The Bad Book Affair: A Mobile Library Mystery

by Ian Sansom

  As he spoke, Israel’s eye wandered slowly from Katrina to the room in which he now found himself. Like the staff downstairs, Katrina was wearing a red polo shirt and red baseball cap—dyed blonde hair poked out the back. She wore powder blue eye shadow. And the room he was standing in seemed to be her bedroom. There was a low, thin, sick sofa in brown acrylic fabric pressed up against the left wall, a chipped and clawed white melamine wardrobe next to it. Big empty metal cans that had once contained cooking oil seemed to double up as furniture, with clothes slung on them, plates stacked up. The place stank of smoke and fat. In the middle of the room was a single bed with a faded purple padded headboard that people seemed to have been using for some time to stub out their cigarettes. A young man wearing a white tracksuit and a white baseball cap lay on the bed on a yellow blanket. A TV in the corner of the room was showing what appeared to be a zombie film, in which corpselike individuals in tattered clothing lurched, moaned, and grunted in a swaying crowd through a shopping mall.

  “This is…very cozy,” said Israel. “This is your…recreation area, is it?”

  “Recreation area!” Katrina laughed.

  “Well, I mean, where you all congregate for…”

  “We live here.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you work downstairs?”

  “Yes. We work downstairs and live here.”

  “That’s…handy, for work, then,” said Israel.

  “You want to live over a chip shop?”

  “No, not really,” said Israel.

  She gestured forlornly around her.

  “For this, we pay one hundred pounds,” she said.

  “A month?”

  “Week.”

  “One hundred pounds a week!”

  “Five of us living here. When it rains…” She pointed up at a cracked plastic skylight, which had been patched together with masking tape and cellophane tape.

  “Water. Falls down,” she said.

  “That’s terrible.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “But so?”

  “Who is he?” said the man on the bed.

  “A librarian,” said Katrina.

  “Librarian?” said the man. “You are going in the library?”

  “No,” said Katrina.

  “So why is he here?”

  “Erm. Let me explain. I’m just…I wondered if you’d seen Lyndsay Morris lately?”

  The man snorted, dismissively.

  Israel thought he might try another tack.

  “Where are you from? Poland?” He’d got to know some of the Poles working on the local farms. They walked up and down the coast road to and from work, wearing bulging fluorescent coats. He sometimes gave them a lift in the mobile library into Tumdrum, and he’d try to have conversations with them, the kind of conversation conducted in the abstract, consisting largely of questions such as “You like Northern Ireland?” and “How long have you been here?” And when they answered, the Poles had a faraway look in their eyes, like people who had lost something or had something taken away from them; it was an expression he recognized from the photographs in the silver frames of his parents, back home in London.

  “I’d love to visit Poland,” said Israel.

  “It’s very beautiful,” agreed the woman. “Cigarette?”

  “No,” said Israel. “In Poland, everybody still smokes, don’t they? It’s normal.”

  “I don’t know,” said Katrina. “I’m from Romania.”

  “Ah,” said Israel, slightly stumped. “Sorry. I thought you said you were from Poland?”

  “You said I was from Poland.”

  “Ah. Right. Sorry. And where are you from in Romania?”

  “You know Romania?”

  “No.”

  “So why do you ask?”

  “I just…Anyway.”

  “Where are you from?” said Katrina.

  “London,” said Israel.

  “London!” She laughed.

  “Yes,” said Israel.

  “I’ve been to London,” said Katrina.

  “Oh, have you?”

  “It’s like a big rubbish bin,” she said.

  “Well. Parts of it could certainly do with a bit of a—”

  “Too many immigrants,” said the man on the bed, as the zombies continued to roam abroad in search of human flesh.

  “Well, that’s certainly one way of looking at things…So how long have you been over here?”

  “You ask a lot of questions.”

  “Yes. Sorry.”

  “I thought you want to ask about Lyndsay?”

  “Yes. Yes. I do. I just wondered how long you’d known her.”

