The Magpie Trap: A Novel (5 page)

‘Fuck it,’ said Mark, pressing down heavily on the
‘on’ button. For a moment, the poor little thing struggled to breathe; the
signal was only intermittent out there at best; would it ever come to life?

Ah yes, it would come to life, and with a vengeance
too. Mark felt the vibrations – the breathing – as the text messages started to
stream through and then the voicemail alerts. He wasn’t invisible any more; the
world had found him. It was casting its fiery gaze over him and judging him;
judging him for his weakness in ever agreeing to conduct Danny’s ‘experiment’
on the cameras in the first place.

What were
you thinking, Mark? If Danny told you to jump off a cliff would you do that,
too?

And then, the Lord of the Ring-tones started to
play his tune once more. Control Room was calling, insisting that he answer.

‘Mark Birch?’ he sighed into the sleek black
handset.

‘Where’ve you been, Mark? We’ve got your next call
flashing-up. We’ve been trying to call you,’ said a disembodied voice from the
Control Room; an Orc, probably, or a Ring-Wraith.

Mark returned to his
blue EyeSpy Security transit van and slammed his tool box away in the back. He
needed a moment to collect his thoughts. Absent-mindedly he flipped down the
sun-visor in the driver’s side and stared longingly at a dog-eared postcard
sellotaped onto it. The postcard featured a stretch of unspoiled bright white
beach, flanked by palm trees and an azure sea. This was the place of Mark’s
dreams. He didn’t know where it was, and had even forgotten who had originally
sent him the card, but as Mark now ruminated, it could even be
Mauritius
. He thought back to
the stack of money – Mauritian Rupees - in the Precisioner Unit. Even if he had
been allowed to tell people about it, nobody would have believed that he’d
simply been allowed to stand on the money as though it was
nothing.

He was jerked out of his reverie by the angry buzzing of his mobile
phone. Although he’d switched onto ‘silent’ now he’d been allocated his next
call, he’d forgotten to take off ‘vibrate’. Somehow, the absence of a ring-tone
seemed to make it seem even more impatient, and also hardened Mark’s resolve
not to answer it; it would only be work:
Why
aren’t you there yet? You left
Edison
’s a good ten minutes ago…
Those Control Centre
Orcs knew nothing of distances and geography.

Mark knew about geography, but he never drove without the aid of his
sat-nav system. Traveling by faith alone was something he’d done away with a
long time, and so he tapped in the postcode of his next call and waited for it
to process the information. While he was doing this, he clamped his mobile
phone into the cigarette-lighter charger and fiddled at the controls of the
radio. His van was his own Control Centre; it housed the most necessary
equipment for his job; the technology which told him where he was supposed to
be, when he was supposed to be there, and what he was supposed to do once he
got there. On the negative side, his van was fitted with a satellite tracking
device, which told company headquarters where he was at every moment of every
day. As Mark had so often reflected, the van provided his freedom whilst
simultaneously restricting his movement to certain boundaries.

Finally, the sat nav started to shout out its demands. ‘Turn around!
Turn around and take the next left,’ it blared.

Mark quickly turned down the volume a couple of notches and then keyed
the ignition. There was the usual muffled groan of the lazy engine, but finally
it roared into life and Mark was on his way. On the radio, the presenter was
talking about some awful accident that had happened to a horse in the 3.15 at
Exeter
. Apparently, one of
the leaders had fallen badly on the final straight and had broken his leg. The
poor horse had been shot afterwards.

Mark wondered why horses had to be put down when they had a broken leg.
When he’d broken his own leg, he’d been fixed up and allowed out to graze away
the rest of his life, hadn’t he?
Sure
it
wasn’t the kind of life that he’d imagined for himself, but it was a life,
wasn’t it? It was survival… Couldn’t they do the same with horses? Couldn’t
they herd them off into some kind of retirement home with their slippers and
pipes and tool-kits and lots and lots of apples?

Or was there a big demand for glue these days? Maybe all of those
glue-sniffers that seemed to congregate on the corner of his road of an evening
were doing wider damage than they knew. Mark also spared a passing thought for
Mick Stephenson. Perhaps the man had a bet on the horse that had been shot.
Perhaps he’d lost a lot of money on the race. Or perhaps Danny Morris had.

