Part Seven of The Sensational Shrimpleton Saga: By ‘eck and sithee – who art `Turban Guerrillas’?

Where were we? Oh we were with Pastor James the Elder; `Tripod’; Threefeet of the Yard or just plain old James Churchill Proudfoot in a greasy spoon café somewhere in the wasteland that is the north western suburbs of the Capital of Great Britain…

Over two hundred miles away to the north, meanwhile, Soldier `J’ was also enjoying a hearty breakfast. The surroundings were slightly different – stunted, wind-swept trees on Cumberside Island as opposed to red double-decker London buses – but a Full English was the same the world over, more or less.

The ex-soldier was troubled, though. Although he hadn’t figured-out what this was yet, Jay smelt a very large rat with the address of the Khalistan Warriors he had seen on young Charlie the footballer’s treasured email from the very beautiful Simran; potential star of Bollywood – and actually Shrimpleton Town AFC’s video offerings to the world. Just one look at the apparent Post Code of a clearly non-existent P. O, Box told him that it was bogus.

He looked at it again:

Khalistan Warriors

P.O. Box 3079

Hyde M75 84KW

Sat Sri Akal: Truth is Eternal

Then thought a bit harder about the Box Number itself: 3097; and then the so-called Post Code: 7584.

His military training and map-reading skills kicked in at this point. Don’t knock it: being able to read a map properly and understand what the various contour lines meant in terms of visibility or ambush in a combat zone – or which seemingly unimportant tracks led you out of trouble instead of into it had saved his life – and that of his men – on more than one occasion in the mountains of Afghanistan and the wide open spaces of Iraq.

He looked at the numbers again and something suddenly clicked. He guessed – correctly – that the global co-ordinates of Khalistan are 3079: 30ᵒ97’ North; 7584: 75ᵒ84’ East. So the numbers in the apparent `address’ hadn’t been chosen randomly – but did they tell us anything else?

He thought for quite some time about this. Was it a coded message telling him that the Warriors could not be found in Britain anymore? Had they returned to their Motherland?

Jay somehow doubted it: what little he knew about them told him that Chairman Ranjit Singh Chopra had far too many business interests to look after in London to be able to return to India for long. But he also knew that people who don’t want to be found can often be extremely successful in doing so. Individuals disappear all the time – run away; move; emigrate – for all sorts of reasons: fear; threats; shame; avoiding arrest – even free choice; new opportunities; fresh starts or whatever – never to be seen by people who had shared their lives until the moment they choose to disappear ever again. He’d done it himself at times, after all. So finding the Khalistan Warriors was clearly going to be tricky. But not impossible. The question was: how could he do it?

Former team-mates Nine and Four, meanwhile, had no such worries. Totally unaware of the subtleties of the address for the Warriors which Jay had read to them from Charlie’s email, they intended to visit it. They took the Manchester Airport train from Barrow and got off at Piccadilly station in the city, from where they navigated their way on another train to Hyde Centralstation. Finding the Post Office on Market Street was simple enough. But that was where their problems began. The Vietnamese had assumed that a Post Office Box Number meant that there would literally be a box full of letters at the local Post Office specified by the address. Makes perfect sense if you’re a foreigner and don’t know how the system works although expecting the Post Office staff to turn-over the box and its contents to total strangers was perhaps a bit naive. Once it was made plain to them that a physical box didn’t exist; the Post Office staff didn’t have it and they wouldn’t hand it over even if they did, Nine made another phone call. He explained to his boss, Lady Lynne Shrimpleton, what had happened and stood by for further instructions as soon as she decided the best course of action.

Regrettably, though, she had no more idea of how to track-down the Khalistan Warriors than Soldier Jay did over two hundred miles to the north. How could she go about it?

The obvious thing was to contact the organisation at whatever address they were registered. According to the internet, this was at a Business Park in Hayes, west London, not a million miles from Heathrow airport. And it was to this address just off College Road that Nine and Four were sent by Lady Lynne. Only to discover that it was effectively just another mail drop point. It would seem that the Warriors didn’t have any actual office or anywhere else where members of it might be contacted. So how on earth was the organisation going to be tracked-down?

