The Magpie Trap: A Novel (34 page)

The lift was waiting
for them on the ground floor, where the two operatives had left it, and they
ascended in a cool expectant silence. Nobody knew what to say. Soon they were
in the
MMC
and Hunter saw the signs of an abandoned ship;
discarded headphones lay trailed across the floor, one of their chairs was
upended, and one of the phones was off the hook, now giving its own howl of
frustration. Hunter quietly replaced the handset and steeled himself to look up
at the huge bank of twenty LCD monitors on the wall in front of him; the focus
of every single monitor was the scene outside the Precisioner Unit.

In live action, he
watched the crumpled body of Callum Burr being lifted onto a stretcher, a large
white sheet covering most of him. What wasn’t covered by the sheet was covered
by breathing apparatus which was clamped over his ginger-whiskered mouth.

Burr was so heavy that
the stretcher bearers lurched over onto one side and his leg slipped from under
the sheet, unbalancing the stretcher still further. Then Burr’s entire body
fell onto the floor, twisting into an unnatural angle. The monitors were
cruelly close-up on Burr’s face; underneath the oxygen mask, righteous anger
burned through his glazed, open eyes.

Burr looked as though
he was going to jump up at any moment and start running after his long-gone
attackers. He looked almost normal, like he was still in the Security Lodge and
had just been forced to listen to another of Hunter’s anecdotes about why he’d
given up drinking. Hunter wondered whether there was any consciousness there,
but then, as one of the stretcher bearers tipped him back onto the stretcher,
his question was answered for him. Burr’s head lolled the other way, and Hunter
was almost sick as he saw again that jagged, open wound on the other side of
his head. He feared that Burr would never come back from an injury like that.
Hastily, he clicked the monitors off, not wanting to shock the two operatives
any further.

‘Come on lad,’ he said
to Jerry. ‘Now I’m not that good on computers, but you are. What we need is for
you to access the computer files from all of the cameras around the Precisioner
Unit for the past hour. From, say,
11pm
… you can narrow it down, right?’

‘Sir… yes… erm, we can
access specific moments from the past hour. We can put in parameters; for
instance, every time anything crossed in front of the camera in the past hour,’
Jerry replied, his voice slowed by shock and whisky

‘What if the camera
missed it though?’ said Hunter. He knew that reliance upon technology in times
like this could save time, but it could also make mistakes which would be
difficult to rectify.

‘Impossible,’ said
Jerry. He was already typing in figures and lines of code into a computer
system in front of him, typing with an agility Jim could never have mastered
even if his hands were still not shaking so much.

‘Right,’ said Jerry,
finally finishing his typed commands with an elaborate slap of the space bar.
‘Now we only have to look through a few minutes of recordings instead of the
whole hour. You’ve always told me that the key period in any investigation is
in the first hour after the crime’s been committed.’

Jim was impressed at
the young operative’s ability to block out his earlier shock; he was now
completely obsessed with the task in hand, excited even.

‘So, where is it?’

Hunter kept seeing
fuzzy, black and white images flash up on the screen with every button that
Jerry pressed.

‘I don’t know, sir,’
said Jerry. He ran his hand through his floppy fringe and sighed. ‘I’ll try
again; Mick come and help.’

Mick, who had been
staring out of the huge back window of the panopticon watch-tower at the
creeping sunrise, promptly ran over, seeing his own chance to rescue some of
the reputation he had lost on his watch. Elbowing Jerry out of the way, he
began to minimize a number of boxes on screen, and then started a new
programme
.

‘This
programme
is a back-up. If someone’s hacked in, as I suspect,
then all of the data will also be backed up here. Should have checked there
straight away Jerry…’

Hunter admired both the
ability and confidence with which the two young men handled the technology. He
knew that he could only speak a kind of pidgin computer language, but both of
these lads were completely au fait with the systems; it was second nature to
them. The problem was that despite their efforts, there were still no
recordings coming up on the screens in front of them.

Suddenly the phone on
the desk in front of him buzzed, causing him to jump backwards involuntarily.
He struggled to regain his composure as he answered.

‘Hello,
MMC
,’ Hunter croaked, his heart still in his mouth.

Mr. Wade’s furious
voice bellowed down the other end of the phone, ‘How the hell did you let this
happen, Hunter? Stay there, I’m coming up.’

Hunter had no idea what
he could say to placate his boss; but the phone was slammed down anyway, so he
at least had a couple of minutes to get the recordings up and working.

Mr. Wade strode into the
MMC
looking as though he had just got out of bed; he
was wearing jeans, a corduroy jacket and running shoes; Hunter had never seen
him in anything other than a suit. He had also never seen anything but a
kindly, almost paternal interest in the man’s eyes, but now, he saw a burning
anger. His face had erupted into angry welts, probably through stress, and his
mouth was twisted into a snarl.

‘Hunter; I’ve had the
police explanation, but I have to hear it from you… I thought I was getting the
best when I got you. I ignored the warnings; people that knew you, who said you
were a drinker. Tell me, was that your bottle of whisky left outside? Were you
drinking on the job?’

Hunter remembered the
whisky again. He remembered Burr in those moments before the heist. There had
to be a connection.

‘I don’t know what I
can say. All we can do is look at the recordings… and no, I was not drinking, I
have not touched a drop since I have worked here,’ he said, trying to keep the
note of desperation out of his voice, fearing the rising inflection would give
him away as the fool who knew nothing.

‘No time for
explanations now. Have no fear; there will be an internal investigation. Now,
give me those recordings!’

Wade was roaring now,
spittle flying from his mouth. It coated Jim in flecks of white pasty saliva,
but Jim could not bring himself to take his eyes from Wade while he wiped it
off. He could not betray any signs of weakness.

