The Murder Diaries_Seven Times Over

by David Carter

‘It’s not much,’ said Dennis, ‘Jillian chose it.’

  Jillian smiled awkwardly.

  ‘Ta,’ said Army again, ‘I’ll open it later.’

  Jillian didn’t like Armitage much. Perhaps she saw him as a threat to her future happiness, but she put up with him because she didn’t have any choice. Dennis had been on at her to find a girlfriend for Army for weeks, and she had managed to fix him up with three dates. Two of the girls didn’t repeat the performance, while the third one lasted a month before binning Army.

  ‘They don’t like his attitude,’ explained Jillian, when he and Dennis were alone in bed at the top of the oddly named Charwell Mansions, the building where Dennis had found his flat. ‘He’s too sarcastic.’

  ‘That’s only his way,’ Dennis would say.

  ‘That’s as may be, but girls don’t like being compared to animals. He told Shania she looked like a wild boar, and Lesley said he began calling her my favourite giraffe.’

  Dennis laughed. He could see the logic in Army’s thinking. Lesley was giraffe-like.

  ‘And when he said to Sharon she reminded him of a meerkat, and did that silly nat-nat-nat impression, I could have died. She was furious, no wonder she didn’t want to see him again.’

  ‘He’ll grow out of it,’ said Dennis, trying to explain away his friend’s awkwardness with women.

  ‘That’s as may be, but my friends won’t hang around until he does.’

  Dennis and Jillian finished their drinks and stood up to go. Dennis, at the last moment, turned and asked Army if he’d like to go with them to the pics. Armitage saw the horrified look that Jillian flashed Dennis.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘you go on, I’ve got things to do.’

  Dennis grinned apologetically and bobbed his head and the pair of them left. After they had gone Army picked up the paper and folded it and stuffed it in his back trouser pocket, collected his present; and the brown bagged parcel, glanced at the beer, realised that he didn’t like lager at all, and left it on the table.

  He would walk around the complete city walls. It was something he did from time to time. He enjoyed the history of it, and it had become a new interest for him, and as he walked around that vast clockwise circle, it enabled him to think things through, to work things out.

  He was all too aware he was at a crossroads in his life.

  The actions he took now and the decisions he made would affect the remainder of his days, he knew that well enough, and if those thoughts were unusual in an eighteen-year-old on the brink of adulthood, perhaps it was understandable, given the fourteen turbulent years he had endured.

  Losing his mother, losing his home, losing his father, all before the age of eleven, losing the happy days at the flower shop, the scholarship to Kings, the dance classes, losing his voice and the mini stardom and adulation that it brought through his angelic singing, and ultimately living in the rough house that Saint Edmonds was back then, open to bullying and harassment and predation, both physical and sexual, by pupils and staff alike, then perhaps it wasn’t so surprising that Armitage was not like other eighteen-year-olds.

  Little wonder too that he was occasionally a trifle sarcastic.

  He had learned tough lessons.

  He had learned that the only person who would ever do anything for him was himself. When he arrived back at Bellingfield he ripped the paper from his present. It was a pack of three string vests. He hated string vests. Jillian had chosen them. Yep, that would be about right.

  Armitage still attended Saint Jude’s church, even though he never went near the choir stalls. All the McGowan boys were now away at college, and Machara had gained entry to Saint Andrews University, studying medicine, which pleased her parents hugely, because the reverend had studied at that fine university.

  Blair McGowan had noticed the hang dog look that had come to sit on Armitage’s face, and the general sense of gloom that hung around him. One Sunday, standing on the steps after the service, shaking hands and smiling at the parishioners as they made their way home, Blair had said, ‘Is everything all right, Armitage?’

  Army had nodded unconvincingly, and then the reverend asked him to stay behind for a chat. Armitage had nothing better to do and agreed.

  When everyone had gone he followed Blair through the church to his private rooms at the back. Seated in that same old musty office where Chris de Wyk had first touched him brought back dreadful memories, so much so that he was thinking of getting up and leaving, when the reverend began speaking.

