Six Stories

by Matt Wesolowski

  —That’s actually a really good question. You know, I don’t know. Maybe because we all went to bed early the previous night? But if that was the case, then how did Tom, just, disappear like that, under our noses? Man, unless we just sort of passed out and woke up again. I wish I could remember.

  Charlie’s right: this is a sticking point. It could never be established by forensics, conclusively at least, whether Tom Jeffries left the centre alone or accompanied by someone else; there had been too much mud and rain. And, unfortunately, it’s not like on TV: forensics cannot say what time he died.

  I have a few more questions for Charlie.

  —Did anyone ‘get with’ each other that night – the night Tom vanished?

  —Not as far as I know. I didn’t, anyway.

  This is another interesting anomaly between the stories. When I spoke to Eva Bickers, she said she had been ‘with’ Brian Mings that night. She did not elaborate any further, but something tells me I shouldn’t mention this to Charlie. I tread carefully.

  —Could something have happened that night?

  —You mean with me?

  —With anyone?

  —I dunno. It could have, it’s hard to remember…

  —Could something have happened that made you storm off? Something with a girl?

  —Sometimes it drives me fucking mad, mate, you know? When I can’t remember stuff. I remember being mad – that fucking tight feeling at the back of my neck. I remember the darkness and the trees … I think I might have even climbed up one, just sat there, stuck my headphones in, had a smoke until I calmed down, I dunno. Maybe I wasn’t even angry. Maybe I was hoping someone would wander out and find me there.

  —Someone like who?

  —Dunno mate. Just … someone…

  —I have to ask this, as I’m asking everyone else who was there: What do you think happened to Tom?

  —Wow … I mean … it’s really hard, this. It’s hard to speculate, because I just don’t know; there’s just no way I can say.

  —How about an educated guess … or a theory.

  —I just have no idea. I mean, it was just so weird. We all woke up and he was just gone. Maybe there was something, some noise that woke us; or some collective … I don’t know … knowledge that he just wasn’t there anymore.

  A theory’s really hard. I’ve gone through it so many times in my head, over and over – even now, even before I talked to you. It still sometimes come back, like a fucking recurring dream. Maybe it’s just simple; maybe that’s what’s just so fucked-up about it: maybe he was just off his head, pissed and stoned, and he just wandered off … got lost, got disoriented and passed out or something…

  —You don’t sound terribly convinced.

  —I’m not, I’m really not. But what else is there? What else could it have been? Nanna Wrack? Some mystery serial killer? I know it wasn’t any of us; it just couldn’t have been. Unless one of them – one of us – is hiding something.

  —I’ve still got two more people to talk to. But it’s going to be tough – maybe impossible.

  —Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. Look, if you do happen to get in touch with Anyu, tell her … just tell her I said hi, OK?

  —OK.

  Charlie’s theory doesn’t sound convincing, does it? Yet that’s the conclusion that the inquest came to. It’s the explanation that everyone seems to be happy with, and it’s the explanation that no one has challenged yet. The interviews with Charlie Armstrong have proved a little bit toothless, if I’m honest. I was expecting to glean more from him. However, there are a few things that stood out.

  Charlie’s home life. It was not alluded to by either Derek or Eva Bickers, which seems strange to me, if there was really something wrong at home. Maybe there was nothing; maybe Charlie, like he freely admits, was just full of pent-up teenage rage.

  Then there is Tom and Charlie’s relationship. Tom seemed to be usurping Charlie as alpha, or at least surreptitiously trying to. I honestly think Charlie simply did not know what to make of Tom Jeffries. He was sort of a friend and sort of not. What both Charlie and Eva mention is Tom’s manipulative nature.

  Then there is Tom and Charlie’s sighting of ‘Nanna Wrack’. I’m inclined to believe, and indeed, the evidence points to, some sort of hallucination – overactive imaginations fed with narcotic drugs. Or did they see Haris Novak up there on the fell, retrieving one of his animal corpses?

