The Magpie Trap: A Novel (21 page)

‘Remember those talks we had at university Chris? Remember the promises
we made? Remember how we said that we wouldn’t become slaves, wouldn’t become
robots? Well look at us. Just take a long-hard look. Look at our suits, our
business cards, our rent, and our mortgages. Look at the chains which now hold
us back.’

Danny noted that Chris did actually look down. He probably saw his
stupid goddamn waistcoat through new eyes.

‘I’ve got my own reasons for wanting away from here,’ said Chris.

‘Well, I have too,’ continued Danny, not letting Chris open up. ‘I’ve
had enough. I have been offered an opportunity, and I would be stupid to pass
it up. We can rob
Edison
’s Printers and get those
dreams back.’

           
Danny proceeded to explain the whole
situation behind the Intertel Shift to an increasingly interested Chris: ‘Look
mate, it’s like this. I’ve known about this for a while, but only now have I
put two and two together. One night next week, Intertel are going to have to
cut all of the traditional phone lines in this area and transfer them over onto
a digital line. Basically, when this happens - and although the telecoms
companies are telling you this won’t happen - all hell will break loose. It’s
like the Millennium bug becoming a reality. Every Intruder Alarm system which
is monitored by an external agency relies on a telephone line. When Intertel
cuts the line to transfer it over onto digital, it will report a fault. This is
when we break into
Edison
’s printers. They will be
reporting a line-fault anyway, and will probably ignore any alarms that whole
night. We can walk in and out, completely scot-free.’

Chris was now fully alert, thinking about the plan, raising questions:
‘But what about the CCTV pictures? Surely in a place like
Edison
’s, they’ll
simply be able to take a look at what’s going on site by looking at the camera
images, and we’re back to you being on
England
’s Stupidest Criminals.
’

Danny raised an interjectory finger: ‘That’s where young Sparky comes
in... came in. He is a complete whizz on network security. All of the
Edison
’s Printers
cameras are transmitted live over a digital network. Mark has already done the
hard work by infiltrating their network once. All we need to do is to persuade
him to do it again. All we need to do is to persuade him to interrupt the
transmission of the camera images for a certain period of time, and we’re home
and dry. You see, these security men ain’t IT literate. What we’ve told them is
a secure line is actually pretty easy to circumvent. If we got a hacker inside
there, we could break into the network in about twenty minutes, but we’ve
already got our inside man: Mark.’

Chris was being reeled
in by Danny’s infectious enthusiasm, just like he was when they had robbed that
huge bag of weed from their dealers’ house when they were at university and
then sold it.

Chris’s need for adventure had been awakened.

           
‘And
if you’re wondering about how we’ll carry off all the money that we steal then
that’s the beauty of this plan. The money isn’t even the main reason for
breaking-in. No, what we will get our hands on is the Precisioner printer. And
that’s like getting a license to print money. That’s
exactly
like a license to print money.’

           
‘A
license to print money,’ repeated Chris, in an awestruck voice.

           
Danny
nodded, smiling.

‘OK Danny, you’re half
way to convincing me that the investment I made in you is starting to pay off,
but I’m not stupid enough to go in gung-ho, throw caution to the wind and
participate in a half-cocked bungling burglary without so much as a properly
worked plan to do this. And it seems that we’ve already got a big problem in
the fact that our
inside man
has just
gone outside. This Intertel Shift you’re talking about is happening pretty soon
Dan; we need to get him back onside, and fast.’

What scared Mark more than anything else was the
fact that Danny was serious. Despite the aroma of whisky emanating from his
every pore. Danny’s speech had the stench of belligerent honesty of the drunk.
Mark had simply walked away. He was genuinely worried. Even by listening in to
such a conversation he had compromised his integrity in his job, and what’s
more, he’d already played an unwitting part in this criminal
behaviour
. His moral compass was haywire; he sat in the
driver’s seat of his car and tried to take deep breaths and discover his true
north again.

Mark couldn’t stop
himself from feeling sympathy with Danny or how the mighty had fallen. He had
once felt envious of the former student’s education, his background and his
self-assuredness, but he now saw this for what it really was; a front which was
put on in order to mask his true, rudderless childish self.

