Black Noise

by Hiltunen, Pekka

  ‘But we may learn much more about these killings, perhaps unexpected things,’ she said. ‘Hopefully not.’

  In the press conference, the police only showed short clips of the kicking videos set to Queen’s music. Even these brief excerpts deeply disturbed some viewers, but the TV news immediately rebroadcast them all over Britain. Then they started spreading online, despite official pleas.

  And within a couple of hours another meme started spreading online. People synced the snuff videos with the entire songs so everyone could watch the videos straight through with the accompanying music, seeing how every blow really was edited in time with the beat.

  That same night the police released a statement reminding the public that distributing the videos could interfere with the police investigation. Still the pace kept picking up. Curious viewers linked to them over and over, yielding hundreds of thousands of hits within the day. Most of the comments online registered dismay, but jokes started to appear in amongst the condemnation too.

  ‘I detest people,’ Lia said to Mari over the phone. ‘Really and truly.’

  ‘I know,’ Mari said.

  ‘For some people this goes straight to the very basest parts of them. The vultures.’

  ‘Best to prepare for more of this to come.’

  Mari still didn’t want to return to the Studio on Sunday, but she asked Rico to meet her at a coffee shop.

  They hugged in greeting. They didn’t always do that, but now it felt necessary.

  ‘I stopped crying a few days ago,’ Rico said.

  ‘Good,’ Mari said. ‘For me it still comes back from time to time. Sometimes I can go half a day without doing so though.’

  They had work to do, lots of work. They had to investigate everything the connection to Queen might reveal, Mari said.

  ‘I’ve already been doing that,’ Rico said.

  Because of the black videos they knew all ten songs the killer had chosen. That list still wasn’t any help identifying him: the same songs showed up on thousands of playlists Queen fans had posted online.

  ‘But they are all pretty old,’ Mari pointed out.

  The songs were from the 1970s, one from the very early 80s.

  ‘He would be in his fifties,’ Mari guessed.

  The man was from the generation that lived through the rise of the music video.

  ‘He’s probably had some involvement in film or video production,’ Rico added. ‘You don’t learn editing like that overnight.’

  Rico also had some important new information. He had started investigating the people whose user accounts the killer had hacked to upload his videos. They were mostly young people with no obvious connection to each other.

  ‘Then I looked at what else they had done online,’ Rico said.

  Digging that up had been extremely time consuming. Rico had needed to find each user’s IP address and then search what else had been done from those locations. He had found lots of network traffic, along with dozens of passwords to different sites like online retailers, discussion forums and gaming servers. The normal things young people did online.

  ‘And they had all poked fun at Queen,’ Rico said.

  Every one of them had written something negative about Queen on some website or another.

  ‘One of them was an outright troll. He just roamed sites making fun of artists and their fans at random. He obviously enjoys the negativity,’ Rico said.

  How easy would it be for the police to find the connection between these users and Queen fans? Mari asked.

  ‘They can do it,’ Rico said. ‘If they think to look. It takes time, but they do have plenty of manpower.’

  ‘I don’t imagine you can track the killer from these teenagers’ user accounts?’

  No, that was too hard, Rico said.

  A profile was forming though, he pointed out. A white man, in his fifties, in good physical shape, with experience making videos, working with computers and marksmanship, and a regular visitor to Queen fansites. Not a very specific profile but something at least. Maybe the police had more.

  ‘And then the most important thing,’ Mari said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He hates gay people.’

  The next morning the staff at Level discussed the violent Queen videos spreading online with just as much disbelief as everywhere else.

  ‘What does this mean for us?’ editor-in-chief Timothy Phelps asked. ‘Someone tell me what our angle should be.’

  The subject wasn’t fans or celebrity worship, he added immediately. That was generally benign in most people’s lives.

  ‘But is the subject desensitisation to violence? Or the kind of little shits who get a kick out of sharing a real killer’s sick pictures?’

  No one in the office had an answer. Timothy Phelps shook his head wearily.

  ‘If only someone could say why this is happening.’

  ‘Maybe that’s the subject,’ said Sam Levinson. ‘The bewilderment. The confusion about how something like this can exist and whether we should start thinking about drawing new boundaries online.’

  ‘Too difficult. Too strange,’ Phelps said.

  ‘Sam’s right,’ Lia said. ‘If we only choose one of these perspectives, it feels like we’re treating the topic too coldly. None of these is going to be enough on its own. Either we deal with the videos broadly or not at all.’

  The AD, Martyn Taylor, cast her an approving glance.

  ‘We can’t not address it,’ Phelps said. ‘That option has been taken off the table, sad to say.’

  Fortunately they had a week before their next issue, so they had time to think.

  Lia tried to focus on her layouts, but she knew her head wasn’t really in the game. Not thinking about the video killings, Queen and the pure evil spreading online was impossible.

  That afternoon she decided to take up a task she had been putting off for days. Martyn Taylor had asked her to develop something new for the magazine’s online edition. The whole issue of digital versioning was a bit sticky for Lia: every publisher expected their staff to produce electronic versions of their existing publications but usually without additional expense and within the same deadlines as before.

