The Magpie Trap: A Novel (37 page)

The Usual
Suspects

From the height
of the scratch of paint upon the dry stone wall, Jim Hunter determined that the
vehicle used was a blue transit van. From the freshness of the paint, and also from
the fact that the moss and lichen which covered the wall had been scraped off
and had not grown back, he worked out that this van had crashed into the wall
very recently.

He also assumed that there had been a certain amount of waiting time at
the site at which the van had been left; the cigarettes smoked right down to
the nub indicated impatient hanging about on the part of the criminals. This
all led him to deduce that there had been a group of people at
Edison
’s Printers on
the night of the heist, and that they had slipped under the police’s radar.
They were so wrapped up in their theory that Callum Burr had simply opened the
door for the Wardle crew to slip inside the site that they’d not even
entertained the possibility that another group might have made their own way
onto the site.

Hunter was adept at reading a narrative structure from seemingly
meaningless events. He threaded them into chains which began to make sense to
him; this was his kind of police work. For the more scientific means of tracking
the criminals, he utilised civilian contacts who still owed him one from his
time on the force, contacts who were far more willing to help than the
reluctant Merton, and who were also far more capable of keeping things
discreet.

Hunter sent the cigarettes off for
DNA
analysis by a
lecturer at the
University
of
Leeds
whom he knew
from a previous life; he had once dated her. Dr. Sharp was as prickly as her
name suggested, but she also had an inquisitive mind which would be happy to be
occupied by an extra-curricular project, such as the cigarettes for example.
Jim much preferred her probable spiky questionings to those of the staff of a
police laboratory who would probably turn down flat his requests for help; he
knew they were all over-worked anyway.

He took the paint samples to a local mechanic who was straight out of
his little black book of former informants. Don Carson would be able to
identify the chosen paint. Despite his dodgy past, Don now threw himself life
and soul into the running of his garage.

Whatever happened, Jim didn’t want the police to know about his own
private investigations. He knew that the ‘assistants’ whom he had chosen had
their own particular reasons to keep quiet about his requests. What he also
knew was that the slender resources of the police would be dedicated to
watching the Wardle crew. They would not welcome, nor would they listen to his
meddling conspiracy stories. Hunter felt partially responsible for the heist,
for the terrible injury that Burr had suffered, and he wanted to do something
about it. He therefore knew that he was perhaps the only hope of catching the
perpetrators.

After an agonised wait, the results of the
DNA
test
telephoned through to him. It was not good news. Dr. Sharp was the best in the
business, but even she hadn’t been able to extract the required data from the
cigarette butts.

‘The rain and the mud has saturated them too much, Jim, I’m sorry,’ she
said. ‘Look, what’s this all about? You a Private Investigator now?’

Jim had to think on his feet, ‘Yeah, I’ve been hired to snoop about
looking at a woman having an affair. The cigarettes were found in her back
garden. Probably by the man she’s been seeing. He’s good though. I’ve never
caught a look at his face. I thought that by analysing the cigarettes I’d be
able to cut out a lot of laborious waiting outside for him to emerge.’

The old lies were tripping off his tongue just as they used to. He would
have made a very good criminal, he’d often been told. Perhaps that’s what made
him such a good policeman in his day.

‘I hope that’s not some kind of barbed comment at me,’ said Dr. Sharp.
‘I know that things happened between us, but that was a long time ago now…’

Jim had to work hard to placate his former lover, ‘I’m sorry Ruth, you
know I didn’t mean that! Please… this is important.’

‘I heard about
Edison
’s Printers,’ interrupted
Dr. Sharp. ‘I’d been meaning to call you, you worked there didn’t you? Are you
okay? Did you lose your job? This hasn’t got anything to do with the heist, has
it?’

Ruth Sharp clearly still followed the movements of Jim Hunter as though
she was a Private Investigator herself.

