Part Five of The Sensational Shrimpleton Saga: Jekyll and Hyde?

Last time, we had entered the realm of famous Northern Counties Islands and Craggy Outcrops League (Second Division) Shrimpleton Town Football Club: the Shrimpies.

Club officials were on the cusp of choosing key volunteers to play in a game against local rivals from Piel Island:  mighty Rampside Royal Raiders FC, no less. It was a Saturday afternoon in a northern English winter and wind with icy teeth and a nasty bite was whistling across the sandstone aberration of geography called Cumberside Island straight from the distant Urals directly over the adjacent part of the North Atlantic known as the Irish Sea.

It was half past two on a Saturday afternoon and Soldier Jay knew that Shrimpleton Town FC were about to play a home game. So he was making his way through the undergrowth from the end of Cumberside Island where he had just come ashore and heading towards where he had guessed The Black Pool stadium was to be found. As he did so, he was also thinking about the bit of research he had done about the opposition the Shrimpies were about to face.

The Raiders began life as a pub team on Piel Island, just off the Furness coast on the edge of Morecambe Bay. Piel only has one pub and its landlord has traditionally also been King of the Island – hence the `Royal’ tag. In reality, though, there weren’t enough people on Piel Island at a time the Royals were founded to make up even a five-a-side team so they had to cast their net wider. That was why the fifteen men who had sailed on the boat usually used to ferry sightseers to Piel from the mainland mostly came from nearby villages, of which Rampside was the biggest.

Some of the Raiders’men had more than a single role in the team: one was Player-Manager; another the Physio and they had a GP in the squad they were fielding today as well. The others were farmers, farmers’ lads or labourers plus random men who worked in nearby Barrow or on the Morecambe Bay gas field or the massive wind-farm estate to be found in the Irish Sea nearby.

But who would Rampside be lining-up against today?

As always, nobody really knew: the composition of the Shrimpleton Town First Eleven depended entirely upon who bothered to turn-up on the day. They had eight regulars and a reserve Goalkeeper who could play every second Saturday but they were usually at least three players short of a team and several more short of a squad with any reserves in it.

By the time Soldier `Jay’ arrived at The Black Pool – Shrimpleton Town’s disappointingly dilapidated home ground – the match day announcer had already used his ex-police loud hailer to ask for potential additions to the bare bones of the Shrimpies’ squad. This motley crew had already lined-up in front to the dug-out/bus shelters as usual, waiting to be chosen – or rejected.

The ex-soldier inspected his potential team-mates with more than a little scepticism.

Regular fans would have recognised at least three of them – because they were regular fans too.

Beryl the tea-lady never got a game: she was far too old. (Although she had – sort-of – run the line when Assistant Referees had failed to materialise in the past.)

Little Phil was never chosen either: he was far too small.

If the normally omni-present Psycho had been present, he wouldn’t have stood a chance either: he’d been sent-off almost immediately in the four games he had competed in previously. But Psycho was currently serving a spell at His Majesty’s Pleasure on the mainland.

So that left Shep, the farmers’ labourer who had suffered serious head injuries after falling from a tractor as a teenager and had never been quite the same since.

Plus today – for the first time and very unusually – two Oriental-looking chaps were in the volunteers’ line-up. One was small and wiry; the other tall and muscular and both were smiling, nodding and bowing slightly at anyone who took any notice of them as a means of overcoming their apparent total lack of English.

Jay joined them. And was directed eventually to the crumbling Dressing Rooms and issued with a faded strip with the Number 5 on the back of the red-and-white shirt. The tall Oriental fellow was wearing the Number Nine (which was clearly a Number Six which had been turned and sewn – badly – onto the back of an ancient jersey; the little chap a Number Four shirt which was far too big for him and red shorts which had what were hopefully only muddy stains on them even before they started the game. Other players’ shorts were white, off-white or even yellow: Shrimpleton Town’s budget didn’t stretch to matching strips any more than it did to laundry services.

Just before three, this collection of oddly-dressed misfits were gathered in a huddle on Black Pool’s bumpy pitch at the iconic Shrimpleton Town’s ground, listening to an inspiring speech by the team Captain.

