The Magpie Trap: A Novel

by AJ Kirby

  This is a brutal world, Hunter thought. Those magpies have the same vicious mentality as the people who conducted the heist. They have the same desperate greed which will be their undoing.

  The Beach

  The small plane plotted its course toward the Tropic of Capricorn and the island of Mauritius, a flashing dot on an air traffic control monitor somewhere. Most of the passengers were cramped in together in Economy Class towards the back of the plane, but Chris, Mark and Danny had virtually the whole of Club Class to themselves. Mark slept for the entire duration of the flight; he didn’t wake for the in-flight meals, nor did he wake up screaming, as Danny and Chris had feared that he might.

  Danny and Chris luxuriated in the spacious leather seats, enjoying the full attention of the hostesses. They were too energized to sleep, and loved the fact that they were being waited on, hand-and-foot by the beautiful Mauritian girls in the flight crew. Enjoying another round of gin and tonics, they continued their excited whispering, plotting conversation free from fear that Mark might overhear.

  ‘He doesn’t know you got the Precisioner, chief,’ said Danny, stifling a giggle. He was drunk again and it felt good. It helped carry the weight which was pressing down on his shoulders

  ‘You’re saying we leave him out altogether?’ asked Chris. He looked at Danny with a quizzical expression, head cocked to one side like a bird.

  ‘What I’m saying is that he has gone off the rails mate. You saw him when we dropped the van off in Harehills… He sounds as though he’s going to have a nervous breakdown…’

  Danny tore at the napkin which had been given to him with his drink, compulsively folding it into concertina shapes and then ripping off small squares which he sprinkled onto the carpeted plane floor.

  ‘Well, you know how easily persuaded I am. I say that we do it. Do you have a plan?’ Chris leaned over the arm-rest, greed shining through his tired eyes.

  ‘Yes I do. We can’t afford to have him around us any more. He’ll bring us down. We have to be allowed to enjoy this. I’m sorry that he had to do what he did, but nobody forced him to be involved. Leave it with me, cock. I’ll sort it.’

  Danny settled back into his leather chair, feeling relief spread over him. He would now, finally, let sleep come. When he awoke, he would be in paradise.

  The plane began to descend at midday, Mauritian time. Sweeping low over the coastline, they were afforded a marvellous view of the coral reef surrounding the island, and from the starboard side they could see the awe-inspiring mountains of the inland region, complete with the famous gushing waterfalls.

  Feeling the anticipation of adventure upon them, Chris and Danny almost ran off the plane as soon as it touched down. They were met by the noisy buzz and frenzied heat of a new country as soon as they stepped out of the plane door. The heat played hazy patterns on the melting tarmac, shimmering puddles of petrol looked like rainbow oases. Flanking the runway on both sides were row upon row of tall sugar cane plants.

  Mark stared at this utterly foreign place and felt nothing but trepidation. After they descended the rickety steps which were loosely attached to the plane once it had landed, they were herded into a waiting frail minibus which drove them towards the main terminal building. They were wedged into the loose flesh of a sweaty group of wearied travellers; the masses from the rear of the plane. Within the bus, a heady concoction of the smells of a night being uncomfortably cramped into too-small seats, eating slop for food and irritable bowels began to choke their initial optimism.

  But as Chris and Danny finally walked through passport control, their excitement returned. Mark lagged behind, still trying to rub away the claggy build-up of sleep in his eyes and shake off his exhaustion. He could not share his companions’ enthusiasm; waking to that same dread feeling that it had not all been a dream, had winded him. He found it hard to control his breathing in the intense thirty degree heat.

  The trio waited in line to hail a cab to Port Louis, the island’s capital city. Port Louis was not far from the airport but they had their heavy bags to contend with. There seemed to be neither rhyme nor reason to the queuing system, however it was finally their turn when a sleek, black, fully air-conditioned four-by-four vehicle pulled into the parking bay in front of them; it seemed that these vehicles were reserved for tourists.

  Inside the vehicle, it smelled faintly of disinfectant and the dead smell of tanned leather. A small figurine was tacked to the dashboard; it portrayed a small, fat man adorned with jewellery. Apart from the fact that the ornament had three legs and four arms, he resembled the chubby taxi driver in almost every respect. He had the same long straggly black beard, the same dry-stone wall of a mouth, complete with gaping holes where his teeth should have been, and the same cocky grin.

  Having deposited their bags in the boot, the driver hoisted himself into the front seat - no mean feat judging by his lack of height - and giving them a cheery thumbs-up, he pulled away from the airport, whistling lightly under his breath. They drove through a series of slum-looking villages, passing numerous abandoned wrecks on the side of the road. The shaded windows lent the view from the window a sepia tint; it was as though they had stepped back in time. But as they rounded a long almost ninety degree bend, they were confronted with the towering view of the capital city. Danny, looking out of the window, was amazed by what he saw.

  ‘Have you seen this place? It’s not exactly on-its-knees poor is it?’

  The skyline of the cityscape was full of slick high-rise buildings. Western advertising hoardings lined the streets. Most of the cars on the roads appeared to be Mercedes or BMW. As they entered the city, they realised that the wastelands surrounding the airport had given them a rather false impression of the place.

  ‘It looks like bloody Dubai,’ Chris muttered, reaching into his bag to get a local guidebook which he began to leaf through.

  ‘Ah, at least we’ve missed the cyclone season,’ he said, as he read the introduction.

