—I fucking hated school, mate, fucking despised it. The Head, we used to call him fucking Mumm-Ra – the ever living. He was always on your case, the wrinkly old fuckbag – well, my case. Cos of my hair, my boots, my uniform, earring, nag, nag, nag. He didn’t like the fact that I just fucking wouldn’t tow the line.
I actually quite liked school – well some of it, like, English and stuff. But the Bitch-a-Tron just fucking ruined it for me. I can’t even remember what she was actually called! Probably why I work for [name removed] now, eh? Ha!
Talking to Charlie is a very different experience from talking to the others. The way he talks is either tiredness or, as I begin to suspect as our interviews go by, the effects of alcohol. Charlie manages a bar and he’s home late, so you can’t really blame him. He jumps around a lot as well – from subject to subject, leaving a memory dead in the water just as he seems to be recalling it. There are some things he just seems to give a cursory nod; others he will really go to town on. The events at Scarclaw in 1996, he seems resigned about, as if they’ve simply been resolved and are therefore not really worth thinking about.
This makes many of our interviews difficult, as we have to wind around many paths before we find the right one.
—They used to think I had ADD – or, what’s it called now: ADHD? – at school and stuff, cos I just couldn’t concentrate. But my memory’s like a sort of time-lapse coral reef; things just kind of blossom up out of nowhere, then fade away again.
—We were talking about school. Back in ’95, you would have been what, year nine, ten?
—Something like that, yeah. I was smart; I wasn’t thick. I was good at subjects, but I had all this energy, this rage inside me. I used to get into fights and stuff, with the … we used to call them ‘charvers’ back then. They call them chavs now don’t they? You know the ones I mean though, don’t you? Big lads who would call you ‘hippy’ and rob your dinner money off you.
I used to kick off, just go for them; and pretty soon they stopped. In fact, weirdly, we kind of found this sort of mutual respect for each other, and I used to smoke weed with them quite a lot; do buckets round the back of the art room at lunch times, that sort of thing.
—Oh wow. So you weren’t ever scared of them or anything?
—Nah, no way. They were just kids. You see, back then, I used to knock about with much older lads, like, outside school. The olders, they were into their drugs, their music and all that sort of stuff. I wasn’t scared of them, so I wasn’t going to be scared of a couple of charvers from my year was I?
This is interesting. Neither Derek nor Eva Bickers have said anything about Charlie’s ‘older’ friends, the ones outside school. Trying to track any of them down is like hitting a brick wall. Charlie seems reluctant to help me identify them. He tells me it ‘doesn’t matter’ who they were. It may be, as I suspect as our interview progresses, that he either doesn’t remember them, or some falling out or similar incident may have driven them apart.
—So how did you start hanging about with these ‘olders’?
—It was weird; I just sort of met them down the park. They were up on the climbing frame, smoking and listening to music, and I would … I would just say to my mum and dad that I was going to play football or something, and I just started, like, knocking about with them…
—Did the others in Rangers know about them?
—I dunno. I doubt it. I might have said something … maybe. But, it’s just, like, they weren’t a big deal. They were just some lads who knocked about down the park and I was just this … this sort of little follower. Ha! They taught me how to smoke and everything. It was good, because when I was at school, all the fucking charvers who used to pick on me, they thought I was hard because I could smoke … and I could handle my weed.
—You would have been, what, fourteen, fifteen at the time?
—Yeah. But I started smoking in the park when I was about twelve. It’s funny, cos, when I got chatting to a lot of the charvers at school, it was like, I could relate to them more than I could the kids in Rangers. The Rangers kids – don’t get me wrong, they were my best mates – but I always felt like a bit of a mess next to them.
—But you didn’t fit in at school with the … the charvers either?
—Nah, not properly. I felt more like myself at Rangers, but I never fitted in there completely. I always had something to prove. I was this long-haired fucking, like, death metal kid who hung about with the charvers at school, but then hung out with these, like, totally different kids outside school. And I fitted in with neither. It was such a mess.
—It surprises me that you say you didn’t fit in with the other Rangers.
—I dunno. Fitting in’s not the right word. It was, like, they all had nice lives and everything, and I didn’t so I felt, like, the odd one out.
—‘Nice lives’ – are we talking class here?
—No. Yeah. Sort of. They were nice people. They were properly nice people. I mean Eva Bickers, she was just … she was my best friend. Without Eva, I would have … I don’t know … probably just done something stupid. Anyu Kekkonen as well – man, she was just … Hey, did you say you knew where she was now?
—I was hoping you might be able to tell me.
—Nah. I wish I could, but I just … I just got away as quickly as possible from them after what happened to Tom, just because I knew they would probably think it was me who did it. And I just didn’t want that … for them.
This is interesting. Charlie talks about the other teenagers in Rangers having ‘nice lives’; in a way that seems to imply he didn’t. As far as I’m aware, Charlie Armstrong’s home life was no different from the others’. The Bickers and the Armstrongs holidayed together often, and it would have been nigh-on impossible for the Bickers not to notice any deepseated problem with their close friends, right?
