A Philosophical Investigation: A Novel

by Philip Kerr

  No, things have changed since I was a boy.

  But here, you know nothing about my childhood, do you? Then let me describe my first thought.

  My first thought (in time it may also prove to be my last) was to cry out, no doubt stimulated by the hand of my deliverer and, in so doing, take my first breath of a strange new world. Of course we cannot talk about what went before and it’s still too early to say what will happen after. But I think this is a reasonable assumption of what first occurred inside my VMN-deficient brain.

  Since the moment I was plucked, head first, from out of eternity and dangled by my ankles in the cold light of what is temporal, I have spent some considerable time in attempting to think of what cannot be thought. The nearest that one may come to this is in the contemplation of the state of non-existence that exists prior to birth and after death. Believe me I have found it easier to bend my mind in trying to say what cannot be said.

  I suppose you could say that my motive, such as I was ever possessed of one in this matter, was partly blasphemous, since my mission resembled the utterance of the Tetragrammaton — JHVH. I feel I must accept this since what is thinkable is possible too, in the sense that one cannot think of anything illogical: we could not honestly say what something that was illogical would look like.

  No doubt there are some who would disagree with this, but the reality - such as reality exists in this poor world - is that it is as hard to think of something illogical as it would be to determine the precise ratio between the diameter and the circumference of a circle, and thus construct a circle of the same area as a given square. (A piece of pie you might think, but speaking as one who has tried, it cannot be done.)

  Commonly the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem, as dreamt up by the Nazis, is considered to have been something unspeakable. But this is simply not so, and to say that language cannot represent the Holocaust is to misrepresent it as something not of this world. It is to suggest that it is a riddle, that the explanation for why it happened lies outside time and space, and that the ultimate responsibility for it does not belong to man. (These are the people who suggest that understanding implies condonation.) Yet it is the fact that the Holocaust is so very much of this world and therefore that it can indeed be said and is not something unspeakable, which makes it so terrible. (For it was a culture producing Mozart, Beethoven and Goethe which committed this crime. In the same way the Romans produced Horace and Pliny and yet still threw Christians to the lions. Great crimes are a corollary of great civilisations.)

  The only limit to what can be said is the limit that separates sense from nonsense. (By this limitation it will be seen that the Holocaust makes perfect sense, although one condemns it.) And yet there persists this belief that that which may indeed be understood may also be unspeakable: that the sense of the world may be found inside the world.

  But if there is any one value which does have value it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens. The fact of the matter is that all propositions are of equal value and there are no such things as propositions of ethics. Ethics are transcendental and cannot be put into words. In short Ethics are impossible.

  Why else should anyone choose to go against them? If it was possible for there to be some kind of moral proposition which forbade murder I would not deny it. But it is also impossible to speak about human will in so far as it is the subject of ethical attributes. And so I kill because there is no logical reason not to.

  The truth of thoughts that are here communicated seems to me unassailable and definitive. I therefore believe myself to have found, on all essential points, the final solution of the problem. Die Endlösung.

  ... But here I’ve been killing time, when I should have been killing the next name on my list. And what a name it is. One of the shapers of the whole Western intellectual tradition: Socrates.

  9

  JAKE’S ADVISORY TEAM of experts was made up of Professor Waring, Doctor Cleobury, Detective Inspector Stanley, and Detective Sergeants Chung and Jones. Two days after the press conference they met in a room at New Scotland Yard to discuss the progress of the inquiry.

  ‘This is the newspaper advertisement which the agency devised,’ said Jake, drawing a PMT copy of the ad across the table in front of Waring and Cleobury. ‘So far there’s been only a limited response to this, or to my statement.’

  Waring glanced down the list of VMN codenames and shook his head. ‘I wonder what the public makes of this?’

  ‘There have been one or two curious calls from the press,’ Jake admitted. ‘Which reminds me. I’ve been meaning to ask you, Professor. Where did the original list of codenames held by the computer come from?’

  Waring shrugged. ‘Do you know, Doctor Cleobury?’

  She smiled. ‘It was Doctor St Pierre’s idea,’ she explained. ‘He was looking for some sort of list of names of people who he could be sure were dead - you know, for legal reasons. Anyway, he picked the current Penguin Classic catalogue, and fed it straight into the computer.’

