The Magpie Trap: A Novel

by AJ Kirby

  ‘Okay; get out of the car if you want to go and hold your hands up to your crime,’ said Chris, leaning over the front seat and grabbing Mark by the scruff of the neck. ‘But if you do, I will fucking crush your head under the tyres. We can still get away; over an hour and a half after the heist and we’re still completely on our own; no sign of our pig friends.’

  Danny leaned round from the driver’s seat to separate them. An uneasy silence reigned throughout the car. Then he turned and revved the engine.

  Jim Hunter was still shivering from a mixture of shock and the piercing cold of the evening which cut through the spare clothes he had been forced to put on when his were taken by the forensics team for examination. Despite what the law said about innocence, Hunter knew that until it was proved beyond reasonable doubt, he would be assumed to be one of the prime suspects in the heist. He could still recite the staggering statistics about raids at sites such as Edison’s Printers, how so many of the culprits ended up being ‘Inside Men’. An unlocked gate here, a blocked CCTV camera there and the rest of the gang would be let in, invited guests; then the ‘Inside Man’ would be given a blow to the head - to complete his cover story - and be assumed collateral damage in the heist.

  Jim was not the ‘Inside Man’ however, and if there was any collateral damage, it had been done to Callum Burr. But this was rather more than a flesh wound; Burr was nearly dead, probably in a coma. He tried to go and see him but the medical team surrounded him like a stone circle. The enquiring looks he received from each and every one of the team confirmed his suspicions that he was not only being fingered for the heist, they maybe even believed that he had attempted to murder Burr. When he persisted with his questions, all they told him was that Burr was alive but in ‘critical condition.’ Hunter had seen enough medical dramas on television to conclude that ‘critical condition’ was a euphemism for ‘fucked up beyond all recognition.’

  He wondered whether the criminals had double-crossed their ‘Inside Man’ in order to cut off any links from them to the crime scene. He wondered whether they presumed Burr dead. He’d certainly believed that to be true until the young detective had let it slip.

  On his way back across the site and on shaky legs, he refused offers of a coffee or a brandy. He had to set about his own investigation of the events of that evening. Nothing could get in the way of that. He was pulled towards the now almost blinding light which was emanating from the panopticon watch-tower. His hands twitching miserably by his side, reaching for the invisible crutch of a cigarette to keep them occupied.

  The two MMC operatives were crouched by the front door to the tower; two young men, one of whom had huge red blotches around his eyes, overcome with the emotion of the night. He gently slapped his large hand on the back of the younger of the two operatives, the one who hadn’t been crying, and gave him a forced smile. Then he saw the large bottle of Scotch that they were passing between them.

  ‘Where did you get that from?’ he asked.

  One of the men – Mick Stephenson, he realised – offered him the bottle, misreading the question.

  ‘Don’t get caught with that,’ Hunter warned. ‘Charlie Wade will be down here soon. You don’t want him to think you’ve been drinking on the job.’

  ‘We found it in the Security Lodge,’ said the younger of the two MMC operatives. ‘I went down there after… I went to press the panic button when nobody in the Lodge responded to my calls. The bottle was lying under your desk. I’m sorry. I just took it… For the shock…’

  Hunter suddenly remembered those hazy moments before Burr had bolted from the Lodge; he remembered his production of the bottle of whisky from his rucksack. His antennae started to twitch again; something was not right. But the whisky was the least of his problems. The CCTV images were of primary importance.

  ‘We need to retrieve the CCTV footage,’ he said, calmly. ‘We need to give the police as good a head-start as possible on this. Come on lads, we need to go up to the MMC.’

  Neither of them moved. Mick Stephenson started to cry again.

  ‘Listen to me,’ said Hunter, ‘this was not your fault. Do not blame yourself, Mick.’

  But young Mick looked angry, ‘Mr. Hunter, I know this was not my fault. We never saw anything up there… there wasn’t any footage, there weren’t any alarms. It was too late before we knew anything… Someone hacked in, I just know it… and now Callum’s dead.’