‘I’m on suspension,’ Jim knew that the best lies always contained shards
of the truth. ‘I’m just doing the private investigations until I’m allowed back
in…’

The blue paint
proved far more fruitful a line of investigation. His friend Don, an expert in
paint-jobs, was only too willing to help once Jim had slipped him a few notes.
Jim visited him at his garage to get the information at first-hand. He was led
past the pit - over which a beautiful Chevrolet was hanging, being worked on;
it’s gleaming, lipstick-red polish was at odds with the rusty scrapheap the
rest of the garage resembled - and into the small office along the side wall.

Don had to kick a stray tyre out of the way in order to get the office
door open, and the scene inside almost made Jim smile. He had heard the phrase
‘Organised Chaos’, but this surely was not it; reams of invoices lay in a pile
on the floor, stray manuals were discarded, spines broken onto the floor, the
phone looked as though it had been battered by a baseball bat.

Don pulled up a small stool for himself, his large bottom hanging over
the sides, and tried to clear away some of the pile of receipts and letters on
the right hand side of the desk so Jim could perch on the end of it. Underneath
the paperwork, an endless spiral of Olympian rings was revealed; the reminder
of years of stains from the underside of coffee cups throughout the ages of the
old desk.

‘It’s a Magenta Blue 001,’ said Don. ‘Handily for you, there’s only a
few places round here which would sell such a colour. Everywhere has your reds,
your blacks; your Magenta blue cars are a bit thin on the ground. The thing is,
it’s nearly green and it shows up the dirt big style.’

Don leaned over the car-lot office desk, his great beer belly dislodging
piles of papers in front of him. He pulled out a catalogue and showed Hunter
the exact colour.

‘So, can you find out where exactly this paint was bought recently?’

Jim was hoping against hope.

‘As it happens mate, you can. Police started a new scheme a while back,
you might not have heard about it since you’re off the force, and it’s all very
hush-hush.’

Don rubbed his filthy black hands down his overalls, grabbed a tea bag
and threw it in a mouldy mug. ‘Tea? Or maybe you’d like something a bit
stronger?’

He opened the bottom desk drawer to reveal a bottle of Famous Grouse.

‘Think I’ll pass. So, what’s this scheme that you’re talking about?’
asked Jim. He was trying to perch on the cleanest spot of the entire garage,
the filing cabinet, but still a wet oily rag had slipped onto his trousers,
leaving a large dark stain.

‘Right. Well, it’s called Operation Picasso; it’s all to stop the
massive amounts of stolen cars in
West Yorkshire
. Any time a
garage does a paint-job, we have to record the registration of the vehicle, and
the colour painted. The pigs, ahem… police, sorry Jim, want to be able to track
the cars far more easily.’

Don lit up a cigarette, which was already turned black by his hands. He
erupted into a series of hacking coughs, before he finally righted himself and
waved the packet over at Hunter.

‘No thanks. I can see what they do to you now those little death sticks…
So, there’s obviously a lot of garages in
West Yorkshire
, can you help
me narrow it down? So I don’t have to make three thousand phone calls. I need
to find out the ones that do Magenta blue.’

Don waddled over to a decrepit computer in the corner, waggled the mouse
around a bit and then the screen jerked into life.

‘Believe it or not, I’ve already done it. I got the suppliers to send me
the list on email. I’m not a Luddite like you, you know. Now, one little click
and I’ll have these printed out for you.’

Jim was astounded. If there was one lesson he’d learned over and over
again during his time as a detective it was that you should never, ever
underestimate anybody. It seemed that he had seriously underestimated his
mechanic friend. Within two minutes he was presented with a list of thirty garages
in the region, their telephone numbers, and the owner’s details. He had the
real feeling that this lead was going somewhere.

Jim Hunter
spent the rest of the morning on what felt like a wild goose chase. Maybe there
was something in his tone of voice which made him sound like a policeman, but
people clammed up when they heard his voice on the other end of the phone.

He lost count of the number of garage owners who claimed they weren’t
in, when he could hear them very well shouting over to whoever had answered the
phone: ‘tell him I’m not in…’

But Jim also learned patience and perseverance when he was a policeman.
He clung to the conviction that the
next
call
he’d make would break the case. Finally, he did make that call. It was a garage
in the
South Leeds
town of
Wortley
, and yes, they
did remember spraying a transit van Magenta blue.

