Black Noise (10 page)

They both slept poorly, woman and dog.

The strange, small flat and the loss of everything familiar confused Gro. Lia had a hard time falling asleep thinking about how the police would find Berg.

They had left him on the street. Two bodies, two more in a series of horrific crimes, and they had simply left them on the street. But what would the alternative have been? There wasn’t one.

Living with the decision they had made was difficult, but at the same time Lia felt gratitude: Mari and Paddy had settled the matter for all of them.

She slept a few hours simply out of exhaustion. Early in the morning she awoke startled to find someone else sleeping in her room. Soft snoring. That sound had never been there before.

She looked at Gro lying still and drooling in her sleep, and then she started to cry. Now it was possible, with the dog sleeping, safe at home.

The crying brought with it a harsh insight. Berg’s death was not only the end of many things that were important to them, it was also the beginning of new, evil things. Everyone at the Studio was out of their minds with disbelief and grief. She was crying for Berg for the first time and knew it wouldn’t be the last. This was just a shock reaction.

The real sorrow was yet to come. And they didn’t know who the killer was.

In the morning she had to get up because Gro needed to go out. Otherwise Lia would have stayed in bed.

Fuck how I feel. I’m not going to leave a dog in distress.

She walked Gro along Kidderpore Avenue and the neighbouring residential streets. She felt strange. She felt like stopping strangers and telling them: I have a dog. My friend was shot yesterday.

After Gro had her morning pee, Lia hurried back inside so no one in the King’s College residence hall would make a fuss about the dog. She didn’t want anyone complaining about her keeping a pet.

At home she had everything she needed for her usual morning rituals, but now there were two of them.

‘What do you eat in the morning?’ she asked Gro.

Gro looked at her hopefully, her tail wagging a couple of times, and Lia nearly burst into tears again because the poor creature still thought life would get back to normal soon. The four-pawed idiot believed the world was good and of course Berg would come back and of course Lia would have a little extra something for a guest.

One of those things was true. There was leftover pizza in the fridge.

Sunday.

Lia went to the Studio before noon. Rico and Paddy were already there, and Maggie had rung to say she was on her way. Everyone looked like they had been crying.

The Rich Lane bodies were all over the TV news and online. They hadn’t made it into the papers yet.

A Rich Lane body. That was all Berg was now.

The police had investigated the scene through the night and issued their initial statement at eight in the morning. A fourth person kicked to death, and a fifth victim who had been shot.

Lia and the others noticed what information the police withheld in order to protect their investigation. They didn’t say they had received a video recording of events in the alley. Or that Berg had died trying to stop the killer – concealing that felt wrong to Lia since it robbed Berg of his importance.

When she arrived, Maggie was very calm, much more so than the others expected.

‘I took a pill,’ she stated quickly.

As a group they tried to concentrate on the things that needed doing. They and the police had a video of the previous night’s events in Kensington. In it they could see the killer, potentially well enough to identify him.

Did they need to help the police more with Berg’s case? The video would show them that he didn’t bring Brian Fowler to the street,
but it also showed that Berg had a gun. Did they need to convince the police that Berg hadn’t been party to the killings in any way?

They had five cameras installed on streets around London.

Paddy hadn’t had time to install the last one he had been carrying. Should they leave the cameras in place? Would it be worth trying to set up more?

There was no end of questions, but it was hard to decide things because Mari wasn’t at the Studio. None of them wanted to ring her in case she was sleeping. She could have been up all night, so they had to give her time to recover.

They focused on the video. Watching it was oppressive, almost nightmarish, but they had to determine what they could see of the killer. Rico enlarged one image after another, all the ones in which any part of the guy was visible.

No face. They could see what he was wearing, a baseball cap, leather jacket, dark trousers and heavy shoes. But no clear picture of his face, not even in profile.

