‘I’m sorry,’ he said, standing up. ‘I have to take this.’
Mairi nodded, hugging the coffee cup to her like it was a comfort blanket.
Parlabane touched the little green handset icon as he walked to a comparatively quiet spot, out of anyone else’s earshot, particularly Mairi’s.
‘Hey, Scoop, how’s it going?’ asked Jenny cheerfully.
‘Well, I’m still alive and I haven’t been arrested, so by those measures fortune has been smiling upon me. Are you calling to tell me that’s about to change?’
‘Not that I’ve heard. Word is there’s been a delay in getting that warrant and there’s some very frustrated Metbots as a result.’
‘A delay?’
‘Yes. The kind of thing that mysteriously happens when very connected people have an interest in the polis not talking to somebody.’
So that was why they’d been hassling Sarah: trying to turn up the heat on him in other ways. A delay was finite, though. They would clear the obstacles soon enough; he just wondered who specifically had thrown them in the police’s path.
‘Where are you?’ she asked.
‘Heathrow. On my way back from Berlin.’
‘Any luck finding your pop star?’
‘Not so far.’
‘Well, fortunately your Auntie Jenny’s got some information you might be interested in. It’s a bit of a quid pro quo deal, though, so I’m expecting you to sing for your supper.’
‘As long as it’s not about Sir Anthony Mead’s laptop, you can order off the menu. What have you got?’
‘It’s about Ms Gunn. I’ve managed to get hold of her credit card transactions. Her other financial details are on request, but I got these first because I’ve a contact. This stuff is inadmissible until it comes through legit channels, but you know the score.’
‘Sure: an unofficial wee heads-up to point you in the right direction. You did this for me? How big a favour am I going to owe you?’
‘Don’t flatter yourself, Scoop, this isn’t about you. My Borders Agency query got flagged when her name popped up in another investigation. But on the day you say she disappeared, there was major activity on her card. The final use was at Berlin Haupt … Haub…’
‘Hauptbahnhof.’
‘Aye. She made a payment to ICE – that’s Intercity Express. I chased the transaction and it turns out she bought a one-way ticket to Copenhagen. Absolutely nothing since then.’
‘Denmark. Interesting.’
‘Does that track with you?’
‘A wee bit. Anything else? You said major activity.’
‘Yes. Earlier the same day she spent seventy grand on two designer watches. You know what that’s about?’
‘Not a clue. But thanks.’
‘Oh, don’t thank me. In a second I’m going to put you through to a nice lady called Detective Superintendent Catherine McLeod, and you’re going to give her absolutely anything she asks for. And when I say nice, what I mean is a black-belt ball-crusher Glesca Polis high heid-yin who, unlike me, will not be so indulgent of your more, shall we say, colourful traits, so step lightly.’
Before he could say anything else the line clicked and the tone changed as he was transferred. He heard a woman’s voice a few moments later. She didn’t sound as scary as Jenny was making out, but to be fair they were only at the sniffing-butt stage, and forewarned was fore-armed.
‘Hello, is this Jack Parlabane?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I understand you’ve been looking for Heike Gunn, who I believe has gone missing.’
‘She hasn’t been seen or heard from since failing to turn up for the last night of her band’s European tour in Berlin,’ he clarified, in full best-behaviour mode, as though Jenny might be listening in. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘We’ve found a body,’ McLeod said, her tone firm and even.
Shit.
He glanced across to where Mairi was sitting. She seemed to sense his attention and looked up, restless anxiety in her eyes. He turned his head away. He couldn’t let her see his face right then.
‘You’ve found Heike?’ he asked.
‘No. That’s why I need to speak to you. We found someone dressed to look like Heike, right down to the creamy-blonde hair. She was discovered in a shipping container in Rutherglen. She had been stabbed.’
‘A shipping container? Shipped from where?’
‘The goods were despatched in Kiev, but its sea port of origin was Hamburg.’
Germany.
