It was irksome. Even private investigators have to grapple with the mundane. Somewhere in Sandley, or Woodnesborough, or Eastry, or Felderland, or Worth, or one of the other surrounding villages, an aficionado of Westerns had the library book that Sterling needed. The borrower, most likely a man (it was a Western, after all) was probably sitting in a favourite chair, enjoying the sunshine and a cup of coffee, finishing it off before tomorrow, oblivious to its true importance.
In the lull back in Sandley, Sterling caught up with domestic duties and shopping, walking to and from the Co-op in the sunshine with his bags of provisions. Inside the front door at the bottom of the stairs to his office, no one apart from Gloria Etchingham was making an old-fashioned request for the services of Frank Sterling Investigations. Amongst the bumf and junk, people offered him two-for-one pizzas, but only on Tuesday evenings, cavity wall insulation, solar panels, distance-learning accountancy modules and cut-price tanning sessions. As he screwed up and tossed the last flyer into the waste bin, the bin teetered and toppled over. He switched on his computer. No one was requesting his services by electronic means, either, but there were plenty of e-mail offers for cut-price sofas or rail journeys to York and places beyond. That reminded him. He should tot up his expenses charges for presentation to Gloria Etchingham.
He telephoned her, but there was no reply. That suited him. He left a message asking her to call at the office at four tomorrow afternoon. The book would be back by then, and he would have news for her. On his way home, he popped in to the library to see Angela. After that, there was nothing to do with the Etchingham case until tomorrow. The Grateful Dead were playing when he fell asleep near midnight. He dreamed he was driving a High Speed 1 train down a lane just outside Ramsgate until it was too narrow to go any further. He phoned Andy Nolan for help, but he just talked about family. Then Christina was visiting him again in his room at Hotel Sultan. He dreamed of Norway, though he had never been.
He was in his office and at his desk early, earlier even than Angela. There was nothing to do except wait. He looked out over the square. A mother cycled through with her two children beneath his window on the way to the primary school through the passageway just beyond. Their cycle helmets bobbed as they pedalled. He saw Jack Cook open the café. A waitress turned up a few moments afterwards. Downstairs in the library, he heard sounds of movement – a key in the latch, the hum of a fan.
Sterling got out his best Delft blue cups and saucers, brewed the tea and added the milk. He paid attention. The tea could not be too dark or too milky. Then he gathered his documents and the Mehrtens chocolates, wedged them under his arm, picked up cups and saucers in each hand and tottered precariously downstairs. The saucers rattled. At all costs, he wanted to avoid spillage. At the bottom of the stairs, he nudged open the door with his hip. Angela was quick to get organised. He was banking that she had not already brewed up.
There was no one at the reception desk.
‘Angela,’ he called. ‘Tea.’
She appeared from the side office. Seeing the cups and saucers, she smiled with pleasure.
‘Good timing, Frank. Tea was going to be my next job. The Delft, too. The Sandley-Low Countries connection. To what do I owe this privilege?’
‘I think you know already. You’ve helped me so much.’ He offered the chocolates. ‘A small token. And I wonder if you have a library registration form?’
‘You’re really wanting to make it right, aren’t you?’ She smiled again. ‘And of course, you charming devil, you’re succeeding. But we can enrol you online these days. Have you got….?’ He flipped his driving licence and a gas bill onto the desk. ‘Impressive,’ she said in response. ‘You seem to know the ropes from the last time, circa 1985.’
‘Meet Lemon Kelly,’ he said. ‘Can I reserve it?’
Angela rolled her eyes as she completed the registration. ‘We updated the children’s section years ago. But you might want to try Appaloosa.’ Then, more seriously, she said, ‘We close at five, Frank. You might have a long wait. The borrower might not even bring it in today. Thirty five per cent of our customers overall return late and pay fines.’
‘Impressive county-wide analysis, Angie.’ He swallowed nervously. ‘I expect you also have the capacity to analyse individual borrower patterns and rates of prompt return. Now that everything is computerised. Not, of course, that I would want to be party to any results involving names.’
Angela gave him the long, hard bureaucratic look. It reminded him of their contretemps on the telephone a few days ago. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and looked away. Then she turned to her computer screen. Her black fingers darted over the keyboard.
She gave a small smile. ‘There’s a very strong chance, not far off 100%, that you’ll have the book in your hot little hands by midday.’
Sterling had more questions. After all, he was a PI. But in the gap between Angela preparing for business and actually opening, they sat comfortably together and sipped their tea. Angela worked open the chocolates, and they had one or two as a breakfast supplement. Sterling was used to waiting, and he knew when he was pushing his luck.
He was doodling in his office, sketching theories and scenarios in the Etchingham case and thinking of Smithy, when the call came. It was 11:51. He scuttled downstairs. As he went through the library door, a shorter man in his late 40s or early 50s was coming the other way. He and Sterling feinted this way and that, blocking each other’s path for a moment. ‘So sorry,’ he murmured with a smile. He wore luminescent cycle clips and carried a cycle helmet. Sterling noticed a standard hearing aid in one ear and a more complicated device near the other – a small, dark blue disc above it attached by wire to another dark blue aid tucked behind it. Angela nodded at his back and looked at Sterling. Appaloosa’s returner had been his statistically reliable self.
Sterling was worried that another eager borrower would pounce on the book he coveted so much. He quickly had Angela scan it and his card, so that he was the new loanee. He wanted to go to a nearby table to examine it on his own, but without Angela he would have had nothing, and perhaps he would have been nothing – a discarded body in some lonely corner of West Flanders.
‘May I come around and sit at your desk with you, Angela – so we can look at the book together?’
‘Be my guest,’ she smiled. He could tell she was pleased.
He placed the book in front of them, square and parallel against the edges of the otherwise almost empty desk, as if symmetry would help. He splayed his fingers each side of it. It felt that this was the moment. Appaloosa, by Robert B. Parker. There was a formulaic picture of a wild stallion and a tall cowboy on the front. He never read westerns.
‘Parker is very good,’ said Angela. ‘He writes crime novels, mainly, but his westerns are a popular sideline. We’ve got a lot of his stuff across the county. I think Appaloosa has been made into a film.’
Sterling nodded, but barely listened to what she was saying. He thought she might be saying it because she was nervous, too.
‘Where’s the ISBN?’
‘Somewhere in the first couple of pages.’
He opened the book and leafed through. He quickly found the page with all the details of publication, and there it was – except that the ISBN had been neatly crossed through and replaced in small, neat black letters and numbers – a/c 000111769.
Angela turned to him. ‘That’s IT?’ she said incredulously. ‘That’s what you’ve been schlepping around western Belgium this last week for? That’s what all this is about?’
He shrugged, feeling the same sense of anti-climax but convinced as well that the journey was just about over. ‘It looks like it. I’m seeing Gloria Etchingham this afternoon. This is an account number. It goes with a photograph I’ve got. I think she’s going to be pleased. Do you think it’s time for another cuppa, Angela?’
As she smiled again and moved away to the kettle in her office, he thought that Gloria would be very pleased. He’d solved her case, but that did not prepare him for the twists and turns that followed.