The Magpie Trap: A Novel (25 page)

Evicted

Mark thought that after his performance at the
funeral, his mother would never speak to him again. He had shown an unacceptable
level of feeling; he had insulted his father’s memory. He was therefore amazed
to be woken from his first sleep since his father had died by his mother’s
phone call.

‘I was ashamed by your
lack of respect this morning. St. Andrew’s did me a real favour letting us have
the funeral so soon after his death. We had the Church Hall booked for tea and
sandwiches after, and I lost count of the amount of people I had to
apologise
to on your behalf.’

‘You don’t have to
speak for me mother. I said what I needed to say… I’m sorry if it offended you,
but it had to be said. You never let me say goodbye at the hospital.’

‘Oh Mark,’ and suddenly
his mother’s voice dissolved into a lake of tears, ‘I vowed that I would never
speak to you again, but now…’

‘Mother?’ said Mark,
suddenly very worried. There was something else in her voice as well as the
grief and disappointment.

‘You may have let me
down son, but its nothing compared to the callousness of the Council. I’ve just
got back to the house now, and there was a letter waiting for me; hold on, let
me read it…’

He heard her rummage
about for her reading glasses, and a rustle of paper as she started to read:
‘Dear Ms. Birch… I’m a Ms. now apparently… he’s not yet cold in the grave, but
I’m a Ms.’

She cleared her throat,
and continued, in her stuttering reading voice, ‘We were very sorry to hear
about the death of your husband… very sorry, a likely story… As you know, there
is a severe shortage of houses in your area, and we would like to move you to a
more manageable home in the lovely retirement
village
of
Daffodil
Acres… the cheek of them.’

‘Daffodil Acres? I had
to install a security system there; it’s like being in the middle of
Beirut
! We can’t have that mother; I have savings, don’t
worry, we’ll sort something out.’

Mark agreed to call the
Council directly, but he was more concerned by calling the bank in order to
check the amount that he actually had in his savings; he knew that the funeral
had wiped out a large chunk of the money. He quickly had his worst fears confirmed
when the bank told him that his funds had trickled away to single figures; £6K
would not be anything like enough to save his mother from Daffodil Acres.

His head felt as though it was about to explode; not only was he
surviving on a diet of absolutely no sleep, but he was having to deal with the
corrosive mixture of guilt and grief which welled up inside him every time he
thought about his father.

His head was pounding, but it was only when he staggered into the
kitchen to get a glass of water that he realised that the metronomic thudding
was not an internal pain, but was rather the sounds of some of the local kids
repetitively crashing a football against his garage door. He collapsed onto the
kitchen floor, clutching his head in his hands, but there was no escape from
that sound which hammered into him his lonely tearful inertia; he didn’t save
his father, and now he couldn’t save his mother either.

As he lay on the sticky lino floor, his blue EyeSpy overalls sticking to
spilled tea, his mind began to associate mental images with the rhythm being
beat out on the metal drum which was his garage door. He saw circuit diagrams
from his security training; he saw the pictorial explanation of how the
monitoring of security system works. He saw a ball of data bouncing back and
forth along a telephone line, ricocheting from one end of the line to the
other.

Mark suddenly raised himself up from the depths of his floor: an idea
had been forming in his head almost without his knowing it.

Thud:
the ball smashed
against the garage door. In his head, he imagined the ball as a packet of data.
It was the remote security control centre sending a message to the security
system/ garage door which asked the question,
are you alright?
It asked further questions;
has anybody tried to tamper with you? Has anything got in the way of
this packet of data getting through
? Then, as the ball/ data ricochets away
from the security system/ garage door it sends back its own message, responding
by saying:
yes I’m all right. No problems
here. Nobody is trying to break in.
 
This ball/ data ricochets back up the line to
the security control centre, and so on. No problem; it is only when one of the
lines says
No I’m not alright
, you
have a problem. Mark’s technical mind was suddenly in overdrive; he grabbed a
pen and paper from the telephone table and began sketching out his thoughts,
giving them meaning.

‘What would happen,’ asked Mark, out loud, ‘if I was to create a dummy
unit; a ‘substitute’ which gets in the way of this constant ricochet? What
would happen if I was able to falsify the
I’m
all right
message, when in reality the lines have been cut? Nobody would be
any the wiser; the security control centre would not notice any change, those
on site would not. Somebody could quite literally just walk in and take all the
stuff. What with the Intertel Shift causing all of that chaos, and this as a
back-up plan, we could just about get away with it… We could not only walk in
without the alarm going off, but we could affect the live streaming of the
images.’

