Black Noise (2 page)

They waited for Craig Cole a few blocks from his flat so he wouldn’t think them pushy.

Cole walked briskly. He had hidden his red, puffy face behind dark glasses. The swelling of his face was not a result of drink, Lia and Mari knew. This was a man who now cried every day. Sometimes several times a day, without the dignity or self-control that had previously been a foregone conclusion in his life up to this point. Until the catastrophe struck.

Craig Cole had become a man who cried every day when a fourteen-year-old girl named Bryony Wade called his live radio show and announced before an audience of millions that Cole had made advances on her.

Of course the staff at Radio 2 screened that call, just like all the other calls that had been made to the show that day three weeks ago. An assistant producer talked with Bryony Wade before connecting her to the broadcast. She was supposed to request a Justin Bieber song and chat with Cole about her friends’ favourite websites. Instead she dropped a bombshell. She said that her parents had encouraged her to ring and tell him that the whole family intended to go to the police.

‘You dirty old man,’ Bryony Wade said live on the air. ‘You should be in prison.’

Cole’s twenty-six years in radio did not save him. He lost crucial time by thinking that the call had to be some sort of sick joke. This sort of thing simply didn’t happen.

‘Come now, Bryony,’ he said. ‘We’ve never even met. I think it’s best we end the fun right here.’

‘Last night you shoved your hand under my jumper and touched my tits,’ Bryony said. ‘You promised me money if you could grope me. You dirty old man. I’m only fourteen.’

The producers cut off the call, but 1.6 million listeners had already heard one of the most popular radio personalities in Britain knocked speechless. All that came over the airwaves was the muted music that was supposed to play in the background of each call. It continued to play for nearly thirty seconds before Cole had finished
screaming at the production team behind the glass and returned to the microphone. All that was missing was the audience hearing his screams.

Within ten minutes the incident started spreading online, replaying over and over the clip of a fourteen-year-old nobody accusing a fifty-two-year-old radio star of groping her breasts and saying he should be locked up in jail.

The tabloids took about an hour to find Bryony Wade and get her on the phone. She told them she and her parents were heading to the police station to file a complaint. And thus, the catastrophe was complete.

They never filed a criminal report. Bryony and her parents never went to the police station. They started giving interviews through the window of the family car and then at home.

Perhaps the Wade family had never intended to go to the police at all, Craig Cole had thought. Their target might have been something else entirely – such as the national media attention.

Cole quickly realised what an easy target he was. It turned out that he had been at the same event with Bryony Wade the previous day, and he had even been seen alone with her for a moment in the same place. They had both been participating in a fundraiser for the Elizabeth Simms School in Newham – Craig Cole as a celebrity guest whose presence would draw in potential donors, Bryony Wade as one of the school’s numerous volunteers.

As Cole waited in the dressing room for his turn on stage, Bryony was also seen backstage, on her way to the dressing room and then coming out a little later. Cole didn’t know what the girl had been doing in the room, but he did know he had never seen Bryony, let alone touched her.

‘Why didn’t you report the groping to the teachers?’ the reporters asked Bryony.

‘I was in shock. I’m only fourteen,’ she replied.

I’m only fourteen.
The girl repeated that over and over, and it had its effect, as if her age confirmed her accusation, practically proving it was true. Every headline, every interview in which Bryony called attention to her fourteen-year-old innocence cut a little piece from Cole’s reputation.

‘I’ve never met this girl. I would never do something like that,’ Cole repeatedly told the reporters. ‘I have a long, happy marriage, and I’ve been working in radio for twenty-six years. I can’t understand why any young girl would even want to allege something so grotesque.’

His confusion and the girl’s age was enough to ensure a spot on the front page of every tabloid in the nation. Inside, their interviews were often printed side-by-side, which dismayed Cole even further: as if the girl’s absurd story could be taken seriously. In the
Sun
, a four-page special report related Cole’s distinguished career, while the Wade family received six pages.

Gropegate
the papers called it. The word left no room for doubt, talking about it as if it had actually happened. When Cole saw the phrase for the first time, he knew he was sunk.

Cole cried for the first time three days after the catastrophic phone call. He cried over how exhausted he was, that he no longer had the energy to declare his innocence to even one more person and that a twenty-six-year career didn’t seem to protect him from anything.

