The Magpie Trap: A Novel (12 page)

‘Hello?’
he breathed.

‘Hi
Danny; it’s Mark,’ said a faraway voice on the other end of the line.

‘Mark?
Look, I’m waiting for an important call… can I call you back?’ slurred Danny,
who had now slumped fully onto the floor, alerting the attention of a couple of
the older drinkers who were frowning at him from over the froth of their warm
pints.

‘But
something’s come up,’ said Mark. ‘Something, um,
unexpected.
’

‘You’ve
not had the fucking pigs round there have you, cock?’ asked Danny. Mark paused
for a moment before answering. To him, Danny’s question must have sounded like
yervenorradvefakkinpigsroundvereahvyer,
cock?

‘No.
No police,’ said Mark finally.

‘Well,
what is it then?,’ said Danny, although his voice was rather muffled. He was
talking into his coat, trying to limbo dance his way back up onto his seat.

‘Well
tonight, I started to feel worse and worse about the thing I’d done. I just
didn’t feel right about it at all; it’s not legal…’

‘Shhhh,’
said Danny, and then realised that Mark wasn’t actually present and that he was
talking to a phone. He looked around the room, embarrassed. The rest of the
drinkers in the room looked back at him with barely disguised contempt. It was
all very well to drink all day, but it was another thing entirely to be
fall-down drunk. Somebody would probably alert the barman any minute now.

‘Somebody’s
on to us. Not the police but somebody… We can’t very well go round messing with
people’s security networks, Danny. We have to stop.’

‘Who
is on to us?’ asked Danny slowly, concentrating on every word. It had the
effect of making him sound even more drunk, as though he’d lost his command of
the English language.

‘Oh
right; I thought you had another
important
call to take. Look, is there something going on here that you’re not
telling me about? What’s going on?’

‘Chill,’
said Danny, who now sounded stoned, not drunk. ‘Who’s this other person and
what’s the fucker said to you?’

‘I’ve
received a very strange email,’ sighed a frustrated Mark.

‘Oh
yeah; a porn one?’ cried Danny, forgetting he was supposed to be pretending to
be sober. He struggled to pull a cigarette from the mangled box on the table.
Other drinkers looked round at him once again; this time, the barman had come
to the door of the Lounge and was standing hands-on-hips.

‘From
a foreign email address… a video clip. I wouldn’t have said anything but… but
it’s a fairly savage clip. And he used my name, Danny. He used my name.’

Danny
was scarily quiet for once.

‘And
I’m sure that in the background, the camera pans past a crate which has an
Edison
’s Printers logo on it. I couldn’t help but think that the two were
connected. You know; what I did today and this email.’

‘Shut
up,’ said Danny, suddenly sounding properly sober. ‘You have done everything
you needed to do, now forget about it. This will just be a random email scam
that’s all. You’re reading too much into it.’

‘But
they knew my name…’ said Mark, trailing off.

There
was no answer from Danny however. The barman had finally taken it upon himself
to get rid of this lively interloper. He grabbed Danny under his arms and
dragged him away from the table. The phone spun out of his hands and flew under
the table. Danny staggered away from his aggressor and put up his fists in the
kind of stance which Charlie Chaplin would adopt in his silent comedies. The
old, hardened drinkers in the bar just laughed.

‘Get.
Your. Phone.
And.
Get. Out,’ said the barman, shaking his head.

‘I’ve
got nearly a full pint of ale there,
guvnor
,’
said Danny, with a slight giggle. He was swaying on his feet now though, and
looked vaguely sick.

‘It
would probably kill you,’ muttered the barman. Then, he sunk to his knees and
retrieved Danny’s phone for him. Danny snatched it from his hands and stumbled
from the pub, occasionally altering his course by pushing against the wall if
he found himself veering off back to the bar; it seemed that his bar-homing
instincts were alive and well, even if the rest of his instincts were out of
kilter.

           
The fresh air hit him like a slap round the face. Danny
leaned back against the wall of the beer garden and closed his eyes; this
apparently only made him feel worse however, and he soon crouched down, closer
to the pavement, clutching his knees for dear life. Only then did he look at
his mobile phone which was in his hand still. It was the prop which reminded
him of the previous conversation. A cloud of worry formed on Danny’s brow.

All
of Mark’s talk of foreign email addresses and of video clips had scared him. He
remembered that now. Something was not right; he needed to speak to his
contact. Things were beginning to spiral out of control.

