The Magpie Trap: A Novel Page 17

  Oracle was set in the Brewery Wharf development right on the banks of the river. It was one of the identikit new-style bars that he usually hated so much. Usually, there’d have been a congregation of drinkers in the large outdoor seating area but today, the river channel had been turned into a wind tunnel, and Danny was only too happy to fade into the background within the interior.

  He ordered up his drink and collapsed into a seat as far away as possible from anyone else. He tried to cajole himself into a better mood; he tried to sell himself on the idea that maybe things weren’t as bad as they seemed.

  The man had told you that you’d be able to get away with it.

  The first sip of the whisky was painful. He felt his kidneys screaming in complaint and had to massage his back for a while just to shut the nagging little bastards up.

  You’re already part-way in. You’ve already infiltrated the site electronically; all you need to do now is infiltrate it physically.

  Another sip; this time the whisky tasted smoother and more welcoming. ‘Come in, Danny,’ it said. ‘Welcome back, Danny. We’re sorry you had to go away for a couple of hours, but now you’re back, we’re so happy to see you.’

  What have you really got to lose, Danny-boy? You hate the life you lead. You hate Leeds. You hate your job. You’ve been waiting for an opportunity like this for your whole life. Don’t turn your back on it now.

  We can convince ourselves of anything given the right amount of booze and the right amount of pain. We can convince ourselves of anything when we’ve not really got a choice anyway.

  Do it, Danny-boy, do it.

  Another sip of whisky; the tumbler was empty already. Better go to the bar and order-up another one before you start to see the world straight.

  Life has broken its promise to you. Life hasn’t been what it said it would be; it did not do exactly what it said on the tin. Think about it…

  New whisky in hand – Danny couldn’t even remember visiting the bar – he found himself thinking back on life’s empty promises. He had come to Leeds for the lifestyle it promised him. University was just an excuse. He wanted to drink deeply from the overflowing chalice which was the thriving metropolis. He wanted to develop his own confident personality to match it. A small-town boy, he thought he could completely reinvent his own character; he was a blank canvas, and he would draw his new life in broad, sweeping, confident brush-strokes.

  What he had found however was that the streets were not paved with gold. He had scraped through his degree, clinging by the skin of his teeth to a place on the course despite his numerous phases of AWOL and his run-ins with authority. Around the time of his graduation, he had begun to suffer from a weighty case of disillusionment, which had eventually hardened into a tough, unbreakable cynicism. He lacked the conviction to leave Leeds, but didn’t know what he had to do restore that shiny newness to the place which had once caught his eye like a magpie’s treasure.

  Danny had dipped his toe half-heartedly into various schemes to make the most of the talent which he knew was ingrained somewhere within himself, but now did not have the strength of character to chip away at that crust of despair which had formed. So he had settled for second best. He had settled for the temporary freedom that a sales role had given him, but this temporary stage had now stretched into four years.

  A wife, mortgage, and responsibility had crept up on him without his knowledge. It seemed as though he had simply woken up one day and it was so. These were the chains which held him down in his job. But now everything could change. And without him having to make any of those killer decisions that he’d shied away from for most of his life.

  Danny’s third Scotch heralded the return of his enthusiasm. He could almost feel the breath of wind lightly brushing his cheek as he stood at the top of the precipice waiting to take the plunge, and with a light-headed excitement, he began to see the reasons why, rather than the reasons why not. Even the mobile phone’s display, which read that he had six missed calls from his boss, Martin Thomas, did not dampen his spirits. Indeed, as his thoughts turned to work, he was gripped by a strong desire to undertake the robbery as much to devastate EyeSpy as to gain money.

  Danny slammed his tumbler down and shook his head, deep in an almost Shakespearean soliloquy. He could not believe that his mind was wandering so much as to contemplate undertaking a heist. What was happening to him? But as his phone began to register a seventh incoming call in the past half hour from Martin Thomas, Danny settled on a new emotion; anger.

  He was angry at the years which EyeSpy had stolen from him, he was angry at the depths to which the company had dragged him, numbing his mind with sales commission, placating his restless soul through bribery. Most of all, he was angry at Martin Thomas, this charlatan who dictated his life. A man whose obsession was his work, whose passion for security simply served to humiliate him in his pettiness in Danny’s eyes.

  How could anyone have a passion for security? For watching? It implied a perversity of character, some kind of sexual deviance or an inactivity which bordered on death. Danny was scared of a living death such as this, and raged against its suggestion. He was different. He could act. Danny was using his own sales techniques on himself, selling the idea to himself by playing on his own weaknesses.

  Remember what the man said about the Intertel Shift. That’s your key to getting on and off the site.

  Danny couldn’t help but remember. In fact, the opportunities presented by the forthcoming Intertel Network Shift were something that he’d had at the back of his mind, albeit unconsciously, for some time now. He remembered the presentation that there’d been at work. He’d reckoned it would be another of those interminably boring lectures about signals, receivers and bloody wires, as most of the presentations usually were. He’d been surprised.

