A Philosophical Investigation: A Novel

by Philip Kerr

  Jake felt her eyes grow smaller. She thought of the set of tungsten electronic knuckles in her bag and wanted to hit him. She could barely conceal the sarcasm in her voice as she told Challis that she wouldn’t miss it for the world.

  But before she followed him out of the door, Jake called Gilmour’s office.

  The police car carrying Challis, Jake and Stanley left New Scotland Yard and headed north up Grosvenor Street, Park Lane and then the little Egypt that was the Edgware Road, before turning west towards the A40. The slip-road climbed and looped like a big dipper until they emerged into the main eight-lane carriageway, sandwiched precariously between two enormous water-tankers. It was almost eight o’clock but the Westway was still choked with homeward-bound traffic. Drivers in their two-door Honda micro-cars stared up at the light railway speeding by overhead, and almost envied the passengers aboard it but for the knowledge that they would certainly have been travelling in conditions that would have left an agoraphobic battery hen short of air. Jake shook her head pityingly. One of the few compensations about working the unsocial hours that her job required was that at the times she usually drove to and from the Yard, the roads were all but empty.

  The big police BMW moved powerfully onto the toll-paying, speed-unlimited lane which, at the flat fee of $100 a day, was comparatively free of all but the fastest and most expensive German cars. They passed one set of high-rise flats and then another - airborne rabbit-hutches, the road so close to the smoke-grimed windows that Jake could almost see the irradiated lettuce on the plastic dinner plates.

  In a few minutes they were at the White City, the two white concrete towers of the new European Television Centre towering over the landscape like a twin pack of toilet rolls, reminding Jake that however long the job kept her out, she wasn’t likely to be missing anything good on the Nicamvision. Seconds later they were driving by H. M. Remand Prison, Wormwood Scrubs, recently expanded into what had been the old Hammersmith Hospital, and surrounded with a no-man’s-land of searchlight and razor-wire.

  At the Hangar Lane roundabout, they turned south towards Ealing and Jake quickly lost her bearings in a maze of quiet suburban roads that ran close to the Honda Corporation’s golf course. At the end of one road, already blocked off by police, they met the flak-jacketed commander of the Tactical Firearms Squad.

  ‘We’ve got the place surrounded, sir,’ he said, indicating a large detached house set in about a quarter of an acre. ‘My boys have just finished having a quick sniff around the place. Apparently there’s a man’s body lying in some long grass close to the tennis courts.

  ‘Bingo,’ Challis muttered, and glanced balefully at Jake.

  ‘What did I tell you?’ He nodded at the house. Behind drawn curtains there were lights burning.

  ‘We haven’t approached the place yet, sir,’ said the TFS commander, whose name was Collingwood. ‘But we’ve shoved a couple of mikes on the wall and it looks as if there’s someone at home all right. Funny thing though. There’s a man standing in the porch.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘He’s just standing there.’

  ‘Didn’t you bring nightsights?’

  ‘Of course I did. But he’s in shadow, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s just stepped outside for a quiet smoke,’ suggested Detective Inspector Stanley. ‘I do that myself sometimes. Perhaps he lives with a non-smoker.’

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ said the commander, and pressed his earpiece closer to his ear. ‘One of my boys says he’s got a gun. A machine pistol it looks like. Seems as if he might be waiting for us, sir.’

  Challis nodded grimly. ‘Probably using that body in the garden as some kind of bait. Gets one of us to walk up to the door to try and make an arrest and then opens fire.’ Challis turned to Jake. ‘What do you think about him now, eh? I suppose this bastard with the gun is there to stop the garden gnomes being nicked.’

  ‘I’ll admit I don’t have an explanation,’ said Jake. ‘But I still think we ought to wait, sir.’

  ‘For what?’ sneered Challis, not expecting an answer. ‘Can your men take a closer look, Commander?’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘We could train some searchlights on the front of the place,’ Jake suggested. ‘Get a loudhailer.’

