The Magpie Trap: A Novel

by AJ Kirby

  Opening up the tiny laptop which was just about the only thing on his large polished desk, Chris seemed to be preparing himself for bad news. His face was stormy; more rain-clouds were sweeping in. Finally he reached for his phone from the small cabinet behind him. He had a voicemail to listen to:

  ‘You’ve not forgotten about our monthly meeting, I hope,’ boomed an authoritative voice. The voice seemingly saw no reason for identifying itself; thought that it was a given that people would know who it was. Chris cradled the phone headset between his shoulder and his ear and began to open up files on his laptop. The voice bellowed on, Brian Blessed like in its full blood-curdling fulsomeness: ‘I think it is important to touch-base and the meeting is an ideal forum to iron out any sticky issues. We’d like you to be here prompt, for once, because it is not just you that has other things to do.’

  Chris sighed and began making the finishing touches to an electronic drawing.

  ‘And do not, I repeat not, upset your mother,’ continued the voice with abrupt finality.

  But the voice continued; evidently he’d thought that his message had finished and that he was no longer being recorded. There had been a rustling and clatter, as if the phone had been put down, but the handset obviously hadn’t been replaced properly.

  ‘Bloody answerphones… convenient hiding place more like. I told him last time that he can’t just turn up here unannounced any more.’

  Chris slowly put down his own phone; he’d heard enough. He continued to play around with the electronic image on his laptop screen, manipulating the faces, changing the clothes. Finally he finished tweaking and sat back to look at the finished product. The picture gave voice to his private fears for why he’d been declared persona-non-grata at his parent’s house and the nagging sense that they had something to hide. It was a sickening vision of the worst case scenario; perhaps Mummy and Daddy were now involved in wild swinging parties which they had put on hold for many years while their son was in situ but which they could now explore to their heart’s content now that their son had flown the nest. Chris had created an image of them opening the front door dressed in full bondage gear…

  Chris wondered for a moment about his own mental health. Not many right-minded people he knew would photoshop the faces of their parents onto a porn scene downloaded from the internet, but then, he reflected, he didn’t know many right-minded people. They must have all been southpaws. Nevertheless, he deleted the image from his computer, if not from his mind and he sat staring into space for a while, being creative.

  In a distant office, he heard the sounds of the meeting of the vegetarians; he heard the polite chatter and the clink of china cup upon china cup as pathetic little deals were made. He sneered at nobody in particular and opened his top desk drawer, reaching round under the mountain of receipts and business cards, looking for something.

  His fingers touched upon glass and he pulled out the item. It wasn’t the high-flying businessman’s compulsory bottle of whisky however, but was actually a photograph. It featured two, fair haired boys playing on a white beach. They were wearing matching red striped football shirts. One of the boys was clearly Chris; even at that young age, he’d seemingly been adept at posing, and had adopted a kind of male-model pout which made him look faintly ridiculous. The other boy looked very similar to Chris, but without that mischievous gleam in his eyes, and with an extra few pounds on his chubby waistline.

  There was a definite family resemblance in the two boys, though, and both of them had a protective arm around the other’s shoulder. What was most striking about the photograph was the deep knowledge in Chris’s brother’s eyes, despite the fact that he’d been only seven. The blue eyes were calm, and yet, strangely alluring. Chris stared into those eyes as though in a trance. For they held a power in them; a power to remind him of that promise which he had made; a promise which he was not keeping.

  Out at the Lake

  The lake was pretty much abandoned; Mark had only seen one couple out walking their dog; they hadn’t even responded when he’d politely nodded to them. Now the air was almost still, and the reeds along the water’s edge were only lightly fluttering in the breeze. He could barely hear the distant hum of traffic; peace at last. The water lapped gently against the concrete wall just to the left of him. That would be how things would stay, he hoped. But then, hope was a dangerous thing, wasn’t it?

