The Murder Diaries_Seven Times Over

by David Carter

  ‘Be in touch.’

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Armitage had been at the orphanage for five years. Things had slowly improved. The food was better and there was more of it. The staff improved through better training and adopting a more enlightened attitude, and every boy incarcerated there breathed easier when the predatory Mr Gilligan was finally disciplined and removed, yet, as there was no concrete evidence against him, he escaped prosecution and retained his pension. The boys didn’t care much about that; they were too busy celebrating his overdue demise.

  To everyone’s relief the non-normals were removed too, taken to a brand new redbrick facility at Willaston, where no more than four boys would ever share a room, where hot individual showers were always on tap, and where any hint of bullying and intimidation from the so called normals was eradicated. Some of the non-normals knew well enough that some of the normals were in the wrong classification, and vice versa, but those non-normals who had been evacuated were now delighted to be wrongly classified and away.

  Those remaining at Saint Edmonds slept better. The crazy nighttime shrieking upstairs soon became a thing of memory and folklore. The new jerks were told horrific stories of how it used to be, and how lucky they were now, and the confused kids didn’t know what to believe.

  In all that time no one had ever come for Dennis Swallow.

  They had looked at him right enough, considered him, those potential foster parents, countless times, like people expecting dogs on dog death row, but always he would be rejected because of his darting untrustworthy eyes, so reported back more than one middleclass Wirral family, or because of his rat-like looks. Dennis was sixteen and on the brink of leaving school, and searching for employment, and finding somewhere to live, outside of the system.

  Dennis had never lived anywhere else other than at Saint Edmonds. He didn’t know what a family home was like. He didn’t know anything better. The idea of him going out into the big wide world alone was terrifying, yet incredibly exciting too. Dennis had his dreams, holding them close to his chest, just like all the rest.

  Armitage was still stuck in Saint Edmonds too.

  Even more potential fosterers had considered him, yet there was something about him that put people off. His limbs appeared to develop at different rates, like a yearling colt where one end grows faster than the other, and the creature never looks quite right. He didn’t look natural, the finished article, and this weird appearance constantly resulted in those same kind people staring at him, and smiling down, pityingly, and grimacing, and slowly shaking their heads, and muttering, ‘Maybe not,’ often in Armitage’s presence.

  All the kids were relieved when they changed the viewing system. They didn’t do that anymore. Reject them on the spot, in full view of the rejected. Thank God for that. It was just a wonder it took them so long to figure out that constant and obvious rejection in itself, could lead to more problems, and more of the same.

  Rejection. Rejection. Rejection.

  When the vicar of Saint Jude’s, the local parish church, had first heard Armitage sing at the age of eleven, he was transfixed. It was a case of love at first sound. The vicar fell head over heels. There was nothing he would not do for Armitage, so long as Armitage felt the same way.

  Armitage did not.

  Not that the Reverend Christian de Wyk would be put off by that, and nor did he block or hinder Armitage’s singing. He didn’t, and he couldn’t, because he adored it so, the magical treble voice that soared through Saint Jude’s church, filling the place with joy, and despite all the rebuffs, he would retain Armitage in the choir because, he, Christian, was fiercely ambitious. The Saint Jude’s choir had been widely talked about and admired once before, but that was all of ten years before, long before Christian de Wyk had taken up his post, and long before Armitage had arrived.

  Christian intended to return it to how it once was, and backed by the Bishop of Chester, who was a personal friend of his; he was determined to achieve it.

  Armitage remained on the front row of the choir.

  He didn’t know exactly what it was the vicar wanted; he simply knew that he didn’t. It came from his deepest instincts, that this God fearing man that the parishioners all so adored, was somehow dangerous. Army shared his thoughts with Dennis who couldn’t sing for coalscuttles, Army told him all about it. Of his doubts and fears, and the creeping feeling of cold discomfort that came over him whenever the vicar called him to his private rooms, and how he couldn’t wait to get away, and the numbness he felt when Christian would stand close behind him at choir practice, his hands alive on Armitage’s slight shoulders, as Christian’s raucous baritone echoed into Army’s ears, through the hearty never-ending renditions of All People That On Earth Who Dwell and Onward Christian Soldiers, a particular favourite of the vicar’s, for obvious reasons.

