by Philip Kerr
We all look to fathom the mind of a mass-murderer and to understand what makes him commit such heinous crimes.
Yet which of us can honestly say that in his Hobbesian heart of hearts, he does not already have the answer?
13
THE MAN SAT slumped in his seat, head on chest, arms dangling by his sides, a perfect caricature of a sleeping gorilla. The back of his neck looked painfully red, as if badly sunburned, but that was only encrusted blood.
Jake regarded the body carefully. It didn’t look so bad. A dead man always looks tidier than a dead woman. Usually the clothes are left on, and there are no mutilations. Nothing missing like a breast or a nipple. No presents left inside the private parts. There were worse ways to get it than six times in the back of the head. This one reminded her of some photographs she had once seen of Mafia hits in Palermo. The neatness of the gang executions had surprised her. There was very little disruption to whichever business (usually a restaurant) was being operated on the premises. Just a few shots in the head and then out, leaving the victim to a pop-eyed contemplation of his shirt-front or his navel or his minestrone.
It was the same with this killer. Jake knew he must be a neat, fastidious sort of man. But she wondered if he took any pleasure in the actual act of killing. Or if, like a mob gunman, it was just something that had to be done, like filling in your tax-return, or going to the dentist. Business. Nothing personal. Just business.
She sat down in the seat behind the body, with Detective Inspector Stanley, who had been on the scene for rather longer, placing himself in the seat beside her. He didn’t say anything. There wasn’t any explanation needed to picture what had happened. Finally she nodded and said: ‘Any witnesses?’
Stanley tugged his shirt collar down from his Adam’s apple and flexed his neck before answering.
‘Most of them buggered off the minute someone noticed that Mr Armfield, codenamed René Descartes, had been shot.’ He laughed scornfully. ‘Probably scared that their wives might find out that they’d even been in a dump like this.’
‘What about the people who run this fleapit?’
‘Well we’ve got the girl who was performing on stage at the time. And the owner, Mr Grubb. He was upstairs, on the cash desk. But they both say they don’t remember seeing anything.’
Jake pointed at the stage. ‘The girl would have been less than six metres from the killer when he fired. With those spotlights on she must have been able to see his face.’
‘Apparently she had her back to the audience for the greater part of the act,’ he explained uncomfortably. ‘And also she was on all fours.’
‘Doing what precisely?’
Stanley sighed and readjusted his shirt collar. ‘I believe she was enjoying a bottle of champagne, ma’am,’ he said, smiling thinly. ‘Ab anam.’
‘I see,’ Jake said with distaste. It never ceased to astonish her what men would find to entertain themselves.
‘About how many men were watching this obscenity?’
‘Grubb says he sold about ten or fifteen tickets in the two hours leading up to Armfield’s death. We’ve already had the contents of his till sent down to the lab in case there are any prints.’
Jake pointed at the bloodstained back of the seat in front of her. ‘Looks to me as if he might have been splashed a bit. There can’t have been too many men walking out of here with blood on them.’
Stanley shrugged. ‘Grubb says he can’t remember.’
‘Perhaps he just doesn’t like policemen much. Any previous convictions?’
‘A couple. Living off immoral earnings. Old stuff really.’
Jake glanced around at the cheap surroundings. ‘Tell this Grubb that you’re going to have a fire and safety officer go over this place. That he’s going to look for broken fire alarms, blocked fire exits, that kind of thing. See if that doesn’t jog his memory a bit. Then I want you to get some men to question everyone in this street. Building workers, traffic wardens, messengers, prostitutes, shop owners, everyone. I want to know if anyone remembers seeing a man with blood on him. Got that?’
‘Ma’am.’
‘Now, where’s this girl who was on stage?’
‘I told her to wait in the dressing room,’ said Stanley. ‘I thought you’d want to question her.’ He pointed to the side of the stage. ‘Through that curtain.’
