The Magpie Trap: A Novel (9 page)

           
To her face, Chris was all cheeky
winks and joviality. When she transferred the call, he flashed his famous,
knee-trembling smile.

           
‘Any calls for me?’

           
‘Mr. Parker, sir, ummm; where have
you been?
The veggies
have been
looking for you…’ If anything, the poor girl had become even more
ruddy-cheeked. ‘How am I supposed to make up an excuse for you if you don’t
tell me where you are?’

           
Chris nonchalantly leaned on the desk
and began to fondle the awful pink teddy bear she’d placed by her computer. For
a terrifying moment, he couldn’t remember whether he’d bought the bear for her
as recompense for some excuse she’d had to invent to explain his absence. He
touched the fur and tried to discern whether it felt expensive. Maybe once he’d
been trying to get into her knickers. He couldn’t remember. Or maybe it was
simply another example of his being so generous, just like the cream-a-cakes
and the constant rounds he shouted in the pub and the ‘loans’ that he
habitually doled out to chancers like Danny.

           
‘Just make anything up,’ he said.
‘In fact;
always
tell them that I am
in my creative-thinking place. Those guys know nothing about creativity, so
they’ll just have to leave me to it. Just like I leave them to their tofu.’

           
‘There’s been a call for you,’
murmured Gemma. ‘They wanted to leave a message on your voicemail. They
wouldn’t say who it was, just that it was personal, and I didn’t want to pry.’

           
‘Thanks Gem; you’re a gem. Oh, and
by the way; where are
the veggies
at
the moment? Schmoozing with clients? They surely can’t be doing any work?’

           
‘They’re all in a meeting,’
whispered Gemma. ‘Like you say; “why work when you can have a meeting?’”

           
‘You’re catching on quick,’ said
Chris, doffing an imaginary cap to her. Then he produced the clear plastic bag
which contained the fragile box of cream-a-cakes and he stepped back and gave
the same mock-bow that Maurice had given. There’s nothing like originality, and
Chris’s bow was
nothing
like
originality.

           
‘Oh Chris!’ gushed Gemma. ‘You
shouldn’t have. What is it?’

           
Perhaps she assumed that underneath
all of the bows and ribbons and shimmering foil there was a goddamn engagement
ring or something.

           
‘Open it up… But don’t get too excited,
Gem; it’s only something small.’

           
Oh
God no; not something small. Not something precious and sparkling like a ring.
Don’t tell her that; her head’ll explode.

           
Gingerly, she unwrapped the box and
unveiled the cakes. She did look a little disappointed for a moment, but masked
it well.

           
‘I really shouldn’t, what with my… I
need to watch my figure.’

           
Chris knew compliments were being
fished-for. She’d cast her line right over that desk; to fail to take the bait
now would be to shatter the poor farm-girl’s illusions forever.

           
‘Don’t worry,
I’ll
be watching your figure. And a very nice figure it is,’ he
said, winking.

           
Gemma took the smallest of the
Alpine range of cakes from the box and mousily nibbled into the corner.

           
‘Mmmm,’ she said. ‘They’re lovely.’

           
‘Keep the box on the counter. If
anyone special comes in, offer them one. If not, take them home and enjoy them
to your heart’s content.’

           
Finally Chris stepped away and
stalked toward the lift and his office. As the lift doors closed behind him,
Chris shot a quick look back at the reception desk and was sure that he saw
Gemma quickly return the cake she’d nibbled from into the box again.
Another
unwanted gesture, he thought. It
was like his father giving a cut to charity; it was all for show, and probably
tax purposes.

           
When the lift doors closed, Chris
rested his head against the cold steel in the universal gesture which read,
I cannot take much more of this.

           
‘What the hell am I doing in this
place?’ he asked out loud. ‘Where’s all the excitement? Where’s the challenge?
Life is just
too easy
. I need to
change something, do something radical, or I’m just going to end up like
Daddy-dear.’

           
Anyone on the river spying into the
lift shaft would have seen the broad, slumped shoulders of a man who wanted to
be anywhere in the world but where he was. They would have noted the way he
shook, but not through the vibrations of the smooth lifting mechanism; no, this
man’s shaking was the uncontrollable fear of growing up, of responsibility, and
of the sham world of business.

           
Chris’s office was on the top floor;
nearest the lift on a corridor of power which led right up to the office of the
Managing Director. The corridor represented the physical manifestation of
Chris’s perceived aspirations in life. His goal was supposed to be to move up
the office food-chain, step-by-step, by replacing the man who currently held
each of the three offices which separated his own and that of the Managing
Director. As the lift doors opened, a waft of a familiar smell drifted past;
the whole of the top floor smelled like a health food store. It was a grainy
yet somehow oily smell which clung to the clothes and spoke of healthy
conviction. As usual, Chris fiddled with his cigarette pack as though he were
about to light up in unhealthy defiance. Luckily, as usual, he didn’t have a
lighter with him.

           
Chris had a quick peek through the blinds to check
whether his direct superior was in, and then sneaked into the sanctuary which
was his own little office. He’d decorated the walls with various graphs and
charts, all of which showed startling upward curves, but then, you can make
statistics say anything can’t you? Well, perhaps, but what statistics couldn’t
voice was the jovial banter which was evidently missing from the entire Peach
Marketing Agency workplace. It had a head-down, mind-your-own-business policy
from top to bottom. Every individual’s office door was closed, and the blinds
shut. The place was a warren of secrets.

           
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 paraphernalia. 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 thoughts. 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.