The Magpie Trap: A Novel

The Magpie Trap

By

A. J Kirby

A White House Stories Publication

 
Published by White
House Publications in 2013

Copyright
© A.J Kirby, 2013

Kindle
Edition

All
rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission
of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a
review to be printed by a newspaper, magazine or journal.

All
characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real
persons, living or
dead,
is purely coincidental.

www.andykirbythewriter.20m.com

http://paintthistownred.wordpress.com/

Published in paperback in 2008 by YouWriteOn.com

The author asserts the moral right under the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this
work.

All Rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or
by any means without the prior written consent of the author, nor be otherwise
circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is
published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent
purchaser.

ALSO
BY THIS AUTHOR

Novels:

Sharkways

Paint this town Red

Perfect World

Bully

Novellas/
Novelettes:

The Haunting of Annie
Nicol

The Black Book

The Call of the Sea

Short
Story Collections:

The Art of Ventriloquism

Mix Tape

Non-Fiction:

Alex Ferguson’s
Greatest Manchester United x11

The Message

For Heidi, who loves me despite my flaws,

And who inspires me to be a better person.

For Mum and Dad; my constant readers.

For Jenny and Leigh, who have already escaped the
Magpie Trap, it seems.

 
And for
Grandad in Kitt Red.

Finally, to all of my friends, and especially
Davoc;

(Thanks for the cover, cocker)

You’re the ones that I persevere for…

“What is the need to tell about it more? (…)

Thus ended these two homicides in woe;

Died thus the treacherous poisoner also.”

Geoffrey Chaucer, ‘The
Pardoner’s Tale’ (
The Canterbury Tales
)

Prologue: The Hunter

Walking on dry sand could turn a romantic walk
into an all-out endurance test. It is a patience-testing chore which requires
different muscles in the masochist’s legs than walking on virtually any other
surface; you walk in a different way.

Walking in high-heels
must feel like that after a while.

At first, you are
devastatingly aware of your own ungainly nature. You do not
glide
, you do not
saunter
; you
stagger
, you
lurch
forward; you gloop forward like
a lump of shit on the edge of a shovel which just won’t shake off. You know,
when you are walking on sand, that you are, basically, shit. You cannot do
anything; you are helpless.

Exhausted, Mark Birch
tottered towards the Hotel Vasco Da Gama. Five hours of lifting his legs out of
the surprisingly robust embrace of the fine sand had tautened his calf muscles
to breaking point. But Mark wasn’t decked out in high-heels, nor was he in
recommended
sensible
beach footwear,
instead he wore flip-flops. Flip-flops which sulkily threw themselves to the
sand in oh so many ‘I can’t go on’ moments; flip-flops which took out their own
revenge on his relentless feet by biting between his toes like angry crabs. But
Mark’s broiling brain barely registered the cuts from a thousand tiny stones
upon his bare feet; he hardly felt the ache in the back of his legs. Instead,
his murderous rage pushed him onwards, and the sight of gradually nearing beach
hut, signalling that he was closing on his destination, spurred him on to one
final push.

One thought had unrelentingly
pumped through his mind like an electric current, generating the required power
to keep him walking. One thought; or rather one voice. Crackly telephone lines
have a way of disguising voices, however, that morning’s phone call came from
an unmistakeable source.

Ringing phones at times
like those set the pulse racing; the imagination trailing only just behind;
what has gone wrong?

Crackling…
‘Sparky; is that you?’ The voice burned Mark to the core; as though
it was coming directly from a telephone exchange within the bowels of hell.

‘We need to meet,
chief,’ the voice continued. ‘There’s a couple of things we need to clear up.’

Ease in the voice; obliviousness even. As though
what had happened between them was simply a misunderstanding.

 
          
‘Please listen to me, cocker. I just want
everything to be back to the way it was…’

The way it was? Incredible! Things can never be
the same again.

But the voice
continued, ploughing on; barging through closed doors of thoughts and feelings,
intruding upon private pain.

‘It’s not for me; it’s
for you!’
 

A salesman’s voice to the end; a syrupy,
persuasive voice, like that of the devil himself, pouring poison into his ear.
But with a hint of fiery chilli pepper added now:
 

‘Sparky; you’d better
come. After all; I know where you live now.’

 
          
Breathlessly,
Mark’s only response:
‘Where? Where do you want me to meet you?’

‘The Hotel Vasco Da
Gama… north coast. Meet me at the beach hut. I’ll have your cut of the money.
And Mark? Don’t come armed. I have to trust you on this.’
         

