Dead Girl Walking

by Christopher Brookmyre

  ‘I heard about the last tour,’ I said. ‘I also heard that you and he were once, you know, a thing.’

  She raised her eyebrows and allowed herself a small smile.

  ‘A thing. That’s as good a description as any.’

  I thought she was going to leave it there, but I was rewarded for fessing up. Either that, or Heike needed to share.

  ‘I got to know him when I moved to Glasgow from Islay, when I first became involved in the music scene. He was a few years older and he knew everybody. He’d played with so many bands. I really looked up to him. I was totally thrilled when we started to play together: it felt like a kind of endorsement, you know?’

  I wanted to nod, but the make-up girl was working around my eyes and I didn’t think moving my head was a wise idea.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ I said instead. ‘I can relate. There was this quite experienced singer who took an interest in me. At first I was flattered, but next thing I knew I was dressed up like a haddy outside a museum.’

  Heike gave me the finger.

  ‘I’m reaching out to you here,’ she said, feigning a huff.

  ‘I know. And I do know what you mean.’

  ‘So you’ll appreciate, I was a bit doe-eyed over him at first, and that impression stayed with me. It swayed my judgement for a long time: I saw the guy I initially looked up to rather than the one who was in front of me. I learned a lot from him, and I don’t mean in a “bitter experience” way.’

  ‘Musically?’

  ‘Yeah. My songwriting definitely improved from working with him. We wrote a few things together. This was before Savage Earth Heart, though: that stuff’s all mine.’

  ‘Did I read that you were with him in your first band too?’

  Heike looked upwards, a weirdly innocent smile on her face, like the sun had just come out.

  ‘No, my first band was actually with Angus, back on Islay.’

  ‘Angus? The guitar roadie?’

  ‘Yeah. We were in the same class at school. We wrote some songs together as well. Angus is actually a really interesting songwriter, but…’

  She frowned, then shook her head sadly.

  ‘Wasted potential,’ she said. ‘He never had the conviction to put in the hours.’

  She reached across and took hold of my hand. I think it was the first time we had touched that way, and I started ever so slightly, wondering what she was doing. She ran her fingers along the tips of mine.

  ‘I bet those were like leather by the time you were about twelve,’ she said.

  ‘Ten,’ I countered.

  ‘Me too. I practised every hour I had. Later than I should, in fact, as my dad wasn’t always the most responsible about telling me to go to bed because I’d school in the morning. Bohemian arty types – what can you do?’

  I got what she was saying.

  ‘But not Angus?’

  ‘No. He could play guitar well enough but he was as likely to be playing video games or chasing the lassies. Scott, on the other hand: he was a man with a mission once I showed him his first chords.’

  ‘He’s your cousin, yeah?’

  ‘That’s right. He grew up in a really rough scheme. Came to stay with us for the whole summer holidays one year, because there had been trouble with gangs where he lived. Serious trouble: stabbings and the lot. The wee man just seemed so delighted with the sounds he could make: like he couldn’t believe it was coming from him. I think it gave him a glimpse of things that he thought weren’t possible, doors he’d assumed were closed.’

  The regret she felt about Angus was matched by happiness at how her cousin had turned out. I could easily appreciate then her dismay at finding them both doing coke before rehearsals. It wasn’t all about Maxi.

  She was back to talking about him now, though.

  ‘I felt like a bit of an idiot when Maxi broke things off. He made me feel like a daft wee lassie, or a bloody groupie who didn’t realise her time was up and the next girl was waiting. Part of me was determined to show him I was more than that, and I sometimes wonder if I kept him in my band as much for those reasons as for his playing. It sounds nuts, but it seemed important to me to prove myself to him.’

  ‘No, I get that,’ I said, though I didn’t admit that it wasn’t from any personal experience. I bluffed on, hoping Gossip Girl hadn’t lied to me. ‘You want guys to know they’re the one who’s not bloody worthy. But they never see that, do they?’

