The Magpie Trap: A Novel (46 page)

Three Wishes

There generally comes a point in a man’s life when
he realizes that he will not be granted his three wishes of fame, fortune and
genius. That he must work; make his own luck. That he has not been born to be
king, but is like everybody else, a drone in the hive.

Jim Hunter had reached
this conclusion earlier than most, and had been driven into a spiral of
self-destruction by the power of this realization, the centrifugal force of his
desire to escape his cynicism driving him deeper and deeper into that yawning
plug-hole known as reality. But because he had plumbed these depths, had been
discarded along with the dirty bathwater of the lowest common denominator of
humanity, it had allowed him to become an adept detective in the police force.
He could see through people, to their rotten inner-cores, and this helped him
come to terms with foreign concepts such as motivation, anger and
worthlessness. The Dodo had been some kind of evil reminder of what Hunter
could have been.

Gradually, he saw the slow-moving man – Mark Birch - appear on the
horizon. He knew that he was going to do the right thing; he was going to take
the man in. Call the relevant authorities. He just had to make sure that this
was the right man. Therefore he kept the Magpie Trap set up exactly as the Dodo
had left it. If the man proved to be Mark Birch, then surely he’d approach the beach
hut, and then Hunter would know that he had the right man. Just like the Dodo,
Hunter had to dangle a carrot to catch his man.

It’s amazing sometimes to look back on those
moments that change your life; the cross-roads. It can be something small; it
can be a random, coincidental comment which opens up a whole world of
possibility. But you never
recognise
their significance at the time. Having said that hindsight is a handy gadget we
could all make good use of. By
utilising
hindsight’s handy playback facility, we can translate a series of unconnected
events into a coherent story with a beginning, middle and end; a narrative
structure which is as relentless as destiny.

The spark by which Mark
knew that his life was finally going to change for the better was the sight of
something – a few words only – written into the sand. He’d never know who had
written them, nor did he really care. In a way, he hoped it had been Danny, in
a last-minute attempt to do something good in his life. But it could just as well
have been that strange, foreign-voiced man that had always promised to help
him.

Burr not dead.

Three words had the
power to change everything. Suddenly Mark knew that he everything was going to
be all right; he could
make
a life.
Somewhere, deep down, Mark knew that he’d been on a quest to find his own
answers to tricky questions such as fate, free will and selfhood; to find a
life worth living. When his father died, it had made him consider all of these
questions deeply.

What was he was
missing? Was it money? Was it adventure? Was it sex? Was it a heart, was it a
brain, was it a soul? When Mark saw the writing in the sand, he knew that what
he’d been missing was the ability to be comfortable with what he already had,
and therefore be able to wish for something else. The three words were more
than just words; they were a sign.

Mark realised that Chris, Danny and he
had all had their own dreams which were all wrapped up with money. Chris had
wanted adventure, and to put distance between him and his father. Danny needed
money to facilitate his escape from a life which wasn’t as bad as he’d thought.
Mark had
thought
that he wanted money
in order that he could be a hero with it and save his mother. They had all
attached the ability to
do something
to being able to steal the money; they’d all taken an almost cowardly route to
achieving these things. They were trying not to work
for
something but to get it handed to them on a plate.

Mark understood that if his story had
taught him anything, it was that although having money was a key to many doors;
lacking money did not have to mean that these doors were locked to him.
Mauritia had showed him that there were other ways of opening the doors to
happiness. She had also inspired in him a new-found determination to make
things happen for himself; to make the most out of life and to grab
opportunities as though they were the last he would ever have. She’d also shown
him that there is no such thing as fate or destiny; he saw now that luck was
just a binary thing; it can be good or bad depending on the situation you are
in at that particular moment in time.

Yes, Mark had made bad choices, but
they didn’t mean that this was the end of his story. In fact, Mauritia’s wisdom
had shown him that it was his choice whether this was a new beginning or the
convoluted ending to his sorry tale.

Mark quickly turned around. Wordlessly,
he said goodbye to his old insecurity, and to Danny in the beach hut. With a spring
in his step he bounced back towards Mauritia. There’s nothing as obvious as the
sight of a man who knows that he’s about to have the best sex of his life, and
that’s just how Mark looked as he walked away unscathed from the magpie trap.

From the deserted shower block, Jim Hunter saw the
figure on the beach turn and walk away with an enthusiastic, happy bounce to
his step. Quickly, Hunter discounted this man from his investigations; the Mark
Birch he was looking for would be an angry young man on a mission. He’d be a
young man who’d been betrayed in the worst possible way by one of his only
friends. He was sure that Mark Birch would spring the magpie trap and bring the
whole sorry mess to an end. And so he carried on waiting for Mark Birch to
arrive.

           
Occasionally,
he’d take a swig from a bottle of water he’d found. He felt that it
concentrated his mind a hell of a lot better than the whisky he’d been drinking
earlier; the whisky which he’d wasted by smashing into the Dodo’s face. But
then again, he hadn’t really wasted it, had he? Even booze had its uses.

THE
END

ABOUT
THE AUTHOR

The only time AJ Kirby speaks in the third person is in biographies. He's
the award-winning author of five published novels (Sharkways, 2012; Paint this
Town Red, 2012; Perfect World, 2011; Bully, 2009; The Magpie Trap, 2008), two
collections of short stories (The Art of Ventriloquism, a collection of crime
shorts, which was released August 2012, and Mix Tape 2010), three novellas (The
Haunting of Annie Nicol, 2012; The Black Book, 2011; Call of the Sea, 2010),
and over fifty published short stories, which can be found widely in print
anthologies, magazines and journals and across the web in zines, writing sites
and more.
Paint this town Red was shortlisted for the Guardian's Not the Booker Prize
2012, and his short fiction has won numerous awards at UK literary festivals,
and his novel Bully recently charted as an Amazon genre number 1. He is also a
sportswriter for the Professional Footballers' Association and a reviewer for
The Short Review and The New York Journal of Books. AJ Kirby lives in
Leeds
,
UK
and is currently writing a full-length
work about football.