The Magpie Trap: A Novel (6 page)

‘A
working class hero is something to be; you’re just jealous,’ said Chris. His
comment stung; Danny knew that there was some truth there. ‘I’m not jealous of
your sparkling alcoholic apple juice,’ he said, rather coldly.

An
uneasy silence descended for a moment, full of the unspoken bittersweet
competition
which existed between the
two. In the background they could hear the barman struggling to work the till
and the clatter of dominos from the back room. Chris snapped them out of it by
clamping another cigarette between his lips and gesturing for Danny to pass him
the lighter.

‘That’s
two in about five minutes, Chris. If you’d have smoked a whole one, you
wouldn’t need a second one so quickly,’ said Danny. In truth he would have
killed for a cigarette, but not if it meant having to ask his friend.

‘I
only smoke when I’m around you; it’s the stress,’ said Chris with a smile. As
he lifted his pint glass to his lips, the ice jangled its own emphasis to the
sentence. His cider had been swiftly diluted and
discoloured by the ice;
Danny had to try hard to mask his disapproval.

Danny
decided to change tack: ‘How’s life in the world of the marketing goons?’

 
Chris frowned and made a dismissive gesture
with his hand;
next question.

‘What’s wrong, Chris?’
asked Danny, suddenly excited that he’d managed to locate a chink in the
all-too-perfect young man’s armour. Maybe he was just like everybody else.
Maybe he hated work just like the rest of us. Maybe he too felt as though he
was being bled dry of all of his creative energy by
the man.

‘Ah,
nothing; it’s just too easy, that’s all. All that you need to know in marketing
is that it’s all about giving the people what they want. Bloody hell, even my
dad knows that, selling his cheap meats. Take cider, for example…’

‘No
thanks,’ interrupted Danny. ‘You’re the one that takes cider, cocker.’

Chris
gave him an all-suffering look and continued: ‘The people want cider, only
maybe everyone’s been afraid to admit it. Maybe until now they’ve been too
scared to admit that they don’t like the taste of beer.’

Danny
sneered and took an extra-long gulp from the remainder of his pint of Nun’s
Knee Trembler. He could smell that same sweet but earthy scent that had given
rise to Chris’s comment about the drink being sheep piss.
  

‘Look
at the barman,’ Chris continued, nodding his head in the general direction of
the bar where said barman was in the process of showing them his builders’ bum
as he swept up the broken glass from his leaning-tower collapse. ‘He’s
genuinely petrified when he has to pull a Guinness or a bitter; he doesn’t like
it. A cider is far easier for him, and far easier for everyone else.’

 
‘Easy maybe, but it’s a passing fad,’ said Danny
conclusively, as though he was the world-leading authority on fashion. ‘Cider’s
in danger of losing its traditional fan-base, and if it does, there may be
nobody left to support it once the yuppies of the city centre have all moved on
to the next big thing - it’s a bit like Leeds United.’

Chris
was a big Leeds United fan. Big as in he talked the talk; big as in he knew
where the ground was and had been there on a couple of occasions on corporate
entertainment packages through his or his father’s businesses. Chris was the
kind of
Leeds
fan that got very vocal for about five minutes
before they started losing and he started losing interest. But the good thing
about Chris was his ability to laugh at himself, and soon he started chuckling
along merrily.

‘We
are pretty shit these days,’ he said. ‘Although I don’t know why I say
we.
They were banking on the Quick Fix,
just like that horse in the race today.’

Danny
froze.

‘What
do you know about the race today? Who told you?’

‘Chill,
Dan,’ said Chris, raising his eyebrows in surprise at Danny’s reaction. ‘I just
heard it on the news, that’s all.’

‘Heard
what on the news?’ asked Danny, leaning forward across the little wonky table
now. A splash of cider slipped over the edge of Chris’s glass. There wasn’t
enough left in Danny’s glass to spill anything.