  Finally, for this episode, what can we conclude from Charlie’s account of what happened that day? It does seem that Charlie was far from the steady hand I imagined him to be. He was more than a little confused – thrust into his leadership of the group without really knowing why. More than anything, he felt like an outsider, an individual unable to find his place in the world. He seems more lost than any of them.

  From an objective point of view, Charlie Armstrong could be seen as more capable of killing Tom Jeffries than the others. But I think it’s a tenuous idea, based on a lot of assumptions; and is there really any motive, aside from, as Charlie himself might describe it, ‘teenage shit’?

  Next time, on the penultimate episode of Six Stories, we will hear from one of the two remaining members of Rangers. It will be interesting to discover whether they can provide any more insights into the night that Tom disappeared.

  This has been Six Stories with me, Scott King.

  This has been our fourth story.

  Until next time…

  Scarclaw Fell 2017

  I leave Belkeld behind; go back the way I came, out onto the fell again.

  My fell.

  I walk against the grain, straying from the path and travelling upward. The grass is thicker this way and I am filled with a strange, forbidden thrill, despite the fact that this is Ramsay land. A part of me expects a shout with every step – someone asking me to come back; what the hell do I think I’m doing?

  That voice never comes.

  About a hundred metres up the slope of the fell, I’m out of breath; my thighs burn and my cheeks feel raw from the wind that has begun whipping its razor-edge around the upper reaches. Spots of gorse cling to Scarclaw, fewer and further between, the higher I go.

  In my rucksack there’s a walking pole that dad bought and never used. I loop the handle over my wrist and lean into it. After a while I fall into the shade of the fell’s claw. The ground hisses at the touch of my boots and water rises through the grass.

  That forbidden thrill again. I’ve crossed the boundary from the stark fellside into the boggy shadow of the claw. Someone needs to tell me to stop, to come back. Someone needs to tell me it isn’t safe.

  I’m glad of the stick in my hand. Metal. Its end is sharp.

  I press on through the upper marshlands. The air is decidedly cooler, here, almost thick with the iron scent of rain.

  There was an opinion piece in last week’s Telegraph about Six Stories – mainly about Scott King. I try not to read them, so I did so with one eye closed, waiting for some dismissive coda about me, about dad, about The Hunting Lodge. It never came. Instead, the article focussed on how clever the format of this series was, the impact on society that unearthing these old cases had. ‘Digging up the Dead’ was its title. Two paragraphs in and I was filled with a terrible guilt, my cheeks flushed, as if I still had something to disclose, as if I could have changed the way things went.

  I could have told the police about the figure we were pursuing that night; but so could the others. I could have told Scott King about it, too. But to what end? Would it have made a difference or sent a hundred monster-hunters onto my father’s land?

  Tomo, Jus and I, we made a promise, a pact that we would not mention what we saw that night – not unless the outcome of the case depended on it.

  The postscript of the Telegraph article spoke about how there might even be a full review of the Tom Jeffries case. I wonder how his mother and father feel about that. The Jeffries family have not spoken a word since Six Stories began. Scott King says his job is raking up o
ld graves. When he says that I cannot detect a smile in between his words.

  I manoeuvre back around the side of the fell; this way is shorter in distance, but the going is harder. I look out for rocks and skeletons of trees to hold on to. Between Belkeld and The Hunting Lodge, the fell holds this land.

  I am foolish to even consider being its owner.

  I’m close now to my next stop on this tour of memories. If it had been raining we would have stayed inside the Woodlands Centre, I’m sure of it. However, the downpour granted us respite, so we scrunched over the muddy gravel to Tomo’s car. The light of the boot felt conspicuous and the dogs were going berserk. I was in charge of them and a few times genuinely expected to be pulled off my feet.

  ‘They’ve caught the scent.’ Tomo said, in control now, gun in hand, black North Face zipped under his chin.

  His words were like a line from some film. The handles of the dog leads were cutting into my palms.

