The Magpie Trap: A Novel (14 page)

           
The
lift deposited them safely on the top floor, and as the doors slid open, Hunter
was met by a scene of seeming chaos. Tentacle-like cables trailed everywhere,
as though technology was reaching out its arms to strangle all life out of the
space. Every available surface was covered with monitors, keyboards, joysticks.
Four human beings clung to their desks as though survivors of some huge
electronic storm. As though anticipating Hunter’s shock, Stephenson began
reeling off excuses.

‘It may look a mess,
but we know where everything is. There’s been a massive changeover in the
monitoring technologies, and we are still trying to catch up. The way that the
systems communicate with each other has traditionally been over cable and phone
lines. Now, there’s a far more effective way of doing this; via the internet.
That’s eventually where we want to be…’

‘Hmmm,’ said Hunter,
studying one of the big-screen monitors on the wall. He felt out of his depth
in front of a computer screen, let alone with talk of internet technologies and
security system communication techniques. He continued to make sounds, which he
hoped sounded like an appreciative commentary, but in reality, could think of
absolutely no response.

Finally: ‘So; what’s
this place that most of the cameras seem to be viewing?’

‘That, Mr. Hunter, is
the Precisioner Unit.’

‘You could hardly
conceive that it could be so small… All you’d have to do would be pick up the
thing and run out with it. Isn’t it? Isn’t that all you’d have to do?’ said
Stephenson, excitedly, as though he’d been asked to give a talk on his
favourite subject. ‘Of course not; the Precisioner here deserves the best.
Think of the almost mythic ideal of a high security location.’

‘
Fort
Knox
,’ said Hunter, feeling as though he was being railroaded by some
crazy zealot; he shifted from one foot to the other. They were standing outside
the Precisioner Unit in a loading bay. Yet again, there was no sign of any
other site workers.

‘Well,
here, like
Fort
Knox
, there are both physical and logical barriers to be overcome. There
is only one entrance to the building; a door which weighs about twenty-one
tonnes
. Shifting that door by force would be the
equivalent of pushing three surly African elephants out of your way; three
African elephants whose mass has somehow congealed into one grey angry,
door-shaped immovable object.’

‘African
elephants?’ said Hunter, not quite following where Stephenson was going with
this.

‘It
would be so much better to simply
ask
the elephants to move, but then you’d need the access code, and no single
person has the access code. No, the access code is written into the tiny micro-chips
on the access cards.’

As
if to demonstrate this, Stephenson produced his own access card from his suit
jacket pocket, and held it up to the card reader. With his other hand he passed
Burr’s spare card over the reader at the other side of the door. The LED turned
from red to green.

‘The
code only makes sense once two cards are presented to the door at the same
time. Then the two codes form a key, which only for that moment matches that
required at the door. And of course, the codes constantly change, and are
therefore impossible to predict, or to manufacture.’

They
passed through the heavy door and into a narrow corridor led them on a swift
descent.

‘We’re
going underground,’ said Stephenson. ‘Can you feel the air become thicker?’

It
was true; the air had a stuffy, recycled quality. There were no windows, just
plain magnolia walls punctuated by a thin yellow strip which pointed them in
the right direction. As if they’d need anything to point them in the right
direction, reflected Jim; Stephenson seemed to know the place as though he
lived there. Unconsciously, Hunter was running his hand along the wall, and it
seemed that Stephenson even had a comment about the walls.

‘These
unremarkable walls are deceptive; they are in fact lined with granite.’

‘I
think I get it; the place is pretty secure,’ said Hunter with a wry smile. The
smile was quickly wiped off his face however, when he entered the main part of
the Precisioner Unit, a space with the equivalent square footage to an aircraft
hangar. Sitting there was a giant pile of money; fresh-faced and full of
talcumy newness, ready to enter the world, ready to
become
. Hunter’s face was now a mask of awe.

Suddenly, Hunter became
aware that Stephenson was tapping him on the shoulder. He realised that the bearded
man was showing him something else in the room; what looked like an electronic
instrument inside a huge steel cage.

