The Magpie Trap: A Novel (18 page)

Instead, Danny cursed the fact that the local Council had seen fit to
make the whole city centre pay and display parking in an attempt to limit the
congestion within
Leeds
. With shaking hands he
rifled through his glove-box to find the required loose change, consigning
cracked CD cases, empty fast food cartons and business cards to a new home in
the passenger foot-well. He had looped the loop of the city centre in a
spiralling freefall of desperation on his search for the elusive space, and was
now rewarded by the Council’s prohibitive charges. Stressed, he could not
contemplate the escapologist manoeuvres which his mate, Chris, a resident of
the city centre, had to perform on a daily basis in order to steer clear of the
parking attendants’ vice-like grip.

Do you think that what the
man said was not real? Do you really think you can concentrate on your usual worries
instead? Do parking attendants really bother you that much?

Parking attendants ruled the city centre with a sinister power which
bordered on that of feudal lords in medieval
England
. The city
centre lured in the cash-rich young professionals and then milked them for all
they were worth. High Council tax, extortionate parking fees; many chose simply
to forgo the pleasure of owning a car, however then found that there was no
provision made for them in terms of supermarkets within walking range, and therefore
small local shops made a killing selling gold-carat carrots, bejewelled beans
and gold-plated bread.

Danny had often contemplated a get-rich-quick scheme such as opening an
off-license cum video store cum grocery in the town centre, filling a supposed
void in the marketplace, but his inactivity had caused him to miss that gravy
train. Now, town was littered with small oasis shops which sold over-priced
essential items for the lazy residents of the urban ant colonies which covered
the horizon. Now such contemplation seemed consigned to the rubbish-tip of
history…

You’re a dead-man walking
now Danny-boy. A dead-man walking, cock. You’ve been a pawn in this strange
foreign man’s game of chess all along, and now he’s playing the end-game. His
slippery fingers are gripping your piece and moving you across the board. Do
you really think you’ll get away with it?

Pale-faced and sweating, Danny switched his mobile phone to silent and
crossed the River Aire on the footbridge which lent his every footstep a metallic
bass echo, as if it was the thudding score of a horror movie. Wincing through
his returning hangover, he knew that a drink was his kill-or-cure for him;
aire of the dog
if you will.
 
Breathing
heavily, his every sense was attuned to drinking his way back into a stable
state where things like what the man had said to him would not matter any more.

In the face of every
pedestrian that passed him, Danny thought he could read knowledge. They must
have
recognised
that he’d just been had.
They must have
recognised
him as a man that
had just been suckered into check-mate. Only whisky would do now.

He made for the closest
bar. He knew very well that his usual haunts would probably not welcome him
back for a while after last night’s performance, and so to Oracle. Not one of
his
favourites
, but one in which he could
slide un-noticed into a plush seat and contemplate what to do next. Is there a
move after check-mate? Was he really going to throw all caution to the wind and
plan a robbery? Was he only considering such deviant
behaviour
because of the blurred reality of a single phone
call? He had to find out. He had to find out whether his fast-pumping heart,
his shortness of breath, his inability to keep still were his reaction to the
call or a familiar chemical reaction to the imbibing of vast quantities of
alcohol on the previous night.

Oracle
was set in the
Brewery
Wharf
development right on the banks of the river. It was one of the
identikit new-style bars that he usually hated so much. Usually, there’d have been
a congregation of drinkers in the large outdoor seating area but today, the
river channel had been turned into a wind tunnel, and Danny was only too happy
to fade into the background within the interior.

He
ordered up his drink and collapsed into a seat as far away as possible from
anyone else. He tried to cajole himself into a better mood; he tried to sell
himself on the idea that maybe things weren’t as bad as they seemed.

The man had told you that you’d be
able to get away with it.

The
first sip of the whisky was painful. He felt his kidneys screaming in complaint
and had to massage his back for a while just to shut the nagging little
bastards up.

You’re already part-way in. You’ve
already infiltrated the site electronically; all you need to do now is
infiltrate it physically.

Another
sip; this time the whisky tasted smoother and more welcoming. ‘Come in, Danny,’
it said. ‘Welcome back, Danny. We’re sorry you had to go away for a couple of
hours, but now you’re back, we’re so happy to see you.’

What have you really got to lose,
Danny-boy? You hate the life you lead. You hate
Leeds
. You
hate your job. You’ve been waiting for an opportunity like this for your whole
life. Don’t turn your back on it now.

We
can convince ourselves of anything given the right amount of booze and the
right amount of pain. We can convince ourselves of anything when we’ve not
really got a choice anyway.

Do it, Danny-boy, do it.

Another
sip of whisky; the tumbler was empty already. Better go to the bar and order-up
another one before you start to see the world straight.

Life has broken its promise to you.
Life hasn’t been what it said it would be; it did not do exactly what it said
on the tin. Think about it…

New whisky in hand – Danny
couldn’t even remember visiting the bar – he found himself thinking back on
life’s empty promises. He had come to
Leeds
for the
lifestyle it promised him.
 
University
was just an excuse. He wanted to drink deeply from the overflowing chalice
which was the thriving metropolis. He wanted to develop his own confident
personality to match it. A small-town boy, he thought he could completely
reinvent his own character; he was a blank canvas, and he would draw his new
life in broad, sweeping, confident brush-strokes.

