A Philosophical Investigation: A Novel

by Philip Kerr

  Try as I might to prevent it, my more murderous brain cells just love talking to the others, poisoning them with their logical pictures of the facts in an attempt to win them round to their cause.

  This brings me no small discomfort. Insomnia being the worst torment. Sometimes I lie awake the greater part of the night, watching them at work. It’s easy enough to spot when something’s happening. All thought becomes an image, and the soul becomes a body. Thought actually manifests itself in little hot spots that are the colour of blood. Recently there’s been a lot more of this colour than normal and the other night, the inside of my dome resembled one of those volcanic lava flows that sometimes spew out of Mount Etna and engulf a couple of local villages.

  The chief area of neuronal discussion seems to be that I should move on from killing my brothers and start on the human race in general. A sort of business expansion scheme. This seems to me to be a lamentable trend and one which worries me considerably. I had hoped that I could keep things in check a bit, but of course lacking a VMN, ultimately this may not be possible. It may be that in time I shall be forced to close down the company altogether.

  16

  THEY DROVE TO Soho and ended up parking as far away as St James’s Square. Chung apologised for the distance to his cousin’s restaurant.

  ‘I don’t mind walking a bit,’ said Jake. ‘Frankly, I could use the exercise.’

  ‘Me too,’ he agreed. ‘Although I do manage to work out a bit at home. I’ve got a heavy punch bag hanging from the ceiling in the garage. I give that a good kicking in the morning. Lately I’ve been imagining that it’s my mother-in-law.’

  ‘They walked up the short hill that led onto Jermyn Street and turned east towards Regent Street and Piccadilly Circus.

  Opposite Simpson’s, Jake paused in front of red brick office building and nodded at the smoked glass door.

  ‘A girl was murdered in there,’ she said. ‘Just a month or two ago. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?’ She glanced up and down the street. ‘It all seems so peaceful, so civilised, so very ...’ Her eyes alighted on the black wall of St James’s Church.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Chung.

  Jake shook her head vaguely. ‘Nothing,’ she said, but started to retrace her steps in the direction of the church’s curiously theatre-like door. ‘At least, I don’t think it’s anything.’

  In front of the church, which seemed hardly like a church at all with its bulletin board of visiting speakers, Jake considered the matter syllogistically, as two separate premises. She could not see how the conclusion she had in mind might logically follow these. But even as she told herself that such an invalid conversion would of course lead to an invalid judgment, she remained convinced of the possibility that the thing might be tested empirically. The question was: how?

  Seeing her momentarily absorbed like this, Chung remained silent, even when he was obliged to follow her as she walked through the church, out into the stone-flagged courtyard on the other side, and across Piccadilly. She led him up Sackville Street and stopped outside the Mystery Bookshop which, even at that time of the evening, was busy with browsing customers. He noticed that she was smiling a little now and when finally she spoke again, there was a quiet look of triumph in her face.

  ‘Crime is common,’ she said. ‘Logic is rare.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me what’s going on?’ he demanded. ‘Or shall I just call you an ambulance?’

  ‘It is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell.’ She pointed not to the Mystery Bookshop, which Chung felt might have better suited her cryptic remark, but to the donerkebab restaurant next door. A man was writing some prices onto the inside of the window with what looked like a piece of red crayon. The name above the door was Parmenides.

  ‘Would you mind very much if we ate Greek rather than Chinese?’ she said.

  ‘Not at all. So long as you tell me what the hell you’re up to.’

  ‘Certainly, but let’s get off the street. He mustn’t see us yet.’ She led him into the doorway of a nearby tailor’s shop. ‘The man in the restaurant window is called Kyriakos Parmenides,’ she explained. ‘But his Lombroso-given name is William Shakespeare.’

  ‘He’s VMN-negative?’

  Jake nodded. ‘A few weeks ago, Wittgenstein followed him to St James’s Church, back there, where he planned to shoot him. But Parmenides scared him off and while he was making his escape, Wittgenstein left behind his A-Z of London. This contained the addresses of all his potential victims who lived here.