  Dennis explained in graphic detail exactly what it was the vicar was after, and he would never forget the look of horror and disbelief on his friend’s young face, as the penny finally dropped.

  ‘You can’t be serious!’

  Dennis nodded his head, unable to keep the likeable smirk from his rodential face.

  Armitage had previously gone out of his way to avoid being alone with the vicar. After that enlightenment he refused to attend the vicar’s private rooms under any circumstances, risking any punishment or banishment in the process.

  A year later Christian de Wyk disappeared.

  Amongst the adults, wicked rumours circulated, not that any of those ever filtered through the thick walls of Saint Edmonds. Armitage was simply glad that Christian de Wyk was there no more, and so were all the choirboys, especially the prettier ones.

  He was replaced by the Reverend Blair McGowan, who as his name suggested, was very Scottish and mighty proud of it. He was happily married with four mini McGowans, three boys, all of whom would go on to sing in the choir, two of whom would much later become ordained, and one shy girl, Machara, who didn’t sing a note, but stood on the front row of the congregation with her mother, a position where some of the older boys would inspect her, as they concentrated on pronouncing their vowels Dwell, Hallelujah, and Praise, as in Praise Him! Praise Him! gazing across at Machara with a mixture of curiosity and excitement, pondering on those pink lips as she silently mouthed her words, wondering what she might be wearing beneath that thick tartan skirt, and wondering too where that might lead.

  Unsurprisingly, Christian de Wyk had never introduced other children to them, and especially not girls.

  After the coming of the McGowans the choirboys relaxed.

  They soon came to adore Blair McGowan who with his three sons, would play football with them on the green, pretend matches between his beloved Raith Rovers, and Everton or Liverpool, or their own local Rovers, Tranmere, and, far more importantly, so far as the choirboys were concerned, on Sunday afternoons, before evensong, he would invite some of them home to tea, ensuring that through the course of a term, each choirboy had his turn. It was an invitation that no one ever refused.

  Armitage’s opportunity arrived one hot sunny June day. Fresh strawberries and cream were served in fancy blue glass dishes, the boys eyeing them through wide eyes, the berries picked by Machara’s fair hand, from the extensive fruit patch at the rear of the vicarage. Neat red salmon sandwiches made from real tinned salmon, and best English butter, not scrimped with either, the sandwiches cut neatly into fours, the faint aroma of a woman’s perfume upon them, as if they had been personally cut and prepared by Mrs McGowan herself, or better still, Machara.

  ‘The crusts cut off!’ exclaimed Armitage. ‘Can you believe that?’ as he later told Dennis all about it. ‘All the crusts fucking cut off!’

  Armitage wasn’t alone in wondering what happened to those crusts. He’d liked to have taken them back to Saint Edmonds with him, but he still hadn’t finished his gleeful descriptions.

  Homemade sugar topped fruit scones with raspberry jam, and even more cream, and gallons of hot steaming tea
, served in cups and saucers, the good stuff too, Typhoo, not the dishwater muck we have to drink, with a large bowl of sugar lumps parked in the centre of the table, where the boys were encouraged to take as many lumps as they wanted.

  ‘Sugar isn’t rationed here you know,’ grinned the Reverend Blair, ‘not in this house,’ through his jovial red face, remembering as he did his own childhood from long ago when sugar was worth more than gold.

  The boys took him at his word, and every week the bowl would be picked clean, many of the boys secreting extra lumps into their pockets to eat later as sweeties.

  ‘And afterwards he put on the record player and played records,’ recalled Army, perhaps getting a little carried away with himself at the beauty and warmth of it all, of being in someone else’s happy home, something that Armitage remembered all too well, but something that Dennis could not relate to at all. It might as well have been in far off Hollywood, for all he was concerned.

  Dennis was keenly interested in the descriptions of the food and drink; and envious too, that went without saying, the mere mention of it made his mouth water, and his stomach rumble, but there was something else that interested him far more.