  Like balloons with messages attached to their string which are released at a school fete, praying that someone, somewhere will pick them up, Mark’s hopes and dreams were usually allowed to drift, to puncture, to disappear. Gradually, Mark began to release fewer and fewer balloons; to guard himself from disappointment; he concentrated on small, achievable aspects of his life instead. He was a keen fisherman, but he chose to fish in local canals and lakes which were known for not having any fish - he did not even want to entertain the idea of opportunity, of catching something - he preferred to concentrate on the pure relaxation which angling gave him. On weekends, he would make up his ubiquitous cheese and pickle sandwiches, pack up his rod and small fold-away stool, and spend a few hours communing with his father. Mark’s father was still alive and living in Newcastle, but somehow Mark always felt closer to him during these moments of quiet contemplation.

  Mark’s fishing-spot of choice was a man-made lake well off the beaten track, between Leeds from Harrogate. An old quarry, the decision had been made to turn it into a wildlife reserve by diverting the flow of a nearby stream and filling it with water; it had been a token gesture to placate the locals once Edison’s Printers blotted the landscape towards the east. Mark’s maintenance visit to the printworks had reminded him how much he missed going down to the nearby lake and he had vowed to go down there as soon as he’d finished his last call of the day. He counted himself lucky that he’d packed his fishing tackle in the van that day, and also that the last call of the day had been at a local supermarket. It meant that he’d finished his working day in the vicinity of the lake.

  As soon as he’d finished tinkering with their alarm system – there had really been nothing wrong with it, just people mucking around with things as usual – he’d almost run out to the van in order to make it to the lake before the sun set. That he made it in good time was pretty much the best that Mark could hope for.

  And so, he sat on his fold-up chair and he cast his line. Occasionally he poured a drink from his flask of Yorkshire tea. When he felt the line tug, he did not allow himself to hope. Although he climbed to his feet to check the water’s edge, he knew that there were no fish to bite; it was probably an old tyre or a boot or a…

  Suddenly Mark almost careered head-first into the lake; strong hands pressed into him, forcing him forwards. The hands were on his shoulders, pushing him hard. His work boots scrabbled to get purchase on the muddy embankment, heart racing in his mouth. Gasping for breath, struggling to remain on his feet, Mark dropped his fishing rod. Then, just when all seemed to be lost, when there was no possible way that he could avoid a drenching, he felt those same strong hands yank him back from the edge in one swift movement.

  And then came the laughter; mad, helpless, snotty, insulting laughter. Mark tried to turn around, to see his tormentor, but that laughter had already told him everything he needed to know; it was Danny Morris.

  ‘Sparky,’ trumpeted Danny. ‘How you doing, cocker? Enjoy your trip?’

  Mark turned wearily to confront his EyeSpy colleague, but all of his righteous indignation promptly fizzled out when he took in Danny’s condition; he looked like a drowned rat; or more precisely, like a hopelessly drunk rat that had fallen into a cask of whisky. Indeed, Danny’s whole look was windswept; no, Mark thought, that would be too polite a way of putting it. He looked as though he had decided to become a hedge-wrestler, or else he was trying out for the role of a blind man walking through a field of cow pats. His left leg was caked in what Mark hoped was mud, and his slip-on shoes were almost completely overwhelmed in a grass-skirt rim of countryside par
aphernalia. Remarkably, the bottle of whisky he was holding remained intact, despite the Herculean tasks he’d obviously had to overcome to actually reach the lake from the car park. Or perhaps this was the least remarkable thing about his appearance; perhaps this was the one part of Danny that he’d actually cared about not rolling about in filth. For the bottle was a part of Danny; it was like an extension of his arm, performing wholly natural movements upwards to his mouth while the rest of his body staggered about as though he were a particularly desperate fish caught from the lake. And this was the man whose instructions he’d so carefully, so potentially criminally, followed at Edison’s Printers.

  ‘What the… how the… How did you know I was here?’ stuttered Mark. He was talking as though he was another species of fish from the lake. He found himself displaying almost aquatic levels of incomprehension.

  ‘You’re always here when you’re off,’ slurred Danny. ‘Either that or in your garage, tinkering. You little tinker.’

