The Magpie Trap: A Novel (31 page)

Chris picked the bag up
for him from where it had landed in a thick bush and pointed. Through the
diminishing tree cover, they could see the outline of the first of the
buildings, and closer, the ominous line of the perimeter fence.

By the time they began their approach to the
perimeter fencing, Chris and Mark were both covered from head to toe in a thick
coating of mud. They took a moment to try and brush themselves down and Mark
regarded the fence. It was approximately three
metres
in height and was tipped with a thick mesh of
barbed wire. Concrete posts had been driven into the ground every ten
metres
or so, to reinforce the strength of the fence to
a vehicular attack, and a sensitive anti-intruder system had been installed to
catch those on foot.

‘Good fencing this,’
said Mark. He made as though to run his hand over the chain links which
arranged in a pattern of tight squares. Chris pulled his arm back and gave him
a warning look; a sinister light danced in his eyes.

‘Whoah there; we don’t
care how good the system is or that you used to come out to maintain it on a
six-monthly basis. All we care about is getting past it.’

Mark knew all about the
angles which
Edison
’s Printers had covered. The purpose of any
perimeter intruder detection system was to keep people from getting in, or out
of a site without authority or away from permitted routes. The new technology
installed by EyeSpy enabled the entire boundary of the site to be monitored and
the precise location of any activity, be it the cutting the chain links; an
attempted intrusion; or anyone climbing over the fence, could be discovered
very rapidly. The system worked by
utilising
a cable - securely wrapped into the chain link - which could detect
vibrations from any interference. The cable then transmitted its data back to a
central monitoring point; in the case of
Edison
’s Printers, the
MMC
.

Mark admired the
capability of the intelligent technology; it could determine independently
whether the vibrations sensed were due to the wind or due to an attempted
intrusion, and then act accordingly. But such reliance on the technological
‘eye’ can bring problems, and Mark planned to exploit the lack of a real, human
eye watching him as he pulled the cable shears out of his sports bag.

Time stood still as
Mark drove the sharp edge of the shears through the thick cable. He could hear
the uneven breath of Chris close by, but didn’t look up. This was the moment of
truth; the tectonic collision which was the Intertel Shift. The tidal wave of
digital world engulfing the dying analogue world; reverberations would be felt
throughout the rest of their lives.

As the big bang of the
Intertel Shift occurred, Mark’s shears snapped through the final strand of the
cable, and he held his breath… He counted to ten in his head, took a swift glance
at Chris and then placed the first of his steel toe caps within the narrow
chain links of the fence.

There was no way of
knowing whether their plan had worked.

Static

Jim Hunter almost choked on his scalding tea; the
urn which had been installed in the Security Lodge somehow contrived to produce
water which was hotter than boiling. He replaced the mug on the desk rather
forcefully, causing an eruption of the mug’s molten contents to be spilled; Jim
could imagine the liquid burning through the cold steel surface.

He was always spilling
things these days; it was surely the onset of old age, the beginning of the
end; the loss of his faculties. He was losing that sharpness of mind which had
so defined him as a detective… Nevertheless, something had set those sensitive
antennae
of his twitching that night; they had picked up
the faint signal of something about to happen.

Wearily, Jim wiped away
the spillage with his newspaper; he wasn’t supposed to be reading anyway. He
crumpled up the sodden parchment and deposited it into the bin below his desk,
his hand involuntarily creeping past the panic button; committing its exact
location to sensory memory.

Jim hadn’t been
expecting to be working that night, but had been called in by Charlie Wade
early that morning. Charlie had told him a scare story about something called
the Intertel Shift, which he’d heard talk about at his Golf Club. Jim, a
natural worrier, had immediately called the EyeSpy Security salesman, Danny
Morris, to get a full explanation, however had been met by the eternal middle C
tone which indicated that the line was dead.

A familiar crackle and
hiss of suspicion had begun to burn in the back of Jim Hunter’s head; something
was not right. His unease was heightened by the fact that EyeSpy’s elusive
Managing Director, Martin Thomas, had finally returned one of Jim’s numerous
calls, and had seemed extremely evasive in his answers; indeed, Jim thought,
the man clearly did not even want to talk about what had happened to Danny
Morris.

Jim was concerned.
Although Martin Thomas’s explanation of the Intertel Shift made it sound like a
lot of panic about nothing - ‘a bit like the Millennium Bug’ - he had read
caginess in the man’s voice. There was something Martin Thomas had not told
him. Jim had encountered similar slipperiness so many times before; usually in
a Police Station Interview Room. He preferred to conduct such interviews
face-to face, which allowed him to read the person’s unconscious betrayals of
the reality behind their lies.
Perhaps it would be a scratch of the nose, or maybe a
shifty, almost imperceptible upwards glance.
Martin Thomas, however, had said that there was no way that he could
comply with Jim’s request for him to come down to site and explain things further,
and Jim no longer had the policeman’s power to make things happen.

