Dead Girl Walking

by Christopher Brookmyre

  ‘I thought you were here to interview Prelude. Now Dean’s saying you’re digging dirt on Savage Earth Heart.’

  ‘I’m not here to dig dirt on anybody. Mairi asked me to look into something, and I’m trying to fly under the radar.’

  Angus turned to face him.

  ‘What has she got you looking into?’

  Parlabane glanced around, making a show of checking that nobody was in earshot.

  ‘What do you think I’m looking into?’ he replied, looking the guitar tech square in the eye.

  Angus thought about it, checking his surroundings like Parlabane had just done.

  ‘Something’s going on with Heike,’ he ventured quietly. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? She fucked off in Berlin and Mairi’s worried she’s bailing on the US tour.’

  Parlabane said nothing, waiting to see how he reacted without being given confirmation.

  ‘I knew it,’ he went on. ‘I’ve called her a few times and got no response.’

  Okay, Parlabane thought, so now that’s two who suspect something is wrong and care enough to be worried, and one who knows something is wrong but is lying.

  He went through the same questions with Angus as he’d put to the other two. He got the same arm’s-length impressions about how alienated she seemed in the days before her disappearance, but Angus knew nothing about the bus incident as he was riding in the truck at the time. No new information, basically. But then Angus said something he really wasn’t expecting.

  ‘How hard has anyone actually looked?’ he asked.

  Parlabane responded with an expression of confusion: if he was prepared to brave a Prelude to the Slaughter gig in Manchester, how much harder did Angus have in mind?

  ‘I mean, I’m sure plenty of folk have tried calling her and no doubt Mairi’s been round and chapped the door of Heike’s flat, but this might not be what it looks like. There’s more than one explanation for why nobody’s getting a response from her mobile.’

  Parlabane got it.

  ‘She might be somewhere there’s no reception.’

  ‘We both grew up on Islay,’ Angus told him. ‘We were at school together. In our first band together: I taught her to play “Why Does It Always Rain on Me” during a wet playtime.’

  He looked self-conscious telling Parlabane this, like a proud dad talking about how he taught his daughter to ride a bike, when these days she was competing in the Isle of Man TT.

  ‘You know she never had a mum, right?’ Angus asked, squinting as a rack of overhead lights got tested above him.

  ‘I’ve read a little,’ Parlabane replied. He thought of the vague and ambiguous accounts of Ramsay Gunn’s relationships, the implications of the age differences and the fact that he was still living with a woman twenty years younger when he died at the age of seventy-one. ‘Her dad had a series of … significant others,’ he settled for.

  ‘There was one woman Heike was close to, though, and stayed close to after her dad had moved on to the next. She wasn’t one of Ramsay’s arty types, she was a normal person. Her name is Flora Blacklock. She still lives on Islay, away up by Sanaigmore. I don’t think even LinkedIn can spam you out there.’

  ‘That’s pretty remote, I take it?’

  ‘Put it this way: if you leave her house and head west, the first pub you come to will be in Newfoundland.’

  The Uninvited

  The atmosphere was quite subdued as we filed backstage towards the dressing room. Heike wasn’t with us, having been waylaid to give a brief to-camera interview for VH-1. All sweaty, her hair pasted either side of her face and her hands holding a bottle of water and a towel, she looked more like an athlete speaking after a race.

  She hadn’t come first tonight.

  The final night of our UK tour at the famous Brixton Academy wasn’t the triumph we had all been hoping for. I mean, we weren’t bad, and the audience was happy enough that they’d got what they came for – i.e. to hear ‘Do It to Julia’ live (saved for last so that we always got called enthusiastically for an encore) – but the show never really caught fire.

  We all knew why.

  Heike had been noticeably down from the start: it wasn’t for the first time, but we all knew there were nights when things took a while to get going. More significantly, she had dropped ‘Smuggler’s Soul’ from the set at the last minute, which pissed everybody off as it was becoming the highlight of the show, the one we all really looked forward to playing. It was the set’s secret weapon, the song that really built things up going into the second half: we’d strip everything down to just Heike and me for ‘Dark Station’, then boom, we’d pull the pin and rocket the tempo all the way down the home straight.