What he had found however
was that the streets were not paved with gold. He had scraped through his
degree, clinging by the skin of his teeth to a place on the course despite his
numerous phases of AWOL and his run-ins with authority. Around the time of his
graduation, he had begun to suffer from a weighty case of disillusionment,
which had eventually hardened into a tough, unbreakable cynicism. He lacked the
conviction to leave
Leeds
, but didn’t know what he
had to do restore that shiny newness to the place which had once caught his eye
like a magpie’s treasure.

Danny had dipped his toe
half-heartedly into various schemes to make the most of the talent which he
knew was ingrained somewhere within himself, but now did not have the strength
of character to chip away at that crust of despair which had formed. So he had
settled for second best. He had settled for the temporary freedom that a sales
role had given him, but this temporary stage had now stretched into four years.

A wife, mortgage, and
responsibility had crept up on him without his knowledge. It seemed as though
he had simply woken up one day and it was so. These were the chains which held
him down in his job. But now everything could change. And without him having to
make any of those killer decisions that he’d shied away from for most of his
life.

Danny’s
third Scotch heralded the return of his enthusiasm. He could almost feel the
breath of wind lightly brushing his cheek as he stood at the top of the
precipice waiting to take the plunge, and with a light-headed excitement, he
began to see the reasons why, rather than the reasons why not. Even the mobile
phone’s display, which read that he had six missed calls from his boss, Martin
Thomas, did not dampen his spirits. Indeed, as his thoughts turned to work, he
was gripped by a strong desire to undertake the robbery as much to devastate
EyeSpy as to gain money.

Danny
slammed his tumbler down and shook his head, deep in an almost Shakespearean
soliloquy. He could not believe that his mind was wandering so much as to
contemplate undertaking a heist. What was happening to him? But as his phone
began to register a seventh incoming call in the past half hour from Martin
Thomas, Danny settled on a new emotion; anger.

He
was angry at the years which EyeSpy had stolen from him, he was angry at the
depths to which the company had dragged him, numbing his mind with sales
commission, placating his restless soul through bribery. Most of all, he was
angry at Martin Thomas, this charlatan who dictated his life. A man whose
obsession was his work, whose passion for security simply served to humiliate
him in his pettiness in Danny’s eyes.

How could anyone have a
passion for security? For watching? It implied a perversity of character, some
kind of sexual deviance or an inactivity which bordered on death. Danny was
scared of a living death such as this, and raged against its suggestion. He was
different. He could
act
. Danny was
using his own sales techniques on himself, selling the idea to himself by
playing on his own weaknesses.

Remember
what the man said about the Intertel Shift. That’s your key to getting on and
off the site.

Danny couldn’t help but remember. In fact, the
opportunities presented by the forthcoming Intertel Network Shift were something
that he’d had at the back of his mind, albeit unconsciously, for some time now.
He remembered the presentation that there’d been at work. He’d reckoned it
would be another of those interminably boring lectures about signals, receivers
and bloody wires, as most of the presentations usually were. He’d been
surprised.

The presentation had been hosted by some
industry bigwig. All of the sales staff had been there, and Fartin Thomas of
course. Mark Birch may have been there, but Danny couldn’t remember. Hell,
Sparky probably made it his job to know about industry stuff like the Intertel
Shift and had probably known about it for months before any of the rest of them
did.
Anyway
, this industry bigwig had
started rambling on about some situation which was about to occur within the
telephony industry. To improve communication and data lines, companies like the
global conglomerate Intertel were planning to change-over all traditional
telephone lines from copper wire into data streams. Apparently, this would enable
the wholesale introduction of new technologies onto all phone networks, such as
video-calling capability, and would open up whole new sources of revenue to
them. So far so boring; so far so everyday. But then, one of the sales team –
Andy Nosworthy, he reckoned; he could usually be trusted to be on the ball in
presentations even when the rest of them had dozed off hours ago – had piped up
with the killer question.

‘But what happens to the alarm systems? There
are millions of intruder alarm systems installed all across the country, many
of which rely upon telephone lines in order to communicate the signalling data
from the sites to the central monitoring centre.’

It
was
Andy
that had made the link. Danny was sure of it now. Only someone like Andy could have
come out with such a jargon-laden fucking sentence. But underneath it all, the
old grey-haired heart-attack-waiting-to-happen had a point.
Sure
the Intertel Shift would be good
for the customer in the long-run, but for the security industry, it meant a
massive headache. The phone lines on which the security systems ran could
signify whether a premises was closed or open, whether access was attempted out
of hours, and if these lines were cut, a burglary could be assumed to be in
progress. Danny remembered shifting in his seat. He remembered the idea
that sneaked up on him and caught him
unawares.

If
the systems are all down, wouldn’t that an ideal time to undertake a robbery?
If a would-be burglar got hold of such information, why, they could make off with
millions in booty without fear of being caught, couldn’t they?

The idea gripped him. He listened more intently
to the industry bigwig.

‘That’s right,’ he answered. ‘And that’s our
main concern. All of this has been kept quiet so as not to worry the general
public. But mark my words, the Intertel Network Shift will take place soon. In
order to facilitate the changeover in communication channels, in the middle of
one night all telephone lines will be stopped and then transferred onto the new
data routes. We anticipate widespread chaos that night, as suddenly all
intruder systems which rely upon the telephone line as their method of
signalling data will go haywire.’

The industry bigwig had gone on to explain the
sales opportunities which the Intertel Shift offered up to companies like
EyeSpy. ‘You’ll be able to sell-in additional CCTV to sites that are worried
about this,’ he said. But Danny had already drifted away into a daydream about
where he’d rob if he knew he had a get out of jail free card as provided by the
Shift.