A fourteen hour shift
was Jim Hunter’s reward for his dedication. The way Jim figured it, this was
his
site and he couldn’t let anything
happen there on his watch; he’d never be able to get another job, or live down
the embarrassment when ex-police colleagues found out. An obsessive compulsion
forced Jim to join his Deputy, Callum Burr, on the night shift. It was a
dedication to the job which drew in feelings of loyalty to his colleagues; he
could never forgive himself if anything happened to Callum which he could have
averted by simply being there; but also wrapped up in the complicated parcel of
Jim’s feelings was a complete inability to let go of
control
.

Perhaps that was why
Callum Burr was in such a bad mood; he was not happy that he was being
accompanied on that night’s shift. The Security Lodge was not designed for two
people, especially when one was giving off such obvious signals of irritation.
Callum Burr was a big man, and Jim was wedged in behind the desk, his elbows
drowning in Burr’s flabby stomach. Burr’s snacking on the job had caused his
weight to balloon; where once he had the regular fitness regime of the army to
burn off the excess calories, he now channelled his innate aggression into
eating.

‘Sure you don’t want to
go home, boss?’ he asked, tucking into one of those supposedly low-fat
chocolate bars. Evidently Burr believed that because they were low-fat, he
could eat six times as many as any normal person. ‘Nothing going on here and
we’re supposed to be getting busier next week; we’ll both be on longer hours
then…’

‘I’m sure,’ said
Hunter, trying to ignore the fact that Burr’s eyes were boring into the side of
his head as though he was trying to cast a spell on him. Hunter was already
aware that Burr had the short temper so often associated with red-haired
people, and despite his weight, was still a very fit man. He had been to see
him play rugby for a local ex-forces team and Burr was literally a force of
nature; riding roughshod over his less potent opponents. He was of Scots
descent, Jim had learned, and in more private moments, Jim had wondered whether
Burr had been born of a clan of Highland Cattle. It paid to be careful when
handling Highland Cattle. They were a law unto themselves.

‘Well, my legs have
been giving me gip; I’ll need to put them up here,’ said Burr, trying Hunter’s
patience still further. He watched as the vast size thirteen boots of Callum
Burr landed on the top of the desk, and his chair groaned under his dead
weight.

Hunter chose to say
nothing. He chose the kid-gloves approach. He remembered something an old
colleague once told him about his partner. The two of them had spent so much
time cramped together in confined spaces on stake-outs that eventually they’d
grown to hate each other more than the criminals they were supposed to be
watching. ‘When it came to the end,’ the man told him, ‘and I couldn’t even
stand the way that he stirred his tea and he couldn’t stand the way that I
breathed, we knew that it was for the best to put in transfer requests.’

It was becoming a trial
like that for Hunter and Burr. Jim noted that the big man had barely once
looked up from his crossword to study the images on the monitors. Why couldn’t
Hunter share his colleague’s complacency? Instead he remained on edge. Perhaps
he was showing early symptoms of policeman’s paranoia; the fabled condition of
all retired officers. It involved a mistrust of anything and everyone; the
reading impossible signals from the tiniest of signs. He needed to escape this
neurotic
having to check
or else he
would never be able to relax.

It was just when Jim
Hunter was contemplating making a second cup of tea that the first of the blips
on the monitors occurred. It was barely noticeable, but all the same, it was
there. He briefly glanced at the near-somnambulant Callum Burr, but saw no hint
of recognition in the man’s gnarled, red face. Jim looked back at the monitors,
contemplating adjusting the settings, but then sat back and watched as a fuzzy
line descended the second screen, followed by a brief flash of static, and then
it was back to normal.

He had to make the
call; was this simply a result of the Intertel Shift, or was there something
more serious at play?

Going over the Top

Climbing the three metre high fence was much
harder than expected, what with the threat of being caught constantly snapping
at their heels as if it was a guard-dog. Chris tried to scale the fence far too
quickly: a surge of adrenalin coursing through his veins. He missed his footing
and slid right back down again, a stray wire ripping straight through his
sodden, heavy Barbour coat, clearly now not the right choice of clothing.

Mark had been more
careful on his ascent, but the wire mesh holes were far too small to fit his
broad boots into properly, and he too had ended up cut to shreds by the barbed
wire at the summit as he struggled to lift the bulky sports bag over. The pain
hardly registered, though, and they dropped over to the other side far more
stealthily. Still there was no sign that they had been seen; no sirens and no
searching beam from the panopticon.

Chris and Mark were
inside
Edison
’s Printers perimeter; they had gone over the top,
to face the machine gun fire of their destiny. They had scaled the fence
towards the rear of the site, at the foot of a gently sloping grassy knoll
which led towards the succession of squat, concrete blocks which made up the
printing and distribution facilities.

