Baildon Moor - Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Bradford, October 2013

 

It had been a quiet Tuesday afternoon in the studio and Esme and I were tidying up. A customer had left a copy of the Telegraph & Argus in the shop and she flicked idly through it as we waited for our four o’clock client.

‘Here, have you seen this?’ she asked and waved page two in my face.

I looked at the headline and the universe rocked on its pivot; I had to grab onto a chair to stop myself from fainting. ‘Human Remains Found on Moors’, it read.  I forced myself to read the rest of the article; the gist of it was that a man walking his dog had found a human skull on the moors just north of Baildon and the police were now mounting a search for the rest of the skeleton. It alluded to long-term missing people – no names were mentioned - but I knew instantly that they had found Rudy.

‘Are you alright?’ said Esme when I had finished reading the article. ‘You’ve gone ever so pale.’

‘Yes, I’m fine. Bit gruesome, isn’t it?’ I said and stalked off to the bathroom on quivering legs to splash cold water on my face.

 

Over the next few days I drove Esme and the clients mad: I watched the local news on the studio TV at every opportunity and compulsively checked the Telegraph & Argus website for updates in between customers. All I could find out was that the police had found some more bones close to the old holding tank by the abandoned mine where Sullivan and I had left the body all those years ago.

Although genuine information was in short supply, it seemed as though our customers could talk about nothing else. Every time someone reported a half-remembered fact or a salacious, gospel-true snippet ‘that the papers wouldn’t publish’. I wanted to scream and it was all I could do some days to keep my hands still enough to do my job. It seemed as though half the women of Bradford had a neighbour or friend who had heard off the record from the police that it was a missing child, a runaway teenager, a gangland killing, a suicide.

 

On the Friday I’d gone home early and left Esme in charge; I was a nervous wreck and unable to concentrate on anything. Once again I had convinced myself that every client who walked through the door was plain-clothes police, although no-one else had connected the finds on the moor to Rudy. Esme got properly worried; in all the years that we’d worked together in the Yellow Room I’d hardly ever taken a day off sick.

            I needed to talk to Sullivan; I felt I owed him that much. I still knew where the band rehearsed and where they drank afterwards – even in 2013 Bradford was still a small town with eyes and ears everywhere, and Sydenham Poyntz were well-known around town.  The thought of seeing him after all these years made me unaccountably nervous; somehow it was worse than waiting for the knock on the door.

 

            That evening I changed my clothes three times before going out. The anxiety made me fidgety, like a teenager going on her first date. I still felt sick to my stomach too, and paradoxically guilty about bringing Sullivan the bad news.

At eight o’clock I found myself standing in the crowded bar of the White Lion, diet Coke in hand - I could have done with a proper drink but it would have made me feel even sicker than I did already. I took a seat in the only quiet corner of the pub and sat and waited. By nine o’clock I was tired and fed up and hoped that they would hurry up; by half past I hoped that they weren’t coming. Whilst I waited I searched the Sydenham Poyntz website on my phone, double and triple checked that they were back from their latest tour and obsessively read the latest Twitter update that said the band were hard at work in the studio, busy laying down tracks for their next album.

            At ten o’clock I saw them: Sullivan, Simon the drummer and the new bassist whose name I didn’t know. The original bass player Jason had long departed – publically the reason was down to musical differences with the rest of the band, although the word on the street more prosaically put his departure down to a crippling addiction to heroin. Rumour had it that Jason now worked as a builder’s mate in his native Skegness.

I tapped Sullivan on the shoulder as he stood at the bar. He turned to greet me – I supposed he thought I was a fan – but his expression changed as soon he recognised me.

‘Julianne?’ he said. ‘What do you want?’

‘They’ve found Rudy,’ I said. ‘Haven’t you heard?’

‘Christ, no.’ He shook his head.

‘I need to talk to you, urgently, fill you in on what’s been happening.’

Sullivan took a deep swallow of his red wine. Up close I noticed how much he had aged in the past two decades: his face was pouchy and lined and covered with a fine network of broken veins.

He thought for a long minute. ‘OK, how about tomorrow?’

‘My studio, eight o’clock, it’s the Yellow Room on Leeds Road. Used to be Gary’s old place, if you remember?’

‘I remember.’

I swallowed the last of my drink and fled.

 

I couldn’t sleep – long-buried memories of Sullivan, Baildon Moor, Billy and Rudy swam around my mind all night and I dragged myself into work late the next morning. The feeling of creeping dread that I’d had all week had become even worse. I felt as if I wouldn’t make it to eight pm.

‘Morning Esme.’

‘Morning Ju. You feeling better?’

‘Much better, thanks,’ I lied and went to check the diary.

 

The day dawdled by on leaden feet. I packed Esme off home promptly at closing time: I needed the time to clear my head and get ready.

I went home, showered, fed Marwood, got changed and arrived back at the Yellow Room by ten to eight. I was surprised to see Sullivan waiting and smoking a cigarette in the shadows as I parked the car.

‘I thought you’d stood me up,’ he said.

‘No chance.’ I mentally kicked myself. ‘I mean, why would I do that after we arranged to meet? You’d better come inside, but put that out first.’

I opened the door and switched on the lights; the shop came back to life. Sullivan ground the cigarette out and followed me in.

