Black Noise (18 page)

‘Yeah, fine,’ Paddy said, confused by the late night call.

‘Did I wake you?’ Mari asked.

The phone went silent. Mari’s voice was a little too loud, a little too revealing.

‘You’re drunk,’ Paddy said. He sounded drowsy and amused in a grumpy sort of way.

‘Yes,’ Mari said. ‘You nailed it.’

Silence again.

‘I want to ask you out to eat. To Pied à Terre,’ Mari said.

Paddy sighed.

‘You’re drunk,’ he repeated.

‘Pied à Terre. It is a French place I’ve wanted to go to with you for a long time,’ Mari said.

‘Sounds expensive.’

‘I can afford it.’

Such a fancy restaurant, Paddy said, feigning hesitation. And what if he just wanted fish and chips?

‘They know how to fry fish and chips. Would you check your calendar to see when you’re free?’

Paddy laughed.

‘Are you serious?’

‘I am.’

‘It would be like… a date?’

‘And fish and chips,’ Mari said.

Paddy let her wait for her answer.

‘Yes, that’s fine then.’

Lia didn’t mean to cry out, but a little yelp still escaped. She was so happy for Mari. And jealous – jealous because something was happening between Paddy and Mari.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Paddy blurted out. ‘Is Lia there too?’

Mari and Lia couldn’t answer they were laughing so hard.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Paddy repeated. ‘Two drunk Finnish women.’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ Mari said, raising her glass to Lia.

‘Go to sleep already,’ Paddy said. ‘Goodnight.’

They could hear as he rung off that Paddy wasn’t sorry about the call though.

They couldn’t go to sleep now. They had to sit and talk. Lia started talking about the thing that kept running through her head whenever
she was in Mari’s flat: why had she lived so long in such a small flat in the basement of a student residence hall?

‘It’s a pretty building,’ Lia said. ‘Old and lovely in a plain sort of way. It’s convenient and awfully cheap. I’ve liked living there because I can control it. But it is small and rather bare. Maybe I should move some day. When it starts feeling necessary.’

‘You have to let things happen in their own time,’ Mari said. ‘Not everyone has to live up in an eyrie.’

They both smiled at that thought: the expansive view from Mari’s windows was gorgeous in the dark. A cityscape you could only get with money.

‘You’re always wondering how I pay for all of this,’ Mari said.

Lia nodded. This was one of many things she had wondered to herself about Mari and the Studio.

‘How do you have money for the Studio and this flat?’

‘You know a lot already,’ Mari said. ‘But there’s more I can tell you now.’

She had entrusted her money to four portfolio managers in different parts of the world. Profits from her Frankfurt investments were the steadiest, but Hong Kong was where she made the quickest money. New York and London produced quite well at times too.

Everything had started in Hong Kong though. While she was there, Mari had helped a British equity banker with some personal issues. In exchange, he suggested investment opportunities, and once Mari had made her initial money, he also found her three other colleagues in different countries to do the same thing.

‘They give me somewhat different advice to that which they give other people,’ Mari said. ‘It isn’t illegal, but it isn’t exactly legal either. It violates their fiduciary obligations.’

To their investor clients, the men recommended opportunities that the financial management companies that employed them had chosen. But Mari they told about the ones they believed in personally. The strategy had paid off well. For the previous month, the total value of her portfolio had been 11.4 million pounds sterling.

‘And the best thing is that it’s invested in so many different places that there’s no way to lose it all.’

Lia snorted. Hearing such a large number was at turns strange and amusing.

‘That’s so much money I can’t even wrap my head around it,’ she said.

Mari nodded towards the dark buildings looming in the night on the other side of the park.

‘It is a lot, but it also isn’t very much at all. For example, you couldn’t buy a single one of those buildings with it. The value of money always depends on what you use it for. I mostly just need it for the Studio though.’

As Lia returned for the second night in a row from Hoxton to her home on Kidderpore Avenue, to her tiny room on the basement level of the King’s College residence hall, she thought of time and its passing.

