A Philosophical Investigation: A Novel

by Philip Kerr

  Jake knew all the arguments in favour of PC. Coma was cheap compared with the cost of keeping a man in prison for ten or fifteen years. The advent of so-called intelligent beds, self-controlled pods operating, by means of individual computers, inexpensive heart/lung machines and intravenous feeding devices, as developed for the health-care sector, but hi-jacked by the prison system, meant that a convict could be kept in a year’s coma for less than a tenth of the cost of an equivalent prison term. Coma removed the opportunities for engaging in further criminality that had been afforded by prison. Overnight, it destroyed criminal society and made expensive prison riots a thing of the past. And depending on the choice of chemical substance, coma was reversible with few deleterious physical or mental effects. There was even evidence from the United States, which had been the first country to introduce PC, that it was helping to deter violent, drug-related crime.

  The arguments against PC were harder to maintain. To the objection that depriving a man of his consciousness was analogous to depriving him of life, the proponents of PC asserted that coma was more analogous to sleep, and that to be sentenced to a long period of sleep was, if anything, kinder than depriving a conscious man of an equivalent period of liberty, with all its attendant discomforts and indignities.

  To the objection, heard in the United States Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights, that PC was a cruel and unusual punishment, it had been successfully argued that since the whole future of manned space-travel was dependent on deep-sleeping astronauts who had volunteered for their five-year missions to Mars and Venus, PC could not therefore be regarded as cruel.

  The argument that in a subjective respect death concerns only consciousness did not survive the evidence of those convicts who had been returned from coma and reported their comatose dreams, which was itself confirmed by observations of electrical neuron activity in the brains of nearly all comatose convicts.

  But a cold shiver ran down Jake’s spine as she stared into the void and tried to imagine it. She knew that she was ambiguous in her own attitude to PC. There were obvious advantages from the point of view of society in general. But from the viewpoint of the individual she could think of life as being of value only as a necessary condition of consciousness.

  What had Wittgenstein said about it?

  Jake retrieved her increasingly dog-eared copy of the Tractatus from her desk drawer, turned to the last few pages and read.

  ‘Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death.’

  That seemed logical enough. And this propositional form could easily be adapted to show that being unconscious was without question an event in life, and that it was perfectly feasible, with so much of the average human life being spent asleep, that people did live to experience the unconscious state as well. Hadn’t Freud proved that consciousness was not a necessary condition of an interesting life?

  Where then was meaning? Where in that impersonal black sky of frightful grandeur that was the universe was significance?

  As Jake stared at her reflection, the depth of what lay beyond helped to bring herself into focus. A sense of other realities, of the trivialities of everyday life, of something different from the routine, all of these sensations gradually made themselves felt within her. To see yourself you had to look where you were not. To find meaning you had to have the will to turn away from yourself.

  Was that why men like the one calling himself Wittgenstein killed? For a momentary flash of identity? For a few seconds of significance? To escape from a lifetime’s lack of meaning?

  Earlier that same day, Jake had felt a brief hatred for him. But now she found she could feel real pity.

  I suppose you would like me to say something to the effect that I killed my victims when I heard the voices and that I believe that the voices came from God.

  Naturally I’ve read of how other killers (although I hardly like to put myself in the same class as them) have tried this one on, and managed to have themselves adjudged insane, thereby escaping the needle. And I dare say you’ve been expecting me to claim something along these lines.

  But the fact of the matter is this: we have you and I drunk up the sea. We have taken a sponge and wiped away the horizon. We have unchained the earth from the sun. And we are moving away now - away from all suns. We are perpetually falling backward, sideward, forward, in all directions. There is no up or down left. We are straying as through an infinite nothing. Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not the night coming inexorably upon us? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God’s decomposition?

  All right, I’ll admit it. This is hardly an original thought. Not these days anyway. I can’t claim this as my own. But you take my point. I mean, the contention that I killed when I heard the voices and that the voices came from God just won’t do. I mean, it’s hardly the claim of a sophisticated killer, now is it? It is too melodramatic, too theatrical for words. I mean, where’s the imagination there, for God’s sake?

  Now if you were to suggest something along the lines of how I killed when I heard the voice and that I believed the voice was that of Friedrich Nietzsche, then at least we’d be heading in the right direction. It sounds a bit more original. And what’s more, it’s considerably nearer to being true. Because each time I kill one of my brothers, I am, of course, killing God.

  But just a minute, I hear you say: if someone kills God and God does not exist, then surely he’s killing nothing at all. It makes no sense to say ‘I am killing something’ when the something does not exist. I can imagine a god that is not there, in this forest, but not kill one that is not there. And ‘to imagine a god in this forest’ means to imagine a god is there. But to kill a god does not mean that ... But if someone says ‘in order for me to be able to imagine God he must after all exist in some sense’, the answer is: no, he does not have to exist in any sense. Except one.

  Where God does exist is in the mind of man. Ergo, one kills a man, one kills God.

  I know these things as thoughts. But my thoughts are not my experiences. They are an echo and after-effect of my experiences: as, when a train goes past my window, my room trembles. I am sitting in the train, however, and sometimes, I am the train itself. Intellect and passion, thinking and feeling - really, they’re all the same thing.