In the bright fluorescent studio lights Sullivan looked even older and more worn-down than the previous night in the pub - as well as the lines and broken veins his hair was shorter, thinning and very grey. He stooped as he pulled up a chair. He’d put on weight, too; it didn’t suit him.

‘Would you like some tea or coffee?’ I thought I sounded as though it was the vicar who’d come to visit, not Sullivan.

‘Have you got anything stronger?’

I took out the bottle of bourbon that I kept under the counter for nervous clients.

‘No ice, I’m afraid,’ I said and poured an inch into a plastic beaker. I hesitated for a moment and poured the same for myself.

‘So, you’re probably wondering why I’ve invited you here.’

‘You said they’ve found Rudy?’ He swallowed three-quarters of the bourbon in a single gulp.

‘Someone out walking his dog on Baildon Moor found a human jaw. Most of the rest of the body is still missing; the police have searched the moor but word is that animals have taken the rest; the bones could be anywhere.’

‘But we put him down a mineshaft, didn’t we?’

‘I don’t know. You said it was the holding tank. I remember it wasn’t very deep.’

He shrugged, which made me angry. ‘It was deep enough for it to look like an accident.’

‘I thought you knew what you were doing!’

‘Why should I have done? You’re the one that went crazy and left us with a dead body on our hands!’

‘He tried to rape me, and I didn’t mean to kill him! And then you took over - you told us what we needed to do, where to drive, where to put him!’

‘I was trying to protect the three of us. The holding tank was the only bit of the moor that I knew.’

It was my turn to take a swig of bourbon; it burned my throat and I winced as the warmth flooded through my body.

‘You could have said, I thought you were the calm one who was in control of everything.’

Sullivan snorted. ‘I was terrified, just as much as you and Billy, except the two of you were so wrapped up in yourselves you couldn’t see it. I couldn’t talk to either of you, I couldn’t sleep…do you know I still get nightmares? Why do you think I was out every night? I was drinking myself to sleep.’

‘And now?’

‘And now I spend my life going from gigs to rehearsals to recording sessions and then back on tour, so I don’t have to bloody well think,’ he spat. ‘It‘s why I spend my life running away; drinking, drugs, the women…just to try and get a moment’s peace.’

My face froze.

‘Sorry, I…’

‘It’s alright. Another drink?’

I poured us both another inch into our plastic beakers to break the frigid silence that filled the studio. Sullivan pulled a tobacco tin and papers from his pocket and started to assemble another cigarette.

‘You can’t, not in here.’

‘I know. I’ll smoke it later.’ He concentrated on making the roll-up and wouldn’t look me in the eye.

‘How’s Billy? Have you seen him lately?’

‘There’s not much point.’

‘Oh?’

‘He doesn’t recognise me. Doesn’t or can’t, not that it matters. He’ll die in that bloody place, thanks to us; we killed him as much as Rudy. That’s the reason I don’t sleep, that’s what’s on my conscience every single day.’

‘And what about your mum?’

‘She died a few years back.’ He licked the papers and rolled the cigarette up in a single smooth action. ‘Officially it was a stroke, but it was Billy being committed that killed her. You could see it in her eyes.’ He searched in his jeans pocket for a lighter and laid it down on the table next to the cigarette.

‘I’m sorry.’ I meant it: I’d killed her, too.

‘What about you? You’re still in the tattooing business?’

‘I always have been. Gary sold me the studio a few years after….you know…and I turned it into the Yellow Room, high class, fine art tattoos by women for women. You’re probably the first bloke to set foot in here in ten years or more.’

‘I’m flattered,’ said Sullivan. ‘Pay cash, did you?’

‘Might have done. What happened to yours and Billy’s share?’

Sullivan tapped his nose. I couldn’t tell whether he meant it was a secret, or he’d gone through ten grand’s worth of cocaine.

‘But back to Rudy for the moment,’ I said. ‘We need to get our stories straight again, just like we did before. Right?’

‘OK.’

I knew the story off pat by now; I’d recited it like a mantra enough times on those endless nights that the dreams made me lie awake. ‘We went to the pub, and then back to the farmhouse for drinks. Rudy came with us. We all went to bed late and when we got up there was no sign of him.’ I felt like a teacher coaching a pupil.

‘He went for a walk and never came back.’

‘And Billy going mad was nothing to do with it.’

‘OK.’

‘Did he ever say anything about it?’

‘Billy? No, I don’t think he could cope with it and blocked the whole night out of his memory. He asked me once where Rudy was and why he’d gone away. I told him I didn’t know and changed the subject.’

‘I need to get a life,’ I said. ‘I’ve been living with this thing hanging over me for twenty years, waiting for the police to come and knock on the door and arrest me for Rudy’s murder. It’s partly the reason I never left Bradford – the guilt kept me here, all this time.’

‘You’re right,’ said Sullivan with a surprising amount of insight. ‘Get a life. You always did like to brood over things.’ That stung, but only because I knew it was true.

 

We finished our drinks and tried to make small talk but we had nothing left to say. It made me sad: twenty years previously we would have been able to talk all night about anything: books, music, films, art….now the only thing we still had common was a murder.

I watched Sullivan walk off into the night and realised that I didn’t hate him any more. I didn’t feel anything at all.