Read The Book Stops Here: A Mobile Library Mystery for Free Online Page B

tea and eating fast-fried burgers from Big Benny McAuley's Premier Meats and Snacks van, and bidding like crazy for other people's discarded household items and rubbish, and rusty tools, and amateur watercolours, and telephone seats and tubular bunk beds, and pot-plant stands, and novelty cruet sets, and golf clubs, and boxes overflowing with damp paperback books; Israel loved Tippings—it was like a Middle Eastern bazaar, except without the spices and the ethnic jewellery, and with more men wearing greasy flat caps buying sets of commemorative RUC cap badges). Lovely little roll-top desk it was, although the top didn't actually roll, and a couple of the drawers were jammed shut, and Israel had had to patch up the top with some hardboard; but it did the job.
    He also had a table lamp, which had first graced a home sometime in the 1970s, by the look of it, and whose yellow plastic shade bore the scars of too many too-high-watted lightbulbs; and also a small armchair which had at some time been reupholstered with someone's curtains, and which had a broken arm; and a couple of old red fire buckets to catch the rain that made it through the coop's mossy asbestos roof; and also he'd rigged up a washing line using some twine and a couple of nails; and he had a walnut-veneer wardrobe crammed in there, with a broken mirror and only one leg missing, to keep his clothes in. To store his books he'd broken apart some old pallets and knocked up some shelving—him, Israel Armstrong, wielding a hammer and nails, and with the blackened thumb and fingernails to prove it—and these pretty sturdy shelves of his were now piled with books on one side of the bed and with jars of tea and coffee on the other, and an old teapot containing all his cutlery, two Duralex glasses and his enamel mug. He'd cut off a bit of an old mouldy scaffolding plank to cover the sink when he needed to prepare his food. The chicken coop wasn't exactly a palace, but nor was it quite the proverbial Augean stable. Israel liked to think of it as an eccentric World of Interiors kind of a look—Gloria loved The World of Interiors . It was…there was probably a phrase for it. Shabby chic, that was it. With the emphasis, admittedly, on the shabby. Super-shabby chic? Shabby shabby chic?
    It was shabby.
    He squeezed his spare corduroy trousers into his case, and went to the farmhouse, to the kitchen to say good-bye to the Devines.
    There was only Brownie in, hunched over the table, reading. It was June, but the Rayburn was fired up, as ever. There were flies, but even the flies were resting. Old Mr Devine was a firm believer in flypaper; the kitchen was festooned with claggy plumes of curling brown tape.
    'Israel!' said Brownie, looking up. You could always count on Brownie for a warm welcome.
    'Brownie.'
    'How are you?'
    'I'm doing good, actually,' said Israel. 'Pretty good. What are you reading?'
    'Levinas,' said Brownie. Brownie was studying Philosophy at Cambridge.
    'Oh, right. Yes.'
    ' Totality and Infinity ?'
    'Absolutely, yes,' said Israel.
    'Have you read it?'
    'Erm. That one? Er. Yes, I think so. I preferred some of his…others though, actually—'
    ' Alterity .'
    'Yes, that's a good one.'
    'No, that's the idea, translation of the French.'
    'Uh-huh,' said Israel dubiously.
    'Anyway, how are things on the mobile?' asked Brownie.
    'Good! Yes. Excellent,' said Israel. 'Even better now, we're going away for a few days.'
    'Oh, really? In the van?'
    'Yes. Yeah. Big conference thing over in England.'
    'Really?'
    'Yeah.'
    'Are you giving a paper or…'
    'No. No. I mean, they did ask me, of course, but I was…It's difficult to fit it all in when you're at the…'
    'Coal face?' said Brownie.
    'Exactly. The library is the coal face of contemporary knowledge management.'
    'Right,' said Brownie. It was something Israel had read in one of the brochures for the Mobile Meet.
    'Anyway. I was wanting to explain to George I wouldn't be around, just so that she—'
    'Ah, right. I