  ‘And let him know we’re here, so he can hole up in there? No way,’ said Challis. ‘I’m not going to risk a siege. The last thing we want on this is the press turning up.’

  So, Jake thought, Challis was looking out for the interests of the Home Office after all.

  Meanwhile the TFS commander had twisted a small microphone attached to his helmet round to his mouth and given the order.

  For several minutes there was only the sound of what passed for silence in that part of London: traffic moving on the North Circular, a Nicamvision’s stereo sound system turned up too loud, a dog exercising its owner’s freedom to let it bark its head off, an ice-cream van insanely spewing out its signature tune “Oh What a Beautiful Morning”, and the wind stirring the rhododendron trees.

  Jake breathed uncomfortably, still unable to articulate precisely what was wrong with the whole situation. A long dark Mercedes drew up alongside the other police cars. Gilmour, wearing a dinner jacket, got out and extended an index finger in the direction of Challis. Whatever he said was almost immediately forgotten.

  The sound of automatic gunfire is not at all distinctive, at least in a West London suburb. There, people are so unused to hearing the sound that it would almost always be attributed to a late or early fireworks party, no matter what the time of year, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred the sound would indeed turn out to be just that. But on this occasion, Jake, Stanley, Challis, Gilmour, and the TFS commander knew better. Instinctively they ducked and two of them, Challis and the commander, even reached for their weapons.

  ‘What the hell’s happening, Sergeant?’ the commander yelled into his headset.

  There was another, more protracted burst of gunfire and then silence again: traffic still moving in the distance, the Nicamvision still blaring, the dog barking more furiously than ever, and the wind in the trees. After a minute or two there were shouts from somewhere in the target’s garden and the TFS commander, fingers pressed against his earpiece like some affected pop singer, stood up.

  ‘All over,’ he said breezily. ‘The man in the house has been arrested.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ said Gilmour.

  ‘What about the gunman in the porch?’ asked Jake.

  ‘He opened fire and was shot,’ explained the commander.

  ‘Dead?’ enquired Gilmour.

  The commander frowned uncomfortably. ‘In cases involving terrorists, a termination is the usual policy, sir. Unless there are instructions to the contrary.’ He glanced awkwardly at Challis as if seeking confirmation that no such instruction had been given.

  ‘And who ordered this operation?’

  The commander’s frown grew more profound as now he sensed that something was not quite right. He pointed at Challis. ‘Him, sir. I mean, Detective Chief Superintendent Challis, sir.’ He touched the earpiece again and turned round. Two members of his squad were frogmarching a handcuffed man towards them.

  Gilmour stepped squarely in front of Challis as if he meant to kiss both his cheeks like a French general. But the congratulations he offered were bent double with sarcasm.

  ‘Well done, Challis, well done,’ he said grimly. ‘You’ll get a medal for this. I’ll see that you do. And I’ll be the one who pins it on your chest. With a fucking bayonet. If I’m not mistaken they’ve just managed to shoot one of our own people. An armed guard from Special Branch.’

  Challis’s jaw slackened. ‘What? Well we didn’t know, sir. I mean, who’s he supposed to be guarding?’

  ‘Him,’ said Gilmour.

  The two arresting TFS officers presented their charge, a fat, blowing, angry-looking figure with blood pouring from his nose and mouth, the result of a blow from the butt of a machine pi
stol. His fair hair was dishevelled and his shirt was torn, but there was no mistaking the corpulent figure of the Shadow Home Secretary, Tony Bedford, MP.

  ‘You will understand that I couldn’t prove this. Not exactly anyway. Some of it’s nothing more than informed guesswork by Sergeant Chung and myself. And it will take a while to include all of this within the context of the official report -’

  A day or so later, with Challis suspended pending an inquiry, the explanation for what had happened was supplied to Gilmour, Jake and Stanley by Inspector Cormack of the Computer Crime Unit, in Gilmour’s office at the Yard.