  ‘I can’t help noticing that something is troubling you.’

  Army took some time to reply.

  ‘I don’t seem to be making any headway in life, I can’t seem to get a steady girlfriend, I have a hateful job I despise, while everyone else seems to be getting on with their lives like no one’s business, while I am stuck in a stinking rut.’

  ‘It will come, Armitage, don’t be in such a rush, don’t force it, just relax. Try and enjoy life.’

  ‘That is easier said than done.’

  Then Blair said something that truly surprised Army.

  ‘Have you ever felt the calling?’

  ‘The calling?’

  ‘Yes, to God of course. You do believe in God, don’t you?’

  ‘Well yes, I suppose I do.’

  ‘The thing is, Armitage; I have always thought that you would make such a fine vicar.’

  Armitage smiled. It made such a change for anyone to think he would make a fine anything.

  ‘Don’t you have to have qualifications and stuff?’

  ‘Yes, you do, but you have plenty of time. You’re a clever lad; if you worked hard I am sure you could get there. Why don’t you think about it, and if you are interested, I have dozens of books you could borrow from my old seminary, I could even give you some lessons too if you wanted.’

  Armitage bobbed his head and promised he would think about it.

  When he told Dennis he laughed like a drain.

  ‘It could be worse,’ Dennis said, still guffawing, ‘at least you’re C of E; imagine if you were a catholic, you wouldn’t even be allowed nookie!’

  ‘I think if you really wanted nookie you’d get it, regardless of whether you were a priest or not.’

  ‘True. You’re probably right.’

  Fact was, Army didn’t really know what nookie was, or more correctly, he knew what it was, but not how and where to get it.

  The following Sunday, Armitage told Blair McGowan that he was interested in taking things further. Blair smiled a satisfied smile, produced some books that he had brought in case of that very eventuality, handed them to Armitage, who took them home and started out on the long road to becoming a Church of England vicar.

  While he was doing that it took him four years to find a new job, an employer who would take him seriously, by offering a post that he deemed acceptable. He had consciously raised his standards. He rejected supermarket shelf stacking, bar work, waiting on table, telephone selling for commission only, loan sharking around the council estates on behalf of minor criminals, and not so minor drug dealers, (good pay, short life expectancy). He rejected retailing of any kind; his days of pandering to the ungrateful and smelly public were most definitely behind him. He rejected agricultural labouring, picking swedes in the rain for God’s sake, backbreaking work where the pay was lousy and none of his colleagues would ever speak English. He didn’t even try it. He didn’t try any of them. He wanted something better, and he was determined to find it.

  The day the letter came from the Inland Revenue offering him a clerking job in their brand new offices at the bottom of Northgate Street was a day he would never forget. It gave him great pleasure when he finally handed in his notice at the stinking feet farm, as he had come to refer to Mawdsley’s Shoes.

  What had finally broken him was not the sweaty feet, nor the holey socks, not the lack of tips, nor the poor money, or the complete lack of a career structure, no, the thing that had annoyed him the most was the arrogant and c
old way so many of the Great British public treated shop assistants.

  Boy, can we try on the size nines? Boy?

  These are awful, get something else!

  I said tens for Christ sake! Are you stupid?

  Haven’t you got anything better than this?

  Pay attention when I’m speaking to you!

  Wilsons up the road are much cheaper than you.

  Go to fucking Wilsons then!

  It wasn’t as if the customers were anything special. If they had been they wouldn’t have been seen dead in Mawdsley’s. They were jumped up middle class pricks, most of them, who imagined that was the way to speak to servants like him.

  When he left the store for the final time he vowed that he would never look down on shop assistants, never treat them like dog dirt, and more than that, the next time he bought a pair of shoes, he would tip the assistant.

  He did too. The young hard faced woman into whose hand he had slipped the fiver; looked at him in disgust, imagining and wondering what he was offering her money for exactly.