As Mark navigated the narrow private road leading to and from the
printworks, he was forced to pull over – almost into a ditch – to allow a large
Edison
’s Printers truck to
pass him. When he pulled over, a large shadow over by the perimeter fencing
caught his eye. He looked closer and realised that the shadow was actually
Callum Burr.

Burr was squatting down on the grass, as though he didn’t want to be
spied by the eyes of the printworks. He was clutching a mobile phone to his ear
and looked… He looked suspicious actually. He looked as though he was conducting
some call that couldn’t be overheard. He looked like Danny Morris did when he
was being shifty about something; like he had when he’d first suggested the
‘experiment’.

Burr looked up suddenly. He spotted Mark’s van and narrowed his eyes.
Mark gave a polite wave – almost a salute – but big old Burr ignored him
completely, even turning his back.

Mark drove away from the site and wondered if there wasn’t more to the
place than originally met the eye.

The Adelphi

The ashtray’s cargo of
shredded beer mats, and the constant tap, tap, tapping of his legs underneath
the table, bore testimony to the impatience that consumed Danny Morris.

He
ran an unsteady hand through his thick dark hair; liberally applied hair wax making
it spring immediately back into place. He shifted from a crossed-leg position,
to a more relaxed sprawl and picked up his mobile phone for the seventh time,
thinking that he might have forgotten to switch it back onto ‘loud’. Maybe the
phone’s battery had died? But no, it remained mockingly free of calls or texts.
Danny then drained the last of his pint and dragged his whisky chaser across
the table towards him, but refrained from drinking it… yet.

The
Adelphi had emerged unscathed from the lunch-time rush, but had entered the
mid-afternoon lull; the interlude populated by only the most hardened drinkers
or those with nothing better to do. Danny had the entire lounge room to
himself, and the only other sign of life was the muted sound of a dominoes game
echoing through from the back room.
 

But
Danny wanted it like that. He had purposely chosen the pub as he knew that he
would be able to achieve peace and quiet in there. He had always known the
Adelphi as a proper drinker’s establishment, thankfully free from the
peripherals to which other pubs had succumbed. Here, Danny had thought, there
was no music, no quiz machine, and no
other
people
to distract him from the prime occupation of pouring drinks down his
throat.

But
when he had entered his old haunt, Danny had been confronted by the fact that,
along with so many of his old
Leeds
favourites
, the Adelphi had changed. It had made the giant
leap from staid, deserted, old man’s pub perhaps in need of a lick-of-paint, to
a contemporarily-styled watering hole, complete with stylish autumnal interior
décor. The change had been brought about by the pub’s close proximity to the
head office of a major supermarket chain, and the demand of its workers to have
a stylish, local pub to hand for the end of the working day. The Adelphi had
become just another ingredient in the wholesale redevelopment of the riverside
area of
Leeds
.

Suspiciously,
the bored barman kept glancing over at this young man, who could not keep
still, whose legs were like those of a demented riverdancer. For the barman,
there was only one answer - Danny was on drugs. He
must
be on drugs. He watched Danny constantly re-aligned his mobile
phone and cigarettes so that they lay at perfect right angles on the table.
Danny shot a warning stare back at him.

Don’t give me hassle today,
said Danny’s eyes.
I’ve already had enough goddamn hassle today than I know how to deal
with.

‘Fucking
Terry Martell,’ he muttered as another pang of guilt wracked his body.

Every
time the door swung open, Danny’s eyes leapt to it, as though he was expecting
Key-Ring and his baseball bat to follow him even down here. As if Key-Ring
would even have been caught dead in a place like the Adelphi; once upon a time,
perhaps, but not now. Key-Ring would have probably hated everything about the
place, like he probably hated the city centre and everything that it stood for
in
Leeds
’ brave new world. Hell, he was probably still
reeling from the fact that women were allowed in pubs these days and that they
didn’t have to just stick to Babychams.