  ‘Not dead,’ said Hunter, glad to be the bearer of good tidings for once on that unhappy night. ‘In a critical condition maybe, but not dead. We have to hope he’ll come through.’

  The other operative, Jerry, suddenly wailed, ‘He may not be dead but Callum was such a good man... I saw him after. I saw that cut in his head. Horrible. Who would do such a thing?’

  ‘Well, that’s what we need to do now; check the recordings. Come on, you two, look sharp. You need to keep doing things to take your mind off it. You may not have had the live action, but we can play-back exactly what happened, and then we’ll be one step on the way to catching Burr’s attackers.’

  Still neither of them moved.

  ‘Jerry; come on lad. The whisky won’t be doing you any good at all now. Put it down lad. The big man’s fate is out of our hands now.’

  Hunter could not bring himself to mention Burr by name. Even the thought of him brought a bad taste to his mouth. He may not have been dead, but Hunter intuited that he had been involved in the bungled crime, and that the two lads would not look so favourably on the big man once they knew about this. But Hunter wanted the lads to see this with their own eyes; he wanted them to make up their own minds.

  Jerry and Mick used their access badges to get back into the panopticon. Hunter followed them, as usual surprised at the sheer empty space of the place. There was nothing in there; it was a glorified lift shaft up to the top floor where the MMC was housed.

  The lift was waiting for them on the ground floor, where the two operatives had left it, and they ascended in a cool expectant silence. Nobody knew what to say. Soon they were in the MMC and Hunter saw the signs of an abandoned ship; discarded headphones lay trailed across the floor, one of their chairs was upended, and one of the phones was off the hook, now giving its own howl of frustration. Hunter quietly replaced the handset and steeled himself to look up at the huge bank of twenty LCD monitors on the wall in front of him; the focus of every single monitor was the scene outside the Precisioner Unit.

  In live action, he watched the crumpled body of Callum Burr being lifted onto a stretcher, a large white sheet covering most of him. What wasn’t covered by the sheet was covered by breathing apparatus which was clamped over his ginger-whiskered mouth.

  Burr was so heavy that the stretcher bearers lurched over onto one side and his leg slipped from under the sheet, unbalancing the stretcher still further. Then Burr’s entire body fell onto the floor, twisting into an unnatural angle. The monitors were cruelly close-up on Burr’s face; underneath the oxygen mask, righteous anger burned through his glazed, open eyes.

  Burr looked as though he was going to jump up at any moment and start running after his long-gone attackers. He looked almost normal, like he was still in the Security Lodge and had just been forced to listen to another of Hunter’s anecdotes about why he’d given up drinking. Hunter wondered whether there was any consciousness there, but then, as one of the stretcher bearers tipped him back onto the stretcher, his question was answered for him. Burr’s head lolled the other way, and Hunter was almost sick as he saw again that jagged, open wound on the other side of his head. He feared that Burr would never come back from an injury like that. Hastily, he clicked the monitors off, not wanting to shock the two operatives any further.

  ‘Come on lad,’ he said to Jerry. ‘Now I’m not that good on computers, but you are. What we need is for you to access the computer files from all of the cameras around the Precisioner Unit for the past hour. From, say, 11pm… you can narrow it down, right?’

  ‘Sir… yes… e
rm, we can access specific moments from the past hour. We can put in parameters; for instance, every time anything crossed in front of the camera in the past hour,’ Jerry replied, his voice slowed by shock and whisky

  ‘What if the camera missed it though?’ said Hunter. He knew that reliance upon technology in times like this could save time, but it could also make mistakes which would be difficult to rectify.

  ‘Impossible,’ said Jerry. He was already typing in figures and lines of code into a computer system in front of him, typing with an agility Jim could never have mastered even if his hands were still not shaking so much.

  ‘Right,’ said Jerry, finally finishing his typed commands with an elaborate slap of the space bar. ‘Now we only have to look through a few minutes of recordings instead of the whole hour. You’ve always told me that the key period in any investigation is in the first hour after the crime’s been committed.’