Then a thought suddenly occurred to her Ladyship at virtually the same time that the identical idea had occurred to Jay on Cumberside Island over two hundred miles away to the north.

Jay had returned to the football club and tracked-down the statement made by the new Director of Communications on behalf of Shrimpleton Town AFC only a short while ago. He found this bit particularly interesting:

“We will be sitting down with the Shrimpies Trust podcast as an ownership group, and we will engage directly with all the fans – Dave; Billy; Edna; Roy; Big Pete; Dicky; Psycho; Barbara; Little Phil and Zorba the Labrador – at the Forum in January. This is your club, and you deserve clarity, honesty and a plan you can believe in.”

The sole question remaining was: what date in January was this Forum going to be held?

It was scheduled – believe it or not – to happen the very next day…

In London, Lady Shrimpleton had just discovered the same thing. So she needed to move quickly. But first of all, she had an interview to conduct. The Private Investigator going by the name Jim Threefeet of the Yard was due at her office at two. There were a couple of things she needed to do before she met him…

She sent her personal secretary Lionel to the Vietnamese Embassy to collect a parcel first of all. Then she asked Office Manager Victoria to tell Mr Threefeet when he arrived that she was stuck in a meeting.

“Apologise to him for me and tell him I won’t be long please, Vic. Usher him into my office and sit him down. Offer him a drink – not an alcoholic one – and leave him on his own. Then ring me, after you make sure the camera in there is working, OK?”

Lionel was well-known at the Embassy and made very welcome. He was back at Parliament with Lady Lynne’s package by Midday. Inside was a Daily Mail and a Guardian with that day’s date. You wouldn’t look at them twice: they seemed identical in every way to the copies widely available throughout the capital and right across Britain. But these two were just ever so slightly different, courtesy of the forgers the Embassy sometimes employed.

Sandwiched between them was an envelope with Post Office stamps and a SIGNED FOR sticker on it addressed to Lady Shrimpleton, c/o The House of Lords, London SW1A 0PW. It had already been torn open. Inside it was a seemingly very important but actually totally bogus letter. Bundled on top of this were a number of official-looking documents, some stamped TOP SECRET in red ink and all of them with various Crown Ministries – Defence; Treasury and Home Office among others. There were even a couple headed with a Coat of Arms featuring a Bald Eagle and the title Department of Homeland Security, both stamped in bold red letters `FOR EYES ONLY’. Neither of these was authentic either.

In the meantime, the sole member of the Association of the Private Eyes’ was heading into London by public transport. Jim Threefeet had taken the Metropolitan Line tube to Baker Street and was now aboard the 88 bus which would take him to Westminster Abbey, right across the road from where he wanted to be. He arrived early and mixed with the rubber-neckers – as he so contemptuously thought of them – for a while before going into the House of Lords fashionably early. He showed Security the letter he had received on House of Lords’ headed notepaper from Her Ladyship; was subjected to a half-hearted search by a big, bored bloke wearing a reflective yellow jacket and issued with a lanyard to wear round his neck with VISITOR written on it by a different one. He was then pointed in the general direction of Lady Lynne Shrimpleton’s office in the bowels of the huge building. He arrived there at ten to two.

A very attractive young woman who introduced herself as `Victoria’ greeted him warmly and ushered him into the inner sanctum. As instructed, she made her apologies to her visitor and offered him a drink – tea; coffee; fruit juice – which he refused.

“I’m a Celeriac!” he said, thinking that getting the sympathy of his potential victims –and he knew that female targets were usually most susceptible to this ploy – was almost always a good idea.

Vicky looked slightly nonplussed. He didn’t look like a vegetable and if her nose was correct, he didn’t smell like one either: it was more like Cod – or perhaps Sqid… And if it was a slip of the tongue and he actually meant `celiac’ (which he did), she didn’t realise there was any gluten in the things she had just offered him anyway…

“I’ve been allergic to glue since I was ten” Jim explained sadly and then – smiling in a slightly creepy way at her – added. “Glue? Ten?”

