A Philosophical Investigation: A Novel (10 page)

‘Your father too?’

‘No. Me actually. I used to design business software. Accounts packages, that kind of thing.’

‘Interesting,’ said Jake.

‘Not really. That’s why I joined the Met. To catch electronic burglars.’

‘The Lombroso people were pretty stiff about the suggestion that anyone could have broken into their system. But they were just as stiff about the idea of an inside job. What do you think? Is it possible, from the outside?’

‘Twenty years ago, when the UK Government installed the Government Data Network specification on all departmental computers, they thought it was impregnable. But within five years, the system was revealed to have more holes than a Russian condom. You see, systems are designed by people, and people are sometimes fallible, and sometimes corrupt. If you could eliminate the human element of the equation altogether then you could probably make a system that was completely secure.’ He shrugged. ‘The most probable case-scenario here? Someone was careless. Probably they change the password every day at this Brain Research Institute. Well that’s a double-edged sword. On one level it makes it difficult for someone to work out what the password could be by process of elimination. But it also makes it difficult for the people who work there to remember. Maybe someone writes the word down. Maybe he asks someone else to remind him. In this way an unauthorised person might catch sight of or overhear the password. And then he’s in. It could be that simple.’

Cormack lit a small cigar. Smoking was forbidden anywhere in the building, but with the door shut, nobody was likely to make a fuss about it except Jake herself and Cormack knew that so long as she was asking favours from his department she would not object to it.

‘Of course, having got into the system he then has to understand its language. He’d need a protocol analyser.’

‘What’s that?’

‘A protocol is a set of rules. An analyser is a portable device with its own miniature screen and keyboard. Looks much like that computer on your lap. Bigger maybe. This examines the target system’s telephone line or the port itself and carries out tests to see which of the hundreds of datacomm protocols are in use. A good one, fully digital, will handle asynchronous or synchronous transmissions. Some of them even have dedicated hacker’s software to make the whole process even easier.’

Jake was relieved when the intercom on Cormack’s desk buzzed noisily. Technical explanations like this one left her feeling short of air. Cormack stabbed the answer button as if it was a midge which had been irritating him.

‘Detective Sergeant Chung, sir,’ said a voice. ‘You said to buzz you.’

‘Yat, I want you to come up to my office,’ he said, so loudly that he hardly seemed to require an intercom at all. ‘Someone I want you to meet.’

Cormack released the button and pointed the same finger at Jake.

‘Just a word or two about Yat,’ he said, frowning. ‘He’s a bit of a grumpy bastard. Like most Hong Kong Chinese, he’s had a pretty rough time of it. Came here when he was a kid, when the colony folded. But - well you know what I’m talking about.’

Jake who still remembered watching the whole tragic affair on television knew very well what Cormack was talking about. The return of the colony to Communist China had been achieved with a spectacular degree of inefficiency and injustice. At the same time, Jake hated the idea of having to persuade people to do what they were supposed to do anyway. She didn’t much care to tiptoe round the feelings of people who thought that their sex or race gave them special privileges. New Scotland Yard was full of that kind of bullshit.

‘I’m sure we’ll get on just fine,’ she said coolly. ‘Just as long as he gives me his best work.’

 

 

It never seemed to rain anymore, thought Jake as the police car taking her and Yat Chung to the Brain Research Institute crawled slowly along the dusty streets. Here it was, the middle of winter and the previous summer’s water-rationing was still in force. In some parts of southern England they had been taking their water from stand-pipes for over five years now. She wondered what the slight little man sitting beside her thought about it. He lived near Reading, in the centre of the main drought area. After living in Hong Kong, he was possibly used to taking water from a communal tap. She wondered if he would have laughed at the suggestion. Considering the matter a second time she thought it seemed unlikely that he would have laughed at all. Cormack had not exaggerated about Yat Chung’s temperament. He seemed to possess a temper that was the equal of any of three killers Jake had helped send into punitive coma.

‘I don’t believe this fucking country,’ he snarled as once more the car came to a halt. It had taken them fifteen minutes to drive fifty metres.

