The Magpie Trap: A Novel

by AJ Kirby

  ‘What’ll it be then?’ asked Chris, despite the fact that Danny already had a full drink on the table. Chris, thought Danny, was the kind of person that would have bought a round for everybody in the pub, just to be on the safe side and to maintain his popularity. He was the kind of person that wanted everyone to appreciate his generosity and continuously thank him for it. He was a lot like his father.

  Danny pointed to the glass of bitter that he was supping from.

  ‘What’s that then?’ asked Chris. ‘The latest ale from the Sheep Piss Brewery?’

  Danny wiped the foam from his lips and tried not to smile. ‘It’s a Nun’s Knee Trembler, apparently,’ he said.

  Chris smiled vaguely as he would have done to a poor serf that worked his land. Danny watched as he bounced to the bar; he walked like a schoolboy who was trying to somehow communicate his above-it-all-ness through the medium of dance. He was very tall, and his shoulders-back, cock-sure walk made him seem even larger. It was as though he wanted people to look at him, comment on him; whether these comments were positive or negative was probably irrelevant. He ordered his drink, sharing some joke with the barman and then returned to the lounge. He immediately dived onto the saloon seat too close to Danny, despite the fact that the rest of the room remained empty and he could have chosen virtually anywhere else to sit.

  Relaxed, Chris spread his spidery long legs under the table as though spinning a web, and took a long draught from his pint.

  ‘What the hell have you got there, cock?’ asked Danny. ‘Designer cider poured over-ice? What serious drink needs ice with it?’

  ‘I don’t drink it for its serious drinking qualities,’ replied Chris, grinning. ‘I drink it because I like it. And also because I knew that it would guarantee to piss you off. I bought it as much for entertainment value as for the taste itself.’

  ‘So, you’ve been taken in by the adverts then. No surprise there. As soon as cider becomes fashionable, you’re straight to the front of the queue,’ said Danny. Part of him meant to undermine his friend. Part of him hated the way that life was so easy for Chris.

  ‘What can I say? I’m a slave to fashion. I can’t help it, I’m in advertising myself,’ said Chris, running a hand through his hair. ‘You are such a drink-snob; if you could have warm beer and paint-stripper whisky you’d be in your element… as long as you don’t actually have to enjoy what you are drinking. That just gets in the way of getting wrecked.’

  ‘Cheers,’ said Danny, lifting his bitter and taking another man-sized gulp. And before the Trades Description Ring-Wraiths start quivering, in this case, Danny’s ‘man-sized’ gulp was supposed to imply his massive appetite in the way that man-size tissues and Yorkie bars are massive.

  Chris responded in kind, slightly altering the angle of his pint so that the ice cubes jangled together.

  ‘Cheers,’ he said, rather too loudly. The nosy barman, unused to such a thing as conversation in the Adelphi in the afternoon lull and wanting to see what all the fuss was about, interrupted them by leaning over Danny to collect empty glasses from the next table, adding them to an existing leaning tower which he cradled under his arms. He staggered away from the table and the tower began to sway back and forth alarmingly.

  Danny cleared his throat and ignored the intrusion: ‘Back in the day, you used to sneer at cider-drinkers and especially me when I bought it. Once upon a time, you said that cider was a drink for park benches and for street corners and for smuggling into the school disco. Oh how the mighty have fallen; look at you now.’

  Chris grinned, refusing to rise to the bait. He pulled a packet of cigarettes from the pocket of his suit and started rooting about in another pocket for a lighter.

  ‘Never got a lighter, have you?’ said Danny, retrieving his own lighter from his pocket and sparking a flame.

  Chris accepted the light and dragged on his cigarette, then winked and continued: ‘When we were at uni, the cider you bought was the £1.99 variety. White cider; simply impossible to drink without being sick, developing Tourettes syndrome or falling out with all of your mates. I seem to remember you doing that quite a lot of the time, then. Have you got over that phase yet, Dan?’

  Danny narrowed his eyes. He had a part to play in this man-sized banter, but the mood he was in, he might end up taking the banter one step too far. After the heavy loss at Killingbeck, anything seemed possible. All the signs were bad.

  Snap out of it thought Danny. You asked him here. You can’t blame him for your predicament.

  ‘How soon is it until customers like you start demanding an ice bucket for your cider bottles?’ asked Danny, with a supreme effort. The supposedly irreverent masculine pub-talk usually demanded of one of their meetings was difficult for him to achieve. But he couldn’t cut to the chase yet, not without sounding completely down-and-out and desperate.

  ‘That would be nice,’ said Chris. He leaned forward; already he’d smoked two-thirds of his cigarette and he stubbed out the remaining third with a flourish.

  In the background, the barman was trying to transfer his stack of glasses onto the bar without smashing them; he’d bitten off more than he could chew however, and the top two or three glasses fell to the floor with a smash. Danny laughed, maliciously.

  ‘Why do you never smoke a whole cigarette?’ he asked. ‘Are you that rich? Are you one of those people that throw away their underwear after one use?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Chris in a voice full of sarcasm. ‘No; don’t be ridiculous. It’s because I’m worried about my health, and this way, I smoke less.’

  ‘Your health?’ snapped Danny, incredulous. ‘You’re the healthiest person I’ve ever met, and from the looks of you, you’ve spent your most recent work trip snowboarding.’

  ‘Ah, the goggle-marks,’ sighed Chris. ‘No matter what I do, I always seem to get panda eyes.’

  ‘It’s probably because English people weren’t meant for snowboarding and skiing, you fool, just like people living in Switzerland or Austria aren’t meant for surfing.’

  ‘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 e
veryone’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.’