The Magpie Trap: A Novel (17 page)

‘Hi Gem-Gem,’ he said,
affecting his usual stupid sing-song voice. Sometimes he thought that she’d
just see right through his pathetic act, but she never seemed to. She was
always simply high as a kite that he’d called her.

‘Oh hi, Chris,’ she
said in a voice that seemed to be made up of high-pitched beeps and whines,
rather like R2D2 or something. She spoke as though the call had made her day,
her month or even her fucking year. She probably liked
Friends
; probably wanted her life to be just like that of Monica or
Rachel. She probably wanted Chris to be her
Chandler
or her Ross. She probably wanted them to lead
this boy-in-the-bubble life where Aire Bar was the caff that they spent all day
long talking shit in and letting their minds turn to mush. Didn’t those people
have a goddamn kettle in their apartments?

‘Did you manage to save
any of those cakes so you could take them home?’ he asked. He knew damn well
that she hadn’t; he’d been out for a ciggie by the bin store – amazing the
lengths the veggies expected him to go to for a simple human right these days –
and he’d seen the box jutting out from the top of a half-open black bin bag.
The local tramps had been at them.

‘Oh I
loved
the cakes. My housemate and I had
a real girlie night in in our nighties eating the cakes and watching
Sleepless in Seattle
for about the
seventieth time.’

He knew such an image
was supposed to turn him on; the typical male fantasy of girls together in
their nighties getting a little too frisky in their pillow fight and ending up
wallowing around naked… But for fuck’s sake,
Sleepless in
Seattle
;
Tom Wanks? He changed the subject:

‘Good. Anyway, the reason
I’m calling is to ask you a teeny-weeny favour if I can… I’ve got a mobile
number. I can’t seem to get through to it. Maybe the person is ignoring my
calls when they see my number coming up. Can you try it from the reception
phone every few minutes or so when you’re not busy. Give me a shout if anyone
answers.’

‘Oh Chris; it’s not a
girl, is it?’ asked Gemma, sounding disappointed. ‘I can’t imagine a girl would
want to ignore your calls unless you’ve been a very
bad man.’

Oh fuck right off with your ‘very bad mans’ and
your ability to make me say things like ‘teeny-weeny’,
thought Chris. Instead, he said: ‘You know you’re
the only one for me, Gem-Gem. No, this number’s for a friend that’s done a bit
of a disappearing-act. I’m trying to find him so I can help him.’

‘Oh, I bet you’re such
a
good friend,
’ she gushed. ‘So nice
of you to help look for him; what’s the number? I’ll do everything I can.’

Chris read out Danny’s
number from his computer screen. He usually knew his friends’ numbers off by
heart but Danny had lost so many phones on his drinking sessions that by now,
Chris knew that there was no point even trying to learn the number of his new
one.

Feeling pleased with
himself, he started to get on with his design work again, but then realised
that he should call Mark to let him know that he had already started his
sideline as a private detective. He wanted Mark to know just how generous he
was with his time, despite being such a busy man.

He reached for the
phone with one hand while putting the finishing touches on the cock-shaped
bottle with the other. It looked good; despite the fact he’d designed it as a
joke, he could well imagine the women in god-awful places like the pubs on

The cock-shaped bottle;
it had been worth coming in to work after all…

           
Just
as he was about to dial Mark’s number, a call came through on his mobile phone.
It was from a withheld number.

‘Mr. Parker? Mr. Chris
Parker?’ a woman’s voice crackled down the line.

‘This is he,’ Chris
replied. He loved putting on extravagantly posh voices on when speaking on the
phone to people that he’d never met.

‘This is Dawn Foster
from the
Yorkshire
Evening
Post
…’

‘Not interested,’ Chris
interrupted. He was constantly being pestered by newspapers and magazines who
wanted him to place his client’s adverts in their publications. He wondered why
the hell Gemma had allowed the woman through her usually so impenetrable
barrier.

