Back Up

by Paul Colize

  The police enquiry had concluded that the events were a case of mass hysteria leading to uncontrolled violence. A comparable situation at a football match in Turkey had led to the deaths of forty spectators, twenty-seven of whom died from knife-wounds.

  But this was the first time such unrestrained violence had been seen in a night club. The final death toll was eighteen.

  Stern was struck by this final piece of information: articles published at the time had mentioned fifteen deaths.

  Hans Bühler explained that two people had died from their wounds, and that an employee of the night club – a disc-jockey – had subsequently committed suicide.

  He had been found hanging at his home, a few days after the events.

  70: MY IDEA TOOK SHAPE

  I worked six days a week. Andy and I were both free on Wednesdays, and spent the day together.

  We would meet mid-afternoon in front of the church on Rue du Temple. From there, we would take the Sentier du Télégraphe, climbing on foot to Glion, a small village perched high on the road to Caux.

  The village was home to a bistro run by a Belgian, where we would drink Stella and smoke joints. Andy knew where to get them: they were more expensive than in London, but the quality was worth it.

  Thanks to my new lifestyle, I was smoking less and less dope. I still used speed, but more in order to stay awake all night than for the sensations it delivered.

  Late in the afternoon, when the beers and dope were taking effect, I would talk to Andy about rock music. I had bought myself a portable turntable and a few albums. Hendrix, Cream, the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane were top of the pile.

  Andy talked to me about his twin passions, photography and painting. Between us, he did most of the talking, often with his trademark sing-song, theatrical delivery. Andy was gay, but that never blurred our friendship. One day, I told him about my experience in the swimming-pool cubicle. Nothing more was said.

  Often, Andy would preface a remark with the words, ‘When I’m rich and famous…’

  He had studied art at university in Washington State, and later at Yale. He had secured a grant to study in Rome before setting off on his world tour. Montreux was only his second stopover.

  He said he was going to launch a new movement in painting: hyper-realism. He would be its leader; other artists would follow in his wake. He would stage vast exhibitions in the world’s most prestigious galleries, and the whole planet would applaud in wonder.

  When he talked about art, he used complicated expressions: affective subjectivity, illusionism, pictorial decoys.

  He figured photography was the midpoint between art and reality. He wanted to break with the predominant trend for abstract art. I listened, understanding nothing.

  One day, I asked if he would show me his paintings. He seemed reluctant. He tended to send them all back to the States once they were finished.

  He had been working on an ambitious project for several weeks. He agreed to show me the work, but only when it was absolutely ready.

  On one of our Wednesday afternoons, Andy posited a theory about our respective centres of interest. Sight and hearing were the only senses engaged by the arts. Sight allowed us to perceive reality, to see objects, describe them and be aware of their presence. It was the basis of scientific reasoning.

  Our sense of hearing, on the other hand, could only transcribe the information it received in temporary form. The fleeting quality of sound was precisely the reason why certain sounds, especially music, had such an emotional impact. Andy reckoned that our sense of hearing appealed more to the emotions than to the conscious mind.

  I failed to register the implications of this at first, but he had given me the elements of an explanation for what had taken place in the Berlin studio.

  Next day, I registered at the library in Montreux, near the hotel.

  I subscribed to various scientific magazines. I became fascinated by anything to do with sound – its physiology and psychology, acoustics, psycho-acoustics, geophysics.

  What little money was left at the end of each week, I spent on books that couldn’t be found at the library.

  I read them at night, while on duty, and I took notes.

  When I felt ready, I began to write my story, supporting my theory with examples and technical data culled from my reading.

  Little by little, my idea took shape.

  71: ONE YEAR TO THE DAY

  As soon as he had finished his rounds, Dominique climbed into his car and drove to the cemetery in Ixelles.

  He was curious and impatient to see what awaited him there. Odile was not a common name, but what would he do if several Odiles were buried in the plot?

  He parked on Avenue des Saisons, went into a florist’s shop and bought a magnificent bouquet.

  He checked the plan at the entrance to the cemetery and headed down the broad central path. At the circular intersection, he took Avenue No. 3. At the second intersection, he turned left onto Avenue No. 20.

  Plot No. 7 was at the top of the path.

  Dominique paused and looked around. It was mild for early February, and he squinted in the bright sunshine.

  The cemetery was in the middle of town, yet the silence was broken only by the cries of children at a school somewhere out of sight.

  The ground sloped gently towards to a box hedge masking the railway line beyond. In the distance, the office towers on Boulevard du Triomphe barred the horizon.

  The plot held a hundred or so tombs, arranged side-by-side in rows. Most dated from 1991.

  Dominique moved carefully along, reading the first names one by one. In the middle of the third row, he crouched down to read one in particular:

  ODILE CHANTRAINE

  ÉPOUSE R. BERNIER

  1920–1991

  A shock ran through his body.

  His heart beat fast. Beneath the inscription was a photograph of the deceased, in black and white. The very image of X Midi.

  The grave looked neglected. The tombstone was streaked with blackish mould. There were no candles or flowers.