She was almost thirty years old. She had been working full-time for more than six years now. She had about £10,000 invested.

Seems like this would be a good point to know what I want. To decide what things are important to me.

Mamia was ready to hit the streets with protesters sixty years younger than herself. Mari had just found the courage to rejoin the world and take a decisive step forward with Paddy.

Lia had them, and Rico and Maggie, her colleagues at
Level
and her parents in Finland. She had seen various men from time to time, and there were a few people she didn’t want to think about.

And in the flat above her she had Gro and Mr Vong.

They’ll do just fine.

It was early Saturday morning. Before lying down to sleep, she checked the news for any new information about the video killer. No police reports, nothing. Several days had passed now since anything new had hit the press about the case.

She didn’t know whether the silence signified something good or something evil.

The media’s handling of the killings changed instantly once the police announced their macabre connection to Queen on Saturday. The Video Killer became the Queen Killer, the papers rushed out special editions and the TV channels interrupted regular programming.

‘This is the unfortunate result of the constant growth of celebrity worship and the entertainment business,’ said Christopher Holywell, a criminal psychologist and profiler, during the Metropolitan Police press conference, which three British channels and CNN broadcast live.

Singers and movie stars were constantly being ranked by popularity: there were the A-listers, the B-listers and then all the rest, Holywell continued. But getting on the A list also meant trouble for a star, things like death threats and stalkers. Frequently celebrities had to request restraining orders against fans, and some tended to meet quite a lot of fans who were willing to break the law. Unbalanced people even gravitated towards lesser-known stars – often the fan’s enthusiasm had less to do with the actual reputation of their idol than how important he or she was to them personally.

‘We often applaud celebrities for living like normal people. But for many of them that’s impossible nowadays, or it means taking unacceptable risks. Becoming a big star means your life changes and you have to start thinking about security arrangements, including for your family,’ Holywell said.

‘Are there a lot of these stalkers?’ the
Daily Mail
’s reporter asked.

No one could know how many there were, Holywell said. Examples cropped up constantly, but most of them managed to stay out of public view. The celebrities didn’t want to draw attention to the problem to avoid encouraging other crackpots. Private firms usually handled celebrity security, so many threats never came to the authorities’ knowledge.

One thing united fanatic admirers: they tried to get attention from their idols in dramatic, outrageous ways. Often there was a sexual or violent aspect to it. A woman who stalked Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones threatened to cut the actress up in pieces like
a roast and feed her to her dogs. The evidence against the accused included a letter from Zeta-Jones in which she described her complete loss of peace of mind as a result of the harassment. She feared the anxiety would be with her for the rest of her life.

‘The wider public may sometimes have a difficult time taking these cases seriously because so much of pop culture feels unreal,’ Holywell said to the reporter. ‘But these are very real crimes. Frequently the harassment goes on for years getting worse and worse before anyone takes action.’

Serial killings generally lacked a clear external motive, at least one a normal person could comprehend. Usually the killers point to irrational, seemingly random facts for their reasons.

‘Tracking these killers by trying to identify their goals or motivations is difficult. But identifying victims can help catch them.’

Serial killers usually selected their victims from five groups of people: the elderly, children, prostitutes, homeless teenagers, or gay men.

‘The social standing of the victims is critical,’ Holywell said. ‘These groups are easier to kill because their safety networks are weaker.’

Serial killers killed because it had a powerful psychological effect on them. Holywell believed that celebrity was becoming increasingly important for murderers.

‘Fantasy and reality become confused. According to one theory, all serial killers are connected by an addiction to their own fantasies: they feel a compulsion to live them out that exceeds all normal inhibitions related to killing. Celebrity and fulfilling one’s fantasies are very addictive things.’

Nowadays killing was an easier way to achieve fame than ever before. That was why fame had started playing into the acts themselves. Criminologists had discovered that if a serial killer received a nickname in the press and the media provided detailed descriptions of his killings, the pace of attacks tended to increase. Details would also start coming through in the murders meant to influence the public in certain ways.