‘I’m afraid I’m not
trying to sell you anything. I’m calling out of courtesy actually. I’m calling
to make you aware that we are going to be running a story about your father’s
meat business in tomorrow’s weekend edition of the paper.

Basically it’s an
expose of the cheap meats which your father’s company sells into the schools,
the health risks this causes for
Leeds
children, that kind of thing. The article makes reference to you, Mr. Parker,
and also to your brother. We just wanted to make you aware of this, and invite
you to make any comments before we go to press.’

Chris froze:
speechless.

‘Mr. Parker; are you
there?’

Chris grunted a
response, and grabbed a cigarette from his desk drawer, sparking it up, despite
the fact that it was a no smoking building.

‘What can I do to stop
you running the story?’ Chris appealed.

‘That’s exactly what
your father said. The reason I wanted to call you is because I know that our
paper has a good relationship with your agency, and when I realised that you
were his son, I thought I’d better warn you because this is going to stir up a
whole heap of shit, if you’ll pardon my French.’

‘I want all reference
to me taken out of the article. And if my brother is even referred to I will
have your job,’ Chris snarled.

‘Again, Chris, you
could almost be your father speaking. I’d better let you know; we are meeting
at twelve at Manners’ Restaurant. You know where that is.’

With that, Dawn Foster
clicked off, and Chris was left open-mouthed, his worst fears realised.

The
Conversations

Callum
Burr’s Jaguar stayed behind the bars of its cage; not allowed to come out to
play. He’d bought the car on a whim, almost as though he knew that he was going
to come into some money, but had then lost his nerve; such an obvious show of
wealth was dangerous. It would bring unwelcome questions, snooping, and
twitching of curtains. It might also bring him a beating; the voice had told
him not to do anything out of the ordinary, to behave just as he would usually.

Burr still carefully groomed his pet though; he
waxed and polished it within the garage, he tuned the engine, he buffed up the
upholstery. It was as he was bent right over the driver’s seat, trying to brush
away a cobweb underneath the cramped back seats that his mobile phone began to
chirp. He twisted himself back out of the car, bum first, twisting his heavy
frame through the narrow, low door. Breathing heavily, he pressed an
approximation of the ‘answer’ button; instead his thick thumb pressing about five
buttons at once.

Through pure luck, he answered the call.

‘Burr?’ he gasped.

‘Ah; just the man. Are you currently participating
in a marathon-run? You sound out of breath. We need to talk; remember I told
you to keep your phone on. Well, this is the moment that you needed to keep
your phone on for.’

‘You sure we can talk about this on a mobile?’
asked Burr. A nervous edge was immediately apparent in his gruff voice.

‘This is only a simple conversation; that new code I
asked you to put into the printer? I need to know what is happening. My
intelligence tells me that somebody’s been asking questions.’

‘That’ll be the new boss; Hunter. Only started
today and already he’s snooping. I get the feeling that not much gets past
him.’

Burr, leant against his car, sweaty palms leaving
greasy streaks across the bonnet; for once he didn’t immediately wipe them
away.

‘But you already saw to it that he wouldn’t be
mobile on site. You told me that you already commandeered his access badge.’

‘But he’s ex-police; he knows what to watch for,’
breathed Burr. ‘He went to the Precisioner Unit with Stephenson and came back
asking me all sorts. He even asked me about the
Mauritius
visit… He’ll put two
and two together; I know he will.’

The voice became colder now, calculating: ‘Do not
worry about Hunter. He is a wash-up now; he is pickled in alcohol like an
exhibit in a museum. He is preserved for future generations to look at. Look
childrens; this is what primitive policemen used to look like…’

Burr stifled a laugh. He wished that at some point
in the future, he’d be able to use that exact line to Hunter’s face. Then we’d
see about his goddamn interrogative questions and his mistrust. Then we’d see
who was boss.

‘I like that description of him,’ said Burr.

‘Very good; now I must make another call. And
Burr,’ continued the voice, ‘how do you think you’re going to pay for that car
you are leaning on right now if you don’t make sure that this problem goes
away?’

