Philip Kerr - A Philosophical Investigation

Wittgenstein’s face lay half-melted across the hard edge of her mind’s eye, Jake thought, like one of the soft watches in Salvador Dali’s painting The Persistence of Memory. She roped her brain tightly onto the rack and tried to stretch out a full and accurate account of what she remembered.

When she could think no more she walked quickly back to the Yard. Seated behind her desk again she called up the ComputaFit pictures of Wittgenstein on the screen of her terminal and compared her own mental image of the man in the café with the ones which had been constructed by Clare and Grubb after the murder of Descartes in Soho. Then she looked at the ComputaFit obtained from Doctor Chen, Wittgenstein’s psychotherapist at the Institute, through hypnosis.

Of the three pictures, the one that most matched her own memory was Chen’s. So much for Professor Gleitmann’s opinion that Chen’s unconscious mind had lied.

She wondered if she had devoted enough time to Chen. He was after all, the only person who had spoken at length to the killer. There could be no question that his hypnosis had been handled expertly. But had enough account been taken of the language barrier? Chen spoke excellent English, but was it his first language? Was it English that his subconscious mind used, or Chinese? Might that not make a difference to his answers to her questions? Questions which, directed to his subconscious, were also directed towards the essence of language. Might not those questions see in the essence only something that already lay open to view and that became surveyable by a rearrangement? But what about what lay beneath the surface of his answers? Was there something that lay within, which could be seen when you looked into it and which further analysis might dig out?

Perhaps that was why the stroboscopic light effect on the silver cheese outside the Yard had seemed significant.

Jake called the Brain Research Institute and asked to speak to Doctor Chen. She asked him if he minded being hypnotised once again, only this time she wanted to question him and for him to answer in Chinese.

‘What you’re saying’ — Chen grinned — ‘is that you think there’s something wrong with the way I speak English.’

Jake smiled back at him and shook her head.

‘Not at all. Look,’ she said, ‘you learned English, right?’

He nodded.

‘But you grew up speaking Chinese?’

‘Yes.’

‘These are very different languages.’

‘Only on the surface,’ he said. ‘Man is a syntactical animal, surely. And all languages share the same deep structure. The genetic universal grammar, as it were. The blueprint for language that’s in every newborn baby’s mind. It’s the merest accident that I grew up speaking Chinese rather than English.’

‘Agreed,’ said Jake. ‘However my enquiry here relates to linguistic use. And that’s a factual question. I need to know how form and function interact. I have to try and understand your intentions. For instance, how what you say relates to the reality you have perceived.’

They were in Chen’s office at the Institute. Jake was accompanied by Sergeant Chung who was setting up the stroboscopic light on Chen’s desk.

‘I want to speak to your unconscious in your natural language,’ she added. ‘The translation will be done by Sergeant Chung at a conscious level.’

Chen shrugged. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll give it a try, if you think it will help.’ He smiled inquisitively. ‘Are you planning to try and induce the trance yourself?’

‘Yes,’ said Jake. ‘I have a master’s in Psychology. Rest assured, I’ve done this before. But we’ll forgo the use of an intravenous substance this time. I don’t much like them, and of course you’ll be able to return to what you were doing, almost as soon as we’ve finished here.’

Chen nodded and settled back in his armchair as Jake switched on the light.

There is a popular misconception that good hypnotic subjects tend to be weak-willed acquiescent individuals who are given to submissive behaviour. But it is entirely the opposite state of affairs which is true: the more intelligent make the more susceptible hypnotic subjects, having a greater capacity for concentration than weaker-minded people. Chen was an easy subject and highly absorptive which, as Jake was aware, indicated a developed imagination.

When she was satisfied that she had induced the hypnotic trance, she explained that she wanted to ask him some questions in Chinese and that he would hear another voice next. She told him that he should answer in Chinese and that he should now nod if he understood.

Chen nodded slowly, and then they began.

‘Would you please ask him if he remembers the patient codenamed Wittgenstein,’ Jake instructed Chung.

Chung translated the question into his own language.

Jake thought that Chinese, with its high and low sounds existing so close together, sounded like someone trying to tune an old radio. Listening to the pair of them jabbering away, Jake found it hard to accept that Chinese could have anything in common with English, even at the deep, genetically preprogrammed level.

‘Ask him if he can remember some of the things Wittgenstein said.’

Maybe she was wasting her time. Here she was, trying to investigate how language represents reality and yet she had given no consideration to the question of how anything manages to represent anything. It was not something they taught you at the Hendon Police Training College. Not something that anyone taught, except maybe people like Sir Jameson Lang. And just how far should any criminal investigation go? Had she not already gone a lot further than she was supposed to?

‘Ask him to describe Wittgenstein once again,’ she told Chung. ‘Let’s see if we didn’t miss something.’

Once again Chung translated her question, frowning fiercely as he spoke. What was there about the Chinese language, Jake wondered, that seemed to make people irritated while they were speaking it? Chen sighed and then drooled slightly while he thought of his answer. He spoke hesitantly, adding one word to another and then another, almost at random.

‘Brown raincoat,’ Chung repeated. ‘Brown shoes, good ones. Brown tweed jacket, with leather bits on the elbows. He doesn’t know what you call them. A special word. Not badges. Like badges.’

‘Patches?’ said Jake.

‘Maybe, yes.’ Chung craned his head forwards so as not to miss the rest of Chen’s speech.

‘White shirt. No, not a shirt. Like a pullover, but not like a pullover. A pullover with a polo neck. But not made of wool. Made of the same material as a shirt.’ Chung shrugged. ‘A white polo neck anyway.’

Chung’s words seemed to touch something deep within Jake’s own memory.

It was curious that Wittgenstein had mentioned her perfume, because a sense of smell — something clinical and antiseptic — was what she remembered most about him now.

‘Yat,’ she said, ‘ask Doctor Chen if it’s the same kind of white polo neck that a dentist might wear.’

Chung translated and then, hearing Chen’s reply, nodded.

‘Yes, he could have been a dentist.’

Jake shook her head.

She had offered to help Wittgenstein and he had smiled at her with what he might have thought looked like confidence. But what Jake had seen had been teeth that were scaled and yellow — teeth that were badly in need of dental work.

‘No,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I don’t think he’s a dentist. His teeth aren’t good enough. I’ve never ever seen a dentist with bad teeth.

‘Yat, you remember you said that the only way the killer could have broken into the Lombroso system would have been if he was using a computer that was already on the EC Data Network?’