—Ah, maaaan. Look, I don’t really know. I was just a fucked-up person back then. I just … I thought, why would she want to be with me? Why? This angry kid.
—Did it ever happen again?
—No … no. But it was just so awkward. You know what it’s like when you’re that age? It was just, like, I didn’t know what she wanted me to say – she probably wanted me to say something – and it just … it just got all fucked up.
—That must have been hard to have to deal with, along with everything else.
—Yeah. Maybe. The thing with Eva, it was, like, she was my friend … almost like a sister, sort of thing. I just didn’t have that … that attraction with her. Not like I did with other girls.
—You all went back to Scarclaw the following summer. To insulate the centre.
—Yeah. I have a vague sort of memory of that. I remember wearing that stupid white-paper suit thing and crawling under that building. There were all these fucked-up spiders – massive ones – and everyone was freaking out.
—Was there that awkwardness with Eva, still?
—Not that I remember; I don’t think so anyway. I think we sort of, you know, got over ourselves a bit, just never talked about it and just got on. When you’re young, you just do that, you know?
—Would you have been upset if Eva had … got with someone else, like if she’d kissed one of the others? Was that, perhaps, what made you angry, caused you to storm off?
—Eva was my mate, a good mate. Like I said before, she was like a sort of sister to me. I looked out for her. But we just … I mean I wasn’t focussed on that sort of thing back then. I was more interested in getting stoned. How sad is that?
—Let’s refocus here. I’m getting a bit lost. Let’s go back to spring 1995, the first time you all encountered Haris Novak and he showed you the mineshaft.
—Yeah.
—That became a bit of a hang-out place – a ‘den’ for want of a better word.
—A den is a good term for it – we were still just little kids at heart. We used to steal the emergency candles from the centre and burn the ends, melt them into the walls and just hang there. It can’t have been for long because the leaders would have kicked off if they couldn’t find us. So I reckon we just smoked a bit in there, drank and stuff. It was just something to do.
—Haris found your paraphernalia, didn’t he?
—Oh god, yeah, yeah! But that was later, much later. I remember, cos we were going to give him this black bag of Brian’s with all the stuff in. But I don’t think we did. We weren’t that stupid. It was just a dumb idea … probably Tom’s!
—Haris told me he kept things for you.
—What, really? Wow … I always just thought that was, like I say, a stupid idea.
—Haris also told me about the time you told a story. A story about a witch…
—The marsh-hag. Nanna Wrack. Now that I do remember. How could I forget it? Wow … Christ. I haven’t thought of that in ages.
—Maybe you could tell it to me?
Charlie tells me the story of Nanna Wrack. It’s the passage you heard at the start of this episode; a sort of folk tale. He says he’s not sure where he heard it first. As with most things, his memory is blurry. Charlie does acknowledge, though, that it holds extra weight when you think about what happened to Tom Jeffries and where he was found.
—Cos, like, everyone there knew it. All the little kids at Rangers, the leaders, the older ones – we all knew about this story. But … I don’t know … it’s just a story, that’s all.
We are both quiet for a while, neither of us wanting to prod at the fact that Tom Jeffries’ body was found face down in the marshland that Nanna Wrack is supposed to haunt.
Life imitating art.
Charlie is first to speak.
—We thought we saw her once, you know.
—Go on.
—Well that mineshaft thing, that place, after Tom joined Rangers, me and him, we used to go there quite a bit, just us together, without the others.
—Why was that?
—Just sometimes the others did my head in. Tom was like … well, he was like the charvers at school. He had a darkness to him. He was his own person as well.
—I don’t follow.
—Well, it’s, like, the girls were girls. And Brian, he was just … all he wanted to do was be like me; his clothes, his hair. He even started drinking those cans of, what did you call it, Tab Clear? … He used to drink that all the time, just because I did. I used to hear him sometimes, telling the younger ones things that I’d said; things that had happened to me. He fucking did my head in. I could have said I liked to bum dead bodies and he would have fucking agreed with me! Sometimes I just wanted away with all that you know? I just couldn’t deal with it.
—The girls, too?
—Well … ahh, that’s a funny one. Sometimes I just wanted to talk to Anyu. But Eva was always there, going on and on and never letting anyone speak. I guess Tom … I dunno … I guess there just wasn’t any of that bullshit with him. All he wanted to do was smoke weed and talk.
Sorry, what was I saying? Oh yeah, yeah! So me and Tom, we were at that place, it must have been that winter because it was really snowy. We were just chilling, having a smoke, and we were looking over the fell and … man, it gives me fucking chills just thinking about it … but we saw it … this thing. We … man, at the time we said we saw her.
—Who?
—Nanna Wrack. We saw Nanna Wrack – this fucking horrible thing. This figure, all bent and hunched, just scrambling over the fell in the distance.
—Really? What made you think it was Nanna Wrack? Why not just a hiker, a walker, or Haris?
—Maybe we were wasted or something, but it wasn’t like it was human, just … ugh … just the way it moved – you know like when a spider scuttles along the floor and it gives you this fucking cold-blooded feeling? It was like that. Like all its limbs were too long for it. And it had this fucking … Christ … it had this fucking hair, like, I dunno, like a … like, I don’t know what it was…
—But Nanna Wrack is a story; a story you made up.