Jake stood up and walked round in front of the seats. She stepped onto the stage and looking across the busy scenes-of-crime officers, tried to picture the scene as it might have appeared to anyone performing there. For Jake it was almost beyond imagination. The seating looked as if it had been removed from an old bus. There was a large hole in one of the flock-covered walls. Cheap linoleum covered the uneven floorboards of the small stage. From the toilets came the strong smell of disinfectant. It was hard to conceive of anyone choosing to come to this particular purgatory for entertainment. But come the men had, with direct eyes, to watch a woman’s loss of being and general descent. Men, like rats in a cellar, waiting to feed upon a woman’s corpse.
What must it be like? she asked herself. To stand there naked in front of a roomful of strangers. Worse than just naked: to perform, to display your body’s functions, to become a living anatomy lesson for some amateur medical students. She wrapped her arms around herself and shuddered with disgust.
‘Give us a show, ma’am,’ someone called out. There were several guffaws.
Jake glanced back at her colleagues with cool distaste. They were all the same. ‘Just get on with it,’ she sneered.
The dressing room was hardly much more than a walk-in wardrobe, with a couple of clothes rails that were empty save for a couple of wire coat-hangers, and a wall mirror that made it seem bigger. Underneath a bare lightbulb was a girl about twenty years old, wearing nothing more than a red flannel dressing gown like the one Jake wore herself when she went to see Doctor Blackwell. Jake’s unwilling witness sat on a greasy-looking futon, smoking a cigarette and muttering angrily.
‘Who are you?’ she snarled as Jake came through the door. ‘What do you want?’
‘I’m Chief Inspector Jakowicz.’
‘Can I go now?’ demanded the girl, like a petulant child.
‘Hadn’t you better get dressed first?’
The girl stubbed out her cigarette on the cover of an old magazine and jumped up from the futon.
‘I’d like to ask you a few questions,’ said Jake.
‘I’ve already spoken to the other copper. I told him all I had to say.’
‘Yes, well I don’t much blame you for not telling him much,’ said Jake. ‘I can’t say I’m all that fond of talking to him myself. Especially in a place like this. It’s only a place like this that lets you see men as they really are.’
The girl snorted. ‘That’s for sure.’ She shook her head in accession to Jake’s request. ‘Oh all right, ask away, if you want. But lock the door, will you? I don’t want any of your mates walkin’ in ’ere while I’m gettin’ dressed and gettin’ a free eyeful.’
Jake turned the key in the lock and leaned against the door.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked, searching her bag for a cigarette.
‘Clare,’ said the girl, and slipped off her dressing gown.
Jake lit her Nicofree and regarded the girl’s nakedness with an almost critical attention, as if she had been a painter or a sculptor. It was not a pretty face. It was perhaps not even handsome. Her nose was broken but not badly. The lips were too voluptuous and the teeth slightly protruding. Of intellect there was little sign, but you couldn’t have mistaken the hard cunning that was visible in the face. Her skin was smooth and supple-looking. She seemed too young to be doing this kind of thing, but Jake left that unsaid at the risk of sounding patronising.
Clare rummaged in a tartan duffle-bag and found her underwear.
There was such a wanton libidinous aspect to the tough little face which seemed quite to overcome all its manifest imperfections. Jake could see now how she
would be attractive to men.
‘You saw it all, didn’t you?’ she said.
‘You see everything in a dump like this,’ said the girl and climbed into her pants.
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘No? What did you mean?’
‘The dead man: ever see him before?’
‘I said hello to him as he came down the stairs and sat down.’
‘Would you recognise him again?’
She nodded and pulled up her skirt.
‘So why did you tell my inspector that you didn’t see anything? You know, you almost certainly saw the man who did it.’
Clare shrugged. ‘I dunno. Scared, I guess. In this business, you can get into trouble if you talk to the police. People don’t like people who talk to the law. You know.’
‘Meaning Mr Grubb.’
‘Yes. He can get a bit violent sometimes.’
‘He hits you?’
