Philip Kerr - A Philosophical Investigation

Jake nodded grimly. ‘Very well then. You give me no choice. Put the case that you give me Paul Esterhazy’s address this minute, or I shall be obliged to arrest you.’

‘On what charge?’

‘Double parking. Sex with a minor. Drunk and disorderly. Come on, will you? What charge do you think? I’m a police officer trying to do my duty, and you’re obstructing me. So what’s it to be? Postal code or caution?’

‘Look, I’m not refusing to give you his address, see? I’m only saying that I should call the hospital lawyer first of all.’

‘I’ve no time for that,’ snapped Jake. ‘The address now, if you please.’

The director turned to face his computer screen, his face wrinkled with displeasure. He tapped the keyboard several times, then stood up and went over to the tiny printer which was already in action. Finally he tore off a sheet of paper and handed it to Jake.

‘Thank you,’ she said crisply.

‘Now perhaps you’ll tell me a little more of what this is all about.’

But Jake was already walking out. ‘If you leave your TV on for long enough, you’ll find out,’ she yelled out from the corridor.

Outside again, Jake found Stanley and her driver waiting patiently for her beside the BMW.

‘Docklands,’ she said, as she came down the steps and jumped into the back of the car. ‘Ocean Wharf as fast as you can.’

Stanley was opening and then closing the car boot.

‘Come on,’ she shouted. ‘Let’s go.’

He got in beside her and she saw that he was cradling a pump-action shotgun.

‘Just in case,’ he said, patting the weapon like a favourite pet. ‘That’s a pretty tough area.’

The car leaped forwards, heading east again, Druid Street and the Jamaica Road along to the Rotherhithe Tunnel, under the Thames where the air was cool and fetid. Then the sun again as the car emerged onto Limehouse Road in the shadow of the Docklands Light Railway overhead.

Turning south onto West Ferry Road, they caught sight of the Isle of Dogs, and then the car was immediately enveloped in a swirl of gritty dust blowing like a mini-typhoon off one of the area’s many abandoned building sites. Rotting nineteenth-century houses, their sides shored up with baulks of timber, their roofs patched with corrugated iron gave onto modern tower blocks that stuck out of the dusty, rubble-strewn landscape like giant cacti. A helicopter skimmed around the pyramidical roof of Canary Wharf, hovering like a bluebottle: it was a unit of Airborne Surveillance on permanent attachment to protect what was left of what once had been the pride of the Docklands development from the depredations of the sordid colonies of wooden shanty-housing which, at a short distance away, surrounded it.

Canary Wharf Tower was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous structure of sunburnt steel and glass soaring up, floor after empty floor, 300 metres into the air, and visible from as far away as Battersea. From the backseat of Jake’s BMW it was just possible to read, picked out on its electronic advertising hoarding of white neon lights, in elegant green lettering, the rotating slogans of the only three companies which had offices there:

GOLDSTEIN LIFE ASSURANCE. BECAUSE YOU MIGHT NOT LIVE TO REGRET IT.

THE YAMURA 22-CARAT GOLD COMPACT DISC. 8 OUT OF 10 JAPS SAY THEY PREFER IT.

ROYAL MARSDEN ONCOLOGICAL INSURANCE. A LUMP SUM, JUST WHEN YOU NEED IT MOST.

Keeping pace with the toy railway as if they had been following some drug dealer who was aboard it and making a desperate attempt to escape the police, they had Canary Wharf, Heron Quays and South Quay on their left, the whole business area of the Docks on the other side of a maze of barbed wire and surveillance cameras. Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were patrolled by private security guards in black uniforms with jointed truncheons.

The car turned down one of these side streets where a small gang of youths had collected in front of a bonfire and were engaged in teasing a stray dog, and as if in confirmation of the area’s tough reputation, a rock bounced off the BMW’s toughened windshield, and Stanley worked the magazine of the riot gun expectantly.

‘Relax,’ said Jake, as the car pulled up to the fortress of razor-wire that was the Ocean Wharf compound. But she herself felt anything but that. The security guards waved them through, and in the car-park, beyond the entry gate, stood a blue Toyota Tardis van. They checked the registration.

‘Looks like our man’s at home,’ Jake said as she caught sight of it. If Wittgenstein was indeed contemplating suicide by now, thanks to Sir Jameson Lang’s persuasion, then being a pedestrian in Docklands would have been a good way of doing it.

There were four apartment blocks in Ocean Wharf and Jake consulted her printout to see which one was home to Wittgenstein.

‘Winston Mansions,’ she said as they climbed out of the car. ‘Seventh floor. Let’s hope we’re not too late.’

Stanley looked up at the height of building. ‘Let’s hope the lift is working,’ he added.

Inside the glass doors of Winston Mansions a fruity voice was describing a commercial for a brand of dog food that promised to produce less dog waste than any other brand. The voice came from a television screen behind the doorman’s desk. When the doorman saw Jake and Stanley he turned the volume down, and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. People rarely ever turned a television off completely.

‘Is Paul Esterhazy at home?’ said Jake, flashing her ID in front of the doorman’s face, although there was no need. He had already seen the police car.

‘Went up about thirty minutes ago,’ said the doorman. His eyes stayed on the screen. ‘Want me to call him?’

‘Metaslim. Increase your metabolic rate. The only effective way to help you lose weight,’ said the television.

‘No,’ said Jake, going towards the lift. ‘We’ll announce ourselves.’

Stanley pressed a button to summon the lift.

‘S’not working,’ said the doorman. ‘Company that’s supposed to service it went bankrupt.’

Jake glanced around the lobby. ‘The stairs,’ she said. ‘Where are they?’

The doorman pointed at a brightly lit corridor behind him. At the end of it was a grey steel door. Jake started towards it.

‘Save you a journey,’ the doorman added. ‘Supposing you was planning to go up to the seventh floor. Mr Esterhazy’s the only tenant on that level. So he keeps the fire doors locked from the inside, for security, when I’m not around. S’made of steel, just like that door in front of you, miss. You might bang on it all day and he wouldn’t hear you.’

All through this explanation the doorman’s eyes never strayed from the television screen. He was like some small animal hypnotically fascinated by the movements of a snake.

‘Want me to call him now?’

Jake smiled politely and nodded with slow patience.

The doorman buttoned a number on the internal pictophone and then turned back towards the TV.

‘Usually takes a while for him to pick it up,’ he explained.

A minute passed with no answer.

‘Are you sure he’s in?’ Stanley frowned.

‘Only one way up, only one way down. Unless he jumped of course.’

‘Perhaps you were distracted,’ offered Stanley. ‘By the TV.’

The doorman looked scornfully at the policeman. ‘Nothing worth watching,’ he said. ‘No, he’s up there all right. In trouble then, is he?’

But it was Esterhazy who answered first.

‘Yes, Joe, I’m here. What do you want? I’m a bit busy right now.’

‘Not me,’ said the doorman. ‘The police.’

Jake recognised the voice immediately. It was Wittgenstein all right. There was no mistaking that voice. She pushed the doorman gently aside and looked into the pictophone.