  ‘Penguin Classics?’ repeated Jake. ‘As in the paperback publishing company?’

  ‘That’s right. And when that list runs out, he’s planning to use the names of all the characters who appear in the novels of Charles Dickens.’

  Jake raised an eyebrow at that one. But the idea of catching the murderer of Edwin Drood was not without its own peculiar appeal.

  ‘How is your effort with the Lombroso computer coming along, Chief Inspector?’ asked Waring. ‘The electronic spike.’

  Jake looked at Sergeant Chung. ‘Perhaps you could tell us, Sergeant,’ she said.

  Chung straightened up in his chair. ‘My hope that there might be some kind of an electronic spike has been pretty well fulfilled,’ he explained. ‘The computer decided to treat the erasure as accidental, although the basic memory is still in the process of reconstruction. However, the suspect’s deletion of his own personal details could not be retrieved. Since then, as you may know, I’ve been working with our own police computer, and having created a fictional murder investigation, I’ve been using a series of names drawn by the computer at random from the list of telephone subscribers to create a list of hypothetical suspects, with the aim of generating a response from Lombroso.’ Now he shrugged. ‘But this sort of thing takes time. And not all of these VMNs are on the telephone.’

  ‘How many so far?’ asked Jake.

  ‘Eight,’ said Chung.

  ‘Out of a possible 120,’ said Waring.

  ‘With the two who answered our advertisement, the six who replied to the letter they received from their counsellors, and the nine who are already dead, that makes a total of twenty-five,’ said Jake. ‘Less the VMNs who are already in prison, that still leaves seventy-five.’

  ‘Seventy-four,’ said Chung. ‘We know that Wittgenstein deleted himself.’

  ‘I wonder why there hasn’t been a better response?’ said Professor Waring.

  ‘They’re scared,’ said Jake. ‘Did you know that some of them think that they’ll be rounded up, and quarantined. Maybe even worse. If I was in their position, I don’t suppose I would be too anxious to come forward either.’

  ‘Well, that’s all nonsense,’ said Waring. ‘Stupid gossip, put about by irresponsible people.’

  ‘Nevertheless, it’s what some of them do believe,’ insisted Jake.

  Professor Waring nodded gloomily and stared at one of the papers in his file. It was clear he did not wish to discuss the matter any further. Which made Jake wonder if there might, after all, be some truth in the rumour. But she kept this uncertainty to herself. She recalled that Waring had been opposed to her ideas as to how the investigation should be handled. At the same time, she had a respect for his abilities as a forensic psychiatrist. He was the best in the country and there was no sense in further alienating Waring at this stage in her investigation. She could see that Waring was looking at the list of codenames which constituted Wittgenstein’s nine victims. He read them slowly and in the chrono
logical order of their murders.

  ‘Darwin, Byron, Kant, Aquinas, Spinoza, Keats, Locke, Dickens and last, but not least, Bertrand Russell.’ He looked up at the others seated round the table. With his prematurely white hair, half-moon glasses, undernourished, ascetic-looking features, and an Aran sweater of permanently-knit eyebrows, it wasn’t difficult for him to appear thoughtful. ‘I don’t suppose there could be some kind of pattern there, could there?’ he said vaguely.

  ‘You mean some kind of intellectual pattern?’ said Jake. ‘Not according to the Computerised Intelligence System.’

  ‘Computers have no imaginations,’ Waring said contemptuously. ‘How about we try for one minute to use our own brains to look for a pattern?’

  Jake shrugged. ‘Sure, why not.’

  ‘Let’s take Darwin for a moment,’ he said. ‘He was first. Well, who else would be? Origin of Species, you get the idea.’

  Doctor Cleobury shook her head firmly. ‘Except that this is the grandfather, not the son. It was Erasmus Darwin, not Charles, who was killed, Professor.’

  ‘What’s Erasmus Darwin written that could possibly merit inclusion as a Penguin Classic?’ he said.

  ‘He wrote some poems about plants,’ said Jake.