  He laid the bouquet and took a few photographs.

  A woman paying her respects at a nearby grave walked across, hobbling slightly. She was small, barely a metre fifty in height, and must have been about eighty.

  Her face radiated tenderness.

  ‘Pardon me for bothering you, sir.’

  Dominique gave her a broad smile. She wore a wig, fixed on backwards.

  ‘No bother, Madame, how can I help you?’

  ‘It hasn’t rained for days. I want to water my flowers, but the watering cans and taps are down at the end of the path, and I have trouble walking.’

  ‘Shall I fetch you a watering can?’

  ‘That would be most kind. It’s for my husband. I’ve been coming to see him twice a week, for the past thirty years.’

  She glanced at Odile Bernier’s tomb.

  ‘Is this someone from your family?’

  Dominique realised the watering can was a pretext. The old lady was curious.

  ‘From the family of one of my patients, at the clinic where I work.’

  The woman’s eyes widened. She pushed down the corners of her mouth in admiration.

  ‘A clinic?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re a doctor?’

  Dominique laughed.

  ‘No, I’m not clever enough for that. A humble physiotherapist.’

  Another admiring pout.

  ‘A phy-sythrapist treated my husband when he was ill.’

  ‘Physio-thera-pist.’

  ‘Yes, yes, it’s difficult to pronounce!’

  ‘What happened to your husband, Madame?’

  The woman pursed her lips in grim resignation.

  ‘Cancer. He was gone in less than three months. He was barely fifty-seven. Never drank a drop of alcohol, never smoked. And he played tennis twice a week.’

  ‘I’m very sorry, Madame.’

  She swept the air with a fatali
stic wave of the hand.

  ‘Such is life. What can one do? I make the best of it. And he was a fine-looking man. I never went with another man after him. But I was still beautiful when he died, and there were a few who were after me.’

  ‘You are a sainted woman, Madame.’

  She gave Dominique a knowing wink.

  ‘There were one or two before him, though.’

  Dominique winked back.

  ‘It’ll go no further!’

  She sighed.

  ‘It’s been a long while since I saw anyone attending to Madame Bernier.’

  Dominique felt his heart leap.

  ‘Did you know her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yet you mention her by name.’

  ‘I know the names of all one-hundred-and-eight people resting here. I’ve been coming twice a week, for thirty years.’

  ‘Do you know what happened to her?’

  ‘Well, I know that she has no immediate family, now. Her husband died a few years before her. She had a son who came from time to time, but he died too.’

  ‘Was there only one son?’

  She seemed surprised by the question.

  ‘Yes, and no daughter. That’s why no one has been for a long time.’

  She assumed a detached expression.

  ‘Except perhaps the family member being treated at your clinic.’

  Dominique had no desire to play the old lady’s game. He walked to the end of the path, filled a watering can and carried it back.

  ‘A very good day to you, Madame, and thank you for the gift of your charming smile!’

  ‘Good day to you too, Doctor.’

  He thanked her and left the cemetery.

  Back in his car, Dominique took out his mobile and retrieved the card that had been handed to him by Gérard Jacobs, the police officer. He punched in the number.

  Jacobs recognised his voice straightaway.

  ‘Hello! Any news?’

  ‘Yes, I believe I’ve identified our man.’

  The policeman paused.

  ‘He’s able to talk?’

  ‘No, but he is managing to communicate with me.’

  Dominique explained everything, and told Jacobs about his visit to the cemetery.

  The policeman noted down the information.

  He waited for Dominique to finish his story, then cleared his throat.

  ‘Well played, Sir. The cryptanalysts wondered if the cipher might be the coordinates for a cemetery, but there are several hundred across Belgium. I’ll see what I can find about Odile Bernier-Chantraine, and I’ll call you back.’

  He spoke again, before Dominique could cut the call.

  ‘Oh, and you’re aware of today’s date?’

  The question took Dominique by surprise.

  ‘February the eleventh. Why?’

  ‘Your man was knocked down outside Midi station on February the eleventh, at 6:00p.m. A year ago to the day.’

  72: GHOST WORDS

  Michael Stern took advantage of a few days’ holiday between Christmas and New Year to turn his attention to a decisive question: exactly how had the men Berger surprised at the studio tampered with the tapes?

  He fixed a meeting with Chris Reynolds, a gifted and voluble sound engineer he had got to know as a student. Reynolds was working for Radio 1 now, and supervised studio recordings for the Ulster Orchestra. He was often called in by promoters to record rock or pop concerts.

  Stern visited Reynolds at home, a small bungalow with a pistachio-green façade, on Avoniel Drive. Reynolds offered tea and, not without some difficulty, cleared him a place to sit in the living room, which was crammed with books, records and magazines.

  Stern saw straightaway that he would need deep reserves of patience to extract the answers to his questions.

  With plentiful gesturing and sound effects, Reynolds launched into a detailed account of the Hendrix and Pink Floyd concerts he had supervised at Whitia Hall that November.