  The presentation had been hosted by some industry bigwig. All of the sales staff had been there, and Fartin Thomas of course. Mark Birch may have been there, but Danny couldn’t remember. Hell, Sparky probably made it his job to know about industry stuff like the Intertel Shift and had probably known about it for months before any of the rest of them did. Anyway, this industry bigwig had started rambling on about some situation which was about to occur within the telephony industry. To improve communication and data lines, companies like the global conglomerate Intertel were planning to change-over all traditional telephone lines from copper wire into data streams. Apparently, this would enable the wholesale introduction of new technologies onto all phone networks, such as video-calling capability, and would open up whole new sources of revenue to them. So far so boring; so far so everyday. But then, one of the sales team – Andy Nosworthy, he reckoned; he could usually be trusted to be on the ball in presentations even when the rest of them had dozed off hours ago – had piped up with the killer question.

  ‘But what happens to the alarm systems? There are millions of intruder alarm systems installed all across the country, many of which rely upon telephone lines in order to communicate the signalling data from the sites to the central monitoring centre.’

  It was Andy that had made the link. Danny was sure of it now. Only someone like Andy could have come out with such a jargon-laden fucking sentence. But underneath it all, the old grey-haired heart-attack-waiting-to-happen had a point. Sure the Intertel Shift would be good for the customer in the long-run, but for the security industry, it meant a massive headache. The phone lines on which the security systems ran could signify whether a premises was closed or open, whether access was attempted out of hours, and if these lines were cut, a burglary could be assumed to be in progress. Danny remembered shifting in his seat. He remembered the idea that sneaked up on him and caught him unawares.

  If the systems are all down, wouldn’t that an ideal time to undertake a robbery? If a would-be burglar got hold of such information, why, they could make off with millions in booty without fear of being caught, couldn’t they?

  The idea gripped him. He listened more intently to the indust
ry bigwig.

  ‘That’s right,’ he answered. ‘And that’s our main concern. All of this has been kept quiet so as not to worry the general public. But mark my words, the Intertel Network Shift will take place soon. In order to facilitate the changeover in communication channels, in the middle of one night all telephone lines will be stopped and then transferred onto the new data routes. We anticipate widespread chaos that night, as suddenly all intruder systems which rely upon the telephone line as their method of signalling data will go haywire.’

  The industry bigwig had gone on to explain the sales opportunities which the Intertel Shift offered up to companies like EyeSpy. ‘You’ll be able to sell-in additional CCTV to sites that are worried about this,’ he said. But Danny had already drifted away into a daydream about where he’d rob if he knew he had a get out of jail free card as provided by the Shift.

  An open goal, he remembered thinking. That was how he had to think of it now.

  Suddenly gripped by a new-found resolve, Danny drained his third, or was it fourth, whisky and left the bar. Pausing to chuck a few more coins in the meter, he made his way across Leeds, feeling much more confident. He passed two braggart magpies bickering aggressively over an abandoned tray of chips and gravy near the Leeds market.

  Instinctively, he remembered the childhood rhyme:

  ‘One for sorrow,

  Two for joy,

  Three for a girl,

  Four for a boy,

  Five for silver,

  Six for gold,

  Seven for a secret

  Never to be told.’

  Danny was touchingly convinced by signs such as this. Two magpies was a promising start. What he needed now was another three, or four; a flock, to make it a real premonition. He increased his pace somewhat, buttoning his coat against the strong wind, also unconsciously hiding his stylish suit from the other hostile groups which populated the area surrounding Leeds market; sullen, hollow-eyed teenagers.

  Leeds was a city in which the language of threat was currency.

  It was not about who you were, but what you wore, and the dividing lines became even more blurred on a Friday or Saturday night. Danny never felt quite right in a suit, he always felt as though he was trying on one of his dad’s for a special occasion, and no matter how many times he wore one, he always projected an aura of being uncomfortable in this second skin. He preferred the ubiquitous hoodie, baggy jeans and standard white trainers which formed the urban guerrilla’s camouflage. Today, he stared the bus stops down, he eye-balled the cracks in the pavement; anything but look in the direction of the silently menacing groups of teenagers.

  EyeSpy Security had made their reputation on Town Centre CCTV systems, focussing their camera lenses on crowd scenes such as this. They had ridden the crest of a wave of the public’s fear of such congregations of young people and had overcome the vocal objections of a small minority in terms of the infringement of human rights with the argument that ‘it is for the benefit of the wider community’.

  EyeSpy had saturated the centre of Leeds with cameras, drowning the voices of argument and further destabilising the pockets of society which populated the centre’s public spaces. But the company hadn’t stopped there. They had also taken advantage of the massive amount of building work within Leeds and had won several lucrative contracts with new residential developments, office blocks and retail establishments. The long necks of cranes which were an ever-present view in the Leeds panorama bore testimony to the ongoing work which would keep EyeSpy trading for years to come.

  But Edison’s Printers was the jewel in their crown. It was their Case Study site. If they could secure such a high-risk site, then they could secure anywhere. Winning that contract had lined Danny’s pockets at the time, and now he planned to re-visit the scene; this time to commit a crime.

