Black Noise

by Hiltunen, Pekka

  Happy slapping and these new videos were a difficult subject for the media, The Times observed. They had to tell people about the phenomenon even though the publicity was precisely what fed it.

  ‘The police don’t have time to respond,’ wrote one commentator. ‘Videos can be restricted but not completely deleted. The real question is about the wellbeing of families, support and training for teachers and the limits we each set on acceptable behaviour in our interactions each and every day. This is not a problem we can erase or ignore, but we can prevent it. If you know that your children are watching these videos, intervene. All freedoms have limits. Despite our commitment to democracy, as a society we do not sanction demonstrations that devolve into riots and hooliganism. Likewise, we can ill afford to allow happy slapping to spread, and these videos are beyond the pale.’

  When a video entitled Bohemian Whipsody started circulating online, a line had been crossed. The video, uploaded by a user named ‘dethcalls’, became a hot topic because the author claimed to have assembled it from video clips of actual deaths, mostly brutal beatings that ended up being fatal. In the longest one a man whipped a motionless, naked woman.

  ‘A snuff film made into a music video,’ Paddy said. ‘And the person who created it could easily be a minor.’

  Most of dethcalls’ previous uploads had been removed due to complaints. The music he used was extreme heavy metal, and the images usually depicted the subjugation of women.

  ‘Can you find out who dethcalls is?’ Mari asked Rico.

  The job took Rico a couple of hours.

  The boy was seventeen years old and lived in Nottingham. His name was Ian, and he had a long record of involvement with social services and the Youth Crime Unit.

  ‘Poor kid,’ Paddy said.

  Mari shook her head.

  ‘That video isn’t the work of any “poor kid”,’ she said. ‘That boy is going to grow up to be a big problem.’

  But the Studio wasn’t going to get involved, Mari said. Bohemian Whipsody was deleted before long, but it would live on in the darker corners of the Internet and become a hit in its own little gruesome subgenre. But it wasn’t a pressing problem for them.

  Henssge. Anect. Subdural haematoma. Alphabet.

  Lia remembered almost all of the words, abbreviations and numbers she had seen in the incident room. She tried to duplicate the list as well as she could by writing the words on the whiteboard in Mari’s office at the Studio in the same order she had seen them.

  She wasn’t sure of two of the numbers, but everything else was etched in her mind.

  ‘This is part of a forensic pathology investigation,’ Paddy said immediately upon seeing the list.

  The forensic analysis was happening elsewhere than in the Operation Rhea offices, and the police would only be receiving specific information about the results of the analysis. But it was possible that the detectives had wanted to see with their own eyes something that had been found in the bodies.

  Paddy recognised a few of the terms in the list. Subdural haematoma meant intracranial bleeding. Henssge had to do with Henssge nomograms, a method for calculating time of death based on body temperature.

  ‘The Alphabet is MPDV and other drugs like that,’ Paddy said.

  Murder victims were tested for possible drugs in their systems, and many of the modern designer drugs were known by abbreviations, the ‘alphabet’ in common police parlance.

  One of the abbreviations had been circled: Anect.

  ‘I’ve never heard of that,’ Paddy said.

  Rico only took a few seconds tracking it down on the Topo. The drug in question was Anectine. In hospitals its active ingredient was known as SUCCS. Succinylcholine.

  ‘What does it do?’ Paddy asked.

  ‘Paralyses muscles. It paralyses a person’s muscles but keeps them conscious.’

  Anectine was used especially in emergency situations, for example when victims of an accident were being transported in an ambulance. If there was an urgent need to intubate, succinylcholine relaxed the patient’s muscles instantly so the tube could be inserted.

  The drug’s advantages in medical treatment were almost immediate effectiveness and short duration, ten minutes at most. The downside was that the patient couldn’t communicate after receiving it.

  ‘If the killer is injecting his victims with Anectine, they wouldn’t be able to scream or fight back at all. But they would stay conscious; they would know what was happening to them and stumble along as he forced them to wherever he was going to kill them,’ Mari said.

  Lia couldn’t say anything. She was nauseated by the thought that the killer could do something like this. Paddy stared at Mari in shock.

  ‘Do the victims know what’s being done to them?’ Mari asked. ‘Do they feel pain?’

  Rico scanned the web pages he had open on the Topo.

  ‘It seems like it,’ he said quietly.

  The instructions for administering Anectine warned health professionals specifically that it did not render the patient unconscious or remove feeling. That was why its use was so specific.

  ‘It’s really strong,’ Rico said, still reading online. ‘The muscles start relaxing almost instantly. The first ones are the throat muscles, which is why you can’t talk.’

  He did a cross-search with Anectine and the other words Lia had memorised at the incident room. One of them came back with results: furosemide.

  ‘It’s a drug they usually use for something else completely,’ Rico said. ‘But it can also be used to prolong the effect of Anectine.’

  Mari stood up from her desk and walked to the windows.

  ‘He injects them with drugs so they can’t call for help or fight for their lives. Then he keeps them like that as long as he wants,’ Mari said.

