A Philosophical Investigation: A Novel

by Philip Kerr

  ‘Stupid bastard,’ Stanley muttered, twisting around in his seat to look through the rear window at the quickly shrinking figure. ‘Someone ought to move all these people.’

  ‘I think I’m right in saying, Professor Wittgenstein,’ said Lang, ‘that suicide has been rather common in your family. Not to mention the fact that your own adolescent hero, Otto Weininger, took his own life.’

  ‘You’re right, of course. My brother Rudolf killed himself. It was a merely theatrical gesture. Weininger’s death was altogether something else. It was an ethical acceptance of an intellectually predisposed fate. A noble thing.’

  ‘As I recall, there were many Viennese men who were moved to kill themselves in imitation of Weininger. But you did not. Was it simply that you did not dare to kill yourself? That you did not have the courage?’

  Wittgenstein uttered a long, deep snort of amusement. ‘You’re very good, Professor. I see your game. Well perhaps you’d call it a game. It certainly isn’t a perfect game. It has ... impurities. I compliment you. Well then I shall also call it a game. Existential Leaps, perhaps. But only because I am dazzled by your ideal.’ He spoke languorously, as if savouring the full implication of Sir Jameson Lang’s design. ‘It is quite admirable.’

  ‘I am glad that you think so,’ said Lang, apparently undisturbed by Wittgenstein’s complete understanding of what he was trying to achieve. ‘If I may add one more thing, however ...’

  ‘I should insist on it.’

  ‘I’d be correct in assuming that you believe in God?’

  ‘Yes, you would be correct.’

  ‘Therefore, you have the perspective for suicide. The God relationship and the Self. That’s very important. I mean, any atheist can commit suicide. They have no sense of spirit. The point about suicide, that it is a crime against God Himself, altogether escapes the atheist. Well, what I’m trying to say is this: all this time I imagine you’ve been thinking that in killing these other men you were killing God.’

  ‘That’s fair I suppose.’

  ‘I won’t ask you why. I’m not interested why. But I’m sure you have your reasons. Whatever they are, I respect them. I feel quite sure you must have given the matter a great deal of thought. But look here, if you really want to wave two fingers in the face of God, then you’ve been missing the point. That’s not the way to do it. To flee from existence itself is the most critical sin, the ultimate rebellion against the Creator. What is required of you is intensified defiance, the heightening of despair.

  ‘The last time we spoke you described yourself as an artist. I don’t doubt it. Only as such, yours is a common dilemma: the sin of living life in the imaginative as opposed to the real world, of Art instead of Being. Naturally God plays the crucial role in your heightened sense of despair. In your secret torment, God is your only hope, and yet you love the torment and will not abandon it. Somehow you are aware that what you must do is let go of your torment and take it upon yourself in faith, and that you cannot do. So your defiance of God intensifies and you kill others to prove it. But, as I say, real defiance is shown most of all by killing oneself.’

  Wittgenstein sighed. ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he said wearily. ‘What you say about the artist’s existence feels true.’

  ‘How do you feel about killing yourself?’

  There was a long silence.

  The car left Southwark Street and sped along Southwark Bridge Road into Borough. St Thomas Street. Guy’s Hospital. The security guards on the gate lifted the barrier and stepped quickly back as the car roared past.

  ‘Does it make you feel afraid?’

  Jake cursed Lang loudly.

  ‘Do you believe in eternal life?’

  ‘Eternal life,’ Wittgenstein whispered, ‘belongs to those who live in the present.’

  Jake heard him smile as he added:

  ‘Is some riddle solved by me surviving for ever? Is not this eternal life itself as much of a riddle as our present life? When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question. Well then. The riddle does not exist. And the solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem.’ Then he rang off.

  Jake buttoned down the electric window and leaned out of the car to address the gate-keeper.

  ‘Where’s the nurses’ home?’ she asked.

  ‘Nurses’ home? You’re a bit out-of-date, aren’t you? That closed two years ago.’

  ‘Drive on,’ said Jake. ‘We’ll try inside the butcher’s shop.’