           
Then the phone began to ring again; it was as though
somebody had been watching him, judging when just the right moment to further
screw him up would be. Not wanting to answer it, Danny found his thumb had
already slipped onto the ‘answer’ button, and he could hear the tinny sound of
somebody speaking. Slowly, he lifted the phone to his ear.

‘…the
information I require? You know how important this is to me…’

A foreign-sounding voice; almost
too-perfect
BBC
English
gave the speaker away as not being from these shores. It was as though this man
had learned the language by way of watching endless repeats of the Queen’s
Speech.

‘I’m
sorry; can you repeat that?’ asked Danny, trying his best to sound sober.

‘I
said; the deadline is looming for you to provide me with the information and
the money which was such a vital part of our agreement. You’ve not forgotten
this in your inebriated state, have you?’

Danny’s
head shot around; he looked into the darkness of the side street, looked up at
the roves of nearby buildings, he studied the parked cars on the main road.
Somebody was watching him…

‘How…
Where are you?’ stuttered Danny.

‘If
by your stammering outburst, you mean to ask whether I am, at this moment,
watching you, then I would have to say no,’ said the foreign voice coldly.

This guy is really proud of his
ability to speak English,
thought
Danny, before saying: ‘You’re really proud of your ability to speak English,
aren’t you…’

‘Let
me finish,’ said the voice, angry now. ‘I am not watching you now, but my eyes
are everywhere, and they are all-seeing. Be careful how address me, in future.’

‘I
have the money for you, sir,’ said Danny.

‘Ah,
good. Wire it over to me then; there’s a good boy.’

Danny
felt suddenly relieved; if the man expected him to be able to wire money over
to him, then he clearly hadn’t spotted the fact that he was, at that moment,
slumped against a wall, outside the pub. Maybe he wasn’t being watched.

‘Where
should I wire it to?’

‘Just
put the money in your own gambling account. I will access the account myself
forthwith,’ said the voice. ‘And the information?’

‘The
Edison
’s security network is fallible…’

‘I
knew that; what else?’

‘It’s
fallible, and they didn’t detect any cross-over point when we spliced in the
recorded images.’

‘You
say
we
, Mr. Morris, but in fact, you
had very little to do with it, did you? I should like to meet your friend Mr.
Birch; virtually meet him, you understand.’

‘The
deal’s between you and I,’ snapped Danny. ‘Mark knows nothing about all of this
and wouldn’t be of any help… Heretofore, I’m your man… hello? Hello?’

The
line had gone dead. Danny’s head sunk back and then struck the wall; only then
did he remember how drunk he was supposed to be as a sudden wave of sickness
crashed over him. He reached into his pocket and was relieved to find that the
half-bottle of Vodka he’d bought earlier had not smashed. He broke the seal,
and poured a little of it into the cap with the intention of settling his
stomach. Holding his nose, he poured a few capfuls down his throat and
eventually felt well enough to walk properly without feeling as though he was
on one of those half-mile long airport travelators.

Lost… Again

‘
Seneca says a good word too, doubtless;
He says there is no difference he can find
Between a man that’s quite out of his mind
And one that’s drunken, save perhaps in this
That when a wretch in madness fallen is,
The state lasts longer than does drunkenness.’

(Chaucer’s ‘The
Pardoner’s Tale’)

The sound of my lonely shoes stumbling through
these strange streets breaks the chilled silence of an April night. My
footsteps reverberate from the tall looming buildings whose frontages of glass
and stone keep me on the outside. They do not want me to come closer;
threatening their impenetrable business-like
demeanour
with my unsteadiness on my feet.

I walk because it is all I can still
do to keep the demons at bay. I walk because I am looking for something; what
that thing is though, I don’t know; I can’t remember. I walk as though I am an
animal closed in an eternal cage; I pace round in circles, my footsteps boring
deep into the earth, trying to trace the path of my lost thread; the thread to
lead me from this labyrinth. I am at the same time both
Theseus
and the Minotaur…

Black cabs of reality flash past,
ignoring my ghostly presence, sensing my loss and creeping away into the night.
A mechanical monster street sweeper swerves to avoid my own haphazard stagger;
it’s nearly a two-mile-an-hour hit and run. I hear the mocking click of traffic
lights as they shift from colour to colour, and I stand and watch this firework
display whilst I smoke a cigarette I find crushed in my back pocket of my
jeans.

