Black Noise

by Hiltunen, Pekka

  ‘What was it?’ Mari asked. ‘Did you have a go at some of the female students?’

  Dillon’s jaw started its nervous motion again.

  ‘No, I doubt it was anything like that,’ Mari said. ‘You were probably just stealing again. Part of the training was going out with an ambulance crew as an assistant. That was where you saw how to use Anectine.’

  Stealing some wouldn’t have been difficult for Dillon later on, Mari ventured. ‘That was probably the easiest thing in all of this.’

  ‘And I know why you’re starving Durand and Zambrano,’ she continued quickly. ‘You want to make them waste away like Freddie Mercury did before his death. But I still don’t understand the kicking.’

  Kicking was an ineffective way to kill, but Dillon had made the result certain using Anectine, Mari stated. ‘A coward’s way to overpower a victim.’

  Dillon’s jaw was moving more intensely than ever.

  ‘I can only come up with one explanation for the kicking,’ Mari said.

  Religiously motivated gang killings sometimes involved kicking. When a crowd in an extremist Islamic country stoned someone for breaking Sharia Law, sometimes they also kicked them. Kicking means shame – crushing someone into the muck strips them of their honour in an open display of contempt.

  ‘But you probably also wanted to kick them because it looks so horrifying in the pictures. You wanted to do something disgusting you could do to them alone. Something that would put your videos in a class of their own.’

  Lia looked at Dillon’s feet. How could he endure the pain of being shot through his instep without even grimacing?

  As she looked at the small, clean hole the bullet had left in Dillon’s foot, she understood.

  Ron knew how and where to shoot. Like Paddy had taught her: if you shoot the edge of the instep, there won’t be much blood. The bullet goes through without any risk to life.

  Lia felt a chill as she thought that Ron and Paddy knew what shooting people in different places caused.

  And so does Philip Dillon.

  ‘You’ve been planning this for a long time. Years,’ Mari said to him. ‘Anyone who crossed your path could qualify as a victim, but all of the circumstances were planned: the bars, the kicking, the filming, the disposal of the bodies. And snatching tourists here on this island and torturing them.’

  ‘It isn’t just torture,’ Dillon grunted.

  ‘If it isn’t torture, what is it?’ Mari asked instantly.

  Dillon closed his eyes.

  ‘Marking them,’ he said.

  Mari only took a second to understand what he meant.

  ‘The marks on their bodies? The marks burning and kicking makes.’

  Dillon remained silent.

  ‘You wanted to make marks on their bodies. Marks like the ones on Freddie Mercury’s body when he was dying of AIDS,’ Mari concluded.

  Especially before modern medical treatments, it was typical for people suffering with AIDS to develop sores, discolouration, and swollen lesions as the disease approached its terminal phase. Dillon had marked his victims with bruises and burns and the last two by keeping them without food and water.

  ‘What is Theo Durand eating in his cell? What’s the dark substance you give him?’ Mari asked.

  ‘Spices,’ Dillon growled.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So he smells right.’

  Mari nodded.

  ‘Freddie liked smells,’ she said.

  Freddie Mercury loved scents and would often spend large amounts of money on them. The people close to him remembered how careful he always was about his perfumes.

  ‘It’s preparing his flesh,’ Dillon said.

  Lia felt a sudden nausea so strong she had a hard time staying in her place.

  ‘Durand’s flesh?’ Mari asked. ‘Preparing it for what?’

  Dillon’s eyes shone.

  ‘The fire.’

  Lia felt herself go completely cold even though lines of sweat still ran down her face in the afternoon heat. The only thing that stopped the tears from coming was the thought that she couldn’t cry.

  ‘It makes the smoke sweet,’ Dillon said.

  He was feeding Theo Durand a spice so his body would smell a certain way as it burned.

  ‘You sick bastard,’ Mari said.

  Dillon didn’t answer.

  ‘Why gay people?’ Mari asked. ‘You aren’t gay.’

  The London police probably assumed the killer had some sort of issue with his own homosexuality.

