The Magpie Trap: A Novel Read online

  But God, if anything, seemed all-for the scheme. His was the voice in Mark’s head which told him to pick up the phone quickly, not allowing himself any second thoughts. His was the voice which told him that this was his opportunity to save his mother, and he wasn’t about to start arguing otherwise.

  ‘Hello stranger,’ answered Danny, ‘I heard about your dad; I’m really sorry.’

  ‘I’m in,’ Mark almost shouted down the phone. ‘Dad’s dead and I’m in.’

  ‘I’m pleased to hear it, but listen, have you thought properly about it? You do sound quite strange mate.’

  ‘I don’t want to think about it. I just need us to carry this off.’

  ‘Fantastic,’ said Danny, sounding excited. ‘Well, you know what we need to do. We need to find out the exact time of the Intertel Shift and we need to hack in to their camera network again and install the looped images.’

  ‘There’s a bit more required than that, like,’ said Mark. ‘We can’t just rely on external forces. We have to make sure that our every angle is covered. We need to make sure that we’re secure when we go on site.’

  Mark could hardly believe that he was talking so calmly. Some heretofore unknown inner strength had taken over.

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Danny. ‘That’s why we wanted you on board so much; you’re the technological brains behind the scheme, cocker.’

  ‘Um, thanks,’ said Mark. He clicked the phone off feeling as though he’d done the only thing available for him to do. It wasn’t a moral choice or a desperate choice, it was simply the only way that he could find to pull himself out of the pit of despond in which he found himself. It was action.

  He stepped out to his van and started to collect his tools together. He was going to start work on a dummy system to be used to get in and out of Edison’s Printers. But technology had already half-opened the door for them, hadn’t it? All they were doing was simply taking advantage of a breach in the defences from the Intertel Shift and they were building on this.

  I’m starting to think like Danny, thought Mark. God agreed. Maybe there’s something to be said for living your life as though it is a fantasy. You don’t get hurt as easily.

  Danny’s initial excitement that all of the pieces of the puzzle were starting to fall into place had gradually become an acerbic nervous tension. The more he talked with Mark about the technical aspects of the heist, the twitchier he became. This whole part of the plan relied solely on Mark and his electronic genius. He was being asked to trust this man who he only knew through work, with his life.

  Danny had also begun to suspect that both Chris and Mark had deep-seated, meaningful reasons for undertaking the heist, whereas he only seemed to be doing it out of some kind of misguided ambition to go abroad. He could almost hear Cheryl’s words ringing in his ears:

  ‘You can’t take responsibility for your actions; you don’t think about how what you do can affect others. You just blunder through your life, lurching from one disaster to the next, throwing beer down your neck to forget the pain you cause to everyone whose lives you touch. You’re like a bloody disease; a plague.’

  He got home in the early evening and started to tidy the house. Since Cheryl had left, it had grown a second skin of empty beer bottles, over-flowing ashtrays and pizza boxes; the flotsam and jetsam of his weekend floating in booze. He grabbed the whole roll of black bin bags and began to throw away everything which wasn’t furniture in the front room. He needed to give himself the space and time to think.

  When every surface was clear, he emptied the fridge of its remaining beer bottles and poured their contents down the sink; he wanted to make a new start. He picked up the phone and dialled a familiar number. For the first time in five days, his call was answered.

  ‘Cheryl, it’s me. Thanks for picking up. I’ve reached the bottom of the glass babe. I’m ready to climb out.’

  ‘I’m glad you called. I needed some time to cool off this weekend. I’ve been talking with my sister all weekend, and I think I’m ready to speak to you now. She wants me to leave you, Danny, and at times this weekend, I have seriously considered it, but we have put a lot of work into our relationship, before this hellish year, anyway. There’s the house, for one. I will come round tonight and we can talk. At least you sound sober at the moment. Make sure you stay that way.’

