Dead Girl Walking

by Christopher Brookmyre

  He had to lean over the rim to spot the source of their ire.

  ‘Fuck.’

  He saw three of them: Bodo, Gove-Troll and Spike, whom he knew could be carrying that nasty little stubby blade he’d flashed at the Hauptbahnhof. The two goons were gazing up and around – which was presumably why they’d clattered into somebody – while Bodo marched close behind with at least one eye on his phone.

  ‘What?’ Mairi asked, making to lean forward.

  Parlabane held her back and led them both closer to the outside wall.

  ‘It’s Bodo and his little Bodites. They know we’re here.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know, I disabled all the iPad’s tracking services. But…’

  Mairi glanced desperately up, down, left and right. Bodo and his men were ascending the ramp, the only path up or down. She looked suddenly wan and Parlabane was concerned that she might either pass out or just throw up.

  ‘They won’t try anything violent in here,’ he said. ‘There’s armed police and you need to confirm your ID to get in. But if they get to us we’ll have to hand over the iPad, and if they tell the cops we’ve stolen it we’re seriously fucked.’

  ‘What do we do? There’s no way past them.’

  ‘Don’t be so sure. You stay in good shape, don’t you?’

  ‘I work out, yes, but I don’t fancy my chances at British Bulldog against these guys. Not in Louboutins, anyway.’

  Parlabane began to take off his jacket.

  ‘There’s another reason I never go out without my wearable handbag, as you put it.’

  He unfastened the stud on a concealed flap in the lining of the maligned garment and began swiftly feeding out its contents like a magician pulling linked hankies from his sleeve.

  ‘What the hell is that?’

  ‘Climbing rope. Ultra-lightweight, extra-strong, neoprene core. I don’t leave home without it. Not since I had to improvise a substitute a few years back.’

  The aluminium railing was tight to the top of the glass barrier. There was nowhere to secure a loop. Instead he slipped the end of the cord around one of the arching support spars that held up the structure. He took a breath and concentrated on calming himself as his fingers worked the line into a knot: haste was imperative, hurry a hazard.

  With the line secure, he stopped to give a smile and a friendly wave to the tourists who were starting to take an interest in what he might be up to, deploying the internationally reliable cloaking strategy for potentially suspicious activity in a public place: that of demonstrably drawing attention to oneself. For some reason it seemed to reassure people that there was nothing going on that ought to concern them. He had further found that gesturing to onlookers that they were welcome to help out or join in didn’t merely render himself invisible, but temporarily erased their memory of what they had seen.

  He glanced down and tracked the progress of Bodo and his boys. They were roughly two loops down, and he was pretty sure they’d seen their targets. Parlabane gripped the line in a folded-up bunch, ready to drop it over the edge on the outside of the walkway, between the ramp and the glass.

  ‘You expect me to climb down this thing?’ Mairi asked, her face more than hinting that she lacked faith in her ability to execute this manoeuvre.

  ‘To slide down it, yes. It’s that or big hugs with Bodo. It’s also now or never.’

  She glanced at the cord folded up into a bunch in his fist.

  ‘It’ll burn the skin off my hands.’

  ‘Not if you take the weight on your foot,’ he demonstrated, dangling a short length to the floor. ‘You just wrap your expensive red soles around it and the tension will let you glide down easy.’

  ‘That would only work if the bottom end was tight too,’ she pointed out.

  ‘And in two seconds it will be.’

  Parlabane tossed the line over the edge and rolled inconspicuously after it like he was climbing into bed. He slid down, gripping the cord between his feet, keeping his eyes on the inside of the spiral as he descended. The curvature swung him in towards the outer rim of the level below, where he kicked off again gently, the cool glass of the dome a few feet from his shoulders.

  He trapped the cord tightly between his feet to brake, and landed softly on the walkway, now two levels beneath Mairi. Above him, at roughly three o’clock, Bodo and his crew were closing in on her. They didn’t notice his stunt as he’d timed it so that they had just passed on the level below when he dropped the cord. They’d notice Mairi, however, if she didn’t hurry. They were approaching the point in their ascent where they’d have direct line of sight.