Danny
gave his mobile phone another accusatory look. Sometimes he felt as though the
phone deliberately baited him by dropping calls that he
really
needed to take. Sometimes he thought that the phone simply
pretended that he’d had no text messages, just to rile him up. Danny loved it
when his phone was busy; it made him feel wanted. But when it wasn’t? Well,
that made him feel as though something terrible had happened - perhaps the end
of the world or something – and he was the only one that didn’t know it. To be
fair though, on an afternoon session at the Adelphi, or pretty much anywhere
when you’ve had a couple of early drinky-poos, the rest of the world at large
can seem like some kind of alternative reality. And while Danny was in one of
those moods, he wouldn’t even bat an eyelid if the world
was
to end.

Suddenly,
the door crashed open again and a second young man announced his entrance by
taking over the pub, acting like electric shock treatment to its flagging
afternoon atmosphere.

‘Afternoon
all,’ he called to the pub at large. ‘Lovely day for it!’

A
few weary eyes turned and looked him up and down, wanting to be displeased with
the result; wanting to hate the man’s brash
demeanour
. He was a tall, wiry individual, who in some
lights could be described as attractive. Scratch that: in every light that
young man would have looked attractive. He was wearing a well-tailored
sharp-looking suit and aviator sunglasses which would have looked incongruous
on most other people, but which looked
just
right
on him. In the end, when the afternoon drinkers could finally take
their eyes off him, those eyes weren’t filled with hatred; only jealousy,
perhaps. Some people get all the luck.

The
young man continued his cat-walk parade through the Adelphi and finally spotted
his ally sitting in the lounge area. He dashed toward him grinning like a
lunatic, flashing his brilliant white teeth.

‘Danny!’
he yelled. ‘
Amazed
to find you in the
pub, my friend; I thought you were a high-flying salesman these days.’

‘Spider,’
replied Danny, rather more calmly. ‘Thanks for coming down to see me, cocker.’

The
brash young man towered over the table, and ran a hand through his stylishly
messy hair as though wanting to make sure that everybody could see the nice
highlights that were there.

‘Why
do you keep talking like that?’ he said. ‘All of those ‘cockers’ and ‘squires’
and the like; you sound as daft as a
Yorkshire
gangster in a Guy Ritchie flick. And it’s Chris, not Spider.’

Only
someone who looked like Chris Parker could have got away with using a word like
‘flick’ these days. Only someone that looked like Chris could make it sound
effortlessly cool. Soon, all of the old juffers in the pub would be calling
their wives and asking them if they fancied
going
down the flicks sometime to catch a movie.
Or maybe not.

Danny
smiled. It looked as though it was a real effort for him. He had to try very
hard to fight off the desire to say that he was now more like the old
pubdrinkers and zombies down at Killingbeck Turf Accountants than his closest
friend.
That
was why he used words
like ‘cocker’ and ‘squire.’

‘What’ll
it be then?’ asked Chris, despite the fact that Danny already had a full drink
on the table. Chris, thought Danny, was the kind of person that would have
bought a round for everybody in the pub, just to be on the safe side and to
maintain his popularity. He was the kind of person that wanted everyone to
appreciate his generosity and continuously thank him for it. He was a lot like
his father.

Danny
pointed to the glass of bitter that he was supping from.

‘What’s
that then?’ asked Chris. ‘The latest ale from the Sheep Piss Brewery?’

Danny
wiped the foam from his lips and tried not to smile. ‘It’s a Nun’s Knee
Trembler, apparently,’ he said.

Chris
smiled vaguely as he would have done to a poor serf that worked his land. Danny
watched as he bounced to the bar; he walked like a schoolboy who was trying to
somehow communicate his above-it-all-ness through the medium of dance. He was
very tall, and his shoulders-back, cock-sure walk made him seem even larger. It
was as though he wanted people to look at him, comment on him; whether these
comments were positive or negative was probably irrelevant. He ordered his
drink, sharing some joke with the barman and then returned to the lounge. He
immediately dived onto the saloon seat too close to Danny, despite the fact
that the rest of the room remained empty and he could have chosen virtually
anywhere else to sit.

           
Relaxed, Chris spread his spidery long legs under the
table as though spinning a web, and took a long draught from his pint.

‘What
the hell have you got there, cock?’ asked Danny. ‘Designer cider poured
over-ice
? What serious drink needs ice
with it?’