He stared at his reflection in the wide mirror above the mantelpiece.
Talking to himself like he had was supposed to be the first sign of madness,
and perhaps he was going a little crazy. But the truth was, Mark had always kept
an interior monologue with himself going, even before his father had died. He
reckoned that lots of people that spend a lot of time on their on probably did
too. And despite his uneasy relationship with religion and the church, perhaps
this was his way of talking with God. Perhaps this was his way of praying;
perhaps he’d simply been waiting for his God-conscience to kick-in and tell him
that such ideas were blasphemous and against everything he stood for.

But God, if anything, seemed all-for the scheme. His was the voice in
Mark’s head which told him to pick up the phone quickly, not allowing himself
any second thoughts. His was the voice which told him that this was his
opportunity to save his mother, and he wasn’t about to start arguing otherwise.

‘Hello stranger,’ answered Danny, ‘I heard about your dad; I’m really
sorry.’

‘I’m in,’ Mark almost shouted down the phone. ‘Dad’s dead and I’m in.’

‘I’m pleased to hear it, but listen, have you thought properly about it?
You do sound quite strange mate.’

‘I don’t want to think about it. I just need us to carry this off.’
 

‘Fantastic,’ said Danny, sounding excited. ‘Well, you know what we need
to do. We need to find out the exact time of the Intertel Shift and we need to
hack in to their camera network again and install the looped images.’

‘There’s a bit more required than that, like,’ said Mark. ‘We can’t just
rely on external forces. We have to make sure that our every angle is covered.
We need to make sure that we’re secure when we go on site.’

Mark could hardly believe that he was talking so calmly. Some heretofore
unknown inner strength had taken over.

‘Fair enough,’ said Danny. ‘That’s why we wanted you on board so much;
you’re the technological brains behind the scheme, cocker.’

‘Um, thanks,’ said Mark. He clicked the phone off feeling as though he’d
done the only thing available for him to do. It wasn’t a moral choice or a
desperate choice, it was simply the only way that he could find to pull himself
out of the pit of despond in which he found himself. It was action.

He stepped out to his van and started to collect his tools together. He
was going to start work on a dummy system to be used to get in and out of
Edison
’s Printers.
But technology had already half-opened the door for them, hadn’t it? All they
were doing was simply taking advantage of a breach in the defences from the
Intertel Shift and they were building on this.

I’m starting to think like
Danny,
thought Mark. God agreed.
Maybe
there’s something to be said for living your life as though it is a fantasy.
You don’t get hurt as easily.

Danny’s initial excitement that all of the pieces
of the puzzle were starting to fall into place had gradually become an acerbic
nervous tension. The more he talked with Mark about the technical aspects of
the heist, the twitchier he became. This whole part of the plan relied solely
on Mark and his electronic genius. He was being asked to trust this man who he
only knew through work, with his life.

           
Danny
had also begun to suspect that both Chris and Mark had deep-seated, meaningful
reasons for undertaking the heist, whereas he only seemed to be doing it out of
some kind of misguided ambition to go abroad. He could almost hear Cheryl’s
words ringing in his ears:

‘You can’t take
responsibility for your actions; you don’t think about how what you do can
affect others. You just blunder through your life, lurching from one disaster
to the next, throwing beer down your neck to forget the pain you cause to
everyone whose lives you touch. You’re like a bloody disease; a plague.’

He got home in the
early evening and started to tidy the house. Since Cheryl had left, it had
grown a second skin of empty beer bottles, over-flowing ashtrays and pizza
boxes; the flotsam and jetsam of his weekend floating in booze. He grabbed the
whole roll of black bin bags and began to throw away everything which wasn’t
furniture in the front room. He needed to give himself the space and time to
think.

When every surface was
clear, he emptied the fridge of its remaining beer bottles and poured their
contents down the sink; he wanted to make a new start. He picked up the phone
and
dialled
a familiar number. For the
first time in five days, his call was answered.

‘Cheryl, it’s me.
Thanks for picking up. I’ve reached the bottom of the glass babe. I’m ready to
climb out.’

‘I’m glad you called. I
needed some time to cool off this weekend. I’ve been talking with my sister all
weekend, and I think I’m ready to speak to you now. She wants me to leave you,
Danny, and at times this weekend, I have seriously considered it, but we have
put a lot of work into our relationship, before this hellish year, anyway.
There’s the house, for one. I will come round tonight and we can talk. At least
you sound sober at the moment. Make sure you stay that way.’

A Second Chance

Danny almost didn’t
recognise
Cheryl when she walked through the front door. She
looked rejuvenated by their break; she’d had her hair cut much shorter than
usual. It was much like Paula’s in fact. It had wispy strands around the ears,
but was very short at the back. It had been
coloured
as well. She had applied substantial amounts of
her usual war paint; her eyes were shaded in dark eyeliner which was
modelled
on a picture of Cleopatra which she loved.