  ‘That would probably fit the profile they have of you,’ Mari said. ‘But you don’t fit their profiles.’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Dillon said.

  ‘You spend a lot of time thinking about what the police have found out about you and what they assume,’ Mari continued. ‘And you’ve spent a lot of time trying to get closer than almost anyone else to Freddie Mercury. Is that how it feels since you’ve had this house? Is that what you get from following his footsteps on this island and collecting pictures only meant for his friends? Getting inside the childhood and private life of the person you worship – it’s like learning what was inside of him.’

  ‘I’m not closer to him than almost anyone else. I am closer to him than anyone else,’ Dillon spat.

  ‘But you can’t accept that he was gay,’ Mari said. ‘Everything else is fine for you, but not that.’

  ‘He was led astray,’ Dillon said. ‘He became… weak.’

  Mari stopped. Lia saw how she collected herself.

  ‘Weak,’ Mari said. ‘You mean he became like a woman.’

  Dillon fell silent.

  ‘Melina,’ Mari said. ‘You know who Melina is.’

  Dillon’s face froze with a cold anger.

  Freddie Mercury had sometimes called himself Melina. It was a way of poking fun at himself and his public persona. It was a term of endearment among his close friends.

  ‘You don’t like that,’ Mari continued quickly. ‘It offends you.’

  What kind of sex they had wasn’t really what bothered people about gay men, Mari said. Most straight people didn’t actually think about that since it was too complicated and distant a thing. If homosexuality bothered them, the irritant was something much simpler – the feeling that gays broke gender boundaries. In gay men they perceived a man mixed with a woman.

  ‘That’s what they always look for in gay men, the weak side, the woman. And when they think they’ve found it, they think they’ve found what’s gay in the man,’ Mari said. ‘Actually it doesn’t bother you that he was gay. What bothers you is that you saw a woman in him. A weak woman.’

  Dillon stared ahead, not answering, but Lia could see how intense his breathing was.

  ‘You hate gay people because you hate that part of Freddie,’ Mari said to Dillon. ‘And because you believe that Freddie passed a death sentence on himself in those clubs and bars. You’re showing Freddie and the gays and the whole world how much you hate.’

  Mari stepped closer to Dillon and stared him in the eyes.

  ‘You don’t just kill because you hate gay people,’ Mari said. ‘You kill because you want to kill and you want to be famous for it. If Freddie Mercury were alive, you wouldn’t care about any of these other men. You’d say to hell with all this symbolism. You would try to kill Freddie himself.’

  Dillon’s scream was so loud that just the sound pierced them through.

  Lia closed her eyes so she wouldn’t see him screaming at Mari. He wasn’t screaming recognisable words. It was an animal roar, rage at being held at their mercy, rage about what Mari had said.

  Mari didn’t hesitate for a second.

  ‘Where are Durand and Zambrano?’ Mari asked. ‘Tell me where and you get out.’

  Dillon tried to spit on Mari. The bloody saliva didn’t make it far enough though.

  ‘Where are they?’ Mari asked again.

  Dillon stopped screaming. Collapsing back in his chair, he turned his attention away from Mari.

 
‘Bad choice,’ Mari said.

  Moving to the door, Mari motioned to Lia to follow her with a nod. When Lia stepped into the next room, only Paddy was waiting there. Ron and Rico were still gone.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Lia started asking, but Mari silenced her with a gesture.

  Mari closed the door separating the rooms. Lia watched in wonder as Mari backed up a few metres to the middle of the room, the whole time watching the door.

  Paddy handed Mari a gun.

  ‘Get behind me,’ Paddy said to Lia.

  Lia obeyed.

  Paddy and Mari raised their pistols towards the door behind which Philip Dillon sat.

  ‘He’s going to try to get out soon,’ Mari said.

  51.

  Dillon got out of the house, out into the dark city, without making a sound. It was inconceivable to Lia. She and Mari and Paddy were in the next room the whole time. They only heard about Dillon’s escape when Rico rang Mari.