The more serious news outlets gave the case a few columns, in which they also stated that Bryony had not yet gone to the police.

But the gossip rags couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Day after day Gropegate continued as they assembled expert commentary on how common sexual harassment was and dug up old friends of the Wade family who swore that Bryony was a normal, quiet girl without any reason to make claims of this sort unless they were well founded.

Cole asked himself every day what the ‘foundations’ could have been. Why had this teenage girl and her family pulled such a dirty stunt?

There were many possible answers. Perhaps she had been infatuated with him. That happened sometimes, Cole knew from his fan mail. Perhaps his presence and sense of humour on air had made him a target, inexplicably important somehow. Perhaps the fact that the listener never sees the speaker only intensifies the attachment, allowing them to fall in love with their own idea of the person behind the voice, with their own emotions when listening to him. A pleasant voice could be a powerful draw.

Or maybe the family just wanted to become famous. Maybe they thought they would get money from it. Maybe they wanted all of this fallout and something more. A feeling that they were somehow important.

When Mari and Lia went to meet Craig Cole, they knew they would find him near his home. Cole didn’t have anywhere to be during the day any more.

The network had shelved his show after five days of sensation. The listening figures had actually gone up because of the scandal, but so many prank calls were coming in accusing Cole of being a paedophile and child rapist that screening for normal callers was nearly impossible. And even the normal callers usually just had one thing on their minds, how terrible what had happened to Cole was. You couldn’t make an entertainment programme out of pity calls. The producers had encouraged Cole to file a criminal complaint against the girl, but he wouldn’t agree to that or to the BBC doing it on his behalf. So Cole had been forced to leave the station.

They stood face to face, two women with expectant looks and Craig Cole steeling himself for the wave of outrage that had to be coming. Cole lived on Radnor Walk in Chelsea, which was dominated by the restrained atmosphere that often accompanied wealth, but perhaps the aggression against him had reached closer to his doorstep than he knew.

‘We don’t know each other, but I have a matter to discuss with you,’ the woman with darker hair said.

‘Yes, you’re right, I don’t believe we do know each other,’ Cole said, trying to keep his voice friendly.

So many people had approached him this way. People who wanted to stand in judgement on the street, in the shop, in the pub, in the lobby of the radio station. The worst had been a man who attacked him in Currys, shouting that people like him didn’t have any right to be walking around free. When the salespeople intervened to save Cole, he fled immediately, without buying anything, avoiding the stares and wondering how long it would take for someone to pull out their camera phone and put him back in the headlines:
Cole Beaten Up in Currys.

These women seemed civilised enough, but their purposeful bearing didn’t bode well. He had to assume that any complete stranger walking up to him on the street might be trouble. Perhaps they were mothers and some pervert had messed with their children and now he was going to get a taste of their rage.

‘My name is Mari Rautee,’ the dark-haired woman calmly said.

‘Yes?’ Craig said, raising his eyebrows at the foreign name as he looked around for an escape route.

‘We can get you back your reputation.’

After an hour of conversation, the impossible was starting to feel possible again.

Not probable, Craig thought, not something you’d dare put much money on, but it was starting to seem at least faintly conceivable.

‘The most important thing is that you stay absolutely calm and stick to the logic of your story,’ the Finnish woman said.

‘My story?’ Craig repeated.

‘Yes.’

The woman’s gaze was sharp, almost piercing, like her entire attitude. The other woman, the blonde one, mostly kept quiet, but the dark-haired one named Mari was more than enough of a challenge. If they hadn’t spent the past hour talking as they had, Craig Cole would have avoided that gaze. He couldn’t have borne it in his present condition.

‘Does it feel strange for you that I call it a story?’ Mari asked.

‘Yes, it does. This whole thing is strange.’

But Cole had to think about it that way, Mari argued. He had his own life, a good life that had been interrupted because he had been thrown into a strange story. Someone had invented this lie, and now that meant the actual reality of Cole’s life wasn’t enough. They had to create another narrative. They had to attract attention to another story that was just as powerful and interesting as the one to which Cole had fallen victim.

‘The truth isn’t enough right now. The truth needs some help.’

The woman with the strange name spoke well, Cole thought.

When she had introduced herself on the street and offered to help him with damage control, Cole’s first reaction was to try to get
away. PR consultants weren’t going to do him any good, and any PR firm sniffing at his carcass wasn’t going to want anything but his money.

