A Philosophical Investigation

2

THE THIRD EUROPEAN COMMUNITY SYMPOSIUM ON TECHNIQUES OF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION, HERBERT MARCUSE CENTRE, FRANKFURT, GREATER GERMAN REICH, 13.00 HOURS, 13 FEBRUARY 2013. SPEAKER: DETECTIVE CHIEF INSPECTOR ISADORA JAKOWICZ, M.SC, LONDON. METROPOLITAN POLICE FORCE.

MEMBER COUNTRY: UK. TITLE OF TEXT: INCREASE OF THE HOLLYWOOD MURDER.

It is Saturday evening, towards the beginning of the millennium. The wife is in bed. There are no children. You switch on the Nicamvision, settle your spectacles on your nose and select a videodisc. A Chinese takeaway and a few bottles of Japanese lager have put you in just the right mood. Your nicotine-free cigarettes are by your side, the futon cushions are soft beneath you, the central heating is on, and the air is warm and pleasantly de-ionised. In these blissful circumstances what kind of disc is it that you want to watch? Naturally it’s one about a murder. But what kind of murder?

Sixty years ago, George Orwell described what would be, from an English newspaper’s point of view, ‘the perfect murder’. ‘The murderer,’ he wrote, ‘should be a little man of the professional class. He should go astray through cherishing a guilty passion for his secretary or the wife of a rival professional man, and should only bring himself to the point of murder after long and terrible wrestles with his conscience. Having decided on murder, he should plan it with all the utmost cunning and slip up over some tiny unforeseen detail. The means chosen should, of course, be poison.’

Arguing the decline of this, the archetypal English murder, Orwell pointed to the case of Karl Hulten, an American Army deserter who, inspired by the false values of American cinema, wantonly murdered a taxi-driver for the sum of eight pounds sterling — about EC$3.

That the most-talked about murder of the last years of the Second World War was this, the so-called Cleft Chin Murder, and that it should have been committed by an American, was a cause of some regret to the curiously patriotic Orwell. For him, Hulten’s ‘meaningless’ crime could not begin to compare with the typically English murder which was ‘the product of a stable society where the all-prevailing hypocrisy did at least ensure that crimes as serious as murder should have strong emotions behind them.’

Today, however, crimes like Hulten‘s, pitiful, sordid and without much emotion behind them, are relatively commonplace. ‘Good murders’, of the kind that might have entertained the News of the World reader of Orwell’s day, are still committed. But these are of little interest to the public at large in comparison with the apparently motiveless kind of murder that has become the norm.

Nowadays, people are routinely murdered, often for no obvious reason. Just over half a century after Orwell’s death, society finds itself subject to a virtual epidemic of recreational murder, which is the work of a breed of killer even more purposeless than the comparatively innocent Karl Hulten. Indeed, were Hulten’s case to occur today, his crimes would rate no more than a couple of paragraphs in the local newspaper. It might seem incomprehensible to us in the year 2013 that the case of the Cleft Chin Murder should have been, as Orwell tells us, ‘the principal cause célèbre of the war years’.

With all this in mind, one can construct, as Orwell does, what would be, from the modern News of the World reader’s point of view, today’s ‘good murder’. He might refer us to the videodisc he had been watching that Saturday night. The murderer would be a young and maladjusted man living somewhere in the suburbs, surrounded by his unwitting potential victims. Our chosen killer should have gone astray through some fault of his mother, thus firmly attaching the real blame for the murders to a woman. Having decided on murder the killer should not restrict himself to the one homicide, but should dispatch as many victims as possible. The means chosen should be extremely violent and sadistic, preferably with some sexual, ritualistic, or possibly even anthropophagous aspect. Those killed should most often be young attractive women and their deaths should occur while they are undressing, taking a shower, masturbating, or having intercourse. Only with this kind of background, the Hollywood style of background, can a murder have the dramatic and even tragic qualities which will make it memorable in the present day.

It’s no accident that a significant percentage of the murders committed in modern Europe have an element of this Hollywood atmosphere.

One of the traditional motifs of the Hollywood murder, and what brings me to the point of my speech, is the male-bonding which frequently occurs between male law-enforcement personnel and their homicidal quarry. Since this conference is taking place here in Frankfurt, in the Herbert Marcuse Centre, it’s worth reminding ourselves of what the Frankfurt School of Social Science and Marcuse himself had to say about this kind of behaviour.

For Marcuse, the one-dimensional patriarchal society was characterised by examples of what he called ‘the unification of opposites’: a unification which served to deter social change at an intellectual level by enclosing consciousness in a masculine and, therefore, one-dimensional way. The historical domination of law-enforcement agencies by men is merely one aspect of this monolithic and homogeneous view. Until comparatively recently the average murder inquiry placed little or no reliance on the specifically feminine qualities.

