Dead Girl Walking (45 page)

Heike’s eyes looked hollow, her legs suddenly weak beneath her. She took a short step forward, putting a hand on the table for support, then succumbed and took a seat on the bench alongside Monica.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It can’t be. Her face was familiar from the first time I saw her. I felt a connection, something instinctive, fundamental.’

‘She was familiar because she was probably somewhere around the fringes on your last European tour, one of Bodo’s girls. And, sad to say, she’d have spent a long time learning how to make people feel instantly comfortable and at ease around her.’

Heike looked exasperated. She wasn’t fighting it now: she just needed to know how it was possible.

‘She had photographs of my mother, photographs I’d never seen, from her time in Bratislava.’

‘You only saw them briefly, in a club, in the dark. Kabka didn’t let you take any away. They’ll have been Photoshopped.’

‘From what source? I’ve got the only surviving picture of her.’

‘They hacked Monica’s blog: how hard would it have been to copy that photo from your phone?’

Heike’s eyes were dead, her expression numb.

‘Fucking bastards,’ said Mairi.

‘Historically, the con men would fake some kind of tragedy at the ransom handover, leaving the mark implicated in a killing so that he wouldn’t tell the authorities. One of them would pretend to be stabbed; they used to burst a bag of blood in their mouths to sell the illusion. The blood-bag even had a name: it was known as a cacklebladder. But in this case the ransom itself – the high-end watches – was only the set-up, and the fake killing was the basis for the real sting.’

‘So if nobody got shot or stabbed in that basement,’ asked Monica, ‘what about the dead girl in the shipping container, dressed to look like Heike?’

‘What?’ Heike demanded.

Monica briefly filled her in, Mairi producing the flyer from her bag.

‘Sadly, I think that
was
your Hannah,’ said Parlabane. ‘I think we can assume she’s the girl Bodo was looking for when he circulated these. For whatever reason, she must have run. Maybe she realised she was a potential risk to the success of the scam if she was seen alive. Maybe she was playing her own angle, threatening to blow it open unless she got a bigger cut.’

‘Or maybe she felt guilty about what she’d done and was trying to reach Heike,’ Mairi suggested. ‘She was found in a crate bound for Scotland, after all. That can’t be a coincidence.’

‘So what do we do now?’ asked Monica.

‘Simple,’ said Heike, the tremble in her quiet tones betraying the rage beneath. ‘We do the one thing that ugly fucker was relying on me
not
doing.’

‘What about it?’ asked Bodo, the first hint beginning to show on his face to indicate that he suspected all might not be well.

‘Never mind,’ Parlabane told him. ‘I think we’ve got what we needed. So we’ll just go and get you what you’ve been asking for.’

Parlabane followed Heike as she stepped carefully down the stairs, silently venting a sigh through pursed lips before they both stepped to the side to leave the passageway clear.

Upon a signal from Detective Superintendent McLeod, armed police erupted from below decks at both ends of the boat, pointing their Heckler & Koch fully automatics at the three astonished figures on the other vessel.

Commands were barked out, loud and frantic.

‘Get down. Get down on the ground. Faces to the deck,
faces to the deck
.’

Parlabane heard the clang of boots on metal as they rushed across the gangplank. He looked through a porthole and saw one of the officers standing with his weapon pointed at Bodo as he lay flat-out on the deck. Another cop had a boot on his neck as he restrained him, grinding his face roughly against the polished wood.

Could have been a lot worse for the bastard. The armed cops had had a bead on him through the portholes the whole time. If Bodo had actually pointed the gun, rather than merely brandishing it, they’d have taken no chances. His brains would be lobster food by now.

Such had been their assurances anyway. Last night Heike had understandably been all for letting the cops swoop in as soon as Bodo gave them the rendezvous coordinates, but McLeod warned her that they didn’t have anything concrete on him at this stage. If a police launch intercepted him, he and his men could make up any story about why they were there, after quietly dropping any weapons they were carrying into the sea.

McLeod explained in depth about the evidence they required, and went to great lengths in describing how the police marksmen would act instantly if they believed there was danger to those on board the
Hecate
. She added that she would entirely understand if Heike didn’t want to put herself at any risk, or found it too difficult to consider confronting Bodo again.

