Ever since the final whistle on that Fateful Evening, Barry had not been seen. At first everyone thought it wouldn’t last for long. After all, his dad Barry senior had only gone missing for a week in May 1981 and for two weeks the year after. His mum’s husband had been relieved then, and even more relieved when Barry senior returned, because the police had started asking him to help them with their enquiries.

Barry’s granddad Basil had vanished for a week in 1957 and his great-great-grandfather Bartholemew hadn’t vanished at all in 1897. He’d just sat up the corner of the Gaolhouse’n’Gibbet, stunned into silence. Admittedly he’d vanished for a while two years earlier but then he’d come back with a bagful of silver two-shilling pieces saying something about how “that dirty Villa bastard Shilcock had it coming” and the insurance would cover his window anyway.

But a month was a worryingly long time and nothing had been heard from Barry, although his whereabouts some of the time could be worked out. For a start, all the Turkish barbers in the High Street had vanished, the displays of Turkish Delight in the 24 hour shops had been set on fire and McGinn’s newsagents had their windows boarded up.

But apart from that, nothing. Adolf was growing worried. Barry might have been a pain in the arse but the money he put over the bar just about made up for the damages he caused. Then there was the extra income be brought in. Sociologists would visit to see Barry in his natural environment, although only once. There were always a few undercover police in there, although they tended to keep quiet and could usually be spotted as they invariably turned down the selection of damaged goods the regulars offered them and left before Adolf set the dogs loose. They had to leave before Adolf set the dogs lose as the dogs only went for strangers. One of them had bitten a Bloser once and he’d had to have a long course of injections. So after that the dogs wisely kept clear of Blosers in case any of them had to have a long course of injections as well. Adolf’s dogs weren’t daft.

The surviving shops in the neighbourhood were struggling as well. Cash Converters had hardly had anything coming in although they also said they hadn’t had any of their customers robbed of their newly-bought goods either. The Job Centre Plus was thinking of making some of its staff redundant, the 24-Hour Boarding Up service had never known it so quiet and the police station as being threatened with closure. Clearly, something had to be done.

A police officer had gone round Barry’s house, but couldn’t get anywhere near as a street party was being held. When the officer went back to the station the sergeant asked how long the party had been going on. “Since the morning after the Fateful Evening,” was the reply.

The sergeant then pointed out that it wasn’t very tactful to be having a party in the street with Barry missing, and how was Barryetta taking it? “In turns dancing with the neighbours,” he was told. “And so are the kids.”

The sergeant sympathized with Barryetta, but the law is the law and certain procedures have to be followed. He contacted divisional HQ, who got into Scotland Yard, who called the Home Office, who spoke on the scrambler phone to their Lose Finding Squad. This was a specialized branch of the emergency services, who were kept on stand-by for such an occurrence. They’d originally been established in 1661 when Charles II had returned to England to become king only to find that his manservant Balthazaar Lose had vanished along with the crown and was found offering it for sale in the Rag Market.

From then on, an elite group of highly-trained soldiers and secret agents had been recruited with orders to track down any member of the Lose family who went missing. They’d been called into action in 1815, when Private Benjamin Lose of the 1st Warwickshire Regiment had deserted the night before the Battle of Waterloo. He hadn’t been too difficult to find, as the French had tied him to a tree with a note saying “We don’t want him either.”

They’d even been called upon by the American government when the Indians started complaining about the annoying Englishman roaming the plains looking for dirty Villa bastards and could they please go back to the reservations. That had been Buffalo Lose, who had emigrated to America in 1874 because he’d heard a terrible calamity had occurred on Heathfield Road.

Then there was Barry’s great-uncle Barrington, who had volunteered for the Home Guard in 1940 and vanished when he’d been discovered flying a ballon with an arrow pointing to Villa Park during an air raid. When he was caught he would have gone to prison but Churchill said the prisoners had enough to put up with and he was freed into the community.

And so the Lose Finding Squad were called into action. They knew there was no point asking around the area where he was last seen, because no-one had given information about a Lose to the authorities since 1067, when Barrabas Lose had been found selling genuine eyes from King Harold and one of the peasants had informed that King Harold hadn’t had seventeen eyes and if he did, not all of them had been hit with an arrow. The peasant had ended up with seventeen arrows somewhere else.

It was therefore down to the Squad to make enquiries elsewhere. And it wasn’t long before they had a lead, when a man with a dinghy said that he had just dropped a load off at Dover when someone had hijacked his dinghy and headed off to France. “Except he wasn’t going to France,” the man said. “I told him he was going in the wrong direction but he wouldn’t listen. He said he was on a mission from God. If he kept going the way he started out he’d have ended up in the Atlantic.”

And that, the Squad concluded, was that. Barry was lost at sea. No-one had heard from him for a month. No-one had seen him. There was no evidence of him being anywhere. He had vanished, presumed drowned. They were just deciding who would have the task of informing Barryetta that she had lost her husband and, even worse, informing Adolf that he had lost his best customer, when the television in the corner began to broadcast breaking news.