Vicky smiled back uncertainly. Was this some sort of joke – or was this guy not a vegetable but another food source altogether – nuts? But then she remembered the rest of her instructions.

“Lady Shrimpleton won’t be long!” she said and offered Jim a comfy chair in the Inner Sanctum. She left him seated facing Her Ladyship’s desk as she pointedly closed the door behind her. Then Victoria returned to her own desk and removed a laptop from a drawer. She pressed a few of its keys until she found what she was looking for: live pictures from inside the room just the other side of a wall from her. Then she rang Lady Lynne.

“Give him five minutes, Vic” her boss told her, “Look busy but keep an eye on what he gets up to. I’m on my way.”

Inside the inner sanctum, Jim took a while to accustom himself to his new surroundings. He looked around and was impressed by the number – and variety – of books on the ancient bookshelves. As a conman, you might think that this might not be the case. In reality, Lady Lynne only used a handful of them – the ancient, bound Parliamentary tomes which particularly took Jim’s eye had been there for decades – and probably untouched by anybody for most of that time. But – as he should have known – impressions are in some ways far better than reality in building-up a false picture of anyone…

He then scanned the walls and the ceiling and saw a clumsily pinned flex leading to what was doubtlessly emergency lighting and what he assumed was a sophisticated smoke alarm: a red globe-like thing, almost like an inverted beacon of the sort you might see on an old-fashioned Fire Engine. But – talking about Fire Appliances – he was surprised not to see a sprinkler of some sort on the ceiling. But somewhere in the recesses of his memory, he remembered hearing ages ago that a Risk Assessment had ruled out a sprinkler system in the bowels of parliament because there was a calculable risk that any fireman exposed to it if there actually was a fire might contract Legionnaire’s disease as a result. He was surprised that the same logic didn’t apply to their main job: if you fight fires, there would surely a much better chance that you’d get burnt, wouldn’t there? Maybe they should get a Doctor’s Note to excuse them from doing that too…

He looked at the ceiling anew and wondered: if there was no fire-fighting system down here, what was the point of the big, red smoke alarm? But this merely showed what a hopeless amateur sleuth Jim actually was – even Sherlock Holmes from an era when such things were totally unknown – would never had made such a basic mistake. For the smoke alarm was actually a CCTV camera with a 360ᵒ lens. In no time at all, both Vicky and Lady Lynne were watching what it was revealing on a screen next door.

Jim sat still for a while. But his urge to poke about a bit when clearly unobserved started to get the better of him. There was a small window, almost at ground level in the basement room. He got up and pretended to look out of it – even standing on tiptoe – but what he was really interested in was Lady Lynne’s desk behind him. Not just one – but two phones – for a start. One of them red. Now that really was impressive! He turned and casually started to return to the chair on the other side of the desk but noticed that a drawer had been left tantalisingly slightly open in it. He glanced around – a nervous habit of the practiced criminal mind – and then opened it, taking its contents out and spreading them on the desk. He saw the words TOP SECRET on a couple of them and more red writing on what seemed to be official United States papers. He had another urge to steal them but that would be stupid: they would be missed. He even briefly thought about taking them and dropping a lighted match into the waste paper bin. Maybe just a localised fire in which, it would be assumed, the stolen papers had been destroyed.  But he had no matches. Or a cigarette lighter. And a nagging doubt that he might be discovered and then convicted also stopped him in his tracks. He could see the lurid headlines already about a latter-day Guy Fawkes…

So with another sly glance around first, he employed Plan C instead. He took his mobile phone out of his pocket and took a photograph. Then another. And another.

Next door, Lady Lynne watched him photographing the bogus secret letters and then put her finger to her lips and smiled to Victoria before going to the main office door, opening and then noisily slamming it as if she had just entered.

