Dead Girl Walking

by Christopher Brookmyre

  Gerd began to back Hannah away slowly.

  ‘You leave now,’ he commanded. ‘You do not fuck with me, understand?’

  There was a moment of total silence in which all I could hear was Hannah’s unsteady breathing.

  Then Kabka spoke.

  ‘Fuck you,’ she said in a furious whisper.

  She drew the gun and pointed it.

  ‘No,’ Heike protested, turning around to face her, holding up both hands.

  Gerd’s already wild eyes burned in response.

  ‘You going to shoot me, little girl? Huh? You going to fucking shoot me?’

  Hannah whimpered as his grip tightened over her mouth.

  ‘Let her go,’ Kabka commanded, still holding the gun in both hands. ‘Give us her passport. The debt is paid. Let her go.’

  ‘You think you can tell me what to do? You think a whore tells me what to do?’

  ‘LET HER GO!’ Kabka screamed.

  ‘FUCK YOU!’ roared Gerd.

  For a fraction of a second I thought her goading had worked, or that his bluff had been called. He took the knife away from Hannah’s throat and held it down by his side. At the same time he removed his hand from her mouth and put it on her shoulder.

  I thought he was about to push her away. I can still see that moment so clearly: the last time I believed everything was going to be okay.

  His grip tightened around her upper arm and he spun Hannah around to face him, thrusting upwards with the blade. Her feet were lifted from the ground by the force of it.

  He withdrew his right arm and let go with his left. Hannah fell to her knees, holding her stomach. She was side-on to me, but I could see the blood coming through her fingers. Then I saw it seep from her mouth, a trickle at first, then a choking surge before she fell forwards.

  Kabka screamed and dropped to her knees. I heard a clatter of metal as the gun fell from her hands. Gerd was a clear target now, but she was useless with shock.

  ‘That’s what I do to whores,’ he spat, pointing with the blade to the body at his feet.

  He had killed her right in front of us.

  And we were witnesses.

  Kabka must have realised the same thing. She fumbled for the gun, but could barely hold it.

  ‘I am sorry. I cannot do this,’ she said, dropping it on the floor a few feet from Heike.

  Heike picked it up, backing away from the barrier. Behind it Gerd was moving, striding towards the ramp.

  She raised the gun, her arms shaking.

  ‘Stay back,’ Heike said. Her voice was a whisper.

  ‘Or what? You think I’m afraid of another fucking whore?’

  Still he came forward, the knife in his hand.

  His eyes were wide, his pupils huge. His mouth was an angry, twisted sneer.

  ‘Put down the gun,’ he commanded. ‘And maybe I won’t fuck you before I kill you.’

  That was when she shot him.

  It was shockingly loud, and yet the room was quiet again instantly. Deathly quiet.

  It seemed incredible that this little object in Heike’s trembling hands could put such a big man down, but down he went. He was thrown back by the impact and crashed to the floor, the knife sent clattering behind him.

  I watched him roll himself painfully from his front on to his back, blood staining his chest, more coming from his mouth. He was reaching into his jacket, climbing to his knees.

  ‘I think he has a gun,’ I yelled out.

  Heike shot him again. He fell backwards, spinning as he tumbled, sprawling face down on the carpet tiles. The hand that had gone into his jacket was now stretched out at his side, holding something small and black. It didn’t look like a weapon.

  Kabka sprinted up the ramp to where the two bodies lay.

  Heike remained frozen, paralysed by fear and disbelief.

  ‘Stay back!’ Kabka urged, though there was little chance of either of us moving.

  She knelt over Hannah, putting a hand to her neck to feel for a pulse.

  Kabka remained still for a few moments before I watched her eyes close in grief. She looked up disconsolately at both of us. Hannah was dead.

  Then Kabka’s expression changed to concerned curiosity about whatever was in Gerd’s outstretched hand. She scrambled across to where he lay and pulled a little black wallet from his grip, folding it open.

  She said something in a language I didn’t understand. It could have been German, it could have been Bulgarian, but it didn’t matter. The emotion was obvious enough: impossible as it seemed, the situation had just got worse.