It makes Charlie choosing to hang out with these elusive ‘olders’ at the park in his spare time even more interesting.
—Can we just go back to when you said the others had ‘nice lives’? What do you mean?
—Well it’s just that they were all really adjusted and I just wasn’t…
—Why do you think that was?
—It’s like … we’d go on holiday – me and Eva and her mum and dad and my mum – and I’d sometimes look at them and just get this rage, this fury, this jealousy, at how happy they all were.
—And you weren’t?
—Never. Never. All my life, I felt I was sort of searching for something, like waiting for something … it’s hard to explain. And when this … when what happened to Tom up at Scarclaw happened, for a while, I thought that was it. I thought that was what I had been waiting for…
—For someone to die?
—No. Yeah … sort of … I dunno. It’s hard to explain.
Charlie and I finish our first interview here. He’s tired, drunk and gets increasingly incoherent, flitting between subjects. There’s little to no point playing much more of it. What I can glean though is that, back then, Charlie was full of confusion and angst, a not uncommon trait for a fifteen-year-old boy.
Maybe there was nothing behind it; maybe Charlie was just a teenager. His family have not responded to any of my requests to speak to them – read into that what you like. Not everyone wants old graves raked over; and it’s also possible that they just want to be left alone.
I listen back to my conversation with Derek Bickers for something, anything, to do with Charlie that may give me some more insight into him. The only other thing I can find is an anecdote that I edited out of episode one.
—It was one of those odd times when the older lot hadn’t showed up at a Rangers meeting in the church hall – only Charlie.
—Why hadn’t the rest of them come?
—I don’t know: homework, can’t-be-arsed, other things to do. Anyhow, Charlie seemed pretty fed up because it was just him and a load of the little ones and us adults. I said to him he could go home if he wanted, that it was OK;
but he stayed. He stayed for the whole thing, and you know what? He was just … he was amazing with those kids. By the end, he had them climbing all over his back, hanging off him. They were delighted and us … all us grown-ups, we were watching this sort of surly, long-haired lad, wearing a T-shirt with Cannibal Corpse written on it, just … it was like he was being a kid again himself.
—Was that out of character for Charlie?
—I don’t want to say yes, because that makes him sound … you know … but certainly, if any of the others had been there, he wouldn’t have done anything of the sort.
Just before the meeting was over and we were packing up; he slipped out for a cigarette and I went to speak to him to say thanks, to just tell him how great we thought he was and all that.
I went out the side door and saw him; he was just sat on the edge of a dustbin, headphones in, just staring out into the night, and … I don’t know if he was crying or something, I can’t remember for sure, but a part of me just wanted to give him a massive hug, just hold him. He looked just so sad … so … lost. I didn’t, though. I wish I had.
So what can we make of that? The thought that comes to my mind is that Charlie was aching for a lost childhood – a playful innocence that perhaps he never had. But that idea seems contrary to everything we know about Charlie’s home life.
The next time Charlie and I talk, I want to mention this incident, but feel like I can’t, as if it would be somehow intrusive to do so. If he can’t remember it, that’s not fair either. Instead, I ask him about what home was like back in the nineties.
—Just normal mate; just normal. I don’t know what you want. Like, you want me to say that my mum and dad beat me, or abused me or something, and that’s why I killed Tom? Yeah? Something like that?
—Whoa, hang fire. I haven’t blamed you for what happened.
—I know, I know. Look, it’s just … I was just waiting to be blamed back then; that’s what I remember. I was just waiting for someone to say, ‘Oh, it was probably Charlie, all the evidence points to it.’
—Why do you think they would have blamed you? Weren’t you and Tom friends?
—I don’t know. Sort of, I suppose. I mean, I know he was a bell-end; I thought so then as well. We just smoked weed and stuff together is all. I smoked weed with a lot of people.
Sorry mate, you were saying something about…
—I was just wondering why you thought they would have blamed you for what happened to Tom, that’s all.
—Cos I was the typical rebellious teen maybe? Like, I was the fucked-up one who did drugs, had long hair, listened to metal – all the death and black stuff. So I was just waiting for them to pin it all on me!
—And did they?
—It’s hard to remember; that night was all a blur. I remember the police talking to me about it. I remember they had my tapes – Morbid Angel, Darkthrone – they were looking at them like they were a fucking contract addressed directly to Satan and written in my own blood. I remember one of them trying to be funny, trying to wind me up: ‘You look like you belong in a fucking graveyard, you, lad.’ Trying to get me to bite.
And they started asking me about some sort of animal sacrifice, or bollocks like that. Did I attack sheep or whatever? It was pathetic really.
I want to pause here for a moment. In last week’s episode, Haris Novak said something about the Beast of Belkeld ‘eating the sheep’. It is only by chance that I remember this passage. During the editing, I had to replay it to clear up a burst of background noise – that’s why it sticks in my mind. However, on impulse, after Charlie mentioned animal sacrifice, I delved back into some police reports from the area and found that a group of rock climbers had found a dead sheep on Scarclaw Fell in February of 1996 and had reported it to the Belkeld police. The report itself states that the animal had been ‘mutilated’, yet I can’t find anything more about it. If it was a natural occurrence, though, why did the police ask Charlie Armstrong about it – about something that had happened earlier in the year when he was nowhere near Scarclaw? I ask Charlie.