The behaviourists and psychologists tell us that hormones undoubtedly play a major part in organising male and female characteristics in the brain. Whereas, for instance, men tend to think spatially in terms of distances and measurement, women on the other hand tend to think in terms of signs and landmarks. Women are much better than men at focusing on their immediate surroundings, which may actually make them superior to men in the matter of the observation of fine detail. Thus the usefulness of women to any criminal investigation, especially an inquiry where there exists a wealth of forensic detail such as the Hollywood-style murder, should be obvious. Other specifically feminine qualities such as non-violence, emotional capacity and receptivity may also be mentioned as having investigative utility.

During the early 1990s, computer analysis of the twentieth century’s inquiries into multiple-killings enabled British statistical criminologists to determine that those inquiries which included a woman among their senior personnel had a much higher rate of success in apprehending the culprit than those inquiry teams which did not include a female police officer.

As a result of this study, a Home Office Select Committee made a number of recommendations to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir MacDonald McDuff, which sought to increase the representation of female police officers in all serious crime investigations, but with particular regard to the Hollywood style of gynocide. Five years ago these recommendations were adopted, with the result that a female of at least Detective Sergeant rank must now be included in any investigation where a recreational killer may be responsible, thereby ensuring an improved, more two-dimensional approach to the inquiry.

The results speak for themselves. During the 1980s, when there existed no such sex-representation guideline and women accounted for less than 2 per cent of the senior personnel investigating the Hollywood-style gynocide, there was an arrest made in only 46 per cent of cases. During the late 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century, where there existed such a gender guideline and women accounted for 44 per cent of senior police personnel in this type of gynocide, an arrest was made in 73 per cent of all cases.

Of course the last ten years have also seen some substantial improvements in law-enforcement and forensic detection technology which has partly helped to explain this dramatic increase in the performance of British murder inquiries. Not the least of these has been the adoption, throughout the EC, of identity cards with bar-codes and genetic fingerprints. However even when developments such as these are statistically discounted, it seems probable that the British experiment with sex guidelines for police investigations has achieved an overall increase in successful arrests of at least 20 per cent.

No doubt you are comparing the gender guideline with that figure of only 44 per cent of senior police personnel being women. Perhaps you are saying ‘why not 100 per cent?’ Well the new two-dimensional approach has been hindered by the small numbers of women who are in positions of relative seniority within the force. However, I am pleased to be able to report that all this is now changing with the advent of recruitment drives among British women, new payscales, crèche facilities, and improved career structures. So it is hoped that before very long, a policewoman of the rank of Detective Sergeant or above will be included in every inquiry relating to a Hollywood-style gynocide.

That represents the view from the bridge. My own experience has been largely on deck. George Orwell mentioned nine cases of murder which he considered to have stood the test of time. Coincidentally I myself have been involved in nine investigations of murder. I doubt that any of them will stand something as mythologising as a test of time. I certainly hope that they do not. But there is one case which I do propose to describe to you as an example of the investigative two-dimensionality I’ve been referring to.

On the face of it we were presented with a fairly typical case of Hollywood gynocide. A maniac was terrorising the women of a university town in southern England, killing eight women within as many months. His modus operandi was to beat his victim unconscious, drag her to some quiet, secluded spot where he would strangle her, and then gratify himself in her lifeless mouth. Perhaps the strangest feature of the case, and what partly distinguished it from the more usual kind of recreational killing, was that when he had finished he would insert two batteries into the dead woman’s vagina.

Male colleagues working on the case adopted a typical phallocentric view of this last item of behaviour, as was clear from the nickname they soon gave to the killer: the Everready Man. Familiar as they were with the kind of pornography in which foreign objects are routinely inserted into a woman ab vaginam as penis substitutes, these male police officers saw little that was particularly significant about two dry-cell alkaline batteries. And beyond making a few enquiries among the town’s electrical retailers, these police officers made no real attempt to try and comprehend this, the most unusual feature of the murderer’s working method. There was even a tacit assumption among them all that the batteries were dead — the sub-text of this being the thought that nobody would waste a good battery on something like a dead woman’s vagina.

It was female police personnel working on the case who first thought of establishing whether or not these were new batteries. In fact, we later discovered that they were purchased specially for the murders. It was also our theory, also verified after the killer was in custody, that there was nothing at all phallic about the insertion of batteries into the woman’s vagina; and that having rendered the woman lifeless for his sexual purposes, the killer then sought to bring her back to life, to re-energise her with a fresh source of power, like a portable disc player.

Yet another unusual feature of the case, and what once again illustrates the two-dimensionality of including women in all serial gynocide investigations, was the significance of the times when all the victims were killed. It was always between 10.30 and 11.30 at night.

I’ll return to this fact in just a moment. But first let me go back to the beginning of the investigation when, as a matter of routine, the names of all sex offenders in the area during the previous twelve months were called up on the computer. Police constables questioned these men with a view to establishing their alibis. (I should also add here that this case took place prior to the inclusion of the genetic fingerprint on identity cards.) One man in particular, a twenty-nine-year-old male who had tried to rape a woman in a park where subsequently one of the murder victims was found, drew the interest of the male officer leading the inquiry. Meanwhile, I and another officer continued to make enquiries among the area’s previous sex-offenders.

