Dead Girl Walking (41 page)

‘Things change,’ he said.

‘Hannah’s debt just went up?’ Heike asked acidly.

‘No. It is not about Hannah’s debt. It is about Hannah’s worth.’

‘She’s getting
older
,’ Heike replied, dripping venom. ‘She’s a declining asset in your evil little business.’

‘Like I say, things change. Not many men want to fuck a girl like Hannah when there are younger, prettier girls on the menu. But maybe they want to fuck a girl who looks like a famous rock star, yes?’

In that moment it all changed quite terribly for the worse. I wouldn’t have taken him for a Savage fan, but Heike’s face had been on a lot of magazines and TV screens. Still, it could have been much worse: if he had known the truth about why Heike was here, he really could have named his price.

‘She looks a lot like you,’ he went on. ‘Even naked.’

I saw rage burn in Heike’s eyes, and I was a second or so behind in working out why. He was letting us know he had seen the photos from our bathroom in Nice; maybe he was the one who had them taken.

‘A girl like that could earn me a lot of money. Many men will want to fuck her after they see you on television. So you want to rescue her, be her saving angel, you must pay what she is worth. How do you say in England? Give until it hurts, yes?’

He chuckled, a weird gurgle like blood down a drain.

‘How much?’ Heike asked.

‘Seventy thousand euros. Tomorrow. You give me your number, I call you later with the where and when.’

‘How do I know you won’t turn up tomorrow and say now it’s a hundred thousand?’

‘I don’t have time to play games. Two days from now, I have business in Sofia. Two days from now, Hannah goes back to Madrid. Is tomorrow, or no deal.’

‘I can’t get that kind of money in cash so soon,’ she said.

‘I do not want cash,’ he replied. ‘Too complicated.’

‘So what the hell
do
you want?’

‘We’ve wasted our time here,’ Mairi said with a sigh, keeping her voice low so that Isobel didn’t hear from through in the kitchen.

Parlabane didn’t answer. A thought was nagging him, a connection just beyond his grasp, all the more tantalising because something in here had sparked it and he wasn’t sure what.

He looked around the room, at the framed prints and posters on the wall, then towards the window, where his eyes lit upon Isobel’s cello. He glanced immediately at the basket full of unironed dresses, T-shirts and trousers. They had passed a laundry airing stand in the hall, hung with towels, bras and knickers. Women’s clothes. Young women’s clothes.

Parlabane stood up as Isobel returned with two mugs of tea.

‘I know where she’s gone,’ he suddenly realised.

‘What, did you just channel it?’ Mairi asked, though he could tell the sarcasm was to repress the fervency of her hope.

‘A cup of tea,’ he said, the connection coming into focus. ‘She never offered me one.’

‘Who didn’t?’

‘Flora Blacklock. I went to her place on Islay.’

‘So?’

‘So she was nice as could be: completely open and helpful. And yet I’d come all the way to the arse end of nowhere and she didn’t offer me a cup of tea. She said she was on her way to Port Charlotte to prepare her boat for the next day. We talked on the boat instead, but she sat fixing ropes: nothing urgent.’

Mairi got it, her features suddenly animated.

‘She didn’t want you inside the house.’

‘She would have had very little notice, maybe just spotted my car approaching. No time to hide all the evidence, like maybe T-shirts and underwear belonging to a younger woman.’

‘Heike.’

Parlabane nodded.

‘That’s where Monica’s going,’ he said. ‘Heike’s been hiding on Islay this whole bloody time.’

‘But the Border Agency told your cop friend she never came back to the UK. How did she get there?’

‘Fiona Blacklock is the closest person Heike has to a mother in this world. She also just happens to be a highly accomplished sailor, from an island with a long, rich history of maritime smuggling.’

We got through the penultimate gig on fumes and the promise of what tomorrow might hold. Heike sounded pretty phoned-in to my ears, but it was better than Hamburg, and the audience didn’t seem to notice how disengaged she was. Some nights you can tell they’re only there for a good time and are happy enough to see the band in the flesh. They’re often belting out the songs so loudly they barely notice how well we’re doing them.

It could have been a lot worse. We were fifteen minutes late going on because Heike had a serious wobble. I found her vomiting in the ladies and had to talk her down from abandoning the show.

