A Philosophical Investigation: A Novel (20 page)

‘Darwin, Byron, Kant, Aquinas, Spinoza, Keats, Locke, Dickens and last, but not least, Bertrand Russell.’ He looked up at the others seated round the table. With his prematurely white hair, half-moon glasses, undernourished, ascetic-looking features, and an Aran sweater of permanently-knit eyebrows, it wasn’t difficult for him to appear thoughtful. ‘I don’t suppose there could be some kind of pattern there, could there?’ he said vaguely.

‘You mean some kind of intellectual pattern?’ said Jake. ‘Not according to the Computerised Intelligence System.’

‘Computers have no imaginations,’ Waring said contemptuously. ‘How about we try for one minute to use our own brains to look for a pattern?’

Jake shrugged. ‘Sure, why not.’

‘Let’s take Darwin for a moment,’ he said. ‘He was first. Well, who else would be? Origin of Species, you get the idea.’

Doctor Cleobury shook her head firmly. ‘Except that this is the grandfather, not the son. It was Erasmus Darwin, not Charles, who was killed, Professor.’

‘What’s Erasmus Darwin written that could possibly merit inclusion as a Penguin Classic?’ he said.

‘He wrote some poems about plants,’ said Jake.

Doctor Cleobury nodded, smiled pleasantly at Jake and then shifted on her largish bottom. Comfortable once more she checked the hem of her tight black skirt and then the edge of her permed blond hair. Jake thought she looked more like a barmaid than a psychiatrist.

‘Surely what is more significant,’ said Jake, ‘is that five out of the nine were philosophers.’

‘Six,’ said Cleobury. ‘If you want to count Erasmus Darwin’s so-called Sensational School of Philosophy. Wait a minute -’

‘What is it?’ said Jake.

‘Just that it was Erasmus Darwin who was one of the first thinkers to try and establish a physiological basis of mental phenomena - a medullary substance.’ She shook her head and waited for everyone else to catch her up. ‘Well, don’t you see? That’s precisely what Lombroso is all about.’

Jake nodded, uncertain that the discussion was leading anywhere.

‘Highly apposite,’ agreed Waring, warming to his original idea. ‘But what could be the connection with Immanuel Kant?’

Jake caught Chung’s eye. He shrugged disinterestedly. Detective Inspector Stanley was studying the contents of his tea cup as if searching for some clairvoyant indication as to a future line of inquiry. Detective Sergeant Jones, who was supposed to be making notes of the meeting, was yawning at his computer screen. Jake smiled as she noticed the obscene spelling he had given the name of Kant. Waring saw it too, and shook his head with vigorous self-reproach.

‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘How stupid of me. His family came from Scotland and changed their name of Cant into Kant to suit the German pronunciation. Darwin took his degree of medicine at Edinburgh. Of course, it’s not as strong a connection to Kant as Hume would have been, but still -’

Jake let the professor and Doctor Cleobury carry on in this rarefied vein for a while, establishing insignificant connections between the nine dead codenames, before finally drawing them back to her original remark.

‘I suggest we try not to let ourselves get too carried away,’ she said with a smile. ‘I think what’s important is that out of a list of 120 VMNs, twenty of these codenames are the names of philosophers. Not only do we know that the killer’s own codename is that of a philosopher, but several of his victims have also had the names of philosophers. It strikes me that what we have here is a killer with a sense of humour. The idea of one philosopher killing others just tickles him.’

Waring considered this for a moment. ‘But then why not choose all nine of them that way? Why just the five?’

‘Or six,’ added Doctor Cleobury. ‘Don’t forget Darwin.’

Jake shrugged. ‘Possibly he may want to deny us the establishment of some kind of pattern.’

Waring sighed wearily. ‘Then he’s making a damn good job of it.’

Detective Sergeant Jones looked up from his screen. ‘I wonder if he actually knows any philosophy?’ he said.

Jake nodded. ‘I’ve been asking myself the same question.’

The meeting meandered on through the remainder of the afternoon before Jake declared it over. At five, she went out to get some coffee. When she came back she found Chung waiting for her in her office. He looked uncharacteristically excited.

