Dead Girl Walking (35 page)

She seemed deep in thought, working harder to digest what her brain had taken in over dinner than the modest quantity her body had ingested. They had made it almost to the top before she finally spoke, yanking Parlabane back from his own reverie as he stared out towards the Hauptbahnhof.

‘If somehow Jan – or somebody else – managed to secretly film Heike and Monica having a shower, I’m surprised it’s not already all over the internet. There would be money in it. Unless they figured there was more money to be had from
threatening
to put it on the internet. Was he using this stuff to blackmail Heike, do you reckon?’

‘Perhaps,’ he answered, ‘though maybe not for money. I think it would more likely be used as leverage. If you ask me, this was a warning to mind her own business.’

‘Which again makes me wonder why the images never got released, because if Heike heeded a warning to mind her own business it would be the first time. She’s never been one to back down from a fight, even when it seems the sensible thing to do.’

‘There’s another factor here, though,’ Parlabane suggested. ‘They didn’t just film her: they filmed Monica too. Maybe that explains why she
did
back down. Nobody else in the band seems to know about these pictures, or has mentioned any other incidents on the tour, apart from the
Daily Mail
photos that did hit the internet.’

‘Knowing Heike, she might have backed down to protect Monica, but she wouldn’t have let it go entirely. She must have found some other way to piss them off. The big question is what.’

Mairi glanced down at the iPad.

‘There’s got to be something else on that thing,’ she said.

Parlabane swallowed back any number of comments about how he’d rather have been sitting down and sifting through it than wending his way around the inside of a giant snow-globe. What made it easier to stay his tongue was the understanding that the tablet was unlikely to yield anything further without the help of a translator. Such a person wouldn’t be difficult to procure, but finding one who had no contextual questions about whose iPad it was and how Parlabane happened to be in possession of it might prove more challenging.

He became aware of a sudden brief squall of sound, its origin confused by having bounced around the cupola before reaching his ears. He heard a squeak of shoes upon the smooth floor, accompanied by what sounded like a voice raised in guarded indignation and another in either gruff apology or dismissal. Parlabane glanced through the glass barrier and very quickly identified the source about four loops below on the opposite side, conspicuous because several other people were staring at them as they glared up-ramp at whoever had presumably barrelled past them.

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.

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.