‘Last week, as it happens sir. I can give you details, just let me make
a note of your name and contact details.’

For once, he was speaking with a competent person; the secretary at this
particular garage was clearly efficient.

Lying once again, Jim gave his name, ‘It’s D.I. Jim Hunter; Millgarth
Police Station; West Yorkshire Police. Now, what’s the information I need?’

‘The van had an SA52 registration. It’s five years old; the owner’s name
is a Steve Elton, although he might have been lying. We never got any ID from
him, I’m sorry.’

‘Steve Elton? Now that name rings a bell…’

Jim hung up and felt that old familiar excitement rising in him. He now
had a name. What should he do with it? Should he inform Merton? Or should he
just make sure that he was right, first, to save any more embarrassment?

He’d had various dealings with Steve Elton when he was in the police.
The man was a small-time crook; surely he wasn’t capable of being involved in
anything like the heist at
Edison
’s? But then, Callum Burr
had struck him as a bumbling gorilla of a man, and he’d seemingly been involved
with the Wardle crew.

You should never underestimate anyone in this life…

Money, money,
money

Chris, Danny
and Mark checked into the Midas Hotel in the afternoon. After finally
persuading the staff at the hotel that they were good for the money to pay for
the five-star accommodation, they then retired to their rooms to wash away the
weariness of their travelling. They planned to reconvene in one of the rooms
later to count the money.

Mark staggered into his room after an almighty struggle with the
card-key access system at his door. He dragged his bag after him along the marble
floor, as though it was a particularly reluctant dog on a lead. It contained
all of his worldly possessions which meant anything to him. It was a sad little
bundle, he thought.

But then he saw the room. Or the
suite
,
as it actually should have been described. The suite resembled a film-set; Mark
had only ever seen such opulence in films. The entire wall down the right hand
side of the room was filled with a tapestry of scenes from the history of the
island; there were pictures of men fishing, hunting… there was the short,
stocky, alien-looking Dodo, right in the middle, a sad look in his eyes. The
other walls contained ornately carved wooden artefacts which were magical in
their craftsmanship. In the centre of the room lay a gigantic King Sized bed
which was covered with deep blue silk sheets and crawling with small cushions.
French windows at the far side of the suite opened out onto a superlative view
of the hotel’s palm-flanked swimming pool, and in the far distance, there was
the sea.

Mark slumped onto a beautifully carved wooden chair and winced as he
tried to take off his shoes. His ankle had now swelled enormously and sores
were weeping over the top of his socks. Gritting his teeth, he finally overcame
the pain and wrenched off the shoe with one lung-busting push. He gingerly
returned his bare foot to the cold stone floor and then dragged himself to his
feet again. He had to clean the ankle; he had to stop it from crippling him. He
hobbled towards the bathroom door and peered round it, gripping the door handle
for support.

The bathroom was almost as spacious as the bedroom; the marble glistened
its hard, snooty welcome to him. The extravagant bath was as big as a small
swimming pool, with gold-plated taps; when Mark turned them he almost expected
liquid gold to trickle out, but no, rich, pure water nonchalantly streamed out,
as if it somehow thought that it was an improvement on natural water. Mark
almost fell into the bath in his eagerness to get in…

Later, when
they gathered in Chris’s room, Mark noted that it was, if anything, even more
decadent. It seemed that he had booked himself into the largest, most palatial
suite in the Midas Hotel. In addition to the majestic bedroom and bathrooms,
there was also a further meeting room area, which contained glorious kaftan
rugs on the walls, and a huge mahogany table. The table’s legs were elaborately
carved into the ubiquitous, cartoonishly plump figure of the Dodo.

Mark contemplated the strange looking bird as he waited for Chris to
fetch the bag containing the money. As far as he knew, this would be the first
time that they had taken it out of the bag since the heist at
Edison
’s Printers
which seemed so long ago.

They sat around the huge table and Danny poured the contents of the bag
into the middle of the table. Once again, just like when they were on the
beach, Chris and Danny’s eyes opened wide in awe at the sight in front of them.
Mark, though, set about counting up the money. He wanted to get his share
sorted as soon as possible in order that he could send some home for his
mother. At least one good thing could come from the situation.

