The Magpie Trap: A Novel (45 page)

‘Danny, we’re in a
Magpie Trap…’

Then Chris fainted
again.

Jim Hunter found a crate of whisky on the Dodo’s
boat, and he cracked into it with a vengeance, trying to eradicate that
sick-feeling which was churning around in his stomach. When he’d arrived at the
Hotel Vasco Da Gama in the Dodo’s four-by-four, he’d been shocked at the
intimidating confidence which the Dodo had in his plan. He seemed so sure that
the illusion of being double-crossed would drive the criminal into an insane
rage which would lead him to spring the trap. The Dodo’s vision of the innate
corruptness of humanity, and of westerners, in particular, had scared even Jim.
He’d therefore started pouring whisky down his throat, despite knowing deep
down that it was a sedative prepared by the Dodo as a part of his terrible
plan. The Dodo clearly wanted Jim to merely observe the results, to be too
drunk to interfere.

And then he’d watched
the savage, bestial violence as Danny Morris had taken the bait; hook, line and
sinker. But he’d also observed the subtle shift in Danny when the red mist had
finally cleared from his eyes. He noted that Danny had stopped himself from
killing Chris of his own accord.
Only
then
had he been alerted to the
presence of the two observers. The Dodo had rubbed his hands in glee at the
spectacle in front of him and had even been shouting encouragement as though he
was attending a cock-fight. He’d looked genuinely disappointed when the assault
had stopped.

Suddenly, the Dodo
pulled a pistol from the high belt of his trousers. He began waving it around
frantically, shouting. It resembled a frenzied war-dance.

‘You fight again! Keep
fighting! Or I will kill you!’
   

Hunter was genuinely
surprised at this new development; he instantly sobered up. Things had spun so
far out of his control that he had no idea how he could stop what was going on.

‘He’s fucking passed
out!’ wailed Danny beating his fists against the wooden walls of the hut.

‘Well finish him off,’
said the Dodo, coldly. He rattled his gun against the cold steel of the bars
menacingly.

‘I can’t,’ begged
Danny.

In the blink of an eye,
the Dodo took a step back,
levelled
his gun and fired, once, twice at Chris.

The echoes of the
gunfire reverberated through the silence that followed. And then Hunter’s ringing
ears began to hear properly again and he was forced to listen to the renewed
sickening dull thuds of Danny’s fists against Chris’s body. This time Danny was
trying to punch him back into life; he repeatedly drove his bloodied fists into
Chris’s chest, pausing only to breathe into his open mouth.

Danny was scattering
blood everywhere. He now looked as though he’d conducted some kind of ritual
sacrifice to the altar of some craven god. The blood was flowing from two huge holes
in Chris’s stomach; entrails crept out, slinking like snakes. There was no way,
thought Hunter, that Chris was still alive.

           
Hunter
watched, aghast, as the Dodo quietly opened the metal mouth of the hut. Gun
drawn, he marched Danny outside. He barked an order at Jim.

‘Drag that body into
the sea; we’re nearly ready for the next show, and we can’t have anything like
a dead body spoiling it.’

Jim stood there
dumbfounded, but was stirred into action by the Dodo lowering his gun to the
side of the whimpering Danny’s head. He entered the hut, half-thinking that the
metal bars would slam shut behind him, and clamped his eyes shut as he gripped
the ankles of Chris Parker.

He then dragged the
dead weight of the body out of the hut, straining against the pressure of the
sand. Pausing to wipe the sweat off his brow, he noticed that Danny was now
being marched into the sea and being ordered to wash away the blood-red paint
job which had been applied to the whole top half of his body. Jim almost
resolved to run away, but then realised that he still had to see this through
to the end. One way or another, he knew that the choices that he’d made had led
him to this point; there was no way he could turn his back now.

           
The Dodo is the puppet-master; the man
pulling all of the strings
, thought Hunter.
It is as though he is putting on a show for a watching audience.

And the Dodo had
rehearsed well; he knew every stage entrance, every movement which his
characters had to make. The only mistake, miscue, had been the failure of Danny
to finish Chris off.