It was while questioning a forty-two-year-old single man called David Boysfield, convicted of exposing himself in a local department store, that I noticed several copies of one particular issue of a woman’s magazine. Perhaps it is significant that my male colleague did not notice this. Not that there is anything wrong with a man reading a woman’s magazine. But all the same it made me curious to find out just a little more about Boysfield. And when I looked up the facts of his case it appeared that he had been in the store’s electrical department when the indecent exposure took place. What was even more interesting was the evidence of one witness which seemed to indicate that Boysfield had not exposed himself in the direction of the female members of staff, but to a number of television screens.

By now I was really curious and checking back through the television company’s broadcast sheets of the day of the offence, I discovered that a programme featuring a well-known television newsreader, Anna Kreisler, had been broadcast around the time that Boysfield was in the store. Indeed the programme was devoted to raising money for charity and at one stage Anna Kreisler had stripped naked for a telephonic pledge of one million EC dollars. It was Anna Kreisler who had also appeared on the front cover of the magazines I had seen in Boysfield’s apartment. More checking now revealed that she had been reading the ten o’clock news on every night when the killer had struck.

Obtaining a search warrant for the suspect’s home I found a number of pornographic magazines in which cut-outs of Ms Kreisler’s head had been glued onto other naked female torsos. I also found a personal televideodisc which Boysfield had used to watch his own custom-made pornographic movies using intercut footage of Ms Kreisler reading the news. And a masturbatory sex-mannequin, with Ms Kreisler’s voice, recorded off television, and a battery-powered suction-operated vagina. Both the videodisc player and the mannequin were found to be fitted with the same brand of batteries that had been found inside all eight murder victims. It appeared that, for want of a better term, Boysfield was a gadget-freak. His apartment was full of electrical appliances of every conceivable kind. Everything from an electric bottle opener, to an electric clothes-brush, and an electric fishfilleter. It was quite clear that in Boysfield’s gadget-run world, women had been reduced to the status of mere domestic electrical appliances.

A forensic DNA profile subsequently confirmed that Boysfield had restriction fragment length polymorphisms that were identical with the killer’s. He later confessed that he had killed all eight women after watching Anna Kreisler read the TV news. Obsessed with her, he had for a long time satisfied himself by exposing himself to Kreisler’s head as it appeared on his own high definition television screen. He fantasised about having oral sex with her, and so when after a while he could contain himself no longer and he started to attack women, he sought to ejaculate within the mouths of his victims. Boysfield was able to escape a sentence of punitive coma by virtue of the fact that his insertion of the batteries into the vaginas of his victims was deemed to have proved that he could not have had an intention permanently to deprive them of life. Boysfield is now detained indefinitely in an asylum for the criminally insane.

Of course, two-dimensionality works two ways. Just in case any of you were under the impression that I don’t think too highly of my male colleagues, I should like to say this: only a few weeks ago, in a situation that I myself had completely misjudged, it was only the quick-thinking of a male colleague which prevented me from being killed or seriously injured. Incidentally this was the same colleague who accompanied me to Boysfield’s apartment and failed to notice the women’s magazines there.

Earlier on I described the incidence of the Hollywood-style gynocide as a virtual epidemic. I did not exaggerate. European Bureau of Investigation statistics show that serial sex-killings in the EC have increased dramatically, by over 700 per cent, since 1950. Last year there were an estimated 4,000 such murders in the Community, comprising over 20 per cent of all Europe’s homicides for the year. Not only that, but the EBI estimates that even now there are at the very least 25 and possibly as many as 90 active killers of this type roaming the EC.

People still talk about Peter Sutcliffe, the so-called Yorkshire Ripper, who killed thirteen women during the 1970s, and Jack the Ripper, who killed six. But there are people out there now killing twenty or thirty people, or more. And while the victims continue predominantly to be female, it behoves women everywhere not to leave it to men to try and put a stop to it.

Of the other seventeen Community members, only Denmark, Sweden, Holland and Germany show any signs of adopting the British model of the two-dimensional gynocidal inquiry. To those other member countries whose police forces remain resolutely patriarchal, not to say macho, I say this: unless you wish forever to categorise women as potential victims, you must permit them to abandon whatever submissive role you have historically kept them in, so that they may become joint custodians of our society’s future health. Thank you.

The audience applauded politely as Jake finished her speech and having acknowledged the applause for no longer than seemed modest, she stepped down from the rostrum and returned to her seat. The conference chairman, a fat German bureaucrat with an expensively-cut pink suit that did a great deal to disguise his bulk, came back to the microphone.

‘Thank you, Chief Inspector,’ he said in English. Some of the women in the audience, enthusiastic for Jake’s brand of feminism, continued clapping for another minute which obliged the chairman to pause before adding, ‘That was most informative.’

‘Yes indeed it was,’ said Mark Woodford, as Jake found her seat beside him. ‘A little strident in some parts, but I suppose that’s only to be expected considering the subject matter.’ He glanced around the auditorium uncertainly and chuckled. ‘Even welcomed.’