  Heike refused to explain why she was dropping it and the guys knew it was useless to push the issue. They just put it down to another one of her power trips. I knew the reason, though, and was grateful they were in the dark.

  It was because I didn’t wear the dress.

  I just couldn’t. When I went back to my room and opened the wardrobe, there was no indecision, no internal debate. I just knew it wasn’t happening.

  I showed up back at Brixton in black jeans and a black sleeveless T-shirt. Admittedly this combo was even less colourful than usual, but I was running to what I knew, as I do in times of insecurity. And you better believe I had a bra on too.

  Heike said nothing, but her face was a ten-minute rant. I was getting her schoolmarm treatment, as she’d done to others before me, but like all the worst teachers, she decided to punish the whole class.

  Other than Heike, I was the last one back to the dressing room, not in any particular hurry to face my bandmates. They couldn’t know about what had – or hadn’t – happened tonight, but that didn’t stop me feeling paranoid.

  This wasn’t helped by the sight of Maxi standing among the group. He was talking with Rory, and getting a sight more out of him than I ever had. Maxi was drinking from a bottle of mineral water, while everyone else was into the booze rider. Beers were being handed round, the body language less peppy than usual: consolation drinks rather than celebratory ones.

  I heard Damien telling Scott it didn’t matter.

  ‘London audiences are always pish anyway. If we had to have an off night, this was the place. They’re spoiled rotten down here. You can give them your all and they just stand there.’ He mimed someone half-heartedly clapping, a dull look on his face. ‘If you took them to the Barrowland, they’d fuckin’ shite themselves.’

  Scott laughed, then I saw the smile disappear from his face like a switch had been flipped.

  Heike was standing in the doorway. I didn’t recall seeing a large consignment of awkward written on the rider, but it had arrived now. The floor suddenly became very interesting to a lot of people. Nobody wanted to look at her. Nobody except Maxi.

  ‘What is he doing here?’ she demanded, taking in the whole room. Obviously she didn’t have a single suspect in mind. Not everybody bore Maxi a grudge, then.

  She saw the triple-A pass clipped to his jacket.

  ‘Who gave him that?’

  ‘He’s just dropping by to say hi,’ said Jan, though I wasn’t sure if this was a confession.

  ‘He’s not part of this any more,’ she said, refusing to address Maxi directly. ‘He doesn’t belong here.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Heike,’ Maxi responded. ‘I don’t think that’s entirely true. I mean, you’re what, two weeks into the tour? Going on past form, I’m guessing at this point I’ve got more friends in this room than you have.’

  Heike said nothing. She was trying to remain steely but I could see the lump in her throat. That had hurt.

  ‘Anyway, I had to make sure you got this.’

  He pulled an envelope from his jacket and handed it to her.

  Heike looked uncertainly at it, then ripped it open. There was a letter inside, a couple of paragraphs of text. She read whatever it said then stared at him in disbelief.

  Maxi gazed back, unmoving, a hint of a smile a
t the corners of his mouth, like he couldn’t quite hide it.

  Heike bustled into the dressing room, grabbed her things and hurried out again. It wasn’t like her other dramatic exits: no shouting, no slamming of doors – she just wanted to be away from here, and fast. She kept her head down the whole time, but I could see she was fighting tears. Fighting but losing.

  ‘What was that?’ Damien asked, confused more than anything.

  ‘Unfinished business,’ Maxi replied. ‘Don’t worry. It’s nothing that will affect you guys, or the tour. Apart from getting you all some much-needed peace from Miss Crabbit-Knickers tonight.’

  After she had gone, the tension disappeared like the room itself had sighed with relief. Maxi had definitely got that right. More beers were being opened. There was a sense of bonding I might find very valuable in the weeks to come. At the same time, I kept picturing Heike’s flushed face, trying to hide her tears.

