The Bad Book Affair: A Mobile Library Mystery

by Ian Sansom

  “Well, you can, when you’re older,” said Israel. “It’s open to all.”

  “What’s it like living in Tumdrum, if you’re from London?” said Lyndsay. In all his time in Tumdrum no one had ever asked him that simple question. He didn’t quite know how to answer.

  “Well,” he said. “I suppose it’s a bit like…It’s a bit like Groundhog Day.”

  “I love that film!” said Lyndsay.

  “Yeah,” said Israel. “Punxsutawney Phil.”

  “Bill Murray,” said Lyndsay. “I love Bill Murray in that film.”

  “Yeah. He’s good, isn’t he?”

  “And in Lost in Translation.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Israel. “And what was that other one? About Schmidt.”

  “I think that was Jack Nicholson,” said Lyndsay.

  “Was it?”

  “Yeah, but he was…a bit like Bill Murray in that, I suppose.”

  “Yes, he was,” agreed Israel.

  He glanced up at the gathering clouds above them.

  “She’s coming on plump,” said Israel. “And you really shouldn’t be out in the mountains in this weather. In clothes like…” Lyndsay was wearing a sort of black miniskirt, with black leggings and black pixie boots and a black T-shirt. “Sorry, I sound like my mother.”

  “You sound like my father,” said Lyndsay.

  “Shall we go back to the cottage, then?” said Israel.

  They began walking back down the mountain, side by side.

  “How did you find me, though?” said Lyndsay. “I didn’t think anyone would find me here.”

  “I spoke to your mother,” said Israel.

  “Is she all right?” said Lyndsay.

  “She’s very upset,” said Israel.

  “I’m sorry,” said Lyndsay. “I didn’t mean to cause any trouble.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be delighted that you’re safe and sound.”

  “Did she tell you where I was?”

  “No,” said Israel. “I just sort of pieced it together. I spoke to your boyfriend—”

  “Who?”

  “Colin.”

  “He’s my—ex, actually.”

  “Well, he seemed very…nice.”

  “God, no. He’s an idiot. He spends all his time gaming, it’s so boring.”

  “It could be worse,” said Israel.

  “Really?”

  “He could be a librarian.”

  Lyndsay laughed.

  “What made you become a librarian?”

  “You make it sound like a conscious decision.”

  “Why? Was it not?”

  “Well. As you get older,” Israel started saying—what was he saying?—“you realize that all your decisions are not necessarily made consciously by you, if you see what I mean. I mean, it would be like me asking you why you’re a Goth?”

  “I don’t know,” said Lyndsay.

  “There you are,” said Israel.

  “I just…am. It’s just like…a state of mind.”

  “Well, that’s me being a librarian,” said Israel.

  “It’s a state of mind?”

  “Something like that.”

  “People think being a Goth is just, you know, Morticia Addams fashion,” said Lyndsay.

  “But it’s not?”

  “Not at all. It’s about experiencing the world in a more intense way.”

  “Right. I spoke to Adam Burns, as well.”

  “From Kerugma? Did you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve been stalking me, then, basically?”

  “No,” said Israel. “I’ve been trying to find you.”

  “Why?”

  Israel thought this probably not the moment to explain about Veronica and the police.

  “Just. Doing a good turn, I suppose.”

  “I do love it here,” said Lyndsay. There was a clap of thunder as they approached the cottage, and the first fat rain drops began falling. Israel could see Ted in the distance.

  “It is beautiful,” agreed Israel.

  “I used to come here with my mother when I was young, when my dad was too busy working.”

  “What’s that over there?” asked Israel, pointing to something shimmering in the distance.

  “That’s the Trassey River,” said Lyndsay.

  “Right.”

  “And that,” she said. “You see there, between the two peaks?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s the Hare’s Gap.”

  “Right.”

  “And there’s a path there called the Brandy Pad, where people used to smuggle stuff.”

  “Wow.”