This was a bearded man of about fifty known just as “Skip” – who wore the Number Eight shirt.

Two of his new players seemingly couldn’t speak any English at all but they seemed to understand what he was saying nonetheless. Which is just as well as this is the only instruction they got. There had been no sign of the Manager – seven-and-a-half year old Amandeep Singh – and the Town team seemed to lack any Coaches or backroom staff either.

Jay scanned the crowd and the part of the repainted sea container with one long side ground-off which served both as Main Stand and Directors’ Box (and Tea Bar – sorry Beryl, I almost forget to mention it. And yes, I am going to tell them about the outside events you cater for… What’s that? Genuine Potted Shrimp Paste in your Special Funeral Teas – yes; I’ll tell them that as well, I promise…)

Sorry about that. Where were we? Oh – back at The Black Pool football ground.

Jay also saw no sign of anyone wearing a turban which might betray their membership of the Khalistan Warriors.

So where were the owners to be found?…

By sharp contrast to their hosts, Rampside Royal Raiders were clearly wearing a new strip with a sponsor’s name emblazoned on the chest: CCI: Cumbria Cattle Inseminators PLC.

Liz Truss would be proud of them…

The Assistant Manager and team Doctor wore contrasting but matching outfits and the whole team looked smart and business-like. And that’s how they played once the game kicked-off.

The Player-Manager had obviously targeted Shrimpleton’s Left-Back – Brian the Milk – as a weak link in the Town side. He’d been up doing doorstep delivery since half past four in the morning and was knackered – and looked like it. 

So the Raiders’ Number Two was combining immediately with their right winger to push home their advantage right from the off. As a result, Jay was having his work cut-out constantly dealing with the crosses coming over from the Rampside right from the first minute to the last.

He headed one of these away for a corner to the visitors after four minutes. With his hands full trying to cope with their Number Nine, however, he was unable to do anything about the Royals’ Centre Half as he charged from the back to connect with the ball coming in from the corner spot. He headed it perfectly downwards and on-target as Town Goalkeeper Jim the Post lived up to his nickname by colliding with his near one so hard that his glasses came off as the ball hit it and bounced over the line to put the visitors one goal to the good.

The ball was played back to Jay by his own Number Nine from the re-start: 9 to 5.

For some inexplicable reason, `Office Hours’ ran through Jay’s head followed by a burst of a Dolly Parton song.

But he could barely ignore the fact that the Oriental player was holding-up four fingers and pointing at his compatriot as he waited to receive the ball on the half-way line to the right of the centre-spot.

So Jay slipped it to him and – maybe thirty seconds later – it had crashed through the back of the Raiders’ net. The little fellow had simply taken off on the right flank, pushed the ball past the Royal’s Left-Back, run onto it again as he easily outpaced his opponent, sold a dummy to the Centre Half who had just scored and made as if to take a shot. This caused the visiting Right-Back to move out of position to try and block it, at which point Town’s new Number Four dinked a short pass over him to the in-rushing Number Nine, who swerved an instant strike past the despairing dive of the Rampside goalkeeper with such power that it literally broke the decaying fishing net which was draped over the away goal.

One-each. Four each at half time. Four assists from the Shrimpleton Number Four; four goals to Town’s Number Nine: one left-footed; the next right-footed followed by a header for the perfect hat-trick and then an instinctive back-heel for his fourth. These two were in a class of their own. But what less would you expect of the Vietnamese People’s Army’s first-choice selections for the national team?

At half-time, the Raiders’ Player-Manager identified these two as the biggest threat to his team and implemented a scheme to immediately nullify them: get Left Half `Cruncher’ Cartwright to nobble them both.

But the nimble newcomers were far too smart to be caught-out by such crude tactics. The fifth time Cruncher attempted to slide-in with both feet – studs showing – to the big Number Nine, the Vietnamese had finally had enough of him. He jumped out of the way at the last moment but made sure he landed with all his weight on his left foot on Cartwright’s chest, gouging veritable plough-marks of torn skin and blood right along the defender’s rib-cage with his own studs before falling to the ground as if he had been pole-axed himself.

