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 café 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 cafés), 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.

Chapter 5

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?”