‘I
don’t drink it for its
serious drinking
qualities,’ replied Chris, grinning. ‘I drink it because I like it. And also
because I knew that it would guarantee to piss you off. I bought it as much for
entertainment value as for the taste itself.’

‘So,
you’ve been taken in by the adverts then. No surprise there. As soon as cider
becomes fashionable, you’re straight to the front of the queue,’ said Danny.
Part of him
meant
to undermine his
friend. Part of him hated the way that life was so easy for Chris.

‘What
can I say? I’m a slave to fashion. I can’t help it, I’m in advertising myself,’
said Chris, running a hand through his hair. ‘You are such a drink-snob; if you
could have warm beer and paint-stripper whisky you’d be in your element… as
long as you don’t actually have to
enjoy
what
you are drinking. That just gets in the way of getting wrecked.’

‘Cheers,’
said Danny, lifting his bitter and taking another man-sized gulp. And before
the Trades Description Ring-Wraiths start quivering, in this case, Danny’s
‘man-sized’ gulp was supposed to imply his massive appetite in the way that
man-size tissues and Yorkie bars are massive.

Chris
responded in kind, slightly altering the angle of his pint so that the ice
cubes jangled together.

‘Cheers,’
he said, rather too loudly. The nosy barman, unused to such a thing as
conversation in the Adelphi in the afternoon lull and wanting to see what all
the fuss was about, interrupted them by leaning over Danny to collect empty
glasses from the next table, adding them to an existing leaning tower which he
cradled under his arms. He staggered away from the table and the tower began to
sway back and forth alarmingly.

Danny cleared his throat
and ignored the intrusion:
‘Back in
the day, you used to sneer at cider-drinkers and especially me when I bought
it. Once upon a time, you said that cider was a drink for park benches and for
street corners and for smuggling into the school disco. Oh how the mighty have
fallen; look at you now.’

Chris
grinned, refusing to rise to the bait. He pulled a packet of cigarettes from
the pocket of his suit and started rooting about in another pocket for a
lighter.

‘Never
got a lighter, have you?’ said Danny, retrieving his own lighter from his
pocket and sparking a flame.

Chris
accepted the light and dragged on his cigarette, then winked and continued:
‘When we were at uni, the cider you bought was the £1.99 variety.
White
cider; simply impossible to drink
without being sick, developing Tourettes syndrome or falling out with all of
your mates. I seem to remember you doing that quite a lot of the time, then.
Have you got over that phase yet, Dan?’

Danny
narrowed his eyes. He had a part to play in this man-sized banter, but the mood
he was in, he might end up taking the banter one step too far. After the heavy
loss at Killingbeck, anything seemed possible. All the signs were bad.

Snap out of it
thought Danny.
You asked him here. You can’t blame him for your predicament.

‘How
soon is it until
customers
like you
start demanding an ice bucket for your cider bottles?’ asked Danny, with a
supreme effort. The supposedly irreverent masculine pub-talk usually demanded
of one of their meetings was difficult for him to achieve. But he couldn’t cut
to the chase yet, not without sounding completely down-and-out and desperate.

‘That
would be nice,’ said Chris. He leaned forward; already he’d smoked two-thirds
of his cigarette and he stubbed out the remaining third with a flourish.

In
the background, the barman was trying to transfer his stack of glasses onto the
bar without smashing them; he’d bitten off more than he could chew however, and
the top two or three glasses fell to the floor with a smash. Danny laughed,
maliciously.

‘Why
do you never smoke a whole cigarette?’ he asked. ‘Are you that rich? Are you
one of those people that throw away their underwear after one use?’

‘That’s
right,’ said Chris in a voice full of sarcasm. ‘No; don’t be ridiculous. It’s
because I’m worried about my health, and this way, I smoke less.’

‘Your
health?’ snapped Danny, incredulous. ‘You’re the healthiest person I’ve ever
met, and from the looks of you, you’ve spent your most recent work trip
snowboarding.’

‘Ah,
the goggle-marks,’ sighed Chris. ‘No matter what I do, I always seem to get
panda eyes.’

‘It’s
probably because English people weren’t meant for snowboarding and skiing, you
fool, just like people living in Switzerland or Austria aren’t meant for
surfing.’