  Parlabane looked up, beckoning her silently with a wave of the hand and an urgent expression. He had the cord looped around his leg and foot, anchoring it with his weight but ready to pay out whatever slack she needed. Like every bit of progress in climbing, this was all about making the commitment. Once she had done that, sheer instinct would take over, though this might well result in minor flaying. It depended on whether she heeded his advice, and whether she valued her palms more than her designer shoes.

  Parlabane had to stifle a gasp as Mairi suddenly launched herself over the side, her flailing legs tangling desperately around the rope as she swung in the air. This flurry of movement drew the notice of their pursuers, but they were on the other side of the dome, at the furthest point away. They realised what was going on, Gove-Troll pointing towards Mairi as she dangled between levels and Spike staring directly at Parlabane.

  She was holding too tight, gripping with her hands and her feet in a petrified clench.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  He could get out of here with the iPad: he had a head start of about a hundred and fifty metres. He couldn’t leave, though, not while she was literally left hanging.

  Suddenly she slackened her grip; Parlabane couldn’t tell whether with her hands or feet or both. She fell too fast, plummeting almost a full level then grasping the cord again in panic. It only slowed her for a moment as she let out a muffled shriek. She’d burned her hands then loosened her grip again in reflexive response.

  She fell again, another sickening lurch. Parlabane felt it as though he were the one falling.

  She squeezed tighter with her feet, sending one shoe tumbling down into the void. The resulting jolt caused her to lose all grip with her hands and sent her tipping head first.

  Parlabane thrust himself as far over the barrier as his balance allowed. He’d have been too late were it not that she had clasped her legs together as she plunged, slowing her just enough for him to grasp her flailing hands.

  He eased her to terra firma as onlookers gawped in delighted astonishment, some of them applauding. He was pretty sure a girl was filming it too. It would be on YouTube within hours. He didn’t begrudge her the hits.

  ‘You do this shit for fun?’ Mairi asked with sharp accusation, gazing at her trembling fingers. There were livid marks on both her palms.

  ‘There isn’t usually someone chasing me,’ he replied, glancing upwards. ‘You okay to run?’

  She whipped off her surviving Louboutin and dropped it on the floor. ‘Faster than ever in my life.’

  She wasn’t kidding either. Parlabane could barely keep up.

  On the levels above, he glimpsed Spike sprinting and weaving, calling to people to get out of the way, while Gove-Troll was showing judgement comparable to his lookalike inasmuch as he believed the strength of his own determination meant far more than any amount of contrary evidence. Instead of hurrying down, he was continuing up, with the intention of also descending the rope, undeterred by the laws of spatial geometry that dictated he’d have to travel almost as far to the start of this shortcut as Spike would have covered to reach its endpoint.

  Bodo, for his part, seemed worryingly unhurried, still glancing at his phone as he lumbered back down the slope.

  Parlabane thought he knew why as he and Mairi approached the end of the spiral. He could see two police officers preparing to bar
the exit, perhaps having witnessed at least part of their acrobatic display. He felt his pace slow involuntarily, but Mairi didn’t skip a beat. She hurtled towards them and went into an impressively histrionic faux-meltdown, grabbing one of them by both hands.

  ‘Oh, thank God, thank God. Do you speak English? There are men chasing us, do you see? They said they would kill us. Please stop them. They keep saying we stole something from them, but we’ve never seen them before. We’re just tourists. Please help us.’

  The cops took a look backwards and clocked what had to be the two most conspicuously henchman-looking fuckers they’d ever seen. Spike was stomping around the dome at full-pelt, all muscle and aggression. Meantime Gove-Troll had looped the cord around his leg once too many and found himself briefly swinging upside down before face-planting quite magnificently at the feet of two shrieking Japanese tourists.

  Yeah, those guys were going to be busy a while, Parlabane decided.