‘The Precisioner
printer,’ said Stephenson, with obvious pride. ‘A single printer which can
print vast amounts of currency in very short spaces of time. A masterpiece of
engineering, but what really sets it apart is its capacity to print
over fifty
infra-red and ultra-violet watermarks on each of the notes, making any
potential counterfeiter almost redundant.’

‘Wow,’ was all Hunter could say.

‘I know,’ said Stephenson, as though delighted that somebody shared his
enthusiasm. ‘It can produce not only four different currencies but also is
involved in the production of personal identification cards ready for mass
introduction by the government in the near future.’

‘Wow,’ said Hunter again, but this time his lack of enthusiasm was
obvious.
Hunter noted a twitch of
disappointment flash through Stephenson’s eyes; he clearly wanted people to
share his awe at the beauty of the engineering artistry of the printer rather
than the quick-fix, almost pornographic gratification of the pile of bank
notes. But
then Stephenson leaned in closer; so close that Hunter could have
reached out and read the pock-marks underneath his beard like Braille. ‘Would you
like to see it printing?’ he whispered.

‘Okay then, yes,’ said Hunter, feeling uneasy.

‘Oh, don’t worry, sir. I’m authorised to do small print-runs,’ said
Stephenson. He moved over to the tiny printer and began fiddling about at the
back of it. ‘At the moment, it’s set to print Mauritian
Rupees, and in a minute, I’ll get it to print some
Kenyan Shillings…’

Hunter waited as
Stephenson continued to manipulate some controls at the back of the printer. He
seemed to be struggling. In a way, Hunter was glad of the man’s struggle; that
way the incessant torrent of
information
was
dammed for a while. He’d almost expected to be told how bank notes came into
existence, and what they were for.

‘Is there a problem?’
asked Hunter after a moment.

Underneath the beard,
Stephenson’s face turned crimson with embarrassment.

‘Something funny about
the settings,’ he sighed. Then he shrugged and bent down for another, closer
look.

Hunter responded with a
sigh of his own: ‘Is it serious?’

Stephenson talked as he
worked, reverting to his tour-guide spiel it seemed, such was his unease:
‘We’ve been working on Mauritian Rupees for a couple of weeks now. They’ve just
brought in a new banknote in
Mauritius
, and this batch is going to literally flood the
marketplace; to wash out all the old notes which will be destroyed. They’ve had
massive forgery problems there - that’s why they’ve come to
Edison
’s - we have made sure that we stay a couple of steps ahead of the
forgers. Their technology keeps getting better, but we have to lead the way
with ours. In a few years time, this country will probably have no bank notes
at all - data such as your money will be stored in a chip on your ID card, but
places like
Mauritius
are still way behind in those terms.’

‘I asked if the problem
with the settings was serious?’ asked Hunter again.

‘I don’t know; I’m not
properly trained on the diagnostics for a machine like this…’

‘If you’re using words
like ‘diagnostics’, then it’s serious,’ said Hunter.

‘No, no. Don’t worry,
sir. We’ll get one of the proper engineers down to have a look. Probably just
something I’m doing wrong.’

But Mick Stephenson did
not look like the kind of man that
did
things wrong
, not where technology was concerned. The Precisioner printer
was the crowning glory of the place. For it to malfunction on Hunter’s first
day; well, that was cursed fate, wasn’t it? It was just another in a long line
of disasters…

           
Hunter’s
eyes unconsciously shot down to his wrists which were covered by a long-sleeved
shirt as usual. The phrase ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire’ came to
mind. He tried to talk himself out of his mood by reflecting that perhaps the
job at
Edison
’s Printers would provide him with a new desire
for life though; after all, there seemed to be a hell of a lot going on there
underneath the surface.

‘Ever been to
Mauritius
?’ asked Stephenson, resolutely not monitoring the
signs of unwillingness to talk which were written all over Hunter’s face.

They were walking back
to the Security Lodge having called the specialist engineer out.

