'People.'

'Which people?'

'Friends.'

'Right. Who? People in your line-dancing class?'

'No. Not just them!' said Israel's mother. 'People in my book group as well.'

'Well, that's…' said Israel. 'Any coffee?'

'Sure,' said Ted.

'It's a start,' said Israel's mother.

'Yeah, but I hardly think we're going to get very far in tracking down the van with a bunch of middle-aged women from Finchley who happen to have read Reading Lolita in Tehran, are we? We need to get a proper plan together.'

'All right, Mr Know It All. So what's your plan?' said Israel's mother.

'Well, I haven't got a plan,' said Israel. 'I'm just saying. And anyway,' he added, getting up, 'I need to go and see Gloria. I'm sorry, I'll catch up with you later, okay?'

'Typical,' said Ted.

'She'll be at work now, won't she?' said Israel's mother.

Israel checked his watch.

'Well…'

'Good,' said Israel's mother, 'so you can help us with our plan then, can't you?'

'Mother!'

'Sit down, Israel.'

Israel sighed. And he huffed. And he puffed. But he sat down.

'Good,' said Israel's mother. 'Where were we?'

'I don't know,' said Israel.

'A plan,' said Ted.

'Ah, yes!' said Israel's mother. 'A plan.'

'It can't be that difficult to find a stolen mobile library in north London, can it?' said Israel. 'You can't just make a mobile library disappear. Someone must have seen it.'

'We could put out an appeal on Crimewatch,' said Israel's mother.

'Mmm,' said Israel, swallowing a piece of bagel. 'Now that is a good idea, actually, in fairness, Mother.'

'I'm not just a pretty face.'

'No,' said Israel.

'Aye,' said Ted.

'If you think about it,' continued Israel, 'there's a great media angle on this. "The Book Stops Where? Have you seen this Mobile Library?" We could get national coverage. It's a Guardian sort of a story.'

'Great!' said Israel's mother. 'We'll start a campaign. Ari's aunt knows Melanie Phillips.'

'No,' said Ted. 'I don't think that's a good idea.'

'Why not?' said Israel. 'You don't like the Daily Mail? I thought you liked the Daily Mail? We're trying to come up with a plan here.'

'No,' said Ted.

'No?' said Israel's mother.

'No…I wouldn't want people to know we'd lost it.'

'You wouldn't want people to know?' said Israel's mother. 'But why? How else are we going to find it?'

'Linda would love it.'

'Ah,' said Israel. 'Good point.'

'Who's Linda?' asked Israel's mother.

'Don't ask,' said Israel.

'Our boss,' said Ted.

'Huh,' said Israel's mother. 'They're all the same.'

'She's a Northern Irish Chinese lesbian single parent,' said Israel.

'Well, they're all more or less the same,' said Israel's mother.

'We can't do any publicity,' said Ted.

'It'd be a shame not to,' said Israel's mother.

'I bet we'd find it that way,' said Israel.

'No,' said Ted.

'Any better ideas?' said Israel.

'I know!' said Israel's mother. 'Let's make a list.'

While Israel and his mother started another list Ted busied himself finishing off the rest of the bagels.

'Yes! Of course! I've got it!' Israel's mother began. 'Number one! Insider contacts! We have to start with any insider contacts we have.'

'What do you mean, insider contacts?' said Israel. 'Contacts in the mobile library-stealing fraternity?'

'Exactly,' said Israel's mother.

'I've a cousin who works in a pub,' said Ted, finishing off his second onion bagel. 'He might be able to help.'

'I doubt that very much,' said Israel.

'Perfect!' said Israel's mother. 'People in pubs, people on the street, that's just where we should start.'

'Mother!' said Israel.

'Where is it, Ted?' said Israel's mother. 'Your cousin's pub?'

'It's…Hold on,' said Ted. 'I've a wee scrap of paper here.' He took some crumpled papers from his pocket and sorted through them. 'Here we are,' he said. 'I wrote it down. It's called the Prince Albert, in Camden Town. I thought I might look him up while I was over here.'

