Black Noise

by Hiltunen, Pekka

  Lia watched the pub, lit up in the darkness with the din of music pouring out whenever the door opened. The thought that they might be standing in the same place as murderers lying in wait for a victim sent a chill down her spine.

  A mobile beeped. Maggie had found something.

  Paddy made it out of the pub onto the street quickly, but the three of them had to wait for Maggie for a few seconds. When she arrived, she brought news.

  ‘Evelyn Morris might not have disappeared alone,’ she said.

  Two men Maggie had just talked to claimed that on the night of her disappearance, Morris had been in the company of her friend Brian Fowler. Fowler had been going to the Black Cap and the other London gay hotspots for years, so all the regulars knew him. But no one had seen him since that night, and one of the men Maggie talked to had heard that Fowler hadn’t shown up at work at his marketing firm and no one could get hold of him. His phone was switched off.

  ‘The police must know he’s missing,’ Maggie said. ‘They just haven’t made it public.’

  Paddy said out loud what they were all thinking.

  ‘Four victims. Or perhaps Fowler is one of the killers.’

  14.

  Mari made her plan instantly after hearing their report.

  They had to go and check the areas surrounding the other two bars immediately to see if any similarities existed with the Black Cap. Dividing into pairs, Lia and Rico headed back to Heaven in the centre of the city and Maggie and Paddy went to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern.

  ‘We’re going to be exhausted soon. It’s dark. We’d be better off doing this in the morning. If this Brian Fowler isn’t the killer himself, isn’t he probably already dead?’ Lia asked Paddy in hushed tones before they split up.

  That seemed likely, Paddy said. ‘But we can’t think that way. We can’t start from that place,’ he continued. ‘You always have to hold on to the possibility that the person you’re looking for is alive. That’s how you find people alive who no one believes could have survived that long.’

  Lia and Rico took the Tube, and Paddy and Maggie went in his car.

  Those travelling by car arrived first. Around midnight, the RVT was still hopping, but people were starting to trickle out, some alone and others in pairs.

  Instead of going in, Maggie and Paddy began inspecting the surrounding area. It was only twenty or thirty metres to the site where Michael Cottle’s body was found on Goding Street, a dreary service road where, again, police stood on guard as crime scene investigators did their work. The area was not restricted as widely as the street where Evelyn Morris was found though. Maggie started to move closer to get a look at the police investigation, but Paddy jerked her back.

  ‘The car, there, in front of us,’ Paddy said quietly.

  Within a nearby parked car sat two police officers, one with a camera taking pictures of everyone who paused at the scene.

  Maggie and Paddy walked by the cordoned-off area calmly like a couple returning from a night out. As they passed the spot marked by the police line, Maggie pressed a button on her phone to mark the precise GPS coordinates, which instantly went back to Mari at the Studio.

  Finding their target took Lia and Rico a while. The site where David Wynn was found was not blocked off as visibly as those of the other two victims – on the buzzing streets of the West End, police investigations always attracted heavy crowds. Tiny York Place was a minor lane a couple of hundred metres from the entrance to Heaven. Guarding the mouth of the lane were two men whom Lia and Rico recognised as plain-clothes police officers just by the way they stood.

  The entrance to the nightclub was located below street level in the railway arches beneath Charing Cross station. The arches also led to several restaurants and other businesses, so no one could hang around long watching club-goers without being noticed himself, Rico guessed.

  ‘Maybe they went inside the club to choose their victim,’ he said. ‘And then waited on the street for him to come out and followed him somewhere.’

  Lia felt her skin tingle with a rush of anxiety at the knowledge that someone had been snatched from these streets to be beaten and murdered only a few days before. And with the feeling of how quickly the situation was changing, that they were in the middle of events.

  We aren’t far behind the police. In some areas we might be working in real time with their investigation.

  Strangely enough, along with everything else, that also gave her a feeling of satisfaction.

  Mari asked them to record as inconspicuously as possible everything about the streets and buildings surrounding the bars.

  ‘Take down absolutely everything. Where are there doors? Where are there stairways? The names of the businesses and offices. Is there rubbish? Have the streets been cleaned? Everything.’

  Paddy and Maggie walked around the RVT searching for a place the killers could have kept watch on the bar unnoticed. Right behind the club was the last patch of an old amusement park, Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. The name felt like black humour – in recent decades the ‘pleasure garden’ area had been known for drug dealing, free sex and vagrants.

  ‘Too restless a place if you wanted to watch the RVT in secret,’ Paddy said.

  Even in the dark a surprising number of people were about in the park, and police patrols made regular rounds.

  ‘And all those cameras,’ Paddy said, pointing out the CCTV installations on the walls of the buildings and the brick walls of the elevated railway that cut through the area. The entire locality around Vauxhall station was full of cameras.

  ‘Cameras don’t help though if the people watching the bar are indoors,’ Maggie said, pointing at a bare window in the brick wall rising from South Lambeth Road.

  ‘What is it?’ Paddy asked.

  ‘Not a clue.’

  Paddy took less than a minute to pick the lock that led into the empty space under the railway. Apparently some kind of business had operated in the space at one time, but the place seemed too uninviting for anything to succeed there.

