The Magpie Trap: A Novel (30 page)

The Heist

That night was shrouded in the kind of darkness which
can only really be appreciated in the countryside, away from the artificial
lights of the city. It was as though someone had slid air-raid blackout covers
over the whole area. The only illumination came from the distant
Edison
’s Printers panopticon, whose intermittent beams made it resemble an
air traffic control tower or a lighthouse.

Mark had been
pleasantly surprised on one of his dry-runs to site, when he had seen how
little light there was at
Edison
’s. Of course, they had state-of-the-art Infra Red
cameras which meant that they didn’t have to rely on certain levels of
illumination for sight, but Mark always believed that light was a powerful
deterrent; if people knew that they could be seen, they were always less
tempted…

There was something comforting
in darkness for the criminal; it became an extra layer in his disguise and also
acted to strip down their idea of their actions to something more primal. If
you are not being watched then only you know about the actions you are
undertaking; you become your only judge.

Mark sat in judgment of
himself that night; but it was not a moral evaluation, no; he knew that his
technical
expertise was being put to the
ultimate test. He had to set up a dummy security control centre in the back of
the van, running off the power of a diesel generator. He had to set up his
system so that, at the exact moment of the Intertel Network Shift, his system
would begin to intercept the alarm signals from the perimeter intruder system
and from the door entry system on site. At that moment, his system would also
project a still image of the Precisioner unit, firing this image back across
the network so that the watchers in the Main Monitoring Centre and the Security
Lodge would not notice anything out of the ordinary. All the staff watching
their banks of monitors would see – hopefully - was a slight flicker in the
image which would be put down to the seismic Intertel Shift.

Mark’s most difficult
task had been the setting up of the images. He had attained the network address
of the camera system from Danny’s original plans and tinkered around creating
his dummy network, but he had then encountered an almost insurmountable
problem. He knew that the
MMC
staff had to carry out frequent ‘guard tours’ of the entire site. This meant that
they were trained to try and pan, tilt and zoom the cameras in order to survey
the entire area surrounding each one, including any blind spots. If Mark’s
dummy network had simply transmitted a still image, an image which didn’t
change no matter how many times they attempted to shift the camera view, the
MMC
staff would immediately be alerted to the heist.
Eventually, the only solution was for one of the trio to remain in the van and
shadow the exact movements of the
MMC
staff’s joystick on their own dummy network; of
course, there would be a small delay in this, but there always was with systems
such as that. Mark had therefore had to attain another network address; that of
the cameras in the
MMC
itself; he planned to watch the watchers.

 
The revelation that one of them would have to
remain in the van prompted a fierce debate amongst the heist team. Danny’s
recent shambolic drunken performance of the days since Cheryl had left him
seemed to count him out immediately in the eyes of the other two; Chris was
simply not knowledgeable enough about the technology to be of much help; Mark
was needed on the inside, as he knew the site better than anybody else. Danny
had suggested drawing lots to make the decision, but the others didn’t like the
sheer randomness of such an approach.

Eventually, Chris spoke
up: ‘I don’t want to be the one left in the van. I can handle the stress and
the adrenaline of the situation on site better than either of you two. I’m the
one who has been on all those adventure holidays in Latin and
South America
. I’ve been in life or death situations before… I
propose that Danny stays in the van; you know about CCTV, a bit about networks
and, I’m sorry to say this mate, but you’ll cause less trouble shut away in
there.’

Danny growled an angry,
non-committal response to this, but was secretly pleased that he was out of the
firing line.

An uneasy silence descended on the van as they
slunk along

It
was an unearthly night; like something out of a horror movie where the werewolf
would suddenly leap out of the dense woodland which flanked the road and attack
the vehicle. The malevolent trees seemed to be doing their best to hide the
predatory night creatures; they shifted and swayed in the wind, creating long
shadows and deep caverns of gloom. At certain intervals, they passed fallen
trees at the side of the road which slumped like well-fed lions; their appetite
sated, exhaustion setting in.

Finally,
Mark heaved the steering wheel to the right and pulled the van into an unseen
opening in the dry-stone wall. A rough track led them deep into the woods and
away from the view of the road. The four-wheel drive capability of the van was,
as expected, very welcome as the tyres fought against the suction of great
swathing puddles which tried to drag them down into their black depths.

Mark
parked the van before the track became impassable. A slight nagging fear bit
into his mind; they did have to drive back that way, and it was still raining.
Conditions would be even worse later in the night.

‘We’re
here,’ he said. ‘This is the end of the road; as far as we can go.’

Mark
dimmed the lights. Chris tutted and sneered under the cover of what he thought
was now complete darkness. Danny made a strange sort of whimpering noise.

‘This
is it, boys,’ said Mark with a confidence that he did not feel. It all felt
too
real now. It felt as though he’d
sleep-walked through the past few days and had only now woken up to find
himself about to do something that he’d never have even allowed himself to
imagine before his father had gone…

‘Let’s
just get it over with,’ said Chris.

Chris
and Danny got out and lit up cigarettes to calm their nerves; to Mark, the cigarettes’
puny lights simply served to highlight the trio’s insignificance against the
twin powers which they were planning to fight; nature and technology. Mark
stepped out of the van; the air was chillingly, bitingly cold. He walked round
to the cavernous back of the van and promptly geared up the diesel generator.
He blew into his hands, attempting to generate a little heat; the gloves could
only be put on once he had completed the fiddly electronics which only he could
perform. His job was to rebuild the dummy system; something he had done many,
many times before. He was glad of something to do to take his mind off what he
was going to do in the next hour; doing such a repetitive task was actually
very therapeutic.