           
Jim
suddenly realised that Jerry had been tugging at his shirt persistently for a
while now, trying to get his attention. He turned to the young operative, eyes
full of hope; surely they had discovered the recordings.

‘Mr. Hunter; there’s
nothing there,’ Jerry whispered, fear evident in the pitch of his soprano
voice.

‘What was that?’ Wade
waded in.

Jim wanted the floor to
swallow him up, he wanted to disappear; he wanted, so very much, to have that
drink now. He suddenly could not handle the reality of the situation and
collapsed into a seat, dropping his head into his hands. He almost looked as
though he was praying…

And then Wade was
shaking him; he had grabbed him roughly by the shirt collar and was trying to
lift him to his feet. Hunter felt the scratch of the man’s long fingernails
into his exposed neck; he felt the desperation in the room making everything go
crazy.

He pushed Wade away and
rose unsteadily to his feet.

‘This heist was a
professional job Mr. Wade. There was nothing we could do about it,’ he gasped,
almost admiringly.

Mick kept on pressing
those buttons, but a large error message appeared, spread across all of the
monitors at once:

The files you are trying to access have been
deleted. Please select another file.

Jerry turned to Wade
and Hunter, who were both still spoiling for a fight in order to relieve the
tension: ‘There’s nothing left; all of the recordings are blank. Someone’s
hacked into the system and stolen the images.’

‘That’s not all they’ve
stolen,’ Hunter muttered, defeated. On one of the screens, they could see the
image of the empty table where the Precisioner printer had once been. They
could still see the printer’s outline in the fine dust.

Airport

They keep
whispering together, I’ve just come out of the toilets now and they’re at it again…
I see something in their eyes; fear, wariness of me. They withdraw their gaze
from me too quickly when I look up. I have crossed some boundary and now am
marked as different from them. I killed a man…

I can only just bring myself to say it, even to
myself, in my head. I will never be able to return to my innocent state of just
one day ago. But he was going to kill me… would I rather be dead now?

I feel dead… only the throbbing in my twisted
ankle tells me that I am still alive. It is now swelling up into a mess of
yellows and blues. Air travel will not do it any
favours
, the blood will clot… but I can’t think about blood. Whenever I do,
I see that man’s head spilt open like a water melon. I will see that image
every day when I wake up, when I wake up screaming in the night.

           
Why are they whispering again? It is
almost as though they don’t see me any more; I have become the invisible man.
They look past me, through me, at the monitors which list the flight arrival
and departure times.

Everyone here is on a journey, but my journey has
already happened. I will forever be in this waiting room - this purgatory. The
people flood past me, tired, but excited; hopeful. I will never hope again.
Businessmen off to meetings to win new clients; families going on holiday; some
are simply going home… I have no home.

           
That whispering is continuing; Danny
is leaning right over Chris and is almost cupping his hand round his ear so I
don’t hear them. Are they planning something? Are they trying to shit on me
like the man said in that email?

I really don’t care any more. Maybe they are just
scared that the police will catch us at last; the first reports are starting to
filter through to the television in the bar in which we are sitting, waiting
for the plane. Apparently there are no suspects, but they might be trying to
lure us into a false sense of security. Danny looks pale, washed out; even
Chris looks faintly green in the airport’s false light. Yes, they are scared.
They still have lives which they want to protect, dreams to fulfill.

           
They continue to whisper as the
television cameras show that place again. The media army has descended on
Edison
’s
Printers. Bulletins are broadcast every ten minutes, but it is clear that there
has been some kind of cover-up. Every time we see the news channel’s
correspondent, she has no new news. All they’ve heard is that there has been an
attempted robbery and that the intruders are still on the loose.

They don’t even know how much money has been
stolen, or that one of the guards has been killed. Hours have passed since the
heist, and
Edison
’s has now closed the stable doors
after the horse has bolted. They cannot afford the stain on their reputation of
a serious heist. Their site is supposed to be almost prison
-esque
in its attention to security detail.

 
Even when
the tired barman comes over to wipe our table, Chris and Danny’s frenzied,
whispered conversation carries on. I feel like waving my hand in front of their
faces, alerting them to my presence, but I’m too weary. I watch as clutches of
armed guards and police roam menacingly past us, but don’t give us a second
glance.

It is always a shock to see guns on people; they
look somehow fake. I imagine that it all becomes too much for me and I make a
run for it, mown down by a hail of bullets. Now that I’ve killed someone, I am
more likely to be allowed to be shot myself. Maybe I should just get it over
with.

Whisper… whisper… whisper…

I avert my eyes. I look over at a child sleeping
on one of the wooden benches which form the perimeter of the bar. She is
sucking her thumb and looks totally at peace in the world. I begin to smile,
but then catch the eyes of the mother who is glaring back at me; she has
obviously seen the mark on me, the mark of a bad man. She gathers up her
daughter and tucks her pink coat under her head, angling her daughter’s profile
away from me.

And then it’s time to leave. Danny is standing
over me and shaking my arm.

‘Stop crying, Mark, you’re making a real show of
yourself in here,’ he says.

Chris is now rapidly sucking on his last cigarette
before the flight, desperation set in his eyes.

‘Just keep your head down; we’ve nearly made it.
All we have to do is get through those gates…’

           
My legs are shaking uncontrollably
as I queue for boarding. Danny helpfully tells the concerned air hostess that I
have never been on a plane before and am simply scared. I have managed to get
hold of some sleeping tablets, and as soon as I sit down, oblivion sweeps over
me.

As long as I don’t wake up screaming, everything
will be okay…