Anansi Boys

“I mean, if I have to haunt anywhere,” she said to the receptionist, “why can’t I haunt Somerset House, over the road? Lovely buildings, excellent view over the Thames, several architecturally impressive features. Some very nice little restaurants as well. Even if you don’t need to eat any longer, it’d be nice for people-watching.”

Annie the receptionist, whose job since the vanishment of Grahame Coats had been to answer the phone in a bored voice and say, “I’m afraid I don’t know” to pretty much any question she was asked, and who, when she was not performing this function, would phone her friends and discuss the mystery in hushed but excitable tones, did not reply to this, as she had not replied to anything Maeve had said to her.

The monotony was broken by the arrival of Fat Charlie Nancy, accompanied by the female police officer.

Maeve had always rather liked Fat Charlie, even when his function had been to assure her that a check would soon be in the mail, but now she saw things she had never seen before: there were shadows that fluttered about him, always keeping their distance: bad things coming. He looked like a man on the run from something, and it worried her.

She followed them into Grahame Coats’s office and was delighted to see Fat Charlie head straight over to the bookshelf at the back of the room.

“So where’s the secret panel?” asked Daisy.

“It’s not a panel. It was a door. Behind the bookshelf over here. I don’t know. Maybe there’s a secret catch or something.”

Daisy looked at the bookshelf. “Did Grahame Coats ever write an autobiography?” she asked Fat Charlie.

“Not that I’ve ever heard about.”

She pushed on the leatherbound copy of My Lifeby Grahame Coats. It clicked, and the bookshelf swung away from the wall, revealing a locked door behind it.

“We’ll need a locksmith,” she said. “And I don’t really think we need you here any longer, Mr Nancy.”

“Right,” said Fat Charlie. “Well,” he said, “It’s been, um. Interesting.”

And then he said, “I don’t suppose you’d like. To get some food. With me. One day?”

“Dim sum,” she said. “Sunday lunchtime. We’ll go dutch. You’ll need to be there when they open the doors at eleven-thirty, or we’ll have to queue for ages.” She scribbled down the address of a restaurant and handed it to Fat Charlie. “Watch out for birds on the way home,” she said.

“I will,” he said. “See you Sunday.”

The locksmith unfolded a black cloth wallet and took out several slim pieces of metal.

“Honestly,” he said. “You’d think they’d learn. It’s not like good locks are expensive. I mean, you look at that door, lovely piece of work. Solid that is. Take you half a day to get through it with a blow torch. And then they let the whole thing down with a lock that a five-year old could open with a spoon-handle—. There we go—. Easy as falling off the wagon.”

He pulled on the door. The door opened and they saw the thing on the floor.

“Well, for goodness’ sake,” said Maeve Livingstone. “That’s not me.” She thought she’d have more affection for her body, but she didn’t; it reminded her of a dead animal at the side of the road.

Soon enough the room was filled with people. Maeve, who had never had much patience for detective dramas, was quickly bored, only taking an interest in what was happening when she felt herself being pulled, unarguably, downstairs and out the front door, as the human remains were taken away in a discreet blue plastic bag.

“This is more like it,” said Maeve Livingstone.

She was out.

At least she was out of the office in the Aldwych.

Obviously, she knew, there were rules. There had to be rules. It’s just that she wasn’t very sure what they were.

She found herself wishing she’d been more religious in life, but she’d never been able to manage it: as a small girl she had been unable to envision a God who disliked anyone enough to sentence them to an eternity of torture in Hell, mostly for not believing in Him properly, and as she grew up her childhood doubts had solidified into a rocky certainty that Life, from birth to grave, was all there was and that everything else was imaginary. It had been a good belief, and it had allowed her to cope, but now it was being severely tested.

Honestly, she wasn’t sure that even a life spent attending the right sort of church would have prepared her for this. Maeve was rapidly coming to the conclusion that in a well-organized world, Death should be like the kind of all-expenses-included luxury vacation where they give you a folder at the start filled with tickets, discount vouchers, schedules, and several phone numbers to ring if you get into trouble.

She didn’t walk. She didn’t fly. She moved like the wind, like a cold autumn wind that made people shiver as she passed, that stirred the fallen leaves on the pavements.