I try not to notice, but I know that
tears have started to stream down my face. It is as though the city has put
roadblocks in my way; or is constantly re-inventing itself so that I cannot
find my way. That street is not supposed to be there.

I imagine that I am blind, and that
I must trust my instinct, my drunk, homing-pigeon instinct to take me back to
Cheryl, and to Chapel Allerton. Why am I still outside? Why have my steps not
led me at least some of the way home?

I am looking for something; or is it
looking for someone? I am looking for my little lost self; a little boy
over-whelmed by the city; scared by its magnitude; its constant watching, or
being watched. Someone, somewhere, is watching me climbing imaginary hurdles
and lurching from one disaster to the next, leaving a trail of rubbish in my
wake… wait, yes… the envelope with the grand in it is still in my jacket
pocket.

I wish… I wish that I had a key to
unlock these doors which remained locked to me, which keep me penned into my
small, pitiful existence. Drink isn’t that key; it is only a temporary escape.
I know that now, more than ever.

Maybe it’s money? Maybe if I could
somehow get my hands on money then everything would be okay. This madness never
fails to take control of my mind. I am obsessed with the idea of escape, and
money can facilitate that. It can get me on the road to doing what I want to
do; it can grease the palms of fate and pay my way into that broad church of
happiness which every fucker else seems to worship at.

Or maybe happiness is a night club;
being surrounded by beautiful women, and drink, and music; dazzling lights,
choreographed smiles on people’s faces. When I arrive, the smiles are always
turned upside down though- I see frowns, anger and shaking heads.

Well, do you know what? Fuck them. I
will not play by their rules. If I’m going to be treated like some kind of
outsider - the world closing me out - then maybe I need to do what’s expected
of me and just take what’s mine and just become a hermit or something. Not only
will I keep going with this scam but I will do something which will show them
all; rob a fucking bank or something. Rob that bloody
Edison
’s Printers.

Robbing that place would be like
getting a license to print money…

The Watcher

Jim Hunter’s fingers drummed impatiently on the
steering wheel of his ageing Volvo as he contemplated the possibility of edging
out over the camber and onto the other side of the road. His eyes bored holes
in the back of the great hulking
Edison
’s
Printers articulated lorry which was resolutely and frustratingly chugging
along in front of him. Even if he did manage to see past the truck, then the
road was so bendy that his Volvo probably wouldn’t have the required horsepower
to get past it and pull over before he encountered yet another of those tight
curves. Whoever had designed the road had either been very drunk, or had a
shaky hand.

And so, Hunter sat
wedged into the sunken car seat, twisting uncomfortably to avoid a stray spring
which had sprung up from the dark no-man’s land of the underside of the seat
and pricked right into the side of his new polyester trousers. Mind-numbingly cold
air pumped out of the small air vents and tickled at his moustache, driving him
crazy. Infuriatingly, even the dashboard clock was conspiring against him;
moving at a speed which was denied the other parts of the car. How he longed
for a cigarette or for a nip of whisky to soothe the burning ache at the back
of his head. How he longed for a new car.

Like the car,
everything about Jim Hunter seemed as though designed in some by-gone era of
engineering in which big statements were valued above anything else. His face
looked as though it was carved in some huge cliff; with his large overhanging
forehead and jutting chin making him seem overtly masculine and immoveable.
Even his moustache added to the severity of his visage; not for him the wispy
bum-fluff of a trying-too-hard teenager, or the jauntily waxed whiskers of a
circus ring-master. Hunter’s facial hair looked as though it had been there all
of his life, like the foliage which holds together part of a cliff-face. It
made him look as though he was part-shadow.

 
Hunter’s large foot increased the pressure on
the accelerator, dragging him ever closer to the back of the lorry. He could
now read the sticker on its back bumper, which read: ‘How am I driving?’ and
then offered a phone number which you could call to outline your observations
of the driver’s skill. Hunter felt like calling the number and having the
driver ordered onto the side of the road in order that he could finally
overtake the lorry. Going too slowly is sometimes just as dangerous as going too
fast. But then, even if the driver had pulled over, there was nowhere he could
really go. The side of the road was lined with trees, and the lorry would have
probably sunk deep into the mud there, like some dinosaur in a tar pit.
Explorers from the future would find its preserved remains still there
thousands of years in the future.

