A Philosophical Investigation: A Novel

by Philip Kerr

  The memory of the music lingered on her finger ends and in her invigorated senses for several minutes afterwards; and later on, she was even equal to the task of reading Gleitmann’s book.

  It was, she considered, not a bad book at all. She liked it better than she had expected. It was true, a lot of it was guesswork, but it was intelligent plausible guesswork.

  Jake was reminded of her own work in the field of male sexual psychology with the EBI, before a career at Scotland Yard had beckoned. Sometimes she was asked why she had joined such a male-dominated institution as the Yard, especially when men were so obnoxious to her. For Jake the answer was simple: with so many women falling victim to male criminals it did not seem politic to entrust the protection of women exclusively to men. Women had the responsibility to help protect themselves.

  When at last she put Gleitmann’s book down, having read almost half of it, she was amused to discover that he had previously signed it.

  That, she told herself, was just men all over.

  Be patient. I’ll describe the next execution in just a minute. In Cold Blood, as Truman Capote would say. First, let me quickly mention the last factor in my life’s new gestalt.

  After my night on the computer and my idea about those other men who tested VMN-negative, I kept the appointment I had made before the test with my analyst, Doctor Wrathall.

  You will ask why I was already seeing a psychoanalyst. Actually, I’m a bit of a neurotic and I’ve been having a weekly session for almost two years now. My relationship with Doctor Wrathall has really helped me a lot. (This is all so imprecise, but it can’t be helped.) Much of what he and I discuss relates to my own feelings of personal dissatisfaction.

  The world is independent of my will, at least in so far as my will is essentially the subject of ethical attributes, and of interest as a phenomenon only to people like Doctor Wrathall. So it is easy to see that by discussing the phenomenon of my will in this way, I was attempting to determine the limits of my world and how these might be altered.

  So straightaway I asked Doctor Wrathall if a man who suddenly perceived his real duty in life should risk everything to achieve it. I was not referring to the kind of duty one owes one’s fellow motorists. Nor the kind of duty one has to honour one’s father and mother. No. I was of course referring to the greatest duty one can ever owe, which is the duty one has to oneself, to the ‘creative demon’.

  Doctor Wrathall hummed and hawed and finally said that by and large he was himself of the opinion that in life it was good to take a few risks now and again. A sense of mission and purpose was what made it worth living.

  It would be wrong to add a structure to what was said. Doctor Wrathall is a simple soul and, like most analysts, he is not able to articulate much that is of any real consequence. Usually it is quite enough for me that he has listened, albeit uncomprehending. And so this question was a comparatively rare phenomenon, occasioning an even rarer response. Indeed, Doctor Wrathall was moved to ask a question or two himself, as to the nature of this ‘creative demon’. By the tramline-thinking of his profession he even made the predictable enquiry as to why I thought I had used the words ‘duty’ and ‘demon’. I lost the poor devil when, by way of an answer, I asserted that the issue was metaphysical rather than empirical. What untidy minds some people have!

  By the time I reached home again I was convinced not merely that I should follow my impulses with regard to my brother VMNs, but that I had a moral obligation to do so. Look at Paul Gauguin for instance: he threw up everything - wife, home, children, job, security - because he had a passionate, profound, intense desire to paint pictures. That’s the sort of man to be.

  Perhaps you will say that killing isn’t much of a vocation compared with painting. But I ask you to look beyond the conventional moralities and consider the phenomenology of the matter. I blush to use a word like ‘existentialism’; however, that is the essence of what I am describing. Think of the character of Meursault in L’Etranger and you have it. Only the prospect of death - one’s own, or of others, it makes no difference — makes life real. Death is the one true certainty. When we die the world does not alter, but comes to an end. Death is not an event in life. But killing ... killing is.

  Consider then the concept of killing: the assertion of one’s own being by the denial of another’s. Self-creation by annihilation. And how much more self-creating where those others who must be destroyed are themselves a danger to society in general. Where the killing is done with a very real purpose. Thus, the taint of nihilism is avoided. The authentic act of pure decision is no longer committed at random with scant regard to meaning. All this provides the key to the problem, how much truth there is in solipsism.