  He and Mairi walked briskly but without conspicuous hurry to the lifts, and a few minutes later they were outside, flagging down a cab on Ebertstrasse.

  Falling bodies

  I suppose it was inevitable I would do something desperate.

  I’d never been so angry in my life, never felt such a sense of betrayal and hostility.

  At the soundcheck in Zurich, Heike was focused and professional, going about her preparations like nothing was wrong. I steeled myself and walked over to where she stood. I couldn’t bring myself to speak at first, just stood and looked her in the eyes.

  ‘What?’ she asked crossly.

  ‘You did this,’ I somehow found the words to say.

  ‘I did what?’

  ‘The photos. They were a set-up.’

  She screwed up her face in confusion; too obvious confusion, as far as I was concerned.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You think I’m fucking stupid, Heike? You used me. You did it to promote the new single.’

  ‘I used you? To…?’

  Her expression was overly horrified, a pantomime of disbelief and distaste. Then she threw back my own words from Berlin, words that had bonded us then, but which could only be meant to drive us apart now.

  ‘Catch on to yourself, Monica,’ she said, shaking her head like I was insane.

  But she didn’t deny anything.

  Heike and I literally didn’t speak for days after that. Previously I would have thought this impossible, given the way we were living, working and travelling, but we managed it. We played Munich, Frankfurt, Cologne and Amsterdam without a word passing between us; the first two without even making eye contact. We were two grown adults in a huff that lasted thousands of miles and several cities. Did this mean I had truly earned my rock ’n’ roll wings?

  I had read about band members not speaking throughout entire tours and dismissed it as music-biz mythology, but now I understood not only how it could happen, but how it could be necessary: how it could be the only way a tour might still work.

  What amazed me was that the audience had no idea, as long as the music still sounded good. It’s easy to smile at the crowd, easy to look like you’re all happy to be up there together.

  We weren’t playing ‘Smuggler’s Soul’ any longer, as though that needed to be said. But I found my own treasured places within the show, and Heike understood at some level that she still ought to let me express myself.

  The hardest part – for both of us, I’m sure – was playing ‘Dark Station’. The song represented all we had shared, the vulnerability Heike had allowed me to see, the trust that had existed between us. It was just the two of us on stage, standing within the pool of a single spotlight, but we were never more closed off to each other than during those four minutes. We put up our own invisible Berlin Wall to protect ourselves from each other.

  Truth was, for a long time I couldn’t even look at her without my hackles rising, as all I could see was her deceit: her face rising to kiss mine and her face mugging for photographers in Zurich after telling me to man up.

  She wasn’t offering any olive branches, never mind an apology.

  In fact, it seemed nobody was in much of a mood to build bridges.

  I kept checking the Daily Mail website, though I knew I shouldn’t, like picking a scab. I don’t know what I was looking for: it was just an insecure instinct to know what else was being said about me. And, like picking a scab, it only made things worse.

  ‘Fiancé Keith Dumps Lesbian Love-Cheat Monica’ ran the headline.

  So this time I was the one who learned about a major development in my own relationship via the press rather than first-hand. Keith had gone from shock and hurt to anger and recrimination, pouring his heart out to the same sleekit bint who had so ruthlessly bodyslammed him earlier.

  Speaking from his home in Aberdeen, heartbroken Keith Jamieson (23) said that his engagement was over, and there was little doubt where he laid the blame.

  ‘I don’t know who Monica is any more,’ he told us. ‘Heike Gunn has turned her head, made her into someone else. Monica’s never been the same since she met her. Heike’s a selfish and manipulative person who just takes what she wants because she can. I could see that from the moment I met her.’

  The spurned oil worker didn’t hold back in his tirade against the Islay-born songstress.

  ‘She’s a spoiled diva who’s grown up being told she’s special all the time because her dad was some artist, and she’s come to believe her own hype. She doesn’t care whose lives she ruins. If Monica can’t see that, then she deserves what’s coming, because she’ll get used up and spat out. I just want her to know that I won’t be here to pick up the pieces.’