‘Just
that they had to shoot the poor old horse that died. Animal rights groups
kicked-off about it. What they don’t know is that the horse meat’ll probably
end up at my dad’s place. What you getting so uppity about anyway?’

Danny
cleared his throat, looked ready to respond with his tale of woe, and then
swiftly changed tack: ‘I’m off to the bar; want another of those ciders, or
have I changed your mind for you?’

‘I’ll
have a bitter this time mate,’ said Chris, sighing. ‘I take it you want
something Danny? I can’t remember when you bought me a no-strings pint and the
way you’re acting, something’s happened, eh?’

Guiltily,
Danny shuffled to the bar, looking every inch like the old man who’d been
discovered spending the last of the housekeeping money on porn. He even stopped
to assist the poor barman in his sweeping up of the broken glass in order to
assuage some of his guilt. The barman ushered him away, probably fearing that
he’d become infected by Danny’s very obvious
fallen
state.

‘Two
Tetley’s this time, chief,’ said Danny. He eyed up the cigarette machine and
tried not to watch as the barman struggled over the old hand-pump system.
Finally, two bitters arrived, looking more like milk, such was their
cloudiness. Danny decided not to be a dickhead and ask the barman to top them
up for him; something he would have usually have had no hesitation doing.

Before
ambling back to Chris he took a moment to compose himself. He wondered how much
he should tell him. Chris would have loved the opportunity to step in and help,
he knew that, but it was mainly because it appealed to his feudal-master sense
of self-worth.

‘Fuck
him,’ said Danny. It didn’t matter what Chris thought of him any more, did it?
The competition (if there ever was one) between the two of them had been won by
Chris years ago. It had been won when Chris secured his place at the famous
Peach Marketing Agency while Danny scrabbled about for scraps thrown from the
king’s table. It had been won when Danny had been roped into marriage and into
life
while good old Chris had continued
living the lifestyle of a twenty-one year old, only now he was the equivalent
of a twenty-one year old grand prix champ.

Armed
with the two bitters, brewed not a hundred yards away in the enormous Tetley
Brewery, Danny began his story:

‘You’re
probably expecting this mate, to be honest, and I hate myself for doing it, but
I wouldn’t ask if there were any other way.’

‘Go
on,’ interjected Chris, needlessly, as Danny was already ploughing on
regardless.

‘I
need to ask you a big
favour
; I
need to borrow some money. Don’t worry; you’ll get it back. I want you to see
it as an investment.’

An investment; yes!
Danny didn’t know how he’d stumbled upon the idea,
but somehow he had. He knew exactly how he was going to pitch it to Chris now;
he was going to pitch it as though he were talking to a rather over-zealous
bank manager.
Investment;
he liked
the idea.

‘Don’t
tell me; it was a sure-thing,’ muttered Chris. He raised his eyebrows and started
fiddling with his packet of cigarettes as though embarrassed. ‘Oh don’t tell me
you bet on bloody Quick Fix?’

‘I
did, yeah,’ sighed Danny. ‘All the form pointed to it winning…’

‘Don’t
talk to me about form and stuff. You know that neither of us has a clue about
form
or
even horses in general. You
just like the feel of having a
Racing
Post
stuck out your back pocket. Makes you feel like a proper man, doesn’t
it?’

‘I
go off tips,’ admitted Danny. ‘And this was a pretty good one. From the horses’
mouth so to speak. We have this rat-bag supplier - Terry Martell, he’s called –
and he used to be a jockey…’

‘Terry
Martell?’ interrupted Chris. ‘I know a Terry Martell. Small guy, runs an
electronics business; Diva Cameras. Got that well funny camera called the
DivCam… They asked us to do some campaign or other on their behalf a few months
back… Anyway, if it’s the same Tel, then he was never a jockey, Dan.’

Danny
felt his mind starting to cloud over. He had to get back on track. He was
starting to lose it. If Terry Martell wasn’t a jockey then… Then what the hell
had he been listening to him for in the first place? He’d just assumed, hadn’t
he? A small guy, likes a bet on the horses;
must
have been a jockey.