  “As long as we live here.”

  “Right.”

  “Not long.”

  “And how did you—”

  “I come here to study English,” said Katrina.

  “Your English is very good.”

  “Ha!” She laughed. “Everybody says that, and then they laugh when you speak a mistake.”

  “No. No. I’m sure that’s not right. Your English is really very good.”

  She smiled as though it was a great sadness.

  “So. Lyndsay? You know her quite well?”

  “I know her. She is my friend.”

  The man on the bed had sat up. His arms were burned up to the elbows from the chip fat and frying.

  “How long have you worked here?”

  “Six month.”

  “And you got to know Lyndsay while working here?”

  “Yes. She is a good person.”

  “Right.”

  “She helps me find babysitting.”

  “I see. You do babysitting as well as—”

  “I work here in evenings. And bar at night. During the day I clean. Day off, I do babysitting.” She counted the jobs off on her fingers.

  “Wow. That’s—”

  “I don’t like babysitting.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s worst.”

  “I would have thought—”

  “Most don’t ask my name. They don’t look at me. They don’t care. I could be anybody!” She laughed again. “They don’t know my name. And I am looking after your kids. There, in the house.”

  “Well,” said Israel.

  “In Romania, where I am from, your parents, to look after your children. If you are going out. Always. A relative. Or a friend. Not stranger. Never.”

  “Yes, I agree,” said Israel. “That certainly sounds more sensible.”

  “Bad job,” said Katrina.

  “Well, I’m sorry to—”

  “And the men, they do not pay.”

  “Do they not?”

  “Of course. Sometimes. We agree price. They come back—they’re eating dinner or drinking—and the man asks me how much money. And I say we agree twenty pounds, twenty-five pounds. For looking after their children! But he does not want to pay. And even after midnight when it is more money. And he gets—” She indicated something with her fingers.

  “Calculator,” said Israel.

  “Yes. Calculator. And the wife, she is gone. In bed. And the man says he will pay me ten pounds.”

  “I see.”

  “Or he says he will pay twenty pounds, but I have to do something for him.”

  “What?”

  “Sex!” The man on the bed laughs.

  “Yes,” agreed Katrina. “He means sex with him.”

  “Oh god.”

  “His wife is bed, upstairs,” said Katrina.

  “That’s terrible,” said Israel. “I’m so sorry.”

  She blew smoke up toward the ceiling. “Is not your fault.”

  “No, but…”

  “What do you want to know about Lyndsay?”

  “Well, I don’t really…Anything, really.”

  “She was nice.”

  The man on the bed nodded his head in agreement.

  “I like her. She help me with things.”

  “And did sh
e have any boyfriends, or…”

  “Yes, of course. Boyfriends. She is pretty.”

  “Yes. Anyone in particular?”

  Katrina looked at the man. The man looked back.

  “You don’t know anybody we know this.”

  “No. No. Of course.”

  “We think Gerry.”

  “Gerry who?”

  “The boss.”

  “She was friendly with the boss?”

  “Yes. He used to give her a lift home.”

  “I see.”

  “In his Mercedes.”

  “Oh.”

  “He pick her up, night she disappear.”

  “In his Mercedes?”

  “Yes.”

  “You saw him pick her up?”

  “I see the car,” said the man on the bed.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Mercedes.” The man nodded his head.

  “Did you tell the police?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to lose my job.”

  “But what if Lyndsay’s been…”

  “What can I do?” said the young man.

  “What’s he like, this Gerry?”

  Katrina hesitated in her answer.

  “He’s a bad man.”

  “Really?”

  “Bad,” piped up the young man on the bed.

  “I see.”

  “DVDs. Computer things. His other business. Illegal. Friend of ours. He was caught by police. He go back to Romania.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “Did you tell the police?”

  Katrina laughed.

  “We’re just immigrants.”

  “And you’re a librarian!” said the man on the bed, laughing.

  “In Romania, I study literature,” said Katrina. “One day, I think I believe I will become great playwright! Like Ionesco. And look! Here I am! You know Ionesco?”