The killer’s vehicle was so blurry that it would be no help identifying him, but Rico did get one detail out of the enlargements. The white van had a two-word advert on the side. They couldn’t read it, but just the fact that it existed meant something.

‘He might be using a logo from a maintenance or security company,’ Paddy suggested. ‘Then no one would take any notice of him parking his van on streets at night that don’t have parking spaces.’

Now that they thought there might only be one killer, the earlier videos appeared in a different light. It was possible he had just repeatedly spliced together pictures of kicks he had meted out himself.

‘We can tell his height from this,’ Paddy said.

The police would be able to estimate it precisely because they had the victim’s body and the video showed the killer dragging Fowler. They were almost the same height. The killer was also strong. Despite his slender frame, he was able to move his victim relatively easily.

‘He works out,’ Paddy said. ‘That kind of strength takes work.’

They rewound the video over and over, back and forth, every part of it in which they could catch a glimpse of the victim in his red and
black shirt. From this they could now be sure it was Brian Fowler. When they compared images from the video with pictures they had found of Fowler, he was recognisable, if only just.

At some point in the afternoon they realised that Mari might not come in to the Studio at all that day. She hadn’t made any contact.

Lia looked at the big bunch of keys Mari had given her. ‘For emergencies,’ Mari had said.

Stealthily Lia tried the keys in the different doors around the Studio. The key ring held keys for all of them, including the large freight doors at the back of the Den. But there were two more keys that didn’t seem to belong to the Studio at all.

Had Mari known when she gave Lia these keys that she wouldn’t be coming in?

Lia threw a ball for Gro in the Den. The dog was elated: a familiar game and a familiar place with her master’s smell everywhere.

‘Listen, pup,’ Lia said. ‘If there’s an emergency, what are we going to do then?’

When the sorrow comes, it is a tsunami the size of a building that leaves nothing standing in its wake.

Mari knows the sorrow is coming; she can feel it on her shoulders and in her temples. It makes her put her hands to her head, massaging lightly, preparing for what is to come.

That is why she first gives Paddy instructions for searching Berg’s belongings and arranges for Rico to send the video to the police. And this is why she gives the keys to Lia. She has to prevent the worst consequences of Berg’s death from hitting them all.

These are things she can do. After the others leave the Studio, she stays behind to watch their very own snuff film. She memorises the images. She looks at them as long as she is able.

In the morning, before dawn, Mari takes a small scrap of paper, scribbles a few words on it, places it on her desk and leaves the Studio. On the street she hails a taxi. She glances at the driver and, as she looks, Mari knows this precaution is only coming from her medulla. She sees nothing. The driver could be anyone, and Mari’s brain wouldn’t detect it.

She gets out in Hoxton three streets before her flat. Always at least three streets early.

As she walks to her home, no one else is on the street. That much she can still notice. She has to get home, behind locked doors.

Being at home is a relief. Mari stands in the hall. The doors are closed. She sets down her bag, observing her own reactions.

Screaming? Weeping? What physical expression would be right? Right in what sense?

When this sorrow comes, it is the size of a building. Mari almost sees it coming.

She sits on her living room floor, at the edge of the large room, near the large windows. The sorrow comes, and she wraps her arms around her knees and squeezes. She’s breaking down in so many places.

Mari curls up under the sorrow. She rocks on the floor.

Their Berg is dead.

She can’t think. All her thoughts hurt too much.

This is torment.

Lia opened the front door of the unfamiliar building with one of the keys from the big key ring.

Bridport Place. There were no resident’s names listed – this was not one of those buildings where each name was written next to the buzzers or in the hall. The building was old and handsome, and apparently a pub had once operated downstairs. Everything felt so big and strange.

She looked for flat number nineteen. There was no name on the door, only a number.

For a moment she hesitated about ringing the doorbell. It felt wrong for some reason. She glanced at the lock and her keys and then chose one. The door opened easily. Stepping inside, she quickly pulled the door shut behind her.

Mari’s home.