‘That’s
beside the point now,’ he said. ‘Like I was saying: investment. I need the
money for an investment. You can call it
your
investment if you want.’

‘What
are you talking about? How many have you had?’ asked Chris, fixing Danny with a
dead-eyed stare as though he’d just got in the way of his performing some
majestic jump on his snowboard.

‘Look;
forget about the gambling for a moment. I have a plan to make money which is
nothing to do with gambling.’

‘You
sure?’

‘Gambling’s
a mug’s game; I can see that now… It’s the same old story every time; hot tip,
and I put
everything
on it. I watched
the race though, and the only thing that horse looked like a hot tip for was
the
knacker’s
yard. Anyway, what I have
in my wallet now is the only cash I have in the world. I might not be able to
afford to pay the mortgage next month; I’m well and truly fucked.’

‘So
you need the money to pay your mortgage? That’s not much of an investment for
me is it? I should just drive over and hand it to Cheryl directly; that way you
don’t get your mucky paws on it,’ said Chris, clearly enjoying his position of
power. He was nonchalantly lounging across most of the seat, arms spread
outward along the top rail as though that was the only thing holding him up
from slumping into an easy sleep.

Danny,
conversely was leaning almost fully across the table; imploring: ‘Yes; we might
lose the house. And it’s not just the house - I’m really worried I’m going to
go bankrupt. And the thing is; if I go bankrupt, I’ll lose my job. You see, if
you’re bankrupt, the company sees it as an additional temptation that you’re
going to steal; give in to temptation - and a lot of that comes our way in the
security industry.’

‘What
are you talking about?’

‘Take
that system I sold to Edison’s Printers up
Harrogate
way; millions and millions in cash, just lying about.
If I go bankrupt, I become a security risk - they think I’ll go on the rob. And
there’s no hiding it. As soon as I’m declared bankrupt, then they’ll stop my
bank accounts, and when the company try and pay my wages into a non-existent
account, they’ll know. There’s no way around it that I can see… I need to
borrow about a grand. And I know it doesn’t need saying, but I will never bet
again.’

‘But
what is the money for? What is this investment?’ asked Chris with the slow
deliberation a teacher uses when talking to a particularly giddy primary school
pupil.

‘That’s
the thing, mate, that’s the thing,’ said Danny in a suddenly hushed voice. If
it was possible, he’d now leaned even further across the table. His work-tie
was now brushing the discarded cigarettes in the ashtray. ‘I owe so much that
whatever comes into my account bounces straight back out again… So I got to
thinking.’

‘Get
to the point,’ snapped Chris.

‘I
got to thinking that maybe there’s another way that I can take advantage of my
position without actually breaking the law.’

‘Shit,
Danny; you are starting to worry me here.’

‘There’s
nothing to worry about; okay, let me explain something to you… Selling security
systems is all about anticipating risk to a business, right?’

‘R-i-i-i-g-g-h-t,’
said Chris, non-committally.

‘That’s
what I do; I go into a business or a factory or a shop, and I try and find out
their weak points and then provide them with something which will overcome it,
such as a camera which watches a key or sensitive area. With me so far?’

‘I
suppose so.’

‘As
I’m sure that you are aware, companies pay a premium for this, but it’s a real
grudge purchase. No matter how many times we tell these people that prevention
is better than the cure, these people can’t see the whole picture until their
security is actually breached.’

Chris
suddenly moved toward the edge of his seat; his cigarette was now burning away,
untouched, in the ashtray. Clearly Danny had suddenly regained some of the
power in the relationship. He was now sitting more comfortably, almost
slouching in his chair, which was a good job because otherwise Chris’s
cigarette would have probably set fire to his tie.

‘So
how do we demonstrate to a company the level of risk, or the potential results
of such a breach? Well, quite simple, we stage a mock break-in.’

‘What?’
said Chris; he’d clearly not seen Danny’s conclusion coming.