  ‘I can’t hold them much longer,’ I said in a voice that was not my own.

  In that moment I realised what was happening.

  None of us had ever been in such a situation as this, not by ourselves; not without the guidance of some relation or other. We were reacting the way they react in films, on TV; the way writers who’ve never been in these situations write. We were saying everything we’d heard and never done.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  Tomo and Jus held a lamp each and looked at me. In their faces, half hidden by the flickering shadows, I saw expectancy.

  ‘Come on.’ I said it more to the dogs.

  One of them whined slightly as he pulled me on, desperate to breach the bulwark of thrashing vegetation. Desperate to reach his quarry.

  I didn’t tell them, I kept my mouth shut the deeper we drove into the woods, with the dogs snarling and throwing themselves off into the undergrowth and the lamps casting a terrible corpse-light, while the wind and the rain battered us. I didn’t tell them about what Dad had told me the last time he came out here to work on the final plans for The Hunting Lodge. What he thought he saw on the fell.

  I wanted to but the words would not come.

  Sometimes I think that it was the first sign, they say family notice things are amiss; a change in routine, a face forgotten. But this, this wasn’t like that. Dad wasn’t a dreamer; he thrived on pure logic, sometimes infuriatingly so. What he said he saw skulking across Scarclaw Fell, I have told myself was the first sign of what was coming – the change in the air that animals can sense before an onslaught of weather. It was as if Dad’s brain was battening down, preparing for a storm.

  I reach the other side of the marsh faster than I expect to. This is not far from where they found the body … we found the body, or what remained of it. It’s about a quarter of a mile downhill from here, at the edge of the trees. Along with the black shape at the window of the Woodlands Centre, and Dad’s insistent story, I relegate these notions to the limits of imagination, speculation. The devil, a long, black man, Nanna Wrack, Alzheimer’s. We like to give things names, personify our darkness. Maybe that’s some innate human trait? If so, I wonder what purpose it serves.

  I’m careful, picking my way through the thickest parts of the marsh-grass, its tube-like stems penetrating my trousers. It’s like walking over the surface of a nettle. I don’t worry that I might be sucked in, slip below the surface of the mud. I do worry, though, that the damp earth might suck at my feet hard enough to pitch me forward, make me twist an ankle. No one’s out here to hear me scream.

  I reach an alder that clings to the last of its life – its roots jut from the ground and I perch on top of one of them, holding hands with the last of the green catkins. Last time I stood here, I stared for a long time at the grinning green skull of a long-dead sheep. I imagined it caught out here in the marsh. Maybe its leg became tangled in the roots of this very tree and it tried to run, collapsed and died, its wool soaking with the foul water, its bleats fading into nothing.

  I lean against the damp trunk of the tree and squint out. I can see what I’m looking for; it rises from the marshes like a single, skeletal digit, ensconced with moss and ivy. The remains of a wall and a single chimney – the engine house that was one day the beating, industrial heart of this land, pumping water from the mineshafts below.

  ‘What’s wrong with them?’

  The rain had resumed, and the wind was hurling it down into the forest; it clattered against the leaves with such a volume that we had to shout.

  Tomo shone his light off into the undergrowth. We couldn’t see the dogs, but we could hear them yelping.

  ‘They’ve found something!’ Tomo shouted back.

  He and Jus could not keep the lights still; like twin searchlights they rode the canopy before us.

  ‘It went toward that ruin thing…’ Tomo was pointing into the black distance. His words were just audible above the screech of the wind and the rattle of the trees.

  The gun was in my hands now. I could not remember how or why, but I was holding it, my arms trembling with cold and the weapon’s dead weight. I begged myself not to shoot the moment one of the dogs burst back out of the undergrowth.

  ‘Fuck me!’

  I nearly did it. I felt my nearly numb finger squeeze the trigger as one of the lurchers, its scant fur plastered to its wiry frame, bounded back into the clearing where we stood, eyes blazing.

  ‘That’s where it lives, that’s where it…’ Tomo was shouting.