Only a severely
dysfunctional person could have seriously entertained such an idea. And why?
Why was Danny wanting to do it? Because he wanted to run away. Because he
couldn’t face the hard work of getting his life on track like everybody else
had to do. Because he didn’t have the patience to work out his problems with drink
and gambling in the normal way.

Mark twisted his key in
the ignition and ran away himself. Away from Sela Bar and the surreal
conversation he had just been witness to, away from the madness of this pair of
delinquents who had no idea of the true meaning of words such as loyalty,
security and hard work. He circumvented the city centre and drove south, to
Wortley, to his home, and his reality…

Washing up later on that evening, Mark caught
himself daydreaming. He had been wearing a suit, just like Danny and Chris. He
had a cigar in his mouth and a sparkle in his eyes. He was in a casino, and it
wasn’t just to fix the alarm system. He was a player. He was being waited on,
he was important. He was a
somebody
.

Then another image
flashed in front of his eyes. He was trapped in a cell. The suit he was wearing
was now a standard prison garb, and the sparkle in his eyes was tears. He had
done something indescribably terrible.

A third and final image
played itself out; Danny and Chris cruelly laughing as they prodded and
tormented a poor helpless bird with a stick. It was a magpie, and it was stuck
in a Larsen trap. With every frantic beat of its wings, more of its feathers
and flesh were ripped open by the barbed wire.

They were mocking him,
they were torturing him; they had betrayed him.

Ringing Phones in the Night

Mark always slept with one ear open. So attuned
was he to being on call from EyeSpy, and getting emergency service calls in the
early hours of the morning that his head was off the pillow and he had reached
for his mobile within three rings. He took a quick look at the call display
though, and immediately knew something was wrong.

The caller was ‘home’,
and Mark knew from years of experience that both his mother and father shared a
great fear of calling mobile phones for fear that a one minute call would
financially cripple them. Mark had been forced to keep a land-line simply in
order that they could stay in touch with him.

Steeling himself for
the worst, Mark pressed the ‘Answer’ button. He was met by silence, and then,
finally, a sob. It was his mother.

‘Mam? Mam, what’s
wrong?’

He heard a rustle of
paper and then a blown nose, and then finally, she spoke:

‘Mark? Is that you?’

‘Yes mam, what’s
wrong?’

‘It’s your father…’

And with that, she
descended into another bout of uncontrollable sobbing, sniveling and frenzied
gasping for breath.

‘Mam. Take a deep
breath. What’s happened?’

He heard the phone
being placed on a table, a fumbling sound and then the striking of a match. He
heard his mother sucking deeply on a lit cigarette before she picked up the
phone again, a calmness returning to her breathing.

‘It’s your father. He
fell in the garden. I’ve told him so many times to get a man in to help him
with it, but he never listens. He was blue when I saw him through the kitchen
window. I rushed out, but he’d stopped breathing. I kicked up a right show for
the neighbours, Mark, I screamed for help. I couldn’t leave him to go and call
for an ambulance… Luckily Dot next door heard me. She came round fast as her
fat legs could carry her. Still had her curlers in. I’ll say one thing for her.
She’s good in a crisis.’

Mark’s mother paused to
inhale deeply from one of her
favoured
lamppost-sized cigarettes, before continuing: ‘Dot called the ambulance, and it
was there in three minutes. Unbelievable. Maybe they just hang around in this
estate waiting for another emergency to get called in. Anyway, they got your
dad into the back, and I got in too. They put all kinds of tubes and wires into
him; one of those masks round his nose and mouth, like in
Casualty
. But they wouldn’t answer me when I asked if he was going
to be all right. All they’d keep saying was that they’d know more once they got
him to
St.
John’s
.
That’s what they always say on telly. It’s a delaying tactic.’

‘Is he alive?’ he
asked, in a small, child-like voice. Mark was panicking; she was going on and
on without telling him the vital information he had to know.

