Black Noise

by Hiltunen, Pekka

  They all gathered in Mari’s office. Mari often looked exhausted these days. She was hardly sleeping at all.

  ‘Time is running out,’ Mari said, not for the first time. ‘Time is running out for the man in that video.’

  At times she kept a freeze frame from the most recent video on the large display on her office wall. It was a close-up of the imprisoned man’s face. Lia couldn’t look at the picture for long.

  ‘I’m sure the police are doing their best,’ Paddy said. ‘But that isn’t enough. We have to do what we can.’

  Paddy reckoned that at that very moment the police were continuing their investigation in the gay bars of London, interviewing customers and sifting through possible sightings. He heard occasional details about the investigation from his friends in the police force. Brewster and his group had looked into the availability of Anectine: unfortunately it was a common drug for use in emergency medical treatment. Because it wasn’t a narcotic and wasn’t terribly expensive, getting it wouldn’t be difficult. The police were looking into whether any had been stolen, whether anyone had purchased an unusually large amount, whether there was evidence of Anectine’s misuse elsewhere.

  The police were also looking into similarities in the killer’s MO with other previous crimes and whether anyone had ever been arrested in Britain whose crimes resembled these.

  ‘They’re doing all that and investigating the kids whose accounts the killer used to upload the videos,’ Mari said.

  But maybe the police didn’t realise what was most important to him.

  ‘They aren’t thinking about Queen,’ Mari said. ‘It seems too strange for them, as it does for everyone. The profiler, Holywell, might be the only one thinking about it. They all naturally think that there have to be logical reasons for killing, like money or revenge. Or war. But sometimes people kill for reasons that don’t make sense when you look at them from outside. It’s hard to tell how crucial Freddie Mercury and celebrity are in what this man is doing.’

  That was why the Studio had to have the courage to think these thoughts.

  Two days later Mari and Rico were ready to show the others the results of their work. On the big screen in Mari’s office they showed a map with two kinds of marks on it, black and red. Lia immediately recognised the locations marked with red: they were the streets where victims had been found.

  What were the black marks? Maggie asked.

  Places in London with special significance for Queen and Freddie Mercury, Mari explained. They were important sites for the band’s hardcore fans: buildings where band members had lived, concert halls where they had performed, studios where they had recorded, nightclubs where they had partied. The school where Mercury had once studied and the antique auction house where he’d often purchased expensive rarities.

  Lia breathed in deeply as she realised what the patterns on the map showed. The red locations where bodies had been found matched up with the black marks.

  ‘He’s choosing his victims from gay bars with connections to places that are important to him,’ Mari said.

  All four places had specific connections to Freddie Mercury’s life. The singer used to visit the Royal Vauxhall Tavern sometimes, and Heaven had been one of his regular haunts. Near Rich Lane, where Berg had been killed and Brian Fowler’s body dumped on the street, there were both a new gay club and a pub where Mercury had been seen from time to time. They didn’t know for sure whether he had ever visited the Black Cap in Camden, but Roundhouse Studios, where Queen recorded, was nearby.

  ‘How could Freddie Mercury have visited so many clubs?’ Lia asked, astonished. ‘A person that famous?’

  Mercury had been well known on London’s gay scene, Mari said, but no one talked about it in the media. The star usually went to bars in a group, with a personal assistant and several friends. He chose places where he could see the other patrons without being the centre of attention himself.

  ‘Of course people always noticed him. They would try not to stare, but everyone knew when he was there,’ Mari said.

  If Mercury wanted to talk to someone, an assistant would surreptitiously go and invite them over. The singer was generous buying drinks for other people but never partied very hard himself. However, the parties he hosted in his own home were the stuff of legend.

  Freddie Mercury visited clubs in London and many other cities around the world. Sometimes he hit on men, and he used drugs with his friends. All of it stayed mostly hidden from the public because they were living in an era before camera phones and the Internet.

  ‘And because people wanted to give him space,’ Maggie pointed out.

  Times were different then. Although some papers did pay for rumours, the scandal business had yet to escalate to the modern paparazzi war where more and more people were constantly being recruited to provide information and pictures.

  ‘It was a much more gentle time,’ Maggie said. ‘Not in the attitude towards gay people but in the attitude towards celebrities.’

  The four places on their map were important to the killer.

  ‘He’s visited all of them, at least at some point. It may be that he lives near some place connected to Mercury or Queen,’ Mari said.

  That was why they had to look for information about the buildings in these locations, including their tenants and the businesses that operated there.

  ‘It’s a shot in the dark,’ Mari admitted. ‘But we have to try something.’

  The work was slow.

  Sometimes Lia would flee the slow pace and rigour of the work and go to the shooting range in Harrow. There she felt as if she was making progress even if everything else was at a standstill. And Bob Pell’s antics weren’t unwelcome either, given everything that was going on. Pell was too old for her, and Lia couldn’t imagine ever being interested in the proprietor of a slightly shady shooting range, but there was something in his rough manner. It was fun to have someone to flirt with. Mari had Paddy, and they were going to progress from a collegial relationship to dating sooner or later.

