unkempt red hair, indicative of someone either not long out of bed or not expecting to be dealing with visitors.

  ‘Hello. We’re looking for Monica?’ Mairi said brightly, as though trying to jog the girl’s memory regarding who she lived with.

  ‘Oh. She’s not here. You’re … Mairi, is that right?’

  ‘Well remembered. We met at the party after the show at Barrowlands. I’m the band’s manager. This is Jack. Isobel, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah. Why don’t you come in? I’m just putting the kettle on.’

  She opened the door and led them into the living room. It was bright and warm, sun streaming through the bay window where Isobel’s cello was resting on its stand.

  ‘You and Monica were both in the RSNO, weren’t you?’

  ‘Aye. Found this place together when she first moved down from Shetland and I came through from Edinburgh. Have a seat. Let me move some of this crap.’

  Isobel reached down to the settee and picked up a basket of ironing, tossing a couple of magazines into it as well to clear space.

  ‘Did Monica just nip out?’ Mairi asked optimistically. ‘Will she be back soon?’

  Isobel bit her lip apologetically.

  ‘I don’t think so. She left about half an hour, forty minutes ago. I don’t know where she’s gone, but it wasn’t round the corner for a pint of milk.’

  ‘But she’s okay?’ Mairi said. ‘I mean, she has been here. It’s just that she’s been ignoring my messages.’

  ‘She’s been here, yes. Okay’s another matter. She’s been very weird since yesterday but she wouldn’t tell me what was wrong.’

  ‘Weird how?’ Mairi asked.

  Isobel shrugged.

  ‘Everything was fairly normal: we were having a bowl of pasta and watching the tennis, then she got this phone call and it was like she’d seen a ghost. She went off to her room to take it. I went to see if she was okay a bit later and I found her packing a bag. She said she was going to Shetland, but she’s just back from there two days ago.’

  ‘A family emergency?’ Parlabane suggested.

  ‘If it was family she wouldn’t have reacted like she did, going off so I couldn’t hear her. Monica’s mum is on the phone all the time, and she sits and jaws to her in front of me, you know? But the other reason I know she hasn’t gone to Shetland is that when I was in her room I saw what was on her laptop; it looked like she was hiring a car. She was out this morning: she didn’t say where, but she could have been picking it up.’

  ‘Has she been secretive like this in the past?’ Mairi asked. ‘I mean, has she been behaving any differently since she returned from the tour?’

  ‘Well, obviously things were a bit touchy when she first came back, given the fallout from what was in the papers and her breaking up with Keith. She was very withdrawn. I’d been looking forward to hearing all the tour stories but she didn’t want to talk about it. Of course, it didn’t help her frame of mind that Keith kept calling and sometimes showing up.’

  ‘He came here?’

  ‘Aye. She let him in one time because he’d come all the way from Aberdeen, but it ended in a row and her threatening to get the polis if he didn’t leave. It was borderline stalking after that. Lots of phone calls and him turning up at the front door. I think I was more upset about it on her behalf than Monica was herself: she’s a tougher cookie than folk assume. But the call last night: whatever this was, it really spooked her. I’ve never seen her being evasive like that. We’re normally quite open with each other.’

  Mairi looked towards the window. From her expression, Parlabane deduced she wanted to lean out of it and scream.

  Mairi tried calling Monica’s mobile but predictably reported that she was getting shunted to voicemail.

  ‘If it wasn’t Shetland,’ Mairi asked, ‘have you any notion of where she might have gone? It’s really important.’

  Isobel looked pained. Parlabane had no suspicion that she was holding something back.

  ‘I’ll have to have a think. Let me get you both that cup of tea.’

  ‘That’s very kind,’ Mairi replied, ‘but there’s no need. We’re imposing enough.’

  ‘Not at all. Besides, ever since moving here I’ve been on a mission to debunk the Edinburgh stereotype, you know? You’ll have had your tea, then,’ she mimicked.

