by Philip Kerr
‘When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question be put into words.’
‘And so my gun speaks for me, silently.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Gilmour muttered after a few seconds had elapsed. And then: ‘Is that it?’
‘Side one,’ said Jake, removing the disc and turning it over to play the other side of the killer’s recording.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Gilmour repeated. ‘You’ve got a right nutter there, and no mistake.’ He looked at Detective Inspector Stanley to elicit support for this view.
‘Sounds like it, sir,’ agreed the other man.
‘Has Professor Waring listened to that?’
‘Yes, he has,’ said Jake. ‘He recommended that I speak to an expert. A professor of moral philosophy at Cambridge University.’
‘Listening to that disc, it sounds to me as if a professor of psychiatry would be more bloody use to you. Eh, Stanley?’
The other officer smiled and shrugged vaguely.
‘Sounds as if this fellow could be a queer after all,’ said Gilmour.
‘I don’t particularly care for that word, sir,’ she said. ‘But since you mention it, he might indeed be homosexual. Killing his brothers, as he calls those other VMN-negatives, might be a way of sublimating a homosexual inclination. Or he could be trying to sell us a dummy. To get us to waste our time conducting our investigation among the gay community. As before, there was no evidence that the dead man had been interfered with sexually. None at all.
‘As a matter of fact, Wittgenstein’s own sexuality has often been debated, and while there are some biographers who have sought, rather sensationally, to suggest that he was an active, predatory homosexual, there is little or no evidence for that either.’
Gilmour smiled uncomfortably.
‘Shall we listen to side two?’ Jake asked, and switched on the machine.
‘Greetings, Policewoman,’ said the voice. ‘Caught your show on television the other night. Thanks for the kind thought vis à vis my sanity and my pre-trial prospects. You need not worry. I have already given careful consideration to my own defence, in the unlikely but nevertheless logically possible event of my arrest.
‘I am certain that I could satisfy the court’s McNaghten Rules and maintain a successful plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. You should note that I would contend that it was the Lombroso test itself which disturbed the balance of my already precarious mind. At the same time I would almost certainly file a civil claim for damages on the basis of the duty of care owed to me and the reasonable foreseeability of my suffering some sort of nervous shock as a result of this scan. When this is all over and the Lombroso connection with these killings has been made public, I think you will find that many of the victims’ families will also want to pursue some sort of joint claim against the Brain Research Institute. But that’s another matter.’
The voice was cool and calm and entirely without an accent. As Tony Chen had described it, ‘like someone on the BBC’, except that it was almost too robotic. It had no modulation, no expression, no lilt; no idiosyncrasy of pronunciation that might indicate an area of origin. Received pronunciation, as it was sometimes described. It made Jake shiver a bit as she listened to it once again.
‘Your suggestion that my brothers are innocent was, as you must have supposed it would be, irritating to me. The fact is that I am providing the public with a valuable service. You see, these are all potentially dangerous men who cannot simply be left to their own devices. The logical extension of their identification is, as a bare minimum, containment. But since the advent of an official shoot-to-kill policy among law-enforcement agents, and the implementation of punitive coma as the new cornerstone of penal theory, the incarceration of violent criminals has been demonstrated to be of only secondary importance to an obsessively cost-conscious administration. As a consequence of this governmental example, I am moved to kill them myself, humanely and efficiently, and with the least possible inconvenience to society.’
Wittgenstein allowed himself a small chuckle.
‘You know, instead of trying to hunt me down, you should be grateful to me, Policewoman. Just consider how many of my brothers might have turned into killers of women. Tomorrow’s gynocidal maniacs. That’s your bag, isn’t it, Policewoman? Serial gynocide? At least that’s what the papers say, and we always believe what we read there, don’t we? Like poor Mr Mayhew’s brave struggle for life in hospital?’ He laughed again. ‘Anyway, you just ask yourself how many more lives may have been saved as a result of the few that have already been sacrificed? Is this not simply a kind of utilitarianism?
‘You challenged me to communicate with you, Policewoman. And I have now done so. Both semantically and syntactically you may find the message - or at least the first part of it - not much to your liking. No doubt you should have preferred it if I had seemed more obviously criminal. And if there had been a few clues to help you track me down. Sorry. I’ll try harder the next time we play our little game. Expect a telephone call from me any day now, when I’ll tell you where to find the next body. And thanks. This is so much more fun. Frankly I was becoming rather bored just executing brothers one after the other, day in day out.
‘Until then, I urge you to sharpen up your thinking and to consider carefully the grammar of what you will say to me. Remember, when eventually we communicate in a real sense you and I will be doing Philosophy. So be prepared. Yours bloodily, Ludwig Wittgenstein.’
Jake switched off the disc player.
‘Well,’ said Gilmour, ‘I’ve never heard anything like that before.’
‘It is quite unusual,’ Jake admitted. ‘However, the subject’s sense of omnipotence, his feeling of invincibility is entirely typical in cases where a multiple killer has contacted police. It’s something I’m familiar with, sir. Even Jack the Ripper was given to telling the police that he didn’t think they were going to catch him. So to that extent at least he was actually conforming to type.’
