The Magpie Trap: A Novel (41 page)

Mark was mystified, but wanted to keep talking to this woman for as long
as he possibly could. She had a spirit, a natural goodness, which shone through
her every word. Oh, come on, who was Mark kidding, she was also absolutely
stunning.

‘Very funny… Tell me about yourself. How did you learn to dance like
that?’

Mauritia proceeded to tell Mark the story of her life. In great detail
she described her ancestry; her father’s side of the family were Hindu. They
had been transported from
India
by the British
when they colonised both countries. When
Mauritius
became
independent in 1968, many had decided to leave and travel back to
India
, or follow the
mythical path to the streets paved with gold in
London
. Her father’s
family had long since become Mauritians rather than Indians, and had decided to
remain, to build a new life for themselves. They had formed a small fishing
enterprise which was still going strong today. Mauritia described the beauty of
seeing the flotilla of small boats setting out at first light to catch their
food.

‘My father met my mother after seeing her dance,’ continued Maurita.
Mark’s cheeks reddened at the implication, but he remained in rapt silence.
‘She was descended from Chinese merchants who traded in the
Indian Ocean
. Her side of
the family settled on the South of the island when they fell in love with it
two centuries ago.’

Ah, Mark thought, that’s where she gets such strange but attractive features.
He had never seen anyone quite like her before.

‘The two sides of the family now share a love of the simple life of
fishing, eating, drinking, family time… it is almost like one of your western
ideas of a hippy commune!’

Mark was completely taken aback; not only was this beautiful woman
deigning to spend her whole evening talking to him, she was also making little
jokes to try to impress him. When Mark didn’t laugh, though, she began to
sulkily play with a ringlet in her flowing, curly hair and looked downcast.
Mark tried to be upbeat, and offered to get her a drink, suddenly,
embarrassingly, he realised that they’d been sitting there for about an hour
and he’d not even offered her one.

           
When he returned from the bar,
Mauritia was there at the table, waiting; he’d almost expected her to have
slipped away in his absence. He placed her drink on the table, and sensing it
was his time to talk, he commented: ‘I think I could love this place too. I
feel somehow freer here; I feel as though I was almost fated to be here,
tonight, talking to you.’

He was at once embarrassed at his show of emotion; he’d never expressed
his feelings in such a way before. But Mauritia eased away his discomfort.

‘I was named after the island because my parents loved it so much. But
Mark, you must tell me more about yourself, why do you feel fated to be here?’

‘I don’t know; I just feel as though I’ve never been properly alive
before tonight. I’ve been walking around in a trance. It’s as though I had to
strip away all of the things which held me back before I could realise what I
wanted most of all in the world. Fate threw up the circumstances which brought
me here…’

Later, in bed,
Mauritia resumed the conversation; they had been inseparable all night, and
when the café had finally closed, she had gently led him by the hand and onto
the deck of one of the small fishing boats on the harbour. He had ignored the
whistling and cat-calls from Stella and the group of fishermen as he’d made his
exit;
this
was what he wanted more
than anything in the world.

‘Do you believe in fate or free will Mark? Is it fate or merely
coincidence that we meet?’ She traced her fingers across the livid bruise on
his ankle. ‘Does the physical, measurable bruise on your ankle matter more to
people than a warm feeling you might get for doing something good for someone?
Do the things that happen occur for a reason, or do they just happen?’

The fishing boat gently moved up and down in concert with the waves in
the harbour; Mark had never felt so at peace.

‘The things I have done
do
count, Mauritia, but only with you can I sense any hope of reprieve.’

He’d told her about the murder, he couldn’t stop himself. Mauritia
treated the knowledge with a worldly calm.

‘You were grieving, you lost your father. You tried to do something good
for your mother but fate meant that someone got hurt; you had to have something
to measure what you gain against what it has cost… In the end, we are judged on
what we learn, rather than what we do.’

Predator

The next flight
to
Mauritius
which Jim
Hunter had been able to book himself onto had meant a wait of two days. He
almost couldn’t sleep; the thrill of the chase was on him, and he’d had his
first scent of his prey. The two days which he’d had were days in which he
constantly battled with himself over whether he should hand his hard-earned
information over to the police or whether he should go it alone. So many times,
he’d had the phone handset in his hands, ready to dial the familiar number at
West Yorkshire Police, but every time, he’d eventually carefully replaced it
with a sigh.

