The Magpie Trap: A Novel (24 page)

Oh Danny Boy…

The walls of the sales floor of the EyeSpy
Security offices were littered with over-the-top motivational posters which
were intended to inspire the workforce onto greater things. There was a print
of a tiger, supposedly
symbolising
‘attitude’, a picture of man and boy fishing which bore the legend ‘Carpe Diem:
Seize the Day’ and Danny’s particular favourite: a still from the movie
Forrest Gump
which was headed by an
altered version of the film’s most famous line. It read: ‘Life is like a box of
chocolates… and so are our customers.’
 
Danny particularly liked this poster because of its inference that some
of the customers were therefore ‘nutty’ or had ‘soft
-centres
’. Because of this poster, the sales team always
referred to a particularly tough customer as ‘nougat’.

Danny surveyed the
office with a detached cynicism: he was only marking time here now before the
big heist and his escape into a new life. He pictured himself in a place which
resembled the lake which the man and boy fished in the motivational poster. He
pictured his cares and worries floating away; being lifted gently up and down
by the almost imperceptible eddies and swirls of the water. All around him was
dead silence, and the folds of the mountains in the background acted like a
wall to keep out the outside world…

Danny was shaken out of
his reverie by an insistent voice.

‘Danny? Danny, are you
all right?’

It was Paula, waving a
bulky A4 file in front of his face as if it was a fan.

Danny cleared his
throat, ‘Sorry, just working some figures out in my head.’

‘Whatever you say,’
replied Paula, uncertainly. ‘Are you really all right though? A little bird
tells me that Mr. Thomas had you in on a Saturday morning about your problems
at home and that incident with the brewery bums… ’

‘Right,’ Danny sighed,
‘word travels fast around here. Anyone would think that the mugs that work here
have nothing better to talk about. He’s given me a written warning.’

Paula pulled a chair up
next to Danny’s desk and touched his arm as though to encourage him. ‘I know. I
was the one that had to type it up for him. Man types like he’s the ape at the
beginning of
2001
and he’s just
worked out that there is such a thing as technology…’

‘He’s not that bad,’
muttered Danny, remembering Fartin Thomas’s strange
behaviour
from Saturday morning; the way that he’d almost
miraculously morphed into something resembling a nice guy once his wings of
steel – the work suit – had been taken out of the equation.

‘Not that bad?’ asked
Paula, raising her eyebrow. She continued, but this time in more of a whisper:
‘I’ve never heard you say anything about our great leader unless it was
something about him being a complete and utter shit.’

‘I told him I’d buck my
ideas up and he gave me a bit more time. It’s weird; he seemed almost normal
without his suit. Well, normal apart from his usual goddamn analogies,’ replied
Danny.

Paula smiled in
recognition. ‘What did he come up with this time; sales is like a game of
snooker? Or is it crown green bowls now?’

Danny smiled and then
decided to chance his arm a little. ‘Have you seen Cheryl? You know… at the
gym?’

Paula’s face clouded
over a little.

‘Course I’ve seen her,’
she said, after taking a brief look over her shoulder to check whether the
other office-based goons were listening-in. ‘You
know
that we both still go up to Dragon’s gym together.

‘And?’

‘And…She was crying on
the running machine, Danny, crying. So I grabbed her and we went for a drink in
the bar, and she told me a whole lot about the sorry mess you’ve got yourself in.
She still loves you but just doesn’t know if she can bear it any more if you
don’t change. She’s trying shock tactics by leaving for a couple of weeks, but
looking at the state of you today, it seems you’re not paying any attention.’

‘You’re on her side.
Straight away, without even knowing my side of the story, you’re on her side. I
should have known. Girls stick together. Well fuck you very much Cheryl,’
snapped Danny.

‘I am not Cheryl. I’m
Paula. Look, she’s clearly on your mind; if you ever need anybody to speak to
about all of this, please just give me a shout,’ and again she touched his arm
as she got up out of the seat and began to walk back to her desk, before
pausing again: ‘I nearly forgot; this is the file you asked for. Its
Edison
’s Printers; all the drawings, specifications and security detail.
Thomas asked me to get it from the safe for you. Blimey, the amount of security
you sell into them, it must be like
Fort
Knox
by now.’

