Strikers Instinct (24 page)

The next few months leading up to Christmas fell into a familiar pattern. Wishton Clough first team went from strength to strength – they were top of the Championship, the striking partnership of Adi and Rae had proved to be the stuff that all managers dream of. Each night Sandy prayed that his family would be safe and well and then he prayed that Adi and Rae didn't get injured. In the reserves Luke continued to get the occasional game and continued to play well. He usually scored at least one goal per game and was really enjoying himself. However, Sandy and Craig had decided to cut back on his appearances – they didn't want to turn this into a freak show.

Luke was more than happy to go along with their wishes – already the media interest had become ridiculous. Ed of course wanted Luke to play more – not less – but each time he spoke to Sandy or Luke about the subject it seemed that Luke had developed a slight injury that ruled him out of the next game. Luke was content with the occasional game if it helped the club out, otherwise he was more than happy training with the players or helping out back at his home in the swimming pool. One thing had changed however – following his daughter's suggestion – Luke now had a trademark celebration he used when he scored a goal.

In the old days – when Luke was working away, he used Skype a lot to talk to his family and they had developed some secret signals. Sue, Lexi and Tom each had a signal that only they knew, that meant all was well. Luke's signal for Lexi was simple – he rubbed his finger under his right eye – and his signal for Tom was a similar gesture under the left eye. Luke used these signals because in the early days, Skype had been easy to hack into and he wanted to pass some messages on without being observed. All his family knew that if they were talking to Luke online and he started pulling his left ear then that was a secret signal that he was in trouble – and they had to let someone in the office know straight away.

Luke decided to combine Tom and Lexi's secret signal after he scored a goal. When he first used it both kids were speechless – then they cheered harder than ever. Sam Barker asked Luke to explain to the readers why Luke put his fingers under his eyes when he scored but Luke just laughed and said it was “personal”.

This was to be the first Christmas in the new house for the Linden family and Sue and Luke went all out to make it a special time. They decorated the house inside and out – even the drive leading up from the main gate glittered and shone, just like the entrance to Santa's grotto! The week before Christmas they threw a party for family and friends – old and new. Sandy and Andy's families mixed with other players and Luke's five a side partners. Even Ed turned up and seemed to enjoy himself. Sue noticed that Sarah Jenkins seemed to be getting quite friendly with Jason Grimshaw as she whizzed around the rooms checking that everyone had enough to eat and drink. It was easy to spot the players – they were the ones who were drinking juice – not alcohol.

The party was a great success and a few days later, on Christmas Day, after they had all been to church, Luke and Sue held a much smaller family gathering. Harry and his mother were there of course – they were considered to be part of the extended Linden family – along with Sue's mother, Luke's mother, Uncle Jack and various other members of the tribe. Once again everyone had a great time and Luke and Sue gazed around the room and again realised just how much they had to be thankful for.

The following day was Boxing Day and the Lindens set off to watch the home game against Blackburn Rovers. Rovers were up near the top of the table and everyone expected a close-fought game. That was exactly what happened. From their seats in the stand Luke and his family watched as the game swung to and fro – from end to end. It was deep into the second half when Wishton finally made the break through – Adi flicked a ball through to Rae who seemed to shrug off a strong challenge to slip the ball past the goalkeeper. The Wishton fans went wild but after a few seconds they fell silent as they realised that Rae hadn't risen from the ground. Their fears deepened as a stretcher appeared and the stricken player was carried from the field. The injury seemed to unsettle the remaining Wishton players and they were caught sleeping a few minutes later when the Rovers centre forward powered down the middle and lashed the ball into the top corner of the net. A furious Sandy bullied the players back into action and they remained vigilant for the rest of the game but were unable to claw back another goal. The match finished 1-1 and the Wishton fans went home disappointed – two points thrown away and their star striker injured.

Luke hurried down to the dressing room after the game to check on Rae only to find that he had already been taken to hospital.