—Yeah … I dunno…
—I don’t follow.
—I just … I don’t know if I made it up.
—So what are you saying?
—Just that, like, I was telling a story that was … that was already there, that was already in existence or something, like it was already … there…
—The Beast of Belkeld perhaps?
—Ha! That’s a good name for it mate; it’s got a ring to it.
—No, I mean, had you ever heard of it … back then?
—Is it a thing? Jesus Christ, are you serious? The Beast of Belkeld? That’s just … that’s just fucked up.
—That’s why I wonder if you’d heard something before.
—NO, no, not at all. Not that I can … Man, maybe I had. Maybe it was a subconscious thing. But I just … I don’t remember … damn!
It’s frustrating. Charlie is frustrating. But I can’t make him recall things and I’m no hypnotist. The story of Nanna Wrack does not sound original; it smacks of some folkloric tale. But even after a week or so, during our final interview, Charlie cannot or will not remember where he got the story from. ‘Maybe I just made it up,’ he says again and again. Maybe he did, but I think that’s unlikely.
I have found talking to Charlie Armstrong to be the most exasperating story so far. It’s a little like he is editing himself, only allowing me in to a point. Maybe that’s a defence mechanism. But there is so much I need to know from him, and there are so many more questions my interviews with him raise.
Charlie’s home life is particularly interesting. Teenagers rebel, there’s no doubt about that, but with Charlie it seems much more than that: the boys in the park; the constant exclusions from school; hanging about with the ‘charvers’, never fitting in. He’s certainly a complex character, and even after all this time, despite his allusions to just being an hones
t working Joe, I still feel that there’s something he’s holding back. It would be great to sit with Charlie and pick apart what is clearly a complex story, but we have limited time, so in our last meeting, I try and cover some of the key events from 1996.
Charlie seems calmer this time, but resigned. Work and these memories are catching up with him, and when I tell him this is probably the last time we’ll talk, he seems glad.
—So, I know it’s hard, but I want to go over a few key events. Just tell me anything you can remember, is that OK?
—Yeah. Honestly mate, I’ll do my best for you. I’ve got nothing to hide. I just … it’s hard.
—So, back in December ’95, you and Tom saw Nanna Wrack.
—Yeah, you know, I’ve been thinking about that, and I’m not sure…
—About what?
—That we saw her … that we saw it. I mean, me and Tom, we were just bollocksed – stoned off our heads – and maybe it was, like, a collective hallucination, because I’d told that story so much, you know, down in that cave thing.
— What else do you remember from that weekend – the one with the snow?
—I remember Derek and the young ones, they built this fucking igloo with the snow. It must have been fucking deep to be able to do that; I have no idea how they managed it.
—But you and the others, you were elsewhere?
—Yeah, mate. We were fifteen. We just wanted to go off on our own and stuff. We thought we were more or less adults.
—I’m interested in the dynamic between the five of you – it was something that didn’t really get spoken about at the inquest.
—No, that’s right. The police didn’t really ask us anything about that, either. They were just all, ‘Did any of you want to kill him? Did you know anyone who’d want to kill Tom?’ That sort of thing. He had a bit of a past; he was a bit of a troublemaker, but that was all. There wasn’t really anything else.
—So none of you hated him?
—Not as far as I know. Tom Jeffries was an acquired taste; he was a bit of a dickhead, we all knew that.
—Yet you accepted him.
—Yeah. Yeah, we did. We were nice kids. We weren’t fucking knobs; we would have been nice to anyone.
—What was Tom like during that winter trip to Scarclaw? I know there was an incident with Haris Novak.
—Yeah. Yeah there was.
—Do you want to…?
—It wasn’t anything really – just kids mucking about.
—He was vulnerable. A vulnerable man.
—I fucking know that now. It’s not as if we abused him or shit. It was just a few snowballs. We were kids, for fuck’s sake.
—I’m not accusing you, Charlie; I’m just stating facts.
—Sorry, yeah, I know.
—It sounds to me like you regret what happened, like you’re angry at yourself.
—Yeah … actually that’s a good way of putting it, mate. I am angry that we did that … that no one stopped us; no one said anything.
—Do you think someone would have, say, if Tom hadn’t been there?
—I don’t think it would have gone that far if Tom hadn’t been there, if I’m honest. Tom and me, we just sort of wound each other up, you know; like the naughty boys who sit at the back of the class at school?
—Who would have stopped you? Eva, Anyu, Brian?
—Eva most probably.
—And she didn’t.
—No, she didn’t.
—Why do you think that was?
—Like I say, we all thought Tom was a dickhead. But he could get us weed – that was why we let him stick around, I suppose. And Eva she … she just … it went too far…
—Eva slept with Tom on that trip.
—Yeah and it was … I was just … so pissed off about it because … it wasn’t like I liked Eva in that way. But it was like … I dunno … like she’d betrayed me or some shit. It just pissed me off.
