by R. Jay
A black meandering line with small cross dashes running up the right side was an unmistakeable rail track.
"Jesus wept! The boy is right." Barry shouted in exhilaration, his own finger stabbing down onto the map. "Right here look, 'Goathland'. The land of goats."
"Trust an Arab to come up with that interpretation." Nobby chuckled. "Abu sunshine, you get us to the right place and I'll buy you the biggest virgin they got in Yorkshire."
"Ain't got no virgins in Yorkshire." Rick Ryan stated, dead-pan face. "Got sheep, should make no difference to an Arab."
"The sheep there are prettier than the lasses anyhow." His brother laughed.
Chris leaned forward, circled his finger around the marked station of Goathland on the North Yorks Steam Line. "You got off here did you? Then where?"
"No, we did not use the train. One night we went to learn how to blow up railway tracks. We did not actually do it of course. We had no explosives or real weapons even."
"A variation on mass murder on the London underground." Rick seethed.
"But your camp was nearby, where Sydique is?" Chris pressed on.
"Our camp was not near anywhere. We had to drive on small roads, too thin for two cars to pass each other. There was a dirt road by trees we went along. Then we had to walk with hills all around us. A stream was at the bottom."
"A valley?"
"There was an old house made of stone. It had no glass and holes in the roof. There were little houses for pigs and a barn."
"That just about describes anywhere on the moor." Barry observed glumly. "Anything else nearby, other houses or whatever?"
"Nobody lived nearby." Abu shook his head vigorously. "We did not want anyone to see us. There was a forest there. We went into that and hunted each other. If anybody came along, walking or on horses, we had to hide in the bushes like naughty children until they had gone."
"You say you had no weapons either?" Chris asked.
"No. But our teachers, those rough men from the mosque did. They had small pistols, said they would shoot us if we did not learn well. I was not very good but they did not kill me."
"We kind of guessed that. But if we took you up there today ,would you be able to show us where this camp is?"
"I do not want to go back up there Mr. Christopher." Abu's face took on a haunted, pensive look.
"What you want Abu and what happens are different things. We need to find Sid before they hurt him, sodding around like that."
"Is that all you did then, run around pretending to shoot one another?" Nobby asked with a grin. "Best put the country on Red Alert Chris."
"We went to the sea-side."
"Day out for the Kiddies was it? Buckets and spades and a little stick of Blackpool rock?" Ned looked incredulous.
"Why did you go to the sea-side?" Chris butted in, impatient.
"To show us the boat."
"What bloody boat?"
"They one they are going to use."
"What for, fishing?"
"This is getting surreal man." Rick shook his head in disbelief.
"No, to attack England."
Ned Ryan gave a barking laugh. "Shit, I'm shaking in my boots here. The Spanish Armada no problem. But a bunch of Paki's and Arabs in a row-boat, best run up the white flag now."
Abu just shrugged his thin shoulders, clammed up as Chris Carter stepped away from the table gripping the road atlas in one hand and Abu's elbow in the other.
"Right those of you who can come, let's get in the War Horse, got a bit of a drive ahead of us lads." He said briskly even as his friends filed out of the door, already arguing as to who would sit in the cab and who got the back.
Nobby Clark had a sudden thought. "Hey Chris, stop by my place, pick up my 410. Could come in handy if those 'rough' boys start popping off their little pistols."
"Why not Nobby? But as far as I know you ain't even hit a rabbit yet."
Barry Wells hung back, sidled over to Chris outside as Ned locked up behind them.
"Got a minute?"
"What's on your mind Barry?"
"Well it's a bit awkward mate. Mind if I sit this one out?"
Chris merely raised his eyebrows, waited for his friend to continue.
"A while ago I applied for emigration to Australia. I'm a qualified plumber, still relatively young and er, got a young family, which gives me a bloody good chance in the points system.
"Alison all of a sudden is all for it. I only told her this morning before I came over here. Seems quite excited. Don't know what brought on this change of mind about us, but I'm over the moon about it myself." His scrutiny of the other's face had an inquisitive air about it.
