Philip Kerr - A Philosophical Investigation

Since the moment I was plucked, head first, from out of eternity and dangled by my ankles in the cold light of what is temporal, I have spent some considerable time in attempting to think of what cannot be thought. The nearest that one may come to this is in the contemplation of the state of non-existence that exists prior to birth and after death. Believe me I have found it easier to bend my mind in trying to say what cannot be said.

I suppose you could say that my motive, such as I was ever possessed of one in this matter, was partly blasphemous, since my mission resembled the utterance of the Tetragrammaton — JHVH. I feel I must accept this since what is thinkable is possible too, in the sense that one cannot think of anything illogical: we could not honestly say what something that was illogical would look like.

No doubt there are some who would disagree with this, but the reality — such as reality exists in this poor world — is that it is as hard to think of something illogical as it would be to determine the precise ratio between the diameter and the circumference of a circle, and thus construct a circle of the same area as a given square. (A piece of pie you might think, but speaking as one who has tried, it cannot be done.)

Commonly the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem, as dreamt up by the Nazis, is considered to have been something unspeakable. But this is simply not so, and to say that language cannot represent the Holocaust is to misrepresent it as something not of this world. It is to suggest that it is a riddle, that the explanation for why it happened lies outside time and space, and that the ultimate responsibility for it does not belong to man. (These are the people who suggest that understanding implies condonation.) Yet it is the fact that the Holocaust is so very much of this world and therefore that it can indeed be said and is not something unspeakable, which makes it so terrible. (For it was a culture producing Mozart, Beethoven and Goethe which committed this crime. In the same way the Romans produced Horace and Pliny and yet still threw Christians to the lions. Great crimes are a corollary of great civilisations.)

The only limit to what can be said is the limit that separates sense from nonsense. (By this limitation it will be seen that the Holocaust makes perfect sense, although one condemns it.) And yet there persists this belief that that which may indeed be understood may also be unspeakable: that the sense of the world may be found inside the world.

But if there is any one value which does have value it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens. The fact of the matter is that all propositions are of equal value and there are no such things as propositions of ethics. Ethics are transcendental and cannot be put into words. In short Ethics are impossible.

Why else should anyone choose to go against them? If it was possible for there to be some kind of moral proposition which forbade murder I would not deny it. But it is also impossible to speak about human will in so far as it is the subject of ethical attributes. And so I kill because there is no logical reason not to.

The truth of thoughts that are here communicated seems to me unassailable and definitive. I therefore believe myself to have found, on all essential points, the final solution of the problem. Die Endlösung.

... But here I’ve been killing time, when I should have been killing the next name on my list. And what a name it is. One of the shapers of the whole Western intellectual tradition: Socrates.

Jake’s advisory team of experts was made up of Professor Waring, Doctor Cleobury, Detective Inspector Stanley, and Detective Sergeants Chung and Jones. Two days after the press conference they met in a room at New Scotland Yard to discuss the progress of the inquiry.

‘This is the newspaper advertisement which the agency devised,’ said Jake, drawing a PMT copy of the ad across the table in front of Waring and Cleobury. ‘So far there’s been only a limited response to this, or to my statement.’

Waring glanced down the list of VMN codenames and shook his head. ‘I wonder what the public makes of this?’

‘There have been one or two curious calls from the press,’ Jake admitted. ‘Which reminds me. I’ve been meaning to ask you, Professor. Where did the original list of codenames held by the computer come from?’

Waring shrugged. ‘Do you know, Doctor Cleobury?’

She smiled. ‘It was Doctor St Pierre’s idea,’ she explained. ‘He was looking for some sort of list of names of people who he could be sure were dead — you know, for legal reasons. Anyway, he picked the current Penguin Classic catalogue, and fed it straight into the computer.’

‘Penguin Classics?’ repeated Jake. ‘As in the paperback publishing company?’

‘That’s right. And when that list runs out, he’s planning to use the names of all the characters who appear in the novels of Charles Dickens.’

Jake raised an eyebrow at that one. But the idea of catching the murderer of Edwin Drood was not without its own peculiar appeal.

‘How is your effort with the Lombroso computer coming along, Chief Inspector?’ asked Waring. ‘The electronic spike.’

Jake looked at Sergeant Chung. ‘Perhaps you could tell us, Sergeant,’ she said.

Chung straightened up in his chair. ‘My hope that there might be some kind of an electronic spike has been pretty well fulfilled,’ he explained. ‘The computer decided to treat the erasure as accidental, although the basic memory is still in the process of reconstruction. However, the suspect’s deletion of his own personal details could not be retrieved. Since then, as you may know, I’ve been working with our own police computer, and having created a fictional murder investigation, I’ve been using a series of names drawn by the computer at random from the list of telephone subscribers to create a list of hypothetical suspects, with the aim of generating a response from Lombroso.’ Now he shrugged. ‘But this sort of thing takes time. And not all of these VMNs are on the telephone.’

‘How many so far?’ asked Jake.

‘Eight,’ said Chung.

‘Out of a possible 120,’ said Waring.

‘With the two who answered our advertisement, the six who replied to the letter they received from their counsellors, and the nine who are already dead, that makes a total of twenty-five,’ said Jake. ‘Less the VMNs who are already in prison, that still leaves seventy-five.’

‘Seventy-four,’ said Chung. ‘We know that Wittgenstein deleted himself.’

‘I wonder why there hasn’t been a better response?’ said Professor Waring.

‘They’re scared,’ said Jake. ‘Did you know that some of them think that they’ll be rounded up, and quarantined. Maybe even worse. If I was in their position, I don’t suppose I would be too anxious to come forward either.’

‘Well, that’s all nonsense,’ said Waring. ‘Stupid gossip, put about by irresponsible people.’

‘Nevertheless, it’s what some of them do believe,’ insisted Jake.

Professor Waring nodded gloomily and stared at one of the papers in his file. It was clear he did not wish to discuss the matter any further. Which made Jake wonder if there might, after all, be some truth in the rumour. But she kept this uncertainty to herself. She recalled that Waring had been opposed to her ideas as to how the investigation should be handled. At the same time, she had a respect for his abilities as a forensic psychiatrist. He was the best in the country and there was no sense in further alienating Waring at this stage in her investigation. She could see that Waring was looking at the list of codenames which constituted Wittgenstein’s nine victims. He read them slowly and in the chronological order of their murders.