  They found the small room containing the window Maggie had seen in the brick wall. On the floor by the window was a stool, which gave the impression of having been put there precisely so someone could look out.

  When they took turns standing on the stool, they could see directly over Kennington Lane to the entrance of the RVT. No one in the bar could have seen them, and no one on the street running below the window could see them either if they stood still.

  They watched the police investigating the crime scene on Goding Street and the crowd milling outside the RVT.

  ‘If the killers wanted to choose their victims unnoticed, they did it from here,’ Maggie said.

  Both teams were keeping Mari apprised of their progress by phone.

  ‘Come on out,’ she finally said. ‘Gather back here when you’re ready.’

  It was almost three in the morning by the time they arrived back at the Studio.

  Rico uploaded the pictures they had taken to the Topo, and they all typed up their notes. By three thirty everything was ready, and it was time to draw conclusions.

  ‘I think we have four victims,’ Mari said. ‘We can’t know whether Brian Fowler is already dead, but he isn’t a killer.’

  While the others were walking around the crime scenes, Mari had looked for what she could find out about Fowler online. Not much. Brian Fowler worked at a marketing agency as an account manager. Mari found references to his schooldays and participation in gay sporting events, including a couple of prizes in Gay Aerobics competitions. For several years he had been involved with organising a fundraising drive for a foundation benefiting children with cleft palates.

  Fowler hadn’t had a cleft palate himself as a child, but his sister had, Mari reported. ‘I even found a picture of him with Evelyn Morris at a fundraising gala.’

  Mari showed the picture she had found online. They looked at Brian Fowler and Evelyn Morris hand in hand, radiant in their formal attire. Their eyes gave away that
they were a little tiddly.

  ‘That man isn’t behind all this,’ Mari said.

  The crime scenes where the bodies were found didn’t seem to have told them anything about the perpetrators. Maybe the police would learn more, which they would hear in due course.

  ‘We made a lot of progress today,’ Mari said. ‘Now we have two options. Either we go to sleep or we soldier on.’

  ‘What can we do in the middle of the night?’ Maggie asked.

  Mari pointed at the pictures and their notes.

  ‘We can catch them using those,’ she said.

  Rico stood up and made a tired sound. The others watched as he paced restlessly, placing his hands on his head.

  Rico stared at Mari.

  ‘It’s an impossible job,’ he said.

  Mari just stared back at him.

  Rico squeezed his head with his hands, as if trying to prevent himself from thinking something.

  ‘Do you understand how many variables we’d have to program?’ he asked Mari.

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘And even if I could program it, it still might not be any use,’ Rico objected.

  ‘That is a possibility,’ Mari admitted.

  ‘You mean a computer program that would calculate possible future crime scenes?’ Paddy asked.

  Mari nodded.

  Rico squeezed his eyes shut before the hopelessness of the task.

  ‘All three of these are gay bars,’ Mari said. ‘That’s one variable. Each one has an Underground station nearby. The killers could have visited the area several times and used the Tube. That could be another variable. And then there’s the fact that the bars are in different parts of London and all have small alleys nearby without any flats or shops at street level. And there must be other variables.’

  ‘That’s pure speculation,’ Paddy said. ‘There must be hundreds of places like that in London. Maybe more.’

  Rico sighed.

  ‘We should still do it,’ he said. ‘If we can do it, it will give us probabilities.’

  ‘We can do it,’ Mari assured them.

  ‘How can you know that?’ Lia asked.

  ‘It’s already been done,’ Mari said. ‘The killers have already drawn the same extrapolations. We just don’t know all of the variables they’re considering.’

  15.

  Rico stayed up all night working on the program, while the others got some rest. Running on just a few hours of sleep, Lia did a full day’s work at Level, but all she could think about were the events of the night before, canvassing the clubs and Rico slaving away at his Sisyphean task.

  The news channels had already christened the murderers the Video Killers, and the media was full of reports about snuff films.

  For makers of snuff films, the cinematography was part and parcel of the killing, a BBC news broadcast reported. Visual recordings of serial killings were extremely rare, but serial killers were known often to be interested in snuff films.

  ‘Some of them may even practise their crimes in a macabre way by looking at pictures of people dying,’ the newsman explained.

  The videos gave the violence a strange new dimension, Lia noticed as she watched the news. Because it was filmed, the killing became less real.

  It’s almost as if it’s harder to accept that this actually happened because we can see it on a video like that. As if the whole purpose of the act wasn’t the killing but the video.

  ‘We’re still talking about a serial killer, though,’ Mari observed at the Studio when Lia arrived at six in the evening. ‘To them, all the details are important: the kicking, who they kick, the videos and the horror they evoke. And that people are watching them.’

  Rico was so tired that his head kept nodding the whole time they were trying to hold a progress briefing on the sofas in Mari’s office. Everyone was there except Paddy, who was joining them later.

