The Magpie Trap: A Novel (26 page)

The Countdown

The countdown had begun in earnest; days dripped
into each other and then flowed confidently into a waterfall crashing towards
their inevitable conclusion. Danny tried to swim against the strong current of
time; he clung to quiet moments as if they were driftwood, or life-rafts of
calmness, trying to claw back some of the stolen hours. But he could not stem
the inexorable flow; in fact he added to it, creating the danger of flooding
with his persistent drinking which lost him time.

He quit work at EyeSpy
Security to buy himself more time to sit, to reflect on what had been washed
away by the current. He ceremoniously discarded his works’ mobile phone,
dispatching it under the wheels of a passing car on his way back from the off
-licence
; he abandoned his car in the EyeSpy car park,
posting the keys through the letterbox with a curt note which read:
I hereby resign from my position at EyeSpy
Security. This is for no particular reason, apart from to try and regain the
spirit which the company sucked out of me. Do not try to contact me; I won’t be
in the country much longer. Signed; Danny Morris.

He heard nothing from
Cheryl; it was as though the tide had swept her to another side of the world.
Danny was in danger of drowning under the weight of his fears. Chris and Mark
visited him regularly; he could read the concern on their faces. He could see
that they were shielding him from much of the leg-work involved with the
implementation of their plan; a plan which had originally been his own. It
seemed as though Mark had taken charge of the logistical side of the operation,
whilst Chris was handling the administrative effort, and the cover story; both
of which were progressing pretty well. It was though both of them had been born
to be part of the plan; as though a guiding hand governed their every move. In
times of weakness, Danny worried that the guiding hand might be that same hand
which was pushing him closer to the edge.

No escape route
presented itself to him, and he didn’t have the nerve to tell his two friends that
he longer wanted any part of the plan.

Meanwhile, Mark Birch tried to
compartmentalise
his new life; all of
the tasks which were geared towards putting in place ‘Operation Backpacker
Heaven’, as they’d code-named the heist, became his obsession. Like the careful
organisation
of his baked beans cans, or his haircut nights of
his former life, they were the small steps which he concentrated on which
allowed him to forget the giant leap which they would eventually become.

By thinking of the
smaller things, he trained his mind to stay off the subject of the one big, bad
thing that loomed on the horizon. He could not let himself think of the
abhorrent crime which they were about to commit, but pangs of pain stabbed at
him at unexpected times; like when he walked out of the EyeSpy Security offices
for the final time. Mark had expected to feel a great weight lifted from his
shoulders when he had shrugged off his old work-hard persona for the final
time, but was instead overwhelmed by nostalgia for the old, unspoiled,
unthinking times when his days were structured for him.

Martin Thomas was
visibly shocked when Mark ritually handed over his company mobile phone, van
keys and uniform; as though he were expecting Mark to suddenly admit that it
was all a big joke. Mark had the ready-made excuse that he needed to return to
Newcastle
to care for his mother, and his white lie almost
made things worse for him.

‘Take all the time off
you need to set things straight,’ said Martin Thomas. ‘As long as you
eventually returned to work, everything will be fine.’

This was a side of
Martin Thomas which Mark had never seen before; desperation; the EyeSpy
Security staff were dropping like flies these days, and Mark especially, would
be hard to replace.

In the car park,
shocked at his own duplicity, Mark felt lost. He felt as though his whole being
had undergone a nuclear attack; all that was left was the small core of himself
which was desperate to survive. He was dramatically losing weight; his rapidly
receding, already thinning hair was beginning to fall out; he looked as though
he had radiation sickness. Or maybe he was like the eels he read about in his
fishing books, thrashing about while his head had been cut off…

Mark’s comforting
security blanket had been yanked out from under him, but he still had to
perform the mechanical tasks to ensure that life went on. His garage became a
makeshift operations centre in which he worked tirelessly on the dummy systems
with which they were planning to fool
Edison
’s
Printers into thinking that everything was hunky dory. He was glad of the
everyday nature of the work; he was so used to tinkering with systems that he
could sometimes fool himself into thinking he was doing nothing out of the
ordinary.

