Philip Kerr - A Philosophical Investigation

‘If you’re referring to President Harry Truman,’ said Lang, ‘he acted to end the war. To save lives. Using the bomb was the only way to stop an even greater loss of life.’

‘What I am doing is born of the same motive: to prevent an even greater loss of life.’

‘But it’s not your position to make such a choice. It sets a bad example in society.’

‘You sound like a moral conservative, Professor.’

‘Perhaps so. But naturally you must accept that in the eyes of the society you seem to say you reject, you must be caught and punished.’

‘Must?’ He laughed. ‘No, I accept only the possibility.’

‘You claim you’re acting to save human life. Therefore you must surely accept that reverence for human life is the foundation of morality.’

‘No, only worthwhile human life.’

‘And what is the criterion of that?’

‘In most cases, the subjective feeling that life continues to be worthwhile.’

‘Well don’t you think that the men you killed had the feeling that their lives continued to be worthwhile?’

‘Very probably, they did.’ His voice darkened a little as he added: ‘But of course, they could have been wrong. Suppose Einstein had received some bad news about his wife and had lost the will to live. Would one not feel a certain obligation to remind him of how worthwhile a life his was? Would his own view of the worth of his own existence be the ultimate standard?’

‘Yes, you’re right there,’ admitted Lang. ‘One would feel such an obligation as you describe.’

‘Then surely you must admit the possibility that there are some who might overestimate the worth of their own existences?’

‘Logically I have to, I suppose. But I don’t see how such a thing could easily be demonstrated.’

‘Suppose that such a person was putting the lives of others at risk by clinging tenaciously to his own. Couldn’t it be demonstrated then?’

‘It might be.’

‘Would you not feel justified in eliminating such a person?’

‘It would depend on the circumstances,’ said Lang. ‘On how clearly evident was the risk to other people. I see what you’re driving at, but I don’t accept that yours is as clear cut a case as the one you’re describing.’

‘What criteria do you think would be acceptable in arriving at such a decision?’

‘I suppose it would be an objective standard. An estimation of what the reasonable man would do in similar circumstances.’

‘A subjective estimation of an objective standard?’ Wittgenstein uttered a little chuckle. ‘That sounds interesting. Don’t you think that I might have tried to consider the case of my brother VMN-negatives objectively? And that I arrived at the conclusion that the risk to other people is demonstrable?’

‘I quarrel with that demonstrability.’

‘But, Professor, it was already demonstrable when I killed my first victim. From that moment on there was a clear and evident risk that others like me might do the same.’

‘No, no, no,’ Lang said irritatedly. ‘You’re trying to prove the cause from the effect. You’re telling me that a murder you committed proves there was risk of others like you committing murder. I don’t accept your use of the a posteriori argument.’

Wittgenstein chuckled. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to, Professor, at least for the moment, anyway. It’s time for me to go.’

‘Please wait a minute,’ said Jake.

‘I can’t, I’m sorry. We’ll continue our little discussion another time. My next victim has turned up a little earlier than I had expected. Oh yes, I promised to give you his Lombroso-given name, didn’t I? Well, it’s René Descartes. And now I really must be about the eviction of a god from its machine.’

‘Wait—’ repeated Jake and the professor in unison. But Wittgenstein was gone.

‘He wasn’t bullshitting,’ said Detective Sergeant Jones. ‘We traced the call onto the Injupitersat, and from there to the London area. It’s impossible to be more precise than that with a satellite phone.’

Jake shook her head with irritation. ‘We should have figured he would use something like that.’

‘Satellite phones are expensive, ma’am. Not to mention the fact that they’re also illegal.’

‘Yes. But that could also mean we might just be able to find out where he got hold of one. Supposing you wanted to buy a satellite phone, where would you go?’

Jones pursed his lips. ‘Only one place to go for that kind of thing. Tottenham Court Road.’ He shook his head. ‘Be a bastard gettin’ some of those blokes to talk, mind, if he did buy one there.’

‘Yes, you’ll have to guarantee them immunity against prosecution. You’d better let me sort that side of it out with the DPP’s office.’

‘By the way,’ Jones said carefully. ‘Was he right about your perfume, ma’am?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Jake. ‘He was right. But I can’t for the life of me think how I could have met him.’

‘You sure they didn’t mention your perfume in that magazine article?’

‘Perfectly sure.’

‘Perhaps he was just winding you up.’

‘Yes. Perhaps.’ Jake smiled thinly. Somehow she didn’t think so.

‘Want me to organise you a bodyguard? Just in case he does want to meet you.’

Jake thought for a moment. She didn’t think one of her male colleagues would have asked for a bodyguard: not unless their families had been threatened. She shook her head.

‘I don’t think so. After all, he didn’t actually threaten me. And anyway, I have my gun.’

This gets easier every time.

Descartes left the advertising agency in Charlotte Street where he worked and walked south towards the New Oxford Street shopping mall.

From St Giles’ Circus to Bond Street, a glass canopy rose ten metres above the tree line, covering two storeys of shops, restaurants, foreign exchange tills, cinemas, building societies, exhibitions and market stalls selling every variety of trinket, craft and souvenir, and all to the apparently endless noise that was generated by the mall’s many guitarists, jugglers, clowns and dancers, each of whom wore his or her determination to be entertaining like three stripes on a sleeve.

Descartes crossed from the mall’s Rathbone Street entrance to the Soho Square exit, where a group of policemen, armed and armoured, lolled nonchalantly within spitting distance of their riot-vehicle, swinging their billy clubs and flirting with the prostitutes. Sidestepping one of the mall’s patrolling sandwich-board automata (Eat at Jo’s Sushi Bar/ Bath yourself brown, with Soldebain/ Only a cunt would drink a can of Canberra, said the small, fat robot), I followed him.

He was a hateful-looking figure, dressed in baggy, colourful clothes like one of the stupid clowns on the mall, his hair ludicrously short at the sides and long and sticking up on top, and carrying a clear plastic briefcase that allowed one an uninterrupted view of his newspaper, his cigarettes, his hand-held computer, his television and videotapes for the train-ride home. Probably he had just finished writing some crass piece of advertising copy for hamburgers, or a Protonic washing powder, or some brand of threadbare jeans. Yes, he looked like the style-conscious type to be writing a jeans commercial. Cogito ergo sum? I should bloody well think not, I said to myself as I left the mall. If you had one thought in your VMN-deficient head you wouldn’t work for the hucksters.

He crossed the well-kept gardens of the square and then headed down Dean Street, pausing only to look in the window of a small bookshop, before ducking into a performing sex club.

For a short while I stood in front of the place, looking in the yellowish window at a collection of black-and-white photographs which depicted an unlikely sample of the girls who were supposed to be performing inside. It wasn’t that they were too attractive to be exhibiting their naked bodies, merely that the pictures themselves looked so old, as if they had been taken ten or fifteen years before, when women still wore their hair that way, or had breasts that shape.