Philip Kerr - A Philosophical Investigation

‘Darwin, Byron, Kant, Aquinas, Spinoza, Keats, Locke, Dickens and last, but not least, Bertrand Russell.’ He looked up at the others seated round the table. With his prematurely white hair, half-moon glasses, undernourished, ascetic-looking features, and an Aran sweater of permanently-knit eyebrows, it wasn’t difficult for him to appear thoughtful. ‘I don’t suppose there could be some kind of pattern there, could there?’ he said vaguely.

‘You mean some kind of intellectual pattern?’ said Jake. ‘Not according to the Computerised Intelligence System.’

‘Computers have no imaginations,’ Waring said contemptuously. ‘How about we try for one minute to use our own brains to look for a pattern?’

Jake shrugged. ‘Sure, why not.’

‘Let’s take Darwin for a moment,’ he said. ‘He was first. Well, who else would be? Origin of Species, you get the idea.’

Doctor Cleobury shook her head firmly. ‘Except that this is the grandfather, not the son. It was Erasmus Darwin, not Charles, who was killed, Professor.’

‘What’s Erasmus Darwin written that could possibly merit inclusion as a Penguin Classic?’ he said.

‘He wrote some poems about plants,’ said Jake.

Doctor Cleobury nodded, smiled pleasantly at Jake and then shifted on her largish bottom. Comfortable once more she checked the hem of her tight black skirt and then the edge of her permed blond hair. Jake thought she looked more like a barmaid than a psychiatrist.

‘Surely what is more significant,’ said Jake, ‘is that five out of the nine were philosophers.’

‘Six,’ said Cleobury. ‘If you want to count Erasmus Darwin’s so-called Sensational School of Philosophy. Wait a minute—’

‘What is it?’ said Jake.

‘Just that it was Erasmus Darwin who was one of the first thinkers to try and establish a physiological basis of mental phenomena — a medullary substance.’ She shook her head and waited for everyone else to catch her up. ‘Well, don’t you see? That’s precisely what Lombroso is all about.’

Jake nodded, uncertain that the discussion was leading anywhere.

‘Highly apposite,’ agreed Waring, warming to his original idea. ‘But what could be the connection with Immanuel Kant?’

Jake caught Chung’s eye. He shrugged disinterestedly. Detective Inspector Stanley was studying the contents of his tea cup as if searching for some clairvoyant indication as to a future line of inquiry. Detective Sergeant Jones, who was supposed to be making notes of the meeting, was yawning at his computer screen. Jake smiled as she noticed the obscene spelling he had given the name of Kant. Waring saw it too, and shook his head with vigorous self-reproach.

‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘How stupid of me. His family came from Scotland and changed their name of Cant into Kant to suit the German pronunciation. Darwin took his degree of medicine at Edinburgh. Of course, it’s not as strong a connection to Kant as Hume would have been, but still—’

Jake let the professor and Doctor Cleobury carry on in this rarefied vein for a while, establishing insignificant connections between the nine dead codenames, before finally drawing them back to her original remark.

‘I suggest we try not to let ourselves get too carried away,’ she said with a smile. ‘I think what’s important is that out of a list of 120 VMNs, twenty of these codenames are the names of philosophers. Not only do we know that the killer’s own codename is that of a philosopher, but several of his victims have also had the names of philosophers. It strikes me that what we have here is a killer with a sense of humour. The idea of one philosopher killing others just tickles him.’

Waring considered this for a moment. ‘But then why not choose all nine of them that way? Why just the five?’

‘Or six,’ added Doctor Cleobury. ‘Don’t forget Darwin.’

Jake shrugged. ‘Possibly he may want to deny us the establishment of some kind of pattern.’

Waring sighed wearily. ‘Then he’s making a damn good job of it.’

Detective Sergeant Jones looked up from his screen. ‘I wonder if he actually knows any philosophy?’ he said.

Jake nodded. ‘I’ve been asking myself the same question.’

The meeting meandered on through the remainder of the afternoon before Jake declared it over. At five, she went out to get some coffee. When she came back she found Chung waiting for her in her office. He looked uncharacteristically excited.

‘What’s up with you?’ she said. ‘Your premium bond come up?’

‘Could be,’ he said, grinning, and waving a piece of paper.

Jake sat down at her desk, exhausted, and removed the lid from the Styrofoam cup. Meetings always made her feel as dull as carpet underlay.

‘Let’s hear it then.’

‘A random name and telephone number just got a response from the Lombroso computer,’ he explained. ‘Bloke called John Martin Baberton. Anyway, at the same time, the police computer at Kidlington reveals that this Baberton fellow has got a criminal record for computer fraud and attempted murder.’

Jake looked up from her coffee. ‘You’re joking,’ she said.

Chung glanced at the printout he was clutching. ‘And what about this? He’s got a degree in Philosophy, and a history of psychiatric disorder.’

‘He sounds too good to be true,’ said Jake. ‘Have you got the file there?’

‘That’s the funny thing. Records can’t find the manual file. It seems to be missing. There’s just his computer record.’

He handed Jake the printout and watched her as she read it over. She lingered over Baberton’s laser-jet-printed picture.

‘These pictures aren’t the best for identification purposes,’ she said. ‘But I can’t help feeling that I’ve seen this man before. What’s his VMN codename?’

‘According to Lombroso, it’s Socrates.’

‘Another philosopher.’

‘Address?’

‘Two known. There’s one on his Lombroso printout, and another on the police file.’

‘Which one matches his ID card number?’

‘The police file.’

Jake read the warning from the Lombroso computer with interest. It was the first time she had come across one within the course of an investigation.

ATTENTION. THE SUBJECT YOU HAVE IDENTIFIED HAS BEEN TESTED VMN-NEGATIVE, SOMATOGENICALLY PREDISPOSED TO VIOLENT CRIME. HE SHOULD BE APPROACHED WITH CAUTION. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ON VMNS, YOU SHOULD CALL THE LOMBROSO PROGRAM AT THE BRAIN RESEARCH INSTITUTE. PLEASE DESTROY THIS COMMUNICATION WHEN YOU HAVE READ IT. IT IS AN OFFENCE TO MAKE A COPY OF THIS COMMUNICATION, OR A RECORD OF THE SUBJECT TO WHICH IT REFERS. THIS COMMUNICATION IS INADMISSIBLE AS EVIDENCE IN A COURT OF LAW.

Jake fed a length of hair into her mouth and sucked it thoughtfully.

‘There’s something strange here,’ she said. ‘We know that somebody with the codename Wittgenstein deleted himself from the original VMN database, right?’

‘Right.’

‘So who’s this well-qualified bastard? You couldn’t hope to pick a better suspect if you went down to central casting.’

There was a knock at the door and Detective Chief Superintendent Challis entered Jake’s office.

In the early stages of the investigation, when he had been effectively supplanted by Jake, Challis had shown no inclination to become involved in the case again. But ever since the press conference, Challis had taken to appearing in Jake’s office at all times of the day and asking her for progress reports. She wondered if his suddenly-reawakened interest in the case was spontaneous, or if someone higher up, perhaps someone in the Home Office, had requested that he keep an eye on things. Whatever the reason, she disliked his interference almost as much as she disliked Poison Challis himself. Challis was another old-style policeman, one who thought that women in the police force were best employed communicating bad news to the families of accident victims.