“Don't worry,” said Andy, “hopefully it's only a precaution. The problem was with his ankle – the Rovers player tackled him just as he was hitting the ball and his foot was planted. His ankle was swollen but he seemed to be moving it OK.”

The dressing room seemed subdued following the result and the mood wasn't helped a few seconds later when Sandy strode into the room. The players faced a withering dressing down from their furious manager who pointed his finger at various players around the room. He explained in no uncertain terms that their performance hadn't been good enough and they had better improve before the next game. With that he strode from the room, slamming the door as he left.

“Flipping eck.” said Nobby. “I wonder what he would have said if we had lost!”

Luke had been standing out of sight – around the corner of the showers. Andy grunted when he reappeared.

“You know when to make yourself scarce!” he said accusingly.

Luke laughed. “He wasn't telling me off. It's you lot who are in trouble!”

With that he dodged various boots and towels that were thrown at him and decided to escape back upstairs before things got worse. He reported back to the family that hopefully Rae was going to be OK and they decided to have another drink in the bar before they headed off for their Boxing Day meal at Luke's mothers. They were just about to leave when Sandy appeared – obviously he was searching for Luke.

“Son.” he said urgently. “I need your help again.”

“Sure boss – what's up?” asked Luke.

“We've just heard that Rae hasn't broken anything – just a strain and bruising.” Sandy explained.

“That's good news.” Luke said happily.

“It is indeed,” replied Sandy, “but could we use your facilities tomorrow to help speed up his recovery?”

“Of course,” replied Luke, “bring him round whenever you like.”

“Great.” Sandy said. “Dave will be round with him first thing – he'll bring a portable ultrasound machine with him but if we can use your pools and hot room as well that will be great.”

With that Sandy hurried away before Ed could grab him to talk about the game – Sandy was obviously in no mood to have to deal with Ed today. Luke drained his drink – Sue was the designated driver today – and they set off across town.

After spending a good old-fashioned Boxing Day night at his former home, Luke was in a good mood the following morning as he waited for Rae to arrive. Everyone else was still asleep when the buzzer went and all was quiet as Luke opened the gate so that Dave could drive up to the back of the house. Luke opened the passenger door so that he could help Rae out of the car. Rae thanked him and hobbled into the pool room, fumbling with the unfamiliar crutches. Dave came through a few minutes later carrying the portable ultrasound machine.

Dave had just started to use the machine on Rae's ankle when the door opened and Lexi entered carrying a tray of steaming tea.

“I thought you may need this.” She said quietly.

Luke's eyes narrowed. Lexi hadn't been up this early during the holidays for years and he immediately wondered what she was up to. On closer inspection she seemed to be wearing some of the new clothes that Sue had bought her for Christmas – and she was wearing make-up! Luke then noticed that Rae had sat up and seemed to be taking more of an interest in what was going on.

“Thanks Lexi.” Luke grunted. “Maybe you could go and check with Nell to see if she can put some breakfast on a little later?”

“No problem Dad,” Lexi shyly replied, “I'll come back down and let you know what she says.”

“That's OK.” Luke said sternly. “Dave and Rae are busy – no need to disturb them again. Thanks for the tea.”

Lexi glared at her father and opened her mouth to say something but obviously thought better of it. She turned on the spot and flounced out. Luke turned to see Dave grinning and shaking his head.

“Something wrong?” Luke asked.

“Nothing at all.” Dave said innocently as he busied himself with Rae's ankle. Rae seemed totally oblivious to what was going on around him.

The treatment continued over the next few days and Rae's ankle quickly began to heal. After a day or two he began swimming and after each session on the machine he went into the hot room and then the ice-cold plunge pool. And each day Lexi tried to find some reason to visit the pool area during Rae's visit. Her last attempt was the final straw. She turned up to try to have a swim whilst Rae was using the pool – the sight of Lexi in a bikini stopped Rae dead in his tracks! Luke dragged her out of the pool room and Lexi was furious. The shouting attracted Sue.

