man with a pipe in his mouth, he had been placid, good-natured, and, as far as those beneath him were concerned, the salt of the earth. As a man with a lump of Plasticine in his hand, he was uniformly irritable and short-tempered. On a good day he made it as far as tetchy.
“Yes?”
“The Grahame Coats Agency case.”
“Mm?”
“I’m not sure about it.”
“Not sure about it? What on earth is there not to be sure about?”
“Well, I think maybe I should take myself off the case.”
He did not look impressed. He stared at her. Down on the desk, unwatched, his fingers were kneading the blue Plasticine into the shape of a meerschaum. “Because?”
“I’ve met the suspect socially.”
“And? You’ve been on holiday with him? You’re godmother to his kids? What?”
“No. I met him once. I stayed overnight at his house.”
“So are you saying you and he did the nasty?” A deep sigh, in which world-weariness, irritation, and a craving for half an ounce of Condor ready-rubbed mingled in equal parts.
“No sir. Nothing like that. I just slept there.”
“And that’s your total involvement with him?”
“Yes sir.”
He crushed the Plasticine pipe back into a shapeless blob. “You realize you’re wasting my time?”
“Yes sir. Sorry sir.”
“Do whatever you have to do. Don’t bother me.”
Maeve Livingstone rode the lift up to the fifth floor alone, the slow jerky journey giving her plenty of time to rehearse in her head what she would say to Grahame Coats when she got there.
She was carrying a slim brown briefcase, which had belonged to Morris: a peculiarly masculine object. She wore a white blouse and a blue denim skirt and over it, a gray coat. She had very long legs and extremely pale skin and hair which remained, with only minimal chemical assistance, quite as blonde as it had been when Morris Livingstone had married her twenty years earlier.
Maeve had loved Morris very much. When he died, she did not delete him from her cell phone, not even after she had canceled his service and returned his phone. Her nephew had taken the photo of Morris that was on her phone, and she did not want to lose that. She wished she could phone Morris now, ask his advice.
She had told the speakerphone who she was, to be buzzed in downstairs, and when she walked into reception Grahame Coats was already waiting for her.
“How de do, how de do, good lady,” he said.
“We need to talk privately, Grahame,” said Maeve. “Now.”
Grahame Coats smirked; oddly enough, many of his private fantasies began with Maeve saying something fairly similar, before she went on to utter such statements as “I need you, Grahame, right now,” and “Oh Grahame, I’ve been such a bad bad bad bad girl who needs to be taught some discipline,” and, on rare occasions, “Grahame, you are too much for one woman, so let me introduce you to my identical naked twin sister, Maeve II.”
They went into his office.
Maeve, slightly disappointingly as far as Grahame Coats was concerned, said nothing about needing it right here, right now. She did not take off her coat. Instead she opened her briefcase and took out a sheaf of papers, which she placed upon the desk.
“Grahame, at my bank manager’s suggestion, I had your figures and statements for the last decade independently audited. From back when Morris was still alive. You can look at them if you like. The numbers don’t work. None of them. I thought I’d talk to you about it before I called in the police. In Morris’s memory, I felt I owed you that.”
“You do indeed,” agreed Grahame Coats, smooth as a snake in a butter churn. “Indeed you do.”
“Well?” Maeve Livingstone raised one perfect eyebrow. Her expression was not reassuring. Grahame Coats liked her better in his imagination.
“I’m afraid we’ve had a rogue employee at the Grahame Coats Agency for quite a while, Maeve. I actually called in the police myself, last week, when I realized that something was amiss. The long arm of the law is already investigating. Due to the illustrious nature of several of the clients of the Grahame Coats Agency—yourself among them—the police are keeping this as quiet as possible, and who can blame them?” She did not seem as mollified as he had hoped. He tried another tack. “They have high hopes of recovering much, if not all, of the money.”
Maeve nodded. Grahame Coats relaxed, but only a little.
“Can I ask which employee?”
“Charles Nancy. I have to say I trusted him implicitly. It came as quite a shock.”
“Oh. He’s sweet.”
“Appearances,” pointed out Grahame Coats, “can be deceptive.”
She smiled then, and a very sweet smile it was. “It won’t wash, Grahame. This has been going on for yonks. Since long before Charles Nancy started here. Probably since before my time. Morris absolutely trusted you, and you stole from him. And now you’re trying to tell me that you’re hoping to frame one of your employees—or blame one of your confederates—well, it won’t wash.”
“No,” said Grahame Coats, contritely. “Sorry.”
She picked up the sheaf of papers. “Out of interest,” she said, “how much do you think you got from Morris and me over the years? I make it about three million quid.”
“Ah.” He was not smiling at all, now. It was certainly more than that, but still. “That sounds about right.”
They looked at each other, and Grahame Coats calculated, furiously. He needed to buy time. That was what he needed. “What if,” he said, “what if I were to repay it, in full, in cash, now. With interest. Let’s say, fifty percent of the amount in question.”
“You’re offering me four and a half million pounds? In cash?”
Grahame Coats smiled at her in exactly the same way that striking cobras tend not to. “Absa-tively. If you go to the police, then I will deny everything, and hire excellent lawyers. In a worst-case scenario, after an extremely lengthy trial, during which I shall be forced to blacken Morris’s good name in every way I possibly can, I will be sentenced at most to ten to twelve years in prison. I might actually serve five years, with good behavior—and I should be a model prisoner. Given the general overcrowding of the prison services, I’d serve most of my sentence in an open prison, or even on day release. I don’t see this as being too problematic. On the flip side, I can guarantee that if you go to the police, you will never get a penny of Morris’s money. The alternative is to keep your mouth shut, get all the money you need and more, while I buy myself a little time to—to do the decent thing. If you see what I mean.”
Maeve thought about it. “I
“Absatively. The safe is over here,” he told her.
There was a bookcase on the far wall, on which were uniform leatherbound editions of Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope, and Austen, all unread. He fumbled with a book, and the bookcase slipped to one side, revealing a door behind it, painted to match the wall.
Maeve wondered if it would have a combination, but no, there was just a small keyhole, which Grahame Coats unlocked with a large brass key. The door swung open.
He reached in and turned on the light. It was a narrow room, lined with rather amateurishly fixed shelves. At the far end was a small, fireproof filing cabinet.
“You can take it in cash, or in jewelry, or in a combination of the two,” he said, bluntly. “I’d advise the latter. Lots of nice antique gold back there. Very portable.”
He unlocked several strongboxes and displayed the contents. Rings and chains and lockets glittered and