  ‘No kidding. No matter how things went for me and for the band, I think Maxi still saw me as a daft wee lassie who looked up to him. That’s why I wasn’t very effective at reining in his behaviour. Until I sacked him,’ she added.

  ‘I bet that felt good.’

  ‘It felt awful, actually. Nothing satisfying or vindicating about it. Now, imagining his face the day “Do It to Julia” broke the Billboard top ten?’ Heike grinned. ‘That felt good.’

  The make-up artist finally decided she was happy with her work and showed me a mirror. I gasped with such an intake of breath that I was lucky there were no flies going past, or even small birds. I looked like some Egyptian princess, and if I didn’t know I was looking in a mirror I wouldn’t have recognised myself.

  It was strangely empowering; or maybe liberating is more accurate. I was able to throw myself into the shoot without any self-consciousness (or at least the usual quantity of self-consciousness) as I felt like I was playing a part.

  Steff directed us to prowl around each other like gladiators. Heike repeated her shield and spear poses while I used my bow like its archery namesake, threatening to fire my violin like a giant arrow. I decided this was just wrong, as well as likely to damage both, so switched to gripping them like my own sword and shield. He got us to snarl at one another, which lasted for about twenty seconds before we broke down hopelessly into giggles. Once we had recovered, he stuck to directing still poses, all of them with us holding the instruments like weapons.

  As Steff took my arms and posed me like a doll, dressed as I was in this second costume they just happened to have brought along, I wondered about Heike’s insistence that I bring my fiddle.

  I went through about a dozen cleansing wipes getting all the gunk off my face, then nipped behind the screens and got changed back into my own clothes, which felt really light after the weight of the faux leather. When I emerged, Heike was excitedly beckoning me across to where Steff’s laptop sat on a table.

  Steff was scrolling through uploads from the shoot, the images startling in their vivid detail. I was standing feet from where they’d been taken, but they seemed to belong in another, more glamorous world.

  ‘She looks brilliant,’ Heike said, to everyone and no one in particular. ‘Doesn’t she look brilliant?’

  She sounded delighted, like she’d forgotten that she was the main subject of the shoot. It reminded me of my mother’s excited pleasure whenever I did something she felt proud of.

  Steff’s hand paused.

  ‘Oh, this is the shot,’ he said, taking his fingers away from the keyboard. ‘This. Is. The. Shot. That is a front cover right there.’

  The image showed me balanced on one knee, thrusting my bow like it was a sword, my chin held high and my khepresh level, like I was drawn in profile on the inside of a pyramid. Heike stood above me with her head thrown back, her spine bent in a graceful arc and her microphone stand held almost perpendicular to the ground behind her. She looked like she had just been mortally wounded by me or that she was ready to unleash a killer blow.

  I had to admit she was right. We both looked pretty amazing. I mean, I didn’t look anything like me, but maybe that’s why I looked so good.

  As Heike purred over the picture, I spotted an email printout among Steff’s gear, on top of a press release about the forthcoming album. It was his brief from someone at the magazine, and it was headed, alongside the date and appointed start time, ‘British Museum: Savage Earth Heart’s warrior women.’

  The email was from yesterday, before Heike’s intervie
w, so the concept for the shoot could not have come out of her talk with the journalist. It was confirmation, if I still needed any, that it had always been Heike’s plan that we be photographed together. I guessed her earlier quiet chat with Steff was her telling him that she would have to reel me in gently.

  I had been played, manipulated, yet all I could feel was a silent, secret gratitude. She had brought out something in me I didn’t know was there, shown me a version of myself I could never have imagined.

  She had known it was there, though. She had seen it clearly, and was now delighted to see it revealed in high definition.

  Oil and Metal

  There are certain undignified and downright embarrassing items that, when people are younger, they never for a moment envisage they will one day have in their possession: items such as pile ointment, nose-hair trimmers and, in Parlabane’s case, an all-access pass for a Prelude to the Slaughter gig at Manchester Apollo. A couple of days ago, he’d have imagined himself buying tickets for a Lostprophets reunion concert before he contemplated going anywhere near a venue hosting this shower, but as fate would have it, several of the Bad Candy crew who had worked the Savage Earth Heart tour were now on the road with this Cornish death-metal atrocity.