The Referee sent Cruncher off when he was able to stand-up again some time later and in that moment, the game was decided.

Nine-six to the Town, with the new players sharing the goals: two more each to Numbers Four and Nine and one to Jay, who headed home from a corner. There would have been more but a combination of his shorts constantly falling down or tripping over his night-gown-like jersey had inhibited Number Four’s progress all game.

The three players hugged each other as they left the field – they may speak different tongues but football was a language they clearly all shared.

Later, Jay would ponder about this. He started to suspect that the lack of comprehension linguistically was probably only his. The Vietnamese both clearly understood some English. It was them, after all, who had yelled “Red” or “Yellow Card, Ref!” when the Royals had transgressed particularly badly during the game; Nine who had yelled `Man On, Five!” at him when he was about to be tackled from behind and hadn’t anticipated it.

But were expressions like these just the universal parlance of footballers in a global age? Or did the Vietnamese understand everything but – for whatever reason – were reluctant to take part in the conversation… or even deliberately mute most of the time?

It was a puzzle which would take Jay some time to solve…

Anyway, after a luke-warm wash from the single, leaky shower, the three men – Four; Nine and Five as they had started to call each other- stayed behind.

“Nice threads!” said Jay to Nine, the big lad. “Where did you get them?”

Both he and Four were wearing very smart camouflage gear with proper Jungle boots. When the Vietnamese finally understood what Five was saying, he took a piece of paper from an inner pocket which had phrases written in Chữ Quốc Ngữ script alongside English translations. He searched through it and – pointing at one line – showed it to Jay.

It read: “Framus Army Shores”. Oh really? – wasn’t Framus a German manufacturer of pretty crummy bass guitars back in the 1960s? Didn’t the Rolling Stones’ Bill Wyman once play one?…

Jay started to interrogate `Skip’ about the set-up at The Black Pool and soon discovered that junior Manager Master Singh and the Directors of the club never set foot on the premises – or the island, come to that. He also noted that Nine and Four seemed to be listening very attentively to what was being said.

“But what’s all that “You will see us more; You will hear from us more; And you will see improvements quickly” stuff from the Chairman on the website?” asked Shrimpleton Town’s new Number Five, repeating the quote he had committed to memory so smoothly that even the italics didn’t notice.

“Look around you!” said the team Captain by means of reply. “Do you see any improvements?”

Enough said – except when Skip added:

“We all watch the Manager’s interviews on the internet, though!”

“To learn what tactics he has for individual matches?”

“What – with the sound turned off? He knows as much about football as I do about the Moons of Jupiter! No – the lads just like to get an eye-full of that sister of his! Charlie over there” (pointing at a particularly spotty and goofy-looking Number Three) “Even sends her love letters!”

So next moment, Jay was interrogating Charlie as well. The skinny, shy lad was clearly embarrassed but admitted that the lovely Simran had replied, once. It was clearly a cherished piece of paper which he had printed-off and kept in his wallet. He proudly showed it to Jay.

It was a generic email thanking him for his greatly appreciated  communication and assuring him that it meant a lot to the recipient, Amandeep being crossed-out, leaving the single word `Simran’ at the unsigned end of the message.

At the top of the email was a heading, though: Khalistan Warriors. It was followed by an address: an address near Manchester which Jay immediately committed to memory. This is it:

Khalistan Warriors

P.O. Box 3079

Hyde M75 84KW

Sat Sri Akal: Truth is Eternal

He was in the process of handing the precious piece of paper back to Charlie when Nine tapped him on the shoulder. He was pointing at another line on his Framus Army Shores script which read “What does it say? Please read a loud.”

So Jay did. Nine then looked excitedly at Four and spoke to him in Vietnamese. Both of them turned immediately towards Jay and Skip, bowed – and disappeared, never to be seen at the club – or at least, in the team – ever again.