  She went off to the kitchen, leaving the two of them in the sudden silence of the living room, where they had to contemplate the fact that the one person they could have finally leaned upon to tell them the whole story had just driven off, and they had no idea where.

  It was Mairi who spoke first.

  ‘We’re screwed, aren’t we?’

  Human Worth

  ‘Twelve thousand euros,’ Heike said. ‘I don’t know which is the more sickening insult: that her life can be for sale so cheap, or that it’s a figure way beyond her means.’

  It was the first time she’d spoken since last night. The bus had been on the road more than an hour, during which Heike had stared out of the window or at her phone. We were on our way to Hamburg, but her thoughts were already in Berlin. She looked like she’d barely slept; how could she? I asked myself. I couldn’t imagine the emotional torment she had gone through: to learn her mother had been alive when she was little, years when she could have been with her; but more happily now to find out she had a sister.

  (‘I won’t tolerate the word “half”, she had said. ‘We have the same mother: we’re not half anything.’)

  She had begged Kabka for one of the photos, just until we met up again in Berlin. But Kabka wouldn’t. She looked torn, saying, ‘A promise is a promise – trust is everything to Hannah. You must understand what these pictures mean to her.’

  Heike had settled for taking a photo of one using her iPhone, but in the dim light of the bar, the flash had produced only a bleached-out ghost of the original. Heike had spent much of the journey looking at it.

  Twelve thousand euros. It sounded like a lot of money to me, but it was nothing to Heike. She had let slip once that her credit card limit was in six figures. She was more worried over how soon a wire transfer could be arranged.

  Kabka promised that Hannah would pay it back. Heike told her that wouldn’t be necessary, but Kabka had insisted that it was important to Hannah that she did so.

  ‘It’s a matter of pride. Hannah is smart. She knows she could earn money if she was out there in the world and free to prove herself. She’s just never had that chance.’

  I hadn’t slept brilliantly either, and I sensed it was going to feel like a long day. I knew that in Heike’s mind the Hamburg show was now simply an unnecessary inconvenience, a diversion to be got through on the way to her true destination.

  So far on the European tour Heike had been the consummate pro, putting her game face on and delivering a performance whatever was going on behind the scenes and beneath the surface. But everyone has their limit, and in Hamburg I saw hers.

  Her mind was elsewhere all day. We were both late for the soundcheck because we went to a Western Union office to organise the money transfer, and it was agonisingly slow, thanks to a computer problem with Heike’s bank back in the UK. She became almost irrationally agitated when they said it would take twenty-four hours, then I reminded her she could pick up the money in Berlin. To my mind this was a better arrangement, as travelling with that much in cash seemed too precarious to somebody who never took out more than fifty quid at a time from an ATM.

  The show was fraught, the atmosphere tense and awkward long before we hit the stage, with Heike and me being AWOL. Jan had been getting grief from the venue management, and there was an A&R guy from the German support band’s record label kickin
g up aggro because their own soundcheck was getting shorter by every minute Heike was late. Angus lost his opening slot as well, so he didn’t exactly add a note of harmony either.

  The show felt flat from the off, Heike barely talking to the audience between songs. Then she had a minor breakdown during ‘Dark Station’: arpeggios she could pluck in her sleep suddenly misplayed or missed out as her fingers turned to jelly; her voice wavering as she fought tears.

  We didn’t play an encore. The audience didn’t exactly clamour for one, but they did wait around expectantly after we left the stage, only to shuffle off when the house lights went up. The band knew something was wrong, but Heike wasn’t saying what. I told them she was just a bit burned out – she’d perk up in Berlin, as that was the end of the line.

  The taxi dropped us off at Alexanderplatz, which I found difficult to picture as a centrepiece for the civic pride of the old East. It was vast, bustling, bright, loud and a bit vulgar, reminding me of Piccadilly Circus. There was trashy pop music coming from storefronts, smells of fast food on the breeze: the kind of place my mum would find nightmarish, but which would have been irresistible to me around the age of fourteen.