  I thought of my conversation with Rory and wondered if a night in the doghouse might mean Heike learning a lesson, and at the right time as well. But I also found it hard to ignore a friend – for surely Heike was a friend – clearly suffering, and none of us could know why without reading that letter.

  If I had known just how much was going to turn on that moment, in that decision, would I have chosen differently? I honestly don’t know.

  I began to get my things. It didn’t go unnoticed.

  ‘Don’t go running after her,’ Rory said. ‘That’s what she wants.’

  ‘I’m not,’ I lied. ‘I’m just calling it a night.’

  Maxi gave me a look, like he knew otherwise.

  Tame violinist. Someone she can control. But if it turns out you’re not …

  I looked in vain for a taxi, before giving up after realising there were at least fifty people in my immediate environment attempting the same thing. I headed for the Tube, wondering whether Heike had been any more lucky.

  I saw her as I came through the revolving door into the lobby of the hotel. She was walking from the bar, holding a bottle of Bowmore, and making for the lifts.

  The doors pinged open as soon as she pressed the button, and she stepped inside. She had her head down as I approached, so I knew she wouldn’t see me, and I didn’t know her room number. I could phone, but it would be easier for her to cut me off.

  I called out to her before the doors could close.

  ‘Heike.’

  She glanced up, looking surprised and a bit affronted, like I had burst in and caught her naked. I thought for a moment that she was going to let the doors close, or even reach for the button to shut them quicker. I felt myself isolated from everybody: blanked by Heike and missing out on the group therapy that was kicking off back in Brixton. I wondered if it was too late to rejoin the guys, walk back in with a smile and say: ‘Fuck the early night, I’ll sleep on the bus tomorrow.’

  Instead Heike held the doors for me, one hand on the button, the other gripping her Islay malt.

  ‘Do you want to slide my hangover down a few notches by helping me out with this?’

  ‘I’ll do my bit,’ I said.

  Whisky wasn’t really my drink. I was more of a G&T girl, but there had been gatherings back home where it was the only thing on the table. Surely she hadn’t seriously been planning to drink the lot?

  I stayed where I was, wondering if a different venue might be more suitable now it wasn’t drinks for one.

  ‘Do you want to take it back to the bar?’

  She glanced towards the revolving door.

  ‘Don’t know when that lot might come piling in.’

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about Heike inviting me back to her room, but maybe I was the one who had been doing the inviting. Where did I think this heart-to-heart was going to happen?

  I stepped into the lift. It felt like an overt act.

  Heike got two glasses from her bathroom and poured a huge measure into each on top of the little desk-cum-dressing table at the end of her bed. It being London, the room was cramped. Heike perched cross-legged on top of the duvet, while I sat a few feet away on the room’s only other item of a furniture, a revolving chair.

  She held up her glass rather joylessly for me to clink mine against.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I really appreciate this, under the circumstances. I’m not easy sometimes, I know that.’

  I said nothing. No point in pretending it wasn’t the case.

  ‘What was the letter?’ I asked. It seemed just as pointless to avoid the issue.

  Heike took a mouthful of whisky and gulped it back. I could imagine it burning all the way down, but she never showed it. Maybe she had already swallowed something worse tonight.

  ‘He’s suing me.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘He wants co-writing credits. I knew it was coming. My lawyer warned me that she’d had preliminary contact with Maxi’s lawyer. She said it was a gambit: at best he’s looking to get an arrangement fee and he’s hoping I settle. It’s kind of inevitable when you have a big hit like “Do It to Julia”. People come out of the woodwork trying to get a piece.’

  She took another drink, less this time, but still a lot more than a sip. I had some too, finding its warmth comforting as it ran down inside me.

  ‘He’s not just naming “Do It to Julia”, though He’s named six songs from across both albums, claiming they were based on songs we wrote together before. It’s a means of strengthening his case: he names six songs, but Julia’s the prize. That wasn’t what upset me, though.’