On the floor in the hall was Mari’s bag. Lia was used to seeing it at the Studio. Seeing it here felt strange. And stepping into the flat at all felt forbidden, as if she were breaking an unspoken rule. Mari had never invited her or the others from the Studio to her home or even told them where she lived.

Lia had spent hours at the Studio thinking. But no word had come from Mari, not even a text to any of them, and when Paddy tried to ring, no one answered.

They didn’t have Mari’s address, and Lia only knew that she lived in Hoxton. She guessed they wouldn’t find the address in any public listings, so spending time looking was pointless.

But the bunch of keys Mari had given her held two keys that didn’t belong to the Studio. And Lia remembered Mari’s expression the previous night when she handed Lia the keys.

Over the past year Mari had disappeared for a few days on one or two occasions. Just like that, as if somehow ceasing to exist for a moment. She had never explained her disappearances to Lia – suddenly they just didn’t see her at the Studio, no one seemed to know where she was and Mari only replied to their messages after several days. She hadn’t been sick then. Lia thought she would have noticed that.

Lia suspected Mari had been away from London travelling and didn’t want the others to know about her trips. Now this was a new situation though, clearly brought on by Berg’s death.

At the Studio they were getting nowhere. Rico had gone through the video from the night before, searching through it frame by frame for any details they could use to identify Berg and Brian Fowler’s killer. Maggie and Paddy had scanned the news broadcasts about the Rich Lane victims.

But without Mari, their work lacked purpose. Everything was on hold.

Lia had started prowling the Studio offices. Gro followed her everywhere except into Mari and Rico’s offices, so she rarely went in either. That was why she didn’t notice the paper on Mari’s desk until the afternoon.

Bridsataman paikka. Asunto yhdeksäntoista.

Mari had written the address and flat number all in Finnish so only Lia would understand the cryptic message.

Lia had set out immediately by taxi, leaving Gro in Paddy and Maggie’s care.

Mari’s home was large, disconcertingly large as far as Lia was concerned.

There were six rooms in addition to an open kitchen. It quickly dawned on Lia that Mari’s flat and terrace covered practically the entire top storey of the building.

She walked through the flat carefully, not wanting to barge in or startle Mari, who might be sleeping.

The decoration had a simple beauty. Berg’s hand was visible everywhere in the Studio, but here Mari had assembled a world of her own. Lia recognised brand names she had only ever seen in style magazines and expensive boutiques.

The living room alone was at least forty square metres. That was more than twice the size of Lia’s entire small flat. There didn’t seem to be much in the room: two mismatched sofas – one Missoni and one something expensive and Scandinavian – and some imposing tall windows. Apparently Mari liked that kind of combination since at the Studio she had two different sofas in her office too.

She found Mari in the bedroom, lying on the large bed fully dressed. She appeared to be awake.

‘Hi,’ Lia said.

Mari looked her in the eye, but only for a fleeting moment.

Lia saw a great deal in that short space of time. This was all Mari could do right now. Mari had been crying, but Lia wasn’t sure whether she had slept. Lia sat down on the edge of the bed.

‘Should I ring a doctor?’ she asked.

‘Don’t,’ Mari said.

Her voice was faint but her thoughts lucid.

‘Do you need something?’

No answer.

Mari’s face contorted. She pulled her arms up to cover it. Under white clenched knuckles her jaw trembled.

Lia grabbed a blanket from a chair, set it on the bed next to Mari and quietly closed the door behind her.

At the Studio Lia didn’t say anything specific about Mari’s condition or her home. She just said she had been to see her. Paddy wanted to ring Mari, but Lia encouraged him to wait.

They were all walking wounded because of Berg. Talking about what had happened was hard, but still it was constantly present. Mari’s absence made them restless, as did the knowledge that the killer was probably still free.

Maggie went through the information she had found about Berg’s relatives. Only two lived in Britain, a half-sister and a cousin. In Sweden there was more family, on Berg’s father’s side.

