Dead Girl Walking (5 page)

The hammer of a snare drum was bouncing off the walls as I went in. It seemed all the more shockingly loud for being on its own: no bass, no toms, only snare beats every half second. The auditorium was a big rectangular standing area surrounded on three sides by a gallery level. It made me think of a venue for something brutal, like cage fighting. This was probably down to a twisted fear that in a few hours, psychologically speaking, I might be the one being torn apart in front of a baying crowd.

As I came up the ramp I saw people and activity all around, familiar faces concentrated upon their tasks: plugging in leads, fussing over kit like mums over children. Everybody else was already here, which was about the size of it: from my point of view, in Savage Earth Heart everybody else always had been already here.

I got a few waves and nods, but not a lot of hail and hello. I realised I might have been
on schedule
– I had told Jan that I could get here from Shetland in a day – but that wasn’t quite the same as
on time
.

I saw Scott, the bass player, no longer the runt of the litter since I became an official member rather than just a session player. I saw Damien, hunched over a pedal board, a guitar pack transmitter partly shadowing a couple of inches of high-quality bum cleavage. And of course I saw Rory, pounding away on the drum riser.

I didn’t yet see the star of the show, but I knew she must be around.

A bearded guy in a Nine Inch Nails T-shirt bounded up, the end of a lead folded over multiple times and gripped in his left hand. The face-fuzz looked daft on him: the lengthy whiskers seemed pasted on. He began speaking without introducing himself, a stream of techno-babble. I took in almost none of it and hoped it wasn’t important.

I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to know who he was: venue staff or one of the road crew, I couldn’t tell. I felt anxious, like I’d been off school and missed lessons. Everybody else seemed to know who each other were and what they were meant to be about.

I felt like an impostor and kept expecting to be told that my being here was a mistake, which was made worse by the fact that the person who had requested my presence was nowhere to be seen. And in truth, my great fear was that she would be the one who would demand to know what the hell I thought I was doing here. I never knew where I stood with Heike from day to day and sometimes hour to hour.

I had been amazed when the producer phoned and asked me to come in for some session work on the new Savage Earth Heart album. I thought it was someone from the orchestra winding me up, because I had taken some flak after I was heard playing along to
The
Venal Tribe
in my hotel room. I went as far as getting the guy to hold while I Googled the recording studio he claimed to be calling from and checked the number that was showing up on my handset.

I was a little star-struck the first time I met her, and worried that I’d be all thumbs when it came to playing. Luckily the pressure of trying to please my mum served me well, and I really killed it that day. I remember being delighted with my performance, and then disappointed that Heike said so little about it, detached behind the soundproof glass of the mixing booth. All I got out of her throughout the sessions was technical stuff: give us another run-through; give us more of that; give us less of this. We barely spoke beyond the professional; in fact, we were seldom in the same room.

So it was another big surprise when she asked me to join the band outright: not just for the forthcoming tour, but as a fully fledged member. I didn’t need to be asked twice, thinking she must have been running the rule over me in ways I didn’t appreciate during the album sessions. I expected our relationship to take on a different footing after that, but I can’t say that it did, really.

From then on we were in the same room, at least, hammering away for hours at a time in a rehearsal space down by the Clyde in preparation for the live shows. But at the end of those days Heike just seemed to disappear, hardly ever coming for drinks or a bite with the rest of us. She always had somewhere she needed to be: meetings with Mairi, the band’s manager, meetings with the label, media interviews, photo shoots. I wondered whether she was subtly laying down a dividing line between herself and the rest of us, as though to emphasise that we were only her backing band.

Maybe that was what was going on during set-up here in Bristol: the minions scurrying around, making everything ready before their queen graced them with her presence.

I only needed a glimpse of her, maybe a nod or a wave: just something that would make me feel I was in the right place, because nothing else was doing that so far.

I got shouted at to knock off tuning up because it was interfering with something else on the console. Then I got shouted at again because I had gone off in a worried daydream and didn’t realise I was being addressed when the sound engineer actually needed me to play.

And all the while, Rory was providing an unsettling backbeat to my discomfort, testing the mics on each part of his kit.

