The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time (22 page)

Number four appeared.

Number four was a postman with a pushcart. A small bead of perspiration appeared on Dirk’s forehead as he began to realise how badly wrong his plan could go. And here was number five.

Number six was a different proposition altogether: a rather delicious-looking woman in jeans, with short, thick black hair. Dirk swore to himself and wondered if he hadn’t secretly meant six instead of five. But no. An undertaking was an undertaking, and he was being paid a lot of money. He owed it to whoever was paying the money to stick to whatever agreement it was that they hadn’t actually got. Number five was still standing there dithering on the street corner, and Dirk hurried quickly downstairs to take up the chase.

As he opened the cracked front door he was met by number four, the postman with the pushcart, who handed him a small bundle of letters. Dirk pocketed them and hurried out into the street and the spring sunshine.

He hadn’t followed anybody for quite a while, and discovered that he had lost the knack. He set off so enthusiastically in pursuit of his quarry that he realised he was walking far too quickly and would in fact have to walk straight past him. He did so, paused for a few confused seconds, turned, round, and started to walk back, which caused him to collide directly with his quarry. Dirk was so flummoxed to find that he had actually physically hit the person he was supposed to be stealthily tailing that in order to allay any suspicion he jumped onto a passing bus and headed off down Rosebery Avenue. This, he felt, was not an auspicious beginning. He sat on the bus for a few seconds, completely stunned at his own ineptness. He was being paid $5,000 a week for this. Well, in a sense he was. He became aware that people were looking at him slightly oddly. But not nearly as oddly, he reflected, as they would do if they had the slightest idea about what he was actually doing. He twisted round in his seat and squinted back down the road, wondering what would be a good next move. Normally, if you were tailing somebody, it was a problem if they unexpectedly jumped onto a bus, but it was almost more of a problem if you unexpectedly jumped on one yourself. It was probably best if he just got off again and tried to resume the trail, though how on earth he was going to look unobtrusive now, he didn’t know. As soon as the bus next came to a halt, he jumped off again and started walking back up Rosebery Avenue. Before he had gone very far, he noticed his quarry walking down the road in his direction. He reflected that he had managed to pick a remarkably helpful and cooperative subject, and better than he deserved. Time to get a grip and be a little more circumspect. He was almost at the door of a small cafe, so he ducked inside it.

He stood at the counter pretending to dither for a moment over the sandwiches until he sensed that the subject had passed.

The subject didn’t pass. The subject walked in and stood behind him at the counter. In a panic, Dirk ordered a tuna and sweetcorn roll, which he hated, and a cappuccino, which went particularly badly with fish, and hurried off to sit at one of the small tables. He wanted to be able to bury himself in a newspaper, but he didn’t have one, so he had to make do with his post. He pored over it intently. Various bills of the usual preposterous and wildly overoptimistic kind. Various circulars of the strange type that private detectives tended to receive—catalogues full of tiny electronic gadgets all designed to counteract each other; ads for peculiar grades of film or revolutionary new types of thin plastic strips. Dirk couldn’t be bothered with any of it, though he did pause for a moment over a flyer for a newly published book on advanced surveillance techniques. He screwed it up crossly and threw it on the floor. The last envelope was another bank statement. His bank had long ago got into the habit of sending them to him on a weekly basis, just to make the point, really. They hadn’t yet adjusted to his new sheen of solvency, or didn’t trust it. Probably hadn’t even noticed it, in fact. He opened the statement, still only half-believing.

Another .3,253.29. Last Friday. Incredible. Inexplicable. But there. There was also something else odd, though. It took him a moment or two to spot it, because he was keeping half an eye expertly trained on his subject, who was buying coffee and a doughnut and paying for it out of a fan of twenties.

The last entry on Dirk’s statement was for a cash withdrawal on his debit card:

.500. Yesterday. The statement had obviously been sent out at close of business yesterday, and it had the day’s transactions up to date. That was all very excellent and efficient and a fine testimony to the efficacy of modern computer technology, of course, but the fact was that Dirk hadn’t withdrawn .500 yesterday, or any other day for that matter. His card must have been stolen. Hell’s bells! He fished anxiously for his wallet.

