Part Sixteen of The Sensational Shrimpleton Saga: Is NKVD anything to do with sexual health?

We left this epic tale of adventure on Lady Lynne Shrimpleton’s yacht as she decided what to do with the senior member of the mysterious and elusive Khalistan Warriors and Director of Communications for Shrimpleton Town AFC, Baban Singh Chopra.

Back on Cumberside Island, ex-Special Ops soldier `J’ had returned from his adventure aboard her yacht and was still thinking of plausible ways to explain his absence which didn’t betray what he had really got up to. He was also under the impression that he had basically scared poor old Baban literally to death.  

Lady Lynne was surprised and disappointed in equal measure by Jay’s disappearance.

Unlike him, though, she knew that Baban Singh Chopra was very much alive and well and was now her guest upon her yacht as it made its way steadily along the south coast of England. She hadn’t decided what role he was going to play in the unfolding Khalistan Warriors saga next though.

In order to make a decision, she first of all needed to speak to her Private Investigator, the slippery and usually drunk James Churchill Proudfoot, a.k.a. Threefeet of the Yard…

She wasn’t best pleased when he didn’t answer his phone. And even less so when he finally returned her call later in the day. This is when she had basically shouted at him and told him to track-down the people whose car registration he had given her. She’d just called in a favour from a pet policeman in the Met and sent Jim the address of the owner of the car.

She had no confidence that he would travel there; even less that he would make contact with whoever lived at this place in Buckinghamshire. But – very unusually for the usually extremely astute Lynne and as we have seen – she was wrong on both counts…

Because later that day, James Proudfoot – in his guise as Threefeet of the Yard – had arrived at a mansion in Buckinghamshire and found his way inside…

—-

Jim was standing at the foot of the stairs in a place that looked as if it had been plucked from one of those Channel Four programmes about people with too much money who get other people to build `dream homes’ for them. Here, he was about to encounter a man who looked like he had stepped from the pages of a fashion magazine but had the most extraordinarily thick Irish Accent. This gentleman – with a strikingly long bright ginger pony-tail – was approaching down a set of spiral stairs in the house’s Atrium…

“My name is Threefeet – Threefeet of the Yard!” said Jim. “Who do I have the pleasure of addressing?”

“Me name is Joseph Aleksandrovitch Kelly from a long way from here. Cos ‘tis a long way to Tipperary as everybody knows. Me Mammy – God Rest Her soul – was known as Mary-Jo Kathleen Kelly. She was originally from Killarney. But me Da is from even further away than Killarney – or even Tipperary. He was called Zasha Ivanovitch Smirnov.“

“Smirnov?” repeated Jim with a smile. “I’m rather partial to some of his products!”

“Not dat Smirnov! Me Da was a tank commaner in the Red Army during de war. A hard man, so he was. Had to be to fight from Stalingrad all the way to Berlin. He became a Hero of the Soviet Union! Got medals such as the Soviet Order of Lenin – not just once but tree times – tree times! His reward: torty years in a Gulag as from 1948 as an Enemy of the People. His crime? Getting to Germany in the first place. Being infected wid de old capitalism. Dog ate dog in dem camps! Me Da killed other prisoners just to survive. Had a home-made tattoo cut into his chest and coloured with powdered rust as a reward. Nobody messed with him after dat. The gang he joined protected him. He protected them. Musha, even the guards ended-up afraid of him. He killed twelve of dem after they managed to pin him out in the snow one afternoon and left him to freeze to death. Took ten of dem to hold him down as two looked on. The gang rescued him even though frostboit had already taken tree of his fingers. Next morning, all twelve guards were dead. His gang tattooed proper blue stars on both his knees to signify the fact that they never got him down onto them, no matter what they did to him. Torty years of dat! Imagine it! You can’t! Nobody can! Torty years later, President Brezhnev gave him a reprieve. Not out of charity. Or sympathy. He knew dat men like me Da could no longer be shot, as they was in Stalin’s day. And he couldn’t keep them locked-up forever neither. So he let him out. Out of the country. Dey didn’t want men like me Da still in the USSR. God alone knows what dey might get up to! So off he went to the Emerald Island. But he still had contacts in the gangs back home. Dey had contacts too. In Siberia. In Poland. In Chechnya. In Afghanistan. Lots of money to be made in Afghanistan – if you knew how to – and you know what I mean. And me Da made it! Yes – me Da: Zasha Ivanovitch Smirnov: better known as Alex Kelly to the locals at home. Took Me Mammy’s surname after dey get hitched. Had to. Bun in the oven – me very good self! Great fellah though. Oi wanna emulate him. Me: Joseph Aleksandrovitch Kelly! Know what Aleksandrovitch means?”