I’d spoken to our drummer even less than I’d spoken to Heike. He made me a little nervy. Scared, even: like of a dog, where you’re not sure if it’s because you don’t know the animal or because your instinct is rightly telling you to beware. In all the time we’d been rehearsing, I don’t think his words to me were in double figures. He rarely came to the pub, and when he did he sat away from me.

It had struck me on one such night that maybe he’d been pals with Maxi, the band’s original fiddler. Yeah, that thought made for a cosy evening.

At some point Rory finally stopped hitting things, though only because the sound engineer was asking him something.

‘No, I told you,’ he grunted irritably in reply. ‘I don’t want to hear any fucking fiddle.’

At least nobody in the audience would be bearing a grudge about the appearance of a new violin player, like they might if we were a metal band who had swapped out a legendary guitarist. There was only one member of this group that wasn’t replaceable. The band had been praised for its musicianship and for developing a distinct sound, but we were under no illusions: Savage Earth Heart was Heike Gunn.

Everybody understood that. Most of all Heike.

The young guy with the mis-beard returned and attached an instrumental mic to my fiddle.

I nearly jumped when I first drew the bow: I had never heard it make such a loud noise, reverberating around the empty hall. I got a brief thrill of power, followed by a less pleasant awareness of how amplified and obvious it would be if I got anything wrong.

At first it sounded like I was playing my fiddle inside a giant biscuit tin, but as the engineer altered a few settings it gradually became warmer until I was enjoying the sound and the volume so much that I had to be shouted at again to knock it off. I was yet to learn that this part of the soundcheck was always very stop-start, full of double-backs and minor adjustments.

It often sounded just fine to me, only for him to alter it again, sometimes for the worse, other times for an improvement I could not have anticipated.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said, noting my frown in response to him deciding on a final setting that seemed rougher than the last. ‘We’re not happy until you’re not happy.’

I was so intent upon the process that I hadn’t noticed Heike appear on stage, a few feet to my left.

Since last I saw her, only a few days ago, she had dyed her hair pink in a startling change from her trademark cream-blonde, and had straightened it to wear down rather than in its familiar tight curls. When I say pink, I don’t mean bright, screaming pink. It was kind of a half-arsed, mixed-colours-in-the-washing-machine pink. I didn’t get it. It looked like she had been going for Hayley Williams and picked up the wrong bottle. That wasn’t Heike, though. If her hair was a specific colour, that style, that length, it was for a reason.

She gave me a quick smile and nod, then turned her attention back to Angus, the guitar roadie and the one guy I knew was definitely on
our
crew, as he had been at most of the rehearsals. She crouched down with him in front of her pedalboard, instantly focused on her preparations. I caught a glimpse of that letter H she had tattoed on the inside of her right arm, which reminded me that I was the only person in the band – maybe even the only person in the building – who didn’t have ink.

I had half-hoped she’d bound over and welcome me, say she was pleased I had made it, maybe ask about the funeral.

I ticked myself off for being so needy. She had a lot of responsibilities, and there wasn’t time for hand-holding and making sure I fitted in. It was a soundcheck, for God’s sake. We were all busy. Still, I felt myself become determined to make her glad I was here, and ensure she had a wider smile for me before the show was over.

After a period I guessed was possibly longer than our scheduled set, everybody was happy enough with the set-up to try running through a few songs. I was almost bursting with my need to actually play something, but the first number only kicked off more tinkering. Heike seemed unsatisfied with just about everything.

The whole soundcheck broke down for about half an hour while she fussed over her guitar and vocal levels. Two of the guys nipped out for a fag, while I took the opportunity to speak to the one person to whom I could admit I was terrified.

I wandered off to the wings, crouched down against a wall and fumbled for my phone.

‘My hands are trembling,’ I told Keith. ‘I can barely grip my bow.’

‘Don’t be daft, Mon,’ he replied, his tone patient and reassuring. ‘You’ve done this a million times, and with
proper
musicians.’

‘These
are
proper musicians.’

‘You know what I mean. You’re used to playing at a higher level than anybody else on that stage.’