His friend, who had betrayed him in the worst
possible way, was now bringing up the thorny question of trust. Trust which
could never be regained; battle-lines had been drawn in the sand. Mark knew
that far from offering an olive branch, his friend was outlining the new,
violent parameters of their relationship.

Mark could not accept
that he would forever be stalked by his past; he knew that it would continue to
twist and distort his present, never allowing him to have a future. It was
revenge which drove him towards his destiny, but it was not for the loss of the
money. It was in bereavement for the loss of his peace of mind, his clarity,
and his fulfillment.

To this end, he gripped
the small, sharp knife in his pocket tightly. It had already drawn some of his
blood, but he never felt the cutting of its blade. Besides, too much blood had
already been spilt for him to care any more anyway.

His monomaniac
intensity made Mark blinkered; the wondrous, picture-postcard white beaches,
the palm trees, the wrinkled background panorama of mountains were all shut
out. All he saw was the abandoned beach hut, with its dilapidated wooden walls
and the sad slumped flag only just erect on its straw roof exposing its
failure.

Within the hut sat his
friend, looking as unflustered as if he were simply enjoying a relaxing
holiday. The fucking
Man from Del Monte
sat there magisterially; the fucking playboy of playboys playing at being a
player. The clean, white shirt reflected the suns rays and dazzled. His hair
was immaculately coiffured, and his sunglasses, even from a distance, looked
expensive. Slick-back, cock-sure; slick-sure, cock-back; unbelievably, he was
smiling.

Mark approached. Every
muscle twitched its antagonism toward the still seated figure in the hut. The
moment had played in his head many times; how it was
supposed
to happen; Mark’s desire had commandeered the remote
control. It had fast-forwarded through his friend’s futile attempts to charm
him, like he used to in the old days, and then had paused longingly on the
moment when his friend had caught sight of the knife. It had chugged forward on
slow-mo as his friend started begging and pleading…

Since that fateful
betrayal, every piece of meat Mark had sliced had been his friend’s flesh; at
first tough, but eventually, gelatinously pliant to the jagged edge of the
blade. Mark could almost smell the hot, bestial stench of urine on his friend’s
leg, as he finally, desperately concluded, that no matter how much of the money
he was to bribe Mark with, there was no escaping the real pay-off.

It was finally going to happen…

But there were more
than two pairs of eyes on the scene on the beach that day. Through the palm
trees flanking the beach, the hunter waited. Mark, his prey, was edging ever
closer to springing his trap.

I spy with my little eye…

In a sense, Mark Birch
had been walking into the jaws of a trap for his whole life, and no matter what
charms and superstitions he adopted in order to ward off his evil fate, he was
simply drawn in deeper and deeper.

The trap’s teeth had made their mark upon him; he was chosen. Rewind the
tape; confront him at any point of his life, and you’ll see that look in his
eyes; that look which says:
I’m falling.
From here the only way is down.

An image: a shaven-headed, squat man is standing
directly on top of a fresh batch of newly printed bank notes; on a funereal
pyre of money which stretches up towards the sky. Well, maybe not that high;
but the corrugated ceiling maybe. The king’s ransom acts unknowingly in its
Icarus-like grasping for these heights; it is an object, a
thing
, but the man, in climbing onto this stack, opens himself up
to torment by the twin gods of ambition and temptation. The
thing
is instantly more than a simple
thing - it is becoming. Cash, money, dollar, spondooliks, wonga; it will become
all of these things and more, once it passes into the grubby hands of the
world.

Once there, some alarming
percentage of it will become coated with the powdery grime of drugs, or perhaps
it will buy guns, junk food, or a woman, or a boy…

Yet more of it will
find its way, sneakily, craftily, into the hands of loan sharks, or into murky
casinos. But maybe, just maybe, that note which is underneath the clunky
work-boots of this man will drop accidentally into the till of an ice cream
man, whose wares will make one small girl’s day seem to shine with joyous
newness, or maybe it will float on some chance breeze down some grid somewhere,
and reach somebody that really needs it, for survival.

For the moment, most of
the money remains mockingly pristine and clean, in both senses of the word. It
awaits the great signifier; human desire. But perhaps it has already been
tainted; the man’s boots have spread possessive footprints across the top layer
of notes. He has introduced the virgin money to a quick taster of the
contortions it will have to perform later on in life; its bending and creasing
to the vice-like will of people; vice-like in both senses of the word.

 
This compact man is the King of the Castle,
but he surveys his realm with apparent calm, apparent ease. He turns to camera
and we start to define his features a little more clearly. His face is dark;
brooding even. A prominent nose overshadows the rest of his features; it
awkwardly props up a pair of glasses which fold across his face with all the
grace of a stubborn deck chair refusing to be erected. The glasses shield small
piggy eyes, boxer’s ears.