  Maggie was the one who ended the wait.

  One evening they had been sitting for hours sifting through residential registries and data about London buildings. Mari had started to doubt whether there was any sense in the whole enterprise.

  ‘What if he’s keeping him prisoner somewhere else entirely?’ she asked. ‘It is possible.’

  They had assumed the location was in London because all of the previous victims had been grabbed there. But that assumption could be dead wrong.

  ‘Then this would just be even more difficult. The number of possibilities is endless,’ Mari said.

  In addition to London, Freddie Mercury had lived in New York, Munich and Montreux. Queen had toured concert halls and stadiums all over the world for years. If all of those cities were possibilities, that was too much to investigate.

  Maggie listened to what Mari was saying and shook her head. They had to focus on what they had, Maggie said. Mari fell silent.

  ‘What do we have?’ Maggie asked. ‘What do we know about that video?’

  She stared at the still frame on the wall of the half-naked prisoner from the fifth video. For a moment there was perfect silence.

  ‘We see a man who is afraid he is going to die,’ Rico said.

  Maggie nodded.

  ‘True. What else?’

  The man was nearly nude. But still he was hot and probably having a hard time breathing, Paddy added.

  ‘He’s in a locked room without shoes. Almost everything has been taken from him. He’s isolated,’ Paddy continued.

  ‘Locked in what kind of room?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘We can’t see anything,’ Rico said quickly. He had been through the images in the video dozens of times searching for things that might help them identify a location. There simply wasn’t anything.

  What material were the walls and floor made of? Maggie asked.

  ‘Concrete,’ Rico replied.

  The floor was concrete, and the e
nlargements showed how rough the flatwork was. The walls had been treated somehow. They looked like concrete too, but they also had a tinted surface coating.

  ‘What kind?’ Maggie asked, keeping her voice unfalteringly clear.

  It was impossible to tell for sure, Rico said, because the images were so dim and the background was out of focus.

  ‘And the colour of the walls?’ Maggie continued.

  They all stared at the picture. In the darkness behind the man they could make out a yellowish wall.

  Brownish yellow, Paddy said. Maybe beige. A colour you could find anywhere.

  ‘And what if it isn’t just anywhere,’ Maggie said. ‘What if it’s a common colour in that building? Or in that place? In that city?’

  A new sharpness appeared in Mari’s eyes.

  ‘Ochre,’ she said. ‘That colour is ochre. People use it all over the world, but in some countries more than others.’

  Rico snorted. The sound came at once from frustration and a newly kindled spark of enthusiasm.

  ‘It’s impossible to delimit a colour geographically,’ he said, but he immediately started looking for the place in his enlargements where the colour of the walls was shown to best advantage.

  The others gathered behind him and watched as he manipulated the images on the Topo. After finding the sharpest one, he quickly cropped a piece of it and started running it through other applications.

  ‘I don’t have the right tools for this,’ he said after a minute. ‘But other people might.’

  On his display, Rico switched to a chat window where a conversation was going on in a closed forum. The others looked curiously at the usernames. One was Errol, another biTer.

  Guys, Rico wrote, starting a new thread, who can find where in the world this wall paint is. right answer earns you a phat botnet, 100k machines, open-ended. full admin rights of course.

  To the message he attached two pictures of the concrete wall and one of the floor. Only twenty seconds passed before someone took up the thread.

  That’s the colour of your imaginary girlfriend’s knickers, replied Errol, one of the group’s smart-alecks.

  So you’re a painter now or what? biTer said.

  What botnet? asked deverec.

  This is serious, Rico wrote. I could use some help. The botnet is Lycia.

  That heated up the conversation.

  Lycia holy shit! deverec exclaimed.

  Race you, biTer said.

  What were Lycia and bots? Lia asked Rico as they watched the hackers on the forum start competing to track down the colour’s location.

  Lycia was one of many botnets, an illegal computer control system hackers used. A botnet was made up of bots, malware that took over thousands of computers around the world. The computers’ real users didn’t know that whoever controlled the botnet was using their computers. Lycia was a sought-after botnet in hacking circles, and rights to it were precious.

  ‘You can buy rights to a botnet from Russia for a week for a few hundred pounds,’ Rico said. ‘But not one like Lycia.’

  Lycia’s artificial intelligence was so refined that it was almost alive, he explained. The basis of the network was a polymorphic virus that could alter itself on every machine it connected to. The botnet could constantly adapt to its environment to remain hidden.

  When the hackers’ answers started coming in, the mood at the Studio electrified.

  That ochre colour is all over africa and south america at least, announced biTer. but that wall aint.

  What do you mean? Rico asked.

  The cement has pieces of rock in it, biTer replied. porous rock. could be coral rock, dead hard coral

  Rico smiled nervously. Where from? he continued.

  Dunno, biTer wrote. my source says the tropics, maybe africa but definitely the tropics

  What’s your source? Rico asked. The answer made him smile again.

  I tell you in your dreams, biTer replied. Lycia is mine.

  ‘Coral,’ Mari said, looking at the freeze frame from the video on the wall.

  ‘Where was Freddie Mercury born?’ Maggie asked.