  “No. Not really. I mean, I know—”

  “Rhinoceros? Everybody knows Rhinoceros.”

  “In Romania, everybody knows Rhinoceros,” echoed the man on the bed. “Schoolboys!”

  “Here,” said Katrina. “Nobody knows nothing.”

  “Anything,” said Israel.

  “What?”

  “Nobody knows anything, that’s the…”

  “Nobody knows anything!”

  “Yes. Well, thanks.”

  “Nobody knows anything!”

  “‘Les morts sont plus nombreux que les vivants. Leur nombre augmente. Les vivants sont rares,’” said Katrina.

  “Yes,” agreed Israel, assuming that she’d told him a joke. “Very good.”

  As he left the building he could still hear them laughing.

  He returned to his chicken coop.

  Rang Gloria.

  No reply.

  Lay on his bed.

  Wept.

  Decided it was time to go and see a doctor.

  15

  While Israel was doing his best for the cause of international relations, Veronica was doing her best with Tumdrum’s Independent Unionist candidate for Member of the Legislative Assembly, Maurice Morris.

  Maurice’s office was on the High Street in Rathkeltair, a street that boasted more clubs and takeaways than any other comparable small town in the north of the county. Which was quite a claim to fame. High Street had helped transform Rathkeltair into a weekend mecca for the young and hungry and thirsty of the north of the north of Ireland. On High Street, in just a few hundred yards, you could sample the culinary delights of pizzas, kebabs, chips, Chinese, and Indian food, some of it actually cooked by people from China and India or countries thereabouts. Stumbling out of or into one of the town’s renowned clubs—Club Foot, the Water-front, or the Destination—you could choose to eat in or out at the Great Wall, or the Pooh Ping Palace, or Yum Yums, or in Billy’s Fat Subs, the Bakehole, Gobble and Go, Nachos, Little India, Taste of the Taj, or half a dozen others of lesser renown. Indeed, some young people took it as a challenge on a Friday or Saturday night to eat in all of Rathkeltair’s popular eateries, often ending up in the Thai Tanic, a Thai restaurant and karaoke bar with a Titanic theme, which served, it was said, the best Thai curry chip in the whole of Ireland—evidence of such being often available on Saturday and Sunday mornings, before the road sweepers got to work clearing last night’s fun.

  Maurice’s office was up at the untakeaway end of the street, above Dennis McIlhone’s, the podiatrist, who advertised his business with a large pair of plaster of paris feet in the window, and below Alison Arden, the dentist, who advertised her business with a banner showing a blonde, lipsticked woman smiling with perfect white teeth. Maurice had chosen as his party symbol a heart, which had been produced in large sticky graphics and pasted up on the window. The building looked like a bizarre art installation.

  The big heart had been Maurice’s idea. As an Independent Unionist, according to his campaign literature, Maurice believed in Strong and Safe Communities, and in Quality Public Services, and Protecting the Environment and Maintaining the Union. But above all, Maurice believed in people. Or rather, Believed in People. And he had A Big Heart for the people of Rathkeltair and Tumdrum and county.

  In the reception area of Maurice Morris’s office (open 8:30–4:30 Monday to Friday) there were fluorescent and halogen lamps, beech-effect filing cabinets, a large wall-mounted plasma screen TV set on the usual magnolia walls, a vase containing some sad little drooping tulips, a laptop computer, a printer, and a shredding machine set up on furniture that looked as if it had been bought yesterday from a catalog—it had little tufts of plastic in hard-to-get-at corners. There were certificates and photographs on the wall, and a map of the area with ominous looking Post-it notes attached.

  Veronica was sitting on a bright blue office chair. Next to her—worryingly close to her—was Mickey Highsmith, a small, stout, tense man with an uneven mustache, prominent bulging eyes, and the active hand movements of an ex-smoker, who was Maurice Morris’s election agent and handler. He was briefing her.