  My next victim, codename Bertrand Russell, was an art lover. In all else he was unpredictable. So unlike his illustrious name-sake with his mathematical logic. Russell left for work at different times of the morning and returned home at different times of the evening. I imagine he was on flexi-time or whatever it is they call it. He was employed in an office on the Albert Embankment in some minor sales and marketing role for the company that makes a brand of caffeine-plus beverage called Brio: ‘Coffee’s never been so full of beans’.

  But every lunchtime at precisely 12.45, Russell would cross over Vauxhall Bridge and walk up Millbank to the Tate Gallery, where he would eat a sandwich in the café downstairs (I don’t think I ever saw him drink any coffee), and then spend approximately thirty minutes looking at the pictures.

  He was an odd-looking fellow, although he seemed to blend in well with all the art-students that the place attracts. There was something gnomic about his features: the ears too large and too prominent, the chin too recessive, the nose too bulbous, the eyes too small, and the head too large for his scrawny neck. You could have used him as the cover illustration for any gothic fantasy novel. This effect was. enhanced by the long, grey coat he was wearing which seemed a couple of sizes too big for him and which put me in mind of Dopey in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. And yet there was nothing benign about this peculiar creature. Russell’s was a wicked face of the kind that guest-star in children’s nightmares. If ever a man looked like a potential killer it was Bertrand Russell.

  Following him around the gallery (he seemed to be particularly fond of the Pre-Raphaelites, which, in itself, is a good reason to shoot anyone) I wondered how much he knew about the Cambridge philosopher whose Lombroso-given name he bore. When you think about it, I ought to have introduced myself. I could have made some caustic remark about the Principia Mathematica, or even disputed the value of his attempt to arrive at atomic propositions. Not that it really matters. We never really got on, he and I. I always thought that he was a bit of an old fraud.

  Of course none of this crossed my mind as I trailed after him, awaiting my opportunity to grant him the temporal immortality of the human soul, that is to say, its eternal survival after death, assuming that such a thing exists. I must confess that I was just a little nervous about (and contrary to my usual practice) the prospect of killing in a public place, in broad daylight. So I said nothing at all. Just watched.

  Did he sense something perhaps? Was there, in the ether between us, a picture of a deadly thought that slowly transferred itself from my mind to his? Because there was one moment - I think it must have been while he was bending over a glass case to inspect some watercolours painted by William Blake - when he looked up and, catching my eye, smiled at me. I cannot say what I might have looked like. Nevertheless, I have the impression that I must have appeared comic somehow, or perhaps my jaw dropped dramatically, because he laughed. He laughed as if I had been a small child saying something impossibly cute.

  At this I felt real anger towards him for the very first time and, in the same second, realising that that part of the gallery which houses a woefully inadequate number of the works of the greatest Englishman who ever lived was empty, I drew my gun from my shoulder-holster and fired at the very centre of his under-resourced forehead.
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  Russell collapsed onto the floor, catching his chin on the edge of the cabinet as he fell. For a brief second one hand pressed at the hole my first shot had made as the blood started down the bridge of his nose, while the other held on to the cloth cover that protects the drawings and watercolours from the damaging sunlight. I almost thought that he would tear it, but then it was through his fingers and I was striding round the cabinet to stand over him and let go with the rest of the clip. My second and third shots silently blasted away two of his fingers. And there was more blood than perhaps I am used to - another reason why working in daylight is more difficult. Some of his gore even splashed onto the toe of my shoe. For all these reasons I could not recall if I heard the sound that denotes a successful headshot or not.

  It was then I became aware that I had shot him in the front and not the back of the head, which is of course my usual practice. So, as I strode nonchalantly away from Russell’s body, I was possessed only of the probability that I had succeeded in killing him. And we only use probability in default of certainty.

