Mr. Dixon disappears: a mobile library mystery (11 page)

By about midnight he was satiated and utterly, utterly depressed; his eyes ached and his head hurt, and also he was starving. Judging by the books he was reading he was going to need a car, and probably a gun in order to get anywhere in his investigation; it would also help if he had a complex inner life and a troubled childhood. But first he needed something to eat.

So he crept downstairs to the kitchen.

There were no lights on anywhere. Israel felt around trying to find them, but failed; he'd never been inside the house by himself at night. He felt his way to where he thought the fridge might be, and knelt down, opened the door, felt the cold and the light upon him, and began looking for what he could find: some lard, some dripping, some hard cheese, and lots of uncooked meat–sausages, mostly, and bacon. But then also, wrapped in foil, he found the remains of the Devines' dinner: a chicken carcass.

Now this was a serious dilemma.

Israel hadn't eaten meat since he was eighteen years old, although he'd thought about it probably every day since, and he looked at the pale stringy flesh hanging from the bones and couldn't decide–it looked so pathetic–but then he remembered those nuggety little bits of meat that you get under the chicken, those little goujons, and he turned the chicken over and there they were, white and glistening in the fridge's glow. He was just prising them off and was about to pop them in his mouth when someone kicked open the kitchen door and yelled at him, 'You move and I'll kill you!'

He leapt up and put his hands in the air.

George was at the doorway in a tartan dressing gown, with a shotgun.

'Jesus Christ!' said Israel, still with his hands up.

'Armstrong!'

'George!'

'What in God's name are you doing in here?'

'I live here,' said Israel.

'Not in the kitchen!'

'No. I was just—'

'You can put your hands down,' said George.

'Right. Thanks.' Israel had the little chicken bits in the palms of his hands. 'Erm…'

'You're lucky I didn't…'

'Quite,' said Israel.

'You ragin' eejit,' said George.

'Sorry. That's the second time today someone's pointed a gun at me, actually.'

'Aye, well, maybe third time lucky,' said George, lowering the gun.

'Right. Thanks,' said Israel.

George was turning to go.

'Actually, George,' said Israel.

'What?'

'I need to ask you a favour.'

'No,' said George, turning back.

'Please. You haven't heard what it is yet.'

'No. It's midnight. You're in my kitchen stealing my food, and you're lucky you're not bleedin' like a stuck pig. So the answer to whatever you're asking is no.'

'It's just…'

'
No!
Do you understand the word?'

'Yes. It's just, I just wondered about your…erm, your gun there? If I could maybe borrow it if I needed it?'

'Are you out of your tiny English mind, Armstrong?'

'No. It's just—'

'No!
No! No!
'

'What about the car then? Could I maybe borrow the car tomorrow? Just while I've not got the van to fall back on.'

'No!'

'But I need some transport, George, at least, if I'm going to be able to prove my innocence, and I've only got a week to—'

'It's not my problem, Armstrong. You've got yourself into a mess, you get yourself out of it.
Without
my gun, and
without
my car–you lunatic! Goodnight,' she said, slamming the door behind her.

'Goodnight,' said Israel feebly.

He looked at the chicken pieces in his hand, and put them in the bin. He'd lost his appetite.

If he'd been a detective in one of Brownie's crime novels he'd have drunk a half-bottle of whisky and gone driving off into the night listening to his favourite music while making incredible deductive leaps.

Instead, he felt silently sorry for himself, made a cup of tea and went to bed.

The Reverend England Roberts stood at the front of the church. He was wearing his customary grey lounge suit and his far too wide, Adam's-apple-accentuating dog collar, and he was speaking–or, rather, booming–in his usual fashion into a microphone, which seemed to distort and amplify not merely his words, but also his personality. His habitual mischievous gleaming smile had been replaced with that peculiar look of the Christian ministering, that look that Israel had seen on the faces of all the old Presbyterian ministers in the photographs in the Reverend Roberts's robing room, a look way beyond smiling, a look of perfect yet somehow undefined profundity, a look of brow-furrowing tranquillity, as though contemplating some utterly obvious yet infinitely complex mathematical problem. It was a look…Israel was trying to think where he'd seen that look before. Well, to be honest, it was a post-coital kind of a look, that was what it was, Israel thought, though it seemed wrong, confusing sexual and religious emotions, particularly in a church, mixing up ultimate and penultimate truths. He had to shake his head to get the thought out of his mind; but then that was religion for you, in his opinion: it got you all confused.

The reverend was reading from the tiny brown leather pocket Bible in his hand.