  ‘What is it?’ Heike asked.

  Kabka’s voice was flat and hollow.

  ‘This guy was a cop.’

  Zoo Station Departures

  Kabka dropped the black wallet like it was toxic, then looked suddenly alert, like a deer that had just sniffed a lion.

  ‘I think I hear someone. We have to go.’

  Heike remained rooted to the spot. The gun was no longer raised but she was still focused on the two bodies on the platform. Her face was a portrait of anguish and disbelief, a mirror of my own.

  Kabka all but rugby-tackled her to get her moving again, taking the gun from Heike’s grip against no resistance.

  ‘We need to get rid of this,’ she said. ‘I’ll drop it in the river.’

  Instinct overcame Heike’s paralysis as she hit the stairwell. She lunged up the steps three at a time, as though she had been submerged since we entered and needed to come up for air.

  I half expected to find we were surrounded when we rushed out through the door, but the lane was deserted, the city obliviously getting on with itself in the background.

  Heike looked totally blank, as though overwhelmed by what she had been asked to process. I didn’t feel like I was doing much better, as I had to go lean against a wall and throw up.

  ‘You have to act normal,’ Kabka urged, leading us out towards the main thoroughfare where we could melt into the crowd. ‘Like nothing happened.’

  ‘Normal?’ Heike said. ‘That guy Boris knows who was here. He’s in with corrupt cops.’

  ‘This is a mess for them too,’ Kabka reasoned. ‘He’ll want to cover it up and deal with it himself. That’s why I have to get out of the city: Boris will come after me. He’ll think I shot Gerd.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Where were you going to get a gun? He’ll know I brought it.’

  Kabka swallowed, wiping at her eyes with her sleeves.

  ‘Plus he knows how close I was to Hannah.’

  The last time I saw Heike was when she disappeared through the doors into Zoo Station.

  Kabka was no longer with us. I hadn’t noticed her leave. The three of us had been walking along the crowded pavement: one second she was alongside us, the next she was gone, like we’d only imagined her being there. I just hoped she was as good at making the gun vanish too.

  ‘Take a taxi back to the hotel,’ Heike said.

  ‘Why, where are you going?’

  ‘I’m going to protect you. You don’t deserve any of this, Monica. I’ve never known anyone like you, anyone who would do so much for me, and this is what you got.’

  ‘Whatever’s going to happen, we can get through it together,’ I reasoned. ‘It was self-defence. He killed Hannah.’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that: he was a cop. I did this, and I have to deal with it.’

  ‘I want to help you.’

  ‘Good, because I need you to do something: I need you to say you weren’t with me in that nightclub. I need you to lie for me once, and then whatever you say after that will be the truth. When they ask, you’ll say you came with me to Zoo Station because you wanted to see the shops on Ku’damm. You’ll tell them I wanted to come here because I’m interested in Christiane F. When we got here, we split up, and the last thing I said to you was I’ll see you at the soundcheck.’

  ‘But Heike, I want—’

  ‘Promise me, Monica.’

  She held me with
both hands, squeezing my upper arms as she stared into my eyes, tearful and begging.

  ‘I promise.’

  She hugged me then, pressing her body into mine and her cheek against my neck.

  It was the way she held me and the way she looked at me afterwards – the sorrow and regret – that told me she wasn’t coming back.

  ‘I’ll see you at the soundcheck,’ she said, then walked away.

  Run to Ground

  Monica’s coffee had sat untouched since she took her initial sip. Once she started talking, everything that she’d been carrying gushed forth in a torrent, words spilling on top of one another with such haste that it was as though she couldn’t speak fast enough to cope with the pressure that was forcing them out.

  Parlabane truly felt for her. Everything that she had told them was gut-wrenching. It must have been eating her from the inside to keep it secret while having no clue as to Heike’s fate. But whatever Monica had been through, it had to have been far worse for Heike.

  ‘Heike must have assumed she had limited time before the German cops came for her,’ Parlabane suggested. ‘She probably guessed they would put a stop on her passport, and she’d be arrested if she tried to board a flight. So she headed for Denmark and made an SOS to Flora: speed bonnie boat indeed.’