           
Danny
watched her pert bottom all the way back across the room and back to her desk
by the front door. Her touching his arm like that had given him a couple of
ideas, after all, it had been quite a while since he and Cheryl had done
anything remotely sexual. He felt a stirring, like a returning old friend, or
the itch on the invisible leg of a man whose leg has been amputated. The plan
was giving him a new lease of life. Well, if she wanted to talk, he could think
of a few ideas…

He began to root around
in his desk drawers, searching for the razor he knew he had put in there for
exactly this type of emergency. As he walked past Paula’s desk, he gave her a
wink; but it was one which could be interpreted as an ‘I’m okay’ wink, just in
case…

Danny hacked away with the blunt razor blade at
his face, trying in vain to sculpt himself back into the ‘young Alec Baldwin’
look he had once cultivated after he had been told that he bore a striking
resemblance to his character in
Glengarry
Glen Ross
. As more and more stubble was removed, however, it simply exposed
a tiredness in him which made him look more like that old Mike Baldwin
character from

Well, he thought, at
least I am neat and tidy, and a girl can’t ask for more than that. He slapped
on some aftershave and re-emerged onto the sales floor, his face throbbing in
naked pain from the hack-job he had suffered. Luckily, no blood was seeping
out, yet.

He approached the
reception desk, where Paula was tapping rapidly at her keyboard, her face a
mask of concentration. She brushed a stray hair away from her eyes and bit her
lip. Danny was tempted…

He watched her a little
longer, marveling at the fact that nobody else seemed to have noticed that she
was not only beautiful - despite the fact she seemed to want to hide this
beauty behind a severe haircut - but also so obviously intelligent. From what
Cheryl had told him, Paula was a folk musician; a highly talented singer and
guitarist. The day job was just to make ends meet.

Danny’s secret
knowledge of her night-time activities made her seem to him an exciting, challenging
target for his advances; to him, catching her would be like trapping a
butterfly. He had often shared light-hearted banter with her, and always sat
with her on work night’s out, inventing mad stories about their colleagues, but
these nights had dried up once Paula had met Cheryl at the gym, and they had
chanced upon a conversation about work. They had laughed at the coincidence at
first, but had eventually become thick as thieves in their surveillance of the
wayward Danny. He had stopped asking her out for drinks, and had almost
forgotten about her until he realised that he might never see her again. He was
de-mob happy, and had the confidence to try anything…

‘About what you were
saying,’ he said, affecting weariness in his voice, ‘I think I would like to
talk. I
need
to talk. Can we go for a
drink at lunch-time?’

‘I think the pub is the
last place you need to be at the moment, but I’ll happily get a coffee with
you?’

‘I’ll only forgive you
for siding with Cheryl if you come to the pub,’ said Danny, only half-joking.

‘Well, I’ve got no
choice then, have I? The Adelphi, I presume?’ said Paula, flashing him an
almost seductive smile, compassion burning like a flare in her eyes. She was
that something out of the ordinary that brightened his day. She was almost out
of place in a hell-hole like EyeSpy.

The teasing hands of the clock finally ticked
round to one o clock, and he escorted Paula outside to the car.

‘I’ll drive there and
leave the car, if that’s what you’re worrying about,’ he chided.

‘Honestly Danny, I
wasn’t thinking that at all. I would have thought that it would be completely
stupid to drink more than the drink-drive limit at lunchtime anyway, after all,
how do you expect to work this afternoon?’

Danny laughed: ‘Ah,
Paula, always the voice of reason in my head.’

Their jovial mood
continued throughout the brief car journey, through their purchasing of the
drinks - an orange juice for the lady, and a pint with whisky chaser for Danny
- but was abruptly brought to a halt when they were finally seated. They had
chosen the no-smoking room, as it was the only quiet room at the Adelphi during
the lunchtime rush. Some habits die hard, and it seemed that even in pubs that
do food, the desire to be free to drink
and
smoke at the same time, without having to go outside, drove most people into
the Adelphi’s many smoking lounges.

‘Cheryl’s right, you
need to sort your life out,’ was Paula’s opening gambit.

‘I know, I know. I need
to get a new job, maybe move away from here: get rid of all of the bad influences
on me. I just want something good to fall out of the sky and change my life.’

Danny took a huge gulp
of his bitter, before continuing: ‘I’ve had a bad time of it. I need to get
away. If I’m not in
Leeds
, everything will be different.’

‘You make your own
chances in this life,’ said Paula carefully. ‘You have the power to change your
own life. Don’t go expecting something to drop out of the sky. It just doesn’t
happen; I should know. I’ve been waiting for somebody to notice me for years
now.’

