The Magpie Trap: A Novel Read online

  Mark looked embarrassed.

  Chris looked a little less amused.

  Danny ploughed on relentlessly.

  ‘Gentlemen, we are about to make history. Mark, explain about the whole Intertel Shift thing if you will? Because thanks to that loop-hole, we’ll be able to walk in and out of that place without even needing to worry about setting the alarms off.’

  But Mark was already on his feet, was already turning on his heels and marching out of the bar, patience drained, unlike his half-pint, which remained untouched.

  ‘I think you’ve scared him mate. Man-to-man, is this a joke or what? To be honest, you’ve ruffled my feathers as well,’ asked Chris.

  Danny struggled to turn the jumble of excitement and impending drunkenness into coherent sentences in his head. He could have handled things a hell of a lot better. He could have structured an argument as if it was a sales speech, and he could have won them over much more easily. Gathering what was left of his thoughts, Danny decided to try a new tack.

  ‘Remember those talks we had at university Chris? Remember the promises we made? Remember how we said that we wouldn’t become slaves, wouldn’t become robots? Well look at us. Just take a long-hard look. Look at our suits, our business cards, our rent, and our mortgages. Look at the chains which now hold us back.’

  Danny noted that Chris did actually look down. He probably saw his stupid goddamn waistcoat through new eyes.

  ‘I’ve got my own reasons for wanting away from here,’ said Chris.

  ‘Well, I have too,’ continued Danny, not letting Chris open up. ‘I’ve had enough. I have been offered an opportunity, and I would be stupid to pass it up. We can rob Edison’s Printers and get those dreams back.’

  Danny proceeded to explain the whole situation behind the Intertel Shift to an increasingly interested Chris: ‘Look mate, it’s like this. I’ve known about this for a while, but only now have I put two and two together. One night next week, Intertel are going to have to cut all of the traditional phone lines in this area and transfer them over onto a digital line. Basically, when this happens - and although the telecoms companies are telling you this won’t happen - all hell will break loose. It’s like the Millennium bug becoming a reality. Every Intruder Alarm system which is monitored by an external agency relies on a telephone line. When Intertel cuts the line to transfer it over onto digital, it will report a fault. This is when we break into Edison’s printers. They will be reporting a line-fault anyway, and will probably ignore any alarms that whole night. We can walk in and out, completely scot-free.’

  Chris was now fully alert, thinking about the plan, raising questions: ‘But what about the CCTV pictures? Surely in a place like Edison’s, they’ll simply be able to take a look at what’s going on site by looking at the camera images, and we’re back to you being on England’s Stupidest Criminals.’

  Danny raised an interjectory finger: ‘That’s where young Sparky comes in... came in. He is a complete whizz on network security. All of the Edison’s Printers cameras are transmitted live over a digital network. Mark has already done the hard work by infiltrating their network once. All we need to do is to persuade him to do it again. All we need to do is to persuade him to interrupt the transmission of the camera images for a certain period of time, and we’re home and dry. You see, these security men ain’t IT literate. What we’ve told them is a secure line is actually pretty easy to circumvent. If we got a hacker inside there, we could break into the network in about twenty minutes, but we’ve already got our inside man: Mark.’

  Chris was being reeled in by Danny’s infectious enthusiasm, just like he was when they had robbed that huge bag of weed from their dealers’ house when they were at university and then sold it.

  Chris’s need for adventure had been awakened.

  ‘And if you’re wondering about how we’ll carry off all the money that we steal then that’s the beauty of this plan. The money isn’t even the main reason for breaking-in. No, what we will get our hands on is the Precisioner printer. And that’s like getting a license to print money. That’s exactly like a license to print money.’

  ‘A license to print money,’ repeated Chris, in an awestruck voice.

  Danny nodded, smiling.

