Philip Kerr - A Philosophical Investigation

I imagine she must have been some kind of athlete when she was at school. It’s difficult to tell from television and the photographs, but I think she must be tall. I expect she was captain of netball, and with those long, strong legs I’d also guess she might have become an efficient high-jumper. I dare say she wore her shorts a size too small and broke a few hearts.

She looks quite intimidating and it would not surprise me if there were a few unsatisfactory relationships with boys who found themselves unable to measure up to her advanced maturity. Doubtless they would have turned this fear of her powerful physicality against her in order to lend themselves comfort and protection. Did they call her names in mockery of her size, I wonder.

There was little information which the newspaper provided about Policewoman, except that she was thirty-seven, a graduate of Cambridge University, that she had served with the Met for thirteen years, and that she was an expert in the investigation of serial killings. It was fortunate that I had been able to access her file in the police computer which, in addition, revealed her name and address.

Almost idly I copied the magazine photographs of her onto the computer and, using the 3-dimensional imager, turned her this way and that, almost as if she had been a child’s doll. But I soon grew bored of this and went to make myself a cup of Brio.

I was glancing through a pornographic magazine when it occurred to me that I could see Policewoman naked. Quickly I returned to the computer and copied a selection of photographs onto the program and started to assemble some photo-composites of her head and various naked female torsos.

I decided that her breasts should be neither too small, nor too large and that her nipples were probably as yet undarkened by a pregnancy. The pubic area presented a greater problem. First I found a pudenda with not enough hair and then one with too much. I was forced to find some more magazines. These were better and more explicit. When these were fed into the computer, she sat, wearing just a pair of white, self-supporting stockings, with her legs drawn up so that her knees almost hid her mouth, tugging at her immaculate labia with well-manicured fingers, and allowing me a midwife’s view of her insides.

In another sequence of shots, I found a girl whose head position exactly matched those photographs I had of Policewoman, and who was depicted in the act of fellating a man, as well as in the act of full intercourse. When I had married this new material together with Policewoman I was able to see what little pleasure she might have taken in the heterosexual act. Of course, this had a great deal to do with her original facial expression which was that of someone appearing before a press conference as opposed to an erect penis. But all the same, intuitively I perceived more or less how it would be.

By way of contrast I found some shots of the same model engaged in lesbian acts. This sexual behaviour seemed to suit Policewoman’s features rather better and I managed to comp an effective one of her guzzling on another girl’s toffee-coloured clitoris.

With all this excitement under my belt, I simply had to have sex with her, or an approximation of her anyway. So I copied the picture disk onto the RA machine and climbed into my exoskeleton. Then I unwrapped an RA condom and peeled it onto my erection before attaching the terminal to the suit. When all was ready I donned my helmet, plugged myself into the computer, and started to run through the pre-RA checks like a pilot about to test fly the old X-15. This was to avoid any accidents that might result from a sudden surge of approximate reality to the ears or, more importantly, the penis.

‘Textures, on. Dynamics, on. Sound, on. Head tracking, on. Body sensing, on. Phallus sensor, on.’

Then I dropped the visor-screen.

And there she was, standing before me in a pleasant forest glade, like Eve herself, without so much as a fig leaf to cover her nakedness. The image blurred a little as I stepped towards her and I made a small adjustment to the visor. Then I reached out and caressed her breast to test the glove, and felt her nipple harden as I touched her. Next, I slapped her face hard to test the sound quality, which was fine. Policewoman took the blow with a cry of pain, but no reproach. She just stood there, awaiting my next move, as programmed. I motioned her down onto her knees to check the RA condom and felt her approximate mouth envelop my penis. Everything was working perfectly. So long as the visor was down, the software would remain in operation, and approximate reality would be nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. (Sometimes I think that I’m living a real life in an approximate way. Or should that be the other way round?) Better even. There are no laws in RA.

Then I fucked her, slowly, from behind, from the front, bent double like a suit carrier, legs splayed wider than a ballet-dancer’s, in the mouth and up the ass...

Well, at least I am alive. As long as I can work and feel sensual, things cannot be too bad.

Of course this awakening of the sexual impulse vis à vis Policewoman suffices to kill any love I might have had for her.

Unfortunately, the technology does not yet exist that would have enabled me to have recorded these events on film. So later on I had to make do with several photo-composites of the work I had done on the computer, and these I put into an envelope to send to Policewoman’s home.

Having returned to reality, I read the rest of her file which included extracts of a speech she made to some European Community conference on law enforcement. She took her starting point to be George Orwell’s The Decline of the English Murder (don’t they all?), and argued the increase of the Hollywood-style murder, meaning the apparently motiveless serial killings of women which seem so fashionable these days. There’s something in all of this (although I feel she missed the cultural importance of murder to our society).

I think that I will make a few notes for a paper on this. I could provide her with a few examples. But wouldn’t her understanding have to be deeper than any examples I could give? Have I not got more than I could provide in any explanation? After all, can you really explain to another person what you yourself understand? Really she would have to guess what I intend. But still, I suppose it’s worth a try.

If I could put it into words, fill in the gaps, add some light and shade, colour things in, she would surely be in the picture. I am not saying that it would make things easier for her. After all, the certainty of mathematics is not based on the reliability of ink and paper. But in the same way that people generally agree in their judgments of colour, perhaps we could arrive at some sort of understanding.

I had started to tell you about how when I awoke this morning I had Shakespeare on my mind. I don’t know much Shakespeare. At least, I can’t quote very much. I’ve meant to do something about this, to brush up my Shakespeare as it were. Brush up my Shakespeare? Let me tell you, on this particular morning, I had something rather more lethal than that in mind.

I boarded a train to follow him from his home close by Wandsworth Common, to Victoria Station. From there he walked down Victoria Street and, to my surprise, went into the Brain Research Institute. This was as near as I had been to the place since my fateful discovery. It had never occurred to me that anyone would actually take up the offer of counselling from the Lombroso Program’s staff of psychotherapists.

I waited for him in the Chestnut Tree Café on the opposite side of the street where I had gone on the day of my own PET scan, and from where I had a clear view of the front door. I ordered a cup of tea and looked at my watch. It was three o’clock.