  5

  JAKE PAUSED IN front of one of the pictures. She liked William Blake. Always had done. There were two prints of his paintings on the wall of her bathroom. Blake was not everyone’s taste, she knew. Some people found him too mystical, especially for a bathroom. But Jake had a soft spot for all kinds of mysticism and her best investigative thinking was often done in the smallest room. While her thinking was more temporal than terrestrial, nevertheless Blake’s pictures inspired her with an insight as to the darker side of man which, as a detective, she found useful.

  She turned her attention to the large bloodstain on the floor which was now being photographed from every conceivable angle, as if its shape contained some symbolic significance. The scenes-of-crime officer, whose name was Bruce, squatted down beside her.

  “What have we got, Sergeant?’ she asked him.

  ‘Well, it’s not Jerusalem, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you that much.’

  ‘I will not cease from mental fight, Sergeant Bruce,’ she returned. ‘Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand. But I’d be grateful if you would kindly stop stating the obvious, albeit poetically.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Bruce, quickly flipping open his PC. ‘Oliver John Mayhew, of 137 Landor Road, SW9. Shot six times in the head, fairly close range, at around 1.20 this afternoon. The security guard found him. Says he didn’t see or hear anything.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘Not quite. Been taken to Westminster Hospital, ma’am. I’ve sent a constable with him just in case he has time for a last soliloquy. What’s the Yard’s interest in this case?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to tell you, Sergeant,’ she said, disliking herself for this reticence.

  Jake hated keeping any investigating officer in the dark, but with the Home Office taking such a particular interest in keeping the lid on the Lombroso connection, she had little choice in the matter. She was as surprised to find herself there, staring at the bloodstain on the floor of the Tate Gallery, as the sergeant. Less than half an hour before she had been at the Brain Research Institute when a call came in from the Yard. Even while she had been standing next to the Paradigm Five as Yat Chung tried to trace the origin of the Lombroso system burglar, the machine had tracked the name Oliver John Mayhew as appearing, albeit as a victim, within the context of a violent crime inquiry on the police computer at Kidlington, and alerted the other computer to Mayhew’s status as a VMN-negative.

  ‘Let’s just say that I’m investigating a similar case,’ she told Bruce. ‘Any of the art lovers see anything?’

  ‘Doesn’t look like it so far. If any of them did, they probably thought it was some kind of performance art.’

  ‘Broad daylight. Don’t tell me, all the goddamned doors were locked as well. I don’t think I feel like playing Sergeant Cuff this afternoon. No witnesses at all? Jesus Christ.’

  ‘Speaking of whom, the director of the gallery is over there, ma’am. Perhaps, as the senior investigating officer, you wouldn’t mind speaking to him. Mr Spencer.’

  It was the sergeant’s revenge for her not telling him anything. Jake smiled wryly. She’d have done the same thing herself. Looking over her shoulder to the edge of the room which housed the Blakes, she caught sight of a tall, distinguished man wearing a grey suit. He stood, with his arms folded, barely able to contain his impatience.

  Jake went over to him, introduced herself and then let him complain about how intolerable it was that no one, himself included, should have been permitted to leave the gallery. Jake waved Sergeant Bruce towards her.

  ‘Have your men finished checking ID cards yet, Sergeant?’

  ‘Yes ma’am.’

  She turned to address the director. ‘Well, Mr Spencer. Everyone can leave now. Yourself included.’

  But Spencer had not yet finished with his complaints about the high-handedness of the Metropolitan Police.

  ‘Mister Spencer,’ said Jake after a couple of minutes of patient listening. ‘You know, this isn’t much of a room for England’s greatest artist. Don’t you think it’s on the small side for a man with as big a vision as Blake?’

  Spencer’s frown deepened. ‘Don’t tell me how to run an art gallery, Chief Inspector,’ he growled.

  ‘Well then, please don’t tell me how to run a police investigation,’ Jake returned.