  The Wall fell before I was born, and it seemed impossible as I looked at my surroundings, to imagine half a city cordoned off.

  Needlessly separated.

  I had been warned that Berlin was a place you could feel stalked by history. Given all we had been through together, I felt like I was being stalked by Heike’s personal history.

  As we passed the World Clock I looked for the café where Heike had agreed to meet Kabka. I saw it further along the tramlines on Rathausstrasse, close to where the television tower poked up at the sky like some gigantic cake decoration.

  We stepped inside and scanned the tables for Kabka. She wasn’t here yet, but we were a few minutes early. We grabbed an empty booth and took a seat, Heike bagging the side with a view of the door.

  The waiter took our order and quickly returned with two coffees. I heard the door open behind me as he put them down, and when he cleared Heike’s line of vision she looked on in obvious alarm. Before I could turn to look there was someone sliding into the booth beside me, a burly and shaven-headed figure I recognised as one of the men who had taken Hannah in Madrid.

  He sat with his back straight and stared directly across at Heike, like I wasn’t even there.

  ‘Where is Kabka?’ Heike asked.

  Her voice caught a little. She was trying to hide fear and anger, and not succeeding.

  ‘She is not coming,’ he replied. ‘You have the money?’

  Heike opened her jacket and let him see the plastic wallet stuffed with hundred-euro notes.

  He gave a patronising nod, like he was surprised or impressed or something. Like he was amused. I didn’t take it to be a good sign, and nor was the fact that he was on his own.

  ‘That’s as close to it as you’re going to get until I see Hannah,’ Heike told him. ‘If you don’t produce her, and her passport, then there’s no deal.’

  He seemed to ponder this, then nodded.

  ‘You are right,’ he said. ‘There is no deal. Not for that price.’

  ‘This is twelve thousand euros,’ she stated. ‘That’s how much Kabka said Hannah owes. You can have it in your hand today.’

  He looked like he was mulling it over, or actually he was making a show of mulling it over, which meant he wasn’t. The fact that Heike had turned up here so smartly with twelve thousand in cash must have told him she could get more.

  ‘Things change,’ he said.

  ‘Hannah’s debt just went up?’ Heike asked acidly.

  ‘No. It is not about Hannah’s debt. It is about Hannah’s worth.’

  ‘She’s getting older,’ Heike replied, dripping venom. ‘She’s a declining asset in your evil little business.’

  ‘Like I say, things change. Not many men want to fuck a girl like Hannah when there are younger, prettier girls on the menu. But maybe they want to fuck a girl who looks like a famous rock star, yes?’

  In that moment it all changed quite terribly for the worse. I wouldn’t have taken him for a Savage fan, but Heike’s face had been on a lot of magazines and TV screens. Still, it could have been much worse: if he had known the truth about why Heike was here, he really could have named his price.

  ‘She looks a lot like you,’ he went on. ‘Even naked.’

  I saw rage burn in Heike’s eyes, and I was a second or so behind in working out why. He was letting us know he had seen the photos from our bathroom in Nice; maybe he was the one who had them taken.

  ‘A girl like that could earn me a lot of money. Many men will want to fuck her after they see you on television. So you want to rescue her, be her saving angel, you must pay what she is worth. How do you say in England? Give until it hurts, yes?’

  He chuckled, a weird gurgle like blood down a drain.

  ‘How much?’ Heike asked.

  ‘Seventy thousand euros. Tomorrow. You give me your number, I call you later with the where and when.’

  ‘How do I know you won’t turn up tomorrow and say now it’s a hundred thousand?’

  ‘I don’t have time to play games. Two days from now, I have business in Sofia. Two days from now, Hannah goes back to Madrid. Is tomorrow, or no deal.’

  ‘I can’t get that kind of money in cash so soon,’ she said.

  ‘I do not want cash,’ he replied. ‘Too complicated.’

  ‘So what the hell do you want?’

