Black Noise (22 page)

Craig Cole was surprised to meet Lia on his doorstep, accompanied by Maggie, whom he had never met before.

‘This is my colleague Margaret,’ Lia said. ‘She knows a lot of people in the media.’

Cole asked them in, and they sat in the kitchen.

‘I thought your work was done,’ he said. ‘The work you did for me. It went beautifully.’

The nasty stories about Cole had stopped quickly after the programmes and opinion pieces defending him came out. Bryony Wade’s family hadn’t appeared in public again.

‘The parents probably realised they didn’t have anything more to gain out of this,’ Cole said.

Looking at him, they could see he still wasn’t sleeping well.

‘We have a proposition,’ Maggie said. ‘A job offer, actually.’

At the Studio they had decided that Maggie would visit Cole this time because she had found a job opportunity for him, and Mari’s thoughts were elsewhere.

Cole looked aside upon hearing the word ‘job’.

‘I haven’t actually been looking for work.’

‘I know,’ Maggie said. ‘But maybe you should be.’

Maggie kept her eyes locked on Cole as she presented the opportunity she had found. He was sitting diagonally across from them, a little hunched over, as if communicating that he didn’t want to see anyone, ready to fly out of the room. When he heard Maggie’s thoughts, his posture began to straighten.

In Bradford, there was a radio station named The Pulse. It was very small, not the sort of place he would have ever considered before even for a moment. The station’s programmes mostly dealt with regional issues, but it had established a foothold in the press of national pop stations.

‘They’re looking for a host for their music programmes,’ Maggie said.

A small sort of smile crept onto Cole’s face. He had done music broadcasting when he was young, long before he became a star of talk radio.

‘A fifty-year-old man hosting a top-of-the-pops programme?’ Cole said.

‘They don’t just want new music,’ Maggie said.

The majority of their listenership was adults, and now they were looking for a host for their programmes directed at the over-forty crowd.

‘That wouldn’t make any sense,’ Cole objected. ‘I’d have to move to Bradford.’

‘Yes, you would,’ Maggie admitted.

She knew Cole was familiar with Bradford. Early in his career Cole had worked as a reporter in the county and he knew what a peaceful place it was.

It would be a fresh start, Maggie explained. Cole could do work he liked for a reasonably large audience. Hosting a music show would still be sufficiently different from the work he had been doing in recent years though.

‘The best thing is you can’t fail at it,’ Maggie said. ‘If it doesn’t work out, not all that many people will hear about it. If it does work, soon you’ll have a faithful audience.’

‘I don’t know,’ Cole said hesitantly.

He made them tea. Lia remained an observer in the conversation since Maggie had the situation well in hand.

Maggie talked to Cole about the latest shake-ups at the BBC and ITV. Chatting about this and that, she kept the conversation light and focused on the entertainment industry. Cole poured the tea and offered them their cups.

‘They won’t want me in Bradford,’ he said.

Maggie and Lia exchanged a quick glance.

‘Yes they do,’ Maggie said. ‘I’ve already asked.’

‘You talked to them about me?’ Cole asked, confused. ‘Before you talked to me?’

‘Settle down,’ Maggie said. ‘I didn’t promise you were coming. I simply asked what they would pay if I could get someone like Craig Cole for them.’

‘And?’

Cole’s expression made it clear how much this answer would mean to him.

‘The station director said that if I could get them someone like Craig Cole, he would pay them the same amount he’s earning and maybe a little more. Then he asked whether I knew you and what you were doing nowadays. He asked how much he would have to pay me to tell you about their station and find out if you were interested.’

By the time Maggie and Lia left, Cole had agreed to think about visiting Bradford. He could do that much without any commitment, Maggie assured him.

‘If you don’t like the place, just tell me and that will be that. We can look for something else or just drop it if you want.’

‘He’ll probably go to Bradford at least to have a look around,’ Maggie told Mari at the Studio.

‘We can’t be sure of that,’ Lia said, trying to put a dampener on their expectations.

But Maggie thought she knew how entertainment stars thought, and she had researched Cole specifically.

‘It’s a place Cole can feel safe. He’ll go for a visit at least.’

Mari thanked Maggie for her effort, but it was easy to tell that her mind was mostly elsewhere.

That night Lia visited the shooting range again. Holding a weapon was beginning to feel routine. She knew how her Heckler & Koch P7 worked and what it demanded of its handler.

‘We usually just say HK, not Heckler & Koch,’ Bob Pell pointed out. ‘You can tell an amateur by the way they talk.’

‘I am an amateur,’ Lia said.

Pell looked at his score record and nodded knowingly.

‘You won’t be for long,’ he said. ‘Mr Moore can make a passable shooter out of anyone.’

Lia frowned at his slightly dismissive tone, but couldn’t help asking what it would take to become better than passable.

‘Dinner with me,’ Pell replied.

‘I don’t think I want to learn that much about shooting.’

Pell burst out laughing.

‘You’re going to be much better than passable if you keep it up like
this,’ he said. ‘You want to shoot, and that determination is what will mean you’ll be good. That can’t be taught.’

The thought made Lia reflective.

‘Why do you want to shoot?’ Pell asked.

Lia didn’t have an answer to that. She thanked him and left for home.

Pell’s question wouldn’t leave her in peace though.

Why do I want to shoot?

She felt sick when she saw the violent videos spreading online. Just a little while ago the idea of even holding a gun had felt uncomfortable. Her close friend had been shot. By rights Lia should have felt more distrustful of guns now, especially since she was practising in secret.

But holding a weapon and learning how to use it brought her a feeling of security. The difficult relationship she’d left behind in Finland so many years ago had made her fear for her safety, and in London she had been involved with several crimes. Whether her life held real or imagined dangers, shooting helped her face them.

I want to learn to shoot because I want to be the kind of person who moves towards the difficult things in this world.

The police didn’t release any information about the fifth video. Not even a statement about the possible actions they might take in response.

The silence of the police affected Mari. Lia noticed that her determination was taking on an increasingly hard edge, as if she knew something unavoidable was coming.

They were constantly waiting for something that would change everything again. That something didn’t come. Lia always left for the Studio immediately after working as short a day as possible at
Level
. She walked her familiar route from Fetter Lane, behind her the buzzing streets of the City and the dome of St Paul’s reaching towards the heavens, before her Bankside and its industrial buildings, office blocks and shrine to the arts, Tate Modern, but the transition didn’t work the way it used to: before it had been a journey from the rest of the world to the protection of the Studio, but now the world always travelled with her.

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 enlargements 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.