  “And there’s Clonachullion Hill there, and the Spellack cliffs.”

  “You really know your stuff,” said Israel.

  “I guess.”

  “You’re very lucky.”

  “Yes,” agreed Lyndsay. “I suppose I am.”

  They reached the cottage.

  “Well, well,” said Ted, as they approached. “By the seven secrets of the Ballymena coach builders! If it’s not our missing young lady.”

  “Hi, Ted,” said Lyndsay.

  “How are ye?” said Ted.

  “Fine,” said Lyndsay.

  “We takin’ ye home, then?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We should ring her parents and let them know,” said Israel. “They’re worried sick.”

  “No,” said Ted. “Let’s ring later.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s no reception here, you’ll not get through.”

  “But weren’t you just on your—” began Israel.

  “No reception,” said Ted. “Quicker we get back in this weather the better.”

  After Lyndsay had gathered her things from the cottage, they climbed into the van and began the long, rain-soaked drive back to Tumdrum, Ted and Israel up front, Lyndsay perched on the children’s book trough behind them.

  “What are we going to do about this little lady, then?” said Ted as they accelerated through the torrential rain up the A24 toward the north coast.

  “Get her back to where she belongs,” said Israel. “Reunite her.”

  “Hmmm,” said Ted.

  “What?” said Israel.

  “I think you owe us an explanation first, young lady, don’t ye?” said Ted.

  “I just had to get away,” said Lyndsay.

  “Aye,” said Ted. “Why was that, then?”

  “The place was doing my head in.”

  “Ye’d be better off telling us the truth, ye know.”

  “That is the truth,” said Lyndsay.

  “The actual truth,” said Ted.

  “That is the truth, Ted,” said Israel, turning around and looking at Lyndsay. “Isn’t it?”

  “The actual truth?” said Ted.

  “Yes,” said Lyndsay.

  “Ye pitched up down at the cottage all by yerself, did ye?” said Ted.

  “Yes.”

  “Get a lift?”

  “No,” said Lyndsay. “I got the bus to Newcastle, and then just walked up to the cottage—”

  “And no one knew you were there?”

  “No.”

  “You haven’t seen a soul?”

  “No.”

  “Funny that,” said Ted. “Because there were fresh tire marks on the gravel up at the cottage there.”

  “Were there?”

  “Mercedes-type tire marks, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “How can you tell—” began Israel.

  “I don’t know who that could have been…” said Lyndsay.

  “No?” said Ted. “Who do we know who drives a Mercedes?”

  “Lots of people,” said Lyndsay.

  “Including your da?”

  “Well…”

  “Hold on,” said Israel. “Do you mean Maurice Morris has already been down here looking for her?”

  “No,” said Ted.

  “No!” agreed Lyndsay.

  “I don’t think he’s been d
own here looking for her,” said Ted.

  “Right,” said Israel, confused.

  “Because he wouldn’t need to look for her, would he? He knew full well that she was here all along. Didn’t he, Lyndsay?

  Israel looked into the rearview mirror and could see that Lyndsay was looking shamefaced.

  “No?” said Israel.

  Lyndsay wiped away a tear.

  “Steady on,” said Israel. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that our little Miss Runaway here was in caboots—”

  “Cahoots?”

  “Exactly. With her father.”

  “No!” said Israel. “That’s ridiculous. That can’t be right. That’s not right, is it?”

  “Yes,” said Lyndsay, from the children’s book trough. “It’s true. I’m sorry…”

  “But you told me you’d run away!” Israel protested.

  “Do you believe everything everyone tells you?” said Ted.

  “No,” said Israel. “But…if he knew she was here, why didn’t he bring her back?”

  “I think we’d best ask Lyndsay that one, hadn’t we?”

  “Lyndsay?” said Israel, turning round to face her.

  “Sorry,” she said between sobs.

  “Best to tell the truth,” said Ted.

  “Yes!” said Israel rather more forcefully than was necessary. “Tell us the truth!”

  Ted slapped him round the head.