He has a pock-marked
chin and a well-lined brow which resembles the ripples the tide leaves
in new sand. Taking his full body into account as he
creakily moves across the reams of money, you acquire the immediate impression
that he wallows through life; as though a lorry-load of cement has been
haphazardly poured over the man; slowing
his
moving parts. The setting cement though, has captured the careworn quality of
his face; it shows that something does lie beneath… The throb of quickening
blood pulses through the veins which stand out on his temple.

Observe
though
;
the statue moves once more.
He steps forward and bows, lowering himself off the top of the pile of money as
though cracking through cement with each bend of his limbs. He descends from
his tower of wealth and back into reality. The soft cushion of the bank notes
has now been replaced by the cold, hard concrete of the room’s sterile floor.
As he lands, there is an audible slap of his boots on the floor, but it might
as well have been a slap across his face.

           
Watch; watch those
small ‘tells’ which betray this man’s discomfort.

He
fiddles with the crucifix on the chain around his
neck. He rubs it between his fingers as though trying to summon up a genie to provide
him with guidance. But with a wistful smile he tucks it under the collar of his
overalls and once more steps awkwardly up onto the pile of new bills, this time
carrying a tool.

He
hoists himself up using his free hand, gaining leverage by getting a foothold
on a crate is at the foot of the pile - a
crate
;
there is so much money
here that it will have to be transported by fork-lift truck.

When
he reaches the summit, the man pauses to wipe his brow, to gain his breath. He
has stocky shoulders and a thick neck, which would suggest that he is tough,
but there is a tell-tale shake in his leg, betraying giddiness maybe? The stack
of money is, after all, fairly tall, and there is always a more tangible
possibility of being hurt when falling from such a height. Falling from a
skyscraper, you’d be wearing the crash helmet of unconsciousness; from this
height, you’d feel every mortal part of you hitting the cold, hard ground.

But
maybe it is the presence of the money itself which has inspired such wobbles in
his legs. There is probably a ton of money in that room. Not the hackneyed ‘ton
of money’ which you’d lose in the bookies on a crazy bet, but a real, ton of
money. Maybe you’d be able to bend down, pick up handfuls of the stuff and
throw it about like confetti, but you’d never be able to pick up the whole lot.

And
the money isn’t the most seductively valuable thing in the room. No, the money
is almost a diversion, there to distract from the real prize. Look around the
vast space of the room, what do you see? Of course, you see the money, but you
see something else, once your eye is finally diverted, don’t you? For the money
is strangely pushed to one side, off
in the
shadows.

Look
at the CCTV cameras for a moment; they have almost rudely turned their back on
the cash, and instead are thrusting their criss-crossing spotlights over one
thing in particular. It is a technological instrument of some description. It
hardly seems worthy of a mention, but so effortlessly does it transcend the
vulgar allure of the money, in those supposedly non-judgemental eyes of the
CCTV cameras, that we must give it a second look.

The
item itself is hardly bigger than a briefcase. It is made of some kind of hard,
metallic substance which looks as though you could drop it a thousand times,
and all you’d dent would be the floor. It could either be immensely heavy, or
Gossamer-light. But something about the low thrum it gutturally emits suggests
immense harnessed energy. It throbs with the fiery intent of a sleeping dragon.
And the more closely you look, the more the object does actually resemble
something organic; the metallic casing could almost be thick scales.

Listen
to the tiny dragon’s snore. It exhales a low vibrating moan which says:
I can give you exactly what you want. But there
may be a price.
But be quiet now. The dragon seems to be waking; two red
lights click on - eyes? Something is happening. And then, from the dragon’s
mouth spouts a fountain of vomit. A torrent of bile is channelled onto the
conveyor belt in front of the dragon. And what is being projected from the
dragon’s gaping mouth is in fact money; clean, pristine, spend-able money. The
dragon is, in fact, a printer; and judging by the rate at which the spondooliks
are spontaneously erupting, there’d be a pretty steady market in dragon-sick.

And our tiny instrument has a name;
it is the world famous Precisioner printer. Ah, the Precisioner printer; safe
behind her gilded steel cage; watched-over relentlessly by cameras which perch
like a flock of sentinel birds amongst the roof beams. Their mechanical eyes
watch proprietarily over their domain, imbued with a robotic menace and
whirring cruelty.

But hang on, you say, this stocky
man has been allowed into their nest unawares, like some devious Oviraptor. And
now you see the lone protagonist of our drama again, and realise that, of
course, he is in disguise. That’s why he’s been allowed to get this far. He is
in disguise as an electronic security engineer; see his crisp blue overalls? On
the back is written the words EyeSpy Security. And it appears to be a more than
adequate disguise - he’s got this far hasn’t he?