  The car accelerated forward and came to a screeching halt at the hospital’s front steps. Jake sprang out of the car and raced up to the front door where, startled by the speed of her arrival, two police guards met her with pointed guns. She waved her ID in front of their bovine faces and demanded to be taken to the hospital administrator.

  The first policeman took off his cap and scratched his head. ‘Don’t have one, ma’am,’ he said.

  ‘The manager then,’ she said. ‘The director. Whoever’s in charge.’

  Both men continued to look puzzled.

  ‘Who is in charge?’ the first policeman said to his colleague. ‘I dunno.’

  ‘Ask her,’ suggested the other, and pointed to a nurse.

  ‘We want the person in charge,’ the first policeman said to the nurse. ‘The one that runs the place.’

  The nurse smiled unpleasantly, as if she had been about to provide some very nasty medicine.

  ‘Make your mind up please,’ she said. ‘Which is it to be? The person in charge, or the person who runs the place? They’re not the same.’

  Jake resisted the temptation to draw her weapon and press it to the nurse’s forehead.

  ‘We want someone who knows about the personnel who work here,’ she said patiently.

  ‘Well why didn’t you say? You don’t want the person who runs the place. You want a personnel director. But which one? Student, surgical, nursing, administrative, technical or ...’

  ‘Technical,’ yelled Jake. ‘I want a pharmacy technician.’

  ‘All the way down that corridor, then second corridor on your right, fourth door on the left,’ said the nurse and walked quickly away.

  Jake turned to look for Detective Inspector Stanley and found him leaning against one of the graffitied walls, already looking decidedly greenish. Hardly disguising her contempt, Jake said: ‘Oh yes, I was forgetting about your stomach, wasn’t I. You’d better wait outside.’

  Stanley nodded weakly and staggered out of the doors.

  ‘I’ll come with you ma’am,’ said one of the policemen. ‘It’s best I do, to be quite frank. You never know who’s hanging around in this place. There are some very dodgy types who walk in and out of these doors, I can tell you. It’s not like the Metropolitan Police Clinic at Hendon.’

  ‘All right,’ said Jake. ‘Come on then.’

  They walked briskly down the foul-smelling corridor the nurse had directed them to. Further away from the entrance hall, they started to find that the corridor was lined with patients lying on the floor, some of whom got up from their dirty mattresses to beg for a few dollars towards their hospital bills. The guard thrust them all roughly aside.

  The technical personnel director’s office was opposite what looked like a bank vault, but was in fact the hospital dispensary. Another two armed guards stood on either side of a barred window in a steel-plated door. The door to the personnel director’s office was made of reinforced glass. Jake’s guard pressed the bell and lifted his mug towards the video camera scanning the both of them.

  ‘Visitor for the TPD,’ he said.

  The door buzzed and sprang open.

  The technical personnel director’s office was small and barely furnished. The telephones looked like they’d been there since the hospital was built. The computer was a cheap Strad such as the poorest student might have owned. A half-eaten hamburger lay on the desk. On the television were some girls doing aerobics in costumes that were a couple of sizes too small. From the prurient
camera-angles it didn’t look like the kind of aerobics that the viewer was meant to join in with.

  Jake confronted a Welshman wearing a pinstripe suit and a zip-up cardigan who smelt heavily of sweat and fried food. She handed him her identity card.

  ‘I’m Chief Inspector Jakowicz,’ she said. ‘I was hoping to find one of your employees, Paul Esterhazy, at the nurses’ home, however I understand from the gate-keeper that it has closed. Is Mr Esterhazy currently in the building?’

  ‘It’s his day off,’ said the director, examining Jake’s identity card with considerable interest. ‘Murder Squad, eh? Is Paul in trouble or something.’

  ‘It is very urgent that I speak to him, sir,’ said Jake. ‘Do you have his present home address?’

  ‘He only lived in the men’s hostel very briefly,’ said the director. ‘Temporary like. Just while he found himself somewhere permanent to live.’

  ‘Well then if you could just oblige me by telling me where that is.’

  The man’s piggy eyes narrowed. ‘Paul wouldn’t harm a fly, you know. I’ve known him for years. Gentle as a lamb, he is.’