  The driver, who had been silently listening to them discussing his homeland turned around as they paused for what seemed like an interminable wait at traffic lights.

  ‘You guys have just missed a particularly bad cyclone season,’ he began in almost perfect English, his belly shaking with every booming word that he said. ‘But for the rest of the summer, it’ll be hot, hot, hot! How long are you guys over here for anyway?’

  ‘For a while,’ snapped Chris, annoyed at the intrusion.

  ‘Business or pleasure?’ queried the driver, obviously not catching the warning tone of Chris’s voice.

  ‘Both mate,’ said Danny, who was doing the talking now. ‘Look, we’re after a decent hotel for a couple of nights, and somewhere good to go drinking. We’ve got some celebrating to do, cockeroo.’

  ‘Ah! Well, you’ve come to the right place. Everything’s fine for tourists like you. You’ll be welcome everywhere. And women!’

  The man had now turned completely around in his front seat and was rubbing his hands with glee; his short legs made him look like a dwarf. Unfortunately the lights then changed to green, and his stationary vehicle was met by a volley of horns from the queue behind them. The driver finally sat back down properly and continued his speech.

  ‘Mauritius is the second richest country in the whole of Africa. I see you didn’t realise we were so economically stable. We have sugar cane, which you saw in the fields by the airport, tourism and we also have off-shore banking here. Is that what you guys are here for?’

  At ease again, Chris laughed, ‘I guess you could say that!’

  ‘Look,’ the man yelled at them, pointing at the small, fat figurine on the dashboard. ‘This is Kubera, the Hindu God of Wealth. He watches over all of the riches in the world… Any investment you make here will be safe, safe safe!’

  Chris began to laugh even more, delighting the driver. He slapped his thigh in enthusiasm and then winked across at Mark.

  ‘See Mark; everything will be great here, just like we told you.’
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  Mark had remained silent throughout the journey, and was still finding it hard to breathe properly. His ankle was agonising now, and he felt on the verge of passing out. He couldn’t handle the constant movement of the driver of the four-by-four; his bouncing eagerness to tell them about his native land was making Mark feel sick. Also, Chris and Danny’s dismissal of the events of the past two days astounded him. Surely moving yourself to some other country does not change the essence of what you are?

  ‘But you know what Mauritius is most famous for?’ The man was almost shouting at them now, interrupting Mark’s ruminations. “The dodo; this was the only place in the world in which the dodo lived! Now he is no more, but we remember and respect him!’

  Mark wished he could be extinct as well…

  The taxi driver dropped them off, bags in tow, at the beach. As Chris reached for the first of the crumpled notes from the bag, he had a sudden wary feeling. Would there be any suspicion about the currency? But no, the driver took the money with that same gap-toothed smile, and repeated the information he had only just given them.

  ‘I tell you. The Midas Hotel is the best hotel on the island. Hidden away; a quiet paradise. Off the beaten track for most tourists, you find it by walking along the beach. Beautiful beach; you have to see it to believe it. And look out for Dodos!’

  He shook Chris’s proffered hand and screeched away, still laughing manically, looking for the next tourists he could regale with his stories.

  The three men walked down a dusty path, tiredness almost clamping up their limbs. The path was flanked by piles of litter, through which small, feral cats dug around, looking for remnants of food. Mark just wanted to collapse; his aching bones, his ruined ankle and the insistence of the eager sun which was beating down upon his shaven head, all beat the tune which was a constant reminder of what he had done.

  But gradually, the litter which lined the path began to disappear, and then they were walking on fine grained sand rather than the grey dust. In the distance, Mark could hear the lulling resonance of the sea.

  Finally, they passed through an archway of palm trees and then they saw it. A vast expanse of piercingly white sand, azure blue sea, the lush greens of the forest; they had never seen such colour. It was as though they had lived their entire lives in monochrome, and only now had their eyes been opened to the true tones and textures of the world. The brushstrokes of nature’s artistry were unequalled; no person could paint such a picture. Mark had to squint, the sand was so bright. He looked round at Danny, who had simply flopped down on his bag, his mouth open in awe at the scene. Meanwhile, he saw that Chris was already running full pelt into the sea.

  ‘We’ve done it!’ yelled Chris. He careered through the first of the tame waves and threw himself into the salty water. ‘We’ve done it!’

  He swallowed a mouthful of the bitter sea but gurgled his refrain with unrestrained delight. He cupped handfuls of the deep blue water and let it trickle down onto his sweaty head.

  Tears pricked at Mark’s eyes for what felt like the hundredth time over the past couple of weeks. Surely such beauty could not occur in a world in which such cruel, ugly things happened. The crimson blood colour which thudded through his mind was far outweighed by the immediacy of this scene, though, and he was reminded of the old postcard he kept behind the sun-visor in his old EyeSpy Security van. It was surely this very beach.

  In a way, he felt that he deserved this one, pure moment of bliss. He had been through so much; surely his mind deserved some rest from the pain. Would he ever get over what he had done? Could he ever live with himself? Mark didn’t know, but for that one moment, he was at peace.

  Danny was now frolicking in the sea with Chris; they were kicking great swathes of water over each other, screaming in child-like delight. This was freedom like they had never known before; perhaps you have to go through such hell, such dark nightmarish places, to be able to really appreciate what freedom is. The chains of reality had been loosened; they thought they were going to get away with it.

  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 b
een 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.’