'That's a lead!' said Israel's mother.

'That is not a lead,' said Israel. 'Ted's cousin who works in some grotty pub in Camden is not a lead. I might as well go and ask some of my friends if they've come across a stolen mobile library recently.'

'That's not a bad idea either,' said Israel's mother. 'We've got to cover every angle.'

It's a wild-goose chase, Mother.'

'It's not a wild-goose chase.'

'Yes, it is.'

'Well, have you got any other leads?'

'No.'

'And how do you know it'll be grotty?' said Israel's mother.

'What?'

'Ted's cousin's pub.'

'Of course it'll be grotty!'

'You don't know that. It could be like a gastropub,' said Israel's mother.

'Yeah, right,' said Israel. 'Maybe we should go there for lunch, then?'

10

Israel was glad that he'd managed to persuade his mother not to join him and Ted for lunch at the Prince Albert.

The Prince Albert was not a gastropub.

The Prince Albert sits on the corner of Georgiana Street and Royal College Street, in Camden, London, NW1, a big wedgy-shaped red-brick and terracotta building. It reminded Israel of the Flatiron Building in New York. Israel absolutely loved the Flatiron Building; to Israel, the Flatiron Building represented Manhattan itself, which in turn represented the good life, the cosmopolitan, the sophisticated, and everything that Israel aspired to-intelligence, wit, repartee, and profound, geeky men in suits and sneakers, and complicated, elegant women in sunglasses, and evenings out with high-end friends in hip new neighbourhood cafés discussing the latest intellectual fashions and comparing stock portfolios. To Israel, the Flatiron Building represented a way of life.

Unfortunately, it wasn't his way of life. (Israel had never ever been to the Flatiron Building: he'd seen it in Spider-Man films. The Flatiron Building, like Grand Central Station, and the Empire State Building, and the Statue of Liberty, and the whole of the rest of New York, and Boston, and San Francisco, and all America, indeed, as well as most of continental Europe, and Asia, and Africa, and Australia, and Antarctica, existed only in Israel's mind, where they had all come to resemble one another: cities, plains and mountains fabulously, exotically and glamorously there, a world of undiscovered and unreachable El Dorados compared to Finchley's and Tumdrum's unavoidable and everyday here. Israel had travelled widely in his imagination, and gone absolutely nowhere; he was imprisoned by limitless horizons. Just the thought of travel gave him a headache.)

And inside, of course, inside, the Prince Albert was nothing like the Flatiron Building. Inside, comparisons to Manhattans both real and imagined quickly evaporated. Inside, the Prince Albert was a typical stinking London Irish boozer: dirty, depressing, dull and completely empty, except for one lone drinker who wore a porkpie hat and dirty boots and a ravaged-looking suit, and who didn't look up as Israel and Ted approached the bar.

'Gastropub!' said Israel. 'God!'

'Language,' said Ted.

'Sorry,' said Israel. 'But I mean…Couldn't they at least give the place an occasional sluicing out?'

There was music playing, a tinny radio-cassette player behind the bar, its shiny silver plastic rubbed black and white with age, the sound of a female singer sighing and deep-breathing and claiming that she wanted to be a slave to your rhythm, over ululations and ecstatic drumming, and a bass line that sounded like it was being played on very tight knicker elastic. In a too-small alcove off the bar there was an old, frayed and chipped pool table, with a big dark stain on the baize that looked as though someone might once have given birth on it. The table was wedged in with just a few feet to spare all round-London Irish pool players having notoriously short arms-and it was flanked and shadowed by big faded, framed posters on the walls all around it, showing the Mountains of Mourne sweeping down to the sea, and County Kerry, and Cork, and a framed jigsaw of the Giant's Causeway, which made it look as though the basalt rocks had been machine-cut and pieced together on a Sunday afternoon by bored children and their maiden aunts.