  She looked at me and swallowed, though there was no whisky in her mouth. Her eyes were tired, her face almost scared, vulnerable.

  ‘He’s named “Dark Station”. He could have named any five songs to bolster his case, but the bastard is claiming he co-wrote “Dark Station”.’

  Her voice was steadier than I was expecting, making me think that maybe she was already cried out, but it faltered at the end. I didn’t understand why.

  ‘Do you know what that song means? What it’s really about?’

  I held my glass, wishing I could hide behind it. I knew what I thought it was about, but it didn’t seem like the time to offer my own half-arsed analysis of a lyric that I had already once seen Heike tearful after singing.

  ‘In Berlin, before the Wall came down, there were these underground stations where the trains wouldn’t stop. Ghost stations, they called them. They were places where the lines ran through East Berlin: you could be there physically, you could pass through, but you couldn’t ever get off.’

  She took another drink and refilled her glass.

  This was as much as I had understood: that the song was about never quite being able to connect with someone, no matter how close you got. Then I suddenly saw what had been in front of me so long, having played this number alongside this woman every evening for a fortnight.

  ‘Your mother,’ I said. ‘She was from Berlin, wasn’t she?’ My words came out as a whisper, and sounded like a gasp.

  ‘I never really knew her,’ she said. ‘That’s what the song is about. She died when I was very young. I don’t even know how young. My dad got together with her when he was living in West Berlin in the eighties. She was an artist too, but she was also a heroin addict. He took me away from her not long after I was born, and I don’t think she put up a fight. He wouldn’t tell me much about her, and now he’s gone too.’

  Heike was unable to speak then. She seemed determined not to cry, but it was touch and go.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘No, not at all.’

  ‘They say you don’t miss what you never had, but…’

  I thought she was about to break down, but instead she smiled in a way that I couldn’t quite read.

  ‘You’re one of a tiny handful of people I’ve ever told this,’ she said, looking me in the eye, both fragile and accusing. Like that first night in Bristol, she had found herself exposed in front of me, with no choice but to trust me with what she had revealed. Bu
t she had trusted others, and been betrayed.

  ‘You told Maxi.’

  Heike nodded, her expression cold, but her anger making her lip tremble.

  ‘He listed “Dark Station” to hurt me. It’s his revenge for me kicking him out of the band. This is something that’s mine, mine alone. It’s one of the few things in my life that makes me feel some connection to her, even though it’s about not being able to connect. So when somebody makes a claim that it’s half his, turns it into a commodity, turns it into a battleground…’

  She was crying gently, as something in her seemed to give in. She looked helpless.

  I moved off the seat and on to the edge of the bed. Heike leaned into me and let her head fall into my shoulder. I felt a wetness on my neck as her check brushed against it.

  She wasn’t sobbing. Her head just moved up and down softly as she breathed, a perfect quiet falling upon the room, the outside world far, far away.

  I knew Heike would make me pay for getting this close, but right then I didn’t care. I felt the most perfect sense of calm inside, of serenity.

  Then she raised her head and we looked into each other’s eyes.

  I don’t know if I kissed her or she kissed me. I just know that it happened. It was soft, it was tender, and then it was over.

  Heike pulled away with a look of shock and doubt, trembling.

  ‘Oh, God, I am sorry. I am so sorry. Jesus, I wouldn’t have thought there was a way I could contrive to make myself feel worse tonight.’

  ‘Heike…’

  ‘I just got caught up in the emotion. I was so touched that you were here for me, and this is how I…’

  ‘Heike…’

  ‘Jesus, I’m effectively your employer. It’s like I’m your boss and I’m taking advantage of—’

  ‘Heike,’ I said again, this time taking her hand.

  She was looking at me, still apologetic, even a bit scared.

  ‘Forget about it,’ I said. ‘It happened. It’s forgotten, okay?’

  She bit her lip and wiped her eyes, recovering a little.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  I poured us both another shot, trying to hide the fact that my hands were shaking.