A Philosophical Investigation: A Novel (32 page)

Jake stood over him, and grabbing him by the tie, she pulled his head clear of the floor and then let it drop a couple of times.

‘How’s your memory now?’ she asked. ‘Anything yet?’

‘All right, all right,’ Grubb moaned, rubbing his jaw. ‘I did see him. No need to get violent.’

‘Good,’ said Jake. ‘I’m glad you’ve decided to cooperate.’ She twisted his tie tighter. ‘I don’t much like your business and I don’t much like the crumbs like you who run it. It’s lucky for you that I’m busy today, otherwise I’d ask some of the girls who work here about you. And if I found that you were the type who slaps them around, well that would really make me angry. Let’s hope for your sake that I never have to come back here, eh?’

Jake yelled out for Stanley. He returned to the room and smiled when he saw Grubb lying on the floor at Jake’s feet.

‘Take this man down to the Yard, Stanley,’ she said. ‘Seems like he’s remembered something after all. And the girl too.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ Stanley helped a stunned-looking Grubb off the floor. ‘What’s the matter with you, then? Fall over, did you, sir? Come on, up you get.’ Stanley nodded almost appreciatively at Jake and then led Grubb out of the office to the car.

Jake switched off the knuckles and dropped them back into her bag. Her high police rank sometimes left her on the slippery ice of intellectual detective work, constructing elaborate aetiological theories, with little or no friction underfoot. She enjoyed the almost academic conditions of her work. But it felt good to be back on rough ground again.

 

 

It was dark by the time Jake parked her BMW in the small car-park surrounding her apartment building. Before she got out of the door she put her head through the strap of her bag and adjusted it across her chest. Then she unzipped the bag and put her left hand inside, so that she had hold of the Beretta’s neoprene grip even before she had pulled the door-handle. Now that he had her address she was more careful about her security. Was it possible that she might have even met Wittgenstein in her own building?

With this one thought in her mind Jake crossed the car-park and gained the front door without incident. The doorman glanced up from his evening paper. There was lipstick on his cheek.

‘Evening, miss,’ he said.

Jake released the big gun and zipped her bag.

‘Good evening, Phil,’ she said. Now she saw the headline on the paper. Another man found murdered.

‘This serial killer, miss: what makes someone do it?’ said Phil. ‘The wife says he must be gay or something, but none of these men who’ve been killed have been touched, right?’

Jake pressed the lift button and shook her head. ‘None of them,’ she said. ‘That’s right.’

‘Myself, I reckon it’s a woman who’s got it in for men. Someone raped her when she was a kid maybe. You know the sort of thing.’

Jake said she did.

‘I don’t mind telling you, miss, I’m careful about how I go home now. I used to walk along the river, when the tide was out. But not now. No fear.’

‘I wouldn’t worry too much, if I were you,’ said Jake.

At the same time she told herself she had no way of knowing if Phil might be a potential victim or not. All sorts of people were VMN-negative. Chung had told her that there was even someone in the Home Office who was rumoured to be VMN-NEGATIVE. So why not her own doorman?

‘Still it’s wise to take a few precautions,’ she added.

The lift arrived, but Jake remained where she was.

‘Phil, you know that if you’re a copper there are always a few weirdos who might want to get even with you.’

‘I can imagine, miss.’

‘If ever you saw someone hanging around here, someone strange, you would tell me, wouldn’t you? I mean you needn’t worry about scaring me or anything. I should want to know.’

‘’Course I would, miss.’

‘There hasn’t been anyone hanging around, has there, Phil?’

‘No, miss. Not that I’ve noticed.’

Jake smiled at him. ‘Goodnight, Phil.’

‘Goodnight, miss.’

 

 

Alone in her flat Jake made herself a cup of coffee and curled up in her favourite armchair to read. Normally she would have been reading a thriller, but for the past week she had been occupied with Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein, in which the great philosopher had set out to correct the mistakes of his first book, the
Tractatus.

In the book, Wittgenstein investigated the concepts of meaning; of understanding; of propositions; of logic; and of states of consciousness. It was a more difficult read and Jake found that she had to make a few notes in order to maintain her concentration; however, she considered that there was more in it for the detective than was to be found in the Tractatus. She wondered if she might not have some of the things she had noted down printed up, as slogans for the wall of her office in New Scotland Yard.