  “Now, before you go in, you understand that this interview with Mr. Morris is a feature piece?” he said, his mustache bristling wonkily.

  “Sure,” said Veronica.

  “You’re in no doubt about that.”

  “None at all,” said Veronica.

  “You’re going to keep it fairly light.”

  “Of course.”

  “Not funny, though. You’re not going to try and be funny.”

  “I don’t do funny, Mr. Highsmith.”

  “Good. Maurice Morris doesn’t like journalism that’s more about the interviewer than the interviewee.”

  “Me neither,” she lied.

  “So no questions about…economics.”

  “Fine.” She didn’t have a clue about economics.

  “Or the war on terror.” It was difficult to see what she might ask Maurice Morris about the war on terror.

  “You’re not recording this, are you?” asked Mickey.

  “You don’t want me to record it?”

  “Definitely not!” said Highsmith. “When I spoke to the paper, I said—”

  “I’m not recording it,” said Veronica.

  “Good. No recording devices on you?”

  “No. I’m going to use”—she held a spiral-bound reporter’s notebook—“this.”

  “OK. Oh. Here.” Highsmith produced from his pocket a ballpoint emblazoned with the words “Maurice Morris: The People’s Choice.”

  “Thank you so much. I’ll…treasure it.”

  “You’re going to be focusing more on his personal life.”

  “Sure,” said Veronica, flashing her most winning smile, in a way that suggested not merely acquiescence but a supine obedience; it was this smile, one might argue, and this smile alone that had ensured she was one of the Impartial Recorder’s most successful reporters. It was her ticket out of here.

  Highsmith looked at her, with a middle-aged man’s look be
tween lust and contempt: her clingy dress, her high heels. She did not seem to him to be dressed so much for a serious political interview as for a cocktail party covered by the Ulster Tatler. She did not look serious. She was perfect as an interviewer for Maurice Morris.

  Highsmith looked at his watch.

  “You’re only going to get about fifteen minutes, OK?”

  “That’s fine. That’s plenty.”

  “May I look at your questions?” he asked.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “I’m sorry, I haven’t got anything written down.”

  Highsmith viewed her up and down. She looked too stupid to do any serious damage.

  “Wait here. I’ll see if he’s ready to see you.” He knocked on the door of the inner sanctum, waited, and then entered, closing the thin wood-effect door carefully behind him.

  She glanced around at the black-framed certificates and photographs on the wall—certificate for this, certificate for that, Maurice Morris emerging from the sea, his body surprisingly lean for a man in his fifties. And his wife and daughter of course. The wife—she’d always struck her as a little bohemian looking.

  Highsmith returned and ushered her in.

  She had interviewed politicians before, but not often, and always at press conferences or local ceremonies and events: public occasions. This was the first time she’d secured a one-on-one. And she had to admit, she was excited. Previously she’d always been separated from them by a certain distance. Even then, she could feel it, although exactly what the “it” was she wasn’t entirely sure. It wasn’t exactly charisma, though some of them certainly had that. It was something else, though, something that made you look at them, watch them. Maybe it was power, pure and simple—like being in thrall to an animal, the thrill of some nonhuman thing.

  Maurice Morris was taking her hand in front of a large mahogany desk and leading her to a seat. How old was he? Forty-five? Fifty? Fifty-five? It was difficult to tell. His hair was beginning to gray around the temples, but he was still attractive. Two words sprang into her mind. George. And Clooney. And then another two.

  “So. Miss—it is Miss?”

  “Yes.” She blushed through her blushes.

  “Tell me about yourself. How long have you been with the paper?”

  Within ten minutes Veronica seemed to have told Maurice Morris her entire life story—her hopes, her dreams. She told him all about growing up in Tumdrum, the daughter of the owner of the grocery store, how she’d worked there helping her father after her mother had died, and had given up her dreams of going to university in order to pursue a career in journalism, which would allow her to assist her father. He smiled serenely and nodded. It was like talking to her father, except Maurice was better looking, with white teeth and hair and no paunch.