  Mairi had sorted him out with a pass so that he could get close to the crew, but his cover for being there was that he was interviewing the band, something Mairi had also cleared with their press office. She had initially suggested he pretend he was writing a piece about what it was like to be a roadie, but Parlabane explained to her that this would merely make them more guarded about the image of themselves they wished to put across. In his experience, people on the fringes of something were more likely to let a few candid details slip if they believed he was interested in someone else.

  Naturally, this conversation had taken place before he learned which band the crew were now out with.

  Parlabane watched them assemble the centrepiece of Prelude to the Slaughter’s stage set: a twelve-foot plastic statue of a vertically thrusting guitar neck with two large-breasted naked women wrapped around it like pole-dancers. It was staggering to believe these same personnel had been setting up for Heike Gunn to sing ‘Dark Station’ a couple of weeks back. He wondered which suited their personal aesthetic more.

  The tour manager was a Dutchman called Jan Rademaker, but Parlabane hadn’t encountered him yet. Who he had gotten a truckload of, however, was Dean Irons, a pot-bellied and foghorn-voiced uber-roadie who looked like he had been given his first Marshall amp to lug around as a toddler, instead of a pull-along doggy. Parlabane’s first impression upon meeting him had been ‘helmet’, but he reined in his instincts and reserved judgement until he had heard what the guy had to say, whereupon he revised his verdict to ‘utter helmet’.

  Also among the crew was Angus Campbell, Savage Earth Heart’s guitar roadie. Parlabane had expressed his surprise that he should be squeezing in a twelve-date UK tour with another band before heading out to the US, but Mairi said he needed the money.

  ‘Isn’t Savage Earth Heart a full-time gig?’ he had asked.

  ‘It is these days,’ Mairi replied. ‘But Bad Candy tours had been his bread and butter up until recently. He’s still on their roster, and I guess if there’s paid work going he’d rather be earning than taking a break. That’s Angus for you.’

  ‘Workaholic?’

  ‘No,’ she had laughed. ‘He’s a natural-born waster who can’t hold on to money.’

  Spammy had fondly mentioned Angus always having good gear on him, and from one look at the guy he could picture the two of them getting on. They were definitely from the same tribe, though Spammy had always been good with his cash, as well as deceptively diligent about the things that engaged him. Angus, it seemed, was industrious too, albeit out of self-created necessity.

  He had first shuffled into view wheeling a huge flight case, his face obscured by the straggly brown hair that hung down over it as he bent his shoulder to the task.

  ‘Here he comes,’ announced Dean with a cackle. ‘Fresh from getting his balls back.’

  Insufferable as he found him, Parlabane nonetheless had to pretend to be amused by Dean in order to keep him talking, in the hope that the sludgy river of sexist indiscretion and UKIP-level prejudice would give up a nugget of gold.

  ‘How so?’ Parlabane asked.

  ‘Been out with Savage Earth Heart around Europe, ain’t we? Angus here is their guitar tech. Has to be on his best behaviour for Queen Heike.’

  Angus responded with a bashful if indulgent grin, the kind that knew he had to take his lumps or it would only be revisited all the more.

  ‘Is she a bit of a ball-breaker, then?’

  Dean suddenly put on a butter-wouldn’t-melt expression.

  ‘I won’t hear a word said against her,’ he replied with exaggerated sincerity, inviting laughter from his colleagues.

  Angus, Parlabane noted, did not join in.

  ‘Bit of a buttoned-down kind of tour, was it?’

  Dean gave him a sly but nonetheless self-congratulatory look.

  ‘There’s always good times to be had, if you know where to look: specially on the Continent. Just gotta be discreet,’ he added, tapping his nose.

  Parlabane mimicked the gesture, then amended it to running a finger beneath his nostrils.