The phone clicked off but Burr hardly heard it; he
leapt away from his beloved Jaguar as if it was on fire. He now knew for sure
that he had gone in far too deep.

Danny
Morris was next.

When
Danny saw the number which was displayed on the screen of his mobile phone he
wanted the ground to swallow him up. He wanted one of the brewery men to smash
him over the head with a bottle. He wanted his laptop to explode.

           
For a moment he stared at the number
and wished it away, like he used to do when he was a child and he closed his
eyes and the world disappeared. He tried to shake off the brief recollections
of the conversation he’d had with the man while he’d been horribly drunk. He
remembered swearing a lot. He remembered saying something stupid like: ‘You’re
really proud of your ability to speak English, aren’t you?’

Suddenly, all of the brewery men looked like
cardboard cutouts. They weren’t real; they weren’t in the same ballpark as the
man on the other end of the phone that was trying to get through to him; a man
whose call he could not possibly ignore. Before he knew what he was doing,
Danny was walking out of the room.

As he walked past them, he saw the incomprehension
scrawled across their faces and wondered if he should make up some story to
tell them about a relative being rushed into hospital or something. But there
wasn’t time. There simply wasn’t time. Time was no longer something that could
be weighed out like portions of sweets in a corner shop; it was something
pressing, like gravity.

The door closed behind him and he answered the call.

‘Can you call me back in two minutes? I’m in the
office. Let me go outside,’ he said in a breathless rush as he half-ran past
reception. He saw Paula’s raised-eyebrows and he mouthed the words ‘cover for
me’ to her. He hoped that she would understand.

‘Fine,’ said the
BBC
-accented voice. ‘You
have two minutes, Mr. Morris. And I’m pleased to hear that you no longer sound
drunken-bum.’

Danny crashed through the double-doors at the front
of the EyeSpy offices and stumbled to his car. He pushed a mountain of
paperwork off the driver seat and sat down, already keying the engine.

I can’t
piss off this man,
he thought.
He has too much on me.
What if he goes to the police or something?

The hangover was increasing Danny’s paranoia by at least
three notches on the dial. When he saw the tell-tale twitch in Fartin Thomas’s
blinds, he was almost sure that the feds would be there already, discussing his
crime with the boss.

Must get
out of here; away from the offices, away from the eyes. Must put enough
distance between myself and them before this call comes through.

For some reason, call it the deciphering of signs –
the single magpie perched on top of one of the security camera for example – or
premonition or a knowledge deep-down that almost every piece of news that he
received these days was bad news, Danny knew that the call would be the one
that would change his life. In those brief moments, it felt as though the world
had stopped spinning; it was sucking in its breath in readiness for a new,
altered reality. Things would never be the same again; Danny’s throat burned
for a drink.

Danny
received the call as he was negotiating the one-way system in
Leeds
city centre, not
really knowing or caring where he was going. Hands-free and so abiding by at
least one law, which was a rarity, he answered the call.

           
‘Hello?’ he yelled, believing that
he had to shout louder in order that he could be heard from the faraway handset
which was clipped into its holster close to where ashtrays used to be, back
when cars were even built with proper ashtrays in them. Now it was just a
pointless plastic gap.

           
‘Danny; the speaker for your phone
is next to your steering wheel. It can pick up your voice even if you speak at normal
levels. Please speak in normal levels to me now.’

           
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, quietly. ‘And
I’m also sorry for what happened last night. For what I said; I was drunk. I
can’t remember it properly…’

           
‘Stop,’ interrupted the voice.
‘While I must admit that our conversation last night was not enjoyable, there
is something more pressing that we must discuss.’

           
Ah,
here’s the rub,
thought Danny, unhappily.

           
‘My intelligence tells me that there
is a new security manager and
Edison
’s Printers. An ex-policeman; always
snoopering around and sticking his nose in aspects that do not concern him.
This means that our plans have changed somewhat. We need to step-up our game,
as the Americans say. We need to move quickly on this.’

           
‘On what?’ asked Danny, although he
feared the answer.