This killer had now linked himself with one of the most famous rock bands in the world to ensure his own future fame. He knew
by now that everything about him would become just as interesting in the public’s eyes as anything a pop star did. And that’s what he wanted – pop stardom through murder.

‘Online auction sites sell memorabilia connected to famous serial killings. You can buy objects and clothing a murderer once owned. We’ve seen locks of Charles Manson’s hair for sale. And if someone wanted, they could go online right now and buy a pouch of sand from the foundations of John Wayne Gacy’s house where he buried twenty-six of his victims,’ Holywell said.

‘Is there some particular significance in the killings to the music used in the videos?’ a reporter asked.

Queen did have a song named ‘Killer Queen’. Based on its length it didn’t seem to belong to any of the black videos, but could the songs themselves have some symbolic part in the overall picture?

‘It would seem that everything is significant in these crimes,’ Holywell said. ‘Every single tiny detail.’

That was why the police had made this information public. They appealed to everyone listening or reading – did the Queen connection mean anything to anyone? The police tip-off lines would be open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

Holywell had one other plea for the public.

‘Don’t distribute these videos. Don’t increase their popularity. Control the curiosity we all naturally feel.’

Serial killers typically took trophies from their victims, something to serve as a symbol of their accomplishment and a memento. The trophy could be a piece of clothing belonging to the victim, or sometimes even a part of the victim himself. In the video murders, the video served as a trophy.

‘Every time someone watches one of these videos online, the trophy becomes more valuable to him. It becomes even stronger evidence of his power.’

Holywell was the first person in the police who seemed to have any idea what was going on in the case, Mari observed to Lia over the phone.

‘But we may learn much more about these killings, perhaps unexpected things,’ she said. ‘Hopefully not.’

In the press conference, the police only showed short clips of the kicking videos set to Queen’s music. Even these brief excerpts deeply disturbed some viewers, but the TV news immediately rebroadcast them all over Britain. Then they started spreading online, despite official pleas.

And within a couple of hours another meme started spreading online. People synced the snuff videos with the entire songs so everyone could watch the videos straight through with the accompanying music, seeing how every blow really was edited in time with the beat.

That same night the police released a statement reminding the public that distributing the videos could interfere with the police investigation. Still the pace kept picking up. Curious viewers linked to them over and over, yielding hundreds of thousands of hits within the day. Most of the comments online registered dismay, but jokes started to appear in amongst the condemnation too.

‘I detest people,’ Lia said to Mari over the phone. ‘Really and truly.’

‘I know,’ Mari said.

‘For some people this goes straight to the very basest parts of them. The vultures.’

‘Best to prepare for more of this to come.’

Mari still didn’t want to return to the Studio on Sunday, but she asked Rico to meet her at a coffee shop.

They hugged in greeting. They didn’t always do that, but now it felt necessary.

‘I stopped crying a few days ago,’ Rico said.

‘Good,’ Mari said. ‘For me it still comes back from time to time. Sometimes I can go half a day without doing so though.’

They had work to do, lots of work. They had to investigate everything the connection to Queen might reveal, Mari said.

‘I’ve already been doing that,’ Rico said.

Because of the black videos they knew all ten songs the killer had chosen. That list still wasn’t any help identifying him: the same songs showed up on thousands of playlists Queen fans had posted online.

‘But they are all pretty old,’ Mari pointed out.

The songs were from the 1970s, one from the very early 80s.

‘He would be in his fifties,’ Mari guessed.

The man was from the generation that lived through the rise of the music video.

‘He’s probably had some involvement in film or video production,’ Rico added. ‘You don’t learn editing like that overnight.’

Rico also had some important new information. He had started investigating the people whose user accounts the killer had hacked to upload his videos. They were mostly young people with no obvious connection to each other.

‘Then I looked at what else they had done online,’ Rico said.

Digging that up had been extremely time consuming. Rico had needed to find each user’s IP address and then search what else had been done from those locations. He had found lots of network traffic, along with dozens of passwords to different sites like online retailers, discussion forums and gaming servers. The normal things young people did online.

‘And they had all poked fun at Queen,’ Rico said.