  For a moment there was perfect silence. Rico’s low voice was the first to break it.

  ‘If you give a large enough dose of Anectine, it can also kill,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think this man would make a mistake like that,’ Mari said. ‘I don’t think he would let them die before he’s finished doing what he wants.’

  In the middle of an evening that felt as if it would go on forever, Mari suddenly suggested that Maggie and Lia go home.

  ‘No, I can stick it out for a while longer,’ Maggie protested. ‘If nothing else, I can think about Craig Cole.’

  But Maggie did leave, and a little later Lia gave in too.

  ‘Go and take Gro for a walk,’ Mari said. ‘Try not to think about anything.’

  It didn’t work. When Lia arrived in Hampstead, Mr Vong had apparently already left for Gro’s evening walk because he didn’t answer his doorbell.

  For a fleeting moment Lia considered the bars where she used to go looking for male companionship. Right now that felt impossible though, if only because all she would be able to think about would be people getting snatched from gay bars.

  She couldn’t go online. The news sites and discussion boards would just be full of talk about the Queen Killer.

  She couldn’t drink alone. Too depressing.

  Lia still had her copy of the old travel guide Mr Vong had given her once, Good for You, London! Thumbing through it often helped her in lonely moments. For all its frivolity, it portrayed the city around her with an unreal beauty. She couldn’t go there though, not now.

  She went out, walking to the small sculpture garden next to the hall of residence and waiting for the silent peace of the statues in the light of the street lamps to do its work.

  What was Mari doing right now? What did she want to talk to Rico and Paddy about? What could be the reason for keeping Lia and Maggie out of a discussion?

  Right now hundreds of police officers were trying to investigate this terrifying series of murders. At the same time, dozens, perhaps hundreds of people around Britain were sitting at their computers making perverse videos to Queen songs for other people to watch.

  And somewhere there was a man who had killed five people an
d meant to kill more.

  Hampstead, Lia’s timeless, placid village was not what she needed now. It was late, but she decided to ring Bob Pell and see whether the shooting range was still open.

  ‘Are we at that point in our relationship already? Late-night calls and all?’ he said.

  ‘Can I still come in?’

  ‘Of course.’

  No one but Pell was at the range. Lia knew she might be giving him ideas with her late arrival, and Pell did try to initiate some mild flirtation. But after seeing that Lia really did want to concentrate on shooting, he left her in peace.

  In half an hour Lia’s nervous exhaustion disappeared. Pell noticed the break in the gunfire and came to look at her results.

  ‘Not bad,’ Pell said.

  ‘I think working as a graphic designer helps,’ Lia said.

  She was used to seeing things as precise lines and measurements. She felt like she could instinctively estimate where to aim.

  Pell snorted. ‘I didn’t know they taught shooting at art school.’

  Lia was actually so promising that trying shooting at a moving target would be worth her time too, he said.

  Lia seized the opportunity instantly. Pell turned on the range’s machinery and large, round targets hanging from tracks began moving at the rear of the hall. Lia spent nearly an hour shooting at the moving targets, and as one after another went swinging, she knew her aim was progressively getting better.

  ‘More tomorrow?’ she finally asked Pell.

  ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘Fancy a drink to celebrate your progress? I have a bottle of good red wine out in the office.’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ Pell replied quickly. ‘Come tomorrow before nine if you want. You’re one of the fastest learners I’ve ever seen.’

  Lia thought she knew at least one person who learned faster than her.

  34.

  Mari sits in her office at the Studio.

  The others have left, including Paddy and Rico once night fell. She gave them assignments, deciding to try to bring an end of this evil.

  The others at the Studio know she isn’t strong yet, but she is almost there.

  And sitting here makes her stronger. The rooms Mari has worked for so long, the space and the machines, the strength of the place. She has been building the Studio for too long – no one is going to take it away from her.

  They took Berg. They aren’t going to take anything else.

  Mari is now focusing all her resolve on one thought: the man who did all of this will not walk around free much longer.

  Whoever you are, I’m going to bring you down. I’m going to throw you like a tiny pebble into a ravine, Mari thinks.

  She smiles at this feeling, how good it feels to think of catching him.

  Is it revenge? Or executing justice? Her feeling contains both, noble and base. Sometimes the two intertwine.

  But that doesn’t matter. Those are moral distinctions; their time will come when the goal has been reached. First they have to figure this man out. They have to know why he acts the way he acts.

  They have to understand their adversary. And they must know and understand this man better than anyone else can know him.

  ‘You are one sick fuck,’ Mari says.

  Swearing at him out loud heightens her senses. She listens to her voice. She hears the power of her resolve.

  It is no coincidence this man is killing gay people. Nor that he makes videos of his killings using songs from a band led by a gay man.

  Mari closes her eyes and thinks of Queen and Freddie Mercury.

  She has spent hours over the past days watching videos of concert recordings and interviews with the band, almost through the night. She knows their history by heart. She knows how all the members of Queen talk and move; she knows their facial expressions. She knows by heart the light, shrugging serenity with which the emaciated Freddie Mercury said his farewells to the world in his final days.

