The Salmon of Doubt

“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.

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.