  Doctor Cleobury nodded, smiled pleasantly at Jake and then shifted on her largish bottom. Comfortable once more she checked the hem of her tight black skirt and then the edge of her permed blond hair. Jake thought she looked more like a barmaid than a psychiatrist.

  ‘Surely what is more significant,’ said Jake, ‘is that five out of the nine were philosophers.’

  ‘Six,’ said Cleobury. ‘If you want to count Erasmus Darwin’s so-called Sensational School of Philosophy. Wait a minute -’

  ‘What is it?’ said Jake.

  ‘Just that it was Erasmus Darwin who was one of the first thinkers to try and establish a physiological basis of mental phenomena - a medullary substance.’ She shook her head and waited for everyone else to catch her up. ‘Well, don’t you see? That’s precisely what Lombroso is all about.’

  Jake nodded, uncertain that the discussion was leading anywhere.

  ‘Highly apposite,’ agreed Waring, warming to his original idea. ‘But what could be the connection with Immanuel Kant?’

  Jake caught Chung’s eye. He shrugged disinterestedly. Detective Inspector Stanley was studying the contents of his tea cup as if searching for some clairvoyant indication as to a future line of inquiry. Detective Sergeant Jones, who was supposed to be making notes of the meeting, was yawning at his computer screen. Jake smiled as she noticed the obscene spelling he had given the name of Kant. Waring saw it too, and shook his head with vigorous self-reproach.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘How stupid of me. His family came from Scotland and changed their name of Cant into Kant to suit the German pronunciation. Darwin took his degree of medicine at Edinburgh. Of course, it’s not as strong a connection to Kant as Hume would have been, but still -’

  Jake let the professor and Doctor Cleobury carry on in this rarefied vein for a while, establishing insignificant connections between the nine dead codenames, before finally drawing them back to her original remark.

  ‘I suggest we try not to let ourselves get too carried away,’ she said with a smile. ‘I think what’s important is that out of a list of 120 VMNs, twenty of these codenames are the names of philosophers. Not only do we know that the killer’s own codename is that of a philosopher, but several of his victims have also had the names of philosophers. It strikes me that what we have here is a killer with a sense of humour. The idea of one philosopher killing others just tickles him.’

  Waring considered this for a moment. ‘But then why not choose all nine of them that way? Why just the five?’

  ‘Or six,’ added Doctor Cleobury. ‘Don’t forget Darwin.’

  Jake shrugged. ‘Possibly he may want to deny us the establishment of some kind of pattern.’

  Waring sighed wearily. ‘Then he’s making a damn good job of it.’

  Detective Sergeant Jones looked up from his screen. ‘I wonder if he actually knows any philosophy?’ he said.

  Jake nodded. ‘I’ve been asking myself the same question.’

  The meeting meandered on through the remainder of the afternoon before Jake declared it over. At five, she went out to get some coffee. When she came back she found Chung waiting for her in her office. He looked uncharacteristically excited.

  ‘What’s up with you?’ she said. ‘Your premium bond come up?’

  ‘Could be,’ he said, grinning, and waving a piece of paper.

  Jake sat down at her desk, exhausted, and removed the lid from the Styrofoam cup. Meetings always made her feel as dull as carpet underlay.

  ‘Let’s hear it then.’

  ‘A random name and telephone number just got a response from the Lombroso computer,’ he explained. ‘Bloke called John Martin Baberton. Anyway, at the same time, the police computer at Kidlington reveals that this Baberton fellow has got a criminal record for computer fraud and attempted murder.’

  Jake looked up from her coffee. ‘You’re joking,’ she said.

  Chung glanced at the printout he was clutching. ‘And what about this? He’s got a degree in Philosophy, and a history of psychiatric disorder.’

  ‘He sounds too good to be true,’ said Jake. ‘Have you got the file there?’

  ‘That’s the funny thing. Records can’t find the manual file. It seems to be missing. There’s just his computer record.’

  He handed Jake the printout and watched her as she read it over. She lingered over Baberton’s laser-jet-printed picture.

  ‘These pictures aren’t the best for identification purposes,’ she said. ‘But I can’t help feeling that I’ve seen this man before. What’s his VMN codename?’

  ‘According to Lombroso, it’s Socrates.’

  ‘Another philosopher.’

