Dead Girl Walking (26 page)

The doors hadn’t begun to close, but already Boris’s men were making their move. The guy with the ponytail was approaching from the lifts, while from the escalators Parlabane could see another one striding towards him. He was troll-like, both facially and in build, resembling a squat and steroid-pumped Michael Gove. It was a truly horrible vision, but on the plus side, it would make it a lot easier if Parlabane ended up having to punch the guy really hard in the face. Indeed, remembering to stop and run off would be the main hazard.

The doors closed and the train began to pull away. Parlabane urged it to hurry, to speed up. Boris’s men were each less than fifteen yards away and closing, Spike joining the hunt now that Mairi was out of the equation.

He glimpsed Mairi’s face one last time as her carriage passed, the train picking up speed. He just wasn’t sure it was picking it up fast enough.

Ten yards. Eight.

The rearmost carriage whipped past him, and suddenly his path was clear. It just wasn’t clear to his reception committee, though perhaps it should have been: the fuckers had forced him on to the rails once already today.

Parlabane leaped down from the platform and across the tracks, taking care to hurdle the third rail. There was a narrow concrete pathway on the far side. Horizontal steel railings ran along it, affording a clear view down towards the main concourse. He could still feel the floor beneath him vibrate as the train departed.

Parlabane vaulted over the rails and climbed on to a girder extending away from the platform. He gripped a steel shaft forming a giant window frame in the office towers that bookended the hall. Passengers wandered obliviously beneath him. It was too high to jump.

He checked his footing and hopped down on to a suspended departure board. It wobbled and lurched under his weight, but it held. A second later he had draped down on to solid concrete.

He glanced back to see Gove-Troll careering down the escalator. Above him, Ponytail was clambering over the railings.

Parlabane sprinted for the broad staircase that descended to ground level. He slalomed two drunks in Bayern tops then gripped the handrail as he took the steps ten at a time. There were more Bayern fans towards the bottom, four abreast on the stairs, arms around each other’s shoulders.

Scheisse
.

He vaulted over the barrier on to the up escalator, catching his ankle on the moving handrail. Glass and steel spun around him as he tumbled to the deck in a tangle of limbs. He’d rattled his head on the edge of a stair too. Blood was running into his right eye, closing it. Through his left he could see Gove-Troll bounding towards the top of the staircase as the escalator took him back up

He climbed to his feet again and stomped down the rising stairs. A few seconds later he was on mercifully unmoving ground, the wall of glass ahead of him. His thigh muscles screamed at him as he sprinted towards the doors.

He barrelled through them and out into the warm air. Across the concrete he could see a taxi rank. Mercifully there was a cab waiting, and the driver wasn’t even outside having a fag with his mates.

Less mercifully, the driver locked the doors as he tried to get in. He babbled something Parlabane didn’t understand, then gestured to his face. He remembered he was bleeding. The guy thought he was a nutter, or at least that he was going to bleed all over his seats.

Back at the station entrance, Gove-Troll was bustling through another clutch of Bayern fans at the doors.

‘Please,’ he begged, pulling on the handle. ‘I was attacked. Look.’

The driver glanced towards the station, then suddenly unlocked the doors.

Parlabane sprawled across the back seat as the car pulled away.

‘FC Hollywood,’ the driver said with distaste.

Parlabane watched Gove-Troll pull up as he realised his quarry was fled, Spike almost crashing into him from the back. They stared in impotent frustration at the departing taxi.

Tschüss
.

He took out his phone and dialled Mairi, clenching a fist in elated relief when she answered.

We didn’t need to wait for the bus to encounter more of Jan’s ‘merch girls’. I was fairly sure I saw several of them draping themselves over a bunch of suits in the hotel bar when we came back from the gig that night. We were staying in some corporate place, but neither girls nor suits looked like delegates at a conference. These guys were high-end: expensively dressed and cordoned off in a private area of the bar by their own personal security. The girls were dressed to look like they belonged in such high-rolling company, but I couldn’t help thinking the designer outfits just made them look even younger and less plausible. One of them was definitely the girl from backstage in Barcelona. I caught her pretending just a bit too hard not to have seen me.