Using the money as a prop, he
reaches toward the cameras on the roof beams, tool in hand. Is he trying to
destroy the security systems? He certainly moves toward this particular camera
with purpose…

And then you lose sight of the man.
He has slipped from the periphery of the camera’s vision. Suddenly your picture
jolts alarmingly. Horizontal lines rapidly descend the screen as though it is a
fast-forwarded game of Tetris. And then static; before finally, a black screen.
We are left, literally, in the dark.

Suddenly the screen
starts to flicker into life once more.

Focus… adjust… you can
just about discern the outline of shapes in the background, but the image is
like a negative from a damaged film. Wait: gradually, the brightness is
tempered, contrast is added. Fine tunings are being made. And then we see the
full moon-face of the security engineer loom into the picture once more, in
extreme close-up. His face is set in a mask of steely determination.

 
He bites his lip in concentration as we see
the blurred outline of his hand - too-close to the camera to be seen properly -
twisting the lens at the very front of the instrument. Then he moves back,
edgily across the money, and he picks up a battered-looking laptop which he has
connected to the camera itself. He checks the clarity of the image, and then
moves on to the next camera.

You now see our man
from a side-angle. Discern the sinewy musculature of his left-arm as he extends
it up towards this new object, stretching his uniform taut. He has his back to
the money and the printer now, but never once stops to give them that
appreciative ‘second glance’; that rubber-necking, open-mouthed look over the
shoulder which it so deserves. For all the world, he is just getting on with
his job; he shows admirable self-restraint. If this man really is a security
engineer, he has a seen-it-all quality to him which comes from extreme
competence in one’s profession, be it as engineer or thief.

He has, perhaps, a long
history of averting his eyes from military tattoos of gold bullion which parade
their regimented arrogance in the safety of bank vaults. Maybe he’s adept at
adopting the tunnel-vision approach to blocking out the view of the voluptuous
painted goddesses in the priceless artworks they contain, whilst he gets on
with the real job. Here, he is treating the money as a part of the furniture;
standing on it as though that is its primary function. But then, perhaps that is
what money is? A way of lifting a person higher, allowing them to attain their
goals? This man’s goal is to access the cameras, and the money has facilitated
that action.

But he is not alone in
the inner sanctum. For the first time, a second man steps into the picture; a
big bear of a man. He is wearing a black hat with a shiny peak and extravagant
epaulettes adorn his shoulders. A military man? His protruding paunch, which
asks pertinent questions of the strength of his shirt’s material, suggests
otherwise. His booming, belly-enhanced, bellicose voice shatters the silence.

 
‘How’s it coming along?’

Our man’s head flicks
round in shock, as though he’d forgotten he wasn’t alone, or maybe as if he’d
been caught doing something he shouldn’t.

Peak-cap continues,
tucking his thumbs into the loops of his belt as though he is trying to support
their weight somehow: ‘It’s those particular cameras we’ve been having problems
with. Got a new boss starting soon; everything’s got to be perfect for his
arrival.’

‘I’m just performing
some routine tests at the moment; cleaning, re-focusing and adjusting the lens,
checking the contrast, the brightness,’ says our man.

‘The amount you guys
charge, and all you’re doing is fiddling with the lens? I could do that
myself!’ And then Peak-cap roars with laughter. His belly shakes with mirth,
exerting almost unbearable pressure on the buttons on his shirt.

A flash of anger on the
part of our stocky man: ‘There’s a bit more to it than that…’

‘Calm down son. I’m
only playing with you. You could be fiddling the system for all I know about
those things.’

Stocky shoots Peak-cap
a look which says - guilty?

‘You’re not still
worried about standing on that pile of money are you? I
told
you, don’t worry about it; we’re always doing it here. Main
Monitoring Centre won’t bat an eyelid when they see you on camera. Anyway, it’s
only Mauritian rupees the Precisioner’s making - they’re not going to mind the
odd muddy footprint on a note are they?’

Stocky moves one of his
steel toe-capped size tens across the crisp new notes, still clearly unsure of
his footing.

‘Look, I think the
problem here is fairly obvious. Somebody has physically altered the angle of
the camera.’

Almost too quickly,
Peak-cap shoots back: ‘Must have been knocked by one of the fork-lifts. Still,
good job we called you in…’

The walkie-talkie
handset strapped to peak-cap’s belt suddenly fizzes into action. He taps it a
couple of times, shakes it…walks out of the picture once more in order to
speak; moving to higher ground to get a better reception.