  The program was still in process. The number of variables was huge, and data gathering and analysis was slow. Most difficult was collecting information about CCTV camera placements. The authorities had cameras, but private parties maintained them too, especially security firms, and some of the cameras installed in public places were dummies not connected to anything. Rico had access to some surveillance systems through his hacker contacts, but no one had a complete map of London’s countless CCTV cameras.

  Maggie, Berg and Mari had helped collect information, but they still didn’t even have a complete list of the gay bars and clubs in London. They had found data on more than a hundred gay gathering places, but there were more.

  ‘Maybe we don’t have to list all of them,’ Mari said. ‘Maybe it’s enough that we include the well-known ones. Those are the kinds of places they’ve targeted so far.’

  On Saturday morning two messages were waiting on Lia’s phone.

  One was from Mari, who asked her to come in to the Studio before lunch. Lia looked at the message sent time. Two o’clock in the morning.

  The other message was from Berg and had come at a more sensible hour, half eight.

  We have Swedish pancakes. And a new jogging lead.

  ‘You know Swedish pancakes have nothing on Finnish, right?’ Lia said when she rang Berg on the way to meet him at his flat in Barnet. ‘They’re so sweet.’

  ‘Javisst,’ Berg said. ‘They’re still pancakes though.’

  Berg had inherited his name from his Swedish father – Bertil Berg – along with his rare talent for set making. He had adapted to British life completely, having lived here since he was a small child, but his Scandinavian roots were important at the Studio, linking him emotionally to Mari and Lia.

  At breakfast, they ate most of the pancakes, and Lia knew that when she left Berg wouldn’t be able to resist giving Gro a piece.

  The three of them left together. While Lia did little sprints with Gro, Berg satisfied himself with a brisk walk.

  The day at the Studio was going to be hard, Berg said.

  ‘Sometimes I worry about all the things Mari decides to take on,’ he said. ‘Not because of anyone else, but for her. She doesn’t know how to let go of work.’

  Lia smiled. Berg had such a way of supporting the people he cared about.

  ‘The miracle girl,’ Berg said, and Lia knew he meant Mari.

  ‘That’s what I called her years ago when I joined the Studio,’ Berg related. ‘Miracle girl.’

  Lia saw her opportunity.

  ‘I’ve never heard how you ended up at the Studio,’ she said.

  Lia tried to make it sound light, as if she were simply mentioning a fact in passing, but the significance of the question was not lost on Berg.

  ‘Mari hasn’t told you about it?’ Berg asked.

  And he told her the whole story. Perhaps Berg felt the moment was right because the Studio was constantly on both of their minds. Berg and the others were gradually taking Lia in, making her part of the Studio, and these days the bond between them was strong. Feeling like she was one of the group helped.

  Years before, Berg had landed a job working on a big period drama, which was celebrating the anniversary of the founding of a large theatre in Liverpool. The production had dozens of workers back stage. Unfortunately everything went wrong. Berg was too gullible, trusting others too much. Construction fell behind schedule. Someone broke into the set storeroom, stealing props and damaging half completed backdrops.

  The whole project was on the verge of collapse, and all of the blame was landing on Berg, whose work was most prominent.

  ‘They liked the sets and props, the ones we were able to get into rehearsals,’ he said. ‘The director said he could almost faint with joy when he looked at them. But that didn’t matter when the whole production was about to crumble in on itself.’

  Berg had agonised over his options. He could resign and give up his budding career as a set designer. Then Mari appeared. She had heard about Berg from Maggie and came to Liverpool to see his work.

  No one told Mari, an outsider, what tr
ouble the play was in.

  ‘But somehow she pieced it together,’ Berg said and looked at Lia.

  Mari never revealed to Berg everything she did to help the play. It was a lot – that much Berg knew. A new investor appeared on the scene, a Londoner Mari knew. With his own money he hired two carpenters to work around the clock and ordered new materials, some of which had to be flown in from overseas. For two weeks Mari and her acquaintance poured in money and support, until the play was back on its feet.

  The show opened. Berg was able to walk away with his head held high. Only a few days later, he received a call from Mari asking him if he would come to work for her.

  ‘The miracle girl,’ Berg repeated. ‘I said that to her as soon as I realised what the Studio was about. Rico was already involved then too, and he was already quite the miracle worker himself.’

  Berg fell silent for a moment, lost in his memories. Lia considered what she had just heard. Mari had helped Berg just like she had helped Lia. Had Mari done some great service for everyone at the Studio? If she had, was it altruistic or did she want to bind them to herself – or both?

  ‘Herregud,’ Berg burst out and then started walking faster again.

  The Swedish was a signal to Lia and made her grin. It was one of their inside jokes when they were out walking. They would always speak English with Scandinavian accents and complain about goings on in Woodside Park like they were fresh off the boat and couldn’t let go of their homelands. Lia didn’t remember where the characters came from, but she loved these conversations.

  ‘These Brits,’ Berg said. What Britain needed, he cried, was cottages, summer cottages, hundreds and thousands of proper summer cottages, one for everyone like in Scandinavia.

  ‘This nation spends far too little time wearing thick woollen socks huddled around a wood stove,’ Berg said.

  Yes, they needed proper cottages, Lia agreed, with proper cottage life where women were in charge.