I’d no idea till how late the merch girls were entertaining the boardroom bawbags, but they were up bright and early the next morning, which was obviously dress-down Friday. There were seven of them sitting in the lobby, all back in their Savage Earth Heart T-shirts, and toting their matching rucksacks.

Heike and I stood close by with our own luggage, determined to really bring the awkward when Jan fronted up.

We watched him wander across the hotel lobby, bleary-eyed and yawning. He woke up pretty fast when he took in what was in front of him, and made a few rapid and troubling calculations.

‘Ladies, what are you doing?’ he asked, in fake puzzlement. ‘Did you forget about the plane? It doesn’t leave until three, yeah?’

‘I think the bigger question is what are
they
doing?’ Heike replied.

‘Serpent have already played Milan and Nice,’ I told him, returning his fake confusion. ‘I checked their tour schedule on my phone. Or are the girls connecting to a flight to Oslo?’

Jan glanced around and upwards for a flustered few moments, like there might be answers printed on the ceiling. It must have been hard to think of an explanation while channelling so much effort into hiding how pissed off he was at both of us.

‘They’re bound for a trade fair at the Fiera Milano,’ he said. ‘Bad Candy have a marketing and promo operation these days. They’ll be working a stand for … I think a software company. Video games, you know?’

‘Is the video game also called Savage Earth Heart?’ Heike asked witheringly, indicating the T-shirts.

‘It’s cross-promotion,’ I answered for him, to show we knew he was full of shit.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘This is not what you think.’

‘What do we think?’ Heike asked him.

‘I’m just saying, it’s complicated. Very complicated. Over my head, yeah? Just stay out of it.’

‘How can I stay out of it? I’m sharing a bus with it.’

‘And that’s your choice, okay? I got you plane tickets.’

‘Yeah, you did. Why was that?’

Jan didn’t have an answer, but truth was he didn’t need one. Now that we all knew he was lying to us, it still left the more problematic issue of what we could do about it.

He found out south of Perpignan.

French police pulled the bus over into a lay-by short of a pedestrian footbridge over the autoroute. Unlike before, this wasn’t a random check, and it wasn’t because we were a rock band who might have drugs. Heike had looked up the authorities on her mobile, ringing them from a payphone when we stopped at a services area north of Girona, so that the call couldn’t be traced to her.

They weren’t immigration, simply two uniformed cops responding to a despatch resultant of Heike’s call, and checking whether there was something in need of further investigation.

Both officers boarded the bus and asked to see everybody’s identification. That was when Jan found out that something was very wrong. He went into his bag to retrieve the girls’ passports, but they weren’t there. Heike had stolen them a couple of hours into the journey, while he was catching up on the sleep he didn’t get the night before. The merch girls were dozing as well, and I wondered if any of them had been the one keeping our tour manager awake.

It was satisfying to watch him scramble and rummage, no doubt wondering if the whole lot might be sitting on a lobby table back in Madrid. But our pleasure only lasted until we saw the panic that was starting to appear on the faces of our guest passengers. They were looking towards him, then frantically checking their own bags as it dawned on them their documentation was not in Jan’s possession. They looked ashen despite the make-up, and a few were in tears.

One of them wasn’t panicking, though. She was pointing. So not all of them had been asleep, and this latest development must have helped her explain what she maybe only
thought
she had seen.

Before Jan could do anything, Heike held up the passports in her right hand, her left gesturing to him to stay back. One of the police officers stepped purposefully past Jan and reached out to take the documents.

Holding them back, Heike asked whether he spoke English. When he confirmed that he did, she told him she suspected the girls were here under duress and being taken en masse, possibly against their will.

‘I took their passports from his bag,’ she said, indicating Jan. ‘He was holding all of them.’

The cop talked quietly with his colleague, then called a name from the first passport he opened: Sabina Dumitrescu. Anxious-looking and tearful, the girl put her hand up and was asked to accompany them outside.

I could see them question her through the window, the cop with the passports holding hers up and occasionally pointing back towards the bus. The girl was shaking her head, speaking quickly and firmly.

