Anansi Boys

could and did sound like anything—

“We apologize for the delay in placing your call,” said a mechanical voice. “Please hold the line.”

Meave felt oddly calm, as if nothing bad could ever happen to her again.

A man’s voice came on the line. “Hello?” it said. It sounded extremely efficient.

“I need the police,” said Maeve.

“You do not need the police,” said the voice. “All crimes will be dealt with by the appropriate and inevitable authorities.”

“You know,” said Maeve, “I think I may have dialed the wrong number.”

“Likewise,” said the voice, “all numbers are, ultimately, correct. They are simply numbers and cannot thus be right or wrong.”

“That’s all very well for you to say,” said Maeve. “But I do need to speak to the police. I may also need an ambulance. And I have obviously called a wrong number.” She ended the call. Perhaps, she thought, 999 didn’t work from a cell phone. She pulled up her onscreen address book and called her sister’s number. The phone rang once, and a familiar voice said. “Let me clarify: I am not saying that you dialed a wrong number on purpose. What I trust that I am saying is that all numbers are by their nature correct. Well, except for Pi, of course. I can’t be doing with Pi. Gives me a headache just thinking about it, going on and on and on and on and on—”

Maeve pressed the red button and ended the call. She dialed her bank manager.

The voice that answered said, “But here am I, wittering on about the correctness of numbers, and you’re undoubtedly thinking that there’s a time and a place for everything—”

Click. Called her best friend.

“—and right now what we should be discussing is your ultimate disposition. I’m afraid traffic is extremely heavy this afternoon, so if you wouldn’t mind waiting where you are for a little while, you will be collected—” It was a reassuring voice, the voice of a radio vicar in the process of telling you his thought for the day.

If Maeve had not felt so placid, she would have panicked then. Instead, she pondered. Seeing that her phone had been—what would they call it, hacked?—then she would simply have to go down to the street and find a police officer and make a formal complaint. Nothing happened when Maeve pressed the button for the lift, so she walked down the stairs, thinking that there was probably never a police officer about when you wanted one anyway, they were always zooming about in those cars, the ones that went neenorneenor. The police, Maeve thought, should be strolling around in pairs telling people the time or waiting at the bottom of drainpipes as burglars with bags of swag over their shoulder make their descent—

At the very bottom of the stairs, in the hallway, were two police officers, a man and a woman. They were out of uniform, but they were police all right. There was no mistaking them. The man was stout and red-faced, the woman was small and dark and might, in other circumstances, have been extremely pretty. “We know she came this far,” the woman was saying. “The receptionist remembered her coming in, just before lunchtime. When she got back from lunch, they’d both gone.”

“You think they ran off together?” asked the stout man.

“Um, excuse me,” said Maeve Livingstone, politely.

“It’s possible. There’s got to be some kind of simple explanation. The disappearance of Grahame Coats. The disappearance of Maeve Livingstone. At least we’ve got Nancy in custody.”

“We certainly did not run off together,” said Maeve, but they ignored her.

The two police officers got into the lift and slammed the doors behind them. Maeve watched them judder up and away, toward the top floor.

She was still holding her cell phone. It vibrated in her hand now and then began to play “Greensleeves.” She glanced down at it. Morris’s photograph filled the screen. Nervously, she answered the phone. “Yes?”

“ ‘Ullo love. How’s tricks?”

She said, “Fine thank you.” Then she said, “Morris?” And then, “No, it’s not fine. It’s all awful, actually.”

“Aye,” said Morris. “I thought it might be. Still, nothing that can be done about that now. Time to move on.”

“Morris? Where are you calling from?”

“It’s a bit complicated,” he said. “I mean, I’m not actually on the phone. Just really wanted to help you along.”

“Grahame Coats,” she said. “He was a crook.”

“Yes, love,” said Morris. “But it’s time to let all that go. Put it behind you.”

“He hit me on the back of the head,” she told him. “And he’s been stealing our money.”

“It’s only material things, love,” said Morris, reassuringly. “Now you’re beyond the vale—”

“Morris,” said Maeve. “That pestilent little worm attempted to murder your wife. I do think you should try to show a little more concern.”

“Don’t be like that, love. I’m just trying to explain—”

“I have to tell you, Morris, that if you’re going to take that kind of attitude, I’ll simply deal with this myself. I’m certainly not going to forget about it. It’s all right for you, you’re dead. You don’t have to worry about these things.”

“You’re dead, too, love.”

“That is quite beside the point,” she said. Then, “I’m what?” And then, before he could say anything, Maeve said, “Morris, I said that he attempted to murder me. Not that he succeeded.”

“Erm,” the late Morris Livingstone sounded lost for words. “Maeve. Love. I know this may come as a bit of a shock to you, but the truth of the matter is that—”

The telephone made a “plibble” noise, and the image of an empty battery appeared on the screen.

“I’m afraid I didn’t get that, Morris,” she told him. “I think the telephone battery is going.”

“You don’t have a phone battery,” he told her. “You don’t have a phone. All is illusion. I keep trying to tell you, you’ve now transcended the vale of oojamaflip, and now you’re becoming, oh heck, it’s like worms and butterflies, love. You know.”

“Caterpillars,” said Maeve. “I think you mean caterpillars and butterflies.”

“Er, that sounds right,” said Morris’s voice over the telephone. “Caterpillars. That was what I meant. So what do worms turn into, then?”

“They don’t turn into anything, Morris,” said Maeve, a little testily. “They’re just worms.” The silver phone emitted a small noise, like an electronic burp, showed the picture of an empty battery again, and turned itself off.

Maeve closed it and put it back into her pocket. She walked over to the nearest wall and, experimentally, pushed a finger against it. The wall felt clammy and gelatinous to the touch. She exerted a little more pressure, and her whole hand went into it. Then it went through it.

“Oh dear,” she said, and felt herself, not for the first time in her existence, wishing that she had listened to Morris, who after all, she admitted to herself, by now probably knew rather more about being dead than she did. Ah well, she thought. Being dead is probably just like everything else in life: you pick some of it up as you go along, and you just make up the rest.

She walked out the front door, and found herself coming through the wall at the back of the hall, into the building. She tried again, with the same result. Then she walked into the travel agency that occupied the bottom floor of the building, and tried pushing through the wall on the west of the building.

She went through it, and came out in the front hall again, entering from the east. It was like being in a TV set and trying to walk off the screen. Topographically speaking, the office building seemed to have become her universe.

She went back upstairs to see what the detectives were doing. They were staring at the desk, at the debris that Grahame Coats had left when he was packing.

“You know,” said Maeve helpfully, “I’m in a room behind the bookcase. I’m in there.”

They ignored her.

The woman crouched down and rummaged in the bin. “Bingo,” she said, and pulled out a man’s white shirt,