The two days also gave Jim time to start formulating his plan for once
he got there. He had never been involved in any police work on foreign shores,
and therefore had no idea what to expect. He needed someone who knew the
island, somebody to act as his guide. Luckily he had this part of the plan sewn
up pretty quickly. He remembered that when he’d been seeing Ruth Sharp a few
years back, she’d had to leave on a field trip; some research mission which had
taken her away from him for over a month. Suddenly it had flashed into his mind
where she’d gone;
Mauritius
!

 
It all came flooding back; she’d
told him all about it. As a part of her University research, she’d been a part
of some pretty pioneering exploration into the
DNA
of extinct
animals - all
Jurassic Park
kind of
stuff, as Hunter remembered thinking - her idea had been to try to grow a new
Dodo.
Mauritius
had been the
Dodo’s traditional homeland, and she had told him that as the bird was still
celebrated there; many places had kept full skeletons, feathers and even
preserved bodily organs. She’d been out there for six or seven weeks working on
the project until the protests from locals who believed her work to be
unnatural had driven her home.

Jim picked up the phone, and for the second time in a week, dialled the
number for her laboratory.

‘Jim; to what do I owe the pressure? More Private Eye work?’ Ruth
answered, Jim could hear her still juggling some typing and rearranging something
on her desk as she spoke.

‘Actually, it’s something far more interesting, but I can’t talk about
it on the phone. Can we meet?’

Hunter and Ruth
Sharp met for lunch at the Eldon, a modest pub close to the university. Jim
found himself at the pub almost an hour before Ruth was due to arrive; he had
unconsciously set his internal clock wrongly. Ever since his taste for police
work and for investigation and for solving puzzles had returned, so had an
almost unquenchable thirst. Over the past few days, he had found himself
lingering outside pub doorways, squashing his face against off-licence windows
and even rooting around in his cupboards, looking for
nothing in particular
. The Eldon had been one of his old haunts,
and as he stepped over the threshold, he smelled that old familiar smell which
fitted him like a well-worn slipper. It was a mixture of stale beer, cigarette
smoke, and wood; it smelled delightful to Jim.

           
The same old barman met him with a
welcoming smile, his hand already reaching for the bitter tap. Jim bit his lip,
and shook his head.

‘I’m off it, Brian,’ he forced himself to say. ‘Just here for the food
today…’

‘DI Hunter; well I never,’ the careworn barman laughed, wiping away some
of the spilled bitter on his hand with one of the bar towels. ‘You used to hate
the Johnny-Come-Latelys that only came in the boozer for food. “Perfectly good
restaurants and cafés for that”, I remember you saying.’

‘It’s not DI any more either,’ sighed Jim. He was sick of having to
define himself by what he was not; he was not a Policeman any more, he was not
an drinker any more. As soon as most of his old friends heard those two things,
they ran out of anything else to say to him.

‘What do you want to drink then?’ asked the barman uneasily.

‘Just give me a tonic water for now please Bri.’

But as Brian had reached over to grab one of those small glass bottles
of tonic water which are pointless if not an accompaniment to the main course,
the main drink, Jim caught a smirk of delight on the barman’s face.

‘Stick a gin in there too,’ Hunter snarled.

‘Sure?’ asked Brian, almost arrogantly; evidently he loved being witness
to this decisive moment in the former DI’s life.

‘Just fucking do your job,’ Hunter shouted, before taking a seat on one
of the stools by the bar.

Only people who drink have a legitimate reason to sit on bar stools, and
Hunter was part of that club again. He handed over his cash, and closed his
eyes as he took his first taste of alcohol for twelve months… and it tasted
foul. The gin was so sharp, so cheaply metallic; the tonic was sickeningly
bitter. He downed the entire contents of the glass in two swigs, and then
tapped his hand on the bitter pump; already he had crossed the point of no
return.

Ruth Sharp arrived
early; so early that her arrival cut into Jim’s serious drinking time. He
stared at her, annoyed, as he realised his impromptu drinking session was over.

‘Off the wagon?’ she chided as she approached. She looked good, still in
her long white coat, but long shapely legs showed underneath. Her hair was in
her familiar pony-tail, but she wasn’t wearing glasses any more.

‘Just for today, Ruth, it’s been twelve months. Where are your glasses?’

‘One of the benefits of working at the cutting edge of research, and
meeting with eminent professors, is the fact that you can take advantage of new
developments in technology. This is something called laser eye surgery, heard
of it?’

