Baildon Moor - Chapter 14

Chapter 14

West Bowling, October/November 1993

 

The next few weeks limp by. I go to work, go through the motions in a daze.  I start to get nightmares – panicked, clammy dreams where Rudy is still alive and he comes to our flat: I usually wake up with a start at the point that he’s kicking the front door in.

 

Sullivan goes to work, band rehearsals and the pub and inevitably comes back late. Some nights he sleeps on the sofa rather than come to bed; he tells me it’s because he doesn’t want to disturb me. I try to believe him and I push the real reason to the back of my mind.

I force myself to go out and see friends but inevitably end up watching everyone else have a good time whilst feeling as if I’m the wrong side of a dirty pane of glass – physically present, but dislocated; disconnected from the rest of the world. On good days the fear and sense of displacement recedes enough that whole minutes pass as normal and I forget what happened.

Billy is absent from our lives. We don’t talk about Billy – in fact we hardly talk at all – but it’s as if he can tell that there are problems and he wants to give us space. Sometimes I wonder if I should talk to him and see if he can get through to his brother because I certainly can’t.

 

One Friday afternoon in early November I am working late at the studio: Gary is at a tattoo convention in Blackpool and has left me in charge. The last customer has gone, the shop is lonely and it’s dark outside so for company I turn on our portable TV whilst I tidy up: it is a little after six and the local news is on.

‘…and we are receiving accounts of an incident in Bradford city centre. A man is reported to be on the roof of a takeaway in the city-centre street…our reporter Jamile Siddiqui is at the scene. Jamile, can you tell us the latest?’

I stop what I’m doing and watch: the city centre is only half a mile away.  The camera shows a man standing on the roof of Mo’s Fried Chicken on the corner of Mannville Terrace and Great Horton Road and a breathless Jamile is filing his report a safe distance back from the scene. There must be a dozen police cars parked up around the university and the yards of police tape cordoning off the area flutter in the wind. The camera zooms in to better show the man – his face is twisted in a snarl and is screaming at someone or something - and my heart stops when I see that the man on the roof is Billy.

My head spins as I lock up the shop as quickly as I can and get into the Wreck. I need to find Sullivan and try frantically to think where he might be – for a moment I can’t remember what day it is but eventually remember that it’s Friday so the chances are he’s at a band rehearsal. I drive the mile and a half across town to Manningham but thanks to the rush hour traffic and the city centre diversions the journey takes nearly fifteen minutes; it feels three times as long. As I wait in the gridlock I fiddle with the Wreck’s radio, trying to tune into a local news channel to get the latest reports but find nothing useful. Only then do I look up and notice the police helicopter circling low overhead like a great black mechanical bird.

 

I park the Wreck carelessly, slewing it across two spaces and barge my way into the building, rushing past the stunned security guard at the front desk. Sydenham Poyntz are in the first studio that I come to.

‘What the fuck…?’ says Sullivan as I yank open the door. The band stops playing in dribs and drabs of chords and Sullivan marches over to me.

‘What’s going on?’ He narrows his eyes with suspicion. All I can think is that he’s never looked at me like that before.

‘H-H-Have you seen the news?’ I stammer, and regret the question the moment it comes out of my mouth. Of course he hasn’t seen the news; the band has been locked away in the studio all afternoon.

‘You what?’ He gives me that suspicious, defensive look again.

‘The news. It’s Billy, he’s gone crazy, he’s up on the roof of a shop – some takeaway place - near the uni and it’s surrounded by police.’

‘Oh Christ. I thought they’d found….’

‘You’ve got to come, maybe you can do something.’

We drive back into town and once again the journey seems to take forever.

‘You know he reckons that Rudy’s come back?’

‘No?’

‘He called a few weeks ago, that’s why he came back to stay. Swore he’d seen him in town, but I told him it was his mind playing tricks….’

‘You never said.’

‘You never asked.’

Mannville Terrace is cordoned off so I park up a few streets away and we jog to the knot of police cars.

‘Let me through,’ says Sullivan to a policeman who looks as though he is in charge.

The policeman shakes his head. ‘Sorry sir, no-one’s coming though here.’

‘But that’s my brother up there,’ says Sullivan, pointing at the roof.

We are ushered into a nearby one-hour photo shop which has been commandeered as a police control room and are asked endless questions about Billy and his state of mind. We do our best but cannot give them the answers that they want, and the police tell us very little in return. We say nothing about Rudy, but I feel the mark of Cain on my forehead again and by the time the police finish with us I’m shaking like a whippet and hope they do not interpret this as guilt.

            The sound of screaming stops us mid-sentence.

           

It is the following morning before Sullivan is allowed to see Billy. I’m not family and not allowed to visit so I stay at home and fret instead: Sullivan fills me in when he returns two hours later. He tells me that the police stormed the rooftop, arrested Billy, had him sectioned and sent him straight to the mental hospital at Lynfield Mount.

‘He wasn’t making any sense – just ranting that he’d not slept or gone out for days because of the dreams and things. The doctors sedated him but he was still in a right state when I saw him.’

‘How do you mean? What sort of things?’

‘He’s hallucinating, Julianne. Elves and spaceships, mainly….he reckons he’s being followed by some invisible elves that can read his mind and transmit his thoughts through hidden loudspeakers.’

‘You what?’

‘Invisible elves that travel around in a spaceship; it picks up his brainwaves and broadcasts them.’

‘Oh Jesus Christ, no.’

‘He’s convinced that Rudy is behind the whole thing, that this is Rudy’s idea of revenge for something or other.’

‘He thinks Rudy’s alive?’

‘Sounds that way.’

 ‘What’s brought it on?’

Sullivan shrugged. ‘The doctors don’t know. It could be a one-off – a reaction to stress – or it could be worse than that. No-one can tell.’

 ‘Shit. What else did he say about Rudy?’

‘Not much. He’s insisting that he’s seen him in town like you said – which is probably a good thing. God knows what would happen if he said anything about him being dead.’

‘Has he reported Rudy missing?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so, not if he thinks he’s still alive.’

‘Have you called your mum?’

‘No.’

‘Are you going to?’

Sullivan puts his head in his hands and I realise how tired and vulnerable he looks. For the first time in weeks he doesn’t push me away when I put my arms around him.

‘Would you like me to call her?’

‘No.’

‘You must, she’s got to find out sooner or later.’

‘I know.’

Sullivan rolls a joint and smokes with shaking hands before making the call.

 

 

Mrs. Sullivan – Anne – arrived a couple of hours later. Sullivan had understated Billy’s psychotic episode on the phone, simply telling her that Billy was in hospital and so we had to break the news to her in person. She sat on the shabby sofa in the West Bowling flat and cried.

‘But Christopher...’ Christopher was Sullivan’s real name, which is why he made everyone call him Sullivan. ‘…you were meant to look after him. You promised.’

‘I know mum, but our kid was fine – he was settling into college, enjoying himself…’

‘When did you last see him?’

‘A couple of weeks ago.’

She tutted. ‘And when did you last speak to him?’

Sullivan shrugged. ‘About the same.’

‘Was it drugs?’ Mrs. Sullivan narrows her eyes. ‘Was Billy taking drugs?’

‘No mum.’

‘Then why’s he had this thing – this breakdown?’

‘I don’t know. It must have been the stress of university that made him ill.’

They go to the hospital and leave me at the flat once again.