Baildon Moor - Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Baildon Moor, October 1993

 

My screams bring Billy running downstairs. He is still fastening his jeans as he comes into the kitchen.

‘Jesus, what’s going on?’ he looks at Sullivan, and me, and back to Sullivan. His eyes grow wider and wider as he sees Rudy laying on the floor, the mug lying shattered and me with my red, puffy tear-streaked face. His freckles stand out on his pale skin like splashes of blood.

‘Sit down,’ Sullivan said to his younger brother. Billy obeys like a dog.

‘Where’s Marie?’

‘Asleep,’ Billy shrugs. ‘Out for the count still. Why?’

‘Good. We’ve got a situation,’ Sullivan says in that same flat, dead voice. ‘Your housemate assaulted Julianne when she came to get a glass of water. Julianne hit him and he banged his head on the cooker there.’

‘It wasn’t assault! He tried to rape me!’ I feel hysteria bubble up again.

Billy’s mouth moves like a goldfish’s.

‘O-O-Rudy would never do that – he’s alright, he‘s a decent bloke…I mean he’s a bit weird, like, but he wouldn’t hurt anyone…you’ve got it all wrong. Is he hurt?’

Sullivan and I look at one another.

‘I think he’s dead.’

‘No, no way! Have you called an ambulance?’

‘Hang on a minute; we need to think about this.’ The sound of my own voice surprises me.

‘Don’t listen to her, Sullivan! We need an ambulance and they’ll take him to hospital and he’ll be fine and….’

‘She’s right, our kid.’

‘Why?’

‘He’s dead. If we phone for an ambulance they’ll get the police involved and that won’t do any of us any favours.’

‘Because of your record, you mean,’ says Billy. ‘Means they’ll try and pin it on you.’

‘Your record? What record?’

‘It was a long time ago,’ says Sullivan. ‘Before I met you; ancient history now.’

‘He got into a fight in a pub back home,’ says Billy. ‘Not long after dad died. He got into a fight and knocked a bloke’s teeth out, it went to court and he got a fine for assault.’

None of this is makes sense but I’ll have to leave it, deal with it later.

‘I’ve got about an eighth of weed on me, and I’m the one who hit him. You don’t believe he tried to rape me; the police certainly won’t. They’ll do me for manslaughter.’

‘And we can’t get the police involved because of Marie,’ says Sullivan.

Billy has the good grace to look ashamed.

‘How do you know?’ he mutters.

‘Because she’s about fourteen.’

‘Actually she’ll be sixteen at Christmas.’

‘And she’s not a student nurse?’

‘No. I suppose she’s still at school, I don’t know. All I know is she’s from Buttershaw.’

‘Buttershaw? Jesus Christ, she’s underage and from the roughest estate in Bradford. How could you be so stupid? Do you what dad would say if he was here? No, don’t answer that.’

Sullivan picks up the remains of the Scotch from the kitchen table and takes a long drink, he passes the bottle to me and I do likewise; the raw whisky burns my throat and the pain gives me focus.

I realise that I am still wearing nothing but a T-shirt.

‘I need to get dressed,’ I say and take the whisky with me to the parlour.

I rip off the T-shirt and my underwear; I can still smell Rudy’s stench as I ball my dirty clothes up and take a clean shirt and knickers from my bag. I take another swallow of whisky and get dressed – jeans, shirt, boots, the lot. I need to feel covered up, hidden.

 

Sullivan and Billy are whispering when I return; Billy looks ghostly pale and wraithlike in the harsh glare of the kitchen light. I lean over the sink and scrub my hands and face with Fairy liquid and a dishcloth: I crave a bath but that will have to wait.

‘What do we do?’ he pleads, on the brink of tears.

‘There are two options,’ says Sullivan. ‘One, we go to the police, which we have already discounted on the basis of my record, your underage girlfriend and the fact that Julianne hit Rudy in self-defence, which the police won’t believe. So we have to make it look like an accident.’

‘What about putting him in there?’ says Billy. He points at the large chest freezer in the corner of the kitchen.

‘No,’ says Sullivan. ‘That would look suspect; you’d only put a body in a freezer if you have something to hide. And we don’t, not if Rudy had an accident.’

I pull out a chair and sit at the table, facing away from the body on the floor; I can’t bear to look at it.

‘An accident? How?’

‘It has to be outside the house, we don’t want the police poking round here. On the moors perhaps….’ He drifts off.

‘There’s tools in the shed,’ says Billy. ‘You could cut him up and….’

‘No! Nobody is going to cut anybody up, do you hear?’