No. His cards were there. Safe.

He thought about it. He couldn’t envisage any way in which a fraudster could make an actual cash withdrawal without the actual card. A horrible clammy thought suddenly grabbed his stomach. These were his own bank statements he’d been getting, weren’t they? He checked in alarm. Yes. His name, his address, his account number. He had double-checked the other ones last night, several times. Definitely his statements. They just didn’t seem to be his financial transactions, that was all.

Time to concentrate on the job in hand. He looked up. His quarry was sitting two tables away, patiently munching his bun and staring into the middle distance. After a moment or two he stood up, brushed some crumbs off his leather jacket, turned, and walked to the door. He paused for a moment, as if considering which way to go, and then set off the way he had been going, strolling casually. Dirk slipped his mail into his pocket and quietly followed.

He had picked a good subject, he soon realised. The man’s ginger hair shone like a beacon in the spring sunshine, so whenever he was briefly swallowed up in a crowd, it would only be a matter of seconds before Dirk would catch sight of him again, meandering idly along the street.

Dirk wondered what he did for a living. Not a lot, it seemed—or at least, not a lot today. A pleasant walk through Holborn and into the West End. Loafing around in a couple of bookshops for half an hour

(Dirk made a note of the titles his quarry browsed through), stopping for (another) coffee in an Italian cafe to glance through a copy of The Stage (which probably explained why he had so much free time for loafing around in bookshops and Italian cafes), and then a long, leisurely amble up through Regent’s Park and then across Camden and back toward Islington—Dirk began to think that this business of following people was really a rather congenial one. Fresh air, exercise—he was feeling in such tremendously good spirits by the end of the day that as soon he strode back in through his front door—or rather, his front polythene flap—it was instantly clear to him that the dog’s name was Kierkegaard.

SOLUTIONS NEARLY ALWAYS come from the direction you least expect, which means there’s no point trying to look in that direction because it won’t be coming from there.

This was an observation that Dirk mentioned a lot to people, and he mentioned it again to Kate that evening when he phoned her.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute,” she said, trying to wedge a phrase into his monologue and wiggle it about. “Are you telling me ...” “I’m telling you that the late husband of the woman who’s forgotten her dog’s name was a biographer.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute,” she said, trying to wedge a phrase into his monologue and wiggle it about. “Are you telling me ...” “I’m telling you that the late husband of the woman who’s forgotten her dog’s name was a biographer.”

”

“And I expect you know that biographers often name their pets after their subjects.”

“No. I ...”

“It’s so they’ve got someone to shout at when they get fed up. You spend hours wading through someone banging on about the teleological suspension of the ethical or whatever and sometimes you just need to be able to shout ‘Oh, shut up, Kierkegaard, for Christ’s sake.’ Hence the dog.”

“Dir ...”

“Some biographers use a small wooden ornament or a potted plant, but most prefer something you can get a good yap out of. Feedback, you see. Speaking of which, do I sense that you have an observation to make?” “Dirk, are you telling me that you spent all day following a total stranger?” “Absolutely. And I intend to do the same tomorrow. I shall be skulking near his front door bright and early. Well, bright at least. No point in being early. He’s an actor.”

“You could get locked up for that!”

“Occupational hazard. Kate, I’m being paid $5,000 a week. You have to be prepared to ...”

“But not to follow a total stranger!”

“Whoever is employing me knows my methods. I am applying them.”

“You don’t know anything about the person who’s employing you.”

“On the contrary, I know a great deal.”

“All right, what’s his name?”

“Frank.”

“Frank what?”

“No idea. Look, I don’t know that his name is Frank. His—or her—name has nothing to do with it. The point is that they have a problem. The problem is serious, or they wouldn’t be paying me a substantial amount of money to solve it. And the problem is ineffable or they’d tell me what it is. Whoever it is knows who I am, where I am, and precisely how best to reach me.”