  Jake, who wished she had a dollar for every time she’d heard that, said that she merely wanted Esterhazy in order that he could help her with her enquiries.

  ‘But that’s always what you people say when you arrest someone. Are you going to arrest Paul? Because if you are, I’ll have to speak to the hospital lawyer before I can give you his address.’

  Jake sighed and asked why.

  The man smiled a patronising sort of smile. ‘Believe me, Chief Inspector,’ he said, ‘there’s not much that we do in this hospital that we don’t speak to the lawyer first of all. If you only knew the number of malpractice suits we have to deal with here.’

  ‘Look,’ Jake hissed back at him. ‘I’m not one of your damned patients, and I’m in a hurry, so if you wouldn’t mind ...’

  The director tut-tutted and shook his head. ‘Well, put the case that I did give you Paul Esterhazy’s address, which I’m not saying I do have, mind. And put the case that you went there to arrest him. Put the case that while you were there arresting him you, or one of your men, shot Esterhazy. Put the case that prevented by law from suing the police, he or his family might well decide to sue the hospital instead, for releasing confidential information to you.’

  Jake nodded grimly. ‘Very well then. You give me no choice. Put the case that you give me Paul Esterhazy’s address this minute, or I shall be obliged to arrest you.’

  ‘On what charge?’

  ‘Double parking. Sex with a minor. Drunk and disorderly. Come on, will you? What charge do you think? I’m a police officer trying to do my duty, and you’re obstructing me. So what’s it to be? Postal code or caution?’

  ‘Look, I’m not refusing to give you his address, see? I’m only saying that I should call the hospital lawyer first of all.’

  ‘I’ve no time for that,’ snapped Jake. ‘The address now, if you please.’

  The director turned to face his computer screen, his face wrinkled with displeasure. He tapped the keyboard several times, then stood up and went over to the tiny printer which was already in action. Finally he tore off a sheet of paper and handed it to Jake.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said crisply.

  ‘Now perhaps you’ll tell me a little more of what this is all about.’

  But Jake was already walking out. ‘If you leave your TV on for long enough, you’ll find out,’ she yelled out from the corridor.

  Outside again, Jake found Stanley and her driver waiting patiently for her beside the BMW.

  ‘Docklands,’ she said, as she came down the steps and jumped into the back of the car. ‘Ocean Wharf as fast as you can.’

  Stanley was opening and then closing the car boot.

  ‘Come on,’ she shouted. ‘Let’s go.’

  He got in beside her and she saw that he was cradling a pump-action shotgun.

  ‘Just in case,’ he said, patting the weapon like a favourite pet. ‘That’s a pretty tough area.’

  The car leaped forwards, heading east again, Druid Street and the Jamaica Road along to the Rotherhithe Tunnel, under the Thames where the air was cool and fetid. Then the sun again as the car emerged onto Limehouse Road in the shadow of the Docklands Light Railway overhead.

  Turning south onto West Ferry Road, they caught sight of the Isle of Dogs, and then the car was immediately enveloped in a swirl of gritty dust blowing like a mini-typhoon off one of the area’s many abandoned building sites. Rotting nineteenth-century houses, their sides shored up with baulks of timber, their roofs patched with corrugated iron gave onto modern tower blocks that stuck out of the dusty, rubble-strewn landscape like giant cacti. A helicopter skimmed around the pyramidical roof of Canary Wharf, hovering like a bluebottle: it was a unit of Airborne Surveillance on permanent attachment to protect what was left of what once had been the pride of the Docklands development from the depredations of the sordid colonies of wooden shanty-housing which, at a short distance away, surrounded it.

  Canary Wharf Tower was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous structure of sunburnt steel and glass soaring up, floor after empty floor, 300 metres into the air, and visible from as far away as Battersea. From the backseat of Jake’s BMW it was just possible to read, picked out on its electronic advertising hoarding of white neon lights, in elegant green lettering, the rotating slogans of the only three companies which had offices there:

  GOLDSTEIN LIFE ASSURANCE. BECAUSE YOU MIGHT NOT LIVE TO REGRET IT.