  Dean grinned approvingly, responding in kind then altering his own gesture to a horizontally thrusting middle finger.

  ‘All manner of fun,’ Dean said.

  ‘Just among the road dogs, or did the band party a bit too?’

  Dean gave a dirty laugh.

  ‘Ooh, when I think of the self-righteous image she likes to give them. Gotta love her for it. She likes to keep everybody on a tight rein, and she’s perfectly happy as long as she thinks it’s so. Fucking amazing what she doesn’t realise is going on right under her nose.’

  ‘Like what?’

  It proved an inopportune moment for Jan Rademaker to show up, striding from the wings clutching an iPad and making haste towards where Parlabane was standing.

  ‘You must be Jack Parlabane,’ he said loudly, offering his hand to shake. ‘Mairi Lafferty told me you wanted to talk about the Savage Earth Heart tour.’

  This had the immediate effect of shutting Dean up, the roadie giving Parlabane a slightly suspicious look before wandering off to help a colleague heft a monitor. Given the swiftness with which Dean abandoned the conversation and busied himself elsewhere, Parlabane couldn’t help but wonder whether this had been Jan’s intention. Did he really need to mention Mairi’s name?

  ‘Let’s go someplace a little more private, where we can talk,’ he suggested, a slight raise of his brow communicating that he knew what they had to talk about was best not shared.

  He led Parlabane to the dressing rooms, where Prelude to the Slaughter’s various leather garments were laid out in waiting for the band’s later arrival.

  Maybe it was the traces of Dutch in his otherwise Americanised accent, but to Parlabane the guy seemed more porn business than music business. There was something slinky about him, but that wasn’t necessarily a criticism, particularly in this game. Some people were good at their jobs because their very oiliness was what prevented those around them grating against one another.

  ‘Mairi told me you’re looking for Heike,’ Jan said, grabbing a bottle of water from a crate on the floor and sitting on the dressing table that ran the length of a mirrored wall on one side. ‘So I take it she still hasn’t been in touch.’

  ‘Unfortunately not. You were the last person to speak to her, is that right?’ Parlabane asked, deliberately getting it wrong.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jan replied, then seemed to give himself a shake. ‘No. I mean, I just told everybody I spoke to her, so that I could keep the situation quiet. As far as I know, Monica was the last person to actually speak to her.’

  ‘Why did you lie? I mean, how could you have known she wouldn’t walk in the door of the venue two minutes after you just t
old everybody she’d flown home sick?’

  Parlabane expected him to bridle at the implied accusation, but he seemed phlegmatic.

  ‘It was a judgement call,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Part of the job. I’m paid to be the one who ends up looking like a lying asshole now and again. Something wasn’t right, though, I could tell. I mean, its rock ’n’ roll, people don’t always keep to their schedules, but Heike would never miss a soundcheck, and if she did, she’d call to let me know what was up, you know?’

  ‘Was there anything else that maybe tipped your judgement? I mean, were you concerned about Heike’s state of mind?’

  ‘I’m always concerned about Heike’s state of mind. I don’t mean I’m always worried about it, but I’m monitoring it. People think the job of tour manager is all about arguing with venue staff and making sure everybody gets paid, but above all else it’s to keep the show on the road. When it comes to a band like Savage Earth Heart, Heike’s state of mind is priority number one. No show without Punch, as you say here in England.’

  ‘And did you have any specific concerns in the run-up to Berlin?’

  ‘Of course. You know about the photos, right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘That made things pretty tense for a while. I thought we had ridden the bump, though. But then Heike was a little off-form in Hamburg, and I just thought she was running out of steam. It happens.’

  ‘Was there anything else that caused tensions on the tour?’

  ‘Not that I can think of. I try very hard not to let molehills become mountains, so maybe I’m guilty of playing things down sometimes – it’s how I roll when I’m having to deal with a lot of conflicting egos – but Savage Earth Heart are an easy ride compared to some.’

  ‘I’ve not heard many people say dealing with Heike is an easy ride.’