Ian Sansom - The Case of the Missing Books

'Yes. Thank you. That's…good advice,' said Israel, who had edged himself off the seat and was moving back slowly towards the front door.

'And I don't expect to see your face ever again!' called Norman, looking down on Israel, the saucepan still in his hand, as Israel scurried quickly down the concrete steps and towards the sanctuary of the mobile library.

'Well,' said Israel, to try and calm himself, once he was safely back behind the wheel of the van, 'that went well.' Except for the hubcaps: Norman had been right about the hubcaps.

He shook all the way back to Tumdrum, his guts and his glasses jiggling and his nerves jangling, thrashing the old van up to 50 mph, and he did his best to park up neat and straight in Tumdrum's town square-there was quite a bit of play in the steering wheel, and the brakes were a little sloppy but he managed finally to bring the van to a halt across three bays at a slight angle-and when he turned off the ignition he took a long deep breath, a swig from his bottle of water, and a couple of Nurofen.

Maybe he wasn't cut out for life as a private investigator after all. He probably needed to drink more, or have some more interesting quirks and tics and characteristics: it was a shame he hadn't done time in prison or been a former heroin addict. He had done detention a few times at school, and he'd once been in a room where people were smoking dope, years ago-Russians, in the kibbutz-but that hardly seemed sufficient. By the time he'd mulled over his lack of extraordinary tics and quirks and composed himself and was ready to get out of the van, though, Israel was faced with a more immediate and more pressing problem: a queue had formed at the back of the mobile library, a dozen middle-aged and elderly women with carrier bags waiting to get in.

Israel saw them in his wing mirror, so he got up and out and shut the door to the van quietly behind him and tried to creep away unnoticed round the front.

'Hey?' called a woman, peeking round. 'Mister? Are yous not opening her up here?'

'Who, me?'

'Yes, course you. You opening her up?'

'No. Erm. Sorry,' said Israel. 'I'm just parking here for a moment.'

'This is the mobile library?'

'Yes,' agreed Israel.

That was true. There was no avoiding that. It was incontrovertible: the sign on the side of the van read MOBILE LIBRARY, with a witty coda painted across the back in a style and font last seen in the late 1970s, THE BOOK STOPS HERE!

'You can't just be parking up the library and not expecting us to want in,' continued the woman, who was now joined by her cohort of carrier bag-clutchers.

'No,' agreed Israel. 'I suppose you can't. No. It's just, the library's not quite…ready, at the moment.'

'D'you know how long we've been without a library, but?' asked another woman, waving a blue plastic bag of fruit and veg accusingly towards him.

'Gosh. No. Quite a while though, I believe,' said Israel.

'Aye, right. And we pay rates just like them other yins,' chipped in another.

'Aye. Why should we not have the services they have?'

'Good question,' said Israel. 'Couldn't agree more, ladies. But I can guarantee that just as soon as the library's ready for action we'll be-'

'Aye, save your breath,' said another woman. 'We've heard it all before. Sure, you're all the same.'

'I can assure you, madam, that-'

'Who you calling madam?'

'Erm.'

'Are yous the new librarian?'

'Who?'

'Yous?'

'Me?' Israel looked over his shoulder: were there more of him?

'Yous!'

'Well,' said Israel, 'yes. Mes. Me, I mean, yes it is. I am. Although actually I'm what's called an Outreach Support Officer these days.'

'Aye. Right. A librarian?'

'Er. Yes,' agreed Israel.

The women stood and scrutinised him for a moment and came to their own conclusions.

'You don't look like a librarian.'

'Sure, it's him. Iqbal or Ishmael he's called, isn't he, or something?'

'Jamal?'

'No.'

'What are you called, love?'

'I thought he was Egyptian, isn't he?'

'It's Israel, actually,' said Israel, prodding his glasses in as authoratively librarian a manner as he could. 'My name. And I'm English.'

'Aye, well.'

'That figures.'

'Yes. Quite. Well. Good to have cleared that up. Anyway, I would love to chat more, and it's a pleasure to meet you all, but I am in a bit of a rush at the moment. Lots of books to collect.'

And here Israel had his brainwave-his means of escape.

'In fact, ladies,' he said, pressing his stomach threateningly out before him, 'if you do have any outstanding books that are overdue, and for which fines are owing, I would be glad to collect both the books and the monies from you now…'

And at the mention of library fines a hush fell over the little crowd of jostlers, and they began suddenly to drift away and before he knew it, Israel was alone again.

He'd have to remember that for when he was back home in London, although maybe it might not work with muggers.

He was in search of a mid-morning snack now, something to steady his nerves after his encounter with Norman, and pretty soon he found what he was looking for: a café, on the corner of Tumdrum's central square. In bold gold lettering on red the sign above the entrance said ZELDA'S. He stepped inside.

The café was packed but it was eerily quiet except for the dense, wet sound of munching and the accompanying clacking of dentures, and the thin, slippery, slapping sound of the turning of the pages of books-almost everyone seemed to be reading. You might almost have been in a café in turn-of-the-century Vienna, or in 1960s Paris, except you very clearly were not, because people were reading large-print Catherine Cookson, for example, rather than Karl Kraus or Jean-Paul Sartre, and the air was thick with that distinctive, ever so slightly incontinent smell of provincial tea-rooms and community halls and garden centre cafés, rather than the smell of fresh coffee, Gitanes and freshly made pastries.

Israel squeezed himself onto a thick-varnished bench next to an elderly man who was wearing a combination of casual sports wear and a flat tweed cap, a curious but common combination locally, Israel had noticed, and not one that he had ever come across before, except in half-remembered Sunday Times black and white photo-spreads of Romany musicians and the aspiring middle classes of some of the former Soviet republics.

'Do you mind if I…' Israel said, indicating the seat.

The man regarded Israel suspiciously. 'S'free country,' he said. He may well have been a touring Romany musician; he was certainly enjoying his vast, Grauballe pavlova.

'Thanks,' said Israel. 'It's busy, isn't it?'

'Aye,' said the man factually, and then proceeded to pretend that Israel was somewhere else entirely and not in fact squeezed up close by him, thigh to thigh and cheek by jowl. He was reading Bravo Two Zero by Andy McNab.

A woman, who was presumably Zelda herself, came hurrying out from behind a high counter at the rear of the café to serve Israel. She was in her seventies-at least-but she strode purposefully and not a little menacingly across the marble-look lino floor towards him. She was wearing a white polo-neck jumper under a nylon, unnecessarily tailored black trouser suit, was in full make-up, and her nail varnish was a vivid-one might almost say a ghastly-green. Her long hair was dyed black, but still somehow streaked with grey, and piled high on her head, like an old, erect beaver's tail, possibly stuffed, or fixed with some kind of glue-mount.

'Sir?' she said. 'What can we do you for? Cup of coffee?'

Israel had not had a proper cup of coffee since leaving London, and he was getting withdrawal symptoms. He wasn't sure whether he could face another cup of instant.