He pinned a copy of the
site plans which Danny had provided onto the back of the garage door, but in a
fit of conscience tore it down when all started to seem to real to him. God, it
seemed, was a fickle kinda guy. One minute he’d be telling Mark that he was
doing the right thing; the only thing he
could
do to help his mother. The next, he’d be whispering in his ear about all of
hell’s fires waiting for him. They were going to roast him like a piece of meat
on a barbecue.

Testing. Testing. Testing.

Mark was testing the
systems but he was also testing himself. How far into this could he push
himself before it became unavoidable reality? He bought a van from a former
university acquaintance of Chris and Danny,
utilising
the last of his savings. The white van looked
real. It was so real that he could reach out and pick off some of the rust
which surrounded the wheel arches, but the engine had been well looked after,
and it would perform the job needed of it. Steve Elton, a friend of Chris and
Danny, delivered the van to Mark’s house in Wortley.

Steve stepped out of
the van looking every inch the used-car salesman; hair slicked back with what
looked like three coats of thick gel, a shirt with no tie; unbuttoned to show a
forest of chest hair; pin-striped trousers. He greeted Mark with a breezy
thumbs-up sign and pranced towards him. Steve Elton was a man who could get
things for you, no questions asked. Mark had been told by Chris and Danny that
in his time at university, Steve had dabbled in dealing soft drugs; he seemed
to have built upon his disregard for the law, and now was healthily remunerated
for turning a blind eye to the histories of the products he sold.
 

‘Tip-top condition,
this van mate,’ Steve announced, handing over a set of keys with a Ferrari
key-ring attached that was surely ironic. ‘I know she’s not got a pretty face,
but she’s a goer; like a good-un man.’

‘Thanks; as I said; as
long as the engine is still in working order, I don’t care about any of the
rust or bumps.’

‘Yeah, well, she looks
like she’s been round the block a bit doesn’t she; not exactly one careful
owner… but treat her right and she’ll do you fine.’

‘Exactly where did you
get it from?’

‘You know me. I have
contacts all over the place. Believe it or not, this beauty used to transport
cold meats; it has a generator in the back which used to run the refrigeration
unit.’

‘I don’t believe it.
This isn’t a re-painted Parker’s Fine Foods van is it?’

‘Now that would be
ironic wouldn’t it?’ grinned Steve Elton. ‘But if truth be told, this beauty comes
at very cheap… and at that price; you don’t get to ask questions. Do me a
favour though, don’t tell Chris about this… I knew I shouldn’t have told you…’

Mark handed over the
remainder of his savings in a brown envelope and turned his back on Steve without
even a wave. Once back in the house, he immediately
dialled
Chris’s number on his mobile.

‘Something’s not right
here. You know that you told me to get a hold of the van? Well, the only lead
that I got was that mate of yours from university, Steve Elton.’

‘That slimy shitbag?’
Chris interrupted. ‘Was there nowhere else you could go?’

‘Not in the time-frame
you gave me. Look, I’ve got the van now, but it’s a re-paint job; a stolen van.
Surely that’s a bit risky? And I didn’t want to tell you this, but I think it
was stolen from your dad’s factory.’

Mark was shocked, and
then relieved, at the outburst of guffawing laughter from the other end of the
phone.

‘Really? Well, all is
forgiven. Think about it; the father’s stolen van being bought by the son, and
then used in another robbery. Even the police wouldn’t credit us with that much
stupidity! Fuck it Mark; you do make me laugh. What did I tell you? I will
never speak to that man again; it’s finished. Once we complete the job, the van
will be burnt out anyway, but this gives us another option. If the van’s found
maybe they’ll start investigating that lying shit once again. Look; the van is
the least of our worries; I’m starting to seriously worry about Danny…’

‘I know; he’s falling
apart. He’s a nervous wreck; we need to chill him out,’ Mark replied, concern
evident in his voice. Reality was starting to bite; its bloody jaws were
clamped around his injured leg and couldn’t be shaken off.

‘Right, well what we
need to do is to get his mind on something else. We need to plan some kind of
big farewell party… it’ll be part of our cover story anyway. We know a lot of
people in
Leeds
, Mark; we can’t just disappear off the face of
the earth. We should tell them all about Backpacker Heaven; throw them off the
scent of what we’re really doing.’

Mark was aware that
Chris’s
phoney
company project had
been moving forward, but he still didn’t know the lengths to which he had gone.

‘How’s Backpacker
Heaven coming along then?’