  Jim was impressed at the young operative’s ability to block out his earlier shock; he was now completely obsessed with the task in hand, excited even.

  ‘So, where is it?’

  Hunter kept seeing fuzzy, black and white images flash up on the screen with every button that Jerry pressed.

  ‘I don’t know, sir,’ said Jerry. He ran his hand through his floppy fringe and sighed. ‘I’ll try again; Mick come and help.’

  Mick, who had been staring out of the huge back window of the panopticon watch-tower at the creeping sunrise, promptly ran over, seeing his own chance to rescue some of the reputation he had lost on his watch. Elbowing Jerry out of the way, he began to minimize a number of boxes on screen, and then started a new programme.

  ‘This programme is a back-up. If someone’s hacked in, as I suspect, then all of the data will also be backed up here. Should have checked there straight away Jerry…’

  Hunter admired both the ability and confidence with which the two young men handled the technology. He knew that he could only speak a kind of pidgin computer language, but both of these lads were completely au fait with the systems; it was second nature to them. The problem was that despite their efforts, there were still no recordings coming up on the screens in front of them.

  Suddenly the phone on the desk in front of him buzzed, causing him to jump backwards involuntarily. He struggled to regain his composure as he answered.

  ‘Hello, MMC,’ Hunter croaked, his heart still in his mouth.

  Mr. Wade’s furious voice bellowed down the other end of the phone, ‘How the hell did you let this happen, Hunter? Stay there, I’m coming up.’

  Hunter had no idea what he could say to placate his boss; but the phone was slammed down anyway, so he at least had a couple of minutes to get the recordings up and working.

  Mr. Wade strode into the MMC looking as though he had just got out of bed; he was wearing jeans, a corduroy jacket and running shoes; Hunter had never seen him in anything other than a suit. He had also never seen anything but a kindly, almost paternal interest in the man’s eyes, but now, he saw a burning anger. His face had erupted into angry welts, probably through stress, and his mouth was twisted into a snarl.

  ‘Hunter; I’ve had the police explanation, but I have to hear it from you… I thought I was getting the best when I got you. I ignored the warnings; people that knew you, who said you were a drinker. Tell me, was that your bottle of whisky left outside? Were you drinking on the job?’

  Hunter remembered the whisky again. He remembered Burr in those moments before the heist. There had to be a connection.

  ‘I don’t know what I can say. All we can do is look at the recordings… and no, I was not drinking, I have not touched a drop since I have worked here,’ he said, trying to keep the note of desperation out of his voice, fearing the rising inflection would give him away as the fool who knew nothing.

  ‘No time for explanations now. Have no fear; there will be an internal investigation. Now, give me those recordings!’

  Wade was roaring now, spittle flying from his mouth. It coated Jim in flecks of white pasty saliva, but Jim could not bring himself to take his eyes from Wade while he wiped it off. He could not betray any signs of weakness.

  Jim suddenly realised that Jerry had been tugging at his shirt persistently for a while now, trying to get his attention. He turned to the young operative, eyes full of hope; surely they had discovered the recordings.

  ‘Mr. Hunter; there’s nothing there,’ Jerry whispered, fear evident in the pitch of his soprano voice.

  ‘What was that?’ Wade waded in.

  Jim wanted the floor to swallow him up, he wanted to disappear; he wanted, so very much, to have that drink now. He suddenly could not handle the reality of the situation and collapsed into a seat, dropping his head into his hands. He almost looked as though he was praying…

  And then Wade was shaking him; he had grabbed him roughly by the shirt collar and was trying to lift him to his feet. Hunter felt the scratch of the man’s long fingernails into his exposed neck; he felt the desperation in the room making everything go crazy.

  He pushed Wade away and rose unsteadily to his feet.

  ‘This heist was a professional job Mr. Wade. There was nothing we could do about it,’ he gasped, almost admiringly.