  ‘Tell me about Machara!’

  ‘Well,’ said Armitage quietly, thinking about her, and trying to remember what she wore and what she said and what she did. Truth was; he hadn’t really paid that much attention. ‘Well, she’s very clean, and quiet, and pink, and smells of scented soap, with black shiny hair, kind of a helmet sort of style, and she was wearing a white top, and a green tartan skirt with a silver pin in it, and long green tartan socks.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. But would you fuck her?’

  Armitage flushed.

  He had never considered such an outrageous idea. It had never entered his head. He had been far too preoccupied with the strawberries and cream. He was about to stammer out a no idea reply, only to halt himself as he remembered how the other boys always acted whenever they talked dirty, and he simply copied them.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, course I would!’

  ‘I knew it,’ said Dennis, leering, ‘I bloody knew it! You dirty bugger!’

  ‘I did see her knickers,’ said Armitage, softly.

  ‘What! Did ya? Did ya? When? How?’

  ‘When she sat down on the settee, when she took her strawberries to eat, after she’d made sure we all had ours, as guests, as her dad had asked her to do. They were green.’

  ‘Were they? Yeah? Green?’

  ‘I saw them only for a second of course, because I looked away.’

  ‘Did ya? Looked away?’ asked Dennis, not quite believing what Army was telling him. ‘What did you do that for, ya limpet?’

  ‘It’s rude to look up women’s skirts.’

  ‘Is it? I don’t think it is. I look up women’s skirts all the time, it’s only natural, not that I get much opportunity.’

  Armitage glanced across at him, thinking him a little weird, though he didn’t like to say, for Dennis was the only true friend he had in the whole wide world.

  Saint Jude’s church choir had built up a fine reputation. While church attendances across the country were plummeting, Saint Jude’s was packing them in. It wasn’t unusual for the place to be full. Word went around the Wirral and beyond. There was a singer there, a treble, who was better than those celebrity singers you always heard on the TV over Christmastime. Far better! I kid you not. Well better, as the local boys might have said. You should go and listen to him. See and hear for yourself while you have the chance.

  People did. Hundreds of them.

  Saint Jude’s was a chunky red stone church with a straight and skinny steeple. It continued to sell out, not that they ever charged anyone to come inside, though Blair McGowan with his Scottish roots, had considered doing such a thing, when he saw the queues of excited people hurrying through the lichgate, talking animatedly amongst themselves, as if they were about to go to a classical music concert at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall.

  Blair resisted the temptation to charge, contenting himself with, a Please Give Generously plea at the end of his brief sermon, for he was clever enough to realise that many of the folks there had not come to hear him, as the mauve velvet collection bags were sent eagerly on their way. In any event, Saint Jude’s had never collected so much cash during a service, including, as the choirboys would sometimes witness afterwards, when the donations were emptied into a rusty red Crawford’s biscuit tin, banknotes amongst the catch!

  ‘I mean,’ said Army, meeting Dennis afterwards on the way back to Saint Edmonds, ‘what kind of person puts notes in a collection bag? They must half be loaded.’

  Dennis would shake his head in disbelief, and return to thinking of Machara in her green kilt and long socks and matching green knickers, whom he’d glimpsed that day, and liked.

  After the service, the Reverend McGowan would stand on the steps and press the flesh of many people he had never seen before. On more than one occasion he would hear worshippers muttering in amazement as they made their way home. Snatches of conversation permeated his hairy ears. ‘What did you think of the boy? Amazing, wasn’t he? Well better than that bloke off the telly. Unique, truly unique.’

  ‘Well better,’ nodded the others, in that slight Merseyside accent that intrigued Blair and Machara so. ‘Well better.’

  Someone informed the local radio station. Perhaps it had cropped up on one of the radio phone-ins that dominated the schedules. Radio Merseyside sent a scout to the next service. She returned with excited tales of packed churches and electric atmospheres, and people coming from far and wide, and the most amazing singer you will ever hear in your life, right here, in Merseyside, on Merseyside! Right here, right now!

