Chapter 11
The walker appeared from the public right of way running alongside the wood. Once over the stile, he stood and read his map then surveyed the area with a pair of small binoculars before he wandered across to the memorial. With a handkerchief, he wiped the inscription and squatted down as if to read it. Standing up, he checked his watch then returned to the stile, disappearing along the footpath.
From the overgrown drainage ditch 20 feet away, a whispered: "Dave T, Gally, this could be our man. He's taken the card that was clipped to the flowers. Now back down the path alongside the wood. If he sticks to it, he'll come out near the two cottages on the far side of the fields."
An interruption: "Billy, I've just driven past there. Nothing parked up. Must be the houses he's heading for."
"Gally. Billy, can you get back there before he exits and throw Mick out somewhere to get an eyeball?"
"Thirty seconds."
The reality was forty, stopping briefly on the bend, just before gaining a view of the footpath, Mick dived over the bushes into the field and quickly concealed himself in the long grass at its edge. The airwaves fell silent. Twenty-minute circuits the agreed drill.
Mick emerged from a treeline three hundred yards from where he'd bailed out just as Tich in the Anglia approached the bend. Safely on board, they collected Dave T and headed for Radfordley.
In the garden of the Crown, they shared a large bench table whilst they drank and exchanged information. Dave T hadn't been able to read what the card said, even with his binos, but there wasn't much written; he thought it was probably, 'Lest we forget'. The next news was more startling. On reaching the road, their hiker had been picked up by a passing car, driven by a woman. Mick handed over a scrap of paper containing a registration number and the words 'maroon Austin Farina Mk2'.
Gallagher tutted and said, "Bollocks!"
Sandy silently interrogated his face. "There's a problem with that?"
Gally gave him a weak smile. "Maybe. I passed them at a junction when I was doing circuits. I was turning left, they were turning right. She's a good looking girl. We made eyeball contact, I couldn't help it, but seconds later I knew she'd just sucked my entire life right out of me."
They shook their heads in disbelief. Billy offered, "It could have happened to anyone."
Gally looked him in the eyes and said, "You really think that?" half hoping, half knowing.
Billy drained his pint. "No, you wanker. Go get the beer in!"
Lying on the bed, the newspaper-wrapped fish and chips he'd bought in Radfordley open on his lap, Gally watched the highlights of the England v France group qualifier. A win would secure the home side a position in the quarter-final. The French had abandoned their previous concrete defensive position. Not having won a game so far, they probably noticed it wasn't working.
The defender Nobby Stiles was not known for his mastery of finesse but he displayed unknown talent when he danced and tiptoed his way through a tackle in the French box and slid the ball for Greaves to lazily stroke a beautiful pass over to an onside Jack Charlton at the far post. Jack's header hit the woodwork and bounced to Roger Hunt who, with nothing else to do, decided he'd best tap it into the net.
The French tried to invoke the offside rule. The referee probably agreed Hunt had been offside when Greaves kicked the ball but must have decided he hadn't interfered with proceedings at that point. Brought back onside and into play by the errant French goalpost, Hunt's goal remained. Gally found himself cheering; a sudden disturbing new interest in the 'beautiful game'. Having already had a Greaves goal disallowed he thought it a just decision.
He licked his fingers and dug his little wooden fork into the crispy, battered fish. Now, this was what good food was all about. Fish and chips, cooked to perfection, expertly drained, with salt and vinegar, and it had to be in that order, not vinegar and then the salt. No, that would be the sort of mistake a foreign spy might make, he mused, a bit like asking for three beers in a wartime Gestapo filled pub using three fingers instead of the continental two fingers and a thumb.
In the second half, Bobby Charlton's goal was ruled offside, surely the French couldn't complain, but when he later found Ian Callaghan in space and willing to lob it over to Hunt the resulting close-range header was fumbled into the back of the net by the French goalie. The quarter-finals were assured.
He screwed up the now empty wrapping and pushed it in the corner bin then rinsed his hands in the room sink before heading for a pee. As he walked down the short corridor it became obvious that Sandy had just used the loo. He'd give it half an hour. Better still, he'd just use his sink.