Philip Kerr - A Philosophical Investigation

Even so, the view from Westminster Bridge was fraught with danger, there were so many beggars and petty thieves along the embankments, and the gun was a necessary precaution.

It was a sight which always managed to touch her soul, although the smog-laden air prevented the sun from lighting the saloon-bar boats, the glass tower-blocks, the satellite mushrooms, theatres and mosques. A feeling of calm overcame Jake as she watched the muddy brown Thames glide underneath her feet. She wondered if Doctor Cleobury’s trance-through-relaxation technique might not have also worked a part of its spell on her.

Traffic was lighter than normal and she crossed from one side of the bridge to the other, stepping coolly over the supine form of a drunk sleeping in the gutter. Even the Houses of Parliament seemed to be asleep. She smiled as she tried to imagine the lies that were probably even now being told in that heart of democracy by the likes of Grace Miles.

This sense of calm refused to desert Jake despite the drunk waking up and, with an almost complete lack of consonants, demanding money of her. She reached into her bag and keeping one hand on the 30-shot automatic, she took out a five dollar bill with the other and gave it to him. The man stared dully at it for a moment, nodded, grumbled a reply, and then, thinking better of snatching the tall woman’s shoulder bag, moved on, unaware of how close he had come to being shot.

Jake watched this majestic piece of work as he walked unsteadily along the pavement, towards the nearest off-licence, and felt nothing but contempt, for him and all men. She would as soon have blown his head off as rewarded his menacing demand for money.

It was the sight of the river, not the man, which had moved her.

I keep two notebooks. Particularly beautiful books, with smooth, creamy paper, a little yellowed by age, but of a kind that has not been manufactured for many years.

There is this one, containing my journal, which I call my Brown Book. And there is another, containing the details of those few individuals whom I have executed, or am planning to execute, which I call my Blue Book. I write with an old fountain pen. I’m not very used to it. Like most people I normally write something straight onto the computer, however I feel that that would be to remove me from the immediacy, the improvised character of these, my thoughts, which only a pen can translate.

Neither of these two books is particularly good, but they are about as good as I can make them. I dare say that they will only be finished when I am. In other words, their publication (about which I am having a few misgivings) will not be an event in my life.

Of course, it is not without the realms of possibility that, taken together, it should be the fate of these two humble volumes, in their poverty and in the darkness of this time, to bring illumination into one brain or another. But then, how things are in this world is a matter of complete indifference for what is higher.

Next to each other, these two books amount to a sort of a system. This is what is important for logic. Because the only necessity that exists is logical necessity. And the idea that there is some kind of natural explanation for everything, and that this natural law is something inviolable is, frankly, nonsense.

Turning to the Blue Book for a moment, you will see how, for each individual, a series of pictures serves to represent precisely how I will carry out his execution. (All right, I did depart from this in the case of Bertrand Russell, but that was a mistake; anyone can make a mistake.) These are simple, childlike drawings, such as might be made when completing an accident-claim form from a motor insurance company.

As a picture of a possible state of affairs, it’s all logical enough. Of course it’s not every picture that corresponds with reality in this way. You just have to take a walk around the Tate Gallery to appreciate that. In there are a great many pictures on view in which an arrangement of objects bears no relation to a state of affairs. This is the freedom of Art. It is what is sometimes called artistic licence, almost as if you had to write away to Swansea in order to get one.

As well as my Brown Book and my Blue Book which, taken together, represent my system, there is the approximate reality of my work.

To enter an approximate world you need the right equipment. My own RA machine and its body attachments represent the state of the art and cost me almost EC $50,000. The main part is just a box, about the size of a cereal packet which you attach to your computer. Then there is a full-face helmet that resembles something a motorcyclist might wear, and a rubberised exoskeleton suit that’s more like what you see a frogman wearing. Inside the helmet, the visor acts as a projection screen, which is where you see the approximate world, and a loudspeaker over each ear lets you hear it. The suit is a flexible composite which enables you to touch and be touched by approximate things and approximate people. You switch on or off simply by lowering or raising the helmet’s visor.

Originally I bought RA as therapy for my aggression, customising several of the existing program disks to my own specifications. When I felt more than normally hostile I would don the body attachments and plug myself in. Seconds later I would be in an approximate world, armed with a selection of lethal weapons enabling me to murder, maim and rape my way through a selection of highly realistic victims. But these days I find that I don’t have to feel hostile to want to use this particular program, and I find that it keeps me on a fairly even keel.

Of course there are many other approximations of reality which one can explore. These other RAs include the erotic, the romantic, the fantasy, the comic, as well as the musical and even the intellectual. Many of these programs I have devised myself, and I look upon these pictures and sensations as a kind of art form, like cinema.

Of course RA is not without its drawbacks. Like any form of escapism such as drugs, or alcohol, it can become addictive for the weaker-minded individual. But that cannot be a problem for me.

It has been said, by the manufacturers of RA and other products like it, that what is real and what is unreal we must merely apprehend, for both are incapable of analysis. But this seems to me to be nothing more than the kind of tautology that typifies advertising.

The fact of the matter is that nothing empirical is knowable.

Jake took her place at the table between Gilmour and the man whom she had replaced in charge of the inquiry and who, heading up the Murder Squad, was nominally her boss: Commander Keith Challis. Adopting expressions of cool, calm, detached gravitas, they faced a roomful of journalists who were armed with cameras, boom microphones and discrecorders. As Gilmour opened the press conference, Jake recalled his last few words to her as they left his office on the fifteenth floor of New Scotland Yard, to take the lift down to the conference room.

‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ he had said gruffly. ‘If this blows up in our faces, it’ll be your head, not mine, that the Minister asks for. To my mind it looks as if she’s giving you all the rope you need to hang yourself.’

‘Yes, well I’m not ready to string myself up yet,’ Jake had replied.

The introductions to the press over, Jake, as senior investigating officer, took charge of the police statement. A number of public relations seminars had helped her to develop presentational skills. She recognised the importance to the success of the conference of her own physical appearance and that morning had dressed with even greater care than was usual, choosing to wear a two-piece suit made of turquoise bouclé. She knew that it would be harder for the press to make a target of someone who didn’t conform to the standard grey-flannel image of police authority. It wasn’t her first experience of handling the press during a murder inquiry, but she treated it as if it was. There was no point in risking making the impression that she was in any way casual about things. She spoke clearly, carefully, watching both sides of the room like a presidential bodyguard, as if expecting that one of the journalists would throw something heavier than a loaded question. It was best to expect the unexpected.