Mr. Dixon disappears: a mobile library mystery (6 page)

And Israel wasn't feeling at all well. He lay on the mattress on the plinth. It was cold. He drew the blanket up around him.

This was not what was supposed to happen. This was not it at all.

He woke in the dawning light to the merry sound of chickens and machinery outside and he stepped quickly to the door of the chicken coop and took a deep welcome breath of the rich country air: the smell of grass; the smell of silage; the thick, complex smell of several sorts of manure; the smell, it seemed to him, in some strange way, of freedom; the smell of very heaven itself. He was getting used to the country and to country ways. He was also getting fewer headaches these days, he found, and he felt lighter, more alert than he had for years: he could feel himself thriving and growing stronger, feeding on all that good corn and milk and fresh air. He threw back his head, filled his lungs with another blast of the world's sweet morning goodness, then put on his duffle coat and slipped on his shoes and quickly went across the yard to the kitchen, greeting the animals as he went: 'Hello, pigs! Hello, chickens! Hello, world!'

In the kitchen Mr Devine was sitting by the Rayburn, wrapped in his blanket.

'Good morning, Frank!' said Israel.

'Good morning, Israel,' Mr Devine replied. 'A wee drop tay?'

'Aye,' said Israel. 'That'd be grand.'

He poured himself a nice fresh mug of tea from the never-ending pot on the Rayburn, then went back across the courtyard to his room where he lay and read for an hour, a fabulous new novel by a brilliant young author he'd only just discovered and whose work he adored and who seemed to be producing novels almost as quickly as he could read them–varied, strange and beguiling, full of stories. Then finally he got back up out of bed, washed his face in a cool calm bowl of water, got dressed, and went over to the farmhouse again to have breakfast and on entering the kitchen he kissed George warmly on the mouth, and she embraced him, and it seemed to him that he could think of no life pleasanter or more preferable than…

Oh, God.

He was dreaming.

Or rather no, not dreaming–it was a nightmare. He wasn't in the chicken coop. He wasn't at the farm at all. He was still in the cell. He must have dropped off to sleep. He'd fallen from one nightmare into another.

He glanced round himself, panicking. Oh, good grief. This was terrible. He was trapped.

He could feel his stomach churning, contracting. He could feel himself beginning to hyperventilate. He needed something to read, to calm his nerves. There was nothing to read. He felt frantic.

He tried reading the graffiti on the walls and on the back of the door. But there wasn't enough, and it was too small, and anyway it was all acronyms defying one another and performing sexual acts on one another, the IRA doing this or that to the UVF, who were doing this or that to the UDA, and the PUP versus the SF, and up the INLA, and down the UFF, and RUC this and PSNI that: where were the great wits and aphorists of County Antrim, for goodness sake? Where were the imprisoned scribes? Where was the Chester Himes and the Malcolm X of the jail cells of Northern Ireland? Where were the Gramscis of Tumdrum and District?

Israel felt half crazed with nothing to read and no prospect of anything to read.

He always had something to read; he always
had
to have something to read: reading calmed him; it did for him what music and television and cigarettes and alcohol seemed to do for other people; it soothed the savage breast, and gave him something to do with his hands and between dinnertime and bed. As a child he'd been a precocious reader, hoovering up books like the pigs on the Devines' farm snuffled up their feed; and as a teenager he had read in a frenzy, reading the one solitary delight and pleasure not only sanctioned but actively encouraged by society and by his parents, an absolute one-off, an exception to the rule, a granting of public esteem not for achievement and worldly gain but for inwardness and the nurturing of whatever it was that constituted a soul.

Everyone loved a great reader. And he'd always loved being a great reader–until recently. Maybe it was just part of getting older, or maybe it was being a librarian, or just being here, but lately he'd found he was becoming suspicious of his own love of books. All that reading–it had started to seem wrong, worthless almost, without purpose.

It seemed abominable, thinking it: thinking about it he felt himself quivering inside.