'"Early on the Sunday morning,"' he boomed, the church's loudspeakers rattling its vast accompaniment of hums and whistles, '"while it was still dark, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb."' The deep 'oo' of the reverend's 'tomb' here rang high and low, reverberating around the church, setting off a high-pitched feedback to follow it, which came bouncing off the walls like some small demented creature hurtling in pursuit of a big bass-baritone bear. As the reverend took a breath and paused between intonations, a man wearing a canary-yellow tie and an ill-fitting brown polyester suit that crackled as he moved darted forward from the front row of seats, and started fiddling with the cable of the microphone. The Reverend Roberts paused until the man in the suit gave a thumbs up, nodded apologetically and retreated back, statically, from whence he had come.

'OK. Thank you. Is that better?' asked England, booming clearly now without feedback or echo. The congregation nodded silent assent. 'OK. Good. Good. Now'–the reverend waved a hand towards heaven but addressed the congregation–'Brothers and sisters'–and Israel felt a little shudder go through the congregation at that; he guessed they weren't accustomed to being addressed as such–'Brothers and sisters,' repeated the reverend, unrepentant, 'I want you to imagine that you were there on that morning. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine that you
were
Mary, going to the tomb? Can you imagine what that might have been like for a young woman going to see her Lord? The man she had seen crucified and died, just days–not even days, just hours–earlier. And now there she is
in the dark
we are told–which is a
wonderful
image. In the dark, both
literally
and metaphorically.'

Israel glanced around him nervously. The congregation was rapt. He was sitting towards the back: he bent down and removed his bicycle clips.

Israel had not been able to persuade George to let him have the use of the car in order to conduct his investigation into the theft of the money from Dixon and Pickering's and Mr Dixon's mysterious disappearance, but George had very generously allowed him to use Brownie's old bike, a Raleigh Elswick Hopper with Sturmey Archer three-speed gears, and a wicker basket up front. So at least he had a means of transport to be able to set about clearing his name, though he had no idea, frankly, exactly how a man might set out to do that; not usually by bike, he guessed.

His first decision was to go to church. He'd promised the Reverend Roberts months ago that he'd be there for the Easter morning service, and he felt he couldn't let him down, even under his current peculiar circumstances; also, to be honest, he was half hoping that in church he might receive some kind of divine guidance; it certainly couldn't be worse than stewing in his own considerable juices at the Devines', looking for an insight into how to solve a complex criminal investigation through the pages of Sue Grafton, Ian Rankin and George P. Pelecanos.

Israel hadn't ridden a bike since he was about ten years old and when he got on, he fell right off; there was either something wrong with the bicycle, or riding a bicycle is not like riding a bicycle: you do forget. He could remember his very first bike as a child: it was a candy-floss pink with multicoloured streamers attached to the handlebars and it had a squidgy purple seat; it had been handed down from one of his sisters. Israel had had to put up with a lot of hand-me-downs when he was young, which meant he'd become accustomed to girls' tastes in most things, including bicycles, and books, toys and music; Gloria thought that too many
Bunty
annuals and Madonna albums had maybe held Israel back in his career development and in his self-image and that he should perhaps go and get some counselling. According to Gloria, any man with a too developed fondness for Anne Tyler and Barbara Trapido should really be trying to beef himself up in other areas; Gloria was very feminine herself, but she also did kung-fu. Israel had never really been the macho type: there was a little park near their house when they were growing up and his sisters would race round, doing laps on their bikes, and he was always happy in his given role as timekeeper; indeed, sometimes, looking back, he felt as if he was merely the observer of his own childhood rather than a full participant, like having off-peak membership at the gym.

'What about the brakes?' he'd said to George, pulling at the brakes on the bike that she'd grudgingly wheeled out of an outbuilding.

'Wee turn, she'll be right,' said George.

'I can't ride this,' he said.

'She's in need of some attention,' agreed George.

'Some attention? This bike doesn't need attention. This bike needs—'

'A wee bit of TLC.'

'Therapy,' said Israel. 'This bike has had a total nervous breakdown.'

It had ordinary raised handlebars with once white, now grey moulded hand grips, slide-pull calliper brakes with brake blocks as thin as cigarette paper, and black and white Raleigh Record 26 x 13/8 tyres bald as an old man in a cap in a park in winter. The old three-speed Sturmey Archer gears were encased in grease with a dodgy trigger control and the full-cover mudguards must once have been chrome but now were rust. The saddle was worn almost to the point of extinction.

'Does it go?' said George.

'Well, the wheels turn,' said Israel.

'That'll do you then,' said George, who promptly disappeared back into the farmhouse.