  We simply must cover it!

  So they did.

  The broadcasting truck rolled up on the Thursday, and for the next few days technicians pulled and prodded their wires and mics into place. Word went round like wildfire. Live broadcast! That lad we told you about. It’s all because of him. Well better! What did we say? He’s an orphan you know. You must be there! You’ll never forget it!

  House full notices went up outside of a church!

  A special loudspeaker relay was hastily set up outside so that the overspill crowd could hang around the weathered gravestones and take it all in. Armitage took it all in his stride.

  He was fifteen and a seasoned performer. He was due to solo two of his favourite pieces. In practice he had been note perfect. After he had finished Machara had come into the choir practice room, ostensibly looking for her father, but she had made a beeline for Armitage, thrusting a rabbit’s foot into his hand, whispering in her gentle Scottish lilt, ‘All the best for tomorra, Armitage, aye,’ and just then her father came in too and she turned and hustled away.

  Armitage hadn’t said a word in reply, not even a mumbled thank you. He had been struck dumb, and he’d blushed too, turning away and staring up at the coloured cut glass windows, hoping that no one would notice his discomfort, wishing the rouge from his face.

  There was crazy talk of a record company executive being spotted in the car park, though how anyone could recognise such a person, if he or she truly existed, was never explained.

  ‘You’re going to be a star,’ someone said, not that Armitage heard that.

  In the Saint Jude’s choir Armitage Shelbourne was already a star.

  He had been from the first day he’d arrived.

  On the Saturday night before the concert he’d gargled his throat clean, went to bed in that same long dormitory; pulled himself down the same narrow bed, though there was no longer the room to cover his head, and said a soft silent prayer for his mother, something he occasionally did, though not something he had done recently, caressed the rabbit’s foot in his hand, and thought of Machara, and the concert, and of singing his heart out, when he finally fell asleep.

  He enjoyed a good night’s rest too, and woke early... with a sore throat.

  He coughed hard to clear the phlegm
.

  There wasn’t any.

  He sat up and stared across at Dennis. He was sitting on the side of his bed scratching his mousy head.

  ‘Hey, Dennis, I’ve got a bit of a sore throat,’ he whispered.

  Dennis beamed and jumped up and walked over to Army’s bed.

  ‘You haven’t got a sore throat, you prick! Your voice has broken. And about time too! We were beginning to think you were a right queer one, we were beginning to think it would never happen!’

  But that couldn’t be right, thought Army, not on his big day. Surely to God, not now. Dennis had to be talking rubbish, as he often did. Army took a deep breath and prepared to launch into Mozart’s The Violet and Alleluia. The croak that followed sounded like rusty barbed wire being dragged across the dusty greenhouses at the back.

  ‘You’re knackered, mate!’ grinned Dennis. ‘You’d better get used to it. You’re a man now! It’s taken bloody long enough for your sprouts to hit the deck!’

  At the first opportunity Army rushed down to the church. He found the technicians hustling about completing their final preparations. Sound checks, directors waffling, women with clipboards, an irritated verger gone scarlet because one of the wire wielders had knocked over and ruined one of Mrs Broadbent’s prize winning flower displays.

  Mrs Broadbent would be furious.

  Army hurried through the church to the reverend’s private rooms at the back. He found Blair standing before a full length mirror practising his speech because it was his big day too, live on local radio, the chance to put his thoughts across to millions, well thousands, maybe. All his words would be broadcast across the region, and he had plenty to say. It had to be word perfect. She was there too, Machara, sitting quietly at the back, reading her red leather bound New Testament, like all good little girls do, not that Army had time to worry about her, not there, not then.

  ‘Sorry vicar, my voice has gone,’ croaked Army.

  Machara glanced up.

  Blair McGowan managed to stifle three seconds of great disappointment, then smiled and said, ‘Your voice has broken, boy, that’s all, it’s God’s work, it happens to everyone, it’s only natural, perhaps there is a reason behind it. Jimmy Wilson will just have to take your place, he can manage, don’t worry about it, Armitage, you’re becoming a man, that’s all.’