“What the hell is going on?” she tried to talk over the commotion.

“Dad is ruining my life!” Lexi screamed.

“I'm just trying to stop her making a fool of herself,” Luke replied calmly, “turning up with no clothes on to try to impress that boy!”

Sue glanced from one to another then spoke again.

“Lexi – upstairs now – and put some clothes on.”

Lexi turned to argue with her mother but after seeing the look on her face she realised that she would be wasting her time. She decided to cut her losses so flinging a filthy look at her father she once again flounced out of the room.

“Sue – you have to do something with her – she's out of control!” Luke growled. “You need to be more firm with her!”

As he turned to look at Sue Luke realised he was in big trouble and gulped.

“Are you suggesting that this is all my fault?” Sue asked sweetly.

“Er no – not at all.” Luke stammered.

“Because if you were to suggest that – then I think you and I would be probably heading towards a big argument – and you don't want that do you?”

Luke shook his head. “But she's only 14.” he said weakly.

“She's 15 in a few days and she isn't your baby any more. I will have a word with her but don't you dare take this out on me or Lexi. She's growing up and you will have to learn to trust her – do you understand me?” Sue demanded.

Luke nodded his head as Sue also swept from the room. “At least we know where she gets it from.” he muttered to himself. Then he brightened. “I may not be able to do much about her but I can deal with the enemy!” He then went back into the pool room and sat watching Rae like a hawk. Rae could feel Luke's eyes boring into him and began to feel uncomfortable. Luke then began to talk about some of the conversations he'd had over the years with retired SAS personnel. Apparently they had discussed some of the torture techniques they had heard about from different parts of the world – Luke remarked that it had been a fascinating subject. The following day Dave reported that Rae seemed ready to resume normal training back at the ground.

“Amazing.” he said. “Don't know what happened but he seems to have made a miracle recovery!”

Although Rae had responded well to treatment he wasn't fit enough to play in the next game and Adi seemed lost without his partner. The match was a drab affair – ending in a 0-0 draw and it also left Sandy a worried man.

“Today showed how much we depend on those two – if we stop scoring goals we will soon slide down the table.” he confided to Craig.

Sandy also had other, bigger worries. Today's game had been the last in December, it would soon be January which not only meant a New Year but it also meant the transfer window was open. There was a system in place in English football that basically said that you could only move players between clubs during two periods of the year – and the month of January was one of those periods. Many clubs took advantage of this period – either to get rid of players or to add newcomers to boost a struggling team. Sandy had heard worrying rumours that some Premier League players were sniffing around his two star players.

It was an open secret that Sandy didn't trust Ed – even though he had made it perfectly clear to him that neither player was for sale. He couldn't wait for February to arrive but deep down he knew that this year January would be a long month. He tried to put the negative thoughts to one side and set his mind to plan for the next game – which was in the FA cup. Sandy planned to rest Adi and also take the opportunity to give Rae another week to recover. Hopefully this would keep them both fresh but also it would keep them out of the spotlight at this tricky time.

Back at the training ground the players didn't seem to share Sandy's nervousness as they prepared for the next game. Spirits were high and most of them were secretly looking forward to gaining promotion to the Premier League in 2015. There had, however, been an interesting development concerning some of the players. Since they had been to Luke's house at Christmas, several of the more senior players had realised that the facilities could be useful to them. This meant that Luke often now had to share his early morning swim and stretching routine with various visitors. Luke didn't mind although occasionally he did miss the tranquillity.

One morning there was an extra early morning visitor to Luke's pool room.

“Morning Harry,” said Luke in surprise, “this is an unexpected pleasure. What do you want?”

“And it's always nice to see you as well.” Harry sniffed.

Both men grinned and then moved to the empty far end of the room so they could talk without being overheard.

