The Murder Diaries - Seven Times Over

by David Carter

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Armitage celebrated his eighteenth birthday sitting alone in the Dublin Packet public house set on the square in Chester city centre opposite the picture house. He was staring at a barely touched pint of lager, a folded newspaper, the Liverpool Echo, on the table, a brown paper parcel at his side. He was looking for a new job, but there was nothing suitable in the paper.

  Saint Edmonds had fixed him up with a job selling shoes in a branch of a multiple in Frodsham Street. To say he detested it was an understatement. He had been amazed at the number of people who shamelessly came in with stinking sweaty feet and ragged socks. Armitage paid attention to his appearance, both what you could see, and what you couldn’t, and was surprised to discover that so many people did not.

  Many of the lads from Saint Edmonds had found jobs as waiters or barmen where the punters regularly tipped. Some of the young guys made more money on tips than they did on wages, and Armitage liked the sound of that. When did you last hear of anyone tipping a shoe salesman, he would occasionally mutter to Dennis.

  Answer, no one, and never!

  He was waiting for Dennis who had recently left the halfway house, Bellingfield, where Armitage now lived. Bellingfield was the Ritz hotel in comparison to Saint Edmonds. A maximum of two boys per room, unlimited showers, and usually they were hot, plus decent food and no lack of it. It was the closest thing Armitage had experienced to a real home for longer than he cared to remember.

  Dennis had done well at the soup factory. He was coming up twenty and had already been promoted twice. Seven trainees now worked for him, at his beck and call, and at least three of them had arrived from Saint Edmonds, so he knew what they would be like.

  Dennis worked hard, saved a little money, and had put it down as a deposit on a small third floor flat in Hoole. In truth the flat had been cobbled together in the eaves, but he didn’t care about that, too busy was he in revelling in having his own home. A place where on his days off he could get up whenever he chose, where he could bathe in hot water any time of the day or night, where he could eat what he wanted, and when he wanted, drink whatever he liked, though strangely that freedom had turned him away from binge drinking, a place where he could watch television whenever he chose, and the channel he preferred, every time, and there was never anyone to tell him different. Dennis was like a pig in muck. He had never been so happy.

  His happiness was made complete when in a greasy spoon café he met the mousy Jillian. She followed him everywhere and linked his arm at every opportunity, as if she were frightened that someone might steal him from her. Dennis came into the Packet with Jillian, bought two halves of lager, and joined Army at the table.

  ‘How are you doing?’ asked Dennis.

  ‘Fine. You?’

  ‘Yeah, great,’ he said, ‘never been better,’ smiling at Jillian, who blushed.

  Armitage glanced across at her. They were the perfect match. Dennis looked more like a rodent with each passing month, his long pointed nose and narrow face, truly rat-like, thought Armitage, while Jillian boasted mousy hair, and a mouse like appearance bordering on the cute animals you could see in any American cartoon in the local picture house.

  Sitting together on that bench seat she linked Dennis’s arm, pulled herself closer, and squeaked, ‘Are we going to the pics, or what?’

  ‘Yeah, when I’ve finished my drink. Bought you this,’ Dennis said, sliding a wrapped present across the table.

  ‘Ta,’ said an embarrassed Armitage.

  It would be the only birthday present he would receive.

  ‘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 Chr
is 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 cold 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.