  This Mari knows: how to take control. She learned it as a child, in a way that warped her entire life, and everything that has happened since then has pointed towards setting straight that twisting in one sense or another.

  Mari cannot endure the feeling of powerlessness. After a childhood like hers she is unable to accept submission, not after realising she was living in the Laboratory.

  She knows how to collect information and assimilate its essence, with a speed others find astonishing. She understands people with a sensitivity without compare, and right now she is trying to understand a man who wants to kill gay people and turn their murders into a tribute to the band he worships.

  Really he doesn’t worship only the band. He worships the gift, the ability to touch others deeply, an ability no one else can duplicate. Queen touched this man. Maybe that has been the most powerful experience in his life.

  A brief reading of this killer would be: sociopath. Loner, manic, attention-seeking. A homophobe moved by simple instincts.

  The police profiler, Holywell, probably looks at him this way.

  And the killer probably is all that but much, much more.

  Mari listens to Queen. She looks the songs up online, clicking one after another. Many of them are familiar, some new. She isn’t trying to think of what they do for this man. She wants to experience them powerfully herself.

  The man seeks out his victims, lures them within reach, pumps them full of paralytics and puts them in front of a camera for execution. He kills, because for him, killing is art.

  He kills, because he is the next logical step from happy slapping and celebrity worship, an unholy union of the two, a nightmare no one wants to contemplate.

  Who is he making his art for? Everyone who clicks on his videos. His audience is the whole world. He worships power and fame.

  This killer wants clicks. He wants a million clicks online. He is going to reach his goal.

  And suddenly Mari realises that simply waiting for this man to make a mistake will not lead to his capture. He is ahead of the police and ahead of the Studio. He has done all of this so precisely, patiently revealing each grotesque detail to the world.

  There will be more victims if the police or they at the Studio don’t dare to think further ahead. They have to find the courage to make assumptions and move towards their fears.

  Mari sits in her office at the Studio and tries to understand a man who cannot be understood.

  Sorrow fills Mari to her core. Not just for her own loss or for the loss of the victims’ loved ones. What she mourns is that she has lived a life that has made it possible to understand such a sick person.

  35.

  His throat hurt.

  Theo Durand lay on the floor of his cell, trying to control the twitching of his arms and hold himself together.

  More symptoms kept appearing. He had never experienced anything similar before, as if his whole body was surrendering to pain and compulsion.

  Something in his throat was swollen, badly. How was that possible, when his whole body cried out for water? Theo didn’t know.

  He hadn’t had anything to drink in hours, possibly days. The passage of time was a mystery – the light visible in the cell was always the same strange yellow one.

  The crazy man who brought him here hadn’t shown his face. Theo didn’t know whether the man’s absence was good or bad.

  Sometimes his throat hurt so badly that his eyes watered. Whatever was so swollen felt like it was blocking his whole throat. He had cautiously tried to touch it, first with his tongue, then with his fingers. The pain was so intense he had to give up.

  Did the throat pain come from the spice?

  Theo had eaten the contents of the bag the man left. The lunatic’s dirty paper bag was the only thing he had. The powder in the bag was so disgustingly strong that just a few pinches of it made him gag, but if he hadn’t eaten anything he would have lost consciousness. The lumpy powder’s burning bite preserved his grip on this world.

  The powder m
ust be some sort of spice, Theo decided, but eating it frightened him. He didn’t really know what was in it, and every time Theo took a little helping of it from the bag with his fingers and painfully swallowed it, he felt the thirst in him surge.

  And what a thirst it was.

  Crazy man.

  Steps outside the cell. He was coming.

  This time Theo had to get the man to talk. He had locked Theo in here, and he was the only one who could let him out.

  Eyes stared at Theo through the bars.

  ‘Tell me what you want,’ Theo said. ‘Do you want something? We can talk about it.’

  He heard the hoarseness of his voice, and every word hurt like a slash at his throat.

  The man didn’t say anything.

  ‘Maybe I can give you something you want,’ Theo suggested.

  If he wanted sex, let him have sex. Anything so Theo could get out of this place.

  ‘Eat,’ the man said, pointing at the paper bag on the floor.

  He talked, Theo thought. At last he talked.

  ‘I have been,’ he said. ‘It’s too strong. It makes me so thirsty.’

  ‘If you eat, I’ll give you water later,’ the man said. ‘Eat.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It will prepare you.’

  Theo didn’t understand. What did the lunatic mean?

  ‘Prepare me for what?’ he repeated.

  His voice was higher. They both heard it.

  ‘It’s preparing you to burn,’ the man said.

  Theo felt the nausea in him grow.

  ‘Fucking lunatic,’ he said.

  It was a knee-jerk reaction, and it was wrong. But it was out now. He couldn’t take it back.

  The lunatic went quiet. He stood motionless, nothing in his face moving at all.

  Suddenly Theo understood why the man was standing right where he was. He was staying out of the camera picture. The camera was sending images somewhere, and he didn’t want to be seen. Maybe someone else could see the picture. As soon as the man left, Theo would try to talk to the camera, try to call for help.