Part Fifteen of The Sensational Shrimpleton Saga: Jalandhar Calling!

In the last episode, we learnt an important lesson for life from one of our main characters, Soldier `J’:

“People can live with the truth; it’s the lies they can’t handle.”

But is he right? And – having just swum the considerable distance from Barrow-in-Furness to the shores of Cumberside Island, would our hero put what he preaches into actual practice?

Once he had got ashore, the first thing Jay searched for was the mobile phone which he had carefully hidden in bushes before swimming out to Lady Lynne’s yacht the previous night. On it, he would be able to find the really vital information in the messages he had sent from Baban Singh Chopra’s and Her Ladyship’s phones earlier in the day.

But the very next thing he had resolved to do as soon as he got the phone safely back into his hands was make a call with it.

We must remember that landlord of the Shrimpleton Arms Amos de Rowlocks had been impressed by the way that Jay had shown an interest in his business when first arrived at his pub. The way he asked questions about it that would not even occur to most punters. Where he got the beer, etc etc. So it was had been no problem as far as he was concerned to tell Jay the phone number the Khalistan Warriors had used to book the ill-fated meeting with the Shrimpies Trust in the pub last night. As we remarked at the time, what possible harm could it do?

Jay had committed the number to memory. And as soon as he retrieved his phone, he rang it…

—-

It was almost six in the evening when the ex-Special Ops soldier got back to the Shrimpleton Arms. He had a hot shower, followed by a coffee at the bar after Amos had kept his promise and fed him with a special Pukka pie. Gratis. He would have preferred something stronger than the coffee but with football training just about to begin, decided to wait until later. But as he ate his strange-tasting food, there had been no difficult questions from the landlord about where he had been or what he had been doing – or anyone else in the pub.

One of the first people he had bumped into there was Seth – sporting a big plaster over a large lump on his forehead.

“Jay!” said the Landlord’s son. “Thank goodness you’re back! We need a bloke of your calibre to keep this island safe! I bet if you had your hands on my Twelve Boar, those Chinkie devils would not have got away with The Big Lad quite so easily last night! If I ever get my hands on those two fellahs who took him away – god help them! And if I ever discover who caused this” pointing to the lump on his forehead, “I’ll tear them limb from limb with me own bare hands!”

But he smiled and held his own hand out to the retired soldier as he said this and Jay – feeling even guiltier than ever – took it. Amos’ dad then welcomed him just as warmly – as if he was his best mate or something; even giving him a hug – and Jay felt really guilty about that too.

But his room had been locked as requested and there was no sign that anyone had tampered with any of his things whilst he had been away.

Best of all, though, he had retrieved his phone and – due to the information he had sent from Baban’s mobile – could see that Lynne’s yacht was still making steady progress down the southern coast of England.

He had a very quick power nap; gathered his kit and the new football boots he had just bought in Barrow and set out to run the short distance to the Shrimpies – Shrimpleton Town AFC’s home ground, The Black Pool. Then the rest of the depleted squad and himself did a lot of square-bashing in the semi-darkness (the floodlights still hadn’t been connected) but absolutely no tactics or any coaching worthy of the name.

And – yet again – there was nobody wearing a turban who anyone could even remotely suspect of being related to the Khalistan Warriors in any meaningful way.

So where on earth were they?

He walked back to the pub with Skip afterwards.

In the bar, after a couple of pints, they were joined by the landlord and his son. Together, they speculated about what might have been the reason for what had happened at the pub the previous evening. They chatted for quite some time about it but came to no clear conslusions.

Then Jay made his excuses at about midnight and retired upstairs to his bedroom.

Finally, with the Shrimpleton Arms empty of customers, Seth also made his way up to bed, leaving just Amos and Skip alone at the bar.

“You look troubled!” the Landlord said to the local team’s Captain. “What’s up?”

Skip looked into his almost half-full glass for a moment, clearly deciding whether or not it would be a good idea to answer. But eventually, he admitted to what was troubling him:

“It’s Jay!”

“What about Jay?”

Skip took a long draught of his beer, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and finally looked Amos straight in the eye.

“I noticed that every time he mentioned the name of Baban Singh Chopra this evening, he said `was’ – as in the past tense. Every time!”

He drained his beer and left the glass on the bar, preparing to depart.

“Keep this between you and me Amos” he said before he left the premises, “But I think there’s something my esteemed Number Five isn’t telling us. Anyway: let’s let that lie for now.”