‘They’ve told me he’s
stable and that there’s nothing I can do at the moment. They sent me back home
in a taxi to collect some of his things so he’s comfortable when he wakes up,
but I don’t know what to get, Mark. I can’t take his gardening gloves in a
hospital can I? I can’t take his pipe. I can’t very well take his armchair in,
can I?’

‘Mam, I think they mean
pyjamas
and things. Newspapers. Maybe a picture for
beside the bed. Listen, can you wait there? This time of night it’s only two
hours at most for me to get up to
Newcastle
, and I’ll come and pick you up and we’ll both go
to the hospital. If you need me, call me on the mobile. I can answer when I’m
driving. And mam. Don’t worry.’

‘Oh Mark, why can’t you
be closer?’ she asked, seconds before the click of the phone being put down
signalled
the breaking of Mark’s heart.

If you were to ask Mark Birch any of the details
of his journey up the A1 to
Newcastle
, he would not be able to tell you any. He did not register the
slightest passing interest in how many cars or lorries were using that well
-travelled
route, how many police cars lay in wait ready to
issue a speeding ticket, or even whether he had to stop for diesel. He did not
know whether the radio had been on, whether the dawn had begun to show its
nervous face, or whether that buzzing in his ears had always been there.

Autopilot carried him
through, while in the meantime his mind played out painful scenes from his
childhood in front of his eyes: a relentless theatre of cruelty.

It was not that he had
been mistreated or abused by his father: he had never even been hit, which on
his estate was a complete unknown. The problem had been that Mark had been
ignored. Young Mark scores a hat-trick in the Newcastle Schools Cup Semi-Final:
his father had not been there. Teenaged Mark is called up for a trial by
Newcastle United: his father cannot even be bothered to drive him to the
training ground. Eighteen-year old Mark is working on a car in the driveway:
his father somehow manages to unbalance the jack and the car falls on Mark’s
leg, breaking it with a sickening crack. Mark had lain under the car for over
an hour under that car before his father had finally realised what had
happened.

In the ambulance on the
way to the hospital, his father hadn’t even held his hand, but had leant
forward and chatted to the driver about the traffic conditions in
Newcastle
. Mark had broken his own finger on that journey,
gripping the metal sides of the bed too hard to try and contain his pain and
anguish.

In the hospital, they
told him that his leg was so badly broken that he needed a skin graft. They’d
had to take some of the skin from his bottom to cover up the great gash on his
shin.

‘It’ll be all right,’
he remembered one of the nurses saying. ‘After a while the skin will bond
together and start to look just like it used to again. In a few years, nobody
will be able to tell.’

But the skin had never
healed properly. It still looked like a strange lunar landscape of unlikely
ridges and depressions. He’d never been able to wear shorts in public again;
he’d shied away from any activity which would mean that his leg was exposed.
His father had once accused him of exaggerating the injury so that Newcastle
United had no choice but to drop him from their Academy. He reckoned Mark was
simply not brave enough to get into the group showers.

Not long after this
accusation, Mark had left home and journeyed to
Leeds
to learn a trade. His father had barely batted an eyelid.

Mark still looked for
approval from his father however, and he had always pictured some emotional
return home for himself: an occasion where he could use all of the money he so
carefully saved, to buy him something which would really impress him. He wanted
to buy him a house: his father was a builder, and appreciated good workmanship.
Unfortunately, even in the North East, prices had begun to dwarf what Mark
could afford. Now, Mark just wanted to be there.

He arrived at
half past six
in the morning, just avoiding the start of the
main rush on the A1. His mother was standing by the front window, already in
her winter coat, waiting. She had probably been like that for the past hour and
a half since the phone call. He barely had time to get to the front gate,
before she was standing by him, ready to go to the hospital.

‘You know how to get
there Mark? I hope we’re not too late,’ she said, not even giving him a peck on
the cheek before she hunched herself into the van.

Tears pricking his
eyes, Mark lightly closed the door behind his mother and walked around to the
back of the van. He had to lean against it for support. It was only after seeing
her suddenly aged, haggard face, bereft of make-up, that he had realised the
sheer desperateness of the situation. He choked back vomit, and sucked hungrily
at the fresh morning air.