But the woman had said they were prepared to work for him pro bono. Cole stopped and listened. After listening he asked the women into his home.

The house was large and silent. Cole’s wife, Gill, had been on personal leave for a week due to Gropegate, but now she was back at work. Cole put the kettle on as they sat in the kitchen.

‘Did you see the morning paper? The letters page?’ Mari indicated
The Times
lying on the table.

‘No,’ Cole said.

He hadn’t been able to read the letters pages for days. His name came up too often.

‘It might be worth a look,’ Mari said, opening the paper to the right page and handing it to Cole.

Reputation is the most important means of communication people have these days,
the long letter began.
Not a social media platform, not a mobile device, but rather the overall picture that forms of each of us through all different channels. Because reputation comes from so many sources, you might think that ruining it quickly and almost by accident would be difficult. But it is not. It is actually very easy. Too easy. And this appears to be what happened to Craig Cole.

The letter described how single, chance occurrences could destroy the reputation of a public figure, possibly for entirely the wrong reasons. Cole looked at the letter-writer’s name: Jane Woolstone, a communications consultant from London.

In the surge of emotion, Cole could barely speak. Mari and Lia waited quietly while he reread the letter.

As she looked on, Lia’s eyes fell on another page of the newspaper lying open on the table. There was a short, one-column story: strange black videos had appeared online again under a hacked identity, this time on MySpace. Again ten videos like last time. Apparently whoever was behind the stunt knew how to cover their tracks in such a way that even the largest web services in the world couldn’t track them down.

The letter to the editor in
The Times
almost brought Cole to tears again.

‘I never would have believed anyone would write something like this about me any more,’ Cole said.

‘There are other people who think this way too,’ Mari said. ‘We have to give them a voice.’

Cole listened in confusion as the dark-haired woman with the strange name pitched her PR campaign. It was the strangest thing Cole had ever heard.

When the woman reached the conclusion of her presentation, Cole thought for a moment. Then he asked, ‘Why would you do all that?’

Mari smiled. ‘I like the truth. And sometimes a chance comes along for me to help it.’

All five of the Studio’s letters were published at almost exactly the time Lia and Mari expected. Only the
Daily Mail
took a day longer than planned.

The five letters to the editor were the first positive things written about Craig Cole in weeks. Each of them presented its own arguments for why the Gropegate accusations should be considered suspect. And all of them suggested that Cole had been defamed.

Each letter sounded reasonable and measured. Mari and Lia had polished the language knowing that there was no sense trying to suppress the frenzy against Cole with passion. Instead, it had to be turned by quiet conversation, by creating conditions favourable for his defence.

Of course the writer who had defended Cole in
The Times,
Jane Woolstone, didn’t exist. The Studio had created her, just like the other four writers.

Rico had doubted the plan. ‘Do people read the letter pages much any more since so much happens online? Do letters like this have any real impact?’

They weren’t looking for any dramatic change from five letters though, Mari explained. They were just an opening, a way to lower the temperature of the conversation. And they would give Cole himself a little hope for the future.

Given her line of work, Lia was able to assure the others that people still read the letter pages. Everyone in newspapers and magazines knew it, and reader surveys had confirmed it. At
Level
, they didn’t publish very many messages or letters from readers, but those they did were still among the most popular content.

And the main audience for the letters wasn’t just the general public, Mari said. By writing in Cole’s defence to the five big papers, they would also create the impression in the rest of the media that the wave of anger against the DJ might be subsiding.

At the same time as the letters were coming out, the larger envelopes reached their destinations at three selected editorial offices. In each was a scrapbook, every one different, containing copies of magazine articles and newspaper headlines spanning Craig Cole’s career.

Cole Opens New Prize Gala.

Radio Star Relaxes at Pub Quiz Contest.

The fact that the Studio could only find warm or neutral news stories about him over the years was a testament to Cole’s irreproachability. He had participated in hundreds of events in his work and free time – he had had a lifetime of opportunities for dalliances or ruffling feathers.

The public record created an unstintingly positive picture of him, and the books of clippings showed that. They had his quips to the paparazzi at film openings, his speeches at charity events, even a story about the only crime he was known to have ever committed: he had been caught trying to smuggle a piece of jewellery made from a rare turtle shell from Morocco back to England. Even that entanglement turned out positive once it came out that he had done it at his daughter’s request since she was so smitten with the piece.