Upstairs, just before he fell asleep, Jay had checked his phone one last time. On the screen was a map of the British Isles which showed a red dot still moving very slowly – past Plymouth at that moment – but still heading in an easterly direction. So Lady Lynne’s yacht was still at sea.

No worry – as long as she kept the phone with her, he would be able to track Her Ladyship wherever she went.

Happy with that, Jay switched his own device off and lay down in the darkness.

Something had happened earlier in the evening that he wasn’t so happy about, though. But – realising that there was nothing he could do about it at the moment – he dismissed it from his mind, rolled over and fell into a very deep sleep.

But in far away Jalandhar, nobody had been sleeping.

Prying eyes there had also being tracking the progress of Lady Lynne’s yacht.

Suddenly though, just a few short hours earlier, the other blip on their screen of Western Europe had appeared again. They zoomed in to it to discover its location: a spot in the Irish Sea somewhere off the coast of Barrow-in-Furness.

They had all just collectively decided that it would need to be investigated further when it made a call.

As they sat in the semi-darkness maybe three thousand miles away from Cumberside Island staring at their banks of screens in a collective effort to unravel the puzzle of who this phone was actually ringing – and who was involved at both ends of the call – they were distracted.

By a sound – loud and urgent.

A phone was ringing right there in the room they were sitting in. A digital phone connected to all their devices. A digital phone which was situated at precisely the point they had all been staring at for the last little while.

Nobody had expected this.

But one of them – who spoke the best English and pronounced some of it with a distinctly Yorkshire accent after her B.Eng degree in Electronic and Computer Engineering at the University of York – answered it.

“Who is this?” she asked.

“Ladies first” came a voice from the ether. “Who are you?”

“We are the PPF:  the Punjabi Popular Front. If you wish to understand our history and purpose or would like to subscribe, please visit our website at…”

“What is your relationship to the Khalistan Warriors?”

“Who is this?”

“Never mind who I am – just answer the question!”

The young Sikh who had just answered the call looked towards her colleagues for unspoken approval of what she said next – and found it. She replied:

“As I just said, we are the Punjabi Popular Front. I cannot speak on behalf of the organisation you have just mentioned. But I will talk with them and get back to you, whoever you are. I have your number. Wait…”

One of her colleagues had been frantically downloading all the recent messages from Jay’s phone as she was speaking to him. He wrote something on a piece of paper and slipped it across to her. She looked at it and said:

”I have your number, Jay. It is `Jay’, isn’t it? We have Her Ladyship’s too. We know what’s going on between you both. We shall be in touch!”

At the other end of the phone, the caller was astonished.

“How do you know my name?” he demanded. “What business do people like you have with me – or Her Ladyship?”

But the phone was dead.

Jay was surprised by how shaken-up he felt by this intercontinental interaction as he trudged back towards the pub and his temporary home. Who the hell were these people? What did they know of his relationship with Lady Lynne Shrimpleton? And how had they gleaned this information?

As he sank deeper and deeper into unconsciousness later on, Jay was certain of just one thing: he would be hearing from the Punjabi Popular Front again. Or, failing that, he had no doubt that the Khalistan Warriors themselves would be in touch. Imminently.

—-

Next morning, when he woke up at the Shrimpleton Arms on Cumberside Island, Jay felt even more troubled than he had been when he had gone to bed.

The first thing he did was to again check the progress of Lady Lynne’s yacht. He’d guessed – correctly as things worked out – that she was heading for a place on the south coast where she could get a train back home to London. But the signal he was getting loud and clear from her phone told him that she was still aboard her posh boat, at least for now.

Jay wasn’t worried about the beautiful Vietnamese woman, though. Something else was gnawing away at his guts.

He seemed to have been received cordially enough by Amos the landlord when he reappeared in the Shrimpleton Arms yesterday. But he sensed something from Skip – the Captain of Shrimpleton Town FC – which made him uneasy. He would have expected this man to want to know more about why he had been a.w.o.l. for the best part of the previous day. Where he’s been and why. If he was in the older man’s position, he’d want to know – and he’d expect at least a plausible explanation or excuse into the bargain too. But Skip hadn’t even asked.