His father might die. His father would never get
the chance to be proud of him.

           
They
drove to
St.
John’s
hospital in silence. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence: there was simply
nothing to say. On their arrival in the car park, Mark realised with a frustrated
sigh, that he did not have any money for the pay and display. He had simply not
had the time to bring any cash with him. He decided to drop his mother at the
main entrance, and frantically drove around searching for somewhere to park
outside the hospital gates. He finally had to abandon the car in a fast food
drive-through car park and run the half-mile distance back to the hospital,
cursing his predicament; he was losing valuable time with his father.

Mark reached the hospital in record time and
crashed through the double-doors into reception. He could barely breathe the
words, but from his desperate appearance, the receptionists knew what ward he
was after, and it wasn’t the rehabilitation wards. They pointed him up a flight
of stairs and across a courtyard: he careered down polished aisles as if on
roller skates.

He finally reached the
second floor, and found the correct corridor. Ignoring the waiting lift and
diving up another flight of stairs, he found the Emergency Ward. He was running
like he used to, before the broken leg, like when he was a footballer.

           
A
group of white-coated staff were congregated outside the door to one of the
rooms, deep in hushed conversation. Mark
knew
that this room was the room in which his father was lying. He tried to
regain control of his breathing and approached the doctors, sweat pouring into
his eyes, stinging him into the reality of the situation once again.

‘That’s Mr. Tom Birch
in there isn’t it?’ he gasped.

‘Yes, it is sir, are
you a relative?’ replied one of the doctors, placing a conciliatory arm on
Mark’s shoulder.

‘I’m his son,’ said
Mark. He could barely choke out the words.

‘I’m afraid your father
is in a very serious condition. He’s on a Life Support machine condition at the
moment, but he
is stable
Mr. ...
Birch.’

‘Can I see him? I mean,
can I go in there? Hold his hand?’ asked Mark desperation creeping into his
voice.

‘I’m afraid we’re
limited to one person at a time in there at the moment. There’s not a lot of
room, what with all of the machinery, and your mother, I think, got here about
quarter of an hour ago. She’s in there now. What we can offer you, Mr. Birch,
is to come into the room next door. We have a video monitor of the room, so you
can check on your dad that way. Once your mother needs a break, I’m sure that
you can go in there. Don’t worry, he’s still fighting…’

Mark allowed himself to
be led next door, where a series of monitors showed his father, close-up.
Another series of monitors were gauging his breathing, heart-rate, and the amount
of drugs being pumped into his almost lifeless form. Mark was offered a hard
chair, and he sunk into it with resignation, but at least things were not quite
as bad as he had anticipated.

He stared at the big
man in the bed, and the small hunched woman crouched next to him, as if in
prayer. Suddenly he hated the unreality that cameras portrayed: these grainy
images being piped across to him. These were not his parents: he could not
touch or comfort them as he wanted to. He could not speak to them, he could not
whisper all of those things to his father that he wished he could have over the
years.

Then the view of the
extravagantly mustachioed man wrapped like a mummy in sheets which were almost
as white as his face began to blur even more: it was as if he was watching
through a goldfish bowl. Ripples of liquid swept across the view: Mark
unconsciously reached across to adjust the settings of the monitor, before
suddenly
realising
that it was not the
monitor which was affected; it was his own eyes, which were swimming with
tears.

A hand reached over him
and passed him a tissue. It was one of the doctors. The doctor adopted a hushed
tone, ‘I’m so sorry, Mr. Birch, it seems like your father has passed.’

‘I’m sorry, what?’ Mark
was caught unawares.

‘I’m afraid your father
passed away about five minutes ago. Your mother is saying a prayer for him. She
didn’t want you to see him like that and asked whether you could be put in here
while she said goodbye.’

‘What… he’s in a coma?
Unconscious - what?’

‘Mr. Birch, there’s no
other way of saying this: your father is dead. I’m sorry.’

Mark’s whole being
slumped forward. The bones in his face crumpled into one soggy mess, and his
stomach gave way: he cracked his head on the desk as he slipped into a dead
faint in front of the monitors.