  Taylor had asked Lia to come up with new ways to use moving images in Level’s electronic version. They just had to be either free or cheap and of course fit with the visual image of the magazine. Practically speaking the job was nearly impossible.

  ‘Sam, help,’ Lia exclaimed.

  And help did come from the neighbouring desk, as it had frequently before. Over the years Sam and Lia had collaborated closely on a variety of new article series and frequently gave each other feedback. Working together was easy.

  Lia told Sam what she had already done in terms of researching compatible features for their digital platform and looking at what the competition was doing. She had seen a lot of videos. Music, speeches, adverts. All of the electronic publications had them, including Level, but they had to come up with a way to do it better.

  The brainstorming session with Sam yielded increasingly absurd ideas. What if they asked people they interviewed to choose three videos to link to from the article? The Prime Minister’s favourite YouTube clips, film stars’ favourite film trailers of all time.

  ‘I already know what Martyn will say,’ Lia said. ‘He’ll say great, because it would be free material, but why do we want to guide readers to some other website, away from Level content?’

  What if the digital edition had a competition? A link that would always show up in a different place in the magazine. Sometimes it could be hidden in a headline or a picture – wherever. On one page there could always be a hint about the link’s location.

  ‘A little like a crossword, but this would be a visual puzzle,’ Lia said.

  Sam liked the idea, although he did see problems with it. Why would the reader want to play with the magazine in the first place? But maybe they could develop the idea in some other direction. They could offer prizes –
some readers always went for that. A magazine that didn’t offer opportunities to win things was a rarity these days, but Level had tried to keep its kitsch marketing in check.

  Sam looked online for ads that might spawn more ideas. As Lia watched one more startlingly expensive-looking commercial, she

  suddenly sat up. She had just seen something she didn’t understand. ‘Show me that again,’ she said.

  Sam clicked back to the beginning of the video. In the picture a man walked along a pavement drinking a smoothie through a straw. The man then saw a lorry on the road bearing down on a woman crossing the street. The woman was pushing a pram and didn’t notice the lorry. Lia knew the advertisement; she’d seen it before on TV. Next the man would rush to the woman, snatch her and the pram up and catapult into the air. The idea was that the smoothie could make anyone a do-gooding superman.

  Lia watched the part where the woman stood in the middle of the street not glancing to either side. What a stupid woman. Why was she just gawping and not acting like normal people did. Why was she being portrayed as stupid?

  ‘Why do they always need a man saving a woman?’ Lia asked Sam.

  Sam grinned.

  ‘No man could give a right answer to that question.’

  Something in the advert bothered Lia. And she knew that was what the people who made it wanted. The simplicity of characters in commercials could irritate you as much as you wanted just as long as you remembered the product.

  Then the images moving on the screen gave rise to another idea, a serious, real one. It was so frightening Lia couldn’t continue working.

  She apologised to Sam for the interruption and made up an excuse about a meeting she had forgotten. Then she fled the building.

  Luckily Mari picked up instantly.

  Lia didn’t have time to explain her idea before Mari asked, ‘Can you come to the Studio right now?’

  Something jumped inside Lia.

  ‘Are you coming too?’

  ‘Yes.’

  31.

  When Mari arrived at the Studio, everyone else was already there. She hugged Maggie, and smiled at Paddy and Rico and Lia. Mari sat down at her desk as if she had never been gone.

  They all made a silent promise not to think that one of the group was missing. They had to investigate the video killings. They had to concentrate.

  ‘On Craig Cole too,’ Mari said.

  The others were surprised.

  ‘You want to return to the Cole case?’ Rico asked in surprise.

  They had been able to put Cole’s issue on the backburner, but Mari didn’t think they could leave it unfinished.

  ‘He isn’t in the clear yet, and we can’t leave him on his own.’

  Lia believed she knew why Mari wanted them to stay on Craig Cole. Mari wanted to give them all something good. A feeling that they could accomplish something, help someone.

  Maybe Mari also felt some sort of connection to Cole. Craig Cole had fallen from a position that looked unassailable from the outside. Cole’s popularity was based on genuine warmth and talent. Losing that had been unfair.

  The same thing had happened to them – the Studio’s wings had been clipped mid-flight, sending them crashing to the ground. A cold, brutal act had shattered their world. Perhaps after falling from so high, Mari wanted to do what she had always done, setting herself aside and focusing on the needs of others.

  Mari had received information that Cole’s agent would no longer even meet with his former star client.

  ‘They haven’t seen each other for weeks,’ Mari said.

  That was bad news. Just a little while ago a radio personality like Cole would have been an important client for any PR agency. Now the agent wanted surreptitiously to dump him.

  ‘I can’t believe no one wants to hire Craig Cole,’ Mari said.

  Popularity like that didn’t disappear that fast. One radio station had offered him a short-term hosting job, although he turned it down.