Luckily we don’t have to tell them the bad news, Lia thought. ‘What will the police do with him?’ she asked Paddy when the others weren’t listening.

‘They’ll move on two fronts,’ Paddy said.

Berg’s body had been taken in for forensic analysis. His death had become part of Operation Rhea now and would be assigned its own principal detectives, one of whom would be contacting Berg’s relatives and friends, and the others would be digging through all the information they could get about him.

‘They’ll go to his flat today. They’ve probably already been there,’ Paddy said.

Lia tried to lighten her mood by temporarily concentrating on practical matters: she took Gro outside and then went looking for proper dog food for her.

The six o’clock news announced Berg’s name to the entire world, following a police press conference. British and Swedish citizen Bertil Tore Berg, sixty-three, had been shot the previous night in Kensington. The circumstances of the shooting were unclear. His body had been found near another man’s, thirty-four-year-old Brian Fowler. They also reported that Fowler had disappeared three days earlier after spending the evening at a nightclub with a previous victim, Evelyn Morris.

The news did not make any special mention of the video the Studio had sent the police, but eventually the police did announce receiving evidence that Berg had tried to stop the man suspected of Fowler’s murder. They also asked the public for any information regarding events or movements in the immediate vicinity of Rich Lane the previous evening.

Bertil Tore Berg, sixty-three, citizen of Britain and Sweden.

You couldn’t describe Berg like that, Lia thought. He was their wizard of stage design, their friend, their bear in overalls. Gro’s master. Berg was laughter, intelligence, attentiveness. The sounds of the Den.

Lia knew why Mari was lying at home incapacitated.

Paddy and Maggie left, but Rico wanted to stay with his machines.

‘Can you watch Gro for a little while?’ Lia asked.

‘Are you going to Hoxton?’ Rico asked.

Lia nodded.

‘Tell Mari that…’ Rico began but trailed off mid-sentence. ‘Say that we’ll get through this too,’ Rico finally said. ‘I’ll work on my tablet so I can sit with Gro Harlem in the Den.’

Mari’s flat was dark and silent.

Lia switched on the hall lights and glanced around. Had Mari been up and around?

Nothing in the flat suggested so. There were no clothes tossed over the back of a chair and no cup left on the table. The large kitchen showed no signs of anyone having eaten there. Lia looked in the fridge, which was almost the same size as her entire kitchenette in Hampstead. An open milk carton, cheeses, and something in the vegetable drawer. Everything arranged in orderly fashion.

Does she have a cleaner?

Was that possible? Mari protected her privacy with almost frightening fastidiousness, but the flat was large and Mari was always at work. And she had money – maybe she did use a maid.

Lia listened quietly at the bedroom door. Nothing came from inside. Lia turned off the hall light so it wouldn’t shine into the bedroom and carefully opened the door.

Mari was sleeping, her breathing deep and slow.

Lia inspected the flat more thoroughly. She wanted to see all the rooms, but she had to do it cautiously.

Holy shit I’m curious about her.

That didn’t mean voyeurism though. You couldn’t go too far into friends’ personal areas, especially not with a friend like Mari.

She didn’t open any drawers or sniff around in any cupboards. She sat in different places, read the spines of books in the wall of bookcases and looked at the paintings. There were few decorations, although she knew Mari travelled a lot.

She thought for a moment about Mari’s office at the Studio. One wall there was dedicated to shelves bearing dozens of neatly arranged binders with information about the Studio’s previous jobs, the ones Mari had never been willing to talk about. But Lia couldn’t go riffling through the binders without Mari’s knowledge. The very thought was impossible, also because a beautiful curtain Berg had made covered the shelves. Not only would Lia have to break Mari’s trust, in a way she also would have been insulting Berg.

Glancing around a friend’s house stayed within the bounds of propriety though.

I’m not prying. I’m just looking.