Gilmour nodded approvingly. ‘I’m sure you know what you’re doing, Jake,’ he said.
Although Jake knew she was correct in what she was saying, at the same time the killer’s disembodied words had made her feel anything but confident within herself. She had recognised a certain logic in what he had said about the need to eliminate those other VMNs. Hadn’t she said as much herself?
When Jake returned to her office she found Ed Crawshaw at her desk, writing out a note. As Jake came through the door he crushed it in his hand and stood up sheepishly.
‘I know you’re busy with this other thing,’ he said, ‘but I thought you’d like to know: we’ve a sort of lead in the Mary Woolnoth case.’
Jake closed the door, squeezed past Ed Crawshaw’s large frame and dumped herself in her chair. She felt the colour rise in her cheeks.
‘So what am I - your bloody nanny?’
Crawshaw shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other.
Jake sighed and closed her eyes.
‘I’m sorry, Ed,’ she said. ‘It’s this other thing, as you put it. It’s got me worn out. Sit down.’ She pointed to the chair on the other side of her desk.
He sat down and opened his mouth to speak, but Jake stopped him.
‘No,’ she said, ‘don’t say anything for a moment. Just let me try and clear my mind.’
Crawshaw nodded and, adjusting his belt, leaned back in the chair.
Jake opened her shoulder bag, took out a small hand-mirror and checked her make-up as if trying to render herself more human. Her eyes looked bloodshot and her hair was a mess. The ends were split like bamboo. She could hardly remember the last time she’d been to the hairdresser. At the same time, out of the corner of her eye she observed that Crawshaw was putting on weight. His grey suit fitted him rather too snugly, she thought. He had always been a big man but now she could see how he had the potential to become a fat one. It was an impression made easier by the red-haired Crawshaw’s lardy complexion. He was spending too much time in
the office and probably not eating properly: the wrong kind of food at the wrong time of day. It was easy to let yourself get out of shape when you were at the Yard. Jake counted herself fortunate that she wasn’t much interested in food.
She found her lipstick and fixing her mind on the lipstick writing she had seen on Mary Woolnoth‘,s dead stomach, she touched up the corners of her diamond-shaped mouth. Finally, as she studied the waxy red end of the lipstick she said, ‘So what sort of a lead do we have, Ed?’
Crawshaw opened the manila file on his lap, drew out a sheet of yellow paper and floated it across the desktop to her.
‘Detailed lab report on the dead girl’s clothes. The collar of her jacket showed light traces of olive oil. Her mother says that Mary was always very careful with her clothes. She spent a lot of money on them, and had things regularly dry-cleaned. So the chances are it didn’t come from her. The olive oil on the collar lapels would be consistent with the killer having grabbed hold of her. There was just a trace of the same olive oil on the clothes of one of the other victims too.’
Jake glanced over the sheet of paper.
‘ “Cold pressed olives from the Tuscany region of Italy”,’ she read, ‘ “producing extra virgin olive oil.” Interesting. So we could be looking for - ?’
‘- for a wop.’ Crawshaw grinned. He shook his head to indicate that he was joking. ‘For someone who eats pizza with his fingers. Or maybe someone who prepares it.’
‘For that matter it might be anyone involved in food preparation,’ said Jake. ‘I think I’ve got some Italian olive oil in my own kitchen at home.’
And that was probably all she had, Jake told herself. The kitchen might have contained every modern convenience, but of food itself there was really very little. Somehow the late supermarket was never quite late enough.
She sent back the paper. ‘Look, see if we can match this oil to a specific supplier.’
‘That’s not going to be easy,’ said Crawshaw. ‘This stuff’s pretty common. I mean olive oil is olive oil, right?’
Jake smiled. ‘I hear what you say, but do your best. By the way, how’s the golden apple operation coming along? The one in the Mystery Bookshop.’
‘No bites so far.’
‘You might take a look at their stock,’ she suggested. ‘Maybe our greasy-fingered killer left a few prints on a book.’
Crawshaw nodded.
‘Anything else?’
‘Er no.’ But Crawshaw stayed in the chair, shaking his head vaguely. ‘Well, yes: some of the squad were wondering what’s going to happen to Poison. I mean to Challis.’
‘Challis is suspended on full pay, pending the result of an inquiry. That’s all I can tell you, Ed.’
‘On full pay, eh? Shame. A meat-hook would have been better. The word is that it was Poison’s incompetence that got that copper killed.’
‘That’s for the inquiry to determine,’ Jake said firmly.
‘I guess so.’ Crawshaw smacked his thighs and stood up. ‘How’s it going anyway? This other thing. Making any progress?’
‘Some.’
‘Need any help?’
‘Thanks for the offer, Ed, but no. But what I need right now is a tame philosopher.’
My own feelings at the time of the death of Socrates were quite extraordinary. It never occurred to me to feel sorry for him, which you might have expected at the death of a brother. But he seemed quite happy, both in his manner and in what he said. He met his death obediently, without fear and with some nobility. I could not help reflecting that on his way to the other world he would be under the providence of God, and that when he arrived there, all would be well with him. So I felt no sadness or sense of remorse.