‘I can’t think about anything else,’ she said. ‘I don’t
care
about anything else.’

‘You need to see it as a dress rehearsal for tomorrow night,’ was my winning gambit. ‘That’s when you’ll give the performance of your life because Hannah will be standing right there, watching from the wings.’

When it was over I just wanted to get to my bed. I wanted the next day to come around without delay. I wanted Hannah to be safe for Heike’s sake, and I wanted this tour to be over. So as I entered the hotel through its revolving doors I was totally unready for the sight that was waiting for me in the lobby.

It was Keith. He was sitting on a couch to the right of the reception desk, scrolling through his phone as he passed the time while waiting for me to show.

It felt jarring to see him, and took me a moment to accept its reality. He belonged in another time-line of my life, and seemed as out of place here as had he been a character from some old TV show I used to watch suddenly made flesh and blood.

I stopped in my tracks, then went forward hesitantly as he got up and strode towards me.

He tilted his head and gave me a bashful smile.

‘I did say I’d fly out and surprise you,’ he offered by way of explanation.

I couldn’t think of anything to say. ‘It’s good to see you’ popped into my head, but under the circumstances it really wasn’t. I felt ambushed.

‘I’d booked the flights before … you know. Never got around to cancelling them because in my head, I think, that would have been symbolic of … I don’t know. Anyway, instead of moping around and feeling pissed-off about what happened, I thought, if this is worth saving, I need to prove it.’

‘Let’s get a seat,’ I said, urging him back towards the couch. I felt uncomfortably visible standing in the middle of the lobby, and all the more on the spot for it.

I plonked myself down on the edge of a couch, my head spinning. I chose my spot so that Keith would sit on the couch opposite, but he came around the low table and sat beside me.

‘Look, things were said, in haste and in anger,’ he told me, friendly but firm, like we both knew this was difficult. ‘It was all such a shock. I’d never had to deal with the press before, and I was dropped into all of that because of what you’d done. But now I’ve had time to reflect, and that’s why I’m here to forgive you.’

To be honest, it took me a moment to remember why I was supposed to be in the wrong. So many other things had been to blame that my own guilt got lost in the fog.

‘See, being exposed to the media like that was actually what made me understand what a mental world you’ve been caught up in, so I realised it was no wonder you had your head turned. But it’s time to get real now, Monica. You can fly home with me tomorrow, and once you’re back in normality we can put all this behind us.’

I wondered if he’d got his dates wrong, but another part of me suspected that in Keith’s mind this wasn’t an issue.

‘I still have a show tomorrow,’ I told him.

He shook his head.

‘I think they’ve had quite enough out of you already. Dragged you from pillar to post for a month and made a fool of you in front of the whole world.’

He still didn’t understand. I wasn’t on a fucking hen weekend here.

‘That comes with the territory,’ I replied. ‘But it
is
my territory. This is my job, Keith.’

‘It’s
a
job, yes, but it’s not where you belong, Mon. This is what I mean by having your head turned. And I know who bloody turned it: that lassie Heike. She’s had her claws in you, seduced you into joining this band and seduced you into God knows what else. She’s used you and humiliated you.’

‘Nobody has used me, Keith. I’m a grown adult. I’m capable of making my own decisions and taking the consequences. I’m happy to talk things through when the tour is over, but that isn’t until tomorrow night. You know we’ve the US tour coming up in a few weeks as well, don’t you?’

‘Christ, Monica. You should hear yourself. You’re losing sight of who you are, and you’re giving up a great life that we could have together. This is why you have to come home now. We can put all of this behind us, and I won’t hold any of it against you, I promise. Trust me, everything will look different once you’re back in the real world and
she’s
out of the picture. Everything will make sense once she’s no longer part of your life.’

The more he talked, the more I realised this was so over. He wasn’t offering a chance at making up: he was laying down the terms of my surrender. And boy had he ever picked the wrong day.

I felt bad about him having come all the way over here, but only until I realised what was going on in his head. He kept talking about me having been made a fool of, but this was because he was the one who felt humiliated, and now he needed to put that right by proving to the world that I was back in my place. He still didn’t understand what this band meant to me, or who I really was. I saw an ugly side to him, one I realised I had always been aware of but had either been in denial about or maybe thought I could control. I wondered how often I had modified my behaviour to prevent that part of him from revealing itself, how much of the real me I had subconsciously sacrificed.