This had clearly
annoyed the Dodo, and there was an added vehemence to his instructions now. Jim
saw that the man could barely hold himself back from whipping the pistol around
Danny’s head; he was struggling to restrain himself. He ordered Danny to strip,
and then selected a white suit and black shirt combination from Chris’s canvas
bag for Danny to wear.

Danny could barely
dress himself he was that scared. He tried to thread his foot into the
trouser-leg on three or four separate occasions but each time found that he was
shaking too much. In the end, Hunter moved over to help him. The Dodo raised
his gun again, but not before Hunter could whisper something into Danny’s ear.

‘Callum Burr is not
dead. The security guard survived; you can still be saved.’

Then the Dodo was upon
them, and pushing Hunter away.

‘Do not speak to the
accused,’ he said.

Hunter backed away and
watched as the Dodo began to set up his elaborate stage again for the next
performance. There was an additional prop this time around; Danny’s mobile
telephone.
 

Staring over the precipice

Danny Morris knew he had a choice to make. It was
a similar choice to the ones that he made on an almost daily basis; he could continue
to look out for himself and simply obey the Dodo’s barked commands or he could
do something which would help somebody else. At the end, he could go some way
towards redeeming his sorry excuse for a life. While he was pulling on another
man’s trousers, an idea began to form in his mind. Casting a quick glance into
the beach hut and finding the Dodo occupied with preparing the trap, Danny
forced his foot into the sand and then dragged it backwards. He made his
choice.

Mark Birch performed his penance for his actions
on a daily basis. Early each morning, he hiked across the beach to the small
coastal village which had been devastated by the previous year’s storms. For a
year, they’d not had electricity or running water. Mark set about trying to
rectify the situation.

He didn’t care if
anyone was watching him; adding some to the tally of his ‘actions for good’ to
balance the weighty column of his ‘actions for bad’, he simply believed that it
was his duty. He worked tirelessly until lunch-time, when Mauritia would bring
him some smoked fish, and then he would work again until the sun set. Then he
would walk back home and begin the healing process in her tender arms.

Mauritia’s medicine was
the fruits from her fishing trips, and also her persistent probing at Mark’s
character. She made him come out from the hiding place in which he’d been for
most of his life. She made him talk about his thoughts, his feelings; she tried
to assuage his guilt. She allowed no anaesthetic relief of forgetting what he’d
done, but instead carefully drew out his poison. She knew that at first he’d be
frightened of his lack of cover, the lack of his security blanket, but that
eventually, this was the only way he’d be able to heal.

But Mark was still
undergoing his unique type of therapy when the telephone in the shack rang
early that morning. Despite Mauritia’s cleansing of the wound of painful
knowledge, it remained sore; an itch which had to be scratched. That’s why,
without a word to her, he slipped out of their bed and trudged up the beach on
the eastern coast of the island towards his appointment with destiny. It was
the implied threat in his friend’s voice; the threat that Mark’s new reality
could be shattered, which drove him onwards to the gates of hell.

The sea had thrown up its nightly intake of
flotsam and jetsam onto the shoreline like the remnants of a mad Friday night
in Leeds. Pressed against Jim’s forehead, the gun felt cold, but had eventually
warmed to the touch,
moulding
itself into his crumpled brow. From their vantage point, they had an ideal view
of the beach hut, the jetty and the long stretch of sandy shore. They’d be able
to see someone coming from miles off, shadowed against the perfect white sand
as they’d be. And so the Dodo and Jim Hunter waited, crouching uncomfortably,
pressed against the broken-tiled walls in the abandoned shower block.

The Dodo was becoming
impatient; the gun’s angry mouth was starting to bite into Jim’s head. The Dodo
was muttering to himself, constantly shifting position in order to attain the
perfect view of the hut.

‘This will look better
on screen,’ Jim heard him say. “Television is the best moderator of images.
This will be my prize-winning snuff movie…’

Jim’s head was all over
the place though; he couldn’t discern the relevance of the madman’s snarling
soliloquy. It was almost as though the Dodo was practicing his lines.

‘I have placed the
magpie in the cage. I have tied him to the chair; behind him is the money. The
magpie is easy for all to see on approach, as the front wall of the hut is
missing. What the audience and the approaching criminal will not see is the
mechanical contraption which will snap shut onto the criminal as soon as he
enters the hut.’