‘I’m sorry?’

Woodford’s smooth English features took on a devious aspect as he folded his arms and stared up at the vaulted mosaic ceiling, reminiscent of some early-Christian basilica, except that the scene depicted was a modern one reflecting Frankfurt’s history: Charlemagne, Goethe, the Rothschilds, and Marcuse all meeting up in one uneasy group against a sky-blue background, as if they had been waiting for God to put in an appearance and offer judgment.

Jake regarded Woodford’s aquiline, inbred-looking and horizontal profile. Was there not some resemblance there to the King? she asked herself.

‘It’s always nice to show the French, the Italians, and the Spaniards lagging behind us in something or other,’ he murmured. ‘ “Patriarchal, not to say macho.” Yes, I liked that.’ His head dropped forward again as he caught sight of his Minister out of the bottom of his eye.

‘Ah now it’s the Minister’s turn. This should be good, don’t you think?’ He pointed to the title of the lecture as it appeared in the program resting on his thigh. ‘ “Retribution: the theme for a new century.” That should get ’em going.’

Jake nodded but stayed silent. She didn’t much care for the Minister’s Old Testament view of crime and punishment. No more than she cared for the Minister’s private secretary.

Woodford glanced at the empty seat beside him as the Minister, a tall handsome black woman wearing a well-tailored lilac suit, joined the German at the microphone. In their expensive, pastel-coloured outfits they looked like two exotic cagebirds.

‘Gilmour’s going to miss this,’ remarked Woodford. ‘If he’s not careful.’

Jake leaned forwards on her chair to look across Woodford’s negligible stomach. Until now she had not noticed that Gilmour was absent from his seat.

‘Where is he?’ she asked.

‘File a message on his portable computer and see if you can find out what’s keeping him.’

Jake retrieved her shoulder bag from the floor and took out her own PC. She unfolded the envelope-sized screen and tapped out Gilmour’s name and number on the miniature keyboard. After only a few seconds the word ‘responding’ appeared on the grey-green glass.

‘Woodford wants to know what’s keeping you,’ Jake typed. ‘Minister’s about to start speech. Sure you wouldn’t want to miss it.’

‘Indeed not,’ came the silent and, Jake suspected, sarcastic reply. ‘But looks as if another man from the Lombroso Program been murdered. Need to make some calls.’

Mark Woodford, reading over Jake’s shoulder, sighed and shook his head. ‘She’s not going to like this,’ he said quietly as the Minister cleared her throat and took hold of the lectern. ‘Better tell your APC to set up a pictophone conference with the UK. I want the officer in charge of the case on the satellite as soon as possible.’

Jake typed out what the Minister’s secretary had said and, motivated exclusively by a desire to escape what was coming, added her own offer of help. She sent the message and watched the blinking cursor expectantly.

‘No thanks,’ came Gilmour’s reply. ‘You stay and enjoy Mrs Miles’s lecture.’

Out of the corner of her eye Jake checked to see that Woodford was not looking over her shoulder. But all his thoughts were for his Minister now, with a face that was as proud and attentive as a parent at a school nativity play. Jake wrote, ‘Lucky old me’, sent the message and then returned the PC to her bag.

Jake had the impression that Grace Miles MP didn’t much care for her. The Junior Home Office Minister seemed to be one of those women who preferred only male colleagues and, since there were eight male bureaucrats in the Police Department responsible for scrutinising the activities of 45,000 employees at the Yard, on matters of law enforcement at least, any such preference would have been easily accommodated.

Gilmour’s decision to choose Jake to accompany him to the conference had, she suspected, been as much inspired by a desire to irritate Mrs Miles as by the wish to demonstrate the equal opportunities of the Metropolitan Police Force. He had warned Jake it would be difficult. Now she knew why. Gilmour had told Jake that it had been the Minister’s own wish that Jake’s speech should precede her own, in the disappointed expectation that she would make a mess of it, leaving Mrs Miles to provide a comparatively expert demonstration of how to handle a conference.

In the event the Minister’s account of the failure of deterrence as a suitable basis for a modern theory of law enforcement did not meet with the enthusiastic response she had expected, leaving everyone with the distinct impression that she had been upstaged by a mere police officer. And so Jake was not deceived by Mrs Miles’s appreciation of her efforts when they saw each other again at the meeting which Gilmour had convened at Woodford’s instruction.

‘A very good effort, Chief Inspector,’ said Mrs Miles as she took her place at the head of the table. ‘Sounds to me as if you must have been on one of these public-speaking courses for beginners.’

‘You flatter me, ma’am,’ said Jake, adroitly, knowing that had not been her intention.

Mrs Miles smiled vaguely in the hope that the ambiguity of her remark might linger with Jake a little. But Jake, seating herself beside the Assistant Police Commissioner, ignored it.

Mark Woodford nodded at Jake and Gilmour, then introduced the man who had followed him into the room, and was now closing the door behind him.