“Two reasons I called by,” explained Harry, “first of all – Lexi's birthday. As one of her godparents I always take my duties seriously so I wanted to tell you what I am getting her this year.”

Luke raised his eyes. “As long as it isn't Rae Bradshaw with a bow round him then I'm sure I'll be happy.” he muttered.

Harry looked confused but ignored Luke and continued. “Actually it's a bit of a present for all of you really, I also wanted to thank you for helping me with the project.” he lowered his voice towards the end of the sentence.

“Well go on then – spit it out.” Luke prompted.

Harry glared at Luke but continued. “At the end of January we play Fulham away – I have arranged first class rail travel to London for the four of you, plus tickets to a West End show in the evening, plus an overnight stay in a top hotel.”

Luke whistled. “Belting! But you shouldn't have gone to so much trouble – it must have cost you a fortune.”

Harry waved away Luke's protests. “I have nothing else to spend my money on,” he explained, “so I just plough it back into the Dementia research or spend it on those I love.”

Luke didn't know what to say so he changed the subject. “What was the other reason you decided to drag yourself out here so early in the day?”

“That's easy,” Harry replied, “I'm tied up solid for the next few days so I just wanted to give you a quick once over.”

They walked back into the house and entered Luke's study. Harry inspected Luke's diary and seemed happy at the way things were going. Both men seemed to agree that Luke was experiencing certain heightened instinctive feelings during the football games. Luke couldn't put it into words but he said that he just knew that he had to be in certain places at different times during the game. It was weird but it was as if he knew that the ball was going to fall in a certain spot or that a player was going to pass in a certain way. Harry gave Luke a quick check up and gave him a clean bill of health as expected.

Harry left soon after and Luke went back into the pool room to shake up any stragglers so they could head off to the training ground. It was only as he was heading to the car when Luke remembered what was scheduled for that morning. He groaned as he remembered that Sarah had approached him to ask if he would talk to the players and backroom staff about the dangers associated with Twitter, Facebook and other forms of social media. She explained that for once Ed and Sandy were in agreement that following the Jake Pryce saga, the players needed re-educating. Luke didn't feel uncomfortable talking to large groups of people – it was something he had done the world over and he certainly wasn't worried talking about IT related issues – but during the year at Wishton Clough he had hoped just to concentrate on football and generally keep a low profile. Then he laughed to himself when he realised, given recent events, how ridiculous that sounded!

On arrival at the ground he was told that he was due to address the players first thing in the canteen. Sarah was waiting for him and he was pleased to see that Sandy and most of his staff were in attendance and all the players seemed to be there. It was only after a few minutes that he realised that he couldn't see the familiar figure of Adi amongst the crowd. He decided to get this over with as soon as he could.

“OK gentlemen,” he began, “I've been asked to have a quick word with you today to talk about the dangers of social media.”

Before he could go any further a hand shot up. “Please sir!” cried Nobby. “Can I go to the toilet?”

The room fell apart laughing and even Luke had to grin. “I'm sorry Nobby but we don't have any ladies toilets in here – you'll have to go outside!”

The players hooted and cheered then Luke raised his arms. “OK lads – very funny but unfortunately this is a serious subject so pin your ears back and listen.”

The laughter quickly died away as Luke seemed to consider what to tackle first. Finally he fixed his gaze on Sandy Dunbar.

“Mr. Dunbar,” he asked, “what would you do if you came in to work today and found a USB stick bearing the Wishton Clough logo on your desk?”

Sandy thought for a moment before answering. “I would assume that someone had left it for me to look at and when I had taken my laptop out of my bag I would connect it to my laptop.”

Luke nodded. “Yes – that's exactly what most people would do. I assume that you are very protective of your laptop and rarely let it out of your sight?”

Sandy nodded.