  “We’re not the KGT.”

  “KGB,” said Israel.

  “Or them,” agreed Ted. “In your own time, my dear.”

  Lyndsay wiped her eyes.

  “My dad asked me to come down here,” she said.

  “Why?” said Israel.

  “He wanted the publicity.”

  “What?”

  “He thought it would get him the sympathy vote. In the election. After the way he’d treated Mum, everyone hated him. And he’d gone from being Mr. Popular to being…”

  “A total scumbag,” said Ted.

  “Yes.”

  “Did your mum know about it as well?”

  “No, no,” said Lyndsay. “She didn’t know. They don’t really get on anymore. They just argue at home. But I thought if Dad got elected again, things might—” And she started sobbing again.

  “That’s all right, darling,” said Ted.

  All three of them sat in silence as they drove through Ballynahinch.

  “Well, now what?” said Israel.

  “Please,” said Lyndsay, “you mustn’t tell anyone. If people find out—”

  “If people find out yer da put you up to it, he’ll not be able to show his face in Tumdrum again,” said Ted. “And he’d lose the election, for sure.”

  “Which wouldn’t be such a bad—” began Israel. “Sorry, Lyndsay.”

  “It’s all right. I wouldn’t vote for him anyway,” said Lyndsay.

  “But you were prepared to do all…this for him.”

  “He’s my dad,” said Lyndsay.

  “Well,” said Israel. “That’s…”

  “Let’s listen to some Harry Potter, shall we?” said Ted.

  “Which one is it?” said Lyndsay.

  “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” said Ted.

  “Oh great.”

  “Oh no,” said Israel.

  “And we’ll have a little think for a bit,” said Ted.

  Lyndsay eventually dozed off to Stephen Fry’s susurrations. And they were finally back on the coast road up to Tumdrum.

  “She’s asleep,” said Ted.

  “Seems to be,” said Israel. “And we’re nearly back.”

  “We’ve a decision to make, then,” said Ted.

  “Yes.”

  “What about your journalist friend?”

  “What about her?”

  “If you tell her, it’d be fate accomplished.”

  “Fait accompli,” said Israel.

  “Be in all the papers. The big fella’ll be finished. Divorce of the wife, I wouldn’t wonder.”

  “God. So what if we don’t tell anyone?”

  “Yon Lyndsay’s just a runaway, then, who’s happily reunited with her parents.”

  “And Maurice Morris gets the sympathy vote.”

  “He thinks,” said Ted.

  “A moral dilemma, isn’t it?” said Israel.

  “That it is,” said Ted.

  “Between public and private,” said Israel.

  “Probably,” said Ted.

  “E. M. Forster again,” said Israel.

  “Who?” said Ted.

  “E. M. Forster.”

  “He play for Chelsea?”

  “No! He’s a famous writer.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t know him if he offered me a sausage sandwich,” said Ted.

  “He’s dead,” said Israel. “So it’s not likely.”

  “Aye.”

  “Anyway, he famously said that if offered the choice between betraying a friend and betraying his country he hoped he’d have the courage to betray his country.”

  “Hmm,” said Ted.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  The sign up ahead said Welcome to Tumdrum.

  “Decision time,” said Ted.

  23

  Maurice Morris was not a bad man as such. He’d gone into politics for the same reason that everyone else goes into politics—to make a difference and to do good. And he believed that he had done good. He had nothing whatsoever to reproach himself with.

  Which is why, on the morning of the election, he was able to look himself fair and square in the eye in the bathroom mirror and find nothing amiss. If he said so himself—and he did say so, Maurice believed in articulating his own self-worth—he was looking pretty good. “Looking pretty good,” he said. He had a radiance about him. He wasn’t only blessed with good looks and with good luck, he was pretty damn smart too. He knew he must be smart because he didn’t know anyone else who’d grown up on the Shankill Road in Belfast and gone to Campbell College, a private school for boys, even though his father was only a postman, and then gone on to found Northern Ireland’s most successful independent financial advisers, and then gone on to become an MLA in the local assembly, and who had lost his seat, but who was now about to be gloriously reelected. He had achieved far and away above what might have been expected of him. His life had a trajectory, a story.