—Christ only knows. Loads of people thought I was into Satan because of the music I listened to – pathetic really, isn’t it? Does anyone assume that all fans of country music are potentially suicidal? Course not. I thought they were trying to wind me up, to make me angry so they had a suspect. I was defensive, but I was more worried to be honest, I was worried about what had happened to Tom, and I had this horrible heavy feeling, like guilt; as if I had done something, as if it was my fault in some way that I didn’t know about!
Anyway, they pinned all that sheep stuff on Haris in the end, didn’t they?
—Really? I’ve not heard that.
—Oh. Maybe not, then. Maybe they didn’t even know about it.
—Know about what?
—Oh, it was something Haris told us – when we met him that first time. He said he used to drag all the dead animals off the fell and bury them in his garden or something.
According to Charlie, Haris Novak would regularly find dead animals on Scarclaw Fell: sheep that had broken their legs; rabbits; birds. He would apparently take the corpses back to his mother’s cottage and bury them. Whilst this feels potentially significant, what exactly does it prove? That Haris was a little strange? It’s odd to me that this detail was never picked up on. Surely the farmers would have noticed their flock vanishing? And I imagine the tabloid press would have had a field day. I am frustrated that I didn’t know this before I talked to Haris himself. But, again, I must question what part, if any, this detail had in the case of Tom Jeffries. Let’s suppose that Haris Novak found Tom Jeffries’ body. Haris isn’t stupid – he would have reported such a thing. But let’s just say he didn’t, and he took the corpse back to his mother’s cottage – why then did he replace it in the marsh a year later? It seems altogether rather far-fetched.
I want to concentrate on the night that Tom Jeffries vanished. According to Charlie, that night in 1996, they had all been drinking and smoking weed – Tom, Charlie, Eva, Anyu and Brian. Charlie says that he doesn’t remember a lot about it, that it’s blurry. He remembers being angry at one point and storming off. It was a warm, summer night, but the teenagers had spent the majority of their time in the centre, in their dormitory, using the window to get in and out. They were messing about in the woodland close by, smoking. Indeed, this was confirmed by investigators: footprints and cigarette ends showed that none of them strayed far from the place … except for Tom.
Interestingly, however, forensics were unable to confirm with total certainty that this was indeed the case. It was possible, they said, that someone else could have walked off onto the fell with Tom, if they were careful. The woods are thick and tracking Tom’s route to the place where his body was found was impossible a year later. All the forensics confirm is that all the teenagers’ tracks were found around the centre.
—So you stormed off?
—Yeah … probably…
—Why?
—Oh, just some teenage shit. Some fucking stupid thing, I don’t know. A girl or something.
Charlie becomes infuriatingly elusive about this particular aspect of that night. He claims he has no recollection of why he stormed off, where, and for how long. Eva Bickers did not mention it, either, claiming that she went to bed early.
‘Teenage shit’ over ‘a girl or something’ usually means one of two things: that a girl you wanted to get with didn’t get with you, or else said girl got with someone else. Eva and Charlie seemed to have a lot going on between them. And, remember, Eva said she was ‘with’ Brian Mings the night Tom disappeared. Maybe it was this that angered Charlie. Again, that part of me that sees Charlie how the others see him doesn’t want to ask. What am I afraid of?
I can tell Charlie is getting frustrated with my questions. He keeps asking me ‘what the point’ of all this is and repeating that he thinks he knows me from somewhere.
I give him a break, and when we reconvene he seems considerably ca
lmer. I am more tentative this time and ask him about the trips to Scarclaw leading up to summer 1996.
—Help me out here…
—OK, so the time you went to Scarclaw with Rangers; spring…
—We went to Scarclaw a lot. I’m really sorry, mate, they all kind of blend into one.
—The first time you encountered Haris Novak.
—OK, yeah, I’ll try.
—Haris tried to give you some money.
—Oh yeah, yeah! I remember that … we were just … we didn’t know what the hell he was on about. Some mental problem. Sorry I don’t know the word…
—He’s got some complex problems, has Haris. But let’s stay with that time, just so you can remember. Haris showed you all a place.
—Yeah! It was one of the entrances to the old mineshafts, like sort of under the hill. God … yeah, I remember that place…
—You sound almost wistful, Charlie.
—Yeah, well, man, that was the place that me and Eva, we … you know?
—Did you?
—Yeah, that first time, it was there, like, in the middle of the afternoon. We just went off for a wander and we had a smoke and … Wow, yeah, I’ll never forget that … had I forgotten that?
OK, so now we know why Eva Bickers came into school so elated after that particular holiday. It makes sense. From my interview with Eva, it seems she really had a thing for Charlie, maybe she always had. I ask Charlie about how he felt about her.
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