  She asked it quickly, without thinking it through, but the idea made the others turn to her in surprise.

  ‘Zanzibar,’ Mari said.

  Standing up from her desk, she extracted a book about Mercury from a pile.

  ‘There are pictures of his house in here,’ she said, showing the others the book. The old, light-coloured stone building in the picture seemed ordinary enough. Perhaps a bit austere.

  ‘Where is Zanzibar exactly?’ Lia asked.

  ‘Off the coast of Tanzania,’ Rico said quickly.

  ‘That might not be underwear,’ Mari said, pointing to the man on the video. ‘They could be swimming trunks.’

  They all looked at the image as if seeing it for the first time.

  ‘It’s possible,’ Rico said, flipping through enlargements on the Topo, looking for a better detail shot of the man’s shorts. The fabric didn’t tell them anything, and no brand names or patterns were visible, but their length suddenly seemed significant.

  ‘If he’s wearing shorts, Zanzibar would explain that,’ Maggie said. ‘And fans are always gaga over the places stars were born. Just think how many childhood homes have been turned into museums.’

  Mari’s eyes flashed.

  Determining that the websites of the Tanzanian police and media didn’t have any information that could connect to these crimes took them under an hour. According to the Tanzanian police, nothing worthy of reporting had happened in Zanzibar recently.

  ‘What about other countries’ embassies and newspapers?’ Mari asked. ‘The man doesn’t look African. If he’s from a western country and he’s being held prisoner, there should be something about him somewhere. A report of a disappearance or something.’

  ‘Should we divide up the countries?’ Paddy asked.

  Coming up with the right search phrases in all the major languages would be faster, Rico said. That way they could cover multiple countries with the same queries. He and Maggie chose the keywords: man, missing, Zanzibar, Tanzania. They translated the list into dozens of languages and limited the searches so they would only cover the previous year.

  The searches immediately returned three results.

  ‘My God,’ Maggie said as she glanced through them.

  One hit was from Germany, the second from Kenya, the third from France. One person from each country had disappeared in Zanzibar within the previous year.

  The names of the missing persons required a little extra digging, but they turned up too. When Rico fed them into an image search and the results flashed up on the screen, everyone went silent. In one of the pictures, the man they had been staring at for days as a half-naked prisoner in the fifth video looked back at them.

  Only a little information was available about Theo Durand and even less about his disappearance in Zanzibar. He was a Parisian accountant who had been on holiday on the island alone and disappeared without a trace a few days earlier.

  His relatives in France had posted a notice about his disappearance on the website of the Manu Association, a support group for the missing and their families. The news hadn’t reached the French media since the disappearance of a single tourist wasn’t going to drive traffic or subscriptions. Even using Durand’s name they couldn’t find anything on the Tanzanian police website.

  Maybe Tanzania wasn’t keen on reporting information about lost travellers, Paddy said. It wouldn’t exactly increase tourism.

  There was no doubt the man in the video was Theo Durand. The likeness was obvious.

  ‘We have to tell the police about this immediately,’ Paddy said.

  ‘Not yet,’ Mari replied. ‘Durand has been a prisoner for days now. If he’s even alive any more. I’ll be ready to give this to the police soon, but first I want to talk it through with all of you.’

  ‘If he’s a prisoner in Zanzibar, the British police aren’t just going to pop over there to in
vestigate,’ Paddy said. ‘The Tanzanian authorities and Interpol will handle it. And possibly the French authorities.’

  ‘Do you trust the Tanzanian police to handle the case?’ Mari asked.

  Paddy shook his head.

  ‘We’ll give the police here one day,’ Mari said. ‘If nothing happens in that time, I’m going there myself.’

  The others took a second to realise what Mari really meant.

  ‘To Zanzibar?’ Lia asked.

  ‘That’s crazy,’ Paddy said sternly.

  ‘It’s dangerous,’ Mari said. ‘Maybe more dangerous than anything we’ve ever done. But I think it’s going to be our only option.’

  Paddy had a hard time keeping his temper.

  ‘I don’t understand why we’re even talking about this,’ he snapped. ‘The whole idea is completely daft.’

  ‘I didn’t say I was going alone,’ Mari said. ‘I’ll take other people with me.’

  Lia silently watched their debate. She knew Mari’s idea was anything but stupid. Going to Zanzibar would be reckless and maybe dangerous. But if time was short, someone like Mari and the Studio might be able to help.

  Suddenly Lia understood that Mari had been emotionally prepared to start chasing this killer for some time now.

  She already knew this might be the only way to catch Berg’s killer.

  Paddy marched out of the room. They heard him walk straight to the front door and out of the Studio.

  Lia looked at Mari and thought she understood her more than ever before.

  Mari has decided to face this man herself. She just has to find him.

  39.

  The pavement outside the Operation Rhea HQ was deserted when Lia arrived on Sunday a little after nine in the morning. Instead of going inside, she glanced down the ramp leading into the car park and at the windows, most of which were covered by Venetian blinds.

  The police profiler, Christopher Holywell, quickly appeared from a side door. He had been expecting her.