Chris had not seen his friend as happy as this since he'd returned home. A bitter-sweet glow spread through him, but held his tongue.
"Nor would I Barry, but that's just great. Really good news."
"Thing is, we have got an interview at Australia House in the morning, down in London … "
"So cutting to the chase," Chris interrupted with an understanding smile. "is that, one: you'll need your beauty sleep tonight, and, two: you can't go getting yourself caught up in anymore punch-ups and getting charged with a criminal offence."
"That's about it Chris. I'm desperate for this opportunity, I really am. A new life back with my family, living in the sun, away from all the shit going down here. There's nothing for me in the UK anymore, the place has been gutted by slime-ball politicians, greedy bankers and grasping foreigners.
"All I want to do is to work, rest and play. Not too much to ask is it? But those bastards won't ever leave us alone to live decently will they?"
Chris clapped Barry's shoulder, relinquishing his grip on a wide eyed Abu. "You go for it, you, Alison and the kids. I'm really pleased for you Barry. Go on, get out of here and get yourself all scrubbed up and perky for tomorrow. They'd be mad not to have you Cobber!"
***
Travelling any great distance in a Landrover is not the most comfortable of experiences, but it'll get you there in all weathers, all terrains. The motorway route skirting around the Humber River, though longer would have got them there sooner. But it seemed a sensible plan to replicate the probable journey taken by 'The Invaders', directly up country and across the Humber Bridge, a more or less straight line to the moors.
In the event they completed the trip in a little over three and a half hours, including a short stop at a roadside truckers café for tea and bacon rolls. The lads in the back had climbed down onto a pebbled car park with stiff joints and back pains, grumbling and groaning theatrically until they secured a grudging agreement to swap places and ride in the cab for the remainder of the journey.
Goathland was more familiar to most of them as 'Aidensfield', the fictional village featured in the long running television series, 'Heartbeat'. They gaped about them at the familiar rail station, and garage cum funeral parlour. The pub they learnt, was in a different village. That's location scouts for you.
Chris stood in front of Abu, lips pursed, hands on hips. No time for sight-seeing. "Well?" He demanded of the lad who stood shivering in a stiff North Easterly breeze blowing in off bare, rounded hills on the moor. "Where to from here, you remember?"
Abu did a slow three hundred and sixty degree rotation, eyes screwed in concentration, watched by a party of tourists just exiting a grand steam locomotive, who obviously thought that this exotic figure, for the York Moors anyhow, to be entertainment laid on for their benefit.
"That way." He pointed along a lane meandering away in a Westerly direction, deep into the wild landscape. He didn't sound too sure.
"You certain?"
"No Mr. Christopher, but I'm less certain about the other way. It was at night."
"fair enough, we'll give it a go. Let's mount up lads?" He clapped his hands feeling like a ring-master.
They climbed back on board arguing again about who should ride in the back this time. He rolled his eyes and got back behind the wheel, Abu in the front
passenger seat as before, which drew envious, resentful glances.
The road led them quickly into open countryside with immense horizons and soaring skies. Chris's confidence and anticipation increased with equal measure each mile they covered. There was a reckoning to be had, without van loads of riot police to stick their noses in. He felt good.
There were not too many alternative routes branching off to consider. At each lonely junction he slowed the Landrover, giving Abu time to study the confusion of identical terrain and weather battered signposts before continuing forward as directed. Eventually the little Arab spotted a narrower lane that angled away down into a wooded cleft in the landscape.
"There!" He jabbed a finger at it, more positive than he had been the whole way.
Chris Carter made the sharp turn, driving slower, again giving Abu leeway to affirm to himself every yard they covered. They had passed through dense, natural woodland in a small sump valley that clustered about a clear gurgling brook, when the road began to incline up to the next wind scoured rise.
Their guide urgently threw up his hand. "Stop!"
Chris looked at him askance. "This it?" He asked dubiously, staring around them at hectare after hectare of open, inhospitable grassland.