  THE YAMURA 22-CARAT GOLD COMPACT DISC. 8 OUT OF 10 JAPS SAY THEY PREFER IT.

  ROYAL MARSDEN ONCOLOGICAL INSURANCE. A LUMP SUM, JUST WHEN YOU NEED IT MOST.

  Keeping pace with the toy railway as if they had been following some drug dealer who was aboard it and making a desperate attempt to escape the police, they had Canary Wharf, Heron Quays and South Quay on their left, the whole business area of the Docks on the other side of a maze of barbed wire and surveillance cameras. Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were patrolled by private security guards in black uniforms with jointed truncheons.

  The car turned down one of these side streets where a small gang of youths had collected in front of a bonfire and were engaged in teasing a stray dog, and as if in confirmation of the area’s tough reputation, a rock bounced off the BMW’s toughened windshield, and Stanley worked the magazine of the riot gun expectantly.

  ‘Relax,’ said Jake, as the car pulled up to the fortress of razor-wire that was the Ocean Wharf compound. But she herself felt anything but that. The security guards waved them through, and in the car-park, beyond the entry gate, stood a blue Toyota Tardis van. They checked the registration.

  ‘Looks like our man’s at home,’ Jake said as she caught sight of it. If Wittgenstein was indeed contemplating suicide by now, thanks to Sir Jameson Lang’s persuasion, then being a pedestrian in Docklands would have been a good way of doing it.

  There were four apartment blocks in Ocean Wharf and Jake consulted her printout to see which one was home to Wittgenstein.

  ‘Winston Mansions,’ she said as they climbed out of the car. ‘Seventh floor. Let’s hope we’re not too late.’

  Stanley looked up at the height of building. ‘Let’s hope the lift is working,’ he added.

  Inside the glass doors of Winston Mansions a fruity voice was describing a commercial for a brand of dog food that promised to produce less dog waste than any other brand. The voice came from a television screen behind the doorman’s desk. When the doorman saw Jake and Stanley he turned the volume down, and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. People rarely ever turned a television off completely.

  ‘Is Paul Esterhazy at home?’ said Jake, flashing her ID in front of the doorman’s face, although there was no need. He had already seen the police car.

  ‘Went up about thirty minutes ago,’ said the doorman. His eyes stayed on the screen. ‘Want
me to call him?’

  ‘Metaslim. Increase your metabolic rate. The only effective way to help you lose weight,’ said the television.

  ‘No,’ said Jake, going towards the lift. ‘We’ll announce ourselves.’

  Stanley pressed a button to summon the lift.

  ‘S’not working,’ said the doorman. ‘Company that’s supposed to service it went bankrupt.’

  Jake glanced around the lobby. ‘The stairs,’ she said. ‘Where are they?’

  The doorman pointed at a brightly lit corridor behind him. At the end of it was a grey steel door. Jake started towards it.

  ‘Save you a journey,’ the doorman added. ‘Supposing you was planning to go up to the seventh floor. Mr Esterhazy’s the only tenant on that level. So he keeps the fire doors locked from the inside, for security, when I’m not around. S’made of steel, just like that door in front of you, miss. You might bang on it all day and he wouldn’t hear you.’

  All through this explanation the doorman’s eyes never strayed from the television screen. He was like some small animal hypnotically fascinated by the movements of a snake.

  ‘Want me to call him now?’

  Jake smiled politely and nodded with slow patience.

  The doorman buttoned a number on the internal pictophone and then turned back towards the TV.

  ‘Usually takes a while for him to pick it up,’ he explained.

  A minute passed with no answer.

  ‘Are you sure he’s in?’ Stanley frowned.

  ‘Only one way up, only one way down. Unless he jumped of course.’

  ‘Perhaps you were distracted,’ offered Stanley. ‘By the TV.’

  The doorman looked scornfully at the policeman. ‘Nothing worth watching,’ he said. ‘No, he’s up there all right. In trouble then, is he?’

  But it was Esterhazy who answered first.

  ‘Yes, Joe, I’m here. What do you want? I’m a bit busy right now.’

  ‘Not me,’ said the doorman. ‘The police.’