‘What’s up with you?’ she said. ‘Your premium bond come up?’

‘Could be,’ he said, grinning, and waving a piece of paper.

Jake sat down at her desk, exhausted, and removed the lid from the Styrofoam cup. Meetings always made her feel as dull as carpet underlay.

‘Let’s hear it then.’

‘A random name and telephone number just got a response from the Lombroso computer,’ he explained. ‘Bloke called John Martin Baberton. Anyway, at the same time, the police computer at Kidlington reveals that this Baberton fellow has got a criminal record for computer fraud and attempted murder.’

Jake looked up from her coffee. ‘You’re joking,’ she said.

Chung glanced at the printout he was clutching. ‘And what about this? He’s got a degree in Philosophy, and a history of psychiatric disorder.’

‘He sounds too good to be true,’ said Jake. ‘Have you got the file there?’

‘That’s the funny thing. Records can’t find the manual file. It seems to be missing. There’s just his computer record.’

He handed Jake the printout and watched her as she read it over. She lingered over Baberton’s laser-jet-printed picture.

‘These pictures aren’t the best for identification purposes,’ she said. ‘But I can’t help feeling that I’ve seen this man before. What’s his VMN codename?’

‘According to Lombroso, it’s Socrates.’

‘Another philosopher.’

‘Address?’

‘Two known. There’s one on his Lombroso printout, and another on the police file.’

‘Which one matches his ID card number?’

‘The police file.’

Jake read the warning from the Lombroso computer with interest. It was the first time she had come across one within the course of an investigation.

Jake fed a length of hair into her mouth and sucked it thoughtfully.

‘There’s something strange here,’ she said. ‘We know that somebody with the codename Wittgenstein deleted himself from the original VMN database, right?’

‘Right.’

‘So who’s this well-qualified bastard? You couldn’t hope to pick a better suspect if you went down to central casting.’

There was a knock at the door and Detective Chief Superintendent Challis entered Jake’s office.

In the early stages of the investigation, when he had been effectively supplanted by Jake, Challis had shown no inclination to become involved in the case again. But ever since the press conference, Challis had taken to appearing in Jake’s office at all times of the day and asking her for progress reports. She wondered if his suddenly-reawakened interest in the case was spontaneous, or if someone higher up, perhaps someone in the Home Office, had requested that he keep an eye on things. Whatever the reason, she disliked his interference almost as much as she disliked Poison Challis himself. Challis was another old-style policeman, one who thought that women in the police force were best employed communicating bad news to the families of accident victims.

‘Did I hear the word suspect, Jake?’ he boomed, rubbing his hands.

For a moment Jake considered stalling him and then decided against it. He was the kind of senior officer who was apt to be unforgiving about being kept in the dark on something. So she told Chung to repeat what he had just told her, after which she added a note of caution.

‘I’d like to keep this man under surveillance for a while,’ she explained. ‘It’s just a precaution, only there’s something strange about all this.’

Poison Challis sniffed. ‘I’ll tell you what’s strange,’ he said. ‘It’s this John Martin Baberton who’s bloody strange. You heard it yourself. The man’s a bloody psycho.’

‘No, sir,’ insisted Jake. ‘What I mean is that this is all a little too -’ She shrugged. ‘Too convenient.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Challis demanded. ‘What do you mean, too convenient?’

Jake wondered if it was her imagination or whether she could smell drink on his breath.

‘Haven’t you got any faith in your own law-enforcement technology ? Jesus Christ, woman, it’s supposed to make things convenient. Not every result has to come from months of painstaking detective work. Not these days, anyway. Or is this just some of that bloody feminine intuition I hear you always banging on about?’

‘No, sir,’ said Jake patiently. ‘I’d just like to wait a little, sir. I’d like to ...’

But Challis was already on the pictophone. ‘I want a tactical firearms squad ready immediately,’ he barked at the startled man appearing on Jake’s screen. ‘What’s the bloody address, Sergeant? Here, give me that piece of paper.’