‘I’m sure we all know Professor Waring,’ he said. ‘I’ve asked him to join us because of his keen interest in all aspects of the Lombroso Program.’

That was understating it, thought Jake. Waring was Professor of Forensic Psychiatry at Cambridge University and the Government’s principal advisor on crime prevention strategies. It had been Waring who had chaired the committee which produced the report recommending the Lombroso Program’s implementation.

‘Yes, of course,’ said Gilmour. ‘I should have thought to invite you.’

Waring shook his head at the APC as if to say that these smaller etiquettes were of no consequence to him.

Woodford consulted his wristwatch and nodded at the empty flickering screen of the pictophone. ‘What time are we expecting the call?’ he asked Gilmour.

The APC checked his own watch. ‘About two minutes from now,’ he said. ‘Detective Superintendent Colin Bowles of the Birmingham City Police will be making the report.’

‘Birmingham?’ Mrs Miles said tersely. ‘Did you say Birmingham?’

‘That’s right, ma’am.’

‘Exactly where in Birmingham was the body found?’ she demanded impatiently.

‘Well until I’ve heard Bowles’s report...’ Gilmour shrugged.

‘The Minister’s constituency is in Birmingham,’ explained Woodford.

The pictophone buzzed loudly. Gilmour, holding the remote control, pressed a button and a bald man, aged about fifty and still straightening his tie, came onto the screen. The small camera lens on top of the set in Frankfurt began to turn as it automatically focused on a wide shot of everyone seated round the table.

‘Make your report, Superintendent,’ said Gilmour.

Bowles’s eyes flicked between the sheet of paper in his hands and the camera lens on top of his own pictophone set. When he started to speak there was hardly any sound.

Mrs Miles groaned. ‘The bloody idiot’s still got the secrecy button switched on.’

Bowles coloured. The Minister might not have heard him, but he had certainly heard her. He picked up his own remote control and pressed a button. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. Then he cleared his throat and started to read again.

‘At approximately ten o’clock last night, the body of a thirty-five-year-old male Caucasian was found lying in an alley in Selly Oak Village.’

The Minister swore. Jake, who was aware that the Minister’s constituency was Selly Oak, cheered inside herself. Superintendent Bowles, faltering, glanced back at the camera uncertainly.

‘It’s all right,’ Woodford said smoothly. ‘Proceed with your report.’

‘Sir. The man had been shot six times in the back of the head between the hours of nine and nine-thirty. Following an examination of the body and the immediate vicinity by scenes-of-crime officers, the body was taken away for forensic examination. The pathologist subsequently removed six.44 calibre conical-conoidal air bullets, each weighing approximately forty grams and fired from a high-powered gas-gun at a range of less than ten metres. Death was more or less instantaneous.

‘The man was later identified as Sean Andrew Hill of Selly Oak Road, Birmingham. When the deceased’s particulars were entered onto the police computer at Kidlington HQ, the Lombroso computer automatically indicated that this was a person who had tested VMN-negative, codenamed Charles Dickens. This, and the killer’s modus operandi, leads us now to suppose that Hill was another victim of the same person who murdered Henry Lam, Craig Edward Brownlow, Richard Graham Swanson, Joseph Arthur Middlemass...’

‘Thank you, Superintendent,’ Gilmour interrupted. ‘There’s no need to read the whole list.’

‘Superintendent,’ said Woodford. ‘Have your scenes-of-crime people found anything?’ He pursed his lips and shook his head as if trying to find something to prompt Bowles. ‘Clues?’

‘Clues?’ Bowles looked pained at the very mention of the word. ‘No, sir, we haven’t found any of those.’

‘And what about witnesses?’ he continued. ‘Did anyone see or hear anything?’

Bowles smiled nervously as if suddenly aware that he was speaking to someone who had only the vaguest idea of what he was asking. ‘Unlikely they’ll have heard anything, sir,’ he said. ‘As I said before, the killer used a gas-gun to murder his victim. It’s totally silent.’ He nodded slowly. ‘But it’s early days and we’re still making our enquiries.’

‘Yes, of course.’ Woodford glanced around the table. ‘Anyone else?’

‘Perhaps the Detective Chief Inspector,’ the Minister said helpfully. ‘This is your field of expertise, isn’t it? What was that curiously tabloid phrase you employed in your lecture? “The Hollywood-style murder”, wasn’t it?’

Jake sat up in her chair. ‘With respect, ma’am, that refers exclusively to the recreational murder of women.’

‘But this is a case of recreational murder,’ Mrs Miles insisted. ‘I can’t see that it matters much whether it’s a man or a woman. Surely there must be some common denominators?’

‘I have no questions for the Superintendent,’ Jake said firmly.

‘Thank you, Superintendent, that will be all for the moment.’

Gilmour’s thumb ended the satellite link and for a moment the room was silent.

Jake appraised her surroundings. It was the kind of all too common meeting-room in which comfort had yielded to colour, geometry and functionality. The kind of room that made her feel like a plastic toy in some architect’s model. She wouldn’t have been at all surprised to have looked out of a window and seen tree-foliage that was made of foam rubber.