Taking Jim’s silence as an indication that he didn’t, Joseph Aleksandrovitch Kelly continued:

“Arra – ’tis a patronymic, so it is! But you can call me Joe-Boy. You know what one of dem patronymics is, of course, don’t yez?”

“Of course!” agreed Jim, who didn’t have a clue what it was. Could it be an Irishman? Pat O’ – what did he say? Or maybe a dog – a breed of Russian dog, perhaps? Had he seen one on that Crufts’ programme on the telly?

“Well – what is it den? Please enlighten me!”

“The meaning’s obvious, isn’t it?” stalled Jim as he tried to make something up which was even vaguely credible. The man with the threatening eastern European stare, the creaky leather jacket but the extraordinarily strong Irish accent stared at him unnervingly. “We need to go back to first principles!”

“Which would be?”

“Er – breaking the word down to its constituency parts.”

“Don’t you mean `constituent’?”

“That’s what I said!”

“Oh, you did, did yez? So what would dey be den, Professor?”

“Well `pat’ and `Ronim: what else could they be?’” The unnerving stare was beginning to unsettle Jim further. “It’s a Russian dog called `Ronim’ – the Indo-Russo-Latino form of `Ronan’ – which likes to be patted. Any other questions?”

“Are yez for real? Musha – a patronym is a Russki middle name telling people who your father was! Me Da’s was Ivanovitch: son of Ivan!” (He pronounced this the proper Russian way – Ih-Van – not `Ivan’ as in “Ivan headache!”) “Ivan meaning…”

He stared menacingly at Jim once more but spared him any more verbal diarrhoea by continuing:

“Ivan meaning `John’. Ivanovitch: Johnson! Got it?”

Jim’s merest nod indicated that he had.

“Mine’s Joseph Aleksandrovitch. But me Da was called Zasha – so how does dat work, den?”

Fortunately for Jim – and as you have probably already noticed – Mr Kelly obviously liked the sound of his own voice:

“It’s because Zasha is the shortened form of Alksandr in Russian, So I’m Aleksandrovitch. What would me sister’s patronymic be den? I’ll give yez a clue: her foist name’s Soibhán and her last is still Kelly!”

“That’s easy!” said Jim. “You’re Aleksandrovitch – she will obviously be the feminine form of that: Aleksandro-bitch!”

“Tink dat’s funny do yez? It would be Aleksandovna – daughter of Ivan, yer eedyit ye! Callin’ me dear, sweet sis a bitch – how dare yez? If yez was talkin’ about me Auntie Niamh” (he actually spat as he spoke this woman’s name) “Yer moight have a point: she is a bitch and a half!”

What Joe failed to mention was that his sister was not only very definitely not either dear or sweet, she was widely feared right across the region of Tipperary where she lived. Protective older brother Joe-Boy might be worried about any romantic advances upon her by the locals – and would probably kill them if there was any `funny business’. But he needn’t have bothered. Nobody would be stupid enough to risk his wrath for a start. Besides which, having a face suitable for a nunnery – to use the local parlance – and a personality perfect for a throat-cutter at an abattoir didn’t exactly inspire either love of affection from any prospective suitors. But Joe-Boy was oblivious to this: to him, Soibhán was perfect. So he was suddenly angered by the insinuation that his beloved sister was anything less than this:

“Me lovely sister’s a bitch sez youse? Oi don’t know what you’re doing here but I want-cha off me property – off me property now! Don’t come back! Oi have all sorts of termal-imaging cameras protectin’ de place! A big lump of lard loike youse would show-up loike de Incredible Hulk and…”

“Forgive me, Mr Kelly! Point of Order, Your Honour. I would not show-up like the Incredible Hulk. Little tip for you here, sir: I know a way to get around that! I could sneak in here and cut everyone’s throats in their sleep and not a single dermal camera of yours would have even seen me coming!…”

Joseph Kelly stared at him in obvious astonishment.