  A Second Chance

  Danny almost didn’t recognise Cheryl when she walked through the front door. She looked rejuvenated by their break; she’d had her hair cut much shorter than usual. It was much like Paula’s in fact. It had wispy strands around the ears, but was very short at the back. It had been coloured as well. She had applied substantial amounts of her usual war paint; her eyes were shaded in dark eyeliner which was modelled on a picture of Cleopatra which she loved.

  Her cheeks were fresh and red, a result of coming in from the crisp, cold evening and into the warm house. Danny had whacked the central heating on full, placing bowls of pot-pourri on top of the radiators when he had known that Cheryl would be coming round. He needed to get rid of the smell of cigarettes and alcohol which had permeated the house.

  For a moment, they simply stood and looked at each other in the no man’s land of the hallway. Then Danny rushed forward and pulled her close to him; hanging on fro dear life. Cheryl responded in kind to his desperation, but tilted her head back to look directly into his eyes and registered her remaining anger.

  ‘At least you look as though you’ve made an effort,’ she muttered. ‘Well; had a shave and a shower at least. You know I hate it when you try and grow yourself that designer stubble that does nothing apart from scratch my face.’

  ‘I’m so glad you’re back, but where’s your bags? Still in the car? I can go and get them for you?’

  ‘The bags are still at my sisters’ house. I told you I was coming round for a talk, Danny, not to move straight back in.’

  This wasn’t going to be as easy as Danny had initially thought.

  ‘Okay, fair enough. But wait ‘til you’ve heard what I have to say; then you’ll change your mind. I can change; I already am changing. I’ve realised what is important, and that’s you and me. I can get a new job; I just need to start taking more responsibility for my actions. I’ve learned my lessons.’

  Cheryl sighed, ‘I have heard all of those kind of things before; so many times this year. How do I know that you really mean it this time?’

  ‘Because the only time I’ve ever done anything which I was proud of was when I asked you to marry me in Greece. Because I’m sick of feeling ashamed of the things that I’ve done. Because I want you to be proud of me.’

  They walked the few paces into the kitchen, and Danny flicked on the kettle, making sure that Cheryl recognised the significance of that action; he hadn’t reached for a consoling beer. When he turned to face her, she was regarding an awful new stain on the kitchen wall however, and was shaking her head; how had Danny missed that stain during his cleaning frenzy of earlier in the evening?

  ‘That was the happiest moment of my life too, but I’m sure that you only plucked up the courage to do that because you’d drunk most of a bottle of Ouzo,’ said Cheryl, choosing to tactfully ignore the argument waiting to happen which was the stain on the wall.

  ‘No: I did it because I realised that I could take control of things; I could make the good things happen as well as the bad.’

  ‘It’s just a shame that you seemed to forget that important lesson as soon as we got back from that holiday. You can’t even remember our wedding night can you? You and that bloody Chris had so many nerve-settlers that you almost fell over during our first dance. I had to tell my dad that you were on painkillers and that’s why I wasn’t allowing you to drink any more.’

  Danny turned his back on her to pour the coffees. He realized with a sinking feeling that he did actually want a drink; perhaps a Scotch or a brandy to pour in his coffee. He needed a drink to ease the tension: to make talking easier. He decided that he had to play his ‘get
out of jail free’ card; he had to make Cheryl laugh.

  ‘But, talking about your dad, do you remember that time when I first went to stay at your house and we weren’t allowed to sleep in the same room? Remember how I pretended that I was really badly ill and that I needed to sleep on your floor so you could keep an eye on me?’

  Cheryl looked questioningly at Danny, and then ever so slowly a smile began to light up her face. The smile grew into a grin, making her nose wrinkle and her cheeks dimple. The anger slipped out of her eyes and she made him put down his coffee cup. Then she took him in her arms and stroked his hair, cradling him as if he was a toddler who had fallen and hurt his knee.

  ‘And I’ve had to keep a bloody eye on you ever since,’ she said, but not cruelly.

  Danny’s fears began to drift away: he had been offered a second chance. On the one hand he had the welcoming arms of his wife who loved him; on the other, he had a crazy scheme to rob Edison’s Printers.

