I kept a careful eye on the rear-view video as I drove away, just in case I was followed. But the screen remained empty of traffic and even before I had reached the end of Wordsworth’s road, I was scrolling down the list of brothers on my hand-held computer for the next target.
Fine, I thought, I always did like Wordsworth and was quite glad not to be his solitary reaper. Stop here or gently pass.
These many then shall die. Their names are pricked. But which one was to be next? Auden? Descartes? Hegel? Hemingway? Whitman?
Auden was certainly the closest, although I had a mind (in the sense of reality as a whole, or the Absolute) to kill Hegel out of pure idealism. Hemingway? Obsessed with death, and somehow too vulgar. Descartes? I had been saving him. All the same there was all the nonsense about deducing the existence of God as proof of the perceptible world. And in a way, he did start all of this. Yes, Descartes then. The father of modern philosophy. I would destroy him out of total scepticism. He shall not live. Look, with a spot I damn him.
I kill, therefore I am.
12
Jake sat alone in her office, her long, strong fingers steepled in front of her forehead as if she had been deep in prayer, or thought, or both.
Ed Crawshaw put his head round the door, cleared his throat, and, having gained Jake’s attention raised both eyebrows by way of preface to a question.
‘Yes, Ed.’ She yawned. ‘What is it?’
She rubbed her eyes which she assumed were sore from a lack of natural light and switched off her desk lamp. Was it the fluorine or the halogen bulbs that were supposed to cause blindness? Perhaps her life wouldn’t seem quite so artificial if she had some flowers in the office.
‘Got a minute, Chief?’
‘Sure, take a chair.’
Crawshaw sat down.
‘Remember the Italian olive oil we found on Mary Woolnoth’s clothes?’
Jake said she did.
‘Well it comes by the drum-load from Italy, to be bottled under licence here in the UK. Company called the Sacred Oil Company, based in Ruislip. Their bottled oil is then distributed all over the country by a company called Gillards. They’re in Brent Cross. Gillards deliver the oil to a number of wholesalers in central London, including one in Brewer Street, Soho. The Soho delivery is always handled by the same driver, one John George Richards. Well it so happens that about eight years ago this Richards did two years under the needle for a sexual assault on a young woman. What’s more, on the date of Mary Woolnoth’s murder, he made a delivery to the wholesalers in Brewer Street.’
‘That’s interesting,’ said Jake. ‘I assume you want my autograph on an application to a magistrate for a search warrant.’
‘That’s right, ma’am,’ said Crawshaw. ‘If you wouldn’t mind.’ He handed Jake a paper. She read his document and then signed it quickly.
‘Thanks, ma’am.’ He stood up to leave.
‘Oh, and, Ed? Let me know when you pick him up. I’d like an opportunity to talk to this guy myself.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Ed?’
‘Ma’am?’
‘Well done.’
Crawshaw had not been gone for very long when the switchboard rang to say that they had Wittgenstein on the line. Jake immediately hit the button on the pictophone link that had been patched into Sir Jameson Lang’s rooms in Cambridge.
‘It’s him, Professor,’ she announced to Lang’s startled image. ‘Wittgenstein. Are you ready?’
‘Yes, I think so,’ said Lang, and straightened his tie.
A message on Jake’s computer screen told her that the call-trace procedure was already initiated. She told the switchboard to put Wittgenstein through.
‘Chief Inspector?’ he said smoothly.
‘Yes. I’m glad you called.’ She wished that they had been speaking on the pictophone and that she could see his face.
‘Oh, I don’t doubt it. Would you like me to give you a sound-level for your recording? Testing, testing, one-two-three. How’s that?’ He chuckled. ‘You know, I really hope you are recording this. It could be historic. We’ve come a long way from messages chalked on walls near the scene of the crime. “The Jews are not the men that will be blamed for nothing”.’
‘Jack the Ripper,’ said Jake, recognising the quotation. ‘The message near the first victim. Now who was it? Catherine Eddowes?’
‘Very good,’ said the voice. ‘I’m impressed, Chief Inspector. If it didn’t sound so corny I should say you were a worthy opponent.’ He paused. ‘May I call you Jake? I feel I already know you quite well.’
‘Be my guest. What do you want to talk about?’
‘Oh no. This is your chat show, Jake. I’m here at your invitation. You’re supposed to put me at my ease. Make me feel comfortable enough to reveal something interesting about myself: isn’t that how it works? But I will say two things right away, Jake. One is to save you the trouble of trying to trace this calclass="underline" I’m using a satellite phone. Ah, the wonders of modern science.
‘And the other is that at some time during our little chat, I’ll have to break off and kill someone. Who this is going to be will be a surprise, of course. I’m saving that until the end, when I will give you his codename. Don’t let that worry you though. Just try and look at it from the point of view of my having to plug a new book or a record. We’ve got plenty of time until then. If my man sticks to his routine we should have at least twenty minutes.’
The voice sounded lighter and more flippant than on the disc. But Jake knew that Detective Sergeant Jones would already have wired the call through to the Yard’s own forensic psychiatrist for a more accurate psychological evaluation. Even now there would be an acoustic engineer trying to isolate and identify any background noise. Jake lit a cigarette. To hell with the regulations, she thought. This was an emergency.
‘I was hoping I could persuade you to give this up,’ she said. ‘Not to kill anyone else. There’s been enough killing already.’ She took a deep, fierce drag. ‘Maybe even to give yourself up. You know, I’d like to help you if I can.’
‘Did you like the photographs I sent you, Jake?’ he said.
She realised that he was trying to provoke her, to see how far her willingness to help really went.
‘They were very good,’ she said evenly.
‘You think so?’ He made a little tutting, dissatisfied noise. ‘I wasn’t sure I got the lips of your vagina right. And your pubic hair. I couldn’t work out if you were the bushy type or not. Whether the hair grows right along the edge of your labia or only as far the pubis. Well? How did I do?’
Jake felt herself colour. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You know this call is being taped. Do you want to embarrass me in front of all my colleagues? Let’s talk about something else.’
‘What about your anus? Or maybe your nipples.’
‘You know I think this is just an act,’ she said. ‘I don’t think you’re this kind of person at all. Listen, I’ve met some real sex perverts in my time, and you don’t begin to come close. I think you’re trying to impress me as being something you’re not.’
Wittgenstein guffawed. ‘All right,’ he said.
Well that was interesting, she thought. You could contradict him without provoking him. It demonstrated that on one level at least she was speaking to a rational person anyway.
‘Would it interest you then to know that I’ve been close enough to you to smell you Jake? What is that perfume you wear? Rapture, by Luther Levine.’