Having heard all of this, Heike was thoroughly emboldened, and according to Mairi looking a lot more like her old self.

‘You had me at “that prick might get away with it”,’ she told McLeod.

They climbed back up on deck as two police launches buzzed into the bay, ready to pick up their wretched cargo. The prisoners were on their knees, hands cuffed behind their backs. Gove-Troll and Spike looked shell-shocked. This was supposed to be an easy gig, but after years of growing used to getting away with it, the crash had come out of nowhere.

Their boss, by contrast, looked satisfyingly furious: his face ruddy and his eyes boiling.

Heike made her way to the gunwales of the
Hecate
, as close to the gangplank as the cops would allow her. She stared across at him, a quiet satisfaction on her face.

The sun was starting to break through as Flora guided her boat smoothly back to Islay. Heike sat on a bench on the foredeck, looking towards the horizon, saying nothing.

Detective Superintendent McLeod had opted to come back with them, deputising her assistant, DI Thompson, to accompany the prisoners on one of the police launches. She took the opportunity to remain above decks on the return journey, having been confined below on the way out.

She stayed on her own much of the time, fielding lots of messages. She had a standard-issue combined radio and mobile, but with no network coverage out here it was all old-school comms protocol. It was also largely incoming info: Parlabane heard lots of ‘received’ and ‘acknowledged’ and ‘understood’; very little else.

She did wander over to speak to him at one point, though.

‘I want to say thanks,’ she told him. ‘You did well back there. Got Herr Hoefner to say what we needed him to.’

‘Eliciting just the right quote is a trick of the trade.’

‘I gather you know more tricks than most in your trade. Jenny Dalziel has been filling me in on your rather chequered history.’

‘And I thought she was a friend.’

‘Relax. It wasn’t all bad. For one thing, you appear to have provoked the displeasure of our esteemed colleagues in the Met, so props for that. It surprises me, though.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, for one thing, you’re not black. What’s the problem: did you forget to bribe them like all the other journalists?’

‘Miaow,’ he replied. ‘Actually, I’m not being persecuted. I really did do what they think I did, and it’s not really me they’re after.’

‘So why not do a deal, cooperate?’

He thought about it, measuring what he could tell her.

‘Two reasons, I suppose. One is that I’m protecting a source, and that’s sacrosanct.’

‘What’s the other?’

‘It’s just so much fun
not
to give them what they want.’

Mairi and Monica were waiting on the jetty as the
Hecate
rounded the headland and Flora slowed the engine. There had been a cop with them the whole time, keeping them up to date, so Parlabane guessed they weren’t standing out there like fishermen’s wives after a storm, waiting for the sight of their loved ones’ boats to confirm they were still alive.

Parlabane and Heike threw out the lines as Flora expertly manoeuvred her vessel into parallel with the pier, old tyres flanking the wooden beams as buffers. DI Geddes, the cop who had stayed with them, tied the rope to a cleat at the stern end, Monica jumping to it at the bow with surprising speed.

Shetland girl, Parlabane remembered.

Heike didn’t wait for the gangway. She hopped down almost directly into Monica’s arms. He didn’t stare, wanting to afford them their privacy, but they didn’t seem very concerned about who may or may not be watching. They both had their eyes closed, tears on their cheeks. It was all pouring out now. They knew the danger was past and they could start looking forward again.

Mairi looked relieved to see him, but there were no tears or hugs. She was keeping her distance, and not because of who might be watching. There was something self-conscious about how she stood her ground, as though conspicuously aware of the contrast between them and the other reunited couple on the jetty.

Whatever had been sparking between them was over. Perhaps it had derived from the other tensions they’d been feeling, meaning now that the fear was gone, so was the thing they were confusing it for. Or maybe he had simply succeeded in blowing her off. He didn’t know. He just knew that she wasn’t looking at him the way she had done in Berlin.

He knew it was better this way. It just didn’t
feel
better.

‘You okay?’ she asked him as they all began wandering back up the path towards Flora’s house. Heike and Monica walked in front, Flora and the two cops at the rear.

‘Well, I didn’t get shot. That’s always a plus.’