"No. Go back down to the trees, we have come too far. We drove off this road onto a dirt track there."
Chris executed a laboured five point turn on the skinny breadth of tarmac that was lined tightly each side by solid dry-stone walling.
"I hope you are right about this." He muttered darkly, puffing heavily and breaking out a sweat as he hauled on the wheel around and around.
"I try to help you Mr. Christopher." Abu answered sulkily.
Back at the bottom to where the brook flowed across the road in a small ford, Abu pointed, a little agitated now, to their right. A sagging five-barred gate, the oak timber silvered with age and exposure, barred access to a barely discernable track running alongside the tree line of the thick forest. It was largely overgrown and followed the tall beech, oak and ash trees.
Chris parked opposite to the gate, looked at it closely, then back at Abu Sharif. "Definite?"
"I - I think so Mr. Christopher."
"Fuck this!" Rick Ryan climbed huffily down out of the cab and walked over to the gate giving it an experimental shove. Reluctantly it gave ground as he pushed it back through long, green rye grass with arthritic stiffness. Frowning he bent down, fishing for something shiny glinting through the vegetation.
He brought back to the driver's window a new looking, heavy duty padlock, its stainless steel hasp sliced clean through with powerful cutters.
He held it up for Chris's inspection. "Well someone was determined to get in there, and you can just see recent tyre tracks in the furrows."
Abu studied it briefly. "We had a key. Somebody else has done that." He asserted with confidence, a small frown forming on his brown face.
"So, the plot thickens." Chris mused. "Jump back on board Rick, don't bother closing the gate, we may want to leave in a hurry. Let's go and take a look?"
Nobby Clark, sitting in the back, reached behind him and pulled out the double-barrelled shotgun from its canvas bag, stroked its blue-black metal.
"Personally I'd rather not scuttle off like the Famous Five, or seven in this case, chased off by the baddies. I rather stick around and let them have both barrels first."
Chris laughed as he eased the big vehicle between the two leaning gate-posts. "Let's hope that they make a bigger target than those rabbits you hunt."
They bumped along slowly and steadily on the faint trace of a track that held straight and true for over a mile, leaving the forest behind, when Abu nudged him, pointing to an equally obscure track that angled off to their left. It crept into a tight little blind side valley surrounded on three sides by heather clad hills on which clumps of stunted trees and rocky outcrops were dotted about their slopes above.
Barely a quarter mile deeper into the narrowing cleft of the moor, a jumble of old stone buildings clustered together at the plugged end of the remote spot. Even from a distance, it was obvious that the sorrowful farmstead was long abandoned and near derelict. Another hill farmer crushed by economic reality and a broken spirit, left a harsh struggle for survival for paid drudgery in the smoky towns beyond the moor.
Chris braked the Landrover a full hundred yards short of their destination. Faces in the back of the cab crowded one another at his shoulder, peering inquisitively out through the windscreen.
"Do you think that they are still here Abu?" he asked tersely, hands gripping the steering wheel just that little bit tighter.
Abu was in an obvious state of terror now, his face taut, seemingly shrinking back into his seat. "Please Mr. Christopher. Don't let them take me back. They are bad dangerous men."
"And they've got guns." Chris added softly.
The sharp metallic click of Nobby loading the shotgun in the back made them both jump a little. "So have I." He growled.
Chris half turned his head to answer, but his wary eyes never left the jumble of grey granite ahead, assembled by man's hand, slowly disassembling back into Mother Nature's bosom.
"Keep it out of sight for now Nobby. You're the only one of us with a shooter. Sounds like they'll out gun us. Let's get in close and jump the fuckers?"
"We'll still be outnumbered." Nobby pointed out, disappointed.
"Yeah, well we're the EFL ain't we?" Rick grinned cockily, fooling no-one.
Chris perused the buildings that seemingly leaned sideways in unison away from the constant wind that bore up the valley. He switched off the engine.
"Seeing as how we are outnumbered anyway, you best stay here a sec', keep an eye on Abu, look after him."
Nobby's face dropped. "Stop the little bugger doing a runner and warning his mates you mean."
