Anansi Boys

“You little shit!” she said, and she kicked him. Maeve had good legs and a powerful kick, but she and her attacker were at close quarters.

Maeve’s foot connected with his shin, and she reached for the hammer he was holding. Grahame Coats smashed out with it; this time it connected, and Maeve stumbled to one side. Her eyes seemed to unfocus. He hit her again, squarely on the top of the head, and again, and again, and she went down.

Grahame Coats wished that he had a gun. A nice, sensible handgun. With a silencer, like in the films. Honestly, if it had ever occurred to him that he would need to kill someone in his office he would have been much better prepared for it. He might even have laid in a supply of poison. That would have been wise. No need for any of this nonsense.

There was blood and blonde hair adhering to the end of the hammer. He put it down with distaste and, stepping around the woman on the floor, grabbed the safe-deposit boxes containing the jewelery. He tipped them out onto his desk and returned them to the safe, where he removed an attaché case containing bundles of hundred-dollar bills and of five-hundred euro notes, and a small black velvet bag half full of unset diamonds. He removed some files from the filing cabinet. And, last but—as he would have pointed out—by no means least, he took out from the secret room the small leather vanity case containing two wallets and two passports.

Then he pushed the heavy door closed, and locked it, and swung the bookcase back into position.

He stood there, panting somewhat, and caught his breath.

All in all, he decided, he was rather proud of himself. Good job, Grahame. Good man. Good show. He had improvised with the materials at hand and come out ahead: bluffed and been bold and creative—ready, as the poet said, to risk it all on a turn of pitch-and-toss. He had risked, and he had won. He was the pitcher. He was the tosser. One day, on his tropical paradise, he would write his memoirs, and people would learn how he had bested a dangerous woman. Although, he thought, it might be better if she had actually been holding a gun.

Probably, he realized on reflection, she had pulled a gun on him. He was fairly sure he had seen her reach for it. He had been extremely fortunate that the hammer had been there, that he had a tool kit in the room for moments of necessary DIY, or he would not have been able to act in self-defense with it so swiftly or so effectively.

Only now did it occur to him to lock the main door to his office.

There was, he noticed, blood on his shirt and on his hand, and on the sole of one shoe. He took off his shirt, and wiped down his shoe with it. Then he dropped the shirt into the bin beneath his desk. He surprised himself by putting his hand to his mouth and licking the gobbet of blood off it, like a cat, with his red tongue.

And then he yawned. He took Maeve’s papers from the desk, ran them through the shredder. She had a second set of documents in her briefcase, and he shredded them as well. He reshredded the shreddings.

He had a closet in the corner of his office, with a suit hanging in it, and spare shirts, socks, underpants, and so on. You never knew when you would need to head to a first night from the office, after all. Be prepared.

He dressed with care.

There was a small suitcase with wheels in it in the closet, too, of the kind that is meant to be placed in overhead lockers, and he put things into it, moving them around to make room.

He called reception. “Annie,” he said. “Would you pop out and get me a sandwich? Not from Prêt, no. I thought the new place in Brewer Street? I’m just wrapping up with Mrs Livingstone. I may actually wind up taking her out for a spot of real lunch, but best to be prepared.”

He spent several minutes on the computer, running the kind of disk-cleaning program that takes your data, overwrites it with random ones and zeroes, then grinds it up extremely small before finally depositing it at the bottom of the Thames wearing concrete overshoes. Then he walked down the hall, pulling his wheeled suitcase behind him.

He put his head around one office door. “Popping out for a bit,” he said. “I’ll be back in about three, if anyone asks.”

Annie was gone from reception, which, he thought, was a good thing. People would assume that Maeve Livingstone had already left the agency, just as they would expect Grahame Coats to return at any time. By the time they started looking for him, he would be a long way away.

He descended in the lift. This was all happening early, he thought. He would not turn fifty for more than a year. But the exit mechanisms were already in place. He needed simply to think of it as a golden handshake, or perhaps a golden parachute.

And then, pulling the wheelie suitcase behind him, he walked out of the front door into the sunny Aldwych morning, and out of the Grahame Coats Agency forever.