When he was reading these days it seemed to form only a background hum to what was really going on in his mind, like static or a scratch, like the sound of traffic in a city, or insects in the country. And he'd started to wonder, is literature ever any more than this? Just the faint sound of the flutter of the cockchafer and moth beneath the deafening daily grind? Just the popcorn and Coke accompanying the main feature presentation,
MY EGO, MY LIFE
, in IMAX, in full Technicolor rolling loop and six-channel digital multi-speaker surround-sound, projected onto a domed screen, and with every seat the best seat in the house, and all of them occupied by little old me? Was there anything more to it than that?

He considered the people who were the heaviest borrowers from the mobile library, the people he saw the most of, week in, week out: all the children and their parents, checking out books indiscriminately, picture books and easy-readers, the good and the bad, no discernible difference between them; and the teenagers–the local MP's daughter and some of her friends, some gothy-looking boys–who seemed to be working their way through every Ian McEwan and William Burroughs in the county and who possibly as a consequence seemed more miserable even than the average teen; and the adults, women in and out for romantic fiction and men for military history. And when he considered them all he couldn't honestly say that these people were any more equipped socially or intellectually or emotionally than anyone else; they might possibly have known whether or not Cromwell's troops massacred civilians at Drogheda in the seventeenth century, or about life under the Nazis in the Channel Islands, or exactly which Harry Potter they preferred, on balance, but they were no more polite when challenged about their overdue books than the average borrower, and no more or less keen to pass the time of day with a lowly public servant.

Library users were exactly the same as everyone else, it seemed, and this came as a terrible shock to Israel. He had always believed that reading was good for you, that the more books you read somehow the better you were, the closer to some ideal of human perfection you came, yet if anything his own experience at the library suggested the exact opposite: that reading didn't make you a better person, that it just made you short-sighted, and even less likely than your fellow man or woman to be able to hold a conversation about anything that did not centre around you and your ailments and the state of the weather.

He shivered.

Could all that really be true? Did it matter? That the striving after knowledge, the attempt to understand human minds and human nature, and stories, and narrative shapes and patterns, made you no better a person? That the whole thing was an illusion? That books were not a mirror of nature or a mark of civilisation, but a chimera? That the reading of books was in fact nothing more than a kind of mental knitting, or like the monotonous eating of biscuits, a pleasant way of passing time before you died? All those words about words, and texts about texts, and all nothing more than tiny splashes of ink…

Nothing to read: nothing to be read.

His mind was racing in the confined spaces and rotations of the cell; Israel was dizzying himself. The whole world seemed to be wobbling around him. He felt like
The Scream.
He felt like crying. Again. He suddenly thought of his mother looking down at him from a great height.

Oh, God.

And the next thing he knew there was a young Asian man standing over him, shaking him, looking down at him. He wasn't sure if he was dreaming or if this was real. It certainly wasn't his mother.

'Mr Armstrong?'

He rubbed his eyes. His shoulders ached.

This was real. The man was standing with his hands behind his back. He had the beginnings of a beard.

'Hello,' said the man. 'I'm Hussain. From Biggs and Short.'

'What?'

'Your solicitors.'

'I don't have a solicitor.'

'No. Well, I'm your legal representative.'

'No. My girlfriend's going to be helping me out with all that.'

'Is that Gloria Cohen?'

'Yes, that's her.'

'The police were unable to contact her, I'm afraid, sir.'

He knew exactly what he meant: Gloria was always too busy to answer her phone. They might have more luck texting her, but even then they wouldn't be guaranteed a response: 'SPK,' would come the reply, but she wouldn't.

'Well,' continued Mr Hussain, 'anyway, I have been appointed your legal representative. I work for Biggs and Short. Mr Billy Biggs is a cousin of Ted Carson, Mr Armstrong, who I believe you know?'

'Oh, no.' That did not augur well. 'Look,' he continued, 'I really don't want to talk to you about this…nonsense.'

'I suggest very strongly that you do, Mr Armstrong. This is really a very serious matter.'

Israel held his head in his hands.

The man was looking down at Israel intently. Israel could feel him looking at him. It was unnerving, like the sense he'd had as a child of God right above his head, being able to see him. The man said, 'Did you do it, Mr Armstrong?'

'What? Did I do what?'