"It's the best plan I can think of right now. Not the best maybe, but I'm not General Montgomery. If things go pear shaped you can always charge to the rescue and pepper their arses."
Carefully opening the driver's door he slid down onto the long, flattened grass. "Coming then lads?"
The other four slid out of the cab and the back, bunching up apprehensively around him for an uncertain moment, the winds whistling mockingly at them.
Rick Ryan drew himself up to his full height, stepped forward, grinned back at them. "Well are we The Lads, or just a bunch of wimpy nancy boys?" He spat, raising his right arm. "To me EFL. UP AND AT 'EM!"
With a howling whoop he launched himself into a full frontal charge towards the farm buildings, big boots thumping on rocky ground as he ran, arms pumping.
Stung into action, the others took off after him, taking up his war cries like a band of wild savages, testosterone and reckless courage on full bore. Young toughs again, spoiling for a fight.
"'ERE WE GO, 'ERE WE GO, 'ERE WE GO!" Grundy chanted.
"Storm the building!" Ned boomed in his best megaphone voice. Surely bullets would have merely bounced off of them?
The front door didn't resist much as it was kicked off of its rusty, bent hinges, clattering flat down onto a rubble and weed cluttered flooring. Rick and Chris burst through screaming at the tops of their voices, both to intimidate and bolster their own nerves as the others fanned out amongst the other buildings.
"It's a raid!"
"Stand still!"
"Against the wall!"
Despite the uncertainties they both burst out laughing at the idiocy of their demands. If the birds amongst the exposed rafters above could understand them, they showed no inclination to comply. They took off with a noisy fluttering of wings, out through a substantial hole in the roof slates.
Ina feverish rush of aggression the pair searched the empty house calling out Sid's name but found no evidence of current occupation. But fresh ash and empty food cartons discarded everywhere proved Abu's assertions that this was the place, 'The Invaders' rat nest.
Deflated and trembling with unspent adrenaline they walked from th
e house to be met by Ned Ryan outside.
"Not so much as a pile of camel dung Chris. No luck yourselves I see."
Before he could answer, 'Sol' Grundy' loped out of the barn structure. "Oi, come and have a dekko at this."
They crossed a cobbled yard following him into what had been a small storage barn. The roof here was in fairly good shape, a solitary window boarded over and the door fairly solid. Inside a few bundles of mouldy hay were stacked against a far wall. On the one to their right a large black banner depicting the quarter moon and star of Islam with the crossed silhouettes of Kalashnikov assault rifles beneath, hung limply at head height.
Immediately before it on the beaten earth floor were an old upturned kitchen table and a wooden chair, left laying in dark pools of water. Despite the bad light, lengths of rope could be seen still secured to the back rest and front legs of the chair. Clearly the knots had been pulled too tight to undo easily as the free ends had been cut through cleanly.
A chill feeling passed through them all despite the already low temperatures.
"The bastards had Sid trussed up like a turkey in here!" Nobby seethed from behind them, framed by daylight in the barn's doorway. He had obviously grown tired of playing first reserve back in the Landrover. As a concession to his responsibilities he held Abu's upper arm firmly alongside him. The Arab's expression was of desperate terror as he too surveyed the ominous scene there.
Chris savagely kicked at the table top in front of him. "We've not long missed them. Those ashes back in the house are still warm. Now we still have no clue where he is."
"They could be on the boat." A small voice offered. Nobody had really noticed Abu.
"What sort of bloody boat is it then?" Chris snapped, angry with himself for forgetting a small fact that had now mushroomed in stature.
Abu blinked in fright at the sharpness of Chris's tone. He was trying to help. "A fisherman's boat. We had to do some work on it, take food and blankets. The Imam, he bought it a week ago. Before he left to go back to Holtingham he blessed us all, said all our plans and glory would sail with us in that boat. Only I was not wanted there."
Chris stepped up to him warily, as if trying not to scare a young child; asked in a quiet, patient tone. "Now, Abu, this boat, where is it exactly?"