At the same time, however, I felt no satisfaction either. Before his death our conversation had taken the form of a philosophical discussion. Strange to describe, but I suppose I experienced a sense of pain and pleasure combined as my mind assimilated the fact that my brother was going to die, and that it was I who was going to kill him.
Largely our discussion centred around the topic of immortality, although I rather think that many of the views which he expressed to me were really Plato’s. But that’s another issue. At its most simple, we discussed whether it was a man’s body or his soul which matters most. Considering where we were at the outset of this dialogue - a gay bar in Chiswick - it is strange to report that Socrates was of the opinion that it is the latter which must be cultivated at the expense of the former. If this seems an unduly ascetic position to take, this may have been due to the fact that I had spiked his Brandy Alexanders, not with hemlock, as you might have thought, but with ZZT, the so-called Obedience Drug much favoured among S & M devotees, and thus he may have been led to agree with me.
Nevertheless, his famous last words seem to me to be curiously ambiguous. Before I shot him, he asked me to offer a cock to the god of medicine. Perhaps there was some humorous homosexual double entendre to this remark. Or he may have been trying a little irony with regard to the Lombroso Program. At the same time, and this is the interpretation which I myself favour, he may also have been trying to indicate that death itself is a cure for life.
It is often assumed that death is the negation of life. But how can this be? Anyone who understands negation knows that two negations yield an affirmation. Can it therefore be said that ‘this man is not alive’ and that two such negations would equal an affirmation, ergo, life? Of course not.
You see how mysterious life really is. Life is no more the negation of death than death is the affirmation of life. Yet it is only death which can confirm that there has indeed been life as we know it. Death is not the opposite of anything. It is death, and nothing else besides. Schopenhauer writes of how a state of non-existence is really man’s more natural condition, given that we spend so many billions of millennia in this fashion; and of how life itself is little more than an unnatural blip on the supramillennial screen.
Aside from an approximately real experience, the nearest one ever comes to the full comprehension of death is the contemplation of the non-existence of that which itself gave life: the death of a parent.
It is curious how this Brown Book works both as a journal of my life and as an event in my life. And you who come after me - well, to you this may be a book like any other: but just as I have read a story and then myself am a participant in it, I hope that this will be true of this story and you.
Perhaps now you can see what it means to speak of ‘living in the pages of a book’. This is because the human body is inessential for the occurrence of experience. Indeed, many of my most profound experiences have occurred within the pages of a book. Experiences which have affected my life. If we understand one sentence, even a sentence in a child’s comic, it has a certain depth for us.
Have you ever caught yourself reading? You know, you’re sitting in a chair engrossed in a good book, enjoying the story and the author’s prose-style, and then suddenly, it’s as if you have an out-of-the-body experience and you catch sight of yourself as you really are: not trading wisecracks with Philip Marlowe, or struggling with Moriarty atop the Reichenbach Falls, but as someone sitting alone in a room, with a book open on your lap. It can be quite shocking. Like a sudden jolting shot of phenothiazine to the schizophrenic. One minute he’s battling international Communism and the next he’s just a guy in a wet bed and a pair of dirty pyjamas.
It is this rare ability to step in or out of the picture which distinguishes reading. Perhaps Keats perceived as much when he wrote to his sister describing the pleasure he should take in being able to sit beside a window on Lake Geneva and spend all day reading, like the picture of someone reading. Like a picture of someone reading ... that’s a lovely revealing sentence. And quite typical of those Romantics, always trying to escape themselves. It conjures up such a powerful image of someone not only living but lost in the pages of a book, oblivious to the exterior physical world, to the hand which turns the page, even to the eye and visual field which co
nducts the printed information to the brain. Without a book I am chained to the earth. Reading I am Prometheus Unbound.
But perhaps our subject, namely my story, has stolen away from us while I have been theorising, like a shadow from an ascending bird. Perhaps you have found that the bird and its shadow are too far apart. I could make more matter with less art, if that was what you really wanted. But must this Brown Book of mine become simply a catalogue of blood with every lethal detail painstakingly described so that you can witness the full horror of my work? Surely we can agree that this improvised bible of my endeavour should remain something detached, a sideshow inside the main show that is my dark heart. And after all it will be entirely your affair how you read it, day and night.
Just remember this, however: thou read’st black where I read white.
10
JAKE DROVE HERSELF to Cambridge and enjoyed the two hours she took to get there. During the journey she listened to the Rachmaninoff second piano concerto on the disc player and resolved to buy the software to play the piece on her own piano at home. The melancholy product of the’ composer’s own hypnotherapy, Jake had always believed that it was essential music for anyone who wished to gain a profounder understanding of depression.
Further on into her journey she stopped at a little tea-shop in Grantchester only to find that it had closed. So for a while she just sat in the car, allowed the windows to mist up, and smoked a cigarette thoughtfully while she listened to the opening moderato, with its famous eight chords, once again.
It felt strange, she thought, to be going back after all this time. Stranger than she would have believed was possible.
It was almost twelve by the time the wheels of Jake’s BMW rolled down the ramp of Cambridge’s short-term multi-storey car-park. She unfolded the sun-visor and, particular about her appearance as usual, checked her make-up in the vanity mirror.