  ‘She needed somewhere to retreat to,’ Mairi said. ‘Where she could lie low and consider her options. Maybe one of them was the rock ’n’ roll mystery disappearance. Quietly liquidise her assets and fade away into mythology, like she was contemplating in Rostock.’

  Monica’s eyes flashed in accusation.

  ‘How do you know what we discussed in Rostock?’

  ‘We’ll tell you later,’ Parlabane replied, not wishing to frighten her with the implications. ‘Short version is Bodo hacked your blog, then I hacked Bodo.’

  ‘She’s definitely planning something,’ Monica said. ‘I hadn’t heard from her since Zoo Station: that wasn’t a lie. Then, last night, out of the blue my phone rang and it was her, though not from her usual number. A landline, I think.’

  ‘There’s no mobile reception at Sanaigmore,’ Parlabane said.

  ‘That’s the place, yes. She gave me the address and told me she needed me to come to Islay. She said she had found a way out of this.’

  The sun was still high and bright as their two cars rounded the headland and trundled steadily along the narrow track towards Flora Blacklock’s house. It was after six, but from the light and warmth in the blue sky above it could have been any hour since the sun burned off the coolness of the midsummer morning. It was only a few days since Parlabane had last been here, but the weather was about ten degrees warmer.

  They parked nose to tail a few yards shy of the property’s walled borders, the closing of their car doors muted by the light breeze coming off the sea, but doubtless loud enough to carry inside and herald their arrival. Parlabane looked towards the bay beyond the rear of the L-shaped cottage.

  The boat he’d boarded in Port Charlotte was tied up at the little wooden jetty, dwarfing the careworn yacht alongside it. He guessed it was the Hecate that had recently served the rescue mission across the North Sea. He wondered why it was moored here now.

  Flora emerged as they walked down the path, intercepting them before they could get close enough to peer inside the building. Her arms were folded, ready to bar their way, but there was conflict in her face. Parlabane could tell she knew Monica was expected, but she wasn’t supposed to be accompanied.

  ‘We know she’s here,’ Parlabane stated, making it sound like a polite but unassailable assertion of fact rather than a challenge or demand.

  ‘She phoned me last night,’ Monica added, almost pleading. ‘She asked me to come.’

  ‘I asked you to come alone,’ said a voice, hurt and vulnerable.

  Heike appeared from the side of the house, dressed in a most atypical – and even less rock ’n’ roll – ensemble of navy linen trousers and a white cotton blouse. She was taller than Parlabane had imagined, and yet she still looked slight and fragile. Her body language was meek and defensive, a husk of the strident figure who stalked the stage, thrashing her guitar as she howled into the mic.

  She took in her other two visitors briefly before focusing her gaze upon Monica, her expression searching and confused. It might have been one of betrayal, but Parlabane wasn’t sure she still trusted anyone enough to even feel that.

  Mairi read it too.

  ‘Monica didn’t bring us here,’ she said. ‘We met her on the ferry. We had already worked out where you were.’

  Heike looked suspiciously at Mairi, distrusting of her motives.

  ‘You went missing, Heike,’ she said softly. ‘That’s why I hired Jack to search for you. I was worried. With very good reason, it turns out.’

  Heike looked to Monica again.

  ‘You told them,’ she stated, crushed and disbelieving, her voice breaking up from the dryness in her mouth.

  ‘We didn’t give her much choice,’ Parlabane explained. ‘We had most of the picture already: Monica only filled in a few blanks.’

  Heike’s left hand slowly rose to cradle her face. She was a pale flower wilting in the sun.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she whispered, grasping how much they knew. ‘Oh my God.’

  ‘You only have friends here, Heike,’ Mairi assured her.

  ‘He’s a journalist,’ warned Flora, in tones firm enough to reveal what a consummate performance she had given the last time in order to allay his suspicions. ‘He’s nobody’s friend.’

  ‘Actually, my trade has largely decreed that I’m an ex-journalist, but that’s beside the point. Do you see anybody here running to tell the polis?’