  ‘Fuck off!’ she’d yelled, thrusting the fiver back in his direction, a scruffy old note that fell to the maroon carpeted floor.

  Armitage didn’t wait to retrieve it, but turned and ran outside, after noticing the heavy brigade coming running to the girl’s assistance from behind the counter at the rear of the shop, though it didn’t put him off being polite to shop staff.

  In the beginning he liked working for the taxman. After a while he was doing what everyone else did, what they were expressly advised not to do. When no one was looking he would log on to the central computer and inspect the tax returns of all the people he knew, and most illuminating they were too.

  How much money they earned; how much tax they paid, how much money they didn’t declare, though you had to know them personally and be able to read between the lines to calculate that.

  Mrs Greenaway in the flower shop, under declared by forty percent, he estimated. Dennis Swallow, Armitage did feel slightly guilty at prying into his financial affairs, but it had to be done, and it was only in fun, and as it turned out he didn’t earn anywhere near as much as he said he did. Jillian the mouse; she was doing rather well, typing away in a big insurance company, running round and round and round the corporate wheel. She was earning more than Dennis, considerably more, though he would always swear blind that was not the case. No wonder they were planning to buy a house and get married, with all that money plopping into the communal pot.

  The Reverend Blair McGowan, Army had no idea vicars were paid so well, or were so wealthy. Look at all the share dividends for God’s sake; are you listening and watching, dear God? And income from property too, let out in Scotland, the parishioners would no doubt be surprised to learn all about that. Even Hancock at Saint Edmonds, and his manager at Mawdsley’s, just about everyone he had ever known who was still alive and employed, all fascinating stuff, and quite contrary to his current detailed terms and conditions of his employment.

  The Inland Revenue management at that time were becoming extra keen on team bonding. It built a more efficient office and added to the happiness and contentment of staff, so the mantra said. There had been an alarming increase in people becoming bored and jumping ship, though Armitage did not mind that, because he landed two promotions through it, and two pay increases too, enabling him to take over Dennis’s flat, when the happy couple bought a dinky little house down at Saltney, at not too many feet above sea level.

  It took him a long time to get used to living alone.

  No matter what hour he arrived back at Bellingfield there would always be someone there to share a pot of tea and a chat. Returning to his deathly quiet flat stuck high up in the gods was a depressing experience.

  Dennis and his mousy spouse had taken what little furniture they possessed down to dinky town, and after paying rent and deposit and insurance on the flat, there was precious little cash left for Armitage to spend on luxuries... like furniture.

  He was reduced to visiting the Salvation Army centre for wayward boys and girls, who supplied him with a clean single bed, he was single, so single was all he qualified for, one small slightly stained settee, one tiny yellow plastic topped dining table with two rickety chairs, and a filthy set of pans that he promptly tossed into the equally filthy dustbin outside.

  It was a start.

  It was home.

  It was his home.

  But it was damned depressing.

  The latest wheeze of team bonding was one that was bound to terrify all but the boldest of staff. They would go parachute jumping, or skydiving, as they preferred to call it.

  When it was first announced many of the team simply mouthed ‘Oh yeah? Not me, pal,’ but over the days that followed it became a test of one’s bravery, one’s courage, one’s lily-liveredness, indeed one’s cowardice.

  Just who was up for it, and who was not?

  Armitage was not the boldest young man to work there, but neither was he the weakest, and when Alan Steadman, the guy who’d always been considered the office wet, announced that he was looking forward to it, and furthermore he most certainly would be jumping, and publicly declared that anyone who didn’t was a fucking weed, it became harder and harder to refuse.

  The date was set, engraved into the diary, logged up on the brand new office notice board as: Who’s a Yellow Bastard day.

  A Saturday morning it was.

  The scruffy hired coach would set off from outside the tax office at nine o’clock sharp. Anyone not there by then would officially be declared an utter weed by none other than Alan Steadman himself.

