Anansi Boys

Carol came in, sat down, stared at the porridge. She was only half-dressed. “S’not a proper breakfast, is it? You ask me, a proper breakfast is fried eggs, sausages, black pudden, and grilled tomatoes.”

“You cook it,” said Daisy, “I’ll eat it.”

Carol sprinkled a dessert-spoonful of sugar on her porridge. She looked at it. Then she sprinkled another one on. “No, you bloody won’t. You say that you will. But you’ll start rabbiting on about cholesterol or what fried food is doing to your kidneys.” She tasted the porridge as if it might bite her back. Daisy passed her a cup of tea. “You and your kidneys. Actually, that might be nice for a change. You ever eaten kidneys, Daisy?”

“Once,” said Daisy. “If you ask me, you can get the same effect by grilling half a pound of liver, then weeing all over it.”

Carol sniffed. “That wasn’t called for,” she said.

“Eat your porridge.”

They finished their porridge and their tea. They put the bowls in the dishwasher and, because it was not yet full, did not turn it on. Then they drove in to work. Carol, who was now in uniform, did the driving.

Daisy went up to her desk, in a room filled with empty desks.

The phone rang as she sat down. “Daisy? You’re late.”

She looked at her watch. “No,” she said. “I’m not. Sir. Now is there anything else I can do for you this morning?”

“Too right. You can call a man named Coats. He’s a friend of the chief super. Fellow Crystal Palace supporter. He’s already texted me about it twice this morning. Who taught the chief super to text, that’s what I want to know?”

Daisy took down the details and called the number. She put on her most businesslike and efficient tone of voice and said, “Detective Constable Day. How can I help you?”

“Ah,” said a man’s voice. “Well, as I was telling the chief superintendent last night, a lovely man, old friend. Good man. He suggested I talk to someone in your office. I wish to report. Well, I’m not actually certain that a crime has been committed. Probably a perfectly sensible explanation. There have been certain irregularities, and, well, to be perfe

ctly frank with you, I’ve given my bookkeeper a couple of weeks’ leave while I try to come to grips with the possibility that he may have been involved in certain, mm, financial irregularities.”

“Suppose we get the details,” said Daisy. “What’s your full name, sir? And the bookkeeper’s name?”

“My name is Grahame Coats,” said the man on the other end of the telephone. “Of the Grahame Coats Agency. My bookkeeper is a man named Nancy. Charles Nancy.”

She wrote both names down. They did not ring any bells.

FAT CHARLIE HAD PLANNED TO HAVE AN ARGUMENT WITH SPIDER as soon as Spider came home. He had rehearsed the argument in his head, over and over, and had won it, both fairly and decisively, every time.

Spider had not, however, come home last night, and Fat Charlie had eventually fallen asleep in front of the television, half-watching a raucous game show for horny insomniacs, which seemed to be called Show Us Your Bum!

He woke up on the sofa, when Spider pulled open the curtains. “Beautiful day,” said Spider.

“You!” said Fat Charlie. “You were kissing Rosie. Don’t try to deny it.”

“I had to,” said Spider.

“What do you mean, you had to? You didn’t have to.”

“She thought I was you.”

“Well, you knew you weren’t me. You shouldn’t have kissed her.”

“But if I had refused to kiss her, she would have thought it was you not kissing her.”

“But it wasn’t me.”

“She didn’t know that. I was just trying to be helpful.”

“Being helpful,” said Fat Charlie, from the sofa, “is something you do that, generally speaking, involves not kissing my fiancée. You could have said you had a toothache.”

“That,” said Spider, virtuously, “would have been lying.”