Chris laughed again:
“The way things are going, we could just forget about the
Edison
’s Printers job and set up this thing full-time. I’m having to
knock-back corporate sponsorship schemes already - big money - and also
hoards
of rich kids are just dying to get their hands
dirty out there…

Since I set us up as a
registered charity, we’re going from strength to strength. The fake website I
set up gets some obscene amount of hits a day… If it wasn’t so much like what
my father did, I could really see myself playing some kind of
King of the Swindlers
role.’

‘Have you ever thought
that we could just do something like this for real?’ Mark said, bitterness
rising in him. ‘That maybe, just maybe, we could still make something real,
something tangible, from our collected brains. We could just set up a charity and
go and live in paradise, actually working for something worthwhile.’

 
‘Don’t be bloody stupid. Whoever heard of
anyone making money from a charity? Remember why we are doing this, Mark; for
your mother,’ Chris interrupted again.

Mark was angry now: ‘And
what about you, Chris, why are you doing this? Why are you risking so much? Why
have you given up your job? You’re just like Danny really, you never think of
the consequences of your actions…’

‘Yeah, you’re right,’
said Chris, a note of sarcasm cutting through his characteristic reserved tone
and lending it an ugly, screeching quality, ‘All I care about is myself. I
don’t have to answer to anyone. I don’t have any promises to keep… look, just
come round to my flat at the weekend for the farewell party.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Mark
tried, guilt edging into his voice, but Chris had already clicked off. There
was no turning back now; the route back had already been blocked off. They were
about to navigate the road to hell; they were to undertake the unspeakable…

The Last Supper

Mark was dreading the indulgence of the last night
farewell party almost as much as the heist. He knew that Chris was planning a
major blow-out, and he knew that Danny was so close to the edge that he was liable
to have some kind of nervous breakdown, or else let the cat out of the bag. He
imagined Chris and Danny being wracked with a nervous excitement which would
transform them into frenzied incarnations of the arrogant brats they sometimes
were. He could almost picture one of them pulling off a trick like Bilbo
Baggins in
Lord of the Rings
, when on
his eleventy-first birthday party, he slipped the ring on his finger and
disappeared, to gasps of wonder and awe from the audience.

Chris planned the party
as a part of their cover story for their fleeing the crime scene. He also threw
himself into the compilation of the invite list, booked the restaurant and
elected to host pre-dinner drinks at his flat. Mark became more and more
concerned at the scale and ambition of the evening; this all looked too much
like tempting fate. They were celebrating before any of the hard work was done.

On
his drive across
Leeds
, Mark’s wariness grew; with an almost
superstitious zeal, he obeyed every possible Highway Code. His law-abiding
driving stemmed from a desire not to risk capture - surely anyone would be able
to read his dark intentions in his eyes, and discover the stolen van, but also
because he wanted to be late. He considered dropping in at the Adelphi for a
nerve-settling pint, but thought better of it when he saw the row of opulent
parked cars outside Chris’s flat; he knew he just had to get through this
torture, and if he popped into the pub, he would have been sorely tempted to
stay there, Danny-style.

Parked-up,
he took the time to collate a damage report on his battered trousers; his
self-consciousness cranked up a notch. He knew that he didn’t fit in amongst
these people. He had never seen himself as one of the bright young things that
populated
Leeds
on a Friday and Saturday night; people whose
clothes were more expensive than his monthly rent. He looked wearily in the
van’s sunvisor-mirror and gingerly smiled at himself, before noticing that
smiling exacerbated his squint.

Shaking
his head, he wrenched open the transit van door and unsteadily craned himself
out of his rather-too-low seat, which was so sunken through years of some other
driver’s slouching so that it almost touched the floor. He was met by a barrage
of angry beeping as a speeding black Mercedes swerved to avoid him, clipping
the edge of his van door in the process.

Suddenly
alert at the prospect of confrontation, Mark realised simultaneously that he
had dropped the bottle of port he’d brought as his contribution to the night,
and that his heart was drumming its own tune, matching that which pumped out of
the speeding black car. But the Mercedes didn’t stop, and instead had already
turned the far corner of the road; and skidded out of sight by the time Mark
had yanked his own van door shut.