Lia was relieved when Cole’s past turned out spotless. When Mari initially announced at the Studio that she was going to try to help Cole, Lia had been floored.

‘We need to intervene. Cole didn’t do it,’ Mari said the day Gropegate hit the news.

‘What do you mean he didn’t do it? How can you be so sure?’ Lia asked curiously.

‘He just didn’t.’

Lia often had a hard time accepting the absoluteness of Mari’s opinions, but she had seen her friend’s special ability in action before: all Mari had to do was look at a person to read their innermost thoughts. Sometimes Mari’s gift felt almost supernatural, although she claimed it didn’t have anything to do with clairvoyance or anything else otherworldly. Mari was a psychologist by training and a researcher by disposition, and she didn’t believe in the supernatural. She took a very practical attitude towards the jobs she took on at the Studio, devoting herself to them nearly round the clock. Part of that was because she seemed to perceive so much more about people than the rest of them.

They had a lot in common. They were roughly the same age – Lia twenty-nine, Mari thirty-three – and both had left their home country to look for work and something new.

Lia had told Mari nearly everything about her background except why in her early twenties she had suddenly wanted to get as far away from Helsinki as she could. She had been in a relationship that had turned nightmarish. Lia didn’t know whether Mari could see that unpleasant experience in her. Sometimes she was convinced Mari didn’t know but other times it seemed obvious that she did. She could never be sure with Mari.

The operation began in earnest when the network shelved Craig Cole’s show. As the first order of business, Mari asked Lia, Rico and Maggie to help her investigate both him and Bryony Wade. Lia focused on newspaper articles in the digital archives, Rico on web sources and Maggie looked into official records and conducted interviews. Every couple of days they reported back to Mari and each other.

Cole’s past was squeaky clean, but so was Bryony’s. Nothing suspicious about her or her family turned up, and the accusations against Cole were the first time the family had appeared in the public eye.

‘The girl is lying,’ Mari said after watching Bryony appear in a TV interview and listening several times to her call to Cole’s radio programme. Something had made the girl direct her anger against Cole, but the reason was a mystery.

Craig Cole’s feeble attempts at self-defence were strange too, Mari said to Lia one night. He hadn’t even filed a police complaint about her accusations, instead just waiting apathetically for the truth to come out.

‘This whole thing has gone too far,’ Mari said. ‘No innocent person should have to endure something like this.’

She also wanted to get involved because she detested the exaggerated fuss some newspapers made about sexual harassment. For decades the issue had been virtually taboo in the UK, as elsewhere, but in recent years more and more cases had come to light where someone accused a famous person of sexual abuse. Entertainers, artists, long-established politicians. The revelations had shocked the nation time and time again. When the incidents kept coming, people had started learning to approach the issue in a new way, breaking the systematic silence. Brushing it aside was a thing of the past.

But these accusations were a dangerous temptation for the media. Witch hunt was often an understatement, and sometimes innocents were harmed. Serious, aggravated sexual harassment occurred every day, and sensational stories only made it harder to do anything about the real problem.

Lia agreed completely, but she still had a theory about why the Craig Cole case touched Mari so deeply. Perhaps Mari was partially trying to make up for the Arthur Fried incident. A year earlier the Studio had taken on two jobs, the ones that had drawn Lia into the team. While investigating the activities of far-right politician Arthur Fried, they had also begun looking into the death of a woman brutally slain in London.

Participating in those jobs changed Lia’s life. She had never believed she could do anything like that or even thought about grim crimes in detail. But after meeting Mari, her ideas of what was possible for a normal person had broadened considerably.

However, they had come to loggerheads about what Mari had done to Fried. It had taken time for Lia to get over their disagreement.

But now here she was, at the Studio. Their little band had become very dear to her, as had their office building’s expansive views of the Thames and the old industrial blocks of Bankside.

Mari and she rarely talked about the events of a year ago and especially avoided talking about the Arthur Fried incident. Lia knew it was better to let things lie.

Maybe Cole is Mari’s way of balancing something out. Help one man regain his reputation because she made the wrong decision about another.

But what do I know? Mari probably doesn’t regret her decisions one little bit. Maybe that’s only my wishful thinking.