When the call was over Parlabane hurried over to Mairi.
‘Have you still got a copy of that leaflet? The one from the Brauereihallen?’
‘I think so,’ she replied, beginning to sift through her Mulberry shoulder bag. ‘What do you need it for?’
Parlabane glanced up at the departure board and scanned it for a German-bound flight. There was one going to Frankfurt in half an hour, preparing to board.
‘Come with me.’
They hastened towards gate A10, looking like they were running to catch their connection. When they got there the Frankfurt flight was at pre-boarding, dozens of passengers grasping their passports and looking up expectantly towards the departure desks.
Parlabane approached a grey-haired lady who was conversing with her travelling companion in perfect but discernibly accented English.
‘Excuse me,’ he asked. ‘We don’t speak German and we need to know what this says. Would you mind telling us?’
‘Not at all,’ she answered, glancing at the leaflet in Parlabane’s hands, the word VERMISST leaping out in its block capitals.
‘Missing,’ she said.
‘And the lines beneath the picture?’
She took it from him and looked more closely this time.
‘It says they are searching for a girl who looks like the one in the photograph.’
‘Looks like?’
‘Yes. They are worried about her. “When she was last seen she was dressed like Heike Gunn, from the band Savage Earth Heart. Her name is Anezka, but she is also known as Hannah or Anna.” It asks if you have seen a girl who looks like this to please call the number on the leaflet.’
‘Thank you,’ Parlabane said. ‘Thank you very much indeed.’
‘You’re welcome,’ she replied, wandering off to join the queue as her flight was called.
He turned to Mairi.
‘Bodo said on the phone that I ought to learn some German. He knew I’d misunderstood the flyer. I asked him why he was looking for Heike, and he said he wasn’t. He was telling the truth.’
‘So what does this mean?’ Mairi asked.
‘It means you don’t need to start organising the memorial tribute concert just yet.’
New Life
The girl sat down at the end of our table, perched on a low pouffe. She kept glancing towards the exit as though concerned who might be about to walk in.
She introduced herself as Kabka. She was attractive, if skinny, and had the most impossibly black hair, swept back behind a headband and reaching down between her shoulder blades. The phrase “bride of Dracula” popped uncharitably into my mind, maybe because I was resentful of the interruption and partly because she had an Eastern European look to her.
‘Hannah is in Berlin,’ she told us.
‘We’re going there in two days,’ Heike replied, her tone asking the question why Kabka had come to Rostock instead. I supposed the answer would be complicated, but could never have anticipated the extent.
‘Yes. She hopes to see you. She did not get the chance to explain when you were in Madrid.’
Kabka looked anxious and apologetic, like she was keen to please but didn’t fancy her chances of getting a result.
‘Explain what?’ I asked. ‘Who those men were that took her away?’
‘That is not why I am here. This is for Heike,’ she added. ‘I do not know if I am allowed to say to another.’
‘It’s okay,’ Heike assured her, resting
her hand on my thigh out of sight and giving it a squeeze. ‘We’re all friends here.’
Kabka nodded uncertainly.
‘Okay. Hannah said she ran away when you … you try…’
She looked really uncomfortable, like she was intruding upon something.
‘To kiss her,’ Heike said firmly.
Kabka nodded again.
‘Yes. To kiss her. I am just … the messenger, yes?’
I wondered why a messenger was needed, given Hannah had Heike’s mobile number.
Kabka sent another glance towards the door, then reached inside her jacket. She produced three photographs and placed them down on the table, sliding them towards Heike with an expression of the utmost gravity.
The light was dim in the low-ceilinged room, but Heike saw enough in that first second to make her cover her mouth and shudder with shock. She glared at Kabka, so many questions in her eyes. Kabka guessed the most important, though.
‘These are Hannah’s pictures of her mother. Please be very careful touching them. They are all she has left of her.’
Heike reached out to lift one of them, her hand shaking like she was cold. Her breathing became smothered, choked in a sob as her eyes filled.