Jim finally spoke,
‘What the hell are you talking about,
the
audience
?’

The Dodo laughed, ‘What
did you think I was doing this for, you fool? Do you think I’m doing all of
this for the fun of it? I am filming this; it’s a moral story. Your part is yet
to come. You are the final act. What are
you
here for, if not to take the money?’

Quick as a flash,
Hunter realised the depraved nature of the Dodo’s plan. He was staging a
gruesome show in order to broadcast it to the world. His intention was to show
corruption of people when confronted with that dirty thing – money - and it was
clear that the Dodo thought that Jim’s motivation for coming to Mauritius in
the first place had been to run off with the money at the end.

Had it been? Jim wasn’t
convinced that somewhere deep down, there hadn’t been a part of him that had
secretly desired that conclusion.

‘Hunter - you are my
grand finale,’ continued the Dodo. ‘You are a man who seemingly wrestles with
his conscience. And yet, your terrible fall will illustrate far better than any
of the others that money can taint anybody. You are a former policeman. You
know that once they are all dead, and I let you go, that you will take the
money. You will see it as the key to a new life, so you no longer have to
drink.’

 
The Dodo pushed the whisky bottle towards
Jim’s mouth at this point, forcing the burning liquid down his throat.

‘The overall effect of
my composition will be to highlight to the world that changes have to be made
in order that we can escape this den of iniquity in which we find ourselves.
The story has shown that if there is temptation, people will take it. People
are always searching for an easy route to happiness; a quick fix. My story will
show them that money is not on this path to enlightenment.’

This man is almost definitely mad
, thought Hunter. He decided that, as he was probably
going to die anyway, there was no reason why he shouldn’t argue against him.
Perhaps it could achieve something.

‘But all your
audience
will see is the act of a
madman. Another tale of blood and guts to achieve some crazed political ideal.
Can you not see that all you’ve achieved is a classic case of entrapment? You
have staged all this; the temptation, the dangled carrot of a new life.’

‘Hunter,’ said the
Dodo, suddenly angry, ‘Can you not see that these men have already committed
their crime? They have made their choices; I did not induce them to steal from
your Edison’s Printers. They threw themselves into it with hardly a whisper of
persuasion from me. All I did was show them that it could be done. What they
did with the information was their own choice. I have the tapes of them
dirtying their hands with the money that night which you can’t bring yourself
to think of.’

‘They have made one
choice. We do not know the reasons why they made this choice. Your story omits
any chance of redemption.’

‘It is the world which
will be redeemed,’ the Dodo interrupted. ‘Think about it, Hunter. Why is money
always described as dirty? You know, as in filthy lucre… It is only paper. And
it is clean. You’ve seen the crisp pile of notes in the hut. Above all, they are
clean. It is people that are filthy, dirty, that cannot keep their mucky paws
off money. Same with your colleague Callum Burr.’

‘Burr?’

‘He was the first act;
his death at the site was the very definition of a man driven wholly by his own
greed. He had even spent his money before it was rightfully his.’

Hunter chose not to
tell the Dodo about Burr’s survival. It might be his only bargaining chip.
Instead, he twisted the bottle of whisky in his large hands, its rusty contents
dancing provocatively before his eyes. He felt the unquenchable thirst come on
him now like never before. It was as though he had an itch in the back of his
throat which he could only scratch by soaking it in whisky. The Dodo laughed as
he watched Jim struggle against his inner demons.

‘You cannot win this
argument, Hunter. Just give in and drink away your problems… like you always
do.’

Summoning all of his
inner-strength, he suddenly wheeled round, smashing the bottle into the little
demon’s face. Shocked at the crimson blood clouding his eyes, the Dodo dropped
his gun.

Hunter dived across the
tiled floor to grab at it, feeling the Dodo’s claws ripping into the flesh on
his neck. And then he rolled onto his back, the gun now safely in his grasp.
The Dodo was thrown back against the w

‘Do not kill me
Hunter,’ pleaded the Dodo. ‘You know I’m right…’

As he pulled the
trigger, Jim Hunter whispered a silent prayer.