  ‘OK Danny, you’re half way to convincing me that the investment I made in you is starting to pay off, but I’m not stupid enough to go in gung-ho, throw caution to the wind and participate in a half-cocked bungling burglary without so much as a properly worked plan to do this. And it seems that we’ve already got a big problem in the fact that our inside man has just gone outside. This Intertel Shift you’re talking about is happening pretty soon Dan; we need to get him back onside, and fast.’

  What scared Mark more than anything else was the fact that Danny was serious. Despite the aroma of whisky emanating from his every pore. Danny’s speech had the stench of belligerent honesty of the drunk. Mark had simply walked away. He was genuinely worried. Even by listening in to such a conversation he had compromised his integrity in his job, and what’s more, he’d already played an unwitting part in this criminal behaviour. His moral compass was haywire; he sat in the driver’s seat of his car and tried to take deep breaths and discover his true north again.

  Mark couldn’t stop himself from feeling sympathy with Danny or how the mighty had fallen. He had once felt envious of the former student’s education, his background and his self-assuredness, but he now saw this for what it really was; a front which was put on in order to mask his true, rudderless childish self.

  Only a severely dysfunctional person could have seriously entertained such an idea. And why? Why was Danny wanting to do it? Because he wanted to run away. Because he couldn’t face the hard work of getting his life on track like everybody else had to do. Because he didn’t have the patience to work out his problems with drink and gambling in the normal way.

  Mark twisted his key in the ignition and ran away himself. Away from Sela Bar and the surreal conversation he had just been witness to, away from the madness of this pair of delinquents who had no idea of the true meaning of words such as loyalty, security and hard work. He circumvented the city centre and drove south, to Wortley, to his home, and his reality…

  Washing up later on that evening, Mark caught himself daydreaming. He had been wearing a suit, just like Danny and Chris. He had a cigar in his mouth and a sparkle in his eyes. He was in a casino, and it wasn’t just to fix the alarm system. He was a player. He was being waited on, he was important. He was a somebody.

  Then another image flashed in front of his eyes. He was trapped in a cell. The suit he was wearing was now a standard prison garb, and the sparkle in his eyes was tears. He had done something indescribably terrible.

  A third and final image played itself out; Danny and Chris cruelly laughing as they prodded and tormented a poor helpless bird with a stick. It was a magpie, and it was stuck in a Larsen trap. With every frantic beat of its wings, more of its feathers and flesh were ripped open by the barbed wire.

  They were mocking him, they were torturing him; they had betrayed him.

  Ringing Phones in the Night

  Mark always slept with one ear open. So attuned was he to being on call from EyeSpy, and getting emergency service calls in the early hours of the morning that his head was off the pillow and he had reached for his mobile within three rings. He took a quick look at the call display though, and immediately knew something was wrong.

  The caller was ‘home’, and Mark knew from years of experience that both his mother and father shared a great fear of calling mobile phones for fear that a one minute call would financially cripple them. Mark had been forced to keep a land-line simply in order that they could stay in touch with him.

  Steeling himself for the worst, Mark pressed the ‘Answer’ button. He was met by silence, and then, finally, a sob. It was his mother.

  ‘Mam? Mam, what’s wrong?’

  He heard a rustle of paper and then a blown nose, and then finally, s
he spoke:

  ‘Mark? Is that you?’

  ‘Yes mam, what’s wrong?’

  ‘It’s your father…’

  And with that, she descended into another bout of uncontrollable sobbing, sniveling and frenzied gasping for breath.

  ‘Mam. Take a deep breath. What’s happened?’

  He heard the phone being placed on a table, a fumbling sound and then the striking of a match. He heard his mother sucking deeply on a lit cigarette before she picked up the phone again, a calmness returning to her breathing.

  ‘It’s your father. He fell in the garden. I’ve told him so many times to get a man in to help him with it, but he never listens. He was blue when I saw him through the kitchen window. I rushed out, but he’d stopped breathing. I kicked up a right show for the neighbours, Mark, I screamed for help. I couldn’t leave him to go and call for an ambulance… Luckily Dot next door heard me. She came round fast as her fat legs could carry her. Still had her curlers in. I’ll say one thing for her. She’s good in a crisis.’