Luke turned back to the rest of the room. “The reason I'm beginning with this example is to show you just how easy it is to steal information. Most hackers these days don't even need to get near your laptop or Smartphone to steal your information. They can just drop a USB stick on your desk – or by your parked car. They know it's human nature to want to look at what is on the USB device and that the majority of people will simply connect it to their laptop or tablet. Once the device has made a connection, then a virus or Trojan is transferred to your device and the hacker can start to take whatever information they want.”

Sandy looked shocked. “But you said it had a Wishton logo?”

Luke shrugged. “It's hard to get at your laptop but why risk it when someone can simply mock up a USB pen with a logo and drop it on your desk – and leave the rest to you.”

The room stayed silent as Luke went on. “That was a bit of an extreme example,” he said “but I wanted to try to make a point – once you lose control then there is no going back. And it is the same story with all your social media accounts. By and large you seem to be a sensible bunch of people but there are a lot of nasty people out there – just waiting to take advantage of any slip-up you make. There are at least two main ways in which you can mess up in Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc. First of all you can post something which you regret later and can't get back – and secondly you may be using weak passwords on all your accounts.”

Luke paused to let his words take effect. “First of all – passwords. Let me tell you here and now that no password is unbreakable. Give me a few minutes and I will crack all your passwords.”

A low rumble spread throughout the room. “And you would be surprised to know how many people there are like me in the world! Probably most of them aren't as modest…..”

This time an uneasy laugh came from a few of the players.

Andy raised his hand. Luke nodded towards him.

“I didn't even use Twitter – and look what happened to me.” Andy commented.

“What happened to you was an extreme example – and a combination of bad luck and bad judgement.” Luke explained. “I've made sure that the club won't make the same mistake again – but at the end of the day the main cause was a weak password. But you need to make it hard for the majority of other idiots out there. Don't use simple passwords, don't write them down – and don't share them with anybody. If you want to be really safe the start using a laptop with a biometric device attached.”

Some of the players were lost.

“That's a fingerprint reader Nobby.” Luke smiled and he held up his phone to show them what he meant. “My phone needs a 12 character password plus my thumbprint before I can get access – and even then there are a few other surprises for any would-be hackers.”

“What kind of surprises?” Sandy asked.

“Well they wouldn't be surprises if I told everyone would they?” Luke replied. “And that's exactly what I am trying to tell you – do not share these kind of secrets with anyone.”

“However,” continued Luke, “the easiest way to protect yourself is to simply not post anything at all. If you don't share your lives on Twitter and Facebook then you have nothing to worry about. I know that some people would rather lose their right arms than lose their Twitter account – and I really feel sorry for those sad people,” he glanced around the room, “but that's the only 100% way of not losing anything – don't put it out there.”

“Having said that,” Luke warned, “you still need to be vigilant if you just use your laptop or tablet for browsing or just editing documents. Lots of companies offer you data storage “in the cloud”, in other words they will offer to store your data remotely. Don't be tempted by these offers. Store your data locally and back up to secure USB sticks or drives. Once those documents and photographs are in the public domain then they are vulnerable.”

Luke paused once again and looked around the silent room. “I'm sorry if I have frightened you today but to be honest that is exactly what I wanted to do. I don't want you to tell the world on Facebook that you are going away for the weekend – only for you to come home to find your home burgled. And I don't want you coming home drunk one night and stupidly publishing things on Twitter that you will regret in the morning. And I definitely don't want personal photos of you and a loved one splashed all over the papers. 99% of this is common sense – just think before you act.”

Luke decided he had said enough. “I've given you the bare minimum,” he said, “If any of you want to learn more or have any concerns – then you can talk to me at any time.”

The players began to politely thank Luke for his help – they all seemed in a lot more serious mood now. Luke stood to leave and he noticed someone enter the main door and hurry across to Sandy. Sandy listened for a minute and then jumped to his feet – swearing and shouting. He pushed through the surrounding players and rushed towards the door. Someone grabbed the messenger as he tried to leave.

“What's happened?”

“Adi Abele has just joined a Premier League club!”