  He had managed to get out of a room whose only exits were the closed door they were guarding and a window with iron bars outside.

  Mari talked to Rico for a few seconds and then walked into the room where their raging prisoner was supposed to be. On the floor lay the pieces of cord that had been binding Dillon’s hands and feet. His heavy shoes were gone.

  The window was open, not broken. Upon closer inspection they could see that the window bars weren’t set in the walls. They were attached to the old metal window frame. Opening the window from the inside, you could also push out the iron grating, which they found lowered to the alley below the window.

  To Lia’s surprise, Mari and Paddy weren’t at all alarmed by Dillon’s escape.

  ‘We wanted this to happen,’ Mari explained.

  When Dillon wouldn’t tell them where he was keeping Theo Durand and Aldo Zambrano prisoner, the only way to find out was to let him go.

  ‘He’ll go to them.’

  That was why Ron and Rico were ready outside. They had been through the house and collected all of the weapons they could find. Afterwards they waited outside, ready to follow him.

  ‘And we have another way of following him too,’ Mari said as they left.

  Mari led them to the van, where Rico was waiting.

  ‘He went south,’ Rico reported immediately.

  Rico had his tablet open next to him. On the display was a map with a bright, red dot moving on it. On it was the number one, and near it was another, blue dot with a number three. A group of other dots, each with its own colour and number, were grouped to the side of the screen.

  ‘That’s Dillon.’ Rico pointed to dot number one.

  Number three going after Dillon was Ron.

  Paddy started the van, and they began driving towards the beach. Lia could see from the Topo’s tracking app that they were only a few hundred metres behind the red and blue dots.

  ‘He’s carrying a micro transmitter,’ Rico said.

  The same kind they all were, Mari said. They had been carrying them for security the whole time they had been on the island.

  ‘If something happened, we would be able to see our locations on the Topo at any time.’

  Rico had installed the transmitter in one of Dillon’s shoes while they were in their possession, out of Dillon’s sight.

  Rico, Mari, Paddy and Ron had their transmitters attached to their underwear. The transmitter was small, smaller than a fingertip, and you didn’t notice it if you attached it under the fabric. It had its own microscopic battery and was in constant contact with a satellite system that passed on location information to the Topo in real time.

  ‘Where is my transmitter?’ Lia asked.

  In your shoe, Mari said. They hadn’t wanted to attach it to Lia’s underwear in case she changed clothing at the wrong moment.

  ‘I didn’t tell you about it before because I hoped we wouldn’t need them,’ Mari explained. ‘But we had to have something in case one of us was taken.’

  Lia understood. Paddy was number two on the Topo app, Mari was four, Lia was five, and Rico was six. It was logical and cautious, but even so, the necessity for such precautions was chilling.

  Lia looked out the windows of the van at the dark buildings. Candlelight flickered from some, generator-powered lamps from others.

  On the tablet, their small, numbered dots moved in a tight group, with ahead of them Ron and Philip Dillon’s dots.

  Ron was following Dillon on foot, Paddy said. One of them had to keep Dillon in sight at all times. Ron had volunteered.

  Dillon’s dot moved slowly but with determination ever further out of the old town.

  ‘He’s on his way out of the city, but his foot is slowing him down,’ Paddy said.

  Dillon’s route was following a side road that ran along Nyerere Road, one of the main thoroughfares.

  When they arrived at the edge of a large park area, darkness surrounded them on every side.

  ‘The cricket ground,’ Mari said. ‘All of these places are important for Dillon.’

  Freddie Mercury’s father had once played cricket on the Mnazi Mmoja Garden pitches, sometimes bringing the whole family along.

  Suddenly the Topo’s screen flashed. All of the dots disappeared for an instant, along with the map they were moving on. Rico, Lia and Mari stared speechlessly at the machine. Paddy noticed from their silence that something was wrong.

  ‘What now?’ he asked.

  ‘A glitch,’ Rico said.