I think, in some ways I understand. Before Tom Jeffries arrived, Charlie was the alpha male of the group – the undisputed pack leader. In nature, the alpha males have exclusive rights to the females in a pack and will destroy any young that is not their genetic material. The fact that Eva had slept with Charlie, despite his claim that he didn’t like her ‘in that way’, and that he was then annoyed with her for sleeping with Tom makes sense. In a sort of feral way. However, does this have anything to do with Tom’s death? For me it’s not enough.
Charlie tells me about how his alpha status was threatened even more by how the others reacted to Tom.
—Brian, he just, like, took anything from Tom. Tom could have called him worse than shit and Brian would have still tried to impress him.
—Like he did with you?
—Yeah. I suppose.
—From what I understand, you preferred to spend time with Tom than Brian, even though you didn’t particularly like Tom.
—I guess I did. But it was because … well, he just had this sort of way about him, like you didn’t like him but you sort of did, you know? Brian was just … annoying.
—Brian and Tom went to the same school, right?
—Yeah, but they were at polar opposites in the hierarchy. I don’t think they even spoke to each other. Not even when they were both in Rangers.
—Did Tom mention Brian much?
—Not really; he just thought he was a joke, an idiot, like an annoying little insect.
—Did Tom pick on him at Rangers?
—Not really. Just sort of mucking about like the rest of us did; just daftness.
—Like when you tied him up in his coat and threw his shoes out of the window?
There is a profound silence. I hear Charlie breathing.
—Oh … yeah, wow. I’d forgotten about that. Yeah, that probably wasn’t very nice.
—Was there anything else?
—Nothing big, just, like, Tom used to rip him off; sell him tiny crumbs of weed for a fiver, a tenner. But Brian, man, he was such a fucking victim.
—And that annoyed you?
—Yeah, because … because it so could have been me! Brian was really into Anyu and he was just so shit about it … like, he had no idea what he was doing, he just followed her about like a little lost puppy. You could never have a proper chat with her cos he’d just sort of turn up and butt in, or just fucking sit there nodding like he agreed with you. It so annoying.
—But none of you said anything.
—Well, we didn’t. But Tom, he didn’t give a shit – he would always say stuff. I remember once, at Scarclaw, we were drinking, and … well, I don’t know how true this is, because I didn’t see it, but Tom reckoned he saw Brian sort of ‘topping up’ Anyu’s bottle. Like, he was pouring more vodka into it when she wasn’t looking.
—Really?
—That’s what Tom said, and he said it out loud, in front of everyone. Brian, he went bright red and started denying it. It was so awkward, it was horrible.
—What did Anyu think?
—Ha! She could have drank any of us under the table – maybe it was something to do with her heritage or something, I don’t know … is that racist? I don’t mean to be. It’s just, like, she picked up her bottle and drank, as if nothing had happened. Like she didn’t care.
—What do you think? Did Brian do it?
—I don’t know. Maybe. He did like her.
—When was this – that December trip?
—No, it can’t have been, cos I remember we were all stood outside, just a few feet from the dorm window, under the trees. There was no snow and it was warm, so it must have been the night … yeah … it must have been that night.
—The night Tom disappeared.
—Right.
—What can you remember of that night?
—Oh … that’s tough. I’ve sort of erased it from my mind after all the … all the stuff with the inquest, so…
Just before we hear Charlie’s account I want to draw your attention to something: Brian ‘topping up’
Anyu’s drink and Tom pointing it out. This small event, if it indeed happened, shows a different side to Brian Mings – a craftier, sneakier side than we know about. It also shows a slightly different side to Tom – was he protecting Anyu? However, if this story is not true, the roles are reversed; putting Tom Jeffries in an even worse light.
—That day we all went to Belkeld, the five of us, to get some bits and bobs. We saw Haris Novak on the way back, but he didn’t stop. Man, I spent most of that weekend just out of my tree, so my memories, they’ll probably be a bit shit.
—That night, though? When Tom disappeared.
—Like I told the police, his family, everyone – it was just a sort of blur…
—Just do what you can.
—The thing was it was just, sort of, a nothingy night. None of us were more or less wasted than usual. I remember being tired, though, really tired, and looking at the clock and seeing that it was only early. Maybe we just did too much too quick, you know?
—But there was the thing with Brian and Anyu’s drink.
—The more I think about it, it was probably just Tom being a prick, trying to embarrass Brian. Anyu didn’t seem more wasted than us lot. Anyway, if I remember right, we didn’t actually stay up that late. And then, in the morning, we woke up and Tom was … he was just gone…
—Can you remember who noticed first?
—I dunno. We were all awake, a bit bleary, and it was like a collective thing. Someone just noticed his bed was empty. And it was weird, cos it was really early, like sixish. Then we got the police and stuff, and the rest is … well, I’m guessing you know the rest.
One thing stands out here – to me anyway. These were five fifteen-year-olds who’d been drinking and smoking weed. Teenagers sleep like the dead, excuse the pun, and tend to lie in. Why were all the teenagers awake at six a.m.? I put this to Charlie.
Six Stories Page 15