  But Cole needed something new. ‘Maggie, could you look into it?’ Mari asked.

  ‘My pleasure,’ Maggie said.

  Cole needed the right-sized opportunity, Mari suggested. Not a return to the past, not to the centre of attention. But something where he could feel needed and liked.

  ‘I have a few ideas of where to start,’ Maggie said.

  They talked about the video murders for the next hour. As they conversed, strange aspects of the killings that had come out over the past few days started to click into place for Lia.

  From his previous work in the police and the private security industry, Paddy knew the magnitude of the celebrity stalking problem. The police kept files on the biggest stars, with records of criminal complaints, reports of threats and any other details. Companies that offered security services made constant risk assessments for their star clients about events at which they were to appear. These firms also investigated fan forums and hate sites where people discussed celebrities, looking for signs of threats.

  Paddy had been turning the Queen and Freddie Mercury fansites inside out. Of course most of them were innocent, full of normal, harmless chatter.

  ‘But it sometimes goes beyond that.’

  The elapsed time since Mercury’s death had done nothing to dampen the fervour of his cult following. Some sites offered extensive analyses of each and every picture and morsel of information ever made public about his life. And some tributes an outsider would hardly consider flattering.

  ‘Some of them are really strange,’ Paddy said.

  For example, someone had written a veritable tome trying to prove that Mercury wasn’t gay and hadn’t died of AIDS. The singer’s homosexuality was still such a difficult thing for some fans that they fought against it tooth and nail. As a young man, Mercury had had one long relationship with a woman, who had become his closest friend, but he also had plenty of male partners over the years.

  Lia shared with the others the idea that had just startled her so much at Level.

  ‘Maybe this is nothing,’ she said. ‘I don’t know much about these things. But I started wondering why the victims don’t move. Why do they lie on the ground ready to be kicked?’

  The question surprised the others.

  ‘Why don’t they try to get away?’ Lia asked. ‘Wouldn’t a person who knows they’re in mortal danger try to get out of there?’

  Mari looked at Lia silently for a long time.

  ‘That’s true,’ she finally said. ‘You’re right.’

  A person being kicked to death would use all their strength to try to escape. Or at least avoid the kicks. But the victims on the videos mostly just lay there. They raised their arms to shield their heads and rolled a bit. But none of them tried to resist or even grab their attacker’s legs. None of them tried to get up. It was unnatural.

  ‘Why didn’t we think about this?’ Mari asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Paddy said. ‘Maybe because we’ve only been looking at what everyone else is. We haven’t been thinking about the situation from the victims’ perspective.’

  In distress like that, a person would do anything to get away, Mari said. The killer had to have done something to them before killing them.

  Maybe he slipped something in their drinks at the bars, Maggie suggested. Ruffies.

  ‘That’s a possibility,’ Mari said. ‘Or maybe he did something to them outside the bars. There are so many eyes in these clubs.’

  Whatever he did to them, this discovery was important.

  ‘In any case,’ Mari said, ‘we’ve just found one more way to narrow down possible suspects.’

  The man probably knew a little about drugs or medications and knew where to get them. That would give the police one more lead to chase down.

  ‘Do the police know about this?’ Lia wondered.

  ‘Of course,’ Paddy said. ‘It’s their job to think about attacks from the victims’ perspective.’

  And they had the bodies, Paddy added. In crimes like these they always did th
orough autopsies and ran toxicology screenings.

  ‘The police know that he’s killing gay people. The police know he drugs them with something. They know all of this but they’re keeping schtum,’ Rico said.

  They could all hear the suppressed anger in his voice.

  ‘Often they have to hold back details like this,’ Paddy said. ‘Sometimes for weeks or months to protect the investigation.’

  Mari turned to Lia.

  ‘Didn’t you say you saw a table with bottles and machines in the police incident room?’

  Lia said she had. She was embarrassed to realise that she remembered almost nothing about the table and its contents. It hadn’t felt important then. The gruesome images of the victims posted on the walls had dominated her attention. For a fleeting moment she had wondered whether the devices and bottles were for collecting some kind of evidence but had shut the thought out of her mind.

  Did it matter that much? Maggie asked.

  ‘Isn’t the most important thing that the police know? That the police can investigate whether the victims were drugged?’

  ‘That’s critical,’ Mari said. ‘But so far nothing indicates the police are really investigating anything about these crimes the way they should.’

  Mari looked them all in the eye, one by one.

  ‘I don’t think the police are going to catch him,’ she said. ‘But we can.’

  32.

  Detective Chief Inspector Keith Brewster was waiting for Lia in the large building on Francis Street – the one that looked lifeless on the outside but which housed within it an Operation Rhea in full swing.

  He let Lia write her name in the visitor log and take her pass from the guard. Brewster eyed Lia closely, but Lia didn’t say anything. She had a clear goal for her visit: to get back into the incident room.

  When she rang and asked Brewster for a meeting, at first he declined.

  ‘You’re a bystander,’ was Brewster’s curt reply. ‘We’ll get in touch if we find it necessary.’