Her cheeks were fresh
and red, a result of coming in from the crisp, cold evening and into the warm
house. Danny had whacked the central heating on full, placing bowls of
pot-pourri on top of the radiators when he had known that Cheryl would be coming
round. He needed to get rid of the smell of cigarettes and alcohol which had
permeated the house.

For a moment, they
simply stood and looked at each other in the no man’s land of the hallway. Then
Danny rushed forward and pulled her close to him; hanging on fro dear life.
Cheryl responded in kind to his desperation, but tilted her head back to look
directly into his eyes and registered her remaining anger.

‘At least you look as
though you’ve made an effort,’ she muttered. ‘Well; had a shave and a shower at
least. You know I hate it when you try and grow yourself that designer stubble
that does nothing apart from scratch my face.’

‘I’m so glad you’re
back, but where’s your bags? Still in the car? I can go and get them for you?’

‘The bags are still at
my sisters’ house. I told you I was coming round for a talk, Danny, not to move
straight back in.’

This wasn’t going to be
as easy as Danny had initially thought.

‘Okay, fair enough. But
wait ‘til you’ve heard what I have to say; then you’ll change your mind. I can
change; I already am changing. I’ve realised what is important, and that’s you
and me. I can get a new job; I just need to start taking more responsibility
for my actions. I’ve learned my lessons.’

Cheryl sighed, ‘I have
heard all of those kind of things before; so many times this year. How do I
know that you really mean it this time?’

‘Because the only time
I’ve ever done anything which I was proud of was when I asked you to marry me
in
Greece
. Because I’m sick of feeling ashamed of the
things that I’ve done. Because I want
you
to be proud of me.’

           
They
walked the few paces into the kitchen, and Danny flicked on the kettle, making
sure that Cheryl
recognised
the significance
of that action; he hadn’t reached for a consoling beer. When he turned to face
her, she was regarding an awful new stain on the kitchen wall however, and was
shaking her head; how had Danny missed that stain during his cleaning frenzy of
earlier in the evening?

‘That was the happiest
moment of my life too, but I’m sure that you only plucked up the courage to do
that because you’d drunk most of a bottle of Ouzo,’ said Cheryl, choosing to
tactfully ignore the argument waiting to happen which was the stain on the
wall.

‘No: I did it because I
realised that I could take control of things; I could make the good things
happen as well as the bad.’

‘It’s just a shame that
you seemed to forget that important lesson as soon as we got back from that
holiday. You can’t even remember our wedding night can you? You and that bloody
Chris had so many nerve-settlers that you almost fell over during our first
dance. I had to tell my dad that you were on painkillers and that’s why I
wasn’t allowing you to drink any more.’

Danny turned his back
on her to pour the coffees. He realized with a sinking feeling that he did
actually want a drink; perhaps a Scotch or a brandy to pour in his coffee. He
needed
a drink to ease the tension: to
make talking easier. He decided that he had to play his ‘get out of jail free’
card; he had to make Cheryl laugh.

‘But, talking about
your dad, do you remember that time when I first went to stay at your house and
we weren’t allowed to sleep in the same room? Remember how I pretended that I
was really badly ill and that I needed to sleep on your floor so you could keep
an eye on me?’

Cheryl looked
questioningly at Danny, and then ever so slowly a smile began to light up her
face. The smile grew into a grin, making her nose wrinkle and her cheeks
dimple. The anger slipped out of her eyes and she made him put down his coffee
cup. Then she took him in her arms and stroked his hair, cradling him as if he
was a toddler who had fallen and hurt his knee.

‘And I’ve had to keep a
bloody eye on you ever since,’ she said, but not cruelly.

           
Danny’s
fears began to drift away: he had been offered a second chance. On the one hand
he had the welcoming arms of his wife who loved him; on the other, he had a
crazy scheme to rob
Edison
’s Printers.

At that moment the
seesaw of his life was weighted heavily in favour of staying right there, of
attempting the much more difficult task of re-building his life. That
temptation to take the easy money and run was beginning to seem further and
further away from him; it was floating in the draughty air of fantasy, of
escapism. Danny preferred the touch of something more visceral, more real; the
body of Cheryl, who was now whispering sweet nothings into his ear.

There was a pert behind: round and fruity, like a
peach. It was parked right at the counter-point of the seesaw, and its owner
held Danny’s new found security in the balance. Paula Dyer had planned to call
Cheryl at the weekend. She’d wanted to invite her to a gig at the Hi-Fi Club
which she was doing for a local charity, but she had lost her nerve at the last
moment. She couldn’t face seeing her friend; she knew that there would be
questions, questions about Danny and how he’d been at work since the break. She
knew that her anger at the man would shine through like a beacon. She knew that
her knowledge of Danny’s actions at the Adelphi could prove the final nail in
the coffin which was their marriage.