  ‘Just get on with it, Cormack,’ Gilmour growled. ‘And try to keep it simple.’

  ‘Well, sir, it’s like this,’ explained Cormack. ‘Wittgenstein must have hacked onto the police computer at Kidlington, possibly with the intention of leaving a message for the Chief Inspector here. But while he’s there he decides to have a look around the system and discovers Sergeant Chung’s random name and number program. He has an idea. He creates a police record in the name of the man he is planning to kill: a VMN-negative codenamed Socrates, real name John Martin Baberton - the body that was found in Mr Bedford’s garden. He gives Baberton the kind of background that is just perfect for us: an ideal suspect, and one that we might not be able to resist. And because he has a sense of humour he adds in one or two details, such as Mr Bedford’s home address and Mr Bedford’s picture.’

  ‘That’s some sense of humour, all right,’ said Gilmour. ‘But where did he get Bedford’s address and picture? That’s what I want to know.’

  Cormack winced. ‘It would seem from our own files, sir.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well you see sir, ECIS has a one-man, one-record database. It would seem that Mr Bedford has a small record. For civil disobedience during the protest marches against punitive coma a few years ago. He was arrested for obstructing a policeman in the execution of his duty.’ Cormack shrugged apologetically. ‘All Wittgenstein had to do was instruct our computer to copy some of Mr Bedford’s details onto a file in the name of John Martin Baberton, sir. The dead man.’

  ‘He’s not the only one,’ Gilmour said darkly.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir?’

  ‘Nothing. Then what did he do?’

  ‘Well, after he killed his victim, and left him at the foot of Mr Bedford’s garden — at least we assume that he did that first — Wittgenstein then had to activate Baberton’s name as a VMN on the Lombroso Program. To do that he must simply have added Baberton’s name and telephone number near the top of Chung’s random program. If anyone had checked they would have seen that the address he used matched only the address on the Lombroso file and not the fake record held on the police computer which provided Mr Bedford’s address, and said that the one on the Lombroso file was out of date. And of course, there was no manual file for a John Martin Baberton: another discrepancy. Also if Baberton had had a criminal record at the time of his being screened by the Lombroso people it would have been revealed on his identity card.’

  Gilmour nodded solemnly. ‘Why do you say that Wittgenstein must have hacked onto our computer with the intention of leaving a message for the Chief Inspector?’

  ‘Well, in view of what happened, sir,’ said Cormack. When Gilmour did not reply, he added: ‘I heard that he left a disc, for Chief Inspector Jakowicz, in the dead man’s mouth.’

  ‘Who told you that, Inspector?’

  ‘Detective Sergeant Chung, sir.’

  ‘He had no business to do so. Things are quite bad enough with the press as it is. If they discover that the killer has made contact with us we’ll never hear the end of it. So keep your mouth shut. Understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘One more question and then you can go, Cormack. On the basis of what you have surmised about this unfortunate breach in our own data security, are you satisfied that the operation which ensued was precipitate?’

  Cormack nodded. ‘Wholly precipitate, sir.’

  Gilmour smiled ghoulishly. ‘Thank you, Inspector. That will be all.’

  After Cormack had gone, they sat in silence for a few moments. Then Detective Inspector Stanley asked the APC what was going to happen to Challis. Gilmour drew one eloquent finger across his throat and shook his head.

  ‘I’ve no choice,’ he explained. ‘There will have to be a formal inquiry of course, but in view of what Cormack has just told me, it’s a foregone conclusion. Too bad. He was a good copper.’

  Jake nodded, although she didn’t agree with Gilmour’s estimation of Challis’s detective skills.

  ‘This disc,’ said Gilmour. ‘Have you brought it?’

  ‘I’ve had a copy made, sir,’ said Jake. ‘The original is still with the lab. They’re subjecting it to every test that’s known to science: fingerprints, voiceprint, accent analysis, background noise, atmospheric adhesion. There’s nothing so far. We’ve traced the disc itself to one of a batch of Sony blank discs sold to an electrical retailer on the Tottenham Court Road. The owner sells ten boxes of the same brand every week.’