Cut him up? Jesus, the thought of it makes me feel sick - even after what he’s done Rudy doesn’t deserve to be hacked up like a piece of meat. I drink some more whiskey.

‘There’s old mine workings all over Baildon Moor,’ says Sullivan. ‘If Rudy had gone for a walk late at night, got lost, fallen down one of the pits….what about the Wreck?’

 ‘You can take him,’ I reply. ‘I can’t do it.’

‘But I can’t drive,’ says Sullivan. ‘You know that.’

‘Billy?’

He shakes his head, vehemently. ‘Me neither.’

 

After what seems like hours of arguing back and forth, we eventually agree what to do. Billy and Sullivan cannot agree whether his wallet should go with the body, or be left in the house. Finally we decide to put his house keys in his pocket (Billy does that; I can’t bear to touch Rudy even now), and we leave his wallet behind on the table. They dress him in a thick coat and I force myself to watch. It’s disgusting, as if they were dressing a life-size doll; his arms are limp and it takes three or four goes to get them into the coat sleeves. Then Sullivan notices that Rudy’s feet are naked so Billy goes to find his socks and trainers. Between them they put his shoes and socks on: they kneel on the floor and take one foot each. By the time they finish Sullivan is grey and perspiring and Billy is crying again.

 

Once Rudy has been dressed they lift him up – holding one of his arms around each of their shoulders - and walk him through the farmhouse and out the front to the Land Rover. His feet drag on the stony ground and his head lolls obscenely with each step.

My teeth are chattering as I get into the Land Rover; a combination of shock and cold air: it’s five in the morning and still pitch black outside. Billy and Sullivan put Rudy in the rear seat and buckle the seatbelt to stop him from slipping from side to side. With his head slumped forwards he could pass for a drunk.

‘I’d best stay here,’ says Billy when they are done. ‘In case Marie wakes up.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘We need your help – at the other end.’ I can’t bring myself to say dispose of the body, the phrase sounds too clichéd, it belongs in a bad film, not here.

‘You’re right,’ says Sullivan to his brother. ‘Wait here, we can manage the rest.’

Billy visibly sags with relief

‘But I can’t carry him!’ I say. ‘I need both of you to help...’

‘We’ll manage,’ says Sullivan. ‘We’ll have to.’

Billy goes back inside and I start the car. I’m still shivering but Sullivan doesn’t seem to notice – he doesn’t speak except to give me instructions – drive down the track; switch off the headlights, go down this footpath; park here…the Land Rover rattles its way across uneven moorland at ten miles an hour.

I park the car in the lee of a hill and switch off the engine. It’s bleak and forbidding outside but the first orange fingers of dawn are tentatively reaching over the horizon to the east. This fills me with a sense of urgency; a part of me thinks that we must finish our gruesome task before sunrise.

‘There’s an abandoned mine over there,’ says Sullivan. He points to something invisible in the gloom. ‘Turn off the lights and let your eyes adjust. We’ll put Rudy in there.’

I do as I’m told – I feel detached from what is happening and I haven’t got the strength to argue with him

Following Sullivan’s lead I get out of the car and unbuckle Rudy’s seatbelt; I try not to touch him - the thought of his dead flesh against mine is utterly repellent. I’m shivering again now that I’m not concentrating on driving.

A sheep baas nearby and I jump; my skin creeps with fear as adrenalin floods through my body.

‘Right,’ says Sullivan in a matter-of-fact way. His nerves must be made of steel.

‘You saw what Billy and I did earlier? I’ll take one arm, you take the other and we’ll walk him. It’s about fifty yards down there.’

‘I can’t touch him.’

‘Julianne, we haven’t got a choice. Believe me, I’d rather not be doing this either but we’ve got a job to do and needs must. OK?’

He can’t hurt you now, I say to myself as Sullivan pulls the body from the back of the Land Rover. I grit my teeth and loop Rudy’s right arm over my right shoulder and put my left arm under his left armpit; Sullivan takes the opposite side and we half carry, half drag him across the moor. He is heavier than I had expected. I sag and my arms and legs begin to ache with the effort of carrying him. My eyes slowly adjust to the darkness as we walk but I still stumble two or three times on the tussocky grass.

The abandoned mine is little more than a hole in the ground in a small copse. I can hear a stream babbling to our left and there is an opening about two feet square in front of us. I can barely see it in the dark.

‘We’re going to drop him down there,’ says Sullivan. ‘Put him down.’

We position Rudy’s feet over the opening and drop him in. There is a muffled thump as he hits the bottom of the shaft.

‘It’s not very deep,’ I say.

‘It’s the best we could do,’ says Sullivan, and we walk back to the Land Rover.