  Smuggler’s Soul

  ‘We’ve wasted our time here,’ Mairi said with a sigh, keeping her voice low so that Isobel didn’t hear from through in the kitchen.

  Parlabane didn’t answer. A thought was nagging him, a connection just beyond his grasp, all the more tantalising because something in here had sparked it and he wasn’t sure what.

  He looked around the room, at the framed prints and posters on the wall, then towards the window, where his eyes lit upon Isobel’s cello. He glanced immediately at the basket full of unironed dresses, T-shirts and trousers. They had passed a laundry airing stand in the hall, hung with towels, bras and knickers. Women’s clothes. Young women’s clothes.

  Parlabane stood up as Isobel returned with two mugs of tea.

  ‘I know where she’s gone,’ he suddenly realised.

  ‘What, did you just channel it?’ Mairi asked, though he could tell the sarcasm was to repress the fervency of her hope.

  ‘A cup of tea,’ he said, the connection coming into focus. ‘She never offered me one.’

  ‘Who didn’t?’

  ‘Flora Blacklock. I went to her place on Islay.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So she was nice as could be: completely open and helpful. And yet I’d come all the way to the arse end of nowhere and she didn’t offer me a cup of tea. She said she was on her way to Port Charlotte to prepare her boat for the next day. We talked on the boat instead, but she sat fixing ropes: nothing urgent.’

  Mairi got it, her features suddenly animated.

  ‘She didn’t want you inside the house.’

  ‘She would have had very little notice, maybe just spotted my car approaching. No time to hide all the evidence, like maybe T-shirts and underwear belonging to a younger woman.’

  ‘Heike.’

  Parlabane nodded.

  ‘That’s where Monica’s going,’ he said. ‘Heike’s been hiding on Islay this whole bloody time.’

  ‘But the Border Agency told your cop friend she never came back to the UK. How did she get there?’

  ‘Fiona Blacklock is the closest person Heike has to a mother in this world. She also just happens to be a highly accomplished sailor, from an island with a long, rich history of maritime smuggling.’

  Normality

  We got through the penultimate gig on fumes and the promise of what tomorrow might hold. Heike sounded pretty phoned-in to my ears, but it was better than Hamburg, and the audience didn’t seem to notice how disengaged
she was. Some nights you can tell they’re only there for a good time and are happy enough to see the band in the flesh. They’re often belting out the songs so loudly they barely notice how well we’re doing them.

  It could have been a lot worse. We were fifteen minutes late going on because Heike had a serious wobble. I found her vomiting in the ladies and had to talk her down from abandoning the show.

  ‘I can’t think about anything else,’ she said. ‘I don’t care about anything else.’

  ‘You need to see it as a dress rehearsal for tomorrow night,’ was my winning gambit. ‘That’s when you’ll give the performance of your life because Hannah will be standing right there, watching from the wings.’

  When it was over I just wanted to get to my bed. I wanted the next day to come around without delay. I wanted Hannah to be safe for Heike’s sake, and I wanted this tour to be over. So as I entered the hotel through its revolving doors I was totally unready for the sight that was waiting for me in the lobby.

  It was Keith. He was sitting on a couch to the right of the reception desk, scrolling through his phone as he passed the time while waiting for me to show.

  It felt jarring to see him, and took me a moment to accept its reality. He belonged in another time-line of my life, and seemed as out of place here as had he been a character from some old TV show I used to watch suddenly made flesh and blood.

  I stopped in my tracks, then went forward hesitantly as he got up and strode towards me.

  He tilted his head and gave me a bashful smile.

  ‘I did say I’d fly out and surprise you,’ he offered by way of explanation.

  I couldn’t think of anything to say. ‘It’s good to see you’ popped into my head, but under the circumstances it really wasn’t. I felt ambushed.

  ‘I’d booked the flights before … you know. Never got around to cancelling them because in my head, I think, that would have been symbolic of … I don’t know. Anyway, instead of moping around and feeling pissed-off about what happened, I thought, if this is worth saving, I need to prove it.’