'The police say they've got rather a lot of evidence against you.'

'What evidence?'

'Your prints are all over the safe.'

'My prints? No. No. They're…I touched the safes when I arrived because…I've explained this to them already. I didn't do it. Of course I didn't do it. I'm a librarian.'

Mr Hussain perched sympathetically on the plinth next to Israel.

'Well,' he said, 'how do you explain it?'

'What?'

'If you didn't do it, why have they arrested you?'

'Because I was there.'

'Why?'

'Because of the five-panel touring exhibition of the history of Dixon and Pickering's.'

Israel then told Hussain everything about what had happened that morning and Hussain listened.

'I see,' he said, when Israel had finished talking.

'Do you?' asked Israel, who suddenly found he needed someone to believe in him.

'I understand what you're saying,' said Hussain.

'That's not the same thing as believing me though, is it?'

'Would you—'

'Do you believe me?'

'It's—'

'You don't believe me, do you? You're supposed to be my bloody solicitor and you don't believe me!'

'Would you like me to accompany you to the interview, Mr Armstrong?'

'What interview?'

'You're going to be interviewed by the police shortly, Mr Armstrong, in connection with the robbery, and you have the right to have your solicitor with you.'

'Oh, God.'

As they were talking, there was a bang at the door and a small window opened and a tray was handed in.

'I took the liberty' said Hussain, gesturing towards the tray.

'What is it?' said Israel.

'It's food and drink,' said Hussain, getting up.

'I'm not hungry,' said Israel. He was hungry. He was starving. But he couldn't eat.

'It's coffee,' said Hussain, offering Israel the tray. 'And scones.'

Scones. Scones. Always bloody scones. Around Tumdrum the scone was regarded not as a snack item or as a luxury, but pretty much as an essential food item; around Tumdrum the scone was a
sine qua non
. And this morning of all mornings Israel could have done with a cup of coffee and a scone.

But even Israel couldn't manage a coffee and a scone this morning: things were really that bad.

So, after Hussain had eaten the scones and drunk the two coffees–'Are you sure?' he said, starting in on scone two. 'They're really good. They're cinnamon. You're absolutely sure?'–he and Israel were taken into the interview room. Two police officers were present: Sergeant Friel and someone Israel didn't recognise.

The policeman Israel didn't recognise switched on a tape recorder, said his name–Israel didn't quite catch it, was it Doggart? Hoggart?–the date, time and place and then he spoke to Israel. 'Can you introduce yourself for the benefit of the tape?'

Israel said nothing.

Hussain gave Israel a little nudge. Back in the cell, he'd explained to Israel that he needed to cooperate. Any questions he wasn't sure about, Israel was supposed to say, 'No comment.'

But instead Israel said nothing. And so Hussain nudged him again. And still Israel said nothing. So Hussain spoke on his behalf, saying his name. And the police officer told the tape that Israel had refused to speak. There was a chorus of huffing and puffing around the room.

'Where'd he get the name, Israel?' Doggart/Hoggart muttered to Sergeant Friel.

'I don't know.'

'What's that?' said Israel.

'Ah! It speaks!' said Doggart/Hoggart. 'Your name. Where'd you get it?'

'My name?'

'Aye. You didn't get it off a bush, did you?'

'What do you mean, I didn't get it off a bush?'

'Why are you called Israel?'

'Why do you think?'

'I'm asking you.'

'I'm called Israel after Israel, the people of Israel, in the Bible. You've heard of that, I suppose?'

'We have to ask,' said Sergeant Friel, whose mock emollience now seemed like true balm compared to Doggart/Hoggart.

'You are named after the state of Israel in the Middle East?' asked Doggart/Hoggart.

'Yes, that too, I suppose.'

'And what's your connection with the state of Israel, Mr Armstrong?'

'What? I don't have any connection with the state of Israel!'

'You're called Israel and you have no connections with the state of Israel or with the Middle East?'

'No. I don't.'

'So why are you called Israel?'

'I thought I'd just explained! My mother's Jewish, and she thought it was a good idea at the time. It was the 1970s. We had family there. It was all the rage.'