“Oi tells you what, den! If you can walk from outside me house straight back here without me cameras picking you up, Oi’ll grant yez an interview. Mebbe a drink!  Mebbe a bed for the noight. Mebbe even a job!”

Jim nodded his agreement. But Joe-Boy wasn’t quite finished.

“But if you can’t – Oi’ll set de Dobermanns on yez! Dey would smell yez a mile away!” Joseph Kelly paused and wrinkled his nose. “Saying dat – I could smell yez a mile away!

“Dobermanns being the patronymic of what, exactly?”

“What? What are ye on about?”

“Let’s go back to first principles again! If they’re boy dogs, it’s all well and good calling them Domermanns, Mr Kelly. But what if they are girl Dogs? Stands to reason that they would be Doverwomens’ then, wouldn’t they?”

The expression on Mr Kelly’s face told Jim that it would be best to beat a hasty retreat at this stage in proceedings. So the intrepid P.I. slunk slowly back into the darkness and the rain once more. Kelly followed him and stood in the house’s doorway. Jim backed slowly away towards the locked gates and, when his back was literally right up against them, he stopped. He could hear what were obviously large dogs barking from behind the huge house not too far away and suddenly felt his bowels seemingly a lot slacker than they had been just a minute or so earlier. Kelly was still watching him from the open door:

“So the deal – Mr Kelly – is this. I walk back into the house in the dark as you look at your dermal imaging monitors. If you see me – let the dogs loose! But if not…”

“Oi’m a man of me word!” said Kelly. “Count to a hundred so I have time to get to me screens – and den do your worst!”

Jim started counting as soon as the front door slammed shut. He felt as nervous as a kitten but he managed to keep calm. After all, he reminded himself, he was a professional. It should be a matter of personal honour to Three Feet of the Yard that he had undertaken considerable and in-depth research to his usual standards before deciding to change his career path entirely and become a Private Investigator. He prided himself on being absolutely aux fait with the latest developments in surveillance.

In a Sam Spade book he’d read – or was it Philip Marlowe?… It wasn’t Sherlock Holmes – Dr Watson would never allow it for fear of catching hydroptherapy or whatever `exposure’ was called these days. And as for Poirot? No – that stupid stick-on tash he wore would fall off for a start – and the amount of dye which would pour down his face from his absurdly black hair would blind him – thought the man who prided himself on wearing pince-nez at every conceivable opportunity.

V.I. Warshawski then? That was more likely. Or possibly Jack Reacher, come to think of it. Whatever, Threefeet of the Yard knew that there was a way that anybody could fool those infernal imaging cameras. And he could prove it…

Which, amazingly enough, he did. Jim understood that thermal imaging cameras seek heat.  But only heat much higher than the abundant (he meant `ambient’) temperature. So if you drop your body temperature – or, more realistically, the clothes you were wearing – to something like the same as the things around you, you will remain invisible.  And he was soaked to the skin and freezing – and had been for quite some time. He spread his arms wide and welcomed more ice cold rain from the skies above as it cascaded all over him.

“Eighty-one; eighty-two; eighty-three – ready or not, here I come- eighty-four; one hundred!”

And off he went, staggering back towards the house.

Inside it, Joe-Boy was suitably impressed by the trick – whatever it was – that Jim was pulling-off. So were the two men – Grigor and Vladimir – who were with him in the little room at the top of the house where the CCTV monitors and lots of other clearly sophisticated electronic equipment was stored. Grigor was a small, swarthy man that fellow Russians would have recognised as being of Tatar stock. Vladimir, by contrast, was tall; hollow-cheeked and blonde with strikingly piercing blue eyes. More German than Russian to look at. But his mother – a teenager at the time – had been a peasant in one of the villages overrun by Hitler’s Wehrmacht in 1941.Best not to look any further than that because Vladimir was very touchy about it. And – as he stared at you with those merciless blue eyes through his steel-rimmed glasses – you knew without being told that this was a man best not to be messed with. Particularly when he had just been snorting cocaine – which was frequently.

Seeing a soaking wet Jim suddenly appearing out of the darkness by the front door on the camera placed strategically right above it, Joe buzzed him back in. The heat-seeking cameras had been completely fooled by him.