  How fast has brother followed brother, from sunshine to the sunless land.

  On my next day off I drove round to the home of the next brother on my list. I’m beginning to sound like Adrian Messenger, I know. I don’t mean this to sound vengeful or vindictive as in some Jacobean tragedian’s play. No, it felt right, what I was doing, cold and pure like crystal, but true. A sense of logical purpose had infected my mind, which is where it started for all of us. All in the mind. The mind of man - my haunt and the main region of my song.

  After the farce with Shakespeare I decided to leave the dramatists alone and, still trying to disobey my first inclination, which was to kill a philosopher, I chose a poet. Wordsworth — stupendous genius! Damned fool.

  My preliminary surveillance had only just begun when I realised that I was not the only one watching over him. Parked outside Wordsworth’s house (I thought I’d break the pattern again) was a scruffy grey van. For a while I paid it no attention as there was nobody in the driving seat. Imagine my surprise when the rear doors opened and two men got out to stretch their legs and smoke a cigarette. They didn’t look much like policemen but then, these days, who does? And given that one of them was carrying a pair of binoculars I didn’t suppose they could be from the Gas Board. The other one clinched it when I saw him unzip his anorak to reveal the flak jacket and machine pistol he was wearing underneath.

  But what I failed to understand was how they neglected to observe me. Did they imagine that I wouldn’t reconnoitre my target before going to work? Can they seriously have believed that I was just going to tur
n up on Wordsworth’s doorstep and shoot him? Maybe they didn’t much care whether Wordsworth was shot or not.

  Perhaps, if I’d been there longer, they might have taken me into consideration as a possible suspect. As it was, I simply started up my van and drove slowly away, very much aware of how lucky I’d been. And of how I had underestimated the police. I would have to be more careful in future, I told myself. Especially since I was planning to use my satellite phone to contact Policewoman in the minutes leading up to my next brother’s execution. It would hardly have looked professional to have been arrested in the middle of a philosophical dialogue.

  I kept a careful eye on the rear-view video as I drove away, just in case I was followed. But the screen remained empty of traffic and even before I had reached the end of Wordsworth’s road, I was scrolling down the list of brothers on my hand-held computer for the next target.

  Fine, I thought, I always did like Wordsworth and was quite glad not to be his solitary reaper. Stop here or gently pass.

  These many then shall die. Their names are pricked. But which one was to be next? Auden? Descartes? Hegel? Hemingway? Whitman?

  Auden was certainly the closest, although I had a mind (in the sense of reality as a whole, or the Absolute) to kill Hegel out of pure idealism. Hemingway? Obsessed with death, and somehow too vulgar. Descartes? I had been saving him. All the same there was all the nonsense about deducing the existence of God as proof of the perceptible world. And in a way, he did start all of this. Yes, Descartes then. The father of modern philosophy. I would destroy him out of total scepticism. He shall not live. Look, with a spot I damn him.

  I kill, therefore I am.

  12

  JAKE SAT ALONE in her office, her long, strong fingers steepled in front of her forehead as if she had been deep in prayer, or thought, or both.

  Ed Crawshaw put his head round the door, cleared his throat, and, having gained Jake’s attention raised both eyebrows by way of preface to a question.

  ‘Yes, Ed.’ She yawned. ‘What is it?’

  She rubbed her eyes which she assumed were sore from a lack of natural light and switched off her desk lamp. Was it the fluorine or the halogen bulbs that were supposed to cause blindness? Perhaps her life wouldn’t seem quite so artificial if she had some flowers in the office.

  ‘Got a minute, Chief?’

  ‘Sure, take a chair.’

  Crawshaw sat down.

  ‘Remember the Italian olive oil we found on Mary Woolnoth’s clothes?’

  Jake said she did.

  ‘Well it comes by the drum-load from Italy, to be bottled under licence here in the UK. Company called the Sacred Oil Company, based in Ruislip. Their bottled oil is then distributed all over the country by a company called Gillards. They’re in Brent Cross. Gillards deliver the oil to a number of wholesalers in central London, including one in Brewer Street, Soho. The Soho delivery is always handled by the same driver, one John George Richards. Well it so happens that about eight years ago this Richards did two years under the needle for a sexual assault on a young woman. What’s more, on the date of Mary Woolnoth’s murder, he made a delivery to the wholesalers in Brewer Street.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ said Jake. ‘I assume you want my autograph on an application to a magistrate for a search warrant.’

  ‘That’s right, ma’am,’ said Crawshaw. ‘If you wouldn’t mind.’ He handed Jake a paper. She read his document and then signed it quickly.

  ‘Thanks, ma’am.’ He stood up to leave.

  ‘Oh, and, Ed? Let me know when you pick him up. I’d like an opportunity to talk to this guy myself.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Ed?’

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘Well done.’

  Crawshaw had not been gone for very long when the switchboard rang to say that they had Wittgenstein on the line. Jake immediately hit the button on the pictophone link that had been patched into Sir Jameson Lang’s rooms in Cambridge.

  ‘It’s him, Professor,’ she announced to Lang’s startled image. ‘Wittgenstein. Are you ready?’