‘You don’t sound exalted,’ Mairi observed, picking up on the ambivalence in his tone.

‘No, I’m happy it’s worked out for everybody. But I just realised this means I’m out of work.’

Heike’s ears pricked up.

‘Hardly,’ she said acidly, turning around. ‘I’m sure you’ve got a drippingly juicy story to flog all over the media. Give them an excuse to run those fucking pictures of us again.’

Jeez, she was just hoaching with gratitude, wasn’t she?

He maintained a sincere expression but he was smiling inside. He’d have cut her some slack anyway, given all she’d been through, but Mairi had already warned him that Heike seldom went out of her way to ingratiate herself with people, especially journalists. He couldn’t help but admire her for it.

‘Actually, I’ve got nothing,’ he told her. ‘Biggest story of the year: rock stars, sex trafficking, drugs, murder, blackmail, and I won’t be telling anybody a bloody thing.’

‘Jack signed an NDA when I hired him,’ Mairi explained. ‘This story will not be reported.’

‘Yeah, but it’ll all come out when it goes to court,’ Heike reasoned.

‘No, it won’t,’ McLeod weighed in. ‘Assuming you seek an injunction, your identity will most likely be subject to reporting restrictions. In cases involving blackmail the judge will usually grant an anonymity order. You and Monica are both victims here, so it would defeat the ends of justice if your details were dragged through the court and the media.’

‘Like I said,’ Parlabane told her, ‘I’ve got nothing.’

Heike looked relieved, then, for a moment, as close to sheepish as she probably ever got.

‘One day,’ she said, ‘when it comes time to do the official book on Savage Earth Heart … you’ll definitely be on the shortlist.’

Parlabane smiled at that.

‘Of how many?’

‘Five or six. Definitely not more than ten.’

He really did like her style.

McLeod’s mobile-cum-radio buzzed to hail her as they approached the back door of Flora’s house. She stepped to one side and held it to her ear: more ‘received,’ ‘acknowledged’, a ‘good work’ and a ‘keep me informed’.

‘That was DI Thompson,’ she reported. ‘Just to let you all know: the suspects were transferred into separate police cars at Kennacraig and are currently en route to Glasgow for processing.’

‘Good,’ said Heike. ‘So does that mean you’re all clear to go after the sleekit bastard who put them up to this?’

It was the last piece of the puzzle. The previous night, once Parlabane had outlined the nature of the con, it hadn’t taken long for Heike to deduce that the whole thing must have been predicated upon personal knowledge that Bodo and his cohorts could not have garnered for themselves. Nor could it have been cooked up at short notice: this had been long in the planning and painstaking in its execution.

There were only a handful of people who even knew that the photograph of Heike’s mother existed, and they had been shown it in the strictest confidence. This entire charade had been built on details that were nowhere near the public domain, such as the real meaning behind her tattoo.

Calling it a betrayal of trust didn’t come anywhere close to describing what had happened here. This was something far more bitter, vengeful and cold, and Heike could only think of one bastard who fitted the description.

Last night Heike had been about ready to put out a contract on the guy, never mind have him lifted by the polis, but McLeod told her the cops would have to hang fire. They couldn’t make a move until Bodo and his men were in custody, for fear that any pre-emptive action might cause word to filter back up the chain.

‘You can’t afford to scare off the big game by shooting at a snake,’ was how McLeod explained it, and Heike had accepted this.

The big game had been bagged now, however. Snake season was officially open.

‘I already made the call from the
Hecate
on our way back from the bust,’ McLeod informed her. ‘Alistair Maxwell was apprehended at his home in Glasgow ten minutes ago.’

We got out of taxis at roughly the same time in front of Govan police station, the first time we’d seen each other since getting back from Islay a couple of days ago. Neither of us said much. There were a lot of charged and confusing emotions going on after all that had happened, and now that we’d both had some time and space I really didn’t know where we stood.

Heike was looking surprisingly prim and sober in her appearance, like it was a dress rehearsal for the court appearances that would come later. That’s not to say she didn’t totally
sell
it; you wouldn’t think a grey wool top and a waterfall cardy was a look that could drip style and attitude until you’d seen Heike rocking it.