  Mark’s mother paused to inhale deeply from one of her favoured lamppost-sized cigarettes, before continuing: ‘Dot called the ambulance, and it was there in three minutes. Unbelievable. Maybe they just hang around in this estate waiting for another emergency to get called in. Anyway, they got your dad into the back, and I got in too. They put all kinds of tubes and wires into him; one of those masks round his nose and mouth, like in Casualty. But they wouldn’t answer me when I asked if he was going to be all right. All they’d keep saying was that they’d know more once they got him to St. John’s. That’s what they always say on telly. It’s a delaying tactic.’

  ‘Is he alive?’ he asked, in a small, child-like voice. Mark was panicking; she was going on and on without telling him the vital information he had to know.

  ‘They’ve told me he’s stable and that there’s nothing I can do at the moment. They sent me back home in a taxi to collect some of his things so he’s comfortable when he wakes up, but I don’t know what to get, Mark. I can’t take his gardening gloves in a hospital can I? I can’t take his pipe. I can’t very well take his armchair in, can I?’

  ‘Mam, I think they mean pyjamas and things. Newspapers. Maybe a picture for beside the bed. Listen, can you wait there? This time of night it’s only two hours at most for me to get up to Newcastle, and I’ll come and pick you up and we’ll both go to the hospital. If you need me, call me on the mobile. I can answer when I’m driving. And mam. Don’t worry.’

  ‘Oh Mark, why can’t you be closer?’ she asked, seconds before the click of the phone being put down signalled the breaking of Mark’s heart.

  If you were to ask Mark Birch any of the details of his journey up the A1 to Newcastle, he would not be able to tell you any. He did not register the slightest passing interest in how many cars or lorries were using that well-travelled route, how many police cars lay in wait ready to issue a speeding ticket, or even whether he had to stop for diesel. He did not know whether the radio had been on, whether the dawn had begun to show its nervous face, or whether that buzzing in his ears had always been there.

  Autopilot carried him through, while in the meantime his mind played out painful scenes from his childhood in front of his eyes: a relentless theatre of cruelty.

  It was not that he had been mistreated or abused by his father: he had never even been hit, which on his estate was a complete unknown. The problem had been that Mark had been ignored. Young Mark scores a hat-trick in the Newcastle Schools Cup Semi-Final: his father had not been there. Teenaged Mark is called up for a trial by Newcastle United: his father cannot even be bothered to drive him to the training ground. Eighteen-year old Mark is working on a car in the driveway: his father somehow manages to unbalance the jack and the car falls on Mark’s leg, breaking it with a sickening crack. Mark had lain under the car for over an hour under that car before his father had finally realised what had happened.

  In the ambulance on the way to the hospital, his father hadn’t even held his hand, but had leant forward and chatted to the driver about the traffic conditions in Newcastle. Mark had broken his own finger on that journey, gripping the metal sides of the bed too hard to try and contain his pain and anguish.

  In the hospital, they told him that his leg was so badly broken that he needed a skin graft. They’d had to take some of the skin from his bottom to cover up the great gash on his shin.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ he remembered one of the nurses saying. ‘After a while the skin will bond together and start to look just like it used to again. In a few years, nobody will be able to tell.’

  But the skin had never healed properly. It still looked like a strange lunar landscape of unlikely ridges and depressions. He’d never been able to wear shorts in public again; he’d shied away from any activity which would mean that his leg was exposed. His father had once accused him of exaggerating the injury so that Newcastle United had no choice but to drop him from their Academy. He reckoned Mark was simply not brave enough to get into the group showers.

  Not long after this accusation, Mark had left home and journeyed to Leeds to learn a trade. His father had barely batted an eyelid.

