The Case of the Missing Books

Israel glanced around, but there didn't actually seem to be that much in the shed for blinkin' head-bangers to steaclass="underline" a table, the chair, a Calor Gas heater, and the TV. There was no paint on the walls.

'We've been burnt out twice,' said the man.

'Oh dear,' said Israel. 'That's terrible.'

'You're right,' said Ted, looking Israel up and down, sceptically. 'So, they got one in the end, then.'

'Sorry?'

'A librarian. You're supposed to be the new librarian?'

'I am the new librarian,' said Israel, with some force and certainty, although to be honest he was no longer entirely convinced himself. He no longer felt much like a librarian: he felt more like someone having reached the edge of the world and himself, a bit like Scott on his last expedition to the Antarctic, perhaps, or Robinson Crusoe on his desert island.

As the man stared at Israel, sizing him up, so Israel did his weary best to stare back.

The man saw Israel-the duffle coat, the glasses, the case, the podge, the suit, the messy mop of hair-and Israel saw a man in hearty good health, maybe early sixties, with a shaven head and wearing so many different layers of clothing that it was difficult to tell where his natural thick-settedness ended and mere padding began. His bulk and his distinctly lived-in, or rather, punched-in appearance-he looked as though someone had at some time secured his fat head in a vice and hit him hard with a flat-iron-suggested that he wouldn't stand any nonsense. You wouldn't mind him driving your cab, but you wouldn't want to have to argue over the fare. Israel strongly suspected tattoos.

'You were supposed to be here earlier,' said the man.

'Yes. Sorry. I got held up.'

'Aye. Right. But you're here now and you're wanting the van and dropped off?'

'Er. Yes,' said Israel. 'Linda Wei said someone here would be so kind as to-'

'Aye. Linda…'

'Is that OK?'

'Well,' said the man, turning away and beginning to flick delicately through a large black ledger on the desk by the grille. 'I suppose it'd better be.'

'Right. Erm. Well, if not, I'm sure I can always find someone else to take me.'

'Aye.' The man laughed-just once. 'You could try. And you might know different, but to my knowledge I'm the only minicab company between here and Rathkeltair.'

'Uh-huh,' said Israel, suitably chastened. 'So you're actually Ted Carson himself?'

'That I am.'

'Pleased to meet you,' said Israel, extending his hand.

'Aye,' said Ted, shaking Israel's hand absentmindedly, and almost crushing it, and continuing to examine the ledger. 'Fortunately for you, as it happens I do have a car and a driver free.'

'Good.' Israel waved his hand to restore his circulation; it was a hell of a handshake. 'Good. Is it…Er. The mobile library. And where I'm staying. Are they-is it-far?'

'Within an ass's roar,' said Ted, 'and at the back of God speed.'

'Right,' said Israel.

Oh, God.

The driver that Ted had free was in fact Ted himself, and the car was an old Austin Allegro with a large illuminated orange plastic bear stuck on the roof-'Ted, bear, d'you see?' said Ted. 'It's advertising,' and 'Yes,' said Israel, trying to sound enthusiastic, 'very good'-and Ted drove Israel far out of Tumdrum, out along the coast, along narrow country roads between high hawthorn hedges, with grey and white farms dotting the landscape, and hills and mountains looming, and the sea shimmering in the distance, but Israel was too tired and too fed up to be bothered about the view.

'Mind if I smoke?' said Ted.

'Not at all,' said Israel, although he did mind actually, but he couldn't say he did because he was a liberal and so instead he just slumped further down in his seat, huddled in his duffle coat and his corduroy trousers, looking at all the green and the grey outside, and feeling profoundly sorry for himself. Ted turned the heating up to full. The car felt like a pressure cooker.

'You know you've come on one of the busiest days of the year?' said Ted.

'Really? I'm sorry,' said Israel.

'No one's blaming you. First Friday in December. Beginning of the auld Christmas season. Bunged, the whole place.' There didn't seem to be that much traffic on the roads.

'Of course. Sorry. I forgot.'

'Forgot Christmas?'

'I'm Jewish,' mumbled Israel in mitigation. 'And a lot on my mind. You know, packing up, moving over here.'

'Oh,' said Ted, giving Israel a sidelong glance. 'Muhammad Ali, he was a Muslim, you know.'

'Erm…'

'Ted Kid Lewis: he was Jewish. Ruby Goldstein. Probably before your time.'

'Erm…'

'Welterweights,' said Ted, adding, 'Birth of Our Saviour and all that, Christmas.'

'Yes.'

'So the young ones are all out getting bladdered.'

'Yes,' agreed Israel, who could feel things beginning to rise within his gullet. 'I wonder. Erm. Would it be OK to have a window open?'

'Aye,' said Ted, winding down his window. 'No problem.'

'It's Hanukkah too,' said Israel vaguely, momentarily revived by the breeze.

'Bless you,' said Ted, turning off the main road onto a narrow road and then onto a rutted lane and pulling up outside an old corrugated-iron barn. 'Here we are now.'

'What?'

'The van.'

'Where?'

'Here.'

Here was a ploughed field, with far views off to dark green mountains one way and the dark grey sea the other, and the old metal barn set in mud and concrete between them. Ted parked, got out of the car, fiddled with some padlocks on a door, and ushered Israel inside.

'There she is,' said Ted, pointing to a massive dark shape in the centre of the dark shed. 'That's my girl.'

It was a large bus-shaped girl.

Ted stepped closer to the big bulky mass and Israel followed and tentatively held out his hand, brushing the dark, heavy, patchy fabric, which felt like a giant damp towel left on a single radiator for many years.

'This is the mobile library?' asked Israel.

'Aye.'

'This?'

'Aye.'

'Right,' said Israel. 'What's with the…sheet?'

'The tarp?' Ted touched the tarpaulin and sniffed his fingers. Israel imitated, trying to pick up the scent.

'What's that sm-'

'Chickens,' said Ted.

'Ah!' said Israel, wiping his hands on his trousers. 'That's disgusting.'

'Well, we couldn't have let her just stood.'

'Ugh!' said Israel, still wiping his hands. 'How long's she been here?'

'Long enough,' said Ted, gazing round.

Israel looked around too. A barn more in the middle of the middle of nowhere and dirtier and damper and dustier Israel could not have imagined: the cobwebs had cobwebs; the dust had dust; and the dirt was so dirty you'd have had to clean the dirt off it first to get at it.

'The mobile library's been kept in this…place?'

'Nowhere else for her. We had to keep her safe, when they stopped the service a few years back. The council wanted to sell her as scrap,' said Ted, screwing up his face in disgust, which was effective: he had a face that was more than capable of expressing disgust; his broken nose was pre-wrinkled. 'They were after breaking her up and selling her off.'

'I see.'

'Same as they did with me.'

'Right.'

'I drove her nearly twenty-five years, man and boy. And then they did away with the pair of us.'

'I'm sorry.'

'Ach, sure but, you knock your pan in for half a lifetime, that's what you get. They're a bunch of hoods, the lot of them.'

'Hoods?'

'Aye.'

'Right. But the council didn't break her up and sell her for scrap?'

'No. Because we hid her.'

'You hid her?'

'Aye.'

'You hid her from the hoods?'

'Aye. Exactly. We had to tuck her away, like. So they couldn't find her,' said Ted, who was now circling the tarpaulined shape, sizing it up, like a sculptor before a block of stone, or a wrestler eyeing up a worthy opponent.

Israel was struggling to keep up with all this.

'So-hang on-you hid a whole mobile library?'