Philip Kerr - A Philosophical Investigation

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A woman is found dead, raped and covered obscene graffiti. This is unremarkable; London is a world of elaborate technology, violence and squalor, and serial murder has reached epidemic proportions. A new killer emerges, however, who has other targets, ones which have alarming consequences for the government. Chief Inspector ‘Jake’ Jakowicz is put in charge of the investigation, which will require all her powers of reason and intuition.
There has been a breach in the security of the Lombroso computer system, which screens people for their predisposition to violent criminality. Aided by Chung, a computer expert, and Dr Jameson Lang, Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University, Jake begins to build a profile of a criminal mind that has adopted the name (and the thought processes) of one of the world’s greatest thinkers. In an age where faith is lost and reality is mutable, logic has become the killers driving force. His voice emerges: sharp, engaging and dismayingly rational. ‘The concept of killing: the assertion of one’s own being by the denial of another. Self-creation by annihilation.’ His name is ‘Wittgenstein’. A chilling philosophical dialogue ensues between Jake and the murderer, where concepts of meaning, logic, and of consciousness are endowed with the importance of life and death.
A Philosophical Investigation 

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Russell collapsed onto the floor, catching his chin on the edge of the cabinet as he fell. For a brief second one hand pressed at the hole my first shot had made as the blood started down the bridge of his nose, while the other held on to the cloth cover that protects the drawings and watercolours from the damaging sunlight. I almost thought that he would tear it, but then it was through his fingers and I was striding round the cabinet to stand over him and let go with the rest of the clip. My second and third shots silently blasted away two of his fingers. And there was more blood than perhaps I am used to — another reason why working in daylight is more difficult. Some of his gore even splashed onto the toe of my shoe. For all these reasons I could not recall if I heard the sound that denotes a successful headshot or not.

It was then I became aware that I had shot him in the front and not the back of the head, which is of course my usual practice. So, as I strode nonchalantly away from Russell’s body, I was possessed only of the probability that I had succeeded in killing him. And we only use probability in default of certainty.

5

Jake paused in front of one of the pictures. She liked William Blake. Always had done. There were two prints of his paintings on the wall of her bathroom. Blake was not everyone’s taste, she knew. Some people found him too mystical, especially for a bathroom. But Jake had a soft spot for all kinds of mysticism and her best investigative thinking was often done in the smallest room. While her thinking was more temporal than terrestrial, nevertheless Blake’s pictures inspired her with an insight as to the darker side of man which, as a detective, she found useful.

She turned her attention to the large bloodstain on the floor which was now being photographed from every conceivable angle, as if its shape contained some symbolic significance. The scenes-of-crime officer, whose name was Bruce, squatted down beside her.

“What have we got, Sergeant?’ she asked him.

‘Well, it’s not Jerusalem, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you that much.’

‘I will not cease from mental fight, Sergeant Bruce,’ she returned. ‘Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand. But I’d be grateful if you would kindly stop stating the obvious, albeit poetically.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Bruce, quickly flipping open his PC. ‘Oliver John Mayhew, of 137 Landor Road, SW9. Shot six times in the head, fairly close range, at around 1.20 this afternoon. The security guard found him. Says he didn’t see or hear anything.’

‘Dead?’

‘Not quite. Been taken to Westminster Hospital, ma’am. I’ve sent a constable with him just in case he has time for a last soliloquy. What’s the Yard’s interest in this case?’

‘I’m not at liberty to tell you, Sergeant,’ she said, disliking herself for this reticence.

Jake hated keeping any investigating officer in the dark, but with the Home Office taking such a particular interest in keeping the lid on the Lombroso connection, she had little choice in the matter. She was as surprised to find herself there, staring at the bloodstain on the floor of the Tate Gallery, as the sergeant. Less than half an hour before she had been at the Brain Research Institute when a call came in from the Yard. Even while she had been standing next to the Paradigm Five as Yat Chung tried to trace the origin of the Lombroso system burglar, the machine had tracked the name Oliver John Mayhew as appearing, albeit as a victim, within the context of a violent crime inquiry on the police computer at Kidlington, and alerted the other computer to Mayhew’s status as a VMN-negative.