It took Mark an hour to count the money, by which time Danny and Chris
had ordered room service; six bottles of champagne and a silver-plated tray
full of delicate, melt-in-the-mouth pastries. The high life had started.

Chris had turned on MTV on the meeting room’s majestic plasma screen and
was disrupting Mark’s carefully constructed piles of money, throwing handfuls
into the air. Danny was jumping up and down on the bed, ruffling the blue silk
sheets. He was doing the cliché-ridden money dance, pouring bucket-loads of
champagne down his throat. Mark finally got his own pile of money sorted and
placed it back in the bag.

Sickened at the scene which was developing, he knew he had to get out.
The two of them were behaving just like they did in
Leeds
; the only
thing that had changed was the quick fix of money.

‘You two,’ he said. ‘I’m off to the Foreign Exchange. I’m going to
change a load of this money back into sterling and send it straight back over
for my mam.’

‘Do that tomorrow Mark! Enjoy the moment,’ cried Chris, already slurring
his words.

‘I can’t do that; I need to do this so at least I can feel a little less
guilty.’

And with that, Mark was out of the door.

Chris suddenly
sobered up, he checked that Mark really had ambled away down the corridor and
then clicked his fingers.

‘Get off that bed Danny, you prat. The Precisioner’s under there. Let’s
see if we can get it working…’

Danny almost fell off the
bed in his haste to get off. Chris lifted up the silk sheets and retrieved the
laptop-sized piece of machinery. It really was an amazing piece of equipment;
cold grey metal formed the skeletal outer shell of the kit, with a small LCD
screen in the centre. It was compact, and heavily armoured, like a small, tough
mollusc. Inside, there was an almost organic heart beating life into the
instrument, and the tray at the bottom, for the distribution of the notes,
resembled a cavernous mouth.

‘I read up about the Precisioner,’ said Chris, concentrating on powering
up each of the switches on the underside of the printer. ‘It’s one of these new
technological devices which relies more upon the software than the hardware.
Because decent printers are getting so cheap nowadays, they had to come up with
something that would beat the forgers. It used to be that the commercial
printing hardware was so expensive that forgers couldn’t compete, but we live
in more inclusive, democratic times. The ability to forge bank notes is now
available to everyone. What they did with this machine is take the
software
to a new level. With this
machine, we can print our own notes which we’ll be able to use anywhere in the
world.’

‘So we don’t have to stay in
Mauritius
?’ asked Danny.
He was becoming impatient. Chris had still not powered up the machine.

‘No Danny, we don’t. We can stay on the run, across the world, wherever
we want to go - just find out what the currency is for the country we fancy,
and then print out as much as we need… The ultimate in freedom; this little
beauty is our skeleton key to open every door which has previously been closed
to us.’

With a final flourish, Chris finished off booting up the unit and an
image of a bank note appeared on the small LCD screen.

‘What do you do now then?’ said Danny. He couldn’t see any keypad on the
smooth sides of the printer; how would they access the files?

‘I think it’s a touch-screen. Hang on,’ said Chris, prodding his finger
at the screen.

Nothing happened. He picked the Precisioner up again and turned it
upside down, searching desperately for something to unlock the printer. The
outer shell was stuck-fast to the interior as though linked through some kind
of an umbilical cord. How could they tame this animal?

‘Where are Mark’s bags? There must be a screwdriver in one of them.’

Beads of sweat started to appear on Chris’s brow. He picked up one of
the champagne bottle out of the ice bucket and rolled it across his forehead.
Maybe they would have to let Mark in on this part of the plan anyway.

‘The
Edison
’s security is built-in to
the Precisioner; it must be. We must have to break some code…’

‘Wait a minute though, chief. Maybe we don’t have to involve Mark at
all. He seems to be wasting his share of the money right now… I have another
plan.’