‘Mr. Burr has;
fantastic place by all accounts,’ continued Stephenson.

From nowhere, the old
antennae at the back of Hunter’s mind started to quiver. There was something at
Edison
’s that he could really get his teeth into, he
reckoned. Perhaps the place wasn’t simply going to be his retirement home after
all.

‘Burr?’ he asked, for
once imploring Stephenson to tell him more.

‘Aye, Burr. He went out
there a couple of months back. You should ask him about it.’

I might well do that,
thought Hunter.
Callum Burr seems like the kind of person that I’d like to know a lot
more about.

The Awakening

Although his eyes were
still firmly sealed closed by the nights’ collection of waxy residue, the first
glimmering rays of light broke through the still-open blinds in the room and
permeated through his eyelids, gently cajoling Danny back into consciousness.
Through closed eyes, this light took on a shimmering, underwater quality. It
was an inert consciousness; ripples and movement, but no clarity or sharpness
of image.

And
then pockets of sound began to seep through the amniotic blanket which had
swathed him, white noise became more distinct and separate whilst still playing
a part in the composition as a whole. Distant drilling provided the rhythm,
complemented by the purr and throb of car engines. The melody of birdsong faded
in and out, whilst closer, the insistent murmur of a television was the
bass-line.

It
was, however, the sense of smell which finally completed the resuscitation of
Danny Morris. The familiar, seductively boorish smell of bacon was the beacon
which finally guided him back into the world of the living. The
anaesthetic
was wearing off now and although Danny still kept
his eyes securely clamped shut, there was no way back into the oblivion from
which he had just come.

Awareness
came one step closer with the insistence of a nagging pain which he could
pinpoint geographically on his body; his right thigh. Danny awoke groaning.

It
was hard to pinpoint Danny’s first coherent thought. Instead, a sixth sense was
awakened. With renewed consciousness came dread;
the fear
. An
all-purpose foreboding at the day’s new world into which he has been borne. He
gave silent words to this feeling:

I
will not open my eyes, maybe I can still go back to sleep. Maybe I’m still in
the gloaming; the grey area between being awake and asleep. Just don’t think.
Don’t think about what that dread is. Don’t think. It must have something to do
with last night. Don’t think. What about last night? Don’t think. What was I
doing? Don’t think.

I
remember smiling faces, laughing, dancing. Singing. Shouting. I remember angry
faces. Why? I remember a strong grip on my arm. I remember a smashed
milk-bottle, or maybe a flower-pot. I remember blinding lights. I remember
smashing a glass down onto a bar, its contents drained. I remember my forehead
resting against something cold. Where was I? Who was I with? Who was shouting
at me?
 
Oh fuck. What did I do?

Danny
gingerly opened his eyes to survey the train wreck he fully expected to see;
not even knowing what room he would be in. A police cell? Some girl’s bed? As
the kaleidoscope turned into focus, however he was immeasurably relieved to
discover that he was actually amongst familiar surroundings; his own couch. And
there plugged safely into its charger was the serial escapologist, Danny’s
mobile phone.

Maybe
I’m just getting the fear because it’s now some kind of automatic response to
waking up in a daze after a night out. Maybe I never did anything bad. Maybe
I’m just half-asleep and that’s why I can’t remember. Maybe I’ll get phone
calls all day from new people I met last night telling me how great it was to
meet me, how good a time we all had, and how we should do it again some time.
Maybe I just got happy drunk, and went around telling everyone that I loved
them, and everyone loved me back…

But
hang on, the very fact that I’m on the couch tells me that I’m probably kidding
myself, that I’m in trouble, and at the very least, with Cheryl. It’s all about
damage limitation now.

Maybe
I just passed out before I could do any real harm. After all, the room looks
virtually untouched, apart from the pile of clothes, maybe I simply knew my
limits and came home when I knew I was too drunk to continue... As if; I may be
an eternal optimist but even I know wishful thinking when I see it.

