Philip Kerr - A Philosophical Investigation

He sat with his head tilted slightly to one side. Looking like an excrescence of thought, the curly hair grew wildly towards the same side as the angle of his head. The thin face was almost completely expressionless, but as Jake studied it more closely she saw something sulky and slightly petulant about it. It was the eyes that held Jake. They stared out from the deep shadowy hollows of his face as if from behind a masque, like the eyes of some nocturnal animal. She was reminded of photographs she had seen of survivors of the Nazi concentration camps.

‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘Chief Inspector Jakowicz.’

Esterhazy smiled broadly.

‘My dear Chief Inspector,’ he said smoothly. ‘Is this a social call or are you here on business?’

Jake’s heart was in her mouth. She had him. There was no way he could get away from her now. In a way she was almost sorry.

‘I’m here to arrest you.’

‘Well, what a relief. I thought you were going to try and bore me into killing myself, like your Professor Lang.’ He laughed. ‘The very idea of it: ridiculous.’

‘No, nothing like that,’ she said.

‘You know, I’ve been expecting you,’ he said. ‘By which I mean I believed that you would come, though your coming did not occupy my thoughts. I don’t mean that I was eagerly awaiting you, Chief Inspector. What I mean here is that I should have been surprised if you hadn’t come at all.’

Out of the corner of her eye Jake caught sight of Stanley, his lips pursed in a silent whistle and his forefinger revolving suggestively next to his forehead.

‘Well, I’m here now. Can I come up and talk to you?’

‘But we’re already talking, aren’t we?’

‘In person.’

‘I am, in person. If I were not I should already be dead.’

‘I wish to talk to you about a number of murders,’ Jake said stiffly. It was the cop coming out in her and she flinched as she heard herself. She added, more gently, ‘Don’t you think it would be better—’ But it was too late.

‘This despotic demand of yours,’ he said. ‘This wish... Curious that you should have used that word, with its expectation of non-satisfaction. I wonder, what is your prototype of non-satisfaction? Strange, isn’t it? That a wish seems already to know what would satisfy it, even when that thing is not there at all. Even when it could not possibly exist.’

Jake tried to hang on to the conversation. ‘It seemed simple enough when I said it.’

Esterhazy tutted fussily. ‘You of all people should know that wishes are a veil between us and the thing wished for. It’s a problem for you, I know, to speak to someone like me with something as crude as ordinary language.’

‘We seem to be getting into a dead-end here,’ said Jake.

‘Easy, isn’t it? In philosophy. In life. But you’re right, a dead-end is exactly what this is, for both of us. For your philosophical investigation and for mine.’

He smiled, sadly it seemed to Jake.

‘I agree. So why don’t you stop wasting time and let me come up and we can sort it all out?’

‘I’m afraid I cannot permit that. You see I have no intention of being “sorted out” as you put it. That would mean spending the next thirty years of my life in a punitive coma. Now that really would be a waste of time.’

‘You know there’s no way out of here,’ said Jake.

‘Oh but there is,’ said Esterhazy. ‘By the time you manage to break in here, I shall be squaring the circle, so to speak.’

Stanley frowned. ‘What’s he mean?’ He looked belligerently at the doorman. ‘You sure there’s no way out?’

Jake said to Stanley, ‘He means Infinity. He’s going to kill himself after all.’

‘Oh not because of any argument deployed by that fool Jameson Lang,’ said Esterhazy.

‘So why?’

‘As I said, I have no intention of wasting time in a coma. As soon as you arrived here, I realised the game was over. You’re the reason I have to kill myself, Jake. You’re the reason.’

‘Please,’ she said, ‘don’t do it.’

‘You mustn’t blame yourself, Jake. It was always part of my plans.’

Covering the microphone with her hand, Jake asked the doorman if there was a way onto the roof.

‘Don’t try and stop me,’ said Esterhazy.

‘I can’t let you go like this,’ said Jake. ‘Aren’t you afraid?’

The doorman handed Stanley a set of keys.

‘I’m touched,’ said Esterhazy. ‘Really I am.’

‘Don’t think I’m climbing all the way up there with you,’ said the doorman.

‘But, Jake, you don’t understand. Feeling the world as a limited whole — now that is something to be afraid of.’

The screen went blank. Jake turned to the doorman.

‘These apartment buildings usually have some kind of window cleaner’s hoist on the roof. Is there one up there?’

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘But it’s never been used these past twelve months. The cleaning contractor went bust at the same time as the lift company. I don’t know that I’d want to trust my life to it.’

But Jake was already through the door to the stairs, followed closely by Stanley.

He said nothing until they were standing on the roof, recovering their breath.

‘Look, ma’am,’ he wheezed. ‘Why don’t we leave it to the TFS? Let them handle it, eh?’ He helped Jake to manoeuvre the hoist out over the edge of the roof.

‘What? And let them shoot him dead? No, I want this collar. I want a proper trial. Besides, by the time they get here he may well have topped himself.’

She climbed into the hoist and inspected the controls which required two operators standing at opposite ends. Stanley peered nervously over the edge.

‘Best for him, best for us, eh? Save us the bother.’

‘You sound like one of those bastards at the Home Office,’ she said. ‘Look, are you getting in or not? I can’t operate this thing by myself.’

‘But it’s ten storeys,’ pleaded Stanley. He shook his head grimly and climbed aboard. ‘I don’t know why I’m doing this. The bloke’s a nutter.’ He took hold of the control handle and nodded to Jake at the other end of the platform. ‘What do I care if he tops himself or not?’

The hoist jerked and then dropped half a metre.

‘Slowly,’ yelled Jake.

‘What the fuck happens when we get to his window? Suppose he doesn’t decide to top himself? Suppose he decides to kill us first? What then?’ Stanley drew his gun as he spoke. Jake was already holding hers. The hoist was moving smoothly now.

‘When we get to the seventh floor, we’ll shoot the windows out,’ said Jake. ‘Then climb inside.’

‘Jesus,’ muttered Stanley, and trembled visibly.

Jake looked up at the distance they had covered. The sun had lent a huge fireball to the smoked windows of the top two floors. For a moment Jake had the thought that she and Stanley were both disposal experts working to defuse some huge nuclear device which had exploded in their faces. A blast of wind cooled her face and shook the hoist under their feet. Stanley groaned. They reached the seventh floor. She blinked and tried to focus through the brightened window and when at last she saw him it was like seeing an X-ray photograph develop in front of her eyes.

There is nothing that cannot be solved by murder, money, or suicide. I’ve killed an apostolic number. And I’ve got plenty of money. Which only leaves option three. No problem.

If, as Malraux says, ‘death changes life into destiny’, then suicide makes destiny subject to personal choice. In life’s great bridge game it’s the last card you can play.

Naturally enough, suicide affects the total perception of a life in a way that no other death can ever do. Fatal car accidents, air-crashes, cot-deaths, executions, even murders are as nothing when you take a long look at the sui side of life. If eternity changes us into what we really are, then suicide is the ultimate moving force for that change.