Baildon Moor - Chapter 15

Chapter 15

West Bowling, November 1993

It was only a matter of time before Rudy’s family reported him missing. A few days after Billy’s arrest, there was an article on the front page of the Telegraph & Argus. Rudy’s family, having not heard from him for several weeks, contacted the university. The university belatedly noticed that Rudy had not attended any classes since the middle of October and alerted the police.

According to the paper, Rudy was a caring son, a perfect brother and model student. I read it and felt sick – did his family genuinely not know what he was really like?

Once Rudy’s disappearance was reported the police quickly made the connection between him, Billy and the Baildon Moor farmhouse. Sullivan and I were interviewed – separately – once they found the drugs and the remainder of the money. I was dry-mouthed with terror, convinced they would ask about that night and make us confess to Rudy’s killing and the disposal of his body - but to our relief and surprise they believed us when we stuck to our story and said we knew nothing, and we both feigned shock at their discovery of the stash. They failed to find a connection between Rudy’s disappearance and dealing, and Billy’s insanity. I asked outright whether his disappearance was anything to do with the drugs, but all I received was a non-committal blank look; as if to say that it was none of my business.

None of this made me any less nervous and was still painfully aware of the money that was still wrapped in a sock and stuffed into a pair of old boots: my guilt gave the banknotes a luminous, radioactive quality and for the first time I understood how Lady Macbeth must have felt. Sullivan wouldn’t tell me what he’d done with his and Billy’s share but I guessed that it was in the flat somewhere too. Truth be told I didn’t want to know where it was hidden – some things were better left as secrets.

Rudy’s family were adamant that some sort of foul play was involved in his disappearance, although thankfully they never raised the idea that he had been killed. They blamed the drugs stash on Billy but he was still acutely psychotic and confined to a locked ward in the mental hospital and in no fit state to answer questions. Of course, the drugs made the police even keener to locate Rudy – although their motivations were very different to those of his family, who continued to insist that he had been fitted up.

Sullivan and I reverted to our twilight existence. He had gigs, the comic shop and the pub and I had the tattoo studio and some tattered remnant of a life. We maintained the pretence that nothing was wrong, but although we still shared the same bed, we lived separate lives: we no longer went out anywhere together and affection and sex was non-existent. The heavy, cloying, nauseous feeling I’d had for weeks didn’t go away and I could barely eat; my clothes had begun to hang off me.

One evening in mid-November Sullivan came home and announced that Sydenham Poyntz had a tour booked. A tour! I was ecstatic - that was the best news we’d had in months. It turned out it was a two week tour supporting a minor American rock group who were coming to the UK to promote their new album, and there were ten gigs – paid gigs – lined up around the country.

‘When is it?’

‘We leave tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘That’s what I said,’ said Sullivan and went to the bedroom to pack.

He didn’t call or send as much as a postcard whilst he was away.

It wasn’t entirely a surprise when he didn’t come home after the fortnight was up. Instead he sent Simon and Jason from the band round to collect the rest of his stuff the following weekend – the bastard didn’t even have the guts to tell me himself that he was moving out. They must have had orders to take Sullivan’s and Billy’s money too; it was nowhere to be found when I searched the flat.

The knowledge I’d tried so hard to suppress - that after Rudy’s killing Sullivan was always going to leave me - didn’t help: after Simon and Jason had collected his things I crawled into bed and cried, mad with grief, for two days.

I couldn’t eat and kept being sick; it was the third day before I forced myself to get out of bed and shower: I felt as weak as a kitten and nearly fainted with the effort of it. I dragged myself to the GP, knowing that something was wrong with me but determined not to cry my eyes out again and be sent away with a prescription for antidepressants.

It was obvious with hindsight that I was pregnant. Nine weeks, the hospital told me after they’d done the scan, although I was so numb with shock and denial that I refused to look at the ultrasound picture. The baby (although I wouldn’t – couldn’t - allow myself to think of it as that) was something alien that belonged to life before Rudy, when Sullivan and I had been a real couple: happy, in love and with a future together.

I got rid of it, of course – I had no other choice under the circumstances. I went to the clinic on my own a fortnight before Christmas and took three days off work afterwards.

I told Gary it was food poisoning.