‘What don’t you believe about it?’

‘Fucking traffic for one thing,’ he said, hardly looking at her.

‘Yeah, well we’d have walked but for all your computer equipment. It’s not like this place is very far away.’

‘Fucking people for another.’

Furious at something, he jerked his head in the direction of an enormous crowd of people who were waiting to get on a bus.

‘Look at them all. Why doesn’t someone do something?’

‘It wasn’t always this bad,’ Jake said drily. ‘I remember a time when life in this city was really quite tolerable.’

‘Yeah? When was that then?’

‘Before 1997.’

‘And then all us fucking lot turned up, eh?’ He grinned quite unexpectedly. ‘You’re one fucking funny lady.’

Jake smiled back. She disliked being called a lady almost as much as she disliked being called a fucking funny one.

‘Don’t think I don’t appreciate the compliment,’ she said. ‘But I’d rather you watched your fucking language a little more when you’re with me, please.’

‘My language wasn’t always this bad,’ said Yat. ‘Before 1997, it was really quite tolerable.’

He laughed so heartily at his own joke that for a moment Jake found herself wondering if he could be quite as expertly familiar with computers as Cormack had said: there was a crude aspect to him that seemed to be quite at odds with the very idea of something as precise as a computer.

Out of the corner of her eye she toyed with the complexity of trying to describe him, supposing, for whatever reason, a police description had been required. Slim, medium height, aged about thirty-five, wearing an expensive-looking navy blue tracksuit with the sleeves rolled up his bony forearms. Then what? His face was young, almost childlike. The skin enviably smooth and soft-looking. Pretty much like any other young man from Hong Kong. It made her think about what it was to try and construct a description. Of how much more it was in the eye of the beholder, an internal as opposed to an external thing. Any description of another human being could reveal as much about the person who was constructing it as the person being described.

At last they pulled up outside a building of gold-hued plate-glass, reflecting the afternoon sky as if it were really some kind of meteorological centre. A jet moved from one side of the refractive edifice to the other, followed closely by a flight of silent pigeons and the disturbing speed of a bank of cloud. Coming up beside her, Yat followed the line of Jake’s gaze.

‘Does heaven always move like this for you?’ he asked.

She bit her lip and started purposefully towards the main, camera-controlled door. But Yat, insensitive to the rhythm and volume of Jake’s high heels which spoke volumes of her irritation, easily kept pace with her despite his several bags of equipment.

‘When you want the earth to move for you, just speak to me, right?’ He grinned suggestively.

Jake made the door first and held it open for him. As he passed through, she said, ‘Cormack tells me that you’re a bloody genius with computers. You’d better start proving it, Yat boy.’ She followed him up to the security desk and added, ‘I’ve got nothing personal against your kind. But I could make an exception in your case, Sergeant. Understand?’

He sneered back at her. ‘Trouble with you whiteys, you got no sense of humour.’

The Brain Research Institute was located in an intelligent building, with its own central computer controlling the lighting, security, temperature and telephone system. The building did more or less everything itself, from locating a fire and calling the fire brigade, to acting as the Institute’s receptionist. While Chung put the bags through the X-ray machine, Jake typed out their details onto the screen of the reception computer, which then told them to wait until someone could collect them. After a minute or so a thermal printer produced a couple of security passes which they affixed to their jackets. At the same time, a lift door opened and an immensely tall man wearing a white coat and a poorly-shaven face advanced to greet them, his outstretched hand extending from a shirt cuff that barely concealed what looked like a combination suit of body hair.

Jake almost gagged with disgust. Hirsuteness was the thing she found most physically repellent in men.

‘David Gleitmann,’ declared the lugubriously-faced man. ‘I’m Professor of Neuro-endocrinology here. I run the Research Institute and the Program.’

Jake introduced herself and Sergeant Chung who grunted and pointedly looked in the opposite direction. She had known him for less than an hour and already she felt like coshing him to a pulp.

The lift carried them to the top floor.