  Somehow, Armitage dragged himself from his single bed, threw on a jumper and jeans, staggered down the stairs, and set off for the office, determined to hide the fact that his legs were shaking, as did every other soul, barring two unmentionables who ducked out, who on Monday morning would be sent to Coventry for the rest of the year, as much by the management as the staff.

  The coach was packed with nervous sweaty-palmed tax collectors, as it headed westward toward Hawarden airport, and the Glendower Aero Club, where the rattled tax team would be taken up in groups of six, to be hurled from the Skyvan plane, yelling some ancient Indian war cry as they plummeted to earth.

  If there really was a God, pondered Armitage, and he still wasn’t sure about that tiny fact, this was as near as he was ever going to get to meet him.

  The nerves were really kicking in as they ambled through the old tumbledown buildings that sufficed as reception centre and warming down rooms, desperately trying to appear nonchalant as they went.

  The previous party of adrenaline fuelled lunatics were making their way back from the landing grounds, rolled up parachutes in hand, talking loudly and excitedly, recapping their terrifying experiences, more than one saying I was certain the shute wasn’t going to open!

  Doesn’t everyone think that?

  The tax party were making ready to go out, forced to listen to several barbed comments from the staff dishing out the gear. This party are tax inspectors; make sure they get the dodgy shutes, followed by strange laughs and equally weird looks. Of course it was all in jest, wasn’t it?

  The previous party were coming back in, many of them saying they couldn’t wait to do it again; they most certainly would be doing it again, when everyone knew that once they were clear from the airfield, wild elephants would not drag them back there.

  Then it was Army’s turn.

  They could all see the aeroplane. The Short Brothers’ Skyvan, twin-engine turbo prop, they were informed, propellers stationary and waiting for the next gang of terrified pioneers.

  The instructor turned up; assuring them there was nothing to it.

  Piece of cake, piece of cake! Easy peasy! Come on! Let’s do it!

  Armitage was no longer listening.

  In an instant he was miles away. A million million miles above the earth, for the lights had gone on.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Ladies�
�� Day dawned bright and clear; the perfect early May day. Samantha was up early, took a shower, wanted to be in plenty of time. She hated rushing; nothing good was ever created in a rush. Even God took seven days. She glanced up at the expensive navy blue suit she’d bought on the last expedition to the expensive Manchester bazaars. No party frock for her, nothing flash and garish, but a businesswoman’s suit, for Samantha was on business.

  Breakfast. Crushed fresh orange juice, bran flakes, a slice of toasted low carbo bread, dry and crunchy, no butter, no margarine, she would eat nothing more than an apple before her seven o’clock dinner.

  Brush those perfect teeth, brush brush brush, no one would flash better teeth on the Roodee today, ’cept perhaps the favourite for the big race. Desi had good teeth too, but much larger than Sam’s. Some people might have thought they were too large, ugly even, but Sam didn’t, and Desi was comfortable in her own skin. Didn’t care a jot what anyone else ever said or thought about her, and she was never short of admirers, lovers, that in her time Desi took full advantage of, until that hateful Toby Malone came along and spoiled everything.

  Sam took ages on the makeup. Foundation, a hint of blusher, perfect eyebrows, perfect lashes, understated lipstick, so many women looked tramps by going over the top, not Sam. Brilliant eyes. So blue. Unmissable. Desi said they were the brightest, bluest eyes she had ever seen. Sam had slept well. No need for chemical eye droplets to induce sparkle today, not a hint of a bag. The eyes were alive with excitement as adrenaline rushed through her slender body.

  Dressing. Stockings and suspenders. Very sexy. New bra and pants, not that anyone would ever see them, no one had, no one ever did, not since Desi went away. Perfect figure hugging suit, it was as if it had been tailored especially, fit her like a glove, bound to attract wandering eyes, half the people went to the races to admire the punters, that was half the fun, to smile and chat and become better acquainted, and maybe, just maybe, collect a telephone number, or two.

  Sam could cope with that, being pursued, courted, quite enjoyed it if truth be told, and she’d dispense a telephone number or three if necessary, not that it would be a real one of course, not one that could ever ring.