  ‘Parmenides found it lying in a church pew where Wittgenstein had been sitting. Well then, after a while, he realised the significance of the book, and like a good citizen handed it into the police.

  ‘But consider this, Yat: Parmenides works next door to a bookshop from where, one hour before she was horribly murdered, Mary Woolnoth bought a paperback novel. When Wittgenstein attempted to shoot Parmenides, he was sitting in a church that’s not twenty metres from the office where Mary’s naked body was found. The killer wrote on her body with a red lipstick. And he was left-handed.’

  Jake leaned out of the doorway and nodded at the restaurant window.

  ‘And there he is, also left-handed, writing a menu on his windowpane with what looks like a piece of red lipstick.’

  Chung nodded. ‘I see what you mean,’ he said.

  ‘Jessie Weston, the girl he killed before Mary Woolnoth, was also a murder mystery novel fan. I can’t prove it yet, but I wouldn’t mind betting that she also bought a book in that shop. Which is where he saw her. I wouldn’t mind betting that all the murdered girls came down this street at some time or another prior to their deaths.’

  ‘It’s an interesting hypothesis,’ agreed Chung. ‘But it all sounds a bit circumstantial.’

  ‘If I’m right, it should be easy enough to push him out into the open.’

  ‘What have you got in mind?’

  ‘Are you carrying a gun?’

  ‘Of course. I’m a copper, aren’t I?’

  ‘All right, here’s what I want you to do. Go in there and order something to eat. I’ll follow you in a couple of minutes. But when I do, act like you’d never seen me before.’

  Chung crossed the road and went inside the restaurant.

  Jake walked towards the Mystery Bookshop.

  A free-standing display card in the window announced that four leading crime writers were in-store to sign copies of their latest novels. As she came through the door, Jake glanced briefly at the names and then the matching men and women who were seated at a long table behind large stacks of their new books. She recognised none of them. Each author stared hopefully at Jake as she swept by their table. Only she wasn’t planning to buy anything. She wasn’t even going to so much as look at a book.

  Jake smiled at the idea of these four self-important crime writers sitting there like a panel of television pundits, forgotten by the general public and largely ignored by the shop’s other customers, while next door a real-life multiple killer was about to be provoked into betraying himself.

  She found what she was looking for in front of those few shelves which were a temporary home to post-modernist crime novels.

  The woman was a tall, strong-looking brunette, wearing a tight denim shirt and skirt. Jake’s eyes caught the curve of her bare breast between the pearl buttons. Bright red lipstick gave her a cheap, tarty appearance.

  ‘Recognise me?’ Jake asked in lowered tones.

  The WPC glanced at Jake uncertainly, glanced outside and then nodded.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘WPC 548 Edwards,’ said the woman.

  ‘Where’s your surveillance team, Edwards?’

  ‘They’re outside, ma’am, in a blue van.’

  ‘Are you wearing a wire?’

  The WPC nodded.

  ‘Good. So everyone can hear me now. This is Chief Inspector Jakowicz speaking. I’ve reason to believe that the man we’re looking for, the Lipstick Kil
ler, works in the kebab restaurant next door.’

  WPC Edwards frowned. ‘That figures, ma’am,’ she said quietly. ‘I was in there the other day, buying a cup of coffee, and one of those fellows behind the counter gave me the weirdest look.’

  ‘Have you a red lipstick on you?’

  The WPC nodded, rummaged in her shoulder bag and then handed it over.

  ‘WPC Edwards and myself are going next door now,’ Jake explained to her hidden audience. ‘There’s a Detective Sergeant Chung who’s already in there. Your orders are these: be ready for him outside if he tries to make a bolt for it.’

  ‘What are you planning to do, ma’am?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  Jake led the way past the table of unsigned books and their self-pitying authors, and out of the shop. She paused as she caught sight of the blue surveillance van and, as if on cue, the passenger’s window slid down to reveal the face of Detective Inspector Ed Crawshaw. He made a thumbs-up sign. Jake nodded back at him and, followed by the WPC, turned into the kebab restaurant.