And Joseph Aleksandrovitch Kelly was a man of his word, if nothing else. He offered Jim a shower to warm him up and a dressing gown to wear as they sat in front of a log burning stove and shared a bottle of Jameson’s not long afterwards. Food was brought by a silent, ancient servant who looked exactly like a more faded, stooped female version of Giles the gardener. This wasn’t all that surprising because this was Agnes, Giles’ Mother: the cook.

“Tanks Agnes, love!” said Joe. “You’re a god-send, so you are!”

Then, noticing Jim’s interest in her, Joe explained once she’d gone:

“Dey are all loike dat around dis neck of the woods! What’s de word? You know – being into Hovis; Wonderloaf – sourdough, dat sort of ting!”

“Into – bread?” suggested Jim, helpfully.

“Precoisely!” said Joe-Boy. “You’re not as daft as yer look, are yer?”

Sadly, this was not true. As became apparent as Joe asked him to tell him more about himself.

As they ate and drank, Joe had soon had more than enough of Jim’s barely believable – or actually intelligible – stories about making a fortune as a Business Consultant in the past. And the constant choice of the wrong words and occasional slips in his obviously fake accent began to irritate the Irishman. For he had met loads of down-on-their-luck chancers like this one before. So he decided to take-over the conversation. But just before he did, though, Jim finally said something actually interesting:

“As part of my duties as Her Ladyship’s personnel (he meant `personal’ but nobody was really listening by this point) assistant, I have been encrusted to look after certain classic-fied documents relatin’ – concernin’ – about state secureness. I have a mind to flog – er, offer – them to the Russian VD Services…”

“Russian VD Services?” asked Joe.

“The Secret Services – you know, the…”

“The FSB?” asked the Irishman, who had an encyclopaedic knowledge of these organs of the Soviet state thanks to his `Da’, who had been personally acquainted with all of them in their various guises over the years. “De KGB before dat? NKVD under that filthy maggot Beria before dem? Arra – me Da would have liked to personally rip that little gobshoite limb from limb – but Nikita Khrushchev beat him to it!”

Jim stared at Kelly, open-mouthed. It was as if Joe-Boy was speaking a different language to him (which, I suppose, he was in a way.) For Threefeet of the Yard had never heard of these people before. But – sensing he was losing momentum – and also sensing in the weasel-like way he had – that here was a man who might prove useful to him, Jim Proudfoot decided to take the initiative…

He removed his phone from his dressing gown pocket, swiped the screen, selected a particular image and handed the device to his host.

Joe looked at the photograph. Then he looked at Jim. Then at the photo again.

You could almost see his brain trying to fit two surely totally contradictory thoughts together in his head. Namely – how did an obvious nobody like this little pillock get his hands on a Top Secret Document of the sort he was currently staring at?

“Do youse have any more of dese?”

“Swipe the screen!”

Joe did. Then he did so again. And again. And again. As he did so, he surreptitiously pressed a hidden button by the side of his chair. Then he started to look backwards through the images, slowly and carefully. Moments later, a man who looked like he might just have stepped out of a Gestapo interrogation session entered the room. He ignored Threefeet of the Yard entirely as Kelly spoke to him in Russian and handed him the phone.

“Dis is Vladimir, Jimbo!” Kelly said “He’s one of me very own – er personnel advoisers! Oi just need his opinion about a couple o’ tings on dis here phone of yours. Hope yer don’t moind!”

It didn’t matter if Jim did, obviously…

Vladimir finally spoke again before handing the phone back to Kelly. Then he left the room. Joe-Boy smiled at Jim in the way a spider might smile at a fly trapped in a web – if such a thing is possible – and said:

”Youse got some very interestin’ holiday snaps on dere, Jim – so you have! Oi tink we needs to get to know each other a wee bit better, don’t we? Another drink?”

The old woman staggered into the room with two bottles of spirits shortly after this. One was another bottle of Irish whiskey. But the other was what expert Jim knew to be the King of Russian vodkas all the way from the old Imperial Court in St Petersburg.

“Arra – let’s have some of de good stuff!” said Joe, pouring them both a generous glass of the vodka. “Dis one’s from the cellars of the Winter Palace! From Tsar Nicholas II’s personal collection dat was looted by the Bolsheviks in1917! Vashe zdorov’ye!”

So saying, he stood up and knocked his back in one gulp.