  Next, came an overview of his major productions and social ascent since leaving university. After that, he expounded on his personal vision for the future of rock and pop music in the short, medium and long term. The monologue took over an hour.

  Stern was a very good listener – a fine quality in a journalist. He sipped his tea, champing at the bit.

  When Reynolds asked Stern the reason for his visit, he stated his question in plain terms, to avoid further procrastination.

  Was it possible to tamper with a recorded tape?

  And if so, could the tampering influence anyone listening to it? Reynolds stared at the ceiling for a moment, then got to his feet, left the room and returned with a piece of paper on which he drew a cross section of a human ear.

  His explanation was delivered in solemn tones.

  The ear enabled us to capture sounds, but the information received was only decoded in the brain.

  Armed with a pencil, Reynolds continued with an explanation – based on the diagram – of how sound vibrations are channelled along a conduit leading to a fine, strong, elastic membrane less than half an inch in diameter, better known as the tympanum or eardrum. The membrane vibrated at the slightest sound.

  Tapping on the paper with his finger, Reynolds noted that each sound received sent a nerve impulse to the brain, corresponding to its particular frequency. The oscillations encountered a thin partition, the basilar membrane, covered in thousands of nerve cells, which transmitted a ‘sound picture’ to the brain.

  The science was far more complex, of course, but he would spare Stern the details.

  Reynolds explained that human hearing had its limits, just like human vision. We couldn’t hear all sounds, only those with a frequency of between 20 and 20,000 hertz (the lowest and highest respectively). Anything below 20 hertz was referred to as infrasound, and anything above 20 kilohertz was ultrasound.

  With an air of mystery, he declared that while it was impossible for us to hear anything outside this range, it did not mean that infra- or ultrasounds had no effect on the human brain.

  Take elephants, for example. They used infrasound to ward off their enemies. The giant beasts were also capable of communicating with one another in this way, across distances of between five and thirty miles.

  Reynolds continued with an anecdote that sent shivers down Stern’s spine: In the early 1960s, two English researchers in acoustics tested the effects of infrasound during a concert in London. They had introduced very low frequency sounds into specific pieces of music, and then asked the audience to describe their sensations. A majority of those questioned reported feeling unexpected emotions such as nostalgia, anguish or heightened aggression.

  Powerful infrasound waves could be highly destructive, both mechanically and physiologically. Experiments had been carried out during the war, with the German army. Low levels of infrasound produced significant physiological symptoms, leading to nervous or psychological disorders.

  Noting Stern’s evident fascination, Reynolds got to his feet once again and searched through his bookshelves. He took out a scientific review and summarised one of the articles.

  In the 1950s, two American doctors studying the effects produced by certain waves in the brain had been visited by agents of the CIA. The government agency had taken over their project and appropriated their technology for its own labs.

  He continued with an article by one Allan Frey, published in 1962 in the Journal of Applied Physiology.

  The article reported that the use of extreme low-density electromagnetic energy had caused both deaf and non-deaf subjects to hear sounds. The effects had been observed several miles from the antenna used to transmit the waves. With slight variations to the parameters, it was possible to recreate the sensation of a brutal blow to the head.

  When he had finished reading the article, Reynolds delved into his bookshelves once more and emerged triumphant, with a patent application from an American researcher in Norcross, Georgia.

  The patent described a silent
communications system based on inaudible sound waves of very low or very high frequencies. The description of the process explained that the intended message would be transmitted using acoustic vibrations, and ‘planted’ in the brain of the recipient by the use of loudspeakers or headphones. The carrier waves could be transmitted ‘live’, in real time, or recorded and stored on mechanical or magnetic supports.

  To complete his demonstration, Reynolds fetched a large Revox tape recorder and placed it on the table, in front of Stern. He disappeared into another room and returned a few minutes later with a spool, which he positioned on the machine. He slipped a set of headphones over Stern’s ears and asked him to listen.

  The tape turned for about a minute, but Stern heard nothing.

  Reynolds stopped the machine, wound the tape back and played it again, but faster.

  This time, Stern heard a collection of sounds that sounded for all the world like some kind of dialogue. Reynolds explained that it was a lovers’ conversation, between two elephants.

  His conclusion was clear; it was possible to record or insert infrasound onto magnetic tape, but powerful equipment was required for it to have any effect on the listener.

  Reynolds launched into a new topic: sound illusions, beginning with the Doppler effect.

  The phenomenon explained why an ambulance siren seemed to become more and more high-pitched as the vehicle approached, and more low-pitched when it was moving into the distance.

  He elaborated further with a sketch explaining that the phenomenon was due to the space between each wavefront.

  On now to musical illusions: the tritone paradox, the Shepard tone and the ‘melody of silences’.

  The tritone paradox showed that it was difficult to determine where a note was situated in the octave when it was played simultaneously across five octaves. The paradox occurs when the note is followed by a second note played in the same way but separated from the first by an interval of six semi-tones. Because the listener has no precise information about the note’s position on the octave, some will state that the second note is lower than the first, while others believe it is higher.