  Every word stung, feeling his pain and his anger.

  I also winced with recognition, seeing the ugly side of Keith so exposed. Keith wasn’t exactly combustible, but when he did get tipped over the edge it could result in a complete loss of control, whichever straw had broken the camel’s back. A couple of years ago he had ended up in the cells for the night after getting into a fight with a guy in a pub in Lerwick. We had been going through a bad patch, and to be honest I was flirting with the bloke, because it was nice to be chatted up at a time when I was feeling taken for granted.

  Keith didn’t attack him or anything: it could have all been easily resolved if the guy hadn’t been a dick about it. There was unnecessary aggression on both sides, which is why it happened, but the point is that Keith was taking out his frustrations with me on someone else.

  All the horrible things he said to the press about Heike were him expressing his hurt and rage at me. But maybe it was fair that she took the abuse, as it was the price she paid for the whole world getting to know that ‘Stolen Glances’ would be available on iTunes and Amazon from the following Monday.

  I felt more and more isolated and insecure. I chatted plenty to the guys, but only as people who worked in the same place and had to get along; it felt like they were more colleagues than friends. The atmosphere was too awful. Plus they were wary about talking to either of us one on one, in case they were perceived to be taking sides. Add to that my general awkwardness about them (not to mention a few million others) thinking me and Heike were lovers and I was one very lonely violinist.

  During the shows I found myself hopping up on to Rory’s drum riser, or jigging with Scott or Damien during certain numbers. It took me a while to see myself from the outside and realise how much I was flaunting my heterosexuality. Or maybe I just needed to look and to feel like I belonged.

  I was an emotional car crash, a disaster waiting to happen, and in Cologne it finally did.

  Kölsch was involved, but that wasn’t the most potent thing. Spending an hour in the hotel bar after the show watching Heike bill and coo with some fangirl didn’t help, though I think that deep down the process was already in motion by that point.

  I might have caught on to the reasons behind my antics with Scott and Damien, but it was something else that kept bringing me back
to Rory. The weird chemistry between us on stage had not gone from my mind during my relationship with Heike: just lain hidden. I had been wary of it before, perhaps even afraid of it, but since Zurich I had been thinking about it, pushing it where before I’d have held back.

  That night in the bar, I felt unstable, my emotions, desires and insecurities all mixed up. I was lonely, angry, scared, regretful, resentful, betrayed, undervalued, rejected. I needed someone to tell me everything was okay. I needed someone to tell me I was okay.

  I saw Rory get up from the table and say he was calling it a night. I gave him a head start of a few seconds then announced I was following suit. I caught up to him as the lift doors opened, and was kissing him by the time they closed. We hadn’t even spoken: it was like he knew my intentions from the way I looked at him. But then, Rory was very adept at recognising such intentions. He spent most nights scanning whatever room he was in for exactly those signals.

  On this night I was the one who had homed in on what I knew to be a sure thing.

  The next morning I woke up with a dawning horror as I remembered where I was and what I had done. Several times, and in a dozen different ways.

  I scrambled unsteadily to the bathroom, my head throbbing, fearing I was going to be sick. Unfortunately I was denied this small mercy. Everything horrible that was inside me was there to stay.

  At the very least I hoped I could get my clothes on and leave before Rory woke up, but he stirred as I came out of the loo. He didn’t seem too comfortable with the situation either. The atmosphere was so thick with awkward you’d have needed breathing apparatus to get from one end of the room to the other.

  We hadn’t spoken last night in the lift and we’d barely spoken during everything that happened after that. Now we really, really weren’t speaking. We knew we had nothing to say to each other, and that we both wanted to be in different places.

  As I gathered my things I realised why Rory had all but blanked me on those first nights out with the band after rehearsals. It wasn’t because he’d been pals with Maxi, or because he’d anything against me. It was because I was spoken for. No point wasting effort on a girl who wasn’t available.