‘Meaning is physiognomy.’ Yes, she liked that. It referred to how a word has meaning, but all the same it seemed to speak of something vaguely forensic too. Jake also appreciated the implicit warning to those who would make a case based on the purely circumstantial that was contained in the thought that ‘the most explicit evidence of intention is by itself insufficient evidence of intention’. And there was certainly a message for every detective in the answer to the question ‘What is your aim in philosophy? To show the fly the way out of the fly bottle.’ How often had she felt just like that fly?

Professor Jameson Lang had been right: there was so much common ground between the detective and the philosopher. More than she could ever have appreciated.

This growing interest in philosophy had, as its most important corollary, a sense of fascination for the man who had, indirectly at least, inspired it: the Lombroso killer. It was, she knew, not uncommon for multiples, spree-killers and lone gunmen trying to make a name for themselves by killing a public figure to arm themselves with some intellectual baggage as evidence of their being something better than a common criminal. Just as often it enabled their lawyers to try and shift the moral responsibility for their actions onto some hapless author, even to try and sue him if he was unfortunate enough still to be alive. Books do furnish a room, wrote Anthony Powell. Jake reflected that in these post-millenial days, books also furnished the well-educated life of many a mass-murderer.

Jerry Sherriff, the man who assassinated EC President, Pierre Delafons, had read him the whole of Eliot’s Waste Land before blowing his head off. Spree-killer Greg Harrison was listening to a disc of John Betjeman’s poetry when, armed with several hand-grenades, he ran amok through the streets of Slough, killing forty-one people. The American multiple Lyndon Topham claimed that he had killed twenty-seven people out riding in various parts of Texas, because they were the Black Horsemen from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. And Jake had lost count of the number of serial killers who claimed that their actions had been influenced by Nietzsche.

There was something different about this particular killer, however: Jake had feelings for him that detectives were not supposed to have about multiple murderers. Admiration was too strong a word for it. Rather it was that she felt fascinated by him. Her imagination had been roused by him. Through him she had come to learn certain things about the world. About herself.

Trying to understand him, trying to catch him was about the most stimulating thing Jake had ever done.

 

 

Jake slept for four hours and woke in the dark with a question gnawing at her memory like a dog’s bone. Where the hell had he met her?

She rolled out of bed, pulled on her dressing-gown and went through to the kitchen where she put some ice and a slice of lime into a long glass, and poured herself some mineral water. She drank it greedily, like a small child after a nightmare. Then she sat down in front of her computer and switched it on.

If she could remember ‘where’ then she might also remember ‘who’. She typed ‘Where?’ and waited for inspiration. When, after several minutes, none came she erased the word and thought again.

Another question en route to ‘where’. When? When had he met her? As she typed ‘When?’ Jake was suddenly possessed of the certainty that he had already given her the answer. She felt a chill of excitement as she tried to recall what it was. Something small. Something in the very air around her. Something ...

Her perfume. Rapture, by Luther Levine. He had complimented her on it.

Jake jumped up, grabbed her shoulder bag from off the back of the chair and emptied its contents onto the floor. Rapture had been a recent purchase. But when and where had she bought it? She sorted through the various till receipts and credit-card vouchers collected during the last few months thanking the slut in her who rarely ever tidied out her bag.

At last she found what she was looking for. Frankfurt Airport. That was where she had bought it. Until her trip to the European Law Enforcement Symposium, she had always worn Lolita, by Federico D’Atri. The purchase of the bottle of Rapture had been a spur of the moment thing. She had even scolded herself for buying it, imagining that she had succumbed to the sexy 48-sheet poster featuring a modern version of Fragonard’s painting,
The Swing.
Since she felt guilty that she had fallen for the hype, it had been some time before she had actually worn Rapture. She remembered wearing Lolita at the press conference where she had issued a description of Wittgenstein. And it had been several days after that before she had actually finished the bottle of Lolita.

The first time she had worn Rapture — had been the day she had gone to see Sir Jameson Lang. Whoever Wittgenstein was, he had met her after that. He had made a mistake, she was sure of it.

Now if she could only recollect everyone she had met since her trip to Cambridge ...