  And he had pulled off quite a coup. His daughter had been reunited with him the night before the election—graciously returned by the librarians—and in enough time for the six o’clock news to cover it. And for the papers to have it for their headline. If that didn’t win him votes, then nothing would.

  He looked good in his plain black suit. He should wear black suits more often: he was usually inclined toward pinstripes, with statement linings. Frank Sinatra wore plain black suits, of course, and Frank was one of his great heroes, the epitome of fifties cool. He was lucky enough to have seen Sinatra sing with Tony Bennett in Vegas, late 1980s. The voice was gone, but Frank was still soldiering on. Still in the tux. “My Way.” “Luck Be a Lady.” “Come Fly with Me.” When people said Sinatra was a crook, what they didn’t understand was where he was coming from—born the son of immigrants, worked as a young man as a riveter in the shipyard. This was someone who had made himself what he was. And that took courage and bravado and commitment. That’s just what it took.

  His wife called from downstairs.

  “It’s time to go!”

  He winked at himself in the mirror and intoned his current favorite motivational slogan: “Winners do things differently.”

  At the Devines’ farm, meanwhile, Israel Armstrong splashed some cold water on his face, dried himself off, and forced himself to eat a spoonful of peanut butter. He already had his migraine, which had started, as usual, with a sort of headache just over his left eye, a piercing pain, and then he’d started feeling nauseous, as though on the verge of vomiting. He still had the prescription in his po
cket for the SSRIs from Dr. Withers. He hadn’t yet decided: drugs, counseling? Maybe he just needed to get away from here.

  He took deep breaths.

  Maybe all English Jewish vegetarian mobile librarians were condemned to a life of headaches, weariness, and existential despair.

  He glanced at himself in the mirror. He’d decided to keep the beard, at least for the time being; it made him look suitably somber, but it was a shame he didn’t have a black suit. He was wearing a black jacket that he’d borrowed from Brownie and an old pair of black corduroys. His only shoes were his brown brogues, which didn’t look right with the jacket and trousers, so he’d found a dark brown shoe polish in the Devines’, and had dabbed some on and made them look darker. He’d bought a pair of black laces, from the Spar. They were too long.

  He rang Gloria, pointlessly.

  The pain in his temples was awful. He was thinking about Gloria and about Maurice Morris and Pearce Pyper, and none of it was good, and he felt inside himself a deep inclination to cry.

  He decided not to.

  He stepped out instead into the yard and made his way over to the farmhouse, passing the chickens in the yard, waving to the goats.

  George was in the kitchen, by the Rayburn, and there was a familiar smell—not just the usual smell. This was a smell that reminded Israel of something. A homely smell. The smell of home. It smelled of parents. And Saturday traffic outside. It smelled of North London.

  “What are you making?” he asked.

  “Chicken livers,” said George, wiping her hands on her apron. She was wearing a black dress. Her hair was scraped back. She looked kind of Italian.

  “Chicken livers,” said Israel. “I didn’t know you did chicken livers.”

  “We live on a farm with chickens, Armstrong. What do you think we do with the chickens?”

  “I love chicken livers.”

  “I thought you were a vegetarian,” said George.

  “Yes, but…Chicken livers.”

  He thought for a moment of all the chickens he must have eaten in his time—all the white flesh and the brown flesh and the crispy skin, and those claws and entrails boiled up into soups. He wondered sometimes whether he’d become a vegetarian through sheer chicken fatigue, his mind and body sated with meat, fowl cravings completed.

  “Do you want some?” said George.

  “Well, I’ll…”

  “There’s plenty: it’s for the wake.”

  “No,” said Israel. “I shouldn’t, no…How do you do your chicken livers?”

  “You want me to explain?”