‘Don’t be silly. Of
course people notice you. Look at you, you’re stunning.’

Paula looked at him,
wide-eyed in disbelief and frustration. Danny nervously began tearing at one of
the beer-mats.

‘I was talking about my
music, you fool. Do you never pay any attention to anybody else? Am I wasting
my time here? You have to listen to people. Listen to Cheryl. Don’t go shutting
yourself away.’

Danny was shocked at
the severity of Paula’s frustration; but he was also a little encouraged. If
she cared about him enough to get that angry, maybe she cared for him in other
ways…

‘I’m sorry. Can you
just give me a hug? I need some human contact.’

Paula looked at him
suspiciously, and he lowered his eyes, in perfect imitation of sadness. In
reality, Danny was trying to hide an incredulous smirk. She suddenly pulled him
toward her and wrapped her surprisingly strong arms around him, rough hands
stroking his neck.

Ah
,
thought Danny,
that’ll be from playing
the guitar; she’s not got any finger nails either.

He began to feel that
same stirring from earlier that morning and he slowly turned his head to meet
hers, brushing his lips against her cheek.

She quickly withdrew,
cheeks already burning red.

‘Erm, Danny, what was
that?’

‘I don’t think Cheryl’s
ever been right for me. It’s you; it’s always been you. Run away with me,
Paula? I’m going to go away soon, and for a very long time, perhaps forever.’

‘When Cheryl told me
that she’d given up on you, I thought she was being too hasty. I now see that
she was right. You are a lost cause; a child. All you’ve ever talked about is
escaping
Leeds
, escaping the reality of your life. My little
brother used to threaten to run away every time he wasn’t allowed ice cream...

I can’t continue this
conversation; it would be unfair to Cheryl, but needless to say, I think you
have cried wolf too many times. When you really do run away, nobody will be
left to care, or even notice.’

With that, she wrenched
her coat off the back of her seat and stormed out of the no smoking room. Danny
made as if to chase after her, but was waylaid by ordering another pint at the
bar.

The Cover

Chris and Danny had
finally tired of drinking coffee, and had retired to the closest pub. They had
both appreciated the irony of drinking in Chapel Allerton’s Old Police Station
as they had discussed their plans to conduct a heist on
Edison
’s Printers. The Old Police Station was actually an old, refurbished
police station and had even
utilised
its old cells as private drinking areas. It was in one of these narrow enclosed
spaces that the pair were conducting their private conversation.

           
‘So you’re definitely up for it then? Because we need to
move fast,’ said Danny, his voice sounding too loud against the stark,
whitewashed walls of the cell.

           
‘I’m up for it,’ answered Chris, in a quieter tone.

           
‘Good. I have the plans to the site now. We can work on
the…’

‘What
we need to work on is an iron-clad cover story,’ interrupted Chris, grinding
out his fourth or fifth cigarette. ‘We need to be able to walk away from this
with no worries in the back of our minds that it will come back and haunt us.
We need a story which we can tell friends and relatives and they can tell the
police, if needs be. We need to be believed to be out of the country
before
the heist. We also need Mark and
you to quit EyeSpy Security. I know that this will raise suspicions, but you’re
already on your last legs there, aren’t you, and Mark is an engineer. Engineers
are always changing company, you told me that…’

Danny,
squinted through the cell’s bright lights and the low-lying of layer of smoke.
‘Mark’s still not on board. I’m working on him, but he’s not answered his phone
all day. He’s going to be a lot harder to persuade than you were.’

Chris
glared across the table: ‘First up, I was not easy to
persuade.
I am in this plan for my own reasons. Second, what do you
mean, we’ve not got Mark?’

‘Stop
looking at me like that; like I’m one of your secretary-birds that’s typed up
the wrong bit of a document. Mark will come back on board. It’s just a matter
of time. And I didn’t mean anything bad about you, saying that I persuaded you
to join me.’

Chris
sighed.

Danny
tried to change the subject: ‘You think we’ll definitely need to go abroad
then?’

‘Life
in
Leeds
is over for both of us, you know that. I don’t
think Cheryl is coming back… sorry mate, but I don’t see it. My life here ended
three years ago; I just tried to hang on to it, like you’re doing now.’

Danny
continued shredding the ubiquitous beer-mat, suddenly
realising
that they were no longer playing make-believe
cops and robbers. It seemed strange, them talking so openly like this about a
crime; two supposedly nice middle-class boys. They should have been talking-up
their next trip to
Ibiza
, perhaps.