I had only seen Heike’s treasured Polaroid briefly via her phone, but even I recognised that it was the same face staring back at us from these dog-eared prints. She looked a little older, more soberly dressed. In one she wore a winter coat, her face peeking out from a hood. In another she wore a pale dress, looking skinny; underfed, I thought. The clothing was so cheap and careworn, though maybe it was just the age of the photos.
In the shot Heike had picked up, gripped delicately in trembling fingers, she was holding a baby.
‘That is Hannah,’ Kabka said. ‘When she was about three months of age, in Bratislava.’
Heike was struggling to speak. I wanted to put an arm around her but it didn’t feel right: it would have been like I was trying to make myself part of this.
‘These are pictures of … This is…’
‘Your mother,’ said Kabka. ‘Sieghilde. This is why Hannah ran away from you. She had not been able yet to tell you the truth: she is your half-sister.’
Heike put the photograph back down, as though it was too heavy a burden to hold up for long. Her eyes went back and forth from the three pictures on the table, trying to make sense of what they were telling her.
‘How is this possible?’ she asked. ‘My mother died when I was a baby.’
Kabka shook her head. Her voice was low, as though afraid of being overheard, but also like she was aware of the impact her words would have, and the need to lay them down gently.
‘Sieghilde let your father take you away because she was too weak to resist. Heroin was killing her, and your father gave up trying to get her off it. She had tried, when you were born. She got a tattoo. Do you know of this?’
Heike took a mouthful of whisky then wiped her eyes with her sleeve.
‘Yes. She got the letter H tattooed on her forearm, where she liked to shoot up. It was a declaration that I was the only H she cared about now.’
Heike rolled up her sleeve and revealed a similar mark. I had seen it plenty of times but never guessed it had a deeper meaning. It wasn’t something she had chosen to share with me, far less mentioned in any interviews.
‘I had this done as a kind of, I don’t know … remembrance, tribute. It didn’t work for her, though. She was back on the stuff within weeks, I was told.’
‘Yes. But losing you was … die Wende, the, what do you say, the turn-around point. She got clean. And then the Wall came down. She had a friend in Bratislava, so she moved there looking for a new life.’
Heike placed a finger softly upon the shot of her mother in the winter coat, and whispered the single word: ‘Bratislava.’
I imagined her thinking about where she was when that photo was taken, what age she’d have been.
‘Once the Iron Curtain came down there was soon a heroin scene in Bratislava. Her old life found her once more. She got pregnant, but Hannah does not even know his name. Sieghilde called her Hannah because she wanted a name that started with H. She was trying again to stop.’
‘With the same success,’ Heike suggested, sounding numb.
‘Yes. And when Hannah got taken by the authorities, this time she did not escape the spiral.’
‘Hannah told me she was raised in care homes,’ Heike said.
‘That’s right. Before she died, her mother wrote her a letter. It told her she had a half-sister whose father was an artist. She never expected she would find this half-sister, but years later she discovered your music. She found out your father had lived in Berlin, and the dates matched up. She feared it was just a coincidence, until she saw a photograph of you playing your guitar. You were wearing a T-shirt, so she saw your arm.’
Heike stared at her tattoo, like it had just appeared, or she was only seeing it for the first time.
‘Hannah has this tattoo also,’ Kabka went on. ‘She had it done when she was thirteen.’
‘I didn’t see it,’ Heike replied. ‘Although I recall she kept tugging her sleeve down like she was self-conscious about something. It was warm in Bilbao that night too: short-sleeve weather.’
I knew it wasn’t my place, but there was a very big question that still needed an answer, and Heike seemed too emotional to raise it.
‘Why isn’t Hannah the one here telling us this?’ I asked.
From the way she kept glancing at the door, I strongly suspected the answer would have something to do with the two men who had taken her away so easily in Madrid.
I wasn’t wrong.