  Mick kept on pressing those buttons, but a large error message appeared, spread across all of the monitors at once:

  The files you are trying to access have been deleted. Please select another file.

  Jerry turned to Wade and Hunter, who were both still spoiling for a fight in order to relieve the tension: ‘There’s nothing left; all of the recordings are blank. Someone’s hacked into the system and stolen the images.’

  ‘That’s not all they’ve stolen,’ Hunter muttered, defeated. On one of the screens, they could see the image of the empty table where the Precisioner printer had once been. They could still see the printer’s outline in the fine dust.

  Airport

  They keep whispering together, I’ve just come out of the toilets now and they’re at it again… I see something in their eyes; fear, wariness of me. They withdraw their gaze from me too quickly when I look up. I have crossed some boundary and now am marked as different from them. I killed a man…

  I can only just bring myself to say it, even to myself, in my head. I will never be able to return to my innocent state of just one day ago. But he was going to kill me… would I rather be dead now?

  I feel dead… only the throbbing in my twisted ankle tells me that I am still alive. It is now swelling up into a mess of yellows and blues. Air travel will not do it any favours, the blood will clot… but I can’t think about blood. Whenever I do, I see that man’s head spilt open like a water melon. I will see that image every day when I wake up, when I wake up screaming in the night.

  Why are they whispering again? It is almost as though they don’t see me any more; I have become the invisible man. They look past me, through me, at the monitors which list the flight arrival and departure times.

  Everyone here is on a journey, but my journey has already happened. I will forever be in this waiting room - this purgatory. The people flood past me, tired, but excited; hopeful. I will never hope again. Businessmen off to meetings to win new clients; families going on holiday; some are simply going home… I have no home.

  That whispering is continuing; Danny is leaning right over Chris and is almost cupping his hand round his ear so I don’t hear them. Are they planning something? Are they trying to shit on me like the man said in that email?

  I really don’t care any more. Maybe they are just scared that the police will catch us at last; the first reports are starting to filter through to the television in the bar in which we are sitting, waiting for the plane. Apparently there are no suspects, but they might be trying to lure us into a false sense of security. Danny looks pale, washed out; even Chris looks faintly green in the airport’s false light. Yes, they are scared. They still have lives which they want to protect, dreams to fulfill.

  They continue to whisper a
s the television cameras show that place again. The media army has descended on Edison’s Printers. Bulletins are broadcast every ten minutes, but it is clear that there has been some kind of cover-up. Every time we see the news channel’s correspondent, she has no new news. All they’ve heard is that there has been an attempted robbery and that the intruders are still on the loose.

  They don’t even know how much money has been stolen, or that one of the guards has been killed. Hours have passed since the heist, and Edison’s has now closed the stable doors after the horse has bolted. They cannot afford the stain on their reputation of a serious heist. Their site is supposed to be almost prison-esque in its attention to security detail.

  Even when the tired barman comes over to wipe our table, Chris and Danny’s frenzied, whispered conversation carries on. I feel like waving my hand in front of their faces, alerting them to my presence, but I’m too weary. I watch as clutches of armed guards and police roam menacingly past us, but don’t give us a second glance.

  It is always a shock to see guns on people; they look somehow fake. I imagine that it all becomes too much for me and I make a run for it, mown down by a hail of bullets. Now that I’ve killed someone, I am more likely to be allowed to be shot myself. Maybe I should just get it over with.

  Whisper… whisper… whisper…

  I avert my eyes. I look over at a child sleeping on one of the wooden benches which form the perimeter of the bar. She is sucking her thumb and looks totally at peace in the world. I begin to smile, but then catch the eyes of the mother who is glaring back at me; she has obviously seen the mark on me, the mark of a bad man. She gathers up her daughter and tucks her pink coat under her head, angling her daughter’s profile away from me.

  And then it’s time to leave. Danny is standing over me and shaking my arm.

  ‘Stop crying, Mark, you’re making a real show of yourself in here,’ he says.

  Chris is now rapidly sucking on his last cigarette before the flight, desperation set in his eyes.