Chapter 5
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.”
“But ...”
“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 ...”
“Logic comes afterwards. It’s how we retrace our steps. It’s being wise after the event. Before the event you have to be very silly.”
“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.”
Chapter 6
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.
Time dragged by. Dirk had read through the small collection of newspapers he’d brought with him twice, and checked through the contents of his wallet and pockets several times: the usual collection of business cards for people he had no recollection of meeting, unidentifiable phone numbers on scraps of paper, credit cards, cheque book, his passport (he had suddenly remembered that he had left it in another jacket when his quarry had paused for a longish time at the window of a travel agent yesterday), his toothbrush (he never travelled without his toothbrush, with the result that it was completely unusable), and his notebook.
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 through 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.