  Mark still looked for approval from his father however, and he had always pictured some emotional return home for himself: an occasion where he could use all of the money he so carefully saved, to buy him something which would really impress him. He wanted to buy him a house: his father was a builder, and appreciated good workmanship. Unfortunately, even in the North East, prices had begun to dwarf what Mark could afford. Now, Mark just wanted to be there.

  He arrived at half past six in the morning, just avoiding the start of the main rush on the A1. His mother was standing by the front window, already in her winter coat, waiting. She had probably been like that for the past hour and a half since the phone call. He barely had time to get to the front gate, before she was standing by him, ready to go to the hospital.

  ‘You know how to get there Mark? I hope we’re not too late,’ she said, not even giving him a peck on the cheek before she hunched herself into the van.

  Tears pricking his eyes, Mark lightly closed the door behind his mother and walked around to the back of the van. He had to lean against it for support. It was only after seeing her suddenly aged, haggard face, bereft of make-up, that he had realised the sheer desperateness of the situation. He choked back vomit, and sucked hungrily at the fresh morning air.

  His father might die. His father would never get the chance to be proud of him.

  They drove to St. John’s hospital in silence. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence: there was simply nothing to say. On their arrival in the car park, Mark realised with a frustrated sigh, that he did not have any money for the pay and display. He had simply not had the time to bring any cash with him. He decided to drop his mother at the main entrance, and frantically drove around searching for somewhere to park outside the hospital gates. He finally had to abandon the car in a fast food drive-through car park and run the half-mile distance back to the hospital, cursing his predicament; he was losing valuable time with his father.

  Mark reached the hospital in record time and crashed through the double-doors into reception. He could barely breathe the words, but from his desperate appearance, the receptionists knew what ward he was after, and it wasn’t the rehabilitation wards. They pointed him up a flight of stairs and across a courtyard: he careered down polished aisles as if on roller skates.

  He finally reached the second floor, and found the correct corridor. Ignoring the waiting lift and diving up another flight of stairs, he found the Emergency Ward. He was running like he used to, before the broken leg, like when he was a footballer.

  A group of white-coated staff were congregated outside the door to one of the rooms, deep in hushed conversation. Mark knew that this room was the room in which his father was lying. He tried to regain control of his breathing and approached the doctors, sweat pouring into his eyes, stinging him into the reality of th
e situation once again.

  ‘That’s Mr. Tom Birch in there isn’t it?’ he gasped.

  ‘Yes, it is sir, are you a relative?’ replied one of the doctors, placing a conciliatory arm on Mark’s shoulder.

  ‘I’m his son,’ said Mark. He could barely choke out the words.

  ‘I’m afraid your father is in a very serious condition. He’s on a Life Support machine condition at the moment, but he is stable Mr. ... Birch.’

  ‘Can I see him? I mean, can I go in there? Hold his hand?’ asked Mark desperation creeping into his voice.

  ‘I’m afraid we’re limited to one person at a time in there at the moment. There’s not a lot of room, what with all of the machinery, and your mother, I think, got here about quarter of an hour ago. She’s in there now. What we can offer you, Mr. Birch, is to come into the room next door. We have a video monitor of the room, so you can check on your dad that way. Once your mother needs a break, I’m sure that you can go in there. Don’t worry, he’s still fighting…’

  Mark allowed himself to be led next door, where a series of monitors showed his father, close-up. Another series of monitors were gauging his breathing, heart-rate, and the amount of drugs being pumped into his almost lifeless form. Mark was offered a hard chair, and he sunk into it with resignation, but at least things were not quite as bad as he had anticipated.

  He stared at the big man in the bed, and the small hunched woman crouched next to him, as if in prayer. Suddenly he hated the unreality that cameras portrayed: these grainy images being piped across to him. These were not his parents: he could not touch or comfort them as he wanted to. He could not speak to them, he could not whisper all of those things to his father that he wished he could have over the years.