Breathing
heavily, he kicked the smashed remains of his treasured port to the side of the
road and leaned back against the van door closest to the pavement. Traces of
blue paint from the paint-job he’d given it imprinted onto his shirt. Within a
couple of minutes, he knew that the car was not coming back - it was probably
stolen - and he felt an unavoidable, creeping sense of foreboding, darkening
his spirits. The near-miss was an unwelcome reminder of that world which he was
trying to forget, trying to get away from; the heavyweight underbelly of the
city burbling indigestive anger at him. He wanted simplicity in his life; he
didn’t want to be reminded of the braggart modernity of the city which he
simply couldn’t fit in with.

Mark sloped haltingly
down

A
lonely red balloon floated pointlessly on the door handle of the loft-style apartments,
marking the way to the lifts. Mark sighed, called the lift and prepared to face
a reality he couldn’t comprehend.

As
the lift doors opened, he could hear the deep thudding bass of Chris’s music.
For a moment, he almost turned back, but something - a relentless desire for
self-punishment perhaps – drove him onwards. When he reached the door, he
didn’t even bother knocking; nobody would hear him.

Danny
was already there; Mark was immediately greeted by the pungent fog of that new,
cheap brand of cigarettes he’d started to smoke as he stepped into Chris’s
sparsely decorated, clean-lined entrance hallway. He could also hear the
outspoken Jed Burton, another of Chris and Danny’s university pals, spouting
forth his usual drug-induced nonsense, and surely that was Steve Elton’s
guffawing in the background.

Mark
steadied himself, putting his palm against the wall, still unnerved by the
close call with the black Mercedes and his dropped port. He heard pockets of
conversation above the music, and managed to pick out the individual voices of
Dave Redford, Paul Sellars and Andy Gregory; the
Leeds
brat pack. Drawing a deep breath, he entered the arena to mocking
applause from Danny and Chris.

‘About
time!’ Chris brayed, already sounding drunk. ‘I thought you weren’t going to
come. Here, have a glass of wine.’

An
over-size glass was thrust into his hand; Mark grasped at it like it was a
life-jacket.

‘Thanks
Chris,’ he said. ‘Just had a nightmare parking mate. Then, just when I finally
did park, I nearly got run over by a Mercedes; must have been stolen judging by
the speed of it. I had to jump out of the way, and I dropped the port I’d
brought for you.’

Mark
caught Dave Redford and Paul Sellars sharing a brief, knowing look. They
thought he was too cheap to bring a bottle.

‘No
worries Mark, as long as you’re okay,’ soothed Chris. He took Mark’s coat from
him and made as if to take it into the bedroom; he had rehearsed his role as
host very well. Then he paused at the door, saying: ‘We’ve had a spate of cars
being stolen around here. Always the Mercs and the Jags though mate; I reckon
your van might be left alone!’

‘Yeah,
you’re right. Cheers, by the way,’ Mark grinned, finally beginning to relax as
the clouds of smoke from whatever was in Steve Elton’s roll-up began to cloud
his brain. He took a deep draught of the red wine and gave Danny a friendly
wink.

Steve
Elton piped up: ‘Hey! That van might not look great, but I did you three a real
favour selling for that price; I even had a mechanic check it over. ‘First class
condition’; his words.’

‘We
all know that mate,’ Danny placated him, ‘We had to get it on the cheap as all
the costs will go into shipping it to
Mauritius
…’

Mark
was impressed at the relaxed exterior Danny had adopted for the evening, a show
which belied his mental disintegration of the past weeks.

‘Ah;
the new jobs, finally we get to the point. What the hell are you guys playing
at?’ Steve Elton asked the question which had been hanging over the room like
it was part of the foggy cloud of smoke.

‘All
will be revealed at the meal, my friends,” replied Danny, still maintaining an
air of calm. ‘All that you need to know is that we have all decided that we
need to do something different with our lives; we are going to make that giant
leap into a new world and do what we’ve always wanted.’
 

While
Danny was regaling some of the group with part of the rehearsed tale of their
new jobs abroad, Mark perched on the arm of the sofa, quietly listening; he
marvelled
at how easily both Danny and Chris managed to hold
a crowd under their spell. They were like a double-act, first Danny would weave
fantastic tapestries of stories, and then Chris would entertain with his
cynical wit. Jed Burton, Dave Redford, Paul Sellars and Andy Gregory were all
seated cross-legged on the floor in front of the sofa, as if they were primary
school pupils at story time.