“Or maybe the bank’s just made an error. Hard to believe, I know, but ...” “Kate, you think I’m talking nonsense, but I’m not. Listen. In the past, people would stare into the fire for hours when they wanted to think. Or stare at the sea. The endless dancing shapes and patterns would reach far deeper into our minds than we could manage by reason and logic. You see, logic can only proceed from the premises and assumptions we already make, so we just drive round and round in little circles like little clockwork cars. We need dancing shapes to lift us and carry us, but they’re harder to find these days.

You can’t stare into a radiator. You can’t stare into the sea. Well, you can, but it’s covered with plastic bottles and used condoms, so you just sit there getting cross. All we have to stare into is the white noise.

The stuff we sometimes call information, but which is really just a babble rising in the air.” “But without logic ...”

“Ah. So that’s what you’re doing.”

“Yes. Well, it’s solved one problem already. I’ve no idea how long it would have taken me to work out that the wretched dog was called Kierkegaard. It was only by the happiest of chances that my surveillance subject happened to pick out a biography of Kierkegaard, which I then discovered, when I checked it out myself, had been written by the man who subsequently threw himself off a crane with elastic round his legs.”

“But the two cases had nothing to do with each other.”

“Have I mentioned that I believe in the fundamental connectedness of all things?

I think I have.”

“Yes.”

“Which is why I must now go and investigate some of the other books he was interested in before getting myself ready for tomorrow’s expedition.”

“...”

“I can hear you shaking your head in sorrow and bewilderment. Don’t worry.

Everything is getting nicely out of control.”

“If you say so, Dirk. Oh, by the way, what does ‘ineffable’ actually mean?”

“I don’t know,” said Dirk tersely, “but I intend to find out.”

THE FOLLOWING MORNING the weather was so foul it hardly deserved the name, and Dirk decided to call it Stanley instead.

Stanley wasn’t a good downpour. Nothing wrong with a good downpour for clearing the air. Stanley was the sort of thing you needed a good downpour to clear the air of. Stanley was muggy, close, and oppressive, like someone large and sweaty pressed up against you in a tube train. Stanley didn’t rain, but every so often he dribbled on you.

Dirk stood outside in the Stanley.

The actor had kept him waiting for over an hour now, and Dirk was beginning to wish that he had stuck by his own opinion that actors never got up in the morning. Instead of which he had turned up rather eagerly outside the actor’s flat at about 8:30 and then stood behind a tree for an hour. Nearly an hour and a half now. There was a brief moment of excitement when a motorcycle messenger arrived and delivered a small package, but that was about it. Dirk lurked about twenty yards from the actor’s door.

The Motorcycle Messenger Arrival Incident had surprised him a bit. The actor didn’t seem to be a particularly prosperous one. He looked as if he were more in the still-knocking-on-people’s-doors bit of his career than in the having-scripts-biked-round-to-him bit.

He even consulted his own horoscope in one of the papers, the one written by a disreputable friend of his who toiled unscrupulously under the name of The Great Zaganza. First he glanced at some of the entries under other birth signs, just to get a feel for the kind of mood the GZ was in. Mellow, it seemed, at first sight. “Your ability to take the long view will help you though some of the minor difficulties you experience when Mercury ...,” “Past weeks have strained your patience, but new possibilities will now start to emerge as the sun ... ,” “Beware of allowing others to take advantage of your good nature.

Resolve will be especially called for when ...” Boring, humdrum stuff. He read his own horoscope.

“Today you will meet a three-ton rhinoceros called Desmond.” Dirk clapped the paper shut in irritation, and at that moment the door suddenly opened. The actor emerged with purposeful air. He was carrying a small suitcase, a shoulder bag, and a coat. Something was happening. Dirk glanced at his watch. Three minutes past ten. He made a quick note in his book. His pulse quickened.

A taxi was coming down the street towards them. The actor hailed it. Damn! Something as simple as that. He was going to get away. The actor climbed into the cab and it drove off down the street, past Dirk. Dirk swivelled to watch it, and caught a momentary glimpse of the actor looking back through the rear window. Dirk watched helplessly and then glanced up and down the street in the vain hope that ...