Every one of them had written something negative about Queen on some website or another.

‘One of them was an outright troll. He just roamed sites making fun of artists and their fans at random. He obviously enjoys the negativity,’ Rico said.

How easy would it be for the police to find the connection between these users and Queen fans? Mari asked.

‘They can do it,’ Rico said. ‘If they think to look. It takes time, but they do have plenty of manpower.’

‘I don’t imagine you can track the killer from these teenagers’ user accounts?’

No, that was too hard, Rico said.

A profile was forming though, he pointed out. A white man, in his fifties, in good physical shape, with experience making videos, working with computers and marksmanship, and a regular visitor to Queen fansites. Not a very specific profile but something at least. Maybe the police had more.

‘And then the most important thing,’ Mari said.

‘What?’

‘He hates gay people.’

The next morning the staff at
Level
discussed the violent Queen videos spreading online with just as much disbelief as everywhere else.

‘What does this mean for us?’ editor-in-chief Timothy Phelps asked. ‘Someone tell me what our angle should be.’

The subject wasn’t fans or celebrity worship, he added immediately. That was generally benign in most people’s lives.

‘But is the subject desensitisation to violence? Or the kind of little shits who get a kick out of sharing a real killer’s sick pictures?’

No one in the office had an answer. Timothy Phelps shook his head wearily.

‘If only someone could say why this is happening.’

‘Maybe that’s the subject,’ said Sam Levinson. ‘The bewilderment. The confusion about how something like this can exist and whether we should start thinking about drawing new boundaries online.’

‘Too difficult. Too strange,’ Phelps said.

‘Sam’s right,’ Lia said. ‘If we only choose one of these perspectives, it feels like we’re treating the topic too coldly. None of these is going to be enough on its own. Either we deal with the videos broadly or not at all.’

The AD, Martyn Taylor, cast her an approving glance.

‘We can’t not address it,’ Phelps said. ‘That option has been taken off the table, sad to say.’

Fortunately they had a week before their next issue, so they had time to think.

Lia tried to focus on her layouts, but she knew her head wasn’t really in the game. Not thinking about the video killings, Queen and the pure evil spreading online was impossible.

That afternoon she decided to take up a task she had been putting off for days. Martyn Taylor had asked her to develop something new for the magazine’s online edition. The whole issue of digital versioning was a bit sticky for Lia: every publisher expected their staff to produce electronic versions of their existing publications but usually without additional expense and within the same deadlines as before.

Taylor had asked Lia to come up with new ways to use moving images in
Level
’s electronic version. They just had to be either free or cheap and of course fit with the visual image of the magazine. Practically speaking the job was nearly impossible.

‘Sam, help,’ Lia exclaimed.

And help did come from the neighbouring desk, as it had frequently before. Over the years Sam and Lia had collaborated closely on a variety of new article series and frequently gave each other feedback. Working together was easy.

Lia told Sam what she had already done in terms of researching compatible features for their digital platform and looking at what the competition was doing. She had seen a lot of videos. Music, speeches, adverts. All of the electronic publications had them, including
Level
, but they had to come up with a way to do it better.

The brainstorming session with Sam yielded increasingly absurd ideas. What if they asked people they interviewed to choose three videos to link to from the article? The Prime Minister’s favourite YouTube clips, film stars’ favourite film trailers of all time.

‘I already know what Martyn will say,’ Lia said. ‘He’ll say great, because it would be free material, but why do we want to guide readers to some other website, away from
Level
content?’

What if the digital edition had a competition? A link that would always show up in a different place in the magazine. Sometimes it could be hidden in a headline or a picture – wherever. On one page there could always be a hint about the link’s location.

‘A little like a crossword, but this would be a visual puzzle,’ Lia said.

Sam liked the idea, although he did see problems with it. Why would the reader want to play with the magazine in the first place? But maybe they could develop the idea in some other direction. They could offer prizes – some readers always went for that. A magazine that didn’t offer opportunities to win things was a rarity these days, but
Level
had tried to keep its kitsch marketing in check.