After a few tentative turns around the yard, Israel had left himself a good hour to make it into Tumdrum for the Easter service; the roads had been deserted and everything had gone smoothly until he'd come round the corner near the Four Road Ends, down there by Maureen Minty's kennels, cattery and pet cemetery, Animal Magic ('Caring For Pets From Cradle to Grave'). As he turned the corner another cyclist, who was coming at some speed in the other direction, and who'd clipped off the corner and was way over on the wrong side of the road, came hurtling towards him. Israel jammed on his brakes, which worked only under considerable pressure, and skidded to a halt, successfully avoiding the other cyclist, just as a little Peugeot driven by an old lady wearing a hat came cruising round from behind him at around 50 miles an hour and narrowly avoided killing them all.

The old lady sped on, keen to get to church, presumably, rather than get involved in any kind of road rage incident or insurance claim. Israel righted himself on the bike and prepared to start screaming at the other cyclist, who was wearing skin-tight leggings, a shiny silver helmet, wrap-around shades, and a bright blue cycling shirt with a zip front and back pockets.

'Armstrong!' called the cyclist, dismounting.

'Hello?' said Israel.

The cyclist flipped up his shades. It was Pearce Pyper.

'Good grief!' said Israel. 'It's you.'

'It is indeed!' said Pearce. 'Didn't know you cycled.'

'No. I didn't either,' said Israel. 'Not until this morning. I didn't know
you
cycled.'

'Ah. Hardly at all these days,' said Pearce, who was eighty if he was a day. 'Given it up. Do the odd one at the weekend, just to keep my hand in, you know.'

'Nice bike,' said Israel, admiring the black steel-framed cycle with its white lettering.

'Ah, yes. A De Selby. Italian. With Campag kit. Armstrong uses Shimano, you know.'

'Right.'

'But I prefer the Campag. More elegant.'

Another car came round the corner, from Pearce's direction this time, again driven by an old lady in a hat, and again narrowly missing them. Pearce raised his fist in anger as the car sped away.

'Shall we move?' said Israel, indicating the grass verge.

'Roadhogs,' said Pearce, hauling his bike to the side of the road. 'Do you shave your legs?' he asked.

'No, I don't,' said Israel.

'You'll have to shave your legs,' said Pearce.

'Right.'

'Aerodynamics. Not against your religion, is it?'

'No, I don't think so,' said Israel.

'My first wife, she wouldn't shave her legs. She was Jewish, did I say?' said Pearce.

'Yes. Yes, I think you did.'

'Strange woman. I'm all for the Mosaic laws, mind, when it comes to food. Perfectly sensible. You keep kosher?'

'No, I don't.'

'She was a great one for the pickles, my wife. Used to ship them over.'

'Good.'

'Anyway. Well done you!' said Pearce nonsensically. 'Good to see a young man out getting fit. The old transfer of atoms twixt man and machine.'

'Quite,' said Israel.

'More of it!' said Pearce, as he saddled up again and sped away.

It was always nice to bump into Pearce Pyper.

Israel cycled slowly and carefully the rest of the way and was delighted when he finally made it safely into Tumdrum and parked his bike outside the Baptist church.

The Baptist was one of the four churches in Tumdrum's main square. The churches sat one on each side of the square, like the Horsemen of the Apocalypse come to round up stragglers and put them in a pen: as well as the Baptist and the Reverend Roberts Presbyterian there were the Methodist and the Church of Ireland, and each of them were big, square, flat-fronted buildings, places that suggested that their original architects and builders, and possibly their current ministers and congregations too, might have erred theologically on the side of judgement rather than mercy. The churches of Tumdrum did not look like the churches Israel knew in England: there was no fancy brickwork, no stained glass, and no steeples; no hint of the Papish, or of the foolish temptations of this world. The architecture seemed to embody the ideas it expressed: if Protestantism was made of blocks and rendered concrete then this was probably what it would look like; architecturally you might describe the style as Armageddon Lite. The Presbyterians had a flagpole on the top of their building, which flew no flags, and the Methodists had nothing at all, except a poster advertising coffee mornings, and the traditional reminder that If God Seems Far Away, Then Guess Who's Moved? The Church of Ireland had a big stone stylised representation of some saint or other over the doorway, with a halo around his head, and as Israel was not good on saints he had no idea who this was supposed to be: he had the usual beard and receding hairline, and what appeared to be a set of butter knives in his left hand and looked like a man who'd been ambushed, and was about to be shot by firing squad. Of all the churches in the centre of Tumdrum, if he had to pick, Israel would probably have gone for the Baptist; the Baptists had hanging baskets. Also, they were hosting the Reverend Roberts Easter Sunday ecumenical service.