She allowed herself a couple of open-faced sandwiches. The bread and other bits and bobs were easily accessible in the kitchen – she didn’t need to go snooping too much in the cupboards.

It was almost time for the Channel Four news. But of course there was no normal television in Mari’s home, either in the living room or the kitchen.

Lia went into the study. It resembled Mari’s office at the Studio: a large room with a long, handsome desk, binders and books on the shelves. An enormous plasma screen covered one wall. Mari must have used that for watching TV.

Lia spent a while searching for a remote but didn’t find one. Finally she plucked up the courage to sit in Mari’s chair and looked at the desk. The laptop was in sleep mode.

She brushed the touchpad. The machine started reviving, which also woke up the wall display. On the screen Lia saw quick links for television and several other options: apparently Mari watched TV through the computer.

Opening the evening news on the computer, and thereby also on the enormous flat screen, Lia leaned back in Mari’s chair and ate. She felt a little guilty. But also relieved.

Guilty because here she was sitting in her friend’s inner sanctum, seeing things with Mari’s eyes, possibly dropping crumbs in a place where no one was supposed to eat. Relieved because Mari was sleeping. Things might work out and the time for grieving might pass someday.

Berg’s and Brian Fowler’s deaths weren’t even the number one story on the news any more. At its height, Craig Cole’s Gropegate scandal had dominated the headlines for a few days, and the letters, phone calls and scrapbooks the Studio had made to help him had spawned their own consequences, but the notice they had attracted was waning as well. The video killings would remain in the news for some time to come, until eventually they had to make room for other things as well.

Publicity was a cold sea governed by no one and in which no one was safe. Lia was wondering whether that was sad or just the way the world dealt with problems and moved forward, but then her thoughts were disturbed when something started ringing.

A soft buzzing, insistently repetitive. Lia frantically searched for its source so that Mari wouldn’t wake up, until she spotted a telephone icon pulsing on the computer screen. Opening the app, Lia read the name next to the caller’s avatar. Mamia.

Mari’s mother? What was her name? Don’t they live somewhere in Häme, near Pori?

Before she had time to think it through too carefully, Lia clicked the Answer button. She jumped when a face flashed onto the computer screen and the large wall display.

An elderly woman with dark hair stared from the wall. She couldn’t be Mari’s mother – she was much too old.

‘This is new,’ the woman said in Finnish.

‘Good evening,’ Lia answered when she didn’t know what else to say.

‘Dear girl, I can’t hear you,’ the old woman said. ‘You need the headphones with the microphone. They’re there somewhere. Or turn on the microphone on the computer.’

Lia stared at the old lady who was instructing her how to use Skype on Mari’s computer. Looking around, on the edge of the desk Lia found a light pair of headphones with a small mic attached. Quickly she plugged them into the computer. Mari had to sleep, and Lia didn’t want Mari to see her messing with her computer.

‘You’re the Finn,’ the old woman said once Lia had the headphones on. ‘You’re Lia.’

Lia realised that the woman had to be some relation to Mari. She could hear it in her voice and see it in her features, her cheekbones.

‘Yeah,’ Lia said.

‘Where is Mari then?’ the woman asked.

‘In there – sleeping.’

The woman’s eyes sharpened ever so slightly.

‘I’m Mari’s grandmother,’ she said. ‘Her father’s mother. Mirjami Rautee.’

Lia smiled and nodded. The video connection was a little slow, giving the feeling that you had to exaggerate your gestures and speak more clearly for the other person to understand.

‘In the family everyone calls me Mamia,’ Mari’s grandmother said.

‘Mamia,’ Lia repeated.

‘There’s a little story behind the name,’ Mamia said.

Lia took a breath and thought for a second. Mari was sleeping off a case of shock so severe she had wanted to give Lia her keys to every door in the Studio and her home. Mari certainly hadn’t intended for Lia to end up talking to her grandma, but she could hardly take offence.