The Bad Book Affair: A Mobile Library Mystery by Ian Sansom Read Free Book Online Page B

those films?”
    “Was he?” said Ted.
    “Aye?” Minnie turned to Israel. “Now what’s up with ye? You’ve a face’d turn milk sour.”
    “The coffee,” said Israel, grimacing. “It really is—”
    “I was telling ye, we can’t get the parts,” said Minnie.
    “How long have you had the machine?”
    “The Gaggia?” said Minnie. “I don’t know. Forty years?”
    “Right. Well, there you are,” said Israel. “It’s obsolete.”
    “It’s a very good make,” said Minnie.
    “It’s an antique,” said Israel. “Like everything else in this godfor—”
    Ted reached forward and clipped Israel round the ear.
    “He smells lovely,” the women at the next table were agreeing among themselves at that very moment, as Maurice Morriswafted over to them, and he did, they were right, Israel could smell it as he ducked down with the force of Ted’s blow; he smelled absolutely lovely, Maurice; it was the sharp, sweet lemony smell of a Turkish cologne, which Maurice had discovered while on holiday with friends at a luxury golf resort hotel in southern Turkey some years previously, a cologne to which he had become famously—according to his campaign literature—addicted, and which he had sent over specially from London, and whose smell of exotic sweetness had until recently cut famously and decisively through the manly whiff of his cigar smoke, though, alas, since the beginning of his campaign Maurice had—also famously—given up smoking. You had to make certain sacrifices in politics, Maurice believed, and politicians were expected to set an example. Also, smoking was no longer a vote winner, so the cigars had had to go. A politician caught smoking cigars in public these days might as well have been caught patting a secretary on her pert little behind, or having an affair—for the sake of argument—with one of their constituency workers; those days, the good old cigar-chomping, camel-coat-wearing, secretary’s-pert-little-behind-patting, and constituency-worker-bedding days were long gone, and they sure as hell weren’t ever coming back. You had to keep moving with the times and keep on moving forward in politics, according to Maurice, which could be easier said than done, frankly: since giving up smoking he’d put on a few pounds around the waist, and if he was absolutely honest the last place he wanted to be was in a café surrounded by gray-haired men and women in car coats discussing coffee and cakes, but if these good people—his people, his constituents—wanted to talk traybakes, Maurice talked traybakes. He was like Jesus, Maurice Morris: his life was a living sacrifice.
    “Tasty, ladies?”
    “Yes,” said one of them.
    “That was a statement rather than a question,” said Maurice, winking.
    “Here you are,” offered one woman, “would you like a wee nibble of mine?”
    “Well, thank you,” said Maurice, leaning down teasingly. “It’s not often I get an offer like that.”
    “Go on, then,” said the woman, blushing and reaching forward with her fork, the dark brown confection poised perilously on the end. Maurice closed his mouth around the cake, winked at the assembled crowd, smacked his lips around the cake, and exaggeratedly chewed and swallowed.
    “Mmmm!” he exclaimed suborgasmically. “That is delicious. So rich!”
    “I think it’s made with buttermilk,” said the woman.
    “Really?” said Maurice, entirely as if the use of buttermilk in cakes were a point of great interest to him.
    “You have to use buttermilk,” piped up someone from the crowd.
    “I can’t get buttermilk these days,” said someone else.
    “Buttermilk,” repeated Maurice, confirmingly.
    “Me neither,” said another woman.
    “You ladies can’t get buttermilk?” said Maurice.
    “No,” they all chorused.
    “That sounds to me like a problem,” said Maurice. “Is that a problem?”
    “Yes,” chorused the ladies.
    “Well, let’s make a note of that,” said Maurice. This was where he