Danny
pulled the blanket under his chin in an unconsciously child-like way;
reassuring himself whilst also hiding himself away. Initial pangs of
the
fear
slowly subsided into an undercurrent of unease, and a new feeling: one
of disappointment. He felt almost bestial in his lack of control over himself
when drinking; he knew that he was a creature that acted according to whim,
with no heed ever paid to consequence, reaction or others around him. He simply
careered about like an unbroken horse, unable to be tamed.

That
morning, the full effects of a bucking bronco of a hangover started to punish
him. What would you do to avoid ever having to feel like that again? Stop
drinking? Danny asked himself that same question on countless occasions, only
to ignore his conclusions within very short spaces of time. He could have a
memory like the top of a drip tray when he wanted to.

Feeling
a stabbing sensation in his bladder, Danny was finally coaxed from his pit by
another bestial need: the need to piss. He now had no choice but to leave the
warmth and familiar comfort of his blanket. And he knew that his introspection
would continue apace as he would not be able to avoid staring himself out in
the mirror in the bathroom.

Shakily,
he ventured one leg from underneath the duvet and then another, before dragging
himself upright into a sitting position. Head bowed and sweating profusely from
the effort, he steeled himself for the next move.

Like
an old man whose legs have seized up from sitting in one place too long, Danny
unsteadily climbed to his feet, using the bed’s head-board for support. He
staggered up the evolutionary ladder from crouched ape to something resembling
a human being and groaned his way across the front room towards the door.

Moving
as quickly as his pained thigh would allow, Neanderthal man crawled up the
stairs and was relieved by the sight of the empty bathroom. He was struck by
the unmistakable tart, alcoholic aroma of a recently liberally applied cleaning
fluid frenzy. Something had been covered up, but he didn’t want to know
what
.

Choking
back the vomit, Danny contemplated his broken face in the bathroom mirror; he
traced unfamiliar new contours with his dirty fingers, winced as he uncovered
yellowed bruising on his cheek.
 
He had been numb to this pain earlier, more
concerned with the immediate stabbing sensation in his thigh but the sight of
the wreckage of his face made the pain more visceral. Breathing, he noted, with
an almost medical detachment, had become laborious, stunted, due to a jagged
cut down the left hand side of his nose.

What
is wrong with me?

The familiar self-pitying Danny had made his
appearance in the mirror’s reflection.

Why
do I persist in getting so outrageously drunk? Why does a night out become some
kind of black hole into which I do not dare enter in case I see the real me. I
know that I have failed Cheryl, failed even Chris again, and I bear the
external signs of my guilt, of my torment. And I deserve it. But then, is guilt
an integral part of a hangover?

It was a good job that Cheryl kept her make-up in
the bathroom. With a practiced ease, Danny began to apply a working-day mask.
There was no way that he could avoid work. He had to try to make that sale
which could keep him afloat financially. A bottom layer of foundation covered
the yellow bruising on his cheek; fake-tan, Chris’s favourite disguise had been
liberally applied all over his face. Yes, Danny looked a strange sight, but one
would have to look pretty closely to notice his bruises. He had undertaken
similar cover-ups before. Surely the sheer number of them should have sent
burglar alarm bells ringing in his head, but if there was one thing Danny was
good at; it was being stuck in a rut. He needed something, some project, to act
as the ladder which he could climb up and out of that underground cell.

He was startled out of his contemplation by the
slam of the front door. Cheryl had left without saying a word to him. He
galloped downstairs, and flung open the door, but saw only the lingering
exhaust fumes of Cheryl’s car. In his state, Danny wasn’t about to start some
domestic scene chasing down their homely cul-de-sac shouting after her.
Resigned, he went back into the house and into the kitchen. Propped up against
the kettle - where she knew he would not fail to see it - was the note. It
snapped:

Going
to stay at my sister’s for a couple of weeks. Sort your head out Danny, and do
it now.

Danny turned the note over and over, looking for
some other clue about his wife’s state of mind, but there was no other writing
on the paper. In two days, he was confronted with the very real fact that he
could lose his job, his house, and his wife. And that’s more than just
carelessness.