  It was the smell of olive oil she noticed first. Then Chung seated quietly in a corner, studiously chewing his way through a large and well-stuffed pitta-bread.

  Parmenides’s hospitable smile faded a little when he recognised that one of the two customers standing in front of his stainless-steel counter was Jake. On a shelf behind him stood a large bottle of the Sacred Oil Company’s extra-virgin olive oil.

  ‘Hello, Chief Inspector,’ he said nervously. ‘What can I do for you?’ He glanced at WPC Edwards, swallowed hard, and added: ‘Have you caught this fellow yet? The one who followed me?’

  ‘Not yet, no,’ said Jake. She tilted her head sideways, towards the WPC. ‘Actually I just met an old friend of mine, in the bookshop next door, and we thought we’d come in here for a coffee.’

  Parmenides seemed to relax a little. He pointed at one of the Formica tables ranged along the mirrored wall. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring them over. Cappuccino? Espresso?’

  ‘Two cappuccinos, I think,’ said Jake.

  The Greek bowed slightly and set about the operation of the machine.

  The two women seated themselves on opposite sides of a table. Jake paid no attention to Chung. Instead she picked up a copy of the Evening Standard which had been left on a chair, and laid it on the table. As soon as he had turned his back to the tables Jake produced the lipstick and wrote the name ‘MARY’ in large red capital letters onto the cream-coloured table top. She then covered this with the newspaper.

  After a couple of minutes the Greek came over bearing the two coffee cups. Smiling he bent forward to lay them down and at the same time Jake pulled away the newspaper to reveal Mary’s name.

  Belshazzar could not have looked more shocked. Parmenides’s face drained of colour. First his jaw dropped, then the two coffees. He turned and ran towards the door, snatching a long knife from off the counter top as he went, with Jake, WPC Edwards and Chung in close pursuit.

  Outside in the street Jake drew her weapon and shouted after him to surrender. He kept on running, and seeing his way impeded by two more men waving guns and badges, he raised the knife.

  Jake stopped still, steadied her arm and aimed low. She saw Crawshaw and the other officer move smartly away from her line of fire. She felt the cold first pressure of the trigger, caught her breath for a millisecond, and then squeezed.

  He catapulted forward onto the pavement, clutching at an instantly bloody thigh. Crawshaw moved in quickly to kick the knife away. Not that it mattered. Even before Jake had got to Parmenides where he lay on the pavement, even before she saw the wound, she knew that the bullet had severed the man’s femoral artery — the sheer quantity of blood told her that much.

  Underneath the stubble the Greek’s face was deathly pale. He did not look as if he was in pain, rather that he had been somehow anaesthetised. His eyes focused briefly on Jake, flickered, closed and then opened again. For just a moment he seemed to smile at her. It was a smile she had seen once before, when her father was dying of a brain tumour. A smile, replete with silent contempt.

  Crawshaw tore off his scarf and using his truncheon as a capstan made a quick tourniquet round the wounded thigh. He did his best to stem the flow of blood, but the wound was too severe and the man was dead even before WPC Edwards had finished radioing for an ambulance.

  Jake walked to the unmarked police van where, according to the regulations, she calmly handed Chung her automatic. ‘For the inquiry,’ she explained.

  Chung nodded and put the gun into his pocket.

  ‘I only meant to wound him,’ she heard herself say. ‘He had the knife. I thought he meant to use it when he saw the other two officers.’

  ‘You done right,’ he said. ‘You warned him and then aimed low. That’s what you’re supposed to do. It’s just too bad you hit him there. A centimetre either way and right now he’d be sitting on the pavement and calling you all sorts of fucking names.’

  Jake sat on the edge of the van and considered her reaction to having killed a man. She thought she ought to have felt worse about it, despite the fact that Parmenides had murdered six women. That was awkward too. A confession might have made things just that little bit more convenient. As it was, she realised that she would now have to hope that the scenes-of-crime officers would find evidence that would help to convince a coroner’s court that her action had been justified.