‘How many is it now, Mr Gilmour?’ asked Mrs Miles.

‘This makes the eighth killing, in as many months.’

‘I’m sure I don’t have to remind you of just how sensitive a matter this could become.’

‘No indeed, Minister.’

‘The Lombroso Program has cost millions of dollars,’ she continued. ‘True, it’s just part of the increased spending on law enforcement and crime prevention to which, time and again, this Government has committed itself. But it is perhaps the flagship of that general policy. It would be unfortunate if the Program had to be interrupted or even scrapped because of this maniac.’

‘Quite so, Minister.’

‘I cannot sufficiently underline just how electorally damaging it might be if the press were to make this thing public,’ she said. ‘The fact that the Lombroso Program itself is the only common factor in eight murders. You can see that, can’t you?’

Gilmour nodded.

‘But we can only keep the press off it for so long. Journalists have a nasty habit of going up against Government on this kind of thing. Even if it is something that’s covered by the Secrecy and Information Act.’

She glanced at Professor Waring who was occupied in the creation of an elaborate doodle on the triangular-shaped blotter in front of him.

‘And what do your inkblots tell us this time, Norman?’ she said crisply.

Waring continued with his doodle for a few seconds. He spoke slowly.

‘We’ve gone a little way past using the perception of unstructured forms as a diagnostic tool,’ he said punctiliously, adding a wry smile to the remark.

‘I want some ideas, Norman,’ she said. ‘If this psycho stops the Program your research might find it never recovers from the shock. If you receive my meaning.’

Waring shrugged with frustration. ‘With all due respect, Minister, we don’t yet know that he is a psycho.’ He looked meaningfully at Gilmour. ‘No more than the police know how to catch him. I’ve spoken about this matter with Professor Gleitmann on many occasions and he still has no idea how such a breach of security might have occurred. I myself am unable to imagine how such a thing might even be possible.’

‘Nevertheless,’ the Minister insisted, ‘it has happened.’

There followed another uncomfortable silence. This time it was Jake who ended it.

‘If I might make a suggestion—’

‘Yes, well that’s why we’re all here, Chief Inspector.’

‘Surely the fact remains that somehow a breach of the Lombroso Program’s security has occurred, whether one likes it or not. As I see it, the priority must be to establish whether that breach occurred from within or from without. Only when that question has been answered can an investigation properly proceed.’

Professor Waring returned to his doodle. ‘Chief Inspector,’ he said. ‘How much do you know about the Program?’

Jake shrugged. ‘Only what I’ve read in the newspapers, and seen on television.’

Waring began to score aggressively at the centre of his drawing. ‘Then have you any idea what it is that you are suggesting? The Lombroso computer system is highly sophisticated. To suggest, as blithely as you do, that it might be possible to breach the system’s security is almost as nonsensical as the idea that one of Gleitmann’s own staff could have something to do with this whole dreadful business.’

‘Nonsensical or not, sir, those are the only two logical possibilities.’

Waring snorted and shook his head impatiently. The doodle was starting to look more like an engraving.

‘What would you do, Chief Inspector Jakowicz?’ asked Mark Woodford. ‘If it was you who was in charge of this particular investigation?’

Jake ran through a few ideas in her head. Then she said: ‘Well, sir, the first thing I would do would be to have the Yard’s Computer Crime Unit assign me their best man. I’d have him take a look at the Lombroso computer and try to find out what happened. What I would also do—’ Jake hesitated for a moment as she wondered how best to approach her next suggestion.

Woodford was typing her ideas onto his PC. He looked up expectantly. ‘Yes?’

It seemed to Jake that there was no other way but to be direct. ‘ — is polygraph all the staff working on the Lombroso Program.’

Waring tossed his pen onto the table. As it bounced it left a little line of ink droplets on the polished walnut table. ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this,’ he snarled. ‘Chief Inspector, you cannot seriously think that one of Professor Gleitmann’s staff could be lying.’

He fixed her with a sharply-pointed stare which Jake did her hard-eyed best to blunt. ‘Either one of his staff, or Professor Gleitmann himself,’ she offered provocatively.

Waring let out a burst of indignant air which the Minister and her secretary seemed to find amusing. But Jake hadn’t finished.

‘With respect, sir,’ she said to Woodford, ‘it is the only logical course for any investigation while there continues to be an absence of any—’ She found herself half-smiling as she prepared to utter what was for her an infrequently used word. ‘—clues.’ The word prompted a picture of herself winding in a ball of thread to find her way out of a maze. ‘We must start from the inside and work out,’ she added. ‘The Program itself holds the key to establishing some kind of a pattern to these killings. But while we persist in trying to address only the exterior facts of each case, there will be no progress.’

To Jake’s surprise she found the Minister agreeing with her. ‘That’s the most sensible thing I’ve heard all day,’ said Mrs Miles.