‘Let’s just say that I’m investigating a similar case,’ she told Bruce. ‘Any of the art lovers see anything?’

‘Doesn’t look like it so far. If any of them did, they probably thought it was some kind of performance art.’

‘Broad daylight. Don’t tell me, all the goddamned doors were locked as well. I don’t think I feel like playing Sergeant Cuff this afternoon. No witnesses at all? Jesus Christ.’

‘Speaking of whom, the director of the gallery is over there, ma’am. Perhaps, as the senior investigating officer, you wouldn’t mind speaking to him. Mr Spencer.’

It was the sergeant’s revenge for her not telling him anything. Jake smiled wryly. She’d have done the same thing herself. Looking over her shoulder to the edge of the room which housed the Blakes, she caught sight of a tall, distinguished man wearing a grey suit. He stood, with his arms folded, barely able to contain his impatience.

Jake went over to him, introduced herself and then let him complain about how intolerable it was that no one, himself included, should have been permitted to leave the gallery. Jake waved Sergeant Bruce towards her.

‘Have your men finished checking ID cards yet, Sergeant?’

‘Yes ma’am.’

She turned to address the director. ‘Well, Mr Spencer. Everyone can leave now. Yourself included.’

But Spencer had not yet finished with his complaints about the high-handedness of the Metropolitan Police.

‘Mister Spencer,’ said Jake after a couple of minutes of patient listening. ‘You know, this isn’t much of a room for England’s greatest artist. Don’t you think it’s on the small side for a man with as big a vision as Blake?’

Spencer’s frown deepened. ‘Don’t tell me how to run an art gallery, Chief Inspector,’ he growled.

‘Well then, please don’t tell me how to run a police investigation,’ Jake returned.

Just at that moment, Spencer wailed and pointed frustratedly at one of Bruce’s team who was cutting out the bloodstained area where Mayhew’s body had been found, with a lino-knife.

‘Oh really,’ he said. ‘This is too much. What about that? What about my carpet?’

‘Don’t worry sir,’ said Jake. ‘We’ll return it to you just as soon as we’ve finished all our tests. Who knows, with a nice frame, you could try exhibiting it.’

Spencer’s mouth opened and closed, and hearing nothing emerge from its mephitic pinkness, Jake wished him a good afternoon and then left.

Mayhew’s company medical scheme meant that he was taken to a private clinic attached to the Westminster Hospital. The clinic itself looked like an expensive hotel. Thick pile carpets, leather furniture, big modern paintings, and bonsai trees. There was even a small fountain trickling along with the Muzak in the reception hall. The smell of disinfectant and the occasional white uniform seemed oddly out of place, as if some kind of accident had happened to disturb the atmosphere of quiet luxury.

Detective Inspector Stanley was waiting for her in a silent corridor outside the operating theatre. When, on taking charge of the investigation, Jake recalled the circumstances of their first meeting, she had asked herself if she should keep him on the case: if a police officer investigating a homicide who could attend a scenes-of-crime report on the gynocide could be anything but a liability. Ed Crawshaw, who knew Stanley from Hendon, said he was a good copper, reliable if also rather literal. Jake was inclined to accept this criticism as a point in Stanley’s favour. Trusting herself to make the imaginative leaps necessary to solving a case, she preferred working above all with people whom she could trust to do only what they were told. Jake’s opinion of the majority of her colleagues at the Yard was that imagination was usually an indication of corruption.

Stanley was a tall, fit-looking man with long hair and the pallor of goat’s cheese. He swayed a little on his feet as he started to make his report.

‘Shit, what’s the matter with you?’

‘Hospitals,’ he said biliously. ‘They always set me off. It’s the smell.’

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