As
Danny left to get a refill from the kitchen, Chris took centre stage; he
clapped his hands and demanded silence before launching into a diatribe about
the way that his Hi-fi simply ruined the fuller bodied
flavours
and colours of the jazz CD which was providing
the be-bop backing music to the evening’s chat. With a flourish, he switched on
his old reel to reel player and the crackly sensual saxophone of Rodrigues cut
through the atmosphere.

‘This,
my friends, is the maestro. Diego Rodrigues; none of you will have heard the
name before but it don’t matter. I discovered him literally falling over drunk
on stage on my Latin American jaunt a few years back.’

Mark
recognised
that
Chris’s appreciation for music played second fiddle to his joy of
one-upmanship. Chris lived for those moments at get-togethers where a guest
would astonishingly enquire as to who was playing such sumptuous jazz, and he
could reply that it was an artist he himself had discovered. Mark had heard
Chris play this game many times before, and Chris was this time regaling his
audience with the fact that, ‘this music is the real thing; it can’t be copied
because it was I who made the recording. It was music of the moment and for the
moment. Pure escapism.’

Steve
Elton knew what was demanded of him, and played his usual sycophant: ‘I don’t
know how you do it. I truly don’t: no matter how obscure the act, you seem to
have a nose for hunting them out- it’s like me stalking a bargain… or a bird.’

‘Rodrigues
was a wizened, nasty old drunk in a remote Mexican village who happened to play
the sweetest most unconventional music I have ever heard,’ continued Chris,
‘until, of course, he had thrown back too much tequila; when his dark thoughts
translated into the music and became a jagged, disjointed mess. I made the
recording that very night, before he descended into his own personal hell. He
will probably never even remember the numbers he played- it’s a true never-to-be-repeated
performance.’

‘Sounds
like you exploited the old fool to me,’ observed Jed Burton, playfully.

‘Don’t
worry Jed, so as not to offend your sensibilities; I slipped a handful of pesos
into the inebriated peasant’s pocket as he lay snoring. His head was resting on
the drum kit and the bottle of tequila was drizzling its final contents right
onto the abandoned saxophone. It was as if the whole thing had been a dream.’

           
Mark believed that the Rodrigues’s music was the
equivalent of a doodle on the notepad next to a telephone: it wasn’t supposed
to be taken so seriously; it was not properly thought out. He preferred simple
rock songs which had a beginning, middle and end; verse, chorus, verse.
 
He did, however, admire the way that Chris
had furnished his flat in a simple, tasteful way. With money, he could see
himself living in a space such as this flat, with its rugged exposed brickwork,
and the rich mahogany table and chairs. He loved the steady functionality of
the flat, and its deference to the heritage of the building.

Mark
decided to get himself another red wine, already feeling a little light-headed
from his first glass. He was waylaid on his way to the kitchen by Steve Elton
however:

‘Marco!
I do hope that van is still serving you well - she’s a good ride, I told you
that didn’t I?’

‘Yes
Steve, it is still running. It’s only been three days…’ Mark was gradually
trying to edge away from Steve, but was too polite to simply turn his back and
walk away.

‘But
Mark; you didn’t tell Chris about its, erm, history did you?’ Steve was now
gripping his arm tightly, a look of concern in his eyes. Chris and Danny walked
past them on their way to the kitchen, not even registering that they had seen
either Steve or Mark.

‘Why
would I?’ Mark hissed. ‘He doesn’t need to know. He wouldn’t care anyway…’

Mark
finally wrenched his arm from Steve’s tight grip but it was some effort. The
man was clearly used to applying a tight-grip on people while he
endeavoured
to exhort a sale from them. He walked away,
feeling relaxed again, but as he entered the kitchen, he overheard Danny and
Chris talking about him. They appeared to be unaware of his quiet slinking
presence; he had taken his shoes off when entering the flat, and therefore his
sock-clad feet did not announce his arrival as it did everyone else on the
flat’s laminated wooden flooring.

‘…we
had to invite him. He’s an integral part of our team. We’ve told everyone that
he’s going to be working with us out there, so we can’t very well not have him
here,’ Danny said.