Mark’s ears rang with
the dizzying silence which surrounded them; his rapidly pounding heart would
surely be heard for miles around; he felt that his senses were about to
explode; he was close to a faint. There was the occasional whirr and hum of the
printers in the first of the blocks, but otherwise they were alone with this
intrusive quietness.

Mark was almost
compelled to shout;
I’m here! Come and
find me! I’m going to rob you!
and laugh as he struggled to regain his
composure.

Chris shook him from
his reverie by grabbing him by the scruff of the neck and snarling: ‘Come on
Mark. We are here now; don’t go all jelly-legged on me. The adrenaline’s going
to be kicking in right about now; just go with it. You might feel a little
light-headed, drunk even, but this is not a game. Why the hell do you think I
couldn’t trust Danny in a place like this? He’d be trying to set off the
security lights right now… Downing whisky from a hip flask…’

‘Sorry. I just froze.
I’m okay now,’ breathed Mark. His heart was beating so fast that he thought it
might be about to explode. A heart attack whilst trying to pull off a heist; he
hardly dared think about how typical of his luck that would be.

Chris stayed still and
stared into Mark’s eyes. ‘Do not fuck this up for me,’ he snarled. ‘Now’s the
time to do or die.’
 

Mark smiled in
agreement. Chris was right; they had no choice in the matter now. As though
guided by the hand of fate, they were coursing toward their destiny. Nothing
would ever be the same again.

Mark led the way, sticking close to the white
concrete walls of the first of the buildings and trying not to give in to the
pain in his leg. He ran his gloved hand along the smooth, cold walls, laying an
imaginary trail for them to follow on their return.

They crunched along the
gravel pathway, wincing at the noise of a thousand small stones rubbing
together, announcing their presence. If the CCTV was alerted to their
exaggerated tip-toeing advance, it would all be over; but Mark knew that if
they were careful, they could avoid the cameras’ watchful gaze. There were so
many cameras on site that monitoring them all was impossible for the
MMC
staff; Mark and Chris would only be spotted if
they set an alarm off, and the Intertel Shift could help them with that. Faults
in the communication network would allow them to slip through the net
unnoticed.

As they rounded the
first corner, they saw the panopticon towering over them in the distance; the
ever-watchful eye. Mark had his fingers crossed that its gaze was distracted by
the dummy system which he had set up, and he whispered a silent prayer that
Danny would not fuck this up for them. He sincerely hoped Danny hadn’t brought
along a hip-flask; Mark knew that Danny got drunk too quickly and was prone to
bouts of melancholy when in that state. Would Danny’s suicidal tendencies drag
them all down with him? Surely even Danny would
recognise
the importance of their mission; how it had the
potential to change all of their lives. He would not fuck it up…

‘Just over there,’ he
whispered, pointing to one of the low-lying buildings. ‘That’s the Precisioner
unit; where all the money’s kept.’

‘And the printer,’ said
Chris, softly. ‘
Fort
Knox
, my arse.’ There was a glint in his eyes as he mentioned the
printer. Mark chose to ignore it. Chris seemed so
wired
that he resembled the mad colonel in
Apocalypse Now.
His eyes were ablaze like he was high on drugs and
his hands were clenched into tight balls. Adrenaline was fucking with him, too.

           
Mark
had tried to tell him how well protected the Precisioner unit actually was. He
wanted Chris to know just how difficult it had been for him to undertake the
technological aspects of the plan. This was
his
baby. Although it was outwardly unremarkable, the building was protected by
the most sensitive detection systems. The integrated door entry and camera
systems also worked the steel locks and there was a direct communication
channel to the police if these locks were interfered with. Because of network
technology, this communication channel no longer had to be cabled; instead it
was simply converted into a data stream which was then interpreted on the other
side.

Technology had served
the needs of the people; no longer was it necessary for a complete security
team to be on site to respond to emergencies. Wages for security guards had
been hiked by new licensing laws and working time directives, and
Edison
’s were immediately sold on the EyeSpy Security cost-cutting idea.
Unfortunately for them, in installing the system, they robbed themselves of the
all important human control. It meant that once the system was bypassed, the
burglars would be left with a virtual open goal.

It was at the entrance
to the Precisioner Unit that Mark’s dummy system was to prove invaluable. At that
exact moment, Danny would be able to see them from his vantage point of the
van, but nobody else on the entire site would be able to see their entry. It
was Danny’s job to disable the door entry system, which otherwise only allowed
access when it was presented by two separate identity passes. They had to be
able to rely on Danny being so seduced by the money that he would not let
himself make any mistakes, and perhaps that was where the human element became
a problem; humans were notoriously prone to emotions, to distractions and to
mistakes.

Mark’s hammer-and-tongs
heart had now leaped up into his mouth. Now really was the time to do or die.