  At that moment the seesaw of his life was weighted heavily in favour of staying right there, of attempting the much more difficult task of re-building his life. That temptation to take the easy money and run was beginning to seem further and further away from him; it was floating in the draughty air of fantasy, of escapism. Danny preferred the touch of something more visceral, more real; the body of Cheryl, who was now whispering sweet nothings into his ear.

  There was a pert behind: round and fruity, like a peach. It was parked right at the counter-point of the seesaw, and its owner held Danny’s new found security in the balance. Paula Dyer had planned to call Cheryl at the weekend. She’d wanted to invite her to a gig at the Hi-Fi Club which she was doing for a local charity, but she had lost her nerve at the last moment. She couldn’t face seeing her friend; she knew that there would be questions, questions about Danny and how he’d been at work since the break. She knew that her anger at the man would shine through like a beacon. She knew that her knowledge of Danny’s actions at the Adelphi could prove the final nail in the coffin which was their marriage.

  Paula had once seen Danny as a kindred spirit; someone in the murky world of EyeSpy Security who shared her desire for something better, but she had watched as the light of brilliance had dimmed in Danny’s eyes, until he became a washed-up mess. She couldn’t see her friend Cheryl dragged down with his sinking ship.

  Paula had written three or four text messages to Cheryl, but every time her thumb hovered over the ‘send’ button, her nerve had failed her. She had come to the conclusion that she would speak to Danny on the Monday after her weekend of indecision, but he hadn’t shown up for work, hadn’t even called in sick. She’d been instructed by Martin Thomas to write a ‘Final Warning’ letter to Danny and personally drop it off through his letter box. That explained why she found herself sitting in her car, a little Citroen 2CV, at the end of Danny’s road, trying to pluck up the courage to drive that final two hundred metres to his house.

  Paula never saw Cheryl’s car parked round the edge of their house. Darkness had set in, and the nearest streetlight to the house was intermittently flickering on and off. She parked a little further up the road, preferring the security of a full streetlight watching over her car; her pride and joy. She locked the car, began to walk to the house, and then convinced herself that she’d left the car unlocked.

  Obsessive compulsive disorder was a real problem for Paula these days, but this time, there was more than a hint at her simply putting off the inevitable confrontation with Danny Morris. The car was, of course, locked, but then it always was. She just needed that little reassurance; in the mornings, she had to set her alarm twenty minutes early in order to compensate for the number of times she’d have to return to the front door to check it was locked. Then she’d have to rush up the stairs to check that she hadn’t left the hair straighteners on. Then it was back out of the door, but wait, had she set the alarm code properly? She had talked to friends about her little obsessions and about the trouble that they had caused in her life, she had even talked to Danny about it, thinking that he would understand, but he had simply laughed at her and muttered something about “bloody women.”

  It was this memory of his wanton cruelty - a talent which he had when he was drunk for turning on the nastiness - which drove her forward to his house.

  Paula rang the doorbell with a renewed confidence, only looking back once to check whether her car was still intact bathing in the streetlight’s molten glow. She heard a clatter of stairs, and then the door opened to a narrow crack. Danny’s dark hair poked through the gap, looking rather unkempt. She pushed the door into him and barged her way into the entrance hallway, noting that he, rather embarrassingly, was dressed only in a pair of boxer shorts.

  ‘What do you think you are doing?’ Danny snarled, menacingly, but there was also a hint of nervousness in his voice, as if he was trying to keep quiet.

  ‘You weren’t at work today again. Mr. Thomas told me to bring round this ‘Final Warning’ letter, and we need to talk about last week.’

  ‘Give me the letter then, and get out. We can talk tomorrow.’ Suddenly he was manhandling her roughly towards the still open door.

  ‘Just what is going on?’

  A woman’s voice shrieked from the stairwell; somebody had been lurking there in the shadows, unseen.

  ‘Is that Paula, Danny?’

  Paula, who was still shaken by Danny’s treatment of her, began to cry.

  ‘What’s the matter? Why are you here? What’s going on?’ A note of worry betrayed itself in Cheryl’s voice.