  Just at that moment, Spencer wailed and pointed frustratedly at one of Bruce’s team who was cutting out the bloodstained area where Mayhew’s body had been found, with a lino-knife.

  ‘Oh really,’ he said. ‘This is too much. What about that? What about my carpet?’

  ‘Don’t worry sir,’ said Jake. ‘We’ll return it to you just as soon as we’ve finished all our tests. Who knows, with a nice frame, you could try exhibiting it.’

  Spencer’s mouth opened and closed, and hearing nothing emerge from its mephitic pinkness, Jake wished him a good afternoon and then left.

  Mayhew’s company medical scheme meant that he was taken to a private clinic attached to the Westminster Hospital. The clinic itself looked like an expensive hotel. Thick pile carpets, leather furniture, big modern paintings, and bonsai trees. There was even a small fountain trickling along with the Muzak in the reception hall. The smell of disinfectant and the occasional white uniform seemed oddly out of place, as if some kind of accident had happened to disturb the atmosphere of quiet luxury.

  Detective Inspector Stanley was waiting for her in a silent corridor outside the operating theatre. When, on taking charge of the investigation, Jake recalled the circumstances of their first meeting, she had asked herself if she should keep him on the case: if a police officer investigating a homicide who could attend a scenes-of-crime report on the gynocide could be anything but a liability. Ed Crawshaw, who knew Stanley from Hendon, said he was a good copper, reliable if also rather literal. Jake was inclined to accept this criticism as a point in Stanley’s favour. Trusting herself to make the imaginative leaps necessary to solving a case, she preferred working above all with people whom she could trust to do only what they were told. Jake’s opinion of the majority of her colleagues at the Yard was that imagination was usually an indication of corruption.

  Stanley was a tall, fit-looking man with long hair and the pallor of goat’s cheese. He swayed a little on his feet as he started to make his report.

  ‘Shit, what’s the matter with you?’

  ‘Hospitals,’ he said biliously. ‘They always set me off. It’s the smell.’

  ‘Well, don’t pass out in here. You couldn’t afford it.’ Jake searched inside her shoulder bag and found a small bottle of smelling salts she had carried since she was a beat copper. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Snort on this a bit.’

  Stanley held the bottle underneath his flaring nostrils. He sniffed a few times and then nodded gratefully. ‘Thanks,’ he said weakly.

  ‘You’d better hang on to it,’ she said. ‘Feeling up to filling me in?’

  He nodd
ed. ‘They’re operating on Mayhew right now. But it looks pretty hopeless. The front of his head has got more holes in it than a bowling ball. And he’s lost a great deal of blood. But he did come round very briefly while the constable was with him in the ambulance.’

  Stanley beckoned to the armed policeman who was standing a short distance away. The man walked towards the two senior officers, his boots squealing on the expensive rubber flooring like a pair of small furry animals.

  ‘Constable, tell the Chief Inspector what Mayhew said to you in the ambulance.’

  The constable pushed his machine pistol out of the way, unbuttoned the breast pocket on his flak-jacket and took out his computer. ‘He said, “Those bastards. They lied. They lied. I should have known, they always meant to kill me. They lied. Brain. Brain”.’ He shook his head. ‘He wasn’t very audible, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You’re sure of all that?’ said Jake. ‘That was exactly as he said it?’

  ‘As exactly as I was able to judge, ma’am. He was more or less delirious.’ The constable returned the computer to his pocket and swung the machine pistol back across his chest.

  ‘And he only spoke the one time?’

  The constable nodded. ‘By the time we got here he’d stopped breathing. I believe they managed to revive him in the operating theatre. The nurse has promised to keep an ear on anything else he might say while he’s in there.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Jake. ‘If he says anything else, no matter how trivial, I want to know about it. Understand?’

  ‘Ma’am.’

  Jake and Inspector Stanley were half way along the corridor leading to the front door when they heard a shout behind them. They turned and saw the constable wave them back. Beside him stood a man in a green overall.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the surgeon, when they reached him. ‘But your man never regained consciousness.’