‘Minister—’

She turned her handsome profile to Waring and silenced him with a wave of her heavily-ringed hand. Jake noticed a manicure that looked less than Ministerial. Mrs Miles had fingernails that were the shape and colour of pieces of orange peel.

‘No, Norman, the Chief Inspector’s correct. Perhaps that’s what this investigation really needs — a woman’s perspective, just as the Chief Inspector was telling us in her lecture this morning. After all, we don’t seem to have got very far with a man in charge of it, do we?’ Mrs Miles ignored Professor Waring’s attempt to interrupt her again. ‘Perhaps some of that attention to fine detail for which women are so distinguished is just what has been lacking until now.’ She smiled as she added, ‘And a little less phallocentrism around here certainly wouldn’t do any harm.’ She turned to the Assistant Police Commissioner.

‘John,’ she said. ‘I want you to make sure that Chief Inspector Jakowicz is assigned to take charge of this investigation. Is that clear?’

Gilmour nodded uncomfortably. He hated being told how to handle an inquiry by anyone, least of all a politician, and more especially, the Minister herself. But at the same time Gilmour had the feeling that what Jake had said was right and that she was indeed the right person for the job.

‘Is that all right with you, Chief Inspector?’ said Mrs Miles.

Jake, who was slightly taken aback at the speed of the Minister’s decision and the imperious way in which it had been communicated to herself and Gilmour, shrugged uncertainly. She thought of the enormous case-load waiting for her back at the Yard and of the consternation her new assignment would cause her superior, Chief Superintendent Challis. She thought of the pleasure that Challis’s consternation at being removed from the case would afford her and found herself nodding. ‘Fine by me, ma’am,’ she said. ‘However, I would like to keep my finger on the pulse of one particular investigation I’ve been handling.’ Jake was thinking of the lipstick on Mary Woolnoth’s body, her face battered to a pulp, and how much she’d like to catch the man who had killed her. ‘In fact, I should insist on it.’

Mrs Miles smiled broadly, revealing a row of perfect white teeth. It was a good smile. The sort of smile that won votes. The sort of smile that had helped Mrs Miles capitalise on her athletic career as a 100- and 200-metre Olympic Gold medallist and put her into the House of Commons at the early age of twenty-nine.

‘I have no problems with that,’ she said. ‘Good. That’s settled then. Mark?’

‘Minister?’

‘I want you to call Professor Gleitmann and tell him that he’s to extend the Chief Inspector and her team whatever cooperation she deems appropriate. You too, Norman? You got that?’

Waring nodded sullenly.

Mrs Miles stood up and walked like a big strong cat to the impossibly tall door, attended by her secretary. Waring followed at an embittered distance. On her way out, the Minister turned on her high heel, tightening the material of her already tight skirt against the curve of her muscular buttock and her pantieline.

‘Oh and Chief Inspector?’

‘Yes?’ said Jake.

‘Please don’t disappoint me. I want results. And I want them quickly. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that I usually get my way. But when I don’t I’m apt to be rather vindictive. Do you understand me?’

‘I think so, Minister,’ said Jake. She didn’t doubt that Grace Miles would make sure Jake’s career was effectively blocked and re-directed into one dead-end or another.

‘Well,’ said the APC when he and Jake were alone. ‘You walked right into that one.’

She smiled wryly. ‘Looks like it, sir.’

‘Oh I don’t doubt that you may have the right idea about this investigation and exactly how it should proceed. But I would hate to lose one of my best detectives merely because of the whim of a Junior Minister with a nettle down her panties. She doesn’t seem to like you very much. She might like to see you fall flat on your face with this particular inquiry.’

‘Maybe.’ Jake shrugged.

‘You know, I could always have a word with Sir MacDonald when we get back to London. Have him persuade Mrs Miles that he would rather someone else handled this.’ He rubbed the back of his neck. ‘What am I talking about? Someone else is handling this.’

‘Challis.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’d like to get this collar, sir,’ she said. ‘If I can.’

‘She affected you that much eh? The bitch. Well, if you’re sure you want to. I’ll back you all the way. But what am I going to tell Challis?’

‘How about telling him you want me to take charge of the day-to-day enquiries?’ Jake suggested. ‘That you think a fresh viewpoint is required. That you think he’s too important to get involved in the inquiry itself. Perhaps he could continue to exercise some kind of executive role.’

Gilmour grunted. ‘Doesn’t sound all that convincing,’ he said. ‘Never mind. I’ll think of something.’ He picked up his briefcase and placed it on his lap, before rummaging in its contents and withdrawing a box of computer disks. He thumbed one out and handed it to Jake.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘This’ll tell you everything you need to know about the Lombroso Program.’

For me, the realisation that I am a freak was not the result of a childhood’s accumulation of unkind remarks about my appearance. Nor, for that matter, was it the consequence of an inadvertently-placed mirror, a job-offer in a circus-sideshow, a horrified plastic-surgeon, or a callously disinterested schoolgirl. Rather the dawning was the outcome of an esoterically designed medical test for which I volunteered following a severe attack of the law and orders. One minute I was, to all intents and purposes, normal. Fifteen minutes later I was a medical curiosity occurring in only three cases in a hundred thousand.