Preserved remains were
exactly what Hunter felt like, in fact. He was too much of an old fossil to be
starting a new job at his age. He sighed heavily, and switched on the radio,
hoping to find some soothing music to distract him. Unfortunately, his radio
listening was limited to one channel; yet another complaint against his old
companion, the Volvo. Even more unfortunately, that channel had now taken the
inexplicable decision to hold a phone-in on the supposed heavy-handedness of
the police at a recent music festival. Hunter promptly switched the radio off
again; some of the officers that had been there had been his old colleagues and
he just knew that the radio station would be giving them a hard time.

With only the view from
the window to distract him, Hunter began to worry. Some people are natural
artists, or natural footballers, or natural born killers; Jim Hunter was a
natural worrier. His grey hair which frizzed into an island on his forehead
told the tale of the years and years of pulling his hair out. The dark holes
which were his sunken eyes proclaimed the too many insomniac nights. His
shredded fingernails; well, they were frankly a disgrace. It looked as though,
slowly but surely, Jim Hunter was going to eat himself, or was going to
disappear into a well of lonely apprehension.

Finally, there was a
break in the tree cover and Hunter took in the sight of what was to be his new
workplace; Edison Printers. The huge money manufacturing plant grew out of the
surrounding forest like some medieval fortress. And it was clearly protected
like a fortress; two metre-high Perimeter Intruder Detection fencing circled it
as though the modern equivalent of a moat. Hunter almost expected to see slits
on the walls in place of windows so that arrows could be fired at any invading
barbarians. And this particular fortress held some rich pickings inside it;
arrows, he reflected, might well serve some purpose here.

Hunter realized that
the lorry had suddenly applied the brakes; he realized this because he’d been
so distracted staring out of the window that he nearly drove straight into the
back of it.

Can you imagine a worse
first day at work than driving straight into one of the trucks from the very
site that you have been hired to protect? Hunter managed to stop the car,
utilizing some of his driving techniques learned in the police, but the shock
of the near-collision had made him start to sweat profusely. He tried to loosen
his tie, thought better of it, and wound down the side window instead.
Too cold
now though; Hunter promptly
wound it back up.

Eventually, after an
interminable wait, the lorry pulled off the lazy right turn into the
privately-owned road which led up to the print-works. What had he been waiting
for? There hadn’t been a car driving the other way for at least the past two
miles. It was almost as though the driver was trying to antagonize Hunter.

Taking another heavy
breath, he followed, still unable to over-take; this road was even narrower
than the A59. It was flanked by more Perimeter Intruder fencing which was
topped by a snarling, twisting stream of thorny metal spikes. The place seemed
to be resonating with a
thou shall not
pass
atmosphere.

Even nature seemed to
be under the strict control of
Edison
’s Printers. The trees had all been cut back and
the grass was cropped very short around some of the out-lying buildings. Locals
had complained about the unsightly nature of the site, but
Edison
’s had applied for, and won, special government dispensation to
bypass planning laws because of the high security risks of the site. In the
area of rugged natural beauty which was this part of
Yorkshire
,
Edison
’s Printers was, as Hunter now realized, an
eyesore.

Through the criss-cross
wire of the fence, he could see that most of the site consisted of robust
single-storey off-white concrete buildings which were dwarfed by the towering
panopticon, the watch-tower, in the centre - the control and surveillance
beacon which ordered and orchestrated the activity of the plant. It resembled
something out of the
Lord of the Rings
films which Hunter had so surprised himself by liking. The panopticon had been
built as an extension to the old stone print works which had been on the site
for over a century. It was the all-seeing-eye; the knowledge base for the whole
site; it radiated power.

Despite his misgivings
about the appearance of the place, Hunter was struck by the thought that the
site could not have been better situated from a security point of view. The
approach road was narrow and bending, flanked by deep ditches, making it almost
impossible to make a swift getaway unless the thieves were champion rally
drivers. And then, above all else, there was the panopticon. Surely the
would-be thief would take one look at that towering monstrosity, and realize
that there was no way that they wouldn’t be seen.

Gradually, the road
swung towards the Security Lodge, the gateway to the site; in fact the only
route in and out of the site; the equivalent of the portcullis. Hunter closely
followed the
Edison
’s lorry as it pulled up to the imposing main
gates and watched carefully as a bulky security guard exited the low-slung
Security Lodge and exchanged remarks with the driver. Only then did the
security guard take a look behind the lorry and realize that Hunter’s Volvo was
there.