Womb-like: that was Jake’s thought as she followed Gleitmann into his office. The walls were the same shade of beige as the floor and the ceiling, and but for the expensive hardwood furniture, you could have turned the room upside down or sideways and inhabited it just as easily. What at first impression looked like windows were flat, rectangular-shaped lights. And although it was equally modern in its origin, the furniture had a slightly classical air about it, all plinths, cross-beams and arches, as if having once belonged to some mediaeval Greek philosopher, an effect which was enhanced by some enormous leather-bound books which lay on the floor like a pile of paving slabs. A free-standing bookcase that was the size and shape of a pagan family shrine occupied each of the room’s seven corners. Another man was already seated at the refectory-sized table. He stood up as they came into the office and Gleitmann introduced him as Doctor Stephen St Pierre. The computer man, Jake said to herself, noting only that he seemed nervous.

Gleitmann offered them coffee. Yat Chung announced that he would prefer tea and then avoided his superior’s eye as she tried to glare balefully at him.

They seated themselves at Gleitmann’s table, with Yat Chung several places away from the other three, almost as if he didn’t wish to be part of the meeting. But Jake noticed his renewed interest in being there when Gleitmann’s secretary, a beautiful Chinese, arrived bearing a tray of refreshments, which included Yat’s tea. She watched the sergeant’s eyes following the girl out of the door and approved of his taste. The girl was worth the look.

‘I’ve been told by the Home Office people that I’m to extend you every facility,’ Gleitmann stated with apparent discomfort.

‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ Jake said politely. Whether you mind or not, she said to herself.

Gleitmann stretched his lower lip against a perfect row of teeth and then bit it. ‘Mark Woodford mentioned something about everyone having to take a polygraph.’

‘That’s right. Detective Sergeant Jones from my investigating team will be handling that part of the inquiry. But I’d like him to carry out the tests as quickly as possible.’ She opened her bag, took out a packet of sweeteners and then added one to her coffee. ‘When can I tell him to bring his equipment?’

She saw Gleitmann exchange a brief look with St Pierre, who shook his head and then shrugged.

‘Whenever you like, Chief Inspector,’ Gleitmann sighed. ‘If you think it’s really necessary.’

‘I do,’ Jake said firmly. ‘Tell me something, Professor: are you still carrying out testing within the context of the Lombroso Program?’

‘I’ve certainly had no instructions to say that I should stop.’ He tapped the ends of his long fingers together as if waiting to be contradicted. Jake said nothing. ‘That is correct, isn’t it? There has been no order from the Home Office telling us to stop.’

Jake noticed the way a singular had been transformed into a plural. This was an obvious sign of weakness and she decided to take advantage of it.

‘It’s hardly a question of needing an order, surely,’ she said. ‘Under the circumstances I should have thought that you yourself might wish to call a halt to the Program. At least until Detective Sergeant Chung has had a chance to determine the origin of the security breach.’

‘I can’t see how that would help.’ This was Doctor St Pierre. ‘I think we have to assume that the killer is already possessed of all the information he or she requires.’

‘In my experience, it’s safer not to assume anything with this type of killer,’ said Jake, glancing negligently at her fingernails. ‘But if there are any assumptions to be made, Doctor, I’ll make them, if you don’t mind.’

‘But surely, Chief Inspector, stopping the Program now would be a case of shutting the stable door - ’

Chung frowned, uncomprehending, as Gleitmann neglected to complete the saying.

‘Your assumption is that the killer’s familiarity with the Lombroso Program data is not current. I don’t think that it’s valid to decide that he, or she (although I believe that we are dealing with a man), no longer has access to the system, albeit unauthorised access. Until we know how system security was broken I would suggest that by continuing to make tests, you could be putting even more men at risk.’

Gleitmann stirred his coffee thoughtfully. ‘I’m afraid I can’t agree with you there,’ he said flatly. ‘If you want to put a halt to the Program, I think you’ll have to take it up with the Home Office.’

Jake shrugged. ‘Very well then.’