Almost miraculously a second taxi appeared suddenly at the top of the street, heading towards him. Dirk shot out an arm, and it drew to a halt beside him. “Follow that cab!” exclaimed Dirk, clambering into the back. “I been a cabbie over twenty years now,” said the cabbie as he slid back into the traffic. “Never had anybody actually say that to me.” Dirk sat perched on the edge of his seat, watching the cab in front as it threaded its way through the slow, agonising throttle of the London traffic. “Now that may seem like a little thing to you, but it’s interesting, innit?”

“What?” said Dirk.

“Anytime you see anything on the telly where someone jumps in a cab, it’s always ‘Follow that cab,’

innit?”

“Is it? I’ve never noticed,” said Dirk.

“Well, you wouldn’t,” said the cabbie. “You’re not a cabbie. What you notice depends on who you are.

If you’re a cabbie, then what you especially notice when you watch the telly,” continued the cabbie, “is the cabbies. See what the cabbies are up to. See?”

“But on the telly you never actually see the cabbies, see? You only see the people in the back of the cab.

Like, the cabbie’s never of any interest.” “Er, I suppose so,” said Dirk. “Um, can you still see the cab we’re supposed to be following?”

“Oh Yeah, I’m following him OK. So, the only time you ever actually ever see the cabbie is when the fare says something to him. And when a fare says something to a cabbie in a drama, you know what invariably it is.”

“Let me guess,” said Dirk. “Its ‘follow that cab’.”

“Exactly my point! So if what you see on the telly is to be believed, all cabbies ever do,” continued the cabbie, “is follow other cabbies.” “Hmmm,” said Dirk, doubtfully.

“Which leaves me in a very strange position, as being the one cabbie that never gets asked to follow another cabbie. Which leads me to the unmistakeable conclusion that I must be the cabbie that all the other cabbies are following.” Dirk squinted out of the window trying to spot if there was another cab he could switch to.

“Now I’m not saying thats whats actually happening, but you can see how someone might get to thinking that way, can’t you. Its the power of the media, innit?” “There was,” said Dirk, “an entire television series about taxi drivers. It was called, as I recall, Taxi.”

“Yeah. Well. I’m not talking about that, am I?” said the cabbie irrefutably. “I’m talking about the power of the media to selectively distort reality. That’s what I’m talking about. I mean, when it comes down to it, we all live in our own different reality, don’t we? I mean, when it comes down to it.” “Well. Yes. I think you’re right, as a matter of fact,” said Dirk uneasily. “I mean, you take these kangaroos they’re trying to teach language to. What does anone think we’re going to talk about? What are we gonna say then, eh? ‘So, hows the hopping life treating you then?’ ‘Oh fine. Musn’t grumble. This pocket down me front is a bit of a pain though. Always full of fluff and paperclips.’ It isn’t going to be like that. These kangaroos have got brains the size of a walnut whip. They live in a different world, see. It will be like trying to talk to John Selwing Gummer. You see what I’m saying?”

“Can you see the cab we’re following?”

“Clear as a bell. Probably be there before him.”

Dirk frowned. “Be where before him?”

“Heathrow.”

“How on earth do you know he’s going to Heathrow?”

“Any cabbie can tell if another cabbie’s going to Heathrow.”

“What do you mean?”

“You read the signs. Okay, so theres certain obvious thinks like the fare’s carrying luggage. Then theres the route he’s taking. Thats easy. But you say he may just be saying with friends in Hammersmith. All I can say is that the fare didn;t get into the cab in the manner of someone going to stay with friends in Hammersmith. So, what else do you look for. Well, here’s where you need to be a cabbie to know.

“What you notice depends on who you are.”

“You couldn’t happen to tell which flight he’s catching, could you?” asked Dirk. “Who do you think I am, mate,” retorted the cabbie, “a bloody private detective?” Dirk sat back in his seat and stared out of the window, thoughtfully.