  ‘Address?’

  ‘Two known. There’s one on his Lombroso printout, and another on the police file.’

  ‘Which one matches his ID card number?’

  ‘The police file.’

  Jake read the warning from the Lombroso computer with interest. It was the first time she had come across one within the course of an investigation.

  ATTENTION. THE SUBJECT YOU HAVE IDENTIFIED HAS BEEN TESTED VMN-NEGATIVE, SOMATOGENICALLY PREDISPOSED TO VIOLENT CRIME. HE SHOULD BE APPROACHED WITH CAUTION. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ON VMNS, YOU SHOULD CALL THE LOMBROSO PROGRAM AT THE BRAIN RESEARCH INSTITUTE. PLEASE DESTROY THIS COMMUNICATION WHEN YOU HAVE READ IT. IT IS AN OFFENCE TO MAKE A COPY OF THIS COMMUNICATION, OR A RECORD OF THE SUBJECT TO WHICH IT REFERS. THIS COMMUNICATION IS INADMISSIBLE AS EVIDENCE IN A COURT OF LAW.

  Jake fed a length of hair into her mouth and sucked it thoughtfully.

  ‘There’s something strange here,’ she said. ‘We know that somebody with the codename Wittgenstein deleted himself from the original VMN database, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So who’s this well-qualified bastard? You couldn’t hope to pick a better suspect if you went down to central casting.’

  There was a knock at the door and Detective Chief Superintendent Challis entered Jake’s office.

  In the early stages of the investigation, when he had been effectively supplanted by Jake, Challis had shown no inclination to become involved in the case again. But ever since the press conference, Challis had taken to appearing in Jake’s office at all times of the day and asking her for progress reports. She wondered if his suddenly-reawakened interest in the case was spontaneous, or if someone higher up, perhaps someone in the Home Office, had requested that he keep an eye on things. Whatever the reason, she disliked his interference almost as much as she disliked Poison Challis himself. Challis was another old-style policeman, one who thought that women in the police force were best employed communicating bad news to the families of accident victims.

  ‘Did I hear the word suspect, Jake?’ he boomed, rubbing his
hands.

  For a moment Jake considered stalling him and then decided against it. He was the kind of senior officer who was apt to be unforgiving about being kept in the dark on something. So she told Chung to repeat what he had just told her, after which she added a note of caution.

  ‘I’d like to keep this man under surveillance for a while,’ she explained. ‘It’s just a precaution, only there’s something strange about all this.’

  Poison Challis sniffed. ‘I’ll tell you what’s strange,’ he said. ‘It’s this John Martin Baberton who’s bloody strange. You heard it yourself. The man’s a bloody psycho.’

  ‘No, sir,’ insisted Jake. ‘What I mean is that this is all a little too -’ She shrugged. ‘Too convenient.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Challis demanded. ‘What do you mean, too convenient?’

  Jake wondered if it was her imagination or whether she could smell drink on his breath.

  ‘Haven’t you got any faith in your own law-enforcement technology ? Jesus Christ, woman, it’s supposed to make things convenient. Not every result has to come from months of painstaking detective work. Not these days, anyway. Or is this just some of that bloody feminine intuition I hear you always banging on about?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Jake patiently. ‘I’d just like to wait a little, sir. I’d like to ...’

  But Challis was already on the pictophone. ‘I want a tactical firearms squad ready immediately,’ he barked at the startled man appearing on Jake’s screen. ‘What’s the bloody address, Sergeant? Here, give me that piece of paper.’

  Chung handed Challis the printout and looked questioningly at Jake as Challis read out the address to the squad constable. Jake shrugged silently, but when Challis had finished speaking, she said to him, ‘Sergeant Chung? For the record, I would like you to note that this course of action is being taken by Detective Chief Superintendent Challis against my advice. In my judgment - ’

  ‘To hell with your judgment,’ snapped Challis. ‘Who the hell do you think you are? I run the Murder Squad, not you. I’ll say when we make an arrest and when we don’t. You may know a lot about criminal psychology, Chief Inspector, but I know about law enforcement, and I can recognise a bloody collar when I see one. Now you can either be a part of this, or you can stay here and sulk. Which is it to be?’