Danny
sat in his kitchen trying to hold back the worst of his hangover with liberal
helpings of coffee; he was fighting a losing battle. It was as though he was
trying to put out a rampaging forest fire with a water pistol. And the forest
fire was now creeping into his very thoughts, biting with forked-tongued flames
at his ravaged brain. It made him analytical; made him think about his life and
how he was consigning it all to some fiery inferno of misplaced desire. Yes,
Danny was very good at undertaking thorough reviews of each particular charred
remains of an evening; he just wasn’t any good at acting upon the results of
these findings.

How he wished to be more like Mark; the man who
never even allowed the flame to get anywhere near the blue-touch paper of his
emotions. He knew that Mark’s weakness was not greed, it was not an
overwhelming desire for adventure, and it was not addiction. No, Mark’s
weakness was that he was simply
too
loyal,
too
uncomplaining,
too
prepared to take the shit that life
threw at him. And Danny had been round to Mark’s house; that was a lot of shit
to put up with. It was the kind of place that they showed as the
before
picture, before the designers and
the architects, the plumbers and the electricians came in and performed a
wholesale makeover in one of those awful reality TV
programmes
.
Reality? Try living in a reality like Mark’s house. It looked as though it was
a reality which would fit only somebody like Jackie or Fish-Eye or Accy.

Mark lived in squalid conditions which approximated
the tormented state of Danny’s brain. Danny, feeling miserably sorry for
himself, could see himself ending up in a place like Mark’s; it was the most
likely destination for his rickety runaway-train alcoholism and gambling
compulsion. Wortley, and specifically Mark’s house, seemed like some haunting
Ghost of Christmas Future, and once again he filled the kettle in a futile
attempt to douse his flames of self-hatred, he
recognised
that he had reached some kind of fork in the tracks; he needed to build himself
a new reality; he wanted to be proud of himself for once.

Danny’s mobile phone began to trill its’ annoyingly
chirpy tune; a true morning chorus to herald the fold in time; the start of a
new working day. Answering it, he heard the soft-spoken Geordie lilt of his
colleague, Mark Birch.

‘Morning mate; you feeling okay today?’

Danny groaned his answer, and then: ‘Were we
fishing yesterday or something, chief? I have some very strange recollections
about a lake…’

A laugh from the other end of the line. ‘You tried
to push me in that lake! Cheeky bastard.’

‘Oops; sorry mate. Had a few too many yesterday;
won’t be happening again. Anyway, what’s up?’

‘Just checking you were up… It’s that presentation
at work today. I was going to offer to pick you up on the way in.’

Reality really does bite; with snarling, jagged
edge fangs; the presentation! Danny had completely forgotten.

‘Shit… where are you?’

‘At home; had to wait in this morning; the landlord
has been round to try and tell me that the creeping mould on the walls is
actually just dust or something…’

‘Why the hell do you still rent that place?’

‘Well, it’s close to the motorway Dan,’ laughed Mark,
self-depreciatingly. ‘You know that I need to be available for work at the drop
of a hat… and work’s my life.’

Danny had sudden, murky recollections of a previous
conversation, from somewhere in the mists of time. Maybe he’d inadvertently
said something to really offend Mark at the lake… something to do with Mark
seeming to be all work, and no play… a dull boy.

‘Did I- have I- what did I say yesterday… Whatever
it was, just ignore it mate. Take it with an ocean full of salt.’

‘Don’t worry; you were actually fairly calm,
considering the amount of booze you’d thrown down yourself.’

‘Well, I’m still sorry, mate. And Mark? Thanks for
agreeing to help me out today.’

Danny signed off the conversation and thought about
Mark for a moment. Because of his easy-going attitude, people tended to take
advantage of Mark. Managers at work would not hesitate to pass on the most
distant call-outs onto him, knowing that they wouldn’t be spoiling his night,
or perhaps simply not caring; colleagues would call in sick in the knowledge
that Mark would cover them.