The Magpie Trap: A Novel by AJ Kirby Read Free Book Online

doing this, he clamped his mobile
phone into the cigarette-lighter charger and fiddled at the controls of the
radio. His van was his own Control Centre; it housed the most necessary
equipment for his job; the technology which told him where he was supposed to
be, when he was supposed to be there, and what he was supposed to do once he
got there. On the negative side, his van was fitted with a satellite tracking
device, which told company headquarters where he was at every moment of every
day. As Mark had so often reflected, the van provided his freedom whilst
simultaneously restricting his movement to certain boundaries.
    Finally, the sat nav started to shout out its demands. ‘Turn around!
Turn around and take the next left,’ it blared.
    Mark quickly turned down the volume a couple of notches and then keyed
the ignition. There was the usual muffled groan of the lazy engine, but finally
it roared into life and Mark was on his way. On the radio, the presenter was
talking about some awful accident that had happened to a horse in the 3.15 at Exeter . Apparently, one of
the leaders had fallen badly on the final straight and had broken his leg. The
poor horse had been shot afterwards.
    Mark wondered why horses had to be put down when they had a broken leg.
When he’d broken his own leg, he’d been fixed up and allowed out to graze away
the rest of his life, hadn’t he? Sure it
wasn’t the kind of life that he’d imagined for himself, but it was a life,
wasn’t it? It was survival… Couldn’t they do the same with horses? Couldn’t
they herd them off into some kind of retirement home with their slippers and
pipes and tool-kits and lots and lots of apples?
    Or was there a big demand for glue these days? Maybe all of those
glue-sniffers that seemed to congregate on the corner of his road of an evening
were doing wider damage than they knew. Mark also spared a passing thought for
Mick Stephenson. Perhaps the man had a bet on the horse that had been shot.
Perhaps he’d lost a lot of money on the race. Or perhaps Danny Morris had.
    As Mark navigated the narrow private road leading to and from the
printworks, he was forced to pull over – almost into a ditch – to allow a large Edison ’s Printers truck to
pass him. When he pulled over, a large shadow over by the perimeter fencing
caught his eye. He looked closer and realised that the shadow was actually
Callum Burr.
    Burr was squatting down on the grass, as though he didn’t want to be
spied by the eyes of the printworks. He was clutching a mobile phone to his ear
and looked… He looked suspicious actually. He looked as though he was conducting
some call that couldn’t be overheard. He looked like Danny Morris did when he
was being shifty about something; like he had when he’d first suggested the
‘experiment’.
    Burr looked up suddenly. He spotted Mark’s van and narrowed his eyes.
Mark gave a polite wave – almost a salute – but big old Burr ignored him
completely, even turning his back.
    Mark drove away from the site and wondered if there wasn’t more to the
place than originally met the eye.

 
 
 
 
 
    The Adelphi

 
    The ashtray’s cargo of
shredded beer mats, and the constant tap, tap, tapping of his legs underneath
the table, bore testimony to the impatience that consumed Danny Morris.
    He
ran an unsteady hand through his thick dark hair; liberally applied hair wax making
it spring immediately back into place. He shifted from a crossed-leg position,
to a more relaxed sprawl and picked up his mobile phone for the seventh time,
thinking that he might have forgotten to switch it back onto ‘loud’. Maybe the
phone’s battery had died? But no, it remained mockingly free of calls or texts.
Danny then drained the last of his pint and dragged his whisky chaser across
the table towards him, but refrained from drinking it… yet.
    The
Adelphi had emerged unscathed from the lunch-time rush, but had entered the
mid-afternoon lull; the interlude