  Carefully he brushed the screen, and the display came back to life. He breathed a sigh of relief before the display started flickering again.

  ‘Battery,’ Rico snapped.

  He had charged the Topo’s battery, but it had used so much power in the past hours that it was almost on its last legs. The location tracking program was resource intensive because the satellite connection came straight from the tablet. The battery still had power but was significantly degraded.

  Rico had a backup, but during the time it took to switch it, they would lose the connection to the satellite completely as the Topo rebooted. Altogether it would take several minutes.

  ‘And there isn’t another option?’ Mari asked seriously.

  ‘There is,’ Rico said. ‘The car charger.’

  As a last resort, they had the power inverter they could plug into the van’s lighter socket. The downside was that the vehicle had to be kept running, and power surges were possible.

  ‘It could cause problems,’ Rico said.

  ‘Don’t change yet,’ Mari replied. ‘Not quite yet.’

  Paddy slightly increased speed. They were driving about 300 metres behind Ron, who was maybe 150 metres from Philip Dillon as he steadily advanced.

  On the dark island, these distances almost felt like kilometres.

  When the dots on the screen disappeared again as the screen acted up, Lia thought it would have been easier if she could pray. Not a religious prayer, not words to a single god, but if there were some other place to turn to ask for help.

  Mari noticed her anxiety.

  ‘We’re going to get him,’ Mari said.

  Lia nodded but didn’t say what she thought.

  I don’t doubt we’ll find Dillon. But what do we do with him then?

  Mari rang Ron’s phone. That had its risks, they knew. It was always possible that Dillon might be close to Ron and notice him. But as long as the Topo’s satellite connection was cutting in and out, they had to know where Dillon was.

  ‘Straight ahead of me,’ Ron said in a muffled voice. ‘Takes a stubborn bloke to walk with a bullet hole in his foot.’

  Ron could only see Dillon as a dark shadow in the gloom, but he was in his field of vision the whole time.

  ‘I can’t see you behind me,’ Ron warned them.

  Mari explained that they were driving without lights, very slowly. They had to follow the road carefully since the street lights were out. They were already a good distance out of the city centre. Here and there around them they saw houses, but no people
were about. Along the sides of the road, they mostly saw dense trees.

  Mari and Ron broke off their phone connection when the satellite program was working again. They were all visible as tiny moving dots. Dillon’s red dot continued on in the same direction.

  ‘What’s out this way?’ Lia asked Rico and Mari, pointing to the area Dillon appeared to be bound for. Rico couldn’t say.

  Mari knew one place located in precisely this direction though. The island’s old Zoroastrian temple.

  52.

  A large garden surrounded the ramshackle temple. A fence with iron gates surrounded the garden.

  They stopped the van a generous hundred metres away, just in sight of the fence and the old, white edifice behind it.

  In the dark, discerning what condition the temple was in was difficult, but the estate agent, Ngowi, had called it a ruin, and everything in the area indicated that it hadn’t been used in decades.

  ‘Hard to believe,’ Mari said quietly, shaking her head.

  She didn’t think it was likely Philip Dillon could have been able to use the temple without anyone noticing. Although the temple was large enough, a lot of people walked through the area each day. Using a famous building would be a huge risk.

  But Dillon had come here, straight away. They saw his red dot on the Topo, number one, moving only slightly.

  ‘He’s listening,’ Paddy said quietly. ‘And watching to see if anyone is following him.’

  Dillon’s dot slowly circled the temple grounds, staying outside the fence. Ron followed behind, at precisely the same speed as his quarry.

  Mari whispered instructions to the others. Rico and Lia would stay in the car. Mari would go out with Paddy to follow Ron. When Dillon approached the temple itself, they had to be right behind. They couldn’t let him reach his prisoners.

  Paddy and Mari were extremely careful as they exited the van. They left the doors slightly ajar so closing them wouldn’t cause any noise.

  Rico held the Topo so the light from the display wouldn’t show outside. He and Lia didn’t speak. Just watching the dots on the screen moving after each other was oppressive enough.