‘Where are you staying?’ I asked him, derailing his rant.

‘At the Radisson. I splashed out on a junior suite for us back when…’

‘Nice,’ I said, standing up. ‘Stay there. It’s late, Keith, and I’ve a busy day making a fool of myself tomorrow. Good night.’

Mairi maintained a heavy right foot where the open road invited it, but she didn’t take any risks. Monica had a head start of anything up to an hour, but as long as they made it to Kennacraig for the same sailing, they knew they would catch up to her on the boat.

Mairi stayed in the car at the ferry port, keeping her head down while Parlabane, whom Monica wouldn’t recognise, bought the tickets. Until she was on board and thus had nowhere to run to, they couldn’t afford to let her spot the manager she’d so studiously been blanking.

They cornered her in the observation lounge, having watched her return from the bar with a coffee and pick a table on the port side. Her attention was focused on ripping open a sachet of sugar and pouring it into her drink when they made their move, Mairi slipping into the seat alongside and Parlabane taking his place opposite.

‘Monica,’ Mairi said neutrally. ‘Fancy meeting you here.’

She looked trapped and panicky, genuinely horrified. This wasn’t merely a surprise: clearly it was a disaster.

‘I’ve been trying to get in touch for days,’ Mairi went on. ‘I left messages.’

Monica stared down at the table, cheeks burning.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I should have replied, I know. But it’s complicated, and it’s personal, and it’s private, okay?’

Mairi shrugged.

‘Okay,’ she conceded, looking to Parlabane. They’d agreed on how they’d play it, and he was up.

‘It’s funny how these things come around, though, isn’t it?’ he suggested. ‘I was on this same ferry less than a week ago, and I took this photograph.’

He placed his phone on the table and turned it around so that Bodo’s picture was the right way up, facing Monica.

‘Do you recognise this guy?’

Parlabane saw the impact on her face like a boulder dropped into a millpond. She wasn’t anywhere near as good at hiding it as the guys at the Brauereihallen.

Monica shook her head.

‘His name is Bodo Hoefner. Funny thing is, after seeing him on this boat we ran into him again in Berlin, where it would be fair to say wackiness ensued, some of it the homicidal variety. You definitely sure his face doesn’t ring any bells?’

‘I’ve never seen him before. I swear.’

She looked around pleadingly at Mairi, like she could call Parlabane off.

Mairi sighed.

‘You know, Monica, you’re a quite brilliant violinist, but a rank amateur at lying.’

‘I’m not lying,’ she insisted, tears beginning to form. ‘I don’t know who this guy is’

‘I think you do,’ said Mairi softly. ‘And I think you’re very scared of him. That’s okay. We can help you, but only if you talk to us.’

‘About what? I don’t know anything about what happened to you in Berlin.’

‘Then let’s talk about something else,’ said Parlabane. ‘Such as what you know about this guy being in possession of naked photos of you and of Heike coming out of the shower in a hotel bathroom.’

She shook her head, wiping away the tears that all three of them knew were betraying her. Parlabane knew the retreat into silence was still an option, so it was time to close that one too.

‘Or we could talk about a dead girl dressed to look like Heike, stabbed to death and left to rot in a shipping container in Germany.’

Heike received the message by text as we stood on Kurfürstendamm. The tree-lined avenue had the most exclusive retail outlets in the city, and I’m sure if you scanned CCTV images going back years, you wouldn’t find photographs of two women looking less pleased about having just spent a fortune on designer gear.

In the café yesterday, the thick-necked creep had produced a card bearing the name of an upscale jewellery business. There were some details scribbled on the reverse.

‘You go here. You buy these: precisely these. Thirty-five thousand euro each. You text me when you have them, then I give you the rendezvous.’

He was demanding two Cartier watches. It was only when Heike referred to them as a ransom that it really sunk in how out of our depth we both were. I was surprised that he wanted something so apparently frivolous, and wondered if he was doing it to make a point, trading Hannah for trinkets he didn’t even need.