After a few minutes they sent her back inside and called another name: Radka Danchev. It was the girl I had seen in Barcelona, who had hidden her shame behind the mask of, as Heike described it, a fucking robot. Again I saw head-shaking, animated gesticulation and quite a lot of anger. This time she was the one pointing towards the bus, with what I took to be accusation.

I saw Jan glance towards us, sitting on the edge of his seat with his feet in the aisle. I expected him to be angry but he just seemed worried. You bloody well should be, I thought as I watched the policemen climb back on board, their faces much more grim than before.

It was huckling time.

As they walked up the aisle towards Jan, I suddenly wondered what this might mean for the Milan show, and for the rest of the tour. But then they continued past him and instead ordered Heike to follow them outside.

Only a few minutes later she was making her way back to her seat, her face flushed and her eyes filling with tears of anger and humiliation.

Some of the girls were glaring at her. One called her ‘a fucking stupid bitch’. Others just looked shaken, not quite ready to feel relief until the bus was definitely back under way.

I didn’t ask what had been said. She didn’t look ready to share.

Jan went outside with the cops, talking with them longer than anyone else had. From his body language I was able to predict that the interruption was coming to a halt. Half of Jan’s job was about smoothing over awkward situations, and even with his back to me I could tell he was doing what he did best.

It was all smiles and handshakes before he came back on board and the cops strolled back to their car. I could imagine how it played out at the end: all a big misunderstanding, temperamental rock-star stuff, crazy chicks having a falling-out. Apologies for your troubles, officers, but have a thought for the shit
I’ve
got to put up with.

What I didn’t understand was why the girls handed their passports back to Jan as soon as we were back on the road. Why, if they were being forced, would they lie to the cops when there was a chance to get their documents and escape? And if they weren’t being forced, why did they all look so afraid when the cops boarded the bus and their passports were found to be missing?

Very little was said after that. Heike stared out of the window for the rest of the journey, occasionally glancing ahead towards where our extra passengers sat with their backs to her.

We reached Nice around eight in the evening, Jan returning from reception with the news that they only had one room free, so Heike and I would have to share. He claimed he had been assured over the phone that two rooms were available, but I thought he was lying and had booked us a twin on purpose: we weren’t supposed to be here, and he was underlining the fact. Neither of us had started complaining about the twin before he was explaining the situation, so I filed that one under ‘protesting too much’.

He hadn’t said anything about Perpignan, and I thought he was just going to act like it hadn’t happened, to keep things friendly. Then, as he handed Heike the keycard for our room he glanced in either direction as though checking for eavesdroppers, and spoke quietly but firmly.

‘That was a very stupid thing you did, okay? Very stupid. You have no idea what you are messing with. Stay out of this, or you’ll get people hurt. You understand me?’

I felt something grip me from my stomach to the ends of my fingers. I thought about the fear in the faces of the girls on the bus, and understood why they hadn’t taken the chance to run. They knew who would come looking for them.

There was a taxi stopped in front of the hotel as Parlabane’s cab pulled in behind it. He could make out Mairi in the back seat, handing the driver his fare. He’d spoken to her on the phone only a few minutes earlier, but he still felt a rush at seeing her in the flesh, back here safe and sound.

She noticed him as he climbed out of the beige Mercedes and came running forward, almost bowling him over as she flung her arms around him and clung on. They stayed like that for a long time, saying nothing. She needed this, he understood, but he was feeling conspicuous being out here in the street. He had to break it off. (Yeah, that’s why.)

‘We need to get inside,’ he said. ‘Out of sight.’

‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘I’m just so glad you’re okay.’

‘Bit of late-night parkour, always good for the cardiovascular system.’

She took a seat in the lobby. Now that she was under decent light he could see she’d been crying but was putting a brave face on it, like she didn’t want him to see how scared she’d been. He felt ultra-protective of her, and not merely because she’d just been thrown in at the deep end. There was something else driving it, perhaps to do with the fact that she was Donald’s sister and he didn’t want to let his late friend down. Or maybe it was that she was Donald’s
wee
sister, which made her seem more vulnerable.