Danny had already thrown Mark’s bag onto the table, scattering some of
the piles of money all over the floor. He unzipped it and delved into its
hidden secrets, searching for the tool which would be the key agent in his
strategy; his mobile phone. He’d not turned it on since the flight, deeming it
surplus to requirements, but now he realised that the mysterious
BBC
-voiced man had
probably been trying to contact him. He’d probably know how to get the printer
working. After all, it was why he wanted it in the first place.

When he turned on the cheap, brick-like object – it was only a
pay-as-you-go that he’d picked up after discarding his EyeSpy phone – there was
an answerphone message waiting for him. Stealing a quick lance at Chris, he
called his voicemail.

The message could have been left by the
Mauritius
tourist board,
such was its propriety. Danny almost smiled at the thought, until he heard the
rest of the message.

Welcome to my beautiful
island paradise,
said the voice.
A
place where all of your dreams may come true. But not yet; remember your
promise to me.

At the moment, the
Precisioner printer which you have in your possession is set to print only
Mauritian Rupees. Only I have the code to change this. Call it my insurance policy.
I needed to make sure that you came to
Mauritius
and you stayed in
Mauritius
. Money does strange things to people; you might have
thought you could simply go out on your own.

Bring the printer to me in
Rose Hill. I will know when you are here and I will contact you directly. And
Daniel? Do not turn this into another of your disasters. I will be watching. I
know all about how you nearly screwed up the heist and left that man for dead.
Come quickly, and come unarmed. This is my number if you have any problems; --

Danny listened to the message and tried to make his face as impassive as
possible. Nevertheless, Chris looked at him strangely as he finished listening
to the message.

‘Who was that?’

‘Oh, only Cheryl, wanting to know where I am. Nothing important,’ said
Danny.

Mark’s trip to
the bank had not been entirely a success. When he had tried to hand over such a
large amount of cash, the Bank Manager had to be called from his office in the
back.

‘I’m sorry sir,’ he politely tried to explain; ‘but it is our policy
that we cannot make transactions of this particular amount of money all at
once. It is too much money sir! We cannot handle all of this money in its
entirety…’

Mark did manage to change a small amount of the money, about five
thousand pounds-worth, and then was allowed to wire it across to his mother’s
bank account. He then tried to undertake another, separate transaction, trying
to bypass the rules, but the bank was about to close - the manager was
virtually shooing him out of the door - so Mark vowed to go back the next day
and send more money.

What Mark wanted more than anything else now was oblivion. He knew that
sleep would be impossible, so he promised himself that he would get drunk. It
was the only thing for it, and after all, Chris and Danny would be half-cut by
now. He dragged himself back to Chris’s room, where it was clear some kind of
an argument had taken place between the two of them. They sat in stony silence
on the balcony aggressively tipping more champagne down their necks, leering
down at some of the bikini clad girls in the hotel pool.

‘Get your money changed? Sent home to mummy?’ snapped Chris abruptly.

‘They let me change it, and wire about five thousand.
          
It might be enough to cover her rent
for a while somewhere better than Daffodil Acres; but they wouldn’t let me send
any more and then the bank had to close. I’ll have to go back and wire some
more tomorrow, maybe from a different bank.’

Danny wordlessly passed Mark an open bottle of champagne, and was surprised
when Mark took a long, head-back swig from the bottle.

‘So where’s the rest of your money now? You didn’t show the bank all of
the money in your bag did you? Did they ask you any questions?’ Chris was very
persistent in his own questioning of Mark, who simply sat, supping at the
champagne bottle. ‘Still got the cash on you? In your bag is it?’

‘Why, Chris? Why are you so interested?’

Mark was beginning to feel a little light-headed from the drink, and the
lack of sleep. He felt anger building up inside him. He glared across the
plastic balcony furniture at Chris, who was nonchalantly smoking a cigarette.
Chris met Mark’s glare with an amused look; his white teeth sparkled in the
afternoon sun.

And then suddenly his mouth began to twist and contort into a blurred
snarl, and the balcony was moving.

Chris’s shirt with its black writing on white linen suddenly spread into
a gigantic chessboard. Chris seemed as though he was squawking now, like a
demented bird - a magpie.