           
‘You’ve already shown that you can
access the networks at the site in theory. You have already infiltrated
Edison
’s Printers
electronically.
I’d now like it very
much if you could infiltrate the site
physically.’

‘What do you mean?’ breathed Danny, turning a
hard-right in order that he could pull up into a parking spot. He didn’t trust
himself driving, not while he was hearing world-changing news like this.
 

‘This new security manager is old-school. We need
to do something which will appeal to his old-school way of thinking. We need to
actually
get in
to the site. Take
Mark Birch with you if you like. He’s already proved that he has the technical
expertise. Take that other man – the one you sting for money all the time – as
well if you like. But just get it done. If you do things right, we’ll all be
onto a winner on this.’

Danny’s car pulled up in the middle of the
side-road. A couple of cars queued behind him and started beeping their horns.
He couldn’t move.

‘You’re asking me to break-in to
Edison
’s Printers?’

The man at the other end of the phone gave a brief
snort of laughter. ‘Oh Danny Morris; the time of asking you to do anything has
long-since passed. Now is the dawn of the era where I
tell
you.’

‘What if I won’t?’ asked Danny, ignoring the fact
that a man in the car behind was no climbing out, ready to confront him for
pulling-up in the middle of the road.

‘If you won’t do it, then I’ll simply go to the
police and to your boss with the documented evidence of your criminal activity
up to now. If you won’t do it, I’ll simply tell your friend Chris Parker about
how you sold him down the river. How you told that journalist at the
Yorkshire Post
about his family’s
meat-business in return for a couple of thousand pounds which you bet on another
horse that contrived to not finish a race.’

Danny jumped at the knock at the window. The man
from the car behind was glaring through, mouthing something like: ‘You can’t
park here, mate. Get out of the way.’

           
‘Your life is falling apart, Mr.
Morris, and I have kindly offered you a way out of this mess.’

           
Another knock at the window; in a
moment, the man’s fist was going to smash through it.

‘And I’ll even give you this piece of advice; look
to the Intertel Shift. Ask your friend Mark Birch about it. This will help you
get onto the site. This will help you get off the site.’

Without knowing what he was doing, Danny gunned the
engine again and screeched away from where he’d stopped in the middle of the
road. Part of him wanted to drive headlong into the wall of a nearby office
block, or perhaps into oncoming traffic. Part of him wanted to drive straight
into the River Aire or the
Leeds-Liverpool
Canal
.

Close
your eyes Danny. It’s not real. If you close your eyes the whole world will
disappear. Driving into that brick wall would close your eyes for you, no
problem. Do it!

In the rear-view mirror, Danny watched the man
climb back into the car behind. He half-hoped that the man would come after him
in some kind of crazed road-rage attack, but the man idled along and then
pulled in to a multi-storey car park.

Come
back! Come back and smash your fists against my window. Let the glass rain down
into my pathetic face. Do it!

‘I’d like you to bring me something from the site.
Evidence, if you like, that you’ve actually done what I’ve asked you to do. I’d
like you to bring me the Precisioner printer. Oh, I’d like to see the
Precisioner printer for my own eyes and appreciate the grandeur of it at
first-hand. Will you do that for me, Daniel? Will you bring it to
Mauritius
?’

‘Yes,’ Danny discovered that he was saying. ‘I’ll
do that for you.’

Danny deposited
his funereal black company car a little too close to the pavement than was
comfortable; he was sure that his alloy wheels were being scraped to buggery,
and that the Intertel Phone Box was
too
close to the passenger door... But, there was so little space for such a large
car on the plush cobbled street of the Calls that he really had no choice but
to squeeze it in as closely as possible in order to avoid coming back to
another wing-mirror lying, wings clipped, in the gutter.

           
Why
are you worrying about such things? Why, when the whole world now holds
different rules for you? Maybe you’re trying to somehow block out that non-stop
ringing in your ears; the constant reminder of what the man had just told you.
But it won’t go away, Danny-boy. It won’t go away, no matter how hard you
scrunch up your eyes.