‘Hannah … the reason I know her, we were in the same situation. She is from Slovakia, I am from Bulgaria. I was offered a job by an agency in Sofia. They said they recruited for waitress work in Berlin. They said they could fix the legal things, the documents, but only if I paid five thousand euros. I did not have this money, but they say it’s okay, I pay five hundred euros as a deposit, then pay the rest once I am in work.’
She looked down at the table, her face flushing. I wanted to look away too. I knew what was coming, and I felt dreadful for her.
‘When I get to Germany there is no job. They take my passport, they take me to this house, and they…’
She sighed, steadying herself. Her voice wavered but she carried on.
‘They raped me. Three men. Several times. After that, they make me work as a prostitute. Until I pay back the debt, they say, which keeps going up. I lived like this a long time. Almost four years.’
She sounded hollow, suddenly very old, but from what she was saying I knew she was probably not much older than me.
‘How did you get out?’ Heike asked.
‘They like the girls young: healthy and attractive. They are not streetwalkers, they operate at the top end.’
I thought of the Eastern European-looking girls in Madrid, and realised Jan wasn’t lying when he said they were going to the Fiera in Milan.
‘Once you start to look too old they are finally ready to let you pay off the debt. They like the girls to know they can buy their way out, so that they will work hard and be obedient. In the end, all the money still comes back to the bosses. But if they decide you are too old and you cannot pay the debt they ship you off to work in brothels, where there will be twenty, thirty, forty men in a day. This is also how they keep the girls in line: the threat of something worse.’
‘You paid off your debt?’ I asked.
She nodded solemnly.
‘I worked very hard,’ she said, looking me in the eye. I felt about one inch tall.
‘This is why I am here, and why Hannah is back in Berlin. She made them angry because she went missing while she was supposed to be working in Spain. And she spent a lot of the money she had saved on travelling to follow you around, working up the courage to speak to you. Now her debt is very high, and she is not so young.’
Heike was still trembli
ng, but from anger. I thought of the men we had seen at the museum in Madrid, and for the first time in my life I wished real, brutal violence upon another human being.
‘How much does she need?’ Heike asked.
Kabka paused, readying herself to break it to us.
Preparing to Fly
They picked up a hire car at Glasgow Airport, Mairi having booked it online the night before along with the flights. She’d neglected to mention this to Parlabane, who was on his way out towards the taxi rank when she hauled him back to the rental desks. It just wouldn’t have occurred to him to hire a vehicle when he was flying into Glasgow or Edinburgh, cities he thought of as home, so he was grateful that it was standard practice for Mairi as a London-dweller.
The rental firm gave them a Volkswagen Scirocco. When the woman on the desk told them this, it felt like Europcar had done their research and calculated specifically which vehicle would psychologically goad him the most by forcing him to recall happier times. He had owned a Scirocco when he first lived with Sarah, a late-eighties model purchased second-hand from a guy in Lochgelly. He’d loved that thing, hadn’t he?
No. It wasn’t the car that he’d loved, nor the flat they’d lived in or the work he’d been doing.
They took the Clyde Tunnel exit off the M8 and headed for Partick, Mairi barely restrained by the speed cameras in her conspicuous urgency to reach Monica’s flat.
‘One thing I don’t get,’ she said, turning on to the Clydeside Expressway. ‘If it was Bodo who put out those flyers, why did he print Heike’s picture rather than the girl he was actually looking for? Surely he’d have a photo of her; she was probably in his database.’
‘He was playing the percentages. You see a picture of a complete stranger you’ve never seen before, you won’t remember the face even if you walk past her the very next day. But if you see that flyer and then you see a girl who looks like Heike Gunn ...’
Parlabane could hear strings playing from an open window above as they walked from the car to the door of the red-stone tenement.
‘Sounds like she’s home, anyway,’ he observed.
Mairi looked at him like he was a puddle.
‘That’s a cello, cloth ears.’
Dead Girl Walking Page 31