  ‘We’re all on your side, Heike,’ Mairi told her. ‘We’re here to help, however we can. We heard you might have a way out of this. Care to tell us about it?’

  Heike weighed things up for a moment, then let out a resigned sigh.

  ‘You’d better have a seat,’ she said.

  Flora gestured towards a weatherbeaten wooden table, pulling out a bench for Parlabane and Mairi to sit on.

  Heike began making her way towards the table. Her route took her close to Monica, who remained rooted to the spot, trembling slightly. Heike stopped a couple of feet away and they gazed uncertainly at each other, a fleeting moment to the observer but doubtless a lot longer to the pair of them. Then they all but flew into an embrace, holding each other tight for what seemed bloody ages to the observer but doubtless a fleeting moment to the pair of them.

  When they finally broke apart Monica took a seat next to Flora, but Heike remained standing at the end of the table, arms folded. Parlabane recognised it: she would feel vulnerable sitting down, subconsciously more comfortable upright with an eye on the horizon and no obstacles, should she need to start running.

  ‘I wasn’t sure what I was going to do once I got here,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t really thinking that far ahead. I just needed somewhere I’d be safe for a while. Part of me thought that maybe the cops would be clueless as to what had happened in that basement, while another part of me was expecting a knock at the door any moment. It turned out to be the latter.’

  ‘I saw them coming,’ said Flora. ‘There were two of them, two men saying they were looking for Heike. I said I thought she was away to America, same as I told you, but they said they knew she was here. They were police, from Berlin. Well, one of them was.’

  ‘SEK,’ said Heike darkly. ‘Spezialeinsatzkommando.’

  ‘He told me he was investigating the murder of a fellow officer and needed to speak to Heike. He said it would be better for everyone if she cooperated. I admitted she was here and I let them in. I think we both knew it would come to this.’

  ‘So I walk in, thinking I’ll be led away in handcuffs, and who’s standing there but that jowly bastard: Boris.’

  ‘Bodo,’ said Parlabane. ‘His name is Bodo Hoefner.’

  ‘We heard his nickname was Boris because he looks like KGB
.’

  ‘He’s actually an ex-cop.’

  ‘That would explain a lot,’ Heike said, nodding to herself. ‘Anyway, soon as I saw him it struck me: why aren’t there Scottish polis here too? That’s when the SEK guy told me they could make it go away.’

  ‘How much?’ asked Parlabane.

  Heike swallowed, clearing her throat.

  ‘Two million euros.’

  ‘Fuck me,’ said Mairi.

  ‘Have you got that much?’ Parlabane asked.

  Heike nodded.

  ‘It’s cleaned me out, but I do have it. It’s been a profitable couple of years, and I guess they knew that. They said if I paid them the two mill, they’d make the whole thing disappear.’

  ‘The cover-up would have been under way already,’ Parlabane suggested. ‘The last thing these guys would want is the Berlin police following the threads from a mess like that: a drug-crazed corrupt cop with links to a Europe-wide sex-trafficking operation.’

  ‘I suggested as much,’ said Heike. ‘Told them they had as much to lose as I did from the deaths coming to light, and I had witnesses that it was self-defence. They just laughed. The SEK cop told me they could frame the investigation any way they wanted. They had found Kabka and she would say anything they commanded to stay out of jail. However it went down, nothing was going to touch them, but if I wanted to avoid a murder rap I had to pay up.’

  ‘I saw Bodo on the ferry from Kennacraig the day I came here,’ Parlabane told her.

  ‘He’d been tipped off that you were looking for me: that’s why he was following you. He came here again after you’d gone, to make sure I hadn’t been seen and to remind me that the deal was off if I did anything stupid, like pre-empting an investigation by going public with my version of events. He knew it was going to take me a while to get the cash together, and he insisted I stay incommunicado in the meantime.’

  ‘But it’s here now?’ Mairi asked. ‘Two million in cash?’

  Heike nodded slowly, her expression grim.

  ‘Where do I come in?’ asked Monica.

  ‘When I called to tell him I had the money, Bodo insisted that you be there also for the handover. He wants to talk to you face to face.’