  Paula saw Danny attempt to shrug; apparently trying to disarm the situation. She had no idea how she should react.

  ‘Cheryl,’ she sniffed, ‘Danny wasn’t at work today. I was asked to deliver this warning letter.’

  ‘Right, but I heard everything. There’s something else isn’t there? What the hell has been going on between you two?’

  Paula blurted out the whole story of Danny’s behaviour at the Adelphi, as much to defend herself from Cheryl’s accusatory tone as anything else.

  ‘Danny’s been back to his old tricks again Cheryl. I’m sorry you had to find out this way. He said that he wanted to talk about your relationship with me, but ended up trying to get me into bed. It’s just like you said; he can’t comprehend human kindnesses without thinking there is an ulterior motive. He thought I wanted him,’ said Paula. She was staring at the floor and did not notice Cheryl glide across the floor and land a resounding slap across her friends’ cheek. Danny also reacted with violence; with a wail of frustration, he began to punch the wall in the hallway.

  Paula fell back against the door, shocked at the force of the slap. She took one look back at her friend and saw Cheryl wavering as if about to collapse. She suddenly looked weak, bending to an imaginary breeze. Paula paused, ready to catch her if she fainted, but then saw Cheryl turn to her husband with a murderous look.

  ‘Do not ever try to contact me again, Danny. I thought I’d be hurt when it finally came to the end with you, but it doesn’t. It feels like an escape.’

  Cheryl turned on her heels and walked out for the second time in a week, pausing only to grab her coat.

  The Countdown

  The countdown had begun in earnest; days dripped into each other and then flowed confidently into a waterfall crashing towards their inevitable conclusion. Danny tried to swim against the strong current of time; he clung to quiet moments as if they were driftwood, or life-rafts of calmness, trying to claw back some of the stolen hours. But he could not stem the inexorable flow; in fact he added to it, creating the danger of flooding with his persistent drinking which lost him time.

  He quit work at EyeSpy Security to buy himself more time to sit, to reflect on what had been washed away by the current. He ceremoniously discarded his works’ mobile phone, dispatching it under the wheels of a passing car on his way back from the off-licence; he abandoned his car in the EyeSpy car park, posting the keys through the letterbox with a curt note
which read: I hereby resign from my position at EyeSpy Security. This is for no particular reason, apart from to try and regain the spirit which the company sucked out of me. Do not try to contact me; I won’t be in the country much longer. Signed; Danny Morris.

  He heard nothing from Cheryl; it was as though the tide had swept her to another side of the world. Danny was in danger of drowning under the weight of his fears. Chris and Mark visited him regularly; he could read the concern on their faces. He could see that they were shielding him from much of the leg-work involved with the implementation of their plan; a plan which had originally been his own. It seemed as though Mark had taken charge of the logistical side of the operation, whilst Chris was handling the administrative effort, and the cover story; both of which were progressing pretty well. It was though both of them had been born to be part of the plan; as though a guiding hand governed their every move. In times of weakness, Danny worried that the guiding hand might be that same hand which was pushing him closer to the edge.

  No escape route presented itself to him, and he didn’t have the nerve to tell his two friends that he longer wanted any part of the plan.

  Meanwhile, Mark Birch tried to compartmentalise his new life; all of the tasks which were geared towards putting in place ‘Operation Backpacker Heaven’, as they’d code-named the heist, became his obsession. Like the careful organisation of his baked beans cans, or his haircut nights of his former life, they were the small steps which he concentrated on which allowed him to forget the giant leap which they would eventually become.

  By thinking of the smaller things, he trained his mind to stay off the subject of the one big, bad thing that loomed on the horizon. He could not let himself think of the abhorrent crime which they were about to commit, but pangs of pain stabbed at him at unexpected times; like when he walked out of the EyeSpy Security offices for the final time. Mark had expected to feel a great weight lifted from his shoulders when he had shrugged off his old work-hard persona for the final time, but was instead overwhelmed by nostalgia for the old, unspoiled, unthinking times when his days were structured for him.