Chris
passed his friend a cigarette and continued, ‘If we are really going to pull
this off, we have to understand that we can never come back. Remember what you
said in Sela Bar about university; those discussions we used to have about
travelling
? Well, this is our golden opportunity, and we
have to make it happen.’

Danny
took a long thoughtful drag of his cigarette, ‘I can’t believe you’re trying to
persuade me now. It was my idea!’

‘It
was your fantasy. Don’t get that confused with an idea; you’ve not properly
thought any of this through have you?’

‘Well,
what are we doing now smart arse?’ Danny snapped, stubbing out his only
half-smoked cigarette. He liked smoking and the aura that smoking seemed to
give him, but smoking at the pace that Chris smoked was a step too far.

‘Whilst
you’ve been drinking your way to oblivion over the past few days, I’ve been
working on our cover story. I may not know about security systems, I may not
have got the site drawings like you, but there’s one thing I am good at, and
that’s making up stories. I’ll cut to the chase.

I
handed my notice in at Peach this morning, probably before you even got out of
your pit. They obviously wanted to know why, so I told them that I am starting
up a new business abroad; a travel company for backpackers, some such bullshit.
Believe it or not, one of those very secretary-birds started crying when I told
her. She thought it was the nicest thing that anybody had ever said to her. She
thought I was a hero.’

Danny
raised his eyes to the ceiling. Chris was starting to grate on him, just as he
usually did when he joined in with something and began to make it his own. It
was as though he naturally assumed that he was the leader of everything. But
then the
real
leader is the one that
knows the most, isn’t he? And Chris didn’t know anything about the
BBC
-voiced man’s new demands. Danny wanted to keep it
that way.

‘Blimey,
you have done your research mate; I have to give you that. This plan almost
sounds good enough to do rather than the heist,’ he said. ‘But have you even
thought about
where
we might go?’

‘How
about
Australia
or
New Zealand
? Loads of backpackers there… Or how about
somewhere along the old hippie trail; somewhere undeveloped.’

‘How
about
Mauritius
?’ asked Danny, remembering what the
BBC
-voiced man had said. He tried not to sound too
enthusiastic about the idea. If he could somehow guide Chris into believing
that he’d reached his own conclusion, then things would work out better. It
would be a sign.

‘Hmmm,
Mauritius
; you know, that isn’t a bad idea,’ mused Chris.
He sounded oddly enthusiastic. ‘Not bad at all.’

‘Supposed
to be pretty much like paradise out there,’ said Danny, dangling the carrot

‘They
have pretty bad rainy seasons there, and I know for a fact that some of its
coastal towns were devastated last year by the storms. Our phantom business
will be to set up a volunteer workforce of the backpackers that travel through
the country to rebuild some of these coastal towns. We will be charging them to
stay at our resort on the north coast.’

Danny
narrowed his eyes. ‘How come you know so much about
Mauritius
all of a sudden? Who’ve you been talking to?’

‘Chill
out mate,’ said Chris. ‘I researched it for a diving holiday I was once
planning on going on… Anyway, what am I going to need to start up an imaginary
business like that? I’m going to need a good salesman; someone like you to rope
the unsuspecting
traveller
into spending
rather more of mummy and daddy’s money than they’d like on staying at our
resort. And the people
will
come,
just like in
Field of Dreams,
they’ll
come. And best of all, everyone will believe such a cover story.’

‘I
suppose so,’ said Danny. He didn’t want to show Chris ho impressed he actually
was, or how happy he was that he’d been able to persuade him that
Mauritius
was their ideal post-heist destination. He felt
like Hannibal Smith in the A-Team; the plan was coming together all around him
and he hardly needed to try.

‘We
bring in Mark as an expert on site engineer to do the electrics or something,’
continued Chris, on a roll now. ‘We set the business up properly, and we
channel the money we steal through that. It’s the ideal cover story, Danny, and
it means that we can have our dream of
travelling
!’

Chris
had a self-satisfied smile on his face, and he winked across at Danny,
gesturing wildly towards the cell walls. ‘Think about it mate, in a week or two
we can be on a beach, away from these bloody walls that keep us in.’

‘All
we need to do now then is get the actual heist done then,’ said Danny, bringing
his friend back down to earth with a bump. Well, he didn’t want his troops
overly cocky, did he?