  But we weren’t looking at him anymore.

  He stopped, turned back. Followed our gaze to what the Lurcher had dropped from its jaws into the mud before us.

  The animal wagged its tail and its tongue lolled.

  We stared.

  I never forgot that black shape. The one at the window of the Woodlands Centre nearly twenty years ago. But we didn’t speak of it again; we didn’t give it a name. And for that I will always be grateful. Of course, any one of us could have said something; we could have told the police that Tom Jeffries’ murderer lured us out onto the fell, just as it had perhaps lured Tom himself. And then what? Would anyone have believed us? Believed any of it: a shadowy black ghoul leering through the window at three drunken toffs?

  In the end, what mattered more than why we were out there in the first place was what we found. I’m sure Tom Jeffries’ family would agree…

  Episode 5: Qalupalik

  —There was a French explorer, Jacques Cartier his name was – he described it as … and these are his actual words by the way … ‘desolate and depressing’. Nice, huh? Even Captain Cook said it was ‘of incredible poverty’, and that was before the fur traders and the missionaries came and actually ruined the place.

  We have a saying here: ‘God created Labrador in six days, and on the seventh he threw stones at it.’

  It’s certainly very different from the UK, but that’s just the way things work out, isn’t it? I’m not wanting for anything. And, in fact, the distance is almost like some sort of safety barrier. It’s like I can stand here and wave my arms, ‘Look. Look! Here I am!’ But no one’s coming.

  This is the voice of Anyu Kekkonen. Her mother, Eska, has retained her maiden name of Noggasak after the two relocated back to Cartwright, a community on the southern coast of Labrador, Canada. Anyu’s heritage is Labrador Inuit on her mother’s side and Finnish fisherman stock on her late father’s. Jari Kekkonen and Eska Noggasak emigrated to the United Kingdom when Anyu was a toddler. Jari met and became friends with Derek Bickers a year or so before his death. Anyu joined Rangers when she was twelve.

  —I’m sort of adaptable, you see. Northern hemisphere genes. I’m also pretty good at withstanding temperatures like this.

  —Just for the sake of people listening, I want to point out that it’s currently -10°c where you are right now.

  —Yeah. That’s sort of normal, January weather here.

  —It’s a long, long way away, Anyu.

  —Yeah. But it’s kind of nice … pretty nice.


  Welcome to Six Stories. I’m Scott King.

  Over next six weeks, we are looking back at the Scarclaw Fell tragedy of 1996, from six different perspectives

  In this, the penultimate episode, we will hear from possibly the most elusive member of the Rangers and the most difficult person I’ve had the pleasure to track down.

  Anyu Kekkonen was, along with Charlie Armstrong, Eva Bickers and Brian Mings, on that trip to Scarclaw Fell Woodlands Centre in August 1996 when fifteen-year-old Tom Jeffries disappeared.

  In the last four episodes we have talked to two of the four teenagers who were close to Tom Jeffries and were present the night he disappeared. From these interviews, we know a little about the dynamic of the group. Charlie Armstrong appeared to be the unofficial ‘leader’ of the clique, revered and looked up to by the others, especially by the ‘lowest-ranked’ member, Brian Mings. Tom Jeffries, while the same age as the others, joined the group later, and appeared to slot in on an almost equal footing with Charlie. Charlie and Eva have told me that Tom Jeffries was quite manipulative; that he had a way of getting to people, and was able to influence them. Both of them also did not think this was significant.

  The other thing we know, and that could, perhaps, be seen as crucial, is that Eva Bickers slept with both Charlie Armstrong and Tom Jeffries at Scarclaw Fell – on different occasions. There appears to have been some attraction between Eva and Charlie, although Charlie says he saw Eva as a ‘sister’. Eva Bickers was elated by her experience with Charlie and distraught by ‘allowing’ herself to have slept with Tom. Also, the night that Tom Jeffries disappeared, Eva has said she was ‘with’ Brian Mings.