Hiltunen Black Noise

1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-1-78094-377-0
Verlag: Hesperus Press Ltd.
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 420 Seiten

The second instalment in Pekka Hiltunen's award-winning Studio series is an intelligent crime thriller pitting unlikely heroines against London's dark crime underworld. This sequel to the prize-winning Cold Courage, published by Hesperus in 2013, presents the second instalment in the Studio series by Pekka Hiltunen, celebrated Finnish crime author. Ultra-violent videos of murder and torture are being uploaded to the internet and when bodies start showing up on the streets of London, it begins to seem that the videos may be real and that a gruesome, exhibitionist killer is on the loose. The news catches the attention of Mari and Lia. Mari and Lia are two Finnish women living in London. Despite bonding over their shared expat identity, they have rather different backgrounds. While Lia is a graphic designer, Mari runs the mysterious 'Studio', a private crime fighting organisation that considers itself above the law. Taking matters into their own hands, they take on cases where the police have failed or are indifferent. Lia in time has slowly found her place in amongst this mysterious, morally motivated group of people who are not above employing underhand tactics to make sure that justice is served. Backed by high-tech gadgets and their team of fiercely loyal experts, the two women set about trying to stem the recent surge of violence and track down the murderer. But the stakes are high and Mari will have to risk much, even the lives of her companions, if she is to bring the perpetrator to justice.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hiltunen, Pekka

Weitere Mitwirkende

Witesman, Owen F.

Leseproben

3.

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.

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 , a four-page special report related Cole’s distinguished career, while the Wade family received six pages.

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:

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...