“Hello Vicky!” she almost yelled and it was all herself and her Office Manager could do to stop themselves laughing as the reaction of their guest and his camera next door was like something out of a Silent Movie, so melodramatic was the way he reacted to the sound. He actually dropped his phone into the waste paper bin in shock before shoving the documents back into place and was clearly about to dive back into his chair before he remembered to retrieve his property from the bin first, so obviously startled was he. Lynne gave him a moment and then opened the door to her office and looked in.

“You must be Tripo – er – Mr Threefeet!” she said cheerily. “I’m really sorry for the delay. Would it be all right if I just tied-up a few odds and ends on the Defence Appropriations Committee? About five minutes?”

Jim mutely smiled his agreement but the moment the door was shut again, he returned to his work of surreptitiously photographing all the documents so carelessly left in Her Ladyship’s open desk drawer which he had missed. He had just finished and was in the act of replacing his phone when the door burst open without warning and Lady Lynne re-appeared. He almost jumped out of his skin.

“Didn’t take as long as I anticipated” she said airily as if she hadn’t noticed – and then asked innocently

“What are you doing?”

“Er – just Perusin’…” (“Damn, Damn! Damn! DAMN!” Jim thought to himself angrily. Caught in the act and one little upset had caused him to lapse in his normally almost perfect diction!) But he was surprised by the way Lady Lynne reacted to his mistake.

Showing no obvious suspicion whatsoever, she approached her desk and gave Jim a smile warm enough to melt the iceberg that sank the Titanic.

“Peru Sin?” she repeated, as if turning the words over in her mind. “Not a concept I am familiar with, to be honest. Is it something to do with Catholicism in South America?” she asked, apparently seriously, as she sat down. Or was there just the slightest hint of mockery in her utterly beautiful smile?

“No matter” she continued. “We’re not here to talk about Western concepts of wrongdoing, are we?”

Was this a question – or just a remark? Jim shifted uncomfortably in his chair, not quite sure whether to reply or not. But he had no chance to as Her Ladyship continued, seamlessly:

“But of course, you have no idea where you are here, have you? You poor man. I’ve kept you waiting too and forgotten my manners into the bargain. Would you like a coffee?… Sure? Well – I’m frankly parched; I need a cup of tea to whet my whistle. Forgive me as Imake myself one. But…”

She made a great show of fumbling in a bag which she had lifted up onto her knee from the floor.

“Whilst I’m doing that, maybe you’d like to have a look at today’s papers.”

She opened the Mail and handed it to him and then dropped the Guardian in front of him as she again left the room.She leant towards him as she did this – close enough for him to be able to smell her entrancing perfume and perhaps have a quick peek at her ample cleavage as she bent over but without getting too close – and pointed at the Mail.

“There’s a piece about me on the front page” she said. “And a longer article on page ten. The Guardian has a similar splash on the front cover and a longer piece on page five. Maybe you’d like to read them. I’ll be back in a tick.”

She re-joined Victoria and they both looked as if they were going to burst out laughing again.

“Coffee my dear?” she asked her Office Manager and made Vicky an instant one with milk from a small fridge cleverly disguised as a filing cabinet.

“Biscuit?”

Vic nodded and Lynne handed her the coffee, a plate and an unopened packet of Rich Tea, which she knew were her assistant’s favourites.

Then she made herself a mug of tea, using a bag of Trà Sen, a lotus-scented concoction which she had brought with her all the way from Hanoi following a recent visit. She winked at Victoria and said, quietly:

“Ring me the moment I take the spoon and the tea bag out of the mug – OK?”

Having received an affirmative nod, Lynne took her own tea – black and with the bag still in the mug and a spoon sticking out of it – back into her own room.

What was she up to?

Why was she about to offer some sort of job to a man of this sort?

And what had any of this got to do with the Khalistan Warriors or Shrimpleton Town Football Club anyway? All will be revealed in the next episode of the Sensational Shrimpleton Saga –  don’t miss it!