They made a bee-line for the island’s biggest pub – the Shrimpleton Arms ­– and, after further consultations between Nine’s piece of paper and landlord Amos, the two men bought two pints of Bitter and discovered the whereabouts of the one pay-phone in the vicinity: in the rear Snug. Four dialled a number and waited for a moment, then replaced the handset. The phone then rang almost instantaneously and an animated conversation in Vietnamese followed. Then the two men – their beer abandoned, untouched, on one of the rickety tables – left by the back door.

Four had been speaking to a Peeress of the British Realm. Lady Lynne Shrimpleton had been expecting this call all afternoon. And she was only mildly surprised to hear what Four had told her: that the last place anybody would ever find the Khalistan Warriors was at the football club they actually owned. But she now had a vital piece of information to work with. The Sikhs were either based near Manchester at the address Four had just supplied her with – or that was where the videos between the young Manager and his gorgeous older sister were being recorded.

Either way – it was progress. She instructed Nine and Four to sail to the mainland immediately; take the train to Manchester and go from there to Hyde – where the key address was actually to be found. Once they had unearthed it, they must investigate further. Because Lady Lynne had made a decision:

“The sure-fire way to get leverage over the Khalistan Warriors is to kidnap the lovely Simran and hold her to ransom!”

As her two operatives were leaving the Shrimpleton Arms by the back door, Jay was entering by the front. He bought a pie and a pint and sat down. Then he had another pint and booked a room for the night. And – all the time – he was wondering what could possibly be the link between a town just to the east of Manchester and the organisation known as the Khalistan Warriors.

Was there a big Sikh community in Hyde? Did it have a significant Gurdwara – er, Temple? He doubted it – correctly.

Alternatively, was it a hub of small production companies which could produce the sort of videos which featured the lovely Simran and her younger brother? He somehow doubted that, too.

So was there a hidden message in the e-mail the Khalistan Warriors had sent to Charlie – and all the other people who have tried to communicate with the young Manager or his beautiful teenaged sister?

With the absence of any Wi-Fi access in the pub at that moment (it was always unreliable) and patchy internet coverage of the island, he concluded that he had had no way of finding out. So it would just have to wait, wouldn’t it? He decided to sleep on it.

Next morning, refreshed despite the damp bed he had slept in, he had made a strategic decision:

“The sure-fire way to get leverage over the Khalistan Warriors is to kidnap the lovely Simran and hold her to ransom!”

The only question was: how was he going to do this?

Jay had no way of knowing that his Vietnamese former team-mates were in the act of making an excursion to the town where the mighty Hyde United can be found. But if he had, he would have written it off as a complete waste of time. There was something about the email of Charlie’s which bothered him. As if there was a sort of cryptic message in it. But what was it?

He needed to try and puzzle it out. This is what he thought:

The Khalistan Warriors didn’t want to be found, that was increasingly clear. The scandal of the link between the group and Punjabi Nationalism which had led to the sudden disappearance of the former Director of Communications at the football club they owned is something they obviously didn’t intend to happen again. It was also clear to Jay that they had decided to make it as hard as possible for anyone to identify individual members of their group – or where those people lived.

He didn’t know that Chairman `Chopper’ could once be discovered regularly in the Bristol – (Bristol Rovers’ Return) pub in east London. But since the demise of Whit Jason, Chairman Chopra hadn’t visited the premises even once, so that knowledge wouldn’t have helped him in any case.

The Warriors’ appearances in public – despite the promise of Chopper to be more visible to Shrimpleton Town fans – was being strictly controlled by them: and them alone.

And it seemed to the former Special Ops soldier that they intended to play a little game with whoever thought they could actually outsmart them and track their carefully chosen exclusive membership down.

He was right.

Unknown to Jay, the Warriors had even coined a name for the game itself which the ex-soldier couldn’t begin to guess. Can you? – all the clues are here:

Khalistan Warriors

P.O. Box 3079

Hyde M75 84KW

Sat Sri Akal: Truth is Eternal

Got it?

Need a clue? Think of the Khalistan Warriors’ themselves and then part of the address they have chosen to adopt.

Ok – time’s up.

Well – time’s up in that we need to stop this episode now. So you have plenty of time to think about it before the next one, don’t you?