  Manners’

  Manners’ Restaurant was located in the heart of lawyer and accountant-land; the area of Leeds City Centre known as the Financial District. It was also not far away from the Yorkshire Evening Post offices, and therefore Dawn Foster was already there, waiting to pounce when Chris and his father entered. She was sitting in the upstairs bar area, drinking an expensive red wine and looking for the entire world like she was celebrating breaking a big story.

  Chris and his father met further up

  York Place, away from her prying eyes, for a briefing session in the multi-deck car park prior to the meeting. They had put in a precautionary call to the lawyers to put the brakes on the story, but they both agreed that they could not avoid this confrontation. They had to know what weapons their enemy possessed. Chris was immediately struck by the fact that his father looked smaller somehow; almost beaten down by the knowledge he held. When he was a child, Chris had been forced to take a thousand small steps to keep pace with his father’s giant leap of a stride, but now he was struck by the lurching crawl which his father’s stride had become. He had found himself trying to pace himself in order that he did not leave his father behind, collapsed or out of breath.

  Mal was handling the situation badly; it seemed as though it had sapped all of his energy, and left him a husk. Chris had therefore forced himself to put a brave face on things and had talked himself into behaving as though his father was his client. Although scandal would affect Chris almost as much as his father, he realised that his job was not retrievable once the article appeared; his boss was, after all, a member of Leeds’ all powerful vegetarian Mafioso. What Chris had to do was save his brother, to fulfill his promise; and this was something he had needed to do for years.

  He approached Manners’ as though it was a last chance saloon, and he was the gun-slinger, ready to do battle.

  Although Dawn Foster was physically dwarfed by the pair when she stood up to meet them, she radiated a particular type of journalistic arrogance which implied she would not be overpowered in terms of will. She was a short, dark haired woman with a curvy figure. She dressed in slimming black to hide that middle-aged spread which had crept up on her almost overnight. She made up for her height disadvantage by walking briskly and clattering her high heels as if it was machine gun fire. As Chris walked down the stairs behind her, he was almost choked by her liberally-applied perfume which she wore as if it was a weapon.

  Chris had been to Manners’ before, and knew that Dawn Foster had picked an ideal location for such a provocative meeting. Despite its wholesome and sensual food, the soft lighting and ambient atmosphere, the restaurant was rarely full, and thus lent itself brilliantly to private conversation. The waitresses were unobtrusive, the surroundings relatively simple away from the street’s prying eyes.

  Chris had brought many a secret date to that particular restaurant. Foreplay was feeding your partner the Tempura King Prawns, followed in a timely fashion by the orgy of game and seafood main courses on offer and the climax was the multiple orgasm which was the Chocolate Brioche pudding. This meeting was hardly about the food, however, and all three knew it, as they barely paid any attention to the menu.

  After the waitress brought a bottle of sparkling water and a carafe of red wine, Chris decided to find out exactly what cards Dawn Foster was holding so close to her chest.

  ‘So, Miss Foster, what have you dragged us here for? As much as I love Manners’, I think the company leaves a lot to be desired. From what you said on the phone, you have convinced yourself that you have some kind of breaking story, but let me ask you; why is it being left to the Yorkshire Evening Post? It’s hardly a bastion of investigative journalism is it?’

  ‘Interesting that you aren’t starting with a denial,’ Dawn Foster commented.

  ‘Why are you trying to dig up events of three years ago? Nothing was found then; nothing will be found now,’ said Chris. He had to pause for a moment as the waitress delivered the starters. Both he and his father had ordered meat; a defiant gesture in their eyes. Dawn Foster had ordered the prawns, which they both eyed jealously.

  ‘I want to clear this up once and for all,’ sa
id Mal, folding his napkin into his lap and crossing his arms, downright refusing to start eating until he was good and ready. ‘I really do not wish to have to keep going back to that time.’

  Dawn Foster gave him a look which only a journalist could give; at once inquisitive and conniving. ‘Allow me to tell you a story to jog your memory about that time. It’s a series of seemingly unrelated events. Number one; January 2003, a child at St. Pat’s Primary School in Wetherby dies. High levels of bleach are found in his blood, but the coroner’s report is inconclusive as to what caused the bleach to be in his bloodstream.’

  Chris blanched at the veiled accusation, dropping his fork and leaving his Parma ham untouched.

  ‘Number two; two anonymous calls are made. One is put in to the Food Standards Authority, the other to West Yorkshire Police. The caller is male, with a Leeds accent, but nothing else is known about him; the calls were traced to a phone box near the Lord Darcy pub in Shadwell. The caller tells the police and the FSA, in great detail about an alleged use of condemned meat by a certain meat production unit.

  Number three; and I’m sorry to have to bring this up, but a Mr. Todd Parker is found dead in his bed in Shadwell, Leeds on 25 January 2003. Post-mortem results prove that he killed himself by drinking bleach. Mr. Parker; Todd knew about the bad meat didn’t he? He knew about the child that died at the school. I have it on very good evidence that you managed to cover up the death of your own son and that of the child. Todd killed himself with bleach; the very bleach you doctored your products with…’

  Chris and his father contemplated the journalist in shocked silence.

  ‘Why now?’ Mal gasped, his eyes wide in terror. ‘Why is this all getting dragged up now? How dare you?’