Chung handed Challis the printout and looked questioningly at Jake as Challis read out the address to the squad constable. Jake shrugged silently, but when Challis had finished speaking, she said to him, ‘Sergeant Chung? For the record, I would like you to note that this course of action is being taken by Detective Chief Superintendent Challis against my advice. In my judgment - ’

‘To hell with your judgment,’ snapped Challis. ‘Who the hell do you think you are? I run the Murder Squad, not you. I’ll say when we make an arrest and when we don’t. You may know a lot about criminal psychology, Chief Inspector, but I know about law enforcement, and I can recognise a bloody collar when I see one. Now you can either be a part of this, or you can stay here and sulk. Which is it to be?’

Jake felt her eyes grow smaller. She thought of the set of tungsten electronic knuckles in her bag and wanted to hit him. She could barely conceal the sarcasm in her voice as she told Challis that she wouldn’t miss it for the world.

But before she followed him out of the door, Jake called Gilmour’s office.

 

 

The police car carrying Challis, Jake and Stanley left New Scotland Yard and headed north up Grosvenor Street, Park Lane and then the little Egypt that was the Edgware Road, before turning west towards the A40. The slip-road climbed and looped like a big dipper until they emerged into the main eight-lane carriageway, sandwiched precariously between two enormous water-tankers. It was almost eight o’clock but the Westway was still choked with homeward-bound traffic. Drivers in their two-door Honda micro-cars stared up at the light railway speeding by overhead, and almost envied the passengers aboard it but for the knowledge that they would certainly have been travelling in conditions that would have left an agoraphobic battery hen short of air. Jake shook her head pityingly. One of the few compensations about working the unsocial hours that her job required was that at the times she usually drove to and from the Yard, the roads were all but empty.

The big police BMW moved powerfully onto the toll-paying, speed-unlimited lane which, at the flat fee of $100 a day, was comparatively free of all but the fastest and most expensive German cars. They passed one set of high-rise flats and then another - airborne rabbit-hutches, the road so close to the smoke-grimed windows that Jake could almost see the irradiated lettuce on the plastic dinner plates.

In a few minutes they were at the White City, the two white concrete towers of the new European Television Centre towering over the landscape like a twin pack of toilet rolls, reminding Jake that however long the job kept her out, she wasn’t likely to be missing anything good on the Nicamvision. Seconds later they were driving by H. M. Remand Prison, Wormwood Scrubs, recently expanded into what had been the old Hammersmith Hospital, and surrounded with a no-man’s-land of searchlight and razor-wire.

At the Hangar Lane roundabout, they turned south towards Ealing and Jake quickly lost her bearings in a maze of quiet suburban roads that ran close to the Honda Corporation’s golf course. At the end of one road, already blocked off by police, they met the flak-jacketed commander of the Tactical Firearms Squad.

‘We’ve got the place surrounded, sir,’ he said, indicating a large detached house set in about a quarter of an acre. ‘My boys have just finished having a quick sniff around the place. Apparently there’s a man’s body lying in some long grass close to the tennis courts.

‘Bingo,’ Challis muttered, and glanced balefully at Jake.

‘What did I tell you?’ He nodded at the house. Behind drawn curtains there were lights burning.

‘We haven’t approached the place yet, sir,’ said the TFS commander, whose name was Collingwood. ‘But we’ve shoved a couple of mikes on the wall and it looks as if there’s someone at home all right. Funny thing though. There’s a man standing in the porch.’

‘Doing what?’

‘He’s just standing there.’

‘Didn’t you bring nightsights?’

‘Of course I did. But he’s in shadow, I’m afraid.’

‘Perhaps he’s just stepped outside for a quiet smoke,’ suggested Detective Inspector Stanley. ‘I do that myself sometimes. Perhaps he lives with a non-smoker.’

‘Hang on a minute,’ said the commander, and pressed his earpiece closer to his ear. ‘One of my boys says he’s got a gun. A machine pistol it looks like. Seems as if he might be waiting for us, sir.’

Challis nodded grimly. ‘Probably using that body in the garden as some kind of bait. Gets one of us to walk up to the door to try and make an arrest and then opens fire.’ Challis turned to Jake. ‘What do you think about him now, eh? I suppose this bastard with the gun is there to stop the garden gnomes being nicked.’