‘Sometimes, yeah. Never on the face, mind. And it’s not just that. If he found out that I was telling you things now, he might assume I’d tell you something else another time. I might lose my job. Grubb says that there are plenty of Chinese who would do what I do, for half the money.’
‘If I promise to sort it out with Grubb, will you take a look at some ComputaFit pictures and see if you can’t help to improve them?’
Clare nodded again and pulled on a none too clean sweater.
‘You promise you’ll make it so that he won’t take it out on me?’
‘I promise. I’ll have one of my men drive you down to the Yard.’
On her way back upstairs, Jake stopped for a moment and took a deep, unsteady breath. It made Jake angry to think of the men who came to this filthy cellar to see a girl, formulated, sprawling on a stage, pinned and wriggling on a floor. It made her angry to think of a girl like that making a commodity of herself for the profit of the man in the office upstairs. She felt her brow lower with distaste.
Jake searched in her shoulder bag for the set of electronic tungsten knuckles she kept there. The rubber grip meant that the user could hold them quite safely, but when the metal came into contact with the human body, they emitted an electric shock, thus enabling most female police officers to hit every bit as hard, if not harder, than their male colleagues. Good job too, thought Jake, with all the thugs they had to deal with, most of whom were prepared to belt a policewoman every bit as hard as they would a male officer.
Jake found Mr Grubb in his office with Detective Inspector Stanley seated on the corner of his desk. She disliked him almost instinctively. He was large and fat, but despite his expensive suit, his gold watch and his cigar, you could still see the grubby little schoolboy underneath the man. He was well-named.
‘You the Chief Inspector?’ snarled Grubb.
Jake kept the hand with the knuckles hidden for the time being.
‘That’s right,’ she said breezily.
‘Then tell your bit of prick to get off my back. It’s no good him threatenin’ me with fire and safety officers. I didn’t see nuthin’, all right?’
Jake looked at Stanley. ‘Leave us alone for a minute,’ she told him.
Stanley nodded uncertainly, and then stepped out of the room.
‘I’m sorry, but what did you say you saw?’
Grubb grimaced at her. ‘What are you? Deaf or something? I said, I didn’t see nuthin’.’ He laughed at her and set about re-lighting his cigar.
‘If you did not see nothing,’ Jake said, ‘that means that you did see something.’
‘Eh? What you talkin’ about?’
‘Don’t you see? The two negatives cancel each other out. You know I’m glad you’re going to help us because if you had said that you didn’t see anything, I’d be worried that something might happen to you.’
‘You threatenin’ me, darlin’?’ He spoke without even looking at her, as if in contempt of her.
‘Yes,’ said Jake flatly.
‘I’ve done nuthin’. You can’t scare me, luv.’
‘No? I bet I could scare you, Mr Grubb. I bet I could have you begging for mercy.’
Grubb smiled. ‘There’s only one way that a girl like you could have me beggin’ for mercy,’ he said suggestively.
‘Oh? And what’s that?’
He laughed. ‘Use your imagination, sweetheart.’ Then he shook his head and, getting up from his desk, advanced towards Jake. ‘You know, I do believe you’re tryin’ to get hard with me: is that right?’ There was quiet menace in his voice.
Jake held her ground and nodded.
Grubb pushed his fat schoolboy’s face closer to Jake’s until she could smell the tobacco on his breath.
‘Don’t make me laugh. You don’t - ’
Jake thumbed the bezel on the grip of the knuckles and brought her fist up through a short arc. The knuckles emitted a low electronic hum as they accelerated through the air, but this was abruptly lost in Grubb’s howl of pain and surprise as, with a small blue spark, her fist connected with his stomach. He doubled over, almost collapsing on top of her, but still finding himself able to flail at her with one fist. Jake neatly sidestepped the clumsy blow, and pulling the punch just a fraction, she caught Grubb on the side of the jaw. He collapsed onto the ground.
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.’
&nb
sp; ‘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.