‘Ha, ha, ha,’ chimed Hunter, mirthlessly. ‘Look, talking about research,
that’s why I’m here…’

‘At least make a girl feel a little bit wanted before you cut to the
chase Jim,’ joked Ruth Sharp. ‘What is it you’re after, the
DNA
strain which
makes you an alcoholic? We’re working on that at the moment. We could soon
eradicate people like you.’

She was still joking, but there was a chilling tone to her voice.

‘Actually, it is
DNA
I wanted to
talk to you about in a roundabout way,’ said Jim, handing her the obligatory
vodka and lemonade which she drank by the bucket-load without ever seeming to
get drunk. ‘Come on, let’s sit down and we can talk properly, away from Brian’s
big ears.’

           
Jim led them to a table in the pub’s
front room which was divided from the bar by a partition wall. He knew that
this small act of rebellion would really annoy Brian behind the bar. He took
with him two menus, but knew very well that in this kind of mood neither of
them would be ordering any food.

‘Ruth, this work I’m doing; can I tell you the truth about it?’ Jim
said, pleadingly, twisting his pint of bitter round and round in his hands.
‘It’s not private investigation work as you’d know it; it’s not looking into
extra-marital affairs. It’s something else…’

Ruth cut him short. ‘Jim, I know; I can tell by that gleam in your eyes
that it’s not only the drinking which you’ve gone back to; you’re investigating
a big case again, aren’t you. It’s
Edison
’s Printers
isn’t it?’

Jim was taken aback, but then, he knew that she had an instinct about
him. She knew him better than he knew himself.

‘You’re right. But the police don’t know about this. This is all my own
work. Nobody can know. Look, the reason I needed to see you is because it’s my
hunch that the gang involved in the crime have fled to
Mauritius
. I’m booked
onto a flight there tomorrow. Between now and then, I need to know anything and
everything you know about the place; any contacts you have, any recommendations
of where I could start my search for some master criminals… anything.’

‘Okay; and this goes against all of my better instincts, but I’m
prepared to help you. I always had a soft spot for you; you know that,’ she
took a long draught from her vodka and shook the empty glass at him. He waved
her hand away -
later.

‘
Mauritius
is a beautiful
island; paradise for some people. But I went there for research and it seemed
to get up the noses of a lot of people. I got on the wrong side of some of the
locals, and they waged war against the scientific facility. You know, I would
have thought they’d have been pleased at the research we were carrying out-
they absolutely revere the Dodo still - but no, they seemed to think that
nature was better left well alone. I never really went anywhere at night where
I’d expect a gang of criminals to hang out; the only place I could recommend
would be a place called the Hotel Midas… it’s a bit off the beaten track, and
very, very expensive. I could conceive of a group of criminals hiding out
there.’

Jim raced to the bar for more lubricant to oil the wheels of his source
of information. On his return, he already had formulated his next set of
questions.

‘Okay, the Hotel Midas might very well be the place, especially if the
group appreciate their ancient mythology. But what I think the group will be
looking for, almost as soon as they reach the island, is some kind of criminal
group which can help them. They’ve stolen a pretty sophisticated piece of kit
from
Edison
’s Printers - the Precisioner itself - and they’ll be
needing some help to work it. Are there any gangs that you might have come
across that would fit the bill? I want to get there first so I can lay my trap
for them.’

‘All I can think of, Jim,’ said Ruth, taking another Jim-sized gulp from
her drink and ruminating over the possibilities, ‘is a man who calls himself
‘the Dodo’. He’s renowned throughout the island. Hates foreigners; keeps
hacking into the bank accounts. It’s him that caused us most of the problems
with our research. He kept hacking into our computers and deleting the files.
The locals seemed to think of him as some kind of a Robin Hood character.’

‘He might very well fit the bill,’ Jim was getting excited again. ‘Did
you ever meet him? Where might I find him?’

Ruth smiled consolingly, ‘I never met him, to be honest, and I don’t
think many people ever did. But, one of the guys at our facility tried to cut
some kind of a deal with him; they were supposed to meet up in a place called
Rose Hill to discuss a way in which we could all move forward. Unfortunately,
the University cut short our research funding at that very moment as they were
getting a little scared about all of the bad publicity.’

Jim clinked glasses with Ruth across the table, ‘I really do owe you one
now, Dr. Sharp. Even if our elusive Dodo can’t help lead me straight to the
three roisterers, then at least he can help us explore some of the murky underworld
of the place; this will make my job one hell of a lot easier.’

‘There’s one way you could pay me back,’ said Ruth, levelling her stare
at him over the top of her glass. ‘You could take me with you…’