The order of the number series is not governed by an external relation but by an internal relation.

Yes, indeed, internal. The essence of my freakishness cannot be perceived by the sense-data of others any more than I can perceive it myself. But of course it has been established empirically and therefore, from a phenomenological point of view, my freakish state is not a matter of simple apriorism, even if it has had the existential result of revealing my true situation in the world.

Of course, I always knew I was different. Nothing so ordinary as somatype — I am in fact the classic ectomorph. Were you to see me naked, you would be confronted with a thin, male body, of delicate build, and lightly muscled. It is possible that this may have been a contribtcting factor. According to Sheldon’s hypothesis, the dimensions of my ectomorphic, sand-kicked-in-my-face physique make me temperamentally inclined to the cerebrotonial personality type, which is characterised by self-consciousness, overreactiveness, and a preference for privacy. But then I also exhibit a few of the characteristics of the average somatotonial personality type, which is characterised by a desire for power and dominance, and which Sheldon associates with the more muscular, mesomorphic physical type. So let’s forget about anything so crude as my physical characteristics. Let’s agree that it has nothing to do with the kind of guy I am. This sort of thing really only works in Shakespeare.

Knowledge of my difference was quite naturally tempered with an awareness of what the philosophers tell us is simply solipsism — the theory that nothing exists except me and my mental states. So I have no real evidence to support the perception that I was different in that I considered my mental states to be unusual. Anyone else reading this account would doubtless be quickly able to judge whether or not my thought processes make me different. But since the essential nature of what I am writing is introspective then that’s really not much help either. Really, all I have to go on is the existence of an altogether separate psychopathological syndrome and a novel by Keith Waterhouse.

With Tourette’s Syndrome there exists such a disorganisation of thinking that the individual finds himself shouting out obscenities wherever he may be. Billy Liar describes the adventures of a young man who, strictly speaking, is not a liar at all, but merely suffers from an unfettered imagination which constantly causes him to construct elaborate fantasies — to alternate upon reality, as George Steiner has described this.

Consider then a combination of these two: Tourette’s and an uncontrolled fantasy world. Consider me.

A trip to the macromarket is a walk on the wild side. Mentally armed with a selection of military hardware I maim, rape and murder my way along the High Street. A dog tied to a lamppost and barking for its master makes an easy target for my Magnum.47. An old lady dragging her shopping-trolley behind her like a miniature chariot and impeding my self-important path is blasted aside with the hand-held rocket launcher. A grenade dropped into a busker’s guitar-case makes mincemeat of him and his instrument: the neck of the guitar, flying through the air, crashes through a car windscreen and then the head of the driver who has had the temerity to sound his horn at me. A child’s balloon is easily burst with a dab of my cigarette. A woman in a short, tight skirt is bent over the macromarket’s checkout desk, her underwear ripped off her quivering backside and then raped mercilessly from behind. A black man, dropping a handful of litter onto the pavement, is toasted with a short burst of my flame-thrower.

A series of pictures which Goya might have painted, or Michael Winner might have filmed.

A picture is a model of reality. A picture is a fact. It is impossible to tell from the picture alone whether it is true or false. All right then, I can compare it with reality. But there are no pictures which are true a priori. Whatever it is you happen to be thinking about.

To look at me of course you would think that I was probably a well-adjusted sort of person. Well we’re not talking Mr Edward Hyde here, let’s face it. Catch me trampling over some innocent child’s body to leave her screaming on the road. No way. I am courteous and well-mannered, opening doors for ladies and helping young mothers with their push-chairs on the escalators. The usual stuff. And though I say so myself, not bad looking, if a trifle thoughtful.

In Victorian times, Cesare Lombroso, the Italian criminologist, thought that criminality could be explained anatomically, using ethesiometer and craniometer to weigh and measure the skull. Not enough forehead or too much lower jaw were the visible indicators that you might be a wrong ’un. He was the first criminal anthropologist.

Nonsense of course. But while Lombroso was misled in attempting to explain criminality in relation to things like the size of a man’s nose, mouth and ears, subsequent neurological research has demonstrated that he wasn’t so very wide of the mark. When he laid open the skull of an Italian version of Jack the Ripper and perceived, on the internal occipital crest, a small hollow — a hollow which related to a still greater anomaly in the cerebellum (the hypertrophy of the vermis) and to which he later ascribed the propensity to degenerate criminality, he was onto more than even he could have realised.

Of course, Lombroso had still not grasped that the real pointer towards a man’s criminal tendencies lay not on the surface of the skull, but on the surface of the brain. What a pity he got sidetracked with all that nonsense about the habitual criminal’s earlobes.

As it happens my own earlobes are large and Lombroso (the first one) would very possibly have classed me as the criminal type. It’s perhaps just as well that no one can tell what’s going on inside your head. That is no one except the second Lombroso. And this is a kind of tautology.