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ said Lang, and straightened his tie.

  A message on Jake’s computer screen told her that the call-trace procedure was already initiated. She told the switchboard to put Wittgenstein through.

  ‘Chief Inspector?’ he said smoothly.

  ‘Yes. I’m glad you called.’ She wished that they had been speaking on the pictophone and that she could see his face.

  ‘Oh, I don’t doubt it. Would you like me to give you a sound-level for your recording? Testing, testing, one-two-three. How’s that?’ He chuckled. ‘You know, I really hope you are recording this. It could be historic. We’ve come a long way from messages chalked on walls near the scene of the crime. “The Jews are not the men that will be blamed for nothing”.’

  ‘Jack the Ripper,’ said Jake, recognising the quotation. ‘The message near the first victim. Now who was it? Catherine Eddowes?’

  ‘Very good,’ said the voice. ‘I’m impressed, Chief Inspector. If it didn’t sound so corny I should say you were a worthy opponent.’ He paused. ‘May I call you Jake? I feel I already know you quite well.’

  ‘Be my guest. What do you want to talk about?’

  ‘Oh no. This is your chat show, Jake. I’m here at your invitation. You’re supposed to put me at my ease. Make me feel comfortable enough to reveal something interesting about myself: isn’t that how it works? But I will say two things right away, Jake. One is to save you the trouble of trying to trace this call: I’m using a satellite phone. Ah, the wonders of modern science.

  ‘And the other is that at some time during our little chat, I’ll have to break off and kill someone. Who this is going to be will be a surprise, of course. I’m saving that until the end, when I will give you his codename. Don’t let that worry you though. Just try and look at it from the point of view of my having to plug a new book or a record. We’ve got plenty of time until then. If my man sticks to his routine we should have at least twenty minutes.’

  The voice sounded lighter and more flippant than on the disc. But Jake knew that Detective Sergeant Jones would already have wired the call through to the Yard’s own forensic psychiatrist for a more accurate psychological evaluation. Even now there would be an acoustic engineer trying to isolate and identify any background noise. Jake lit a cigarette. To hell with the regulations, she thought. This was an emergency.

  ‘I was hoping I could persuade you to give this up,’ she said. ‘Not to kill anyone else. There’s been enough killing already.’ She took a deep, fierce drag. ‘Maybe even to give yourself up. You know, I’d like to help you if I can.’

  ‘Did you like the photographs I sent you, Jake?’ he said.

  She realised that he was trying to provoke her, to see how far her willingness to help really went.

  ‘They were very good,’ she said evenly.

  ‘You think so?’ He made a little tutting, dissatisfied noise. ‘I wasn’t sure I got the lips of your vagina right. And your pubic hair. I couldn’t work out if you were the bushy type or not. Whether the hair grows right along the edge of your labia or only as far the pubis. Well? How did I do?’

  Jake felt herself colour. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You know this call is being taped. Do you want to embarrass me in front of all my colleagues? Let’s talk about something else.’

  ‘What about your anus? Or maybe your nipples.’

  ‘You know I think this is just an act,’ she said. ‘I don’t think you’re this kind of person at all. Listen, I’ve met some real sex perverts in my time, and you don’t begin to come close. I think you’re trying to impress me as being something you’re not.’

  Wittgenstein guffawed. ‘All right,’ he said.

  Well that was interesting, she thought. You could contradict him without provoking him. It demonstrated that on one level at least she was speaking to a rational person anyway.

  ‘Would it interest you then to know th
at I’ve been close enough to you to smell you Jake? What is that perfume you wear? Rapture, by Luther Levine.’

  Jake gave a start. How could he know that?

  ‘Some might find it rather cloying, but I like it. Fact is, there was something about it that gave me a hard-on. But then I’m much more influenced by smell than other people.’

  ‘How did you know that: about my perfume? Have you been following me?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘But we have met. Now then, what were we talking about? Ah yes, you were giving me some crap about wanting to help me.’

  Jake struggled to keep her mind on the conversation. But she was still badly rattled by his claim to have met her. When?

  ‘Oh, but I do,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t fool yourself, Jake.’

  ‘Then at least let me try to persuade you not to murder another man. What would be the point of that?’

  ‘Oh, but there is a point, Jake. While we may agree about the facts, that I am killing men, and that there exists a set of criteria for deciding upon the legality of my actions, regarding the validity of what I am doing, the criteria are less generally agreed. If we were to have a discussion about what I am doing or have done, first it would have to be concerned with how to describe that. It might necessitate an examination of the concept of right and wrong and morality in general. We could talk about whether my action can be demonstrated to be sufficiently against the interests of the community as to merit punishment; or whether it can be argued that these are in fact justifiable homicides.’

  ‘But this is merely verbal - ’

  ‘You disappoint me, Jake,’ he said. ‘That might be a reasonable objection if no further consequences resulted from calling what I do illegal or legal, justifiable or unjustifiable. But of course it does matter when to say “illegal homicide” also means “to undergo punitive coma”.’

  ‘What you have done is quite clearly illegal. Murder is wrong by the standards of any decent society.’