Paula had once seen
Danny as a kindred spirit; someone in the murky world of EyeSpy Security who
shared her desire for something better, but she had watched as the light of brilliance
had dimmed in Danny’s eyes, until he became a washed-up mess. She couldn’t see
her friend Cheryl dragged down with his sinking ship.

 
Paula had written three or four text messages
to Cheryl, but every time her thumb hovered over the ‘send’ button, her nerve
had failed her. She had come to the conclusion that she would speak to Danny on
the Monday after her weekend of indecision, but he hadn’t shown up for work,
hadn’t even called in sick. She’d been instructed by Martin Thomas to write a
‘Final Warning’ letter to Danny and personally drop it off through his letter
box. That explained why she found herself sitting in her car, a little Citroen
2CV, at the end of Danny’s road, trying to pluck up the courage to drive that
final two hundred
metres
to his
house.

Paula never saw
Cheryl’s car parked round the edge of their house. Darkness had set in, and the
nearest streetlight to the house was intermittently flickering on and off. She
parked a little further up the road, preferring the security of a full
streetlight watching over her car; her pride and joy. She locked the car, began
to walk to the house, and then convinced herself that she’d left the car
unlocked.

Obsessive compulsive
disorder was a real problem for Paula these days, but this time, there was more
than a hint at her simply putting off the inevitable confrontation with Danny
Morris. The car was, of course, locked, but then it always was. She just needed
that little reassurance; in the mornings, she had to set her alarm twenty
minutes early in order to compensate for the number of times she’d have to
return to the front door to check it was locked. Then she’d have to rush up the
stairs to check that she hadn’t left the hair straighteners on. Then it was
back out of the door, but wait, had she set the alarm code properly? She had
talked to friends about her little obsessions and about the trouble that they
had caused in her life, she had even talked to Danny about it, thinking that he
would understand, but he had simply laughed at her and muttered something about
“bloody women.”

It was this memory of
his wanton cruelty - a talent which he had when he was drunk for turning on the
nastiness - which drove her forward to his house.

Paula rang the doorbell
with a renewed confidence, only looking back once to check whether her car was
still intact bathing in the streetlight’s molten glow. She heard a clatter of
stairs, and then the door opened to a narrow crack. Danny’s dark hair poked
through the gap, looking rather unkempt. She pushed the door into him and
barged her way into the entrance hallway, noting that he, rather
embarrassingly, was dressed only in a pair of boxer shorts.

‘What do you think you
are doing?’ Danny snarled, menacingly, but there was also a hint of nervousness
in his voice, as if he was trying to keep quiet.

‘You weren’t at work
today again. Mr. Thomas told me to bring round this ‘Final Warning’ letter, and
we need to talk about last week.’

‘Give me the letter
then, and get out. We can talk tomorrow.’ Suddenly he was manhandling her
roughly towards the still open door.

‘Just what is going
on?’

A woman’s voice
shrieked from the stairwell; somebody had been lurking there in the shadows,
unseen.

‘Is that Paula, Danny?’

Paula, who was still
shaken by Danny’s treatment of her, began to cry.

‘What’s the matter? Why
are you here? What’s going on?’ A note of worry betrayed itself in Cheryl’s
voice.

Paula saw Danny attempt
to shrug; apparently trying to disarm the situation. She had no idea how she
should react.

‘Cheryl,’ she sniffed,
‘Danny wasn’t at work today. I was asked to deliver this warning letter.’

‘Right, but I heard
everything. There’s something else isn’t there? What the hell has been going on
between you two?’

Paula blurted out the
whole story of Danny’s
behaviour
at the Adelphi, as much to defend herself from Cheryl’s accusatory tone as
anything else.

‘Danny’s been back to
his old tricks again Cheryl. I’m sorry you had to find out this way. He
said
that he wanted to talk about your
relationship with me, but ended up trying to get me into bed. It’s just like
you said; he can’t comprehend human kindnesses without thinking there is an
ulterior motive. He thought I wanted him,’ said Paula. She was staring at the
floor and did not notice Cheryl glide across the floor and land a resounding
slap across her friends’ cheek. Danny also reacted with violence; with a wail
of frustration, he began to punch the wall in the hallway.

Paula fell back against
the door, shocked at the force of the slap. She took one look back at her
friend and saw Cheryl wavering as if about to collapse. She suddenly looked
weak, bending to an imaginary breeze. Paula paused, ready to catch her if she
fainted, but then saw Cheryl turn to her husband with a murderous look.

‘Do not ever try to
contact me again, Danny. I thought I’d be hurt when it finally came to the end
with you, but it doesn’t. It feels like an escape.’

Cheryl turned on her
heels and walked out for the second time in a week, pausing only to grab her
coat.