Mr. Dixon disappears: a mobile library mystery (24 page)

He couldn't quite picture her face. When he tried to think about her he found he was thinking about other things, other people. He thought about Rosie. And he thought about his grandmother. He thought about the little Jack Russell pups. And Mr Wilson in his shed. He thought about that French photo, the one where the man wearing a scarf is leaning down to the woman's upturned face. And he thought of the scene in
Annie Hall
where Woody Allen and Diane Keaton meet outside her apartment and she invites him up and they're drinking wine on the balcony and enjoying pleasant conversation and the little thought bubbles pop up and you can see that Woody Allen is thinking, I wonder what she looks like naked.

He laughed to himself and sat on at the laminate table, his fingers greasy from the coffee and the caramel slice, just looking out of the window. Usually he'd have read a book.

At 10.30 he went down the stairs to wait by the exit.

The flight was announced; the flight arrived.

He thought for a moment that he recognised someone, but no. They were hurrying through to departures.

Passengers disembarked. Collected their luggage. And Israel waited. And waited.

And the airport emptied.

He had a text. 'SPK,' said the message.

For previous acknowledgements see
The Truth About Babies
(Granta Books, 2002),
Ring Road
(Fourth Estate, 2004) and
The Mobile Library: The Case of the Missing Books
(Harper Perennial, 2006). These stand, with exceptions. In addition I would like to thank the following. (The previous terms and conditions apply: some of them are dead; most of them are strangers; the famous are not friends; none of them bears any responsibility.) To the editors of
The Enthusiast
–greetings.

Caroline Aherne, Arcade Fire, Arctic Monkeys, Tex Avery, David Bailey, Nancy Banks-Smith, Lynn Barber, Daniel Barenboim, Ronnie Barker, Brendan Barrington, Derek Beaven, Captain Beefheart, Catherine Bennett, Ambrose Bierce, St Blaise, Matthijs van Boxsel, Matthew Brady, British Sea Power, Charlie Brooker, Anne Brown, Ken Brown, Frank Bruno, James Lee Burke, Candace Bushnell, Andrea Camilleri, Karel 010Capek, Frank Capra, Simon Carr, Michael Chabon, Martin Chambi, E.M. Cioran, Adam Coates, Rich Cohen, Jackie Collins, Joan Collins, Billy Connolly, Cyril Connolly, Steve Coogan, Tommy Cooper, Sally Cotta, Thomas Cotta, Rob Cowan, Coyle's, Barry Cryer, Tom Dalzell, Jeff Daniels, Geena Davis, Kenneth C. Davis, Eve Dawson, Les Dawson, Mr Dawson, Guy Debord, Jack Dee, Daniel Dennett, Miss Derby, Mrs Dickson, Joan Didion, Norman Thomas Di Giovanni, Barry Douglas, Tim Dowling, St Eustachius, Simon Faithfull, Janet Flanner, George Foreman, St Francis, Nicolas Freeling, Dawn French, Ray Galton, Graeme Garden, James Geary, St Genesius, Boothby Graffoe, Blu Greenberg, Matt Groening, Andy Hamilton, Haruki Hartley, Mami Hartley, John Haskell, Simon Hoggart, Michael Holden, John Hollander, Eric Homberger, Pawel Huelle, Armando Iannucci, St Ignatius, Gary Imlach, Robert Irwin, Kay Redfield Jamison, Tove Jansson, Jack Johnson, Kaiser Chiefs, Dean Karnazes, Andy Kershaw, Florence King, Lizzy Kingston, St Lawrence, Sam Leith, William Leith, Emmanuel Levinas, Bernard Lewis, Victor Lewis-Smith, Walter Love, Humphrey Lyttleton, Emer McAfee, Alexander McCall Smith, Miss McClure, Mrs McCracken, Bill McGuire, Julian MacLaren Ross, Annabelle McNutt, Charles McNutt, Charlie McNutt, Charles McNutt, Mireille McNutt, Madonna, Janet Malcolm, Hilary Mantel, Andrew Martin, Willy Mason, David Matthews, Louis Menand, Andrew Miller, Daido Moriyama, Frank Muir, Arthur Mullard, Eadweard Muybridge, Carl Newbrook, Stephen Nolan, Martha O'Kane, Nicholas Ostler, Pierre Péju, St Pelagia, Peter Perfrement, Bernard Perlin, Polar Bear, Tony Porter, Nicholas Rinaldi, David Rose, Jack Rosenthal, Josh Rouse, Tom Russell, Lorna Sage, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Mrs Sanders, Jennifer Saunders, Arthur Schopenhauer, Scrabo Audiology Unit, Sean, Dr Seuss, DJ Shantel, Neil Simon, Debbie Slater, Timothy Spall, Johnny Speight, Jim Steinmeyer, Alan Sugar, Matthew Sweet, Antal Szerb, Joel Taggart, Mrs Thompson, Paul Tillich, Sherill Tippins, P.L. Travers, Lionel Trilling, Mark Tully, Dubravka Ugresic, James Vanderzee, Terry Victor, Arthur Waley, Harriet Walter, Johnny Weismuller, Louise Welsh, Kanye West, Tim Westwood, Richard Williams, Frances Wilson, Terry Wogan, Steven Wright,
Your Place and Mine
, Carlos Ruiz Zafón.

I
AN
S
ANSOM
is the author of
The Case of the Missing Books
,
The Truth About Babies,
and
The Impartial Recorder
. He is a regular contributor to
The Guardian
and
London Review of Books
. He lives in Northern Ireland.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

MR. DIXON DISAPPEARS
. Copyright © 2007 by Ian Sansom. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Palm Reader May 2007 ISBN 978-0-06-146109-5

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

About the Publisher

Australia

HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)

Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia

http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au

Canada

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900

Toronto, ON, M5R, 3L2, Canada

http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca

New Zealand

HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited

P.O. Box 1

Auckland, New Zealand

http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz

United Kingdom

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

77-85 Fulham Palace Road

London, W6 8JB, UK

http://www.uk.harpercollinsebooks.com

United States

HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

10 East 53rd Street

New York, NY 10022

http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com