  Mark sighed heavily; the idyllic silence had been shattered once and for all. The séance-like conditions were gone, never to be reclaimed.

  ‘Don’t tell me you drove here?’

  ‘Nah, fuck that,’ Danny laughed, before taking another swill from the bottle. ‘I flew here; the wings of opportunity took me over hill and dale, before you drew me into your net.’

  Mark tried to keep a hold of his outrage at Danny’s rude interruption, but was beginning to find it difficult not to be drawn into the man-child’s infectious absurdity. He was like some otherworldly being; too big for this world.

  ‘Well, just sit down and keep quiet,’ said Mark, pretending that he was still annoyed.

  ‘Wouldn’t want to wake the fish, eh?’ Danny was shouting now. ‘Happy swimming round in circles them guys. Not a fucking care in the world; lucky bastards.’

  Now, Mark was alarmed to see, Danny was starting to talk himself into a maudlin mood. He was surprised at the speed of this change; Danny was apparently the drunken equivalent of a high-speed racing car; euphoric to suicidal in five seconds.

  ‘Sit down,’ Mark hissed, stooping to retrieve his fishing rod from the rushes at the edge of the lake where he’d dropped it.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ muttered Danny, seemingly close to tears now. ‘It’s just all getting too much again. I can’t take it any more; I can’t take Leeds any more. I can’t take having to sit this constant examination from Cheryl…’

  Mark could see that his own therapy session, his quiet time, had now been usurped. Danny’s own, extravagant needs had taken over; he wanted to talk about me, me, me and it had to be now, now, now.

  ‘You’ve just had too much to drink. Sober up; have a few days off the booze. You’ll be fine,’ Mark tried.

  ‘It’s gone beyond all that. I’ve lost the will to do anything about it any more,’ Danny sniffed. ‘I’ve let everyone down and the best thing I can do is just leave, go somewhere else.’

  ‘That sounds like running away; you’d still have the same problems wherever you went; just a different view from the window.’

  ‘Are you happy Mark?’

  Danny’s question stopped him; it was something he’d never thought about, not really. It was something he tried to avoid thinking about. He stayed silent.

  ‘Because you always give off the impression that everything is in hand, that you know exactly what you’re expecting; nothing more, nothing less. I mean; you seem to like your job, but your job doesn’t make you who you are does it? Do you have dreams?’

  Mark shrugged off the proffered bottle of whisky and smiled weakly. In the background, the scar on the landscape which was Edison’s Printers loomed like an unpleasant reminder of what he’d done.

  ‘I get by; I like fixing things. I like to be able to have control.’

  It was the longest sentence he had ever spoken about his true feelings; he felt as though it had taken a monumental effort to say even that.

  ‘But you are more than Mr. Fixit… I don’t know… there’s something else, waiting to break free…’

  Mark and Danny were still downright refusing to meet each other’s eyes, but somewhere, in the space between them, Mark felt, a common link was starting to form. He was suddenly beginning to appreciate that there was another, different Danny, hidden deep down under the external packaging; another Danny that seemed as though he actually cared; another Danny who was as confused and alarmed at life’s eternal conundrum as Mark himself was.

  ‘I didn’t like what you asked me to do for you today, Danny, and if that’s what you mean by breaking free, then you can keep it.’

  ‘What was wrong with today? You told me everything went fine. You bloody phoned me to say that everything went fine. Don’t, at the end of this day of all days, now tell me that this is fucked up as well. This plan is about the only thing that’s keeping me going at the moment.’

  ‘But what exactly is your plan?’ asked Mark, quietly.

  ‘I told you that. We’re getting in there early on this new way of selling security systems… You know, like how they sell computer security? We’re picking their holes out for them so we can tell them what needs filling-in.’

  ‘And it is legal. I mean, it doesn’t feel legal. And I couldn’t hardly speak when I was confronted by their security men; that Burr and that Stephenson.’

  ‘Don’t worry about them. No-marks is what they are. They are nothing in comparison to the plan. It did go all right didn’t it?’