From
outside the van, Mark could hear the shuffling disquiet of Chris and Danny, and
their constant lighting of cigarettes; the scratch as their thumbs rolled
across the wheel at the top of Danny’s lighter. They were both impatient at the
best of times, and Mark could only imagine their discomfort now. He had seen
Danny’s fingers tapping out a tune on the dashboard throughout their journey; a
Morse code operator would have read distress into his every dot-dot-dot. Chris
had constantly checked through the large sports bag they had brought along to
carry their tools and eventually the loot; hiding the real reason for his
unease under the cover of more petty concerns; had they remembered the cable
cutters?

Mark
worked quickly; his fingers gradually becoming more flexible as the diesel
generator had cranked into full power. The generator provided a soothing purr
which almost blocked out Chris’s nervous attempts at a tuneless whistle.
Satisfied that his system was working, Mark stepped back outside, pulling his
heavy black fleece around him for warmth. He retrieved a woollen hat and gloves
from the pocket and took a quick look at himself in the van’s wing-mirror.
Staring back at him were the hollow eyes of his father; he almost fell
backwards in shock. He’d always known that he was the spit of his father, but
now, wearing the same kind of outfit that his father had always worn on the
building site, he resembled his father’s avenging ghost. He forced himself to
remember why he was doing this foul deed; perhaps his father, who had always
frowned upon Mark’s passivity, would finally admire his new-found determination
to make things happen.

Fleeting
looks passed between the three of them; their buccaneering spirit was now
completely gone, replaced by apprehension. Only Chris looked remotely composed.
Even in his standard black clothes, he looked stylish. Instead of a fleece
covering black overalls, Chris had chosen a black Barbour jacket and dark blue
jeans; he looked like some city slicker going for a stroll in the country.
Danny, who didn’t actually have to go to site, was dressed as though he was on
an Arctic mission, complete with a fur-lined hood to his voluminous coat, and
what looked like snow boots. He was still twitching; couldn’t keep still.

Mark
was sure that, of the three, he would look the most anxious: as though he was
about to pass out. He tried to give himself comfort in the fact that they had
gone over every detail of what they were going to do. He took a quick look at
his watch and nodded over at Danny. The moment of truth was about to arrive and
the clock was ticking…

The operation was meticulously planned; Chris and
Mark knew the exact number of paces they would have to make from where they had
left their van under cover of heavy foliage to their entrance point to the
site. What they hadn’t anticipated from the plans they had so carefully
studied, was the fact that the weather conditions had turned the surrounding
woodland into an almost impenetrable bog. The river, which had powered the old
paper mill which was previously on the Edison Printers’ site, had burst its
banks due to three days of precipitate rainfall. Chris and Mark cursed their
luck as they were forced to battle through ankle deep mud and detritus from the
river.

Even without the
handicap of a leg that was not quite right, Mark would have found the going
difficult. The wet and the cold seemed to exacerbate the slight, almost
imperceptible limp that he usually tried so hard to cover up. He found himself
lurching through the undergrowth, stumbling over uprooted trees and creaking
through the overhanging branches. It was like the leg wasn’t part of him and
refused to obey his brain’s commands. Perhaps some dummy signal had been
implanted somewhere.

The land started to
rise up from the river’s gorge and onto the flat land on which
Edison
’s Printers was built. The ground was saturated and sucked at Mark’s
boots with every forced step. It felt as though something was trying to stop
him from doing what he was going to do. At the top of the slope Chris started
to get frustrated with waiting for Mark. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he
hissed into the darkness. ‘We’ve not got time to piss about like this. Come on;
hurry up.’

‘I’m going as fast as I
can,’ muttered Mark, breathing heavily from the effort that it took him to
climb the slippery bank. Chris offered him a hand to pull him to the top but
Mark shook his head. He had to prove that he was not a liability. All he needed
to do was grab onto the trunk of a tree and he’d be able to lever himself
upwards. He reached out and felt his gloves touch on the tree’s solidity.

Just drag yourself up there.

Mark felt his leg whine
in complaint as he tried to drag himself forward. He also felt the ground
underneath him start to slip away, back to the river from whence it came.

‘Chris!’ he yelped, but
too late, he was already falling. He felt his bad leg buckle underneath him. He
felt his ankle connect with something as he fell backwards. He felt the weight
of his own body wrench himself free from whatever it was; a root or an old
trap. His ankle twisted. He felt himself slipping down the bank.

Then he felt the
reassuring strength of Chris Parker’s hands as they grasped for his fleece. He
felt himself being tugged upright again. He felt his ankle start to give way,
but Chris’s look of steely determination stopped him from crying out.

‘You all right, Mark?’
asked Chris, not sounding overly concerned.

Mark grimaced: ‘Let’s
just get on with it.’

Unfortunately, his
hard-man act was undermined by the fact that a loud crack as a branch ripped
away from one of the trees which was buckling in the wind. Mark dropped the
sports bag in alarm. He thought the sound was gunfire; the police already on
their trail before they had even broken in to
Edison
’s Printers.