In fact, he showed no interest at all, at training earlier on or in the Snug afterwards. Not even when Amos had told him that Jay had indulged in a bit of spying skulduggery on future opponents of Shrimpleton Town, the Strait Menais and their home ground on St Tudwal’s islands in the Menai Strait near Anglesey. That was surely worth asking about, wasn’t it?

But Skip kept his counsel and said nothing.

Of course, with his Vietnamese stars seemingly also Absent Without Leave, maybe the old stager had put Two and Two together and realised who the real identities of the kidnappers of Baban Singh Chopra really were. Maybe Skip had more important things to think about than his own absence from the island.

He didn’t know Skip well, after all – this man might have a very complicated personal life which was troubling him currently for all Jay knew. But if his instinctive feeling was right – and the ex-soldier’s instincts invariably were – he wondered: what sort of more important things could Skip be interested in?

Maybe he should ask him…

The next time they would meet was tonight at the pub. A meeting open to the entire island population had been hastily convened. Before it started, Jay knew that he would be obliged to talk to Skip and landlord Amos all over again about what had happened on the night of Baban Singh Chopra’s abduction. Because the purpose of the meeting was to decide – as islanders – what they collectively intended to do about it.

—-

However – a long way away to the south, on board the yacht Jay had abandoned, Jay’s former team-mates Nine and Four were still recovering from the shock of the resurrection of Baban Singh Chopra earlier in the day. Although they were both relieved that the big man had recovered, they were also disappointed by the news that Five had abandoned them. 

Understandably, they wanted Her Ladyship to share with them what she made of this – and what she intended them to do next.

“Shouldn’t we be making some sort of ransom demand?” they asked her.

She looked downhearted – something neither of them had witnessed before.

“I’ve had a long chat with Baban” she admitted. “And I don’t think anyone wants him back! I should have thought of this before of course, when I assumed he was a valuable catch. But those Khalli Scallies see the old man as completely expendable!”

Her men looked suitably downcast as well. But, finally, Nine asked her:

“We’ve kidnapped a senior member of Khalistan Warriors. You’ve just told us that this was a mistake because they don’t want him back. So what were you hoping to do with him in the first place? Hold him to ransom?”

Nine was getting very warm. Lynne looked pensive for a moment but said nothing until Four continued:

“Why did we snatch the old guy anyway?”

Should she tell them? Knowing what she did now, it would make her feel even more stupid. But there again – she owed them at least some sort of explanation…

“To do a swap.”

“What sort of swap?”

“It’s probably best that you don’t know. It’s not going to happen now anyway.”

“Why not?”

“Because nobody wants the poor the old man! We can keep him for all the Khalli Scallies care!” she explained sadly.

Nine and Four looked at each other. Then Nine asked their boss:

“So what are we going to do with him?”

Lynne was silent for a minute. Then she answered:

“I haven’t decided yet. But I must be honest with you: I’ve made a really major mistake. I’ve asked you to take risks and you haven’t let me down. You never do. But now I feel that I have let both of you down. You’ve risked your lives and your liberty kidnapping an individual on the territory of a foreign state. You could have been shot – that young man with the Twelve Bore wasn’t messing about! You could have been disarmed; captured; beaten-up… Virtually anything could have happened to you. But you both did your duty.  Only for me to now tell you that it was all a complete waste of time.”

She looked at her crew sadly. They looked steadily back at her until Nine said:

“Everybody makes mistakes, Linh. But we both have faith in you. You will think of something – you always do!”

Then they got up and went back to their chores: Nine to steer the boat; Four to prepare food for four people.

Their blind faith made Lynne feel quite emotional for a while.

But then she had an idea.

So she returned to her cabin to make a phone call. The three days she had allowed Jim Proudfoot to report back to her weren’t quite up yet. But there would be no harm checking-in with him early. Would there?…

What would her very own Private Investigator have come up with? Would he even be in a fit state to answer his phone?

Back on Cumberside Island, would Jay take the opportunity to tackle Skip about his obvious troubles at the forthcoming meeting of the islanders?

Or – given that the Captain of Shrimpleton Town had his own concerns about the soldier, would Skip get in first?

Meanwhile, what did the watchers in Jalandhar have in mind for Jay in the next few days?

These people were still tracking Baban Singh Chopra and Lady Lynne as they continued to sail ever further away from Cumberside Island.

To what purpose?

And what plans did Her Ladyship have for the miraculously recovered Sikh in any case?

Don’t miss the next thrilling episode of the scintillating

Sensational Shrimpleton Saga…