  ‘I did exactly as you asked; I ran the looped footage over their networks and nobody in their Main Monitoring Centre noticed the splice, or that the footage was being played on a loop. You can go in there and sell them some more security equipment now. Their network was exposed…’

  ‘Good,’ said Danny, holding up the bottle in a cheers gesture.

  ‘I did it, but how many more times do you want me to do it? I mean; how many times will be able to get away with it? We’re messing with people’s networks. At some point, somebody cleverer than me and you will suss us out.’

  ‘Not before we’ve already left EyeSpy behind in a cloud of dust and formed our own company, Sparko,’ said Danny, eyeing his bottle as though he’d forgotten it was there. He took a deep swig and winced at the taste. In the background some bird called in the trees; a cark more than a call, really. It sounded like nails on a blackboard.

  ‘It still doesn’t feel right,’ said Mark.

  ‘There’s only two ways out of this life we’re stuck in, Sparks; go out and grab what’s yours by being an entrai… entrepreee… entrepanner… entrepreneur or whatever it’s called or, uh, uh… Help me out here?’

  ‘Crime’s the other one that you’re thinking of,’ muttered Mark. ‘And what are you talking about this life we’re stuck in for? You’re fairly comfortable, you have a nice wife, a nice house and a…’

  ‘And a fucking garden that gets taken over by magpies. My life’s been taken over by magpies and how we can ward them off. When I go home I have to discuss things like scarecrows or how the Neighbourhood Watch would feel about us bringing in an exterminator,’ growled Danny, staring fixedly at the amber liquid in the bottle as he altered its angle.

  ‘Most people would be glad if that was the only thing they had to worry about.’

  ‘That’s the point,’ he slurred. ‘I’m not most people, am I?’

  Danny took a good while to climb to his feet. There were at least four occasions at which Mark thought that he was going to tumble into the lake, but somehow he made it. He leant a hand on Mark’s shoulder and paused a moment.

  ‘I’m off now; going back into town. See if I can’t find myself a bird…’

  And Mark had absolutely no idea whether Danny was joking or not. He watched Danny lurch away from the water’s edge and back up the path toward the car park; the stupid idiot was probably driving, after everything he’d said.

  Finally, Mark reflected, he’d got what he ostensibly wanted; to be left alone with his thoug
hts. But now he was alone, it felt too quiet. He wanted Danny to come back and maybe shout some more. He so wanted noise in his life, but didn’t know how to go about filling the void. As he stared at the rippling water of the lake, Mark reflected on his one dream; the one which he hadn’t told Danny about. It was a simple, achievable dream; he wanted to be a part of a proper family. He wanted to find a wife, have children and to be able to look after his parents in their retirement. He wanted to make a simple life for himself, possibly on the coast; he had always been enraptured by the wildness and the authority of the sea. It had a romantic mystique for him which allowed him to believe that all of his troubles could be washed away or dwarfed by its eternal sensual power.

  Groaning, Mark began to pack away his fishing gear; he’d probably need to follow Danny in the van, to make sure that he got back into town alright; responsibility took many forms. On the short walk up to the car park, he passed an abandoned, half-empty bottle of whisky though, and he suddenly began to feel better about things. Perhaps Danny would turn the corner; perhaps he would get his life in order. Mark knew all about order; his life may have lacked excitement, but he always knew how many tins were in the cupboard, how long it had been since he had last had the clippers run over his head, exactly how much he could spend on drinks if he went out.

  Mark took comfort in the fact that his life was so structured, so secure; he knew that nothing could ever harm him if he never stepped out of his rabbit-hole; if he never put his head above the parapet. He’d seen what happened to the over-ambitious; people like Danny, whose life lurched from one disaster to another as though he couldn’t live with the hand that life had dealt him; Danny, who was constantly trying to change these odds. It would take something dramatic to shake Mark from his wilful inertia… And that something definitely didn’t involve getting caught up in any more of Danny stupid schemes as he had at Edison’s.