Philip Kerr - A Philosophical Investigation

When her clearance arrived, she walked out of the petrol-pump-shaped building onto Tothill Street, turning almost immediately right towards New Scotland Yard and the famous revolving cheese on a pole which had identified it in a hundred television series. The silver cheese caught the hot midday sun at regular intervals, flashing at her like a slow stroboscopic light. She wondered why that particular image seemed to be significant. Back in her own office at the Yard, Jake called the lab.

‘Maurice? Where are we on that autoradiograph?’ she asked. ‘Has the computer matched an identity card with the sample yet?’

‘I wish you’d make up your mind,’ he snarled back. ‘You mean you want to start the DNA-matching program again?’

‘What do you mean again?’ she asked. ‘Who told you to stop?’

‘You did. I got a signed memo from you just yesterday. You told me to send you the graph too.’

‘And did you?’

‘You mean you haven’t got it?’

Jake was beginning to smell a rat. ‘Maurice. I’d like you to find that memo and then bring it to my office. Immediately.’

She waited several minutes and then he called back. Even on the pictophone screen, she could see he looked worried.

‘Is this some kind of joke?’ he said. ‘Because I’ve got better things to do, lady.’

‘It’s no joke,’ Jake said. ‘Well? Did you find the memo?’

‘Funny thing,’ he said. ‘I’ve looked everywhere, and I can’t locate it.’

‘You say that the memo arrived on your computer screen yesterday, right?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I copied it onto my dayfile and made a hard copy to attach to the autoradiograph.’

‘So what you’re saying is that someone’s been into your office and erased the record from your dayfile’s memory.’

Maurice shrugged uncomfortably. ‘Looks that way,’ he said. ‘But who would do a thing like that?’

‘I’ve a pretty shrewd idea,’ said Jake.

‘Maybe I should report this.’

Jake thought for a moment. While she couldn’t see Woodford or Waring snooping around the lab and erasing files from a technician’s PC, she had the feeling that they were behind it. No doubt there were others who were prepared to carry out their orders: police officers who did not wish to see the Lombroso Program and, as a corollary, the Government’s much-vaunted law and order platform irreparably damaged. As it certainly would be when the true facts became known of how Wittgenstein had exploited the very system that had been designed to control him.

No doubt these same people would have preferred that Wittgenstein be dealt with rather more discreetly than an arrest and trial allowed. It was bad enough that Woodford and Waring were intent on having Wittgenstein remove himself from the equation. But it seemed infinitely worse that there should be policemen who were willing to obstruct evidence in order that they should be given sufficient time in which to carry out this intention. What was clear was that if she wished to continue with her investigation, then she would have to move more subtly than any inquiry into missing evidence would permit.

‘No, Maurice,’ she said. ‘Leave it with me for the moment, will you?’

He looked relieved. Gratitude made him more respectful. ‘Yes, certainly Chief Inspector. Anything you say. I’ve more than enough work to do anyway, without answering a lot of questions.’

Jake ended their conversation with a push of a button. It seemed that she could no longer rely on catching Wittgenstein through the genetic fingerprint on his identity card. But nor could she simply sit back and hope that one of the police teams watching the various London addresses which he had marked in his A-Z would get lucky. She reminded herself that being a detective meant that one was never satisfied with what one already had: that the process of enquiry was, of necessity, a continuing one. Quite simply it was a matter of reassessing something because there was absolutely no logical reason to do so.

She turned to face her own computer screen and called up all her own case notes to check that nothing was missing. There wasn’t a great deal on the file, but everything she remembered was still there. Having accessed her notes, she decided to re-read them and so, page by page, Jake went through the file, hoping that some new line of enquiry might occur to her now. There was something in her mind of what Sir Jameson Lang had said about the real Wittgenstein’s preference for the more intuitive detective. Perhaps she herself could be more intuitive now. She knew from previous cases how, when an investigation was over, you could look back through the notes and see something you ought to have known was significant — something that had been there all along, just waiting to be noticed. She hit the ‘page-down’ button. Something so small she might have ignored it. Something she might have misunderstood, concerning the use of words perhaps. To some extent a detective’s job was a grammatical one. To shed light on a problem by clearing misunderstandings and ambiguities away, not to mention lies. She felt almost as if she were directing herself not towards phenomena but, as one might say, to the possibilities of phenomena.

Jake smiled to herself. She was beginning to sound like Sir Jameson Lang. Well maybe he was right. Maybe a detective was a kind of philosopher and her criminal investigation was, in reality, a philosophical investigation. Perhaps it had been that all along.

She needed a cigarette but found that she had run out. She had meant to buy another packet on her way back from the Home Office, only Woodford and Waring’s callous little suggestion had put it out of her mind. Cursing them both, Jake grabbed her bag and went outside again.

The roar of the traffic on Victoria Street robbed Jake momentarily of her bearings. It was force of habit that turned her to the right, towards her usual source of supply for smokes and good coffee, the Chestnut Tree Café.

In front of the Brain Research Institute, her arms folded against the draft from a passing water-tanker, Jake crossed the road. But as she made for the café’s open door she found her footsteps slowing.

On the pavement, near to his monstrous black beetle of a machine, sat a motorcycle messenger, drinking from a large Styrofoam cup of steaming tea. Jake paused as she recollected that her Gynocide Squad was still trying to catch the motorcycle messenger who had murdered several office receptionists. But it was not this which had attracted her attention. It was what this grimy-faced youth was balancing on his leather-trousered knees. An A-Z London street atlas.

‘Yeah?’ said the youth, frowning as he noticed Jake’s attention. ‘What?’ He looked himself over as if checking that he had not caught fire.

‘Do you need any assistance?’ Jake said, half to herself.

‘I’m sorry?’

Then she had nodded at the man’s A-Z.

‘No, it’s all right,’ said the messenger, his tone and expression making it clear that he thought Jake was probably mad. ‘I er... know where I’m going. All right?’

Jake went into the café and bought the cigarettes. But her thoughts were somewhere else. She had suddenly realised that this was where Wittgenstein had met her. Here, in the Chestnut Tree Café. She had dropped her change and he had helped her to pick it up. No wonder he had been able to recognise her perfume. She had been so close to him. Their hands had actually touched.

Breathless with excitement, Jake sat down at the table where he had been sitting, lit one of her cigarettes and then glanced through the window. From here he would have had a perfect view of anyone going in or out of the Institute. He might even have come in here after his own Lombroso test.