  By now the street, suddenly cordoned off at both ends, was full of policemen helping to bolt the stable door. Jake wondered how it was they had contrived to be on the scene quite so quickly. Then she remembered that Vine Street station was only round the corner. That would be where she would have to go now to make her statement.

  ‘You all right?’ said Chung anxiously.

  Jake looked at him, frowning with puzzlement.

  ‘Me? I’m fine.’

  It was almost twelve by the time she arrived back home from Vine Street. Everything in the flat seemed cold and lonely, but the central heating was soon working and she was glad that she would not have to explain what she had done to anyone else. The pictophone rang a couple of times, but she ignored it. Instead she turned on the television and poured out a large glass of whisky to try and divert her thoughts.

  She ought to have known that the midnight television news would cover the shooting. But there was no reason for her to have suspected that the coverage would be quite so brutal and voyeuristic. She was aware that programmes shown after midnight were not obliged to conform to any broadcasting guidelines. This meant that late-night television was comprised mostly of pornographic films. Jake had no idea that the same freedom extended to news broadcasts.

  The crew had arrived on the scene in Sackville Street less than fifteen minutes after Jake had left it. Dealing with the incident chronologically, they filmed first the kebab restaurant and then the pavement along which Parmenides had run. Next they filmed his knife, followed by a gun: not Jake’s Beretta automatic which had accompanied her to Vine Street, but another identical weapon as shown by one of the many other policemen. Last of all the hand-held camera moved down the street to where the Greek lay dead in a kidney-shaped swimming pool of blood: it focused in close on his bare thigh, the bloody tourniquet that Crawshaw had made, and the coin-sized hole from the .45-calibre bullet. Last, and most shocking of all, the television reporter lifted the dead man’s head by the hair the better to show his lifeless features to the camera.

  The commentary was no less sensational than the pictures.

  ‘This criminal filth,’ snarled the reporter, shaking Parmenides by the hair, ‘was almost certainly responsible for the brutal murders of six young women.’ He bent forward to shout into the bloodstained ear.

  ‘You were scum,’ he yelled. ‘A filthy animal. Being shot like this was too easy for you, you shit. You should have been made to suffer, just like those women you murdered, you cunt. I hope that they give the police officer who plugged you the George medal for killing
you. And if, somehow, your greasy spirit can still hear me, we all hope that you burn in hell, you scum. For what you did, you should have been -’

  Jake found the remote control and turned it off. Then she drained her glass. What she had seen left her feeling sickened. Somehow she had had to see it on television for it to sink in that she had killed a man.

  After a minute or so she began to be aware of an empty feeling in the pit of her stomach and her hands started to shake. Then her skin started turning hot and cold. Absurdly she found herself recalling details from her university first-year psychology notes about the way in which her own brain’s hypothalamus, like a tiny temperature gauge, would be trying to control her body’s autonomic nervous response to what had happened; and about René Descartes’s notion of human beings as reflex machines. It was strange how one thing put you in mind of another.

  That smile she had seen on Parmenides’s face. Her father’s sardonic smile. She was quite shaken by the memory of it.

  Tears welled in her eyes and when she walked to the bathroom her legs felt unsteady beneath her. She was retching before she was even halfway through the door.

  Nobody understands me.

  Certainly a lot of people think they do. The other day I was in the Mystery Bookshop and I stopped in front of this bookcase and it was full of studies in the psychology of multiple murderers, or serial killers as they are also sometimes known. Yes, I mean full. There must have been at least fifty different titles. I browsed through a few of them. But not one seemed to me to have properly listened to the words of the supernatural songs they each claimed to have understood so well.

  Mostly these books on why people become multiple killers boil down to two separate theories.

  There is the old-fashioned Marxist theory that interprets the multiple’s behaviour as the product of historical materialism: society’s original victim metamorphosing into society’s oppressor. And then there is the more modern, but essentially Nietzschean view that the multiple has an intense desire not to reject but to belong to society - a society in which fame is the touchstone to success and where murder is merely the short cut to its achievement.