The security guard
started to walk slowly towards Hunter’s car. Hunter contemplated the
approaching guard, and thought that in fact it was more of a waddle than a
walk. The man seemed to be struggling to control the wobble of his expansive
beer-belly. His short legs were bent at the knees like when you are shifting a
particularly cumbersome piece of furniture, only, in this man’s case, he
was
the wardrobe, and his belly was the
extra weight. He carried a peak cap in a ham-fist; sweat was pouring from his
forehead.

The guard approached
the car and made a lethargic gesture for Hunter to wind down his side-window.

‘Only Edison-registered
freight vehicles allowed through here mate,’ said the security guard,
listlessly, in what Hunter thought he detected as a vaguely Scottish accent.

‘Thank you; I know
that. I’m actually here to start a job,’ replied Hunter, reaching over to fish
his identification from inside his jacket pocket which hung from the passenger
seat.

‘You’re Jim… uh, Mr.
Hunter?’ said the guard quickly altering his posture and becoming much more
straight-backed. It was as though he’d received a sudden injection of
adrenaline. Clearly he’d not been expecting his new superior to arrive in such
a battered vehicle.

‘That’s right. And you
are?’ said Hunter, finally producing his wallet.

‘That’s OK sir; don’t
worry about that,’ said the security guard, waving away Hunter’s attempts to
show him his passport. ‘I’m Burr; Callum Burr.’

‘Like Bond; James Bond,
eh?’ said Hunter, with a wry smile. ‘Going to let me through so that I can park
up?’

‘I’m afraid, sir, that
you’re not going to be able to park through the gates… nobody’s allowed, not
even Mr. Wade.’

Hunter detected a note
of pleasure in Burr’s voice as he relayed the news. He’d clearly not taken
kindly to the James Bond comment. Hunter had never been good at small talk;
already, it seemed that he’d managed to alienate one of his new colleagues.

‘Okay Callum; where
should I park then?’ asked Hunter, as politely as he could.

‘Park in the Visitors’
Car Park for now; just down there and to the right,’ said Burr, gesturing
vaguely for Hunter to go back the way he’d come from.

Jim Hunter sighed,
slipped the Volvo into reverse and drove away. Maybe he’d somehow usurped
Burr’s position within the organization? It was hard to tell; Hunter knew all
about the playground tactics which took place in the work place. It seemed as
though he’d had to go through it in virtually every relationship he’d had
within the police force. People in large groups have a tendency to behave like
children; gossiping when backs are turned, pointing fingers, downright
bullying. He just hadn’t expected it to start this early.

Or maybe he was simply being
paranoid? Hunter parked up in the Visitors Car Park and straightened his tie in
the rear-view mirror. Almost without expecting it, he saw the eyes of an old
man staring back at him. They were eyes which had seen too many challenges, too
much disappointment, had observed an inordinate amount of pain.

‘I’m not cut out for
this,’ he said to himself, wearily. Then, making sure that his shirt fully
covered the still-recovering wounds on his wrists, he stepped out of the car.
Like an old man, he had to perform the just-got-out-of-the-car dance in order
to get the circulation going to his legs once more. He just hoped that Callum
Burr hadn’t been able to see this all-too-evident sign of weakness.

All the way back up the
road to the Security Lodge, Hunter tried to convince himself that he was
excited by the challenge ahead, that this wasn’t just one more obstacle on his
short-cut towards an oblivious end of days. He trudged rather than walked;
every step taking him towards a future in which he wasn’t particularly
interested.

Burr came out to meet
him, having safely checked the contents of the lorry and seen it through the
gates. Immediately Hunter reached out to shake hands with the big man and was
met by one of those bone-crushing trademarks of an ex-army officer in return.

‘What regiment was it
then?’ smiled Hunter, knowingly.

‘The Royal Fusiliers;
we’re all ex-forces here, it’s like a bloody retirement home.’

Retirement home,
thought Hunter, incredulous.
That’s the last thing I need. It’ll drive me to an early grave.

‘I’m ex-West
Yorkshire
Police myself,’ said Hunter. ‘I mostly worked in
Leeds
.’

‘R-i-i-g-h-t,’ said
Burr, with no little suspicion in his voice. ‘No other ex-coppers here…’

‘May I ask you a
question?’ asked Hunter. ‘Why were you not expecting me when I arrived here
earlier? And why did it take the driver of the truck in front of me to let you
know that my Volvo was right behind it?’

Burr remained ominously
quiet.

‘I’m not blaming you
for anything, but are there not procedures in place? I know that I arrived a
bit early, but nonetheless…’