  ‘And the dead man? What about him?’

  ‘Six shots to the back of the head, as before. According to the lab report, he was killed in Bedford’s garden. He was full of vodka and we believe that Wittgenstein met him, struck up an acquaintance with him, and then lured him to Bedford’s address on the pretext that they would be having sex there. Baberton was homosexual. There’s a well-known gay bar in Chiswick which Baberton used to frequent. We’re still trying to find out if anyone saw Baberton on the evening he died, and if so, whether he was with anyone or not.’

  ‘Keep me informed on that.’ He nodded at the disc player on Jake’s lap. ‘All right. Let’s hear it.’

  Jake placed the coin-sized disc into the machine.

  ‘The material is in two parts,’ she explained. ‘One on each side of the disc. The first half is a sort of crude axiomatic parody of Wittgenstein’s most famous philosophical work, the Tractatus. The second half — well, I’ll let you judge that for yourself, sir.’ She pressed the button to start the disc.

  ‘Like Moses and Aaron, his brother, I carry a walking stick. I carry it everywhere and in a way I think of it as like my penis, constantly stiff, engorged for love. But it also represents my conscience, for sometimes I mislay it.’

  ‘Ten of my brothers have been killed. And I think of death a great deal. In fact, I’ve been thinking about it for years.’

  ‘Death is the totality of Nothingness, the very opposite of what is in the world. It is determined by a combination of objects (things). The grave is a fine and lonely place but none I think do there embrace. It is only the boys of Chiswick who keep me logico-philosophicus.’

  ‘What we cannot speak about we must, like the Angel of Death, pass over in silence.’

  ‘We never talk. It is too dangerous to talk. The boys are rough and crude. Some of them are almost illiterate. There are no names, just the brutal, selfish enjoyment of another being as an object.’

  ‘If I am to know an object, though I need not know its external properties, I must know all its internal properties.’

  ‘I should go away, somewhere quiet where there is no temptation. Here I am not safe from the love that dare not speak its name.’

  ‘Only facts can express a sense, a set of names cannot.’

  ‘It is loneliness that drives me from my rooms. I have sunk to the bottom. The world of the happy man is different from that of the unhappy man.’

  ‘At The Funfair in Chiswick ...’

  Jake hit the pause button.

  ‘The gay bar in Chiswick, sir,’ she said, ‘it’s called The Funfair.’ She hit the button again.

  ‘... there is a merry-go-round where all the young queers wait to be picked up. They sit on the horses and flirt outrageously with all the male spectators. There was a boy who gave me the eye as I watched him going round and round. They were all in a certain sense, one.’

  ‘I asked him back to my roo
m in Ealing. I gave him all the money I had. Money is not a problem for me. My relations, to whom I handed over the whole of my property, send me money when I need it. I object to the very idea of property.’

  ‘Here, the shifting use of the word “object” corresponds to the shifting use of the words “property” and “relation”.’

  ‘I imagined us both lying together. It made quite a picture, although it was hard to distinguish one form from another. Pictorial form is the possibility that things are related to one another in the same way as the elements of the picture.’

  ‘For one glorious moment I was able to transcend my very being. I did not belong to the world. Indeed, I was at the very limit of the world so that I was almost something metaphysical. Language and its limitations prevent me from saying more.’

  ‘This remark provides the key to the problem, how much truth there is in solipsism.’

  ‘I am revolted at my own debauched behaviour, my very intimacy with this young stranger an endorsement of my own loneliness. But how things are in the world is a matter of complete indifference for what is higher. God does not reveal himself in the world.’

  ‘I am cast down into the deepest pit in hell. Reeking of my own degraded thoughts and in my desperation to be away from the scene of this foul tableau, I take the boy into the garden to kill him. When he sees the gun, he appears to want to say something, then thinks better of it, and just laughs.’