‘I’m not used to playing in front of this kind of crowd.’

‘And that’s why you shouldn’t worry. Nobody in that audience is going to notice if you get a note wrong, not like at an orchestra recital full of trained ears. The fans will all be half cut. Plus, the only thing they’ll really be paying attention to is the singer.’

He was right about that much. There was little doubt that she knew it too, hence my waiting and waiting for Heike to decide she was happy with the sound.

When we were through, the support act barely had time to soundcheck before the doors opened, and they didn’t look too pleased about it. They had been hovering outside in the loading bay the whole time, smoking and waiting for the all-clear.

I heard Damien try to smooth it over with their singer.

‘Sorry mate, we’re always like this the first night. Bigger venue than we’re used to. We’ll take half the time tomorrow, you’ll see.’

I noted the ‘we’, when it was obvious to everybody that Heike had been the one drawing things out. I didn’t know whether Damien was being loyal or protective, or whether he was just aware that it was best to stop things becoming personal.

‘Yeah, no worries,’ the singer replied, giving Damien a pat on the shoulder as he left, but as soon as our guitarist was gone, he resumed his moaning.

‘One spawny hit off the back of a fucking Yank TV show and she thinks she’s Lady Gaga,’ he spat.

‘Yep,’ replied their keyboard player. ‘Gonna be a long fucking tour.’

One of them glanced across as though just noticing I was there. He looked away again, unperturbed. I realised that as they had been outside during our run-through they didn’t know who I was.

It made me feel oddly powerful for a moment, like I enjoyed the gift of invisibility and now had a secret I could use. Then I realised that they’d suss who I was soon enough. Great. I would already be feeling awkward about it before it became mutual, and we still had twelve dates with these guys.

‘Steady, lads,’ said a voice, gruff and firm but not aggressive. It belonged to a burly middle-aged bloke in a Def Leppard T-shirt, spinning a roll of tape around his index finger.

‘Don’t let your emotions run wild and give you a false impression. None of you know Miss Heike yet.’

‘Yeah, okay, but—’ the singer responded, still too angry to be apologetic.

‘She’s a complex young woman,’ Def Leppard went on forcefully. ‘Now, I appreciate she might have got your backs up a little tonight, but I promise you lads, by the end of the tour … you’re gonna fucking
despise
her.’

He said this last part quietly, through his teeth, glancing briefly at me as he spoke. He knew I was there and he knew who I was, or at least that I was in the band, but very clearly he didn’t care.

It was like he was sending me a warning: I just couldn’t work out whether it was about Heike or about himself.

Mairi had arranged for the band to meet Parlabane at their regular rehearsal space, a low-rise warren of soundproofed rooms off the Broomielaw, in the shadow of the Kingston Bridge. From the number of flight cases lining the walls and floors of the place, it looked like there were several bands at work today. He was pretty sure he passed Joe Rattray of Admiral Fallow in the corridor, and his inner fanboy wished he had the luxury of just hanging around and listening at a few doors.

Instead, he would be listening to lies and evasion.

He was expecting four of them: Scott Hastie, the bass player; Damien Lowe, lead guitar; Rory Friel, drummer; and Monica the violinist. He was also expecting them to be late, and they didn’t disappoint. Mairi didn’t show up on time either, leaving him to sit in the reception area like a spare tool. He tried not to dwell on the fact that he was currently in possession of the biggest showbiz scoop in the country but bound by what few principles he had left not to share it. Reflexively, as was the modern custom whenever one had a minimum of thirty seconds to kill, he got out his phone, but he wasn’t checking Twitter or firing up Angry Birds. These days Parlabane’s idle-hands temptation was to ring Sarah on the off chance that one of these times she’d pick up.

They’d be a little tentative and awkward at first, but they’d have news to discuss as they hadn’t spoken in so long. Small talk, little details about what they’d each been up to. That would lead to more solicitous enquiries, rekindling familiar interest in each other’s thoughts and feelings. Soon enough they’d be talking like they used to and she might start asking herself if this didn’t mean things were better: that maybe all they’d needed was a break.