Feeling it would be rude not to do so, Jim followed suit.

“What you said!” he exclaimed before pouring the red hot liquid down his throat and then feeling as if his head was about to go into orbit. Joe poured a refill as Jim vaguely wondered if this stuff was what had powered to Soviet Sputniks into space way back when. Maybe this was their secret weapon: rocket fuel!

The conversation became even more disjointed after that. But Joseph Aleksandrovitch Kelly regaled his guest with more stories about his `Da’. He was very open about it: his Old Man was a drugs dealer. Started in a small way in Ireland – Cork; Galway; then Dublin. The obvious next step was Belfast but Zasha Ivanovitch Smirnov was smart enough to know to keep out of the sectarian struggles which drug dealing there were all about. A much easier market was Britain – and Smirnov was very successful there too. Liverpool first; then Bristol and finally: the capital. That’s when the family moved to England. The money was rolling-in – and there was loads of it.

Until newcomers started trying to cash-in. Albanians. Ukrainians. They held no fear for Zasha Ivanovitch Smirnov stroke plain Alex Kelly.

But then people the Russian had no previous experience with appeared on the scene. Shortly after this, Joe-Boy’s `Da’ had died in a mysterious car crash. Brake failure was diagnosed by the police but Joe suspected that the brake lines of his Old Man’s Roller had been cut. Whether these shady newcomers were responsible or not, Kelly knew for certain that they had taken-out a competitor who he was considering proposing a joint venture involving Crystal Meth to. So it never happened.

“Dese fellahs set a trap for him. Somewhere in Kent. The dealer was killed – his car went over a cliff. “

Threefeet of the Yard sat up – despite the vodka-induced fug in his brain – and took notice.

“Den dey took-over his business. In full.”

“Were these people Indians?” asked Jim.

“Well – dey certainly wasn’t Cowboys!”

“I mean Indians – from the Punch-jab?”

“How did youse know dat?” asked Joe-Boy in amazement. “Sikhs. The Khalistan Warriors, dey call demselves! Dey had better look out!”

“Why?” asked Mr Proudfoot.

“Musha – because I know where I can find dem! And may their god have mercy on their souls when the son of Zasha Ivanovitch Smirnov comes calling!”

“And where would anybody find these people?” asked Jim as innocently as he could.

“Choild’s play!” replied Kelly, whose already loose tongue had been almost detached by the alcohol. “Dey returned to dis country from India two days ago! One is on his way to a meetin’ about a football club dey own in some god-forsaken dump dat time has forgotten about. May already be dere for all I know – or care! But the Top Man – a gobshoite known as `Chopper’ – will be back in his favourite haunt by now. A pub called the Bristol in London’s East End. Anyone could foind him dere at virtually any time of de day or noight in the next few days ‘cos  he has lots of business loose ends to tie-up since he went on his jaunt to de Land of the Towel Heads!”

Jim looked at his watch. Ten to ten. A few minutes later, he said to his host:

“Would you mind if I made a quick phone call?”

—-

Shortly afterwards, James Churchill Proudfoot was feeling pretty pleased with himself even though the conversation he had instigated at ten o’clock with Lady Lynne Shrimpleton hadn’t gone as well as he had expected it to. He had prepared a long spiel about having taken great personal risks in order to infiltrate himself into the confidence of the Khalistan Warriors. How his own cunning, brilliance and bravery had tricked them into betraying their current location. How this brilliance would be naturally reflected in his fees of which he would like a downpayment to cover his considerable expenses so far and…

But he never got that far. Lady Lynne cut him short before he could actually say any of these things:

“Have you actually tracked down the Khalli Scallies?” she demanded.

Well… not as such, Your Ladyship but…”

“But nothing. If you haven’t found them, you haven’t been able to offer them your legal representation, have you?”

“I…”

“Ring me back when you have. Get it done by tomorrow night.”

“Tomorrow night, Highness? But I…”

“Tomorrow night. Or the deal’s off.”

The phone went dead.

Oh dear. Lady Lynne clearly isn’t impressed.

What can our intrepid Private Investigator do to get back into her good books?

And what are the good people of Cumberside Island planning to do in response to the outrage perpetrated among them when Baban Singh Chopra was abducted the other night?

Find out next time in The Sensational Shrimpleton Saga.