I put my hands on each side of the kitchen counter and look deeply into her eyes. A sharp memory from the past comes back, clouding my mind instantly.
I’m fourteen again, walking through the estate waiting for Steph to show up. Josh was wrong about her. He told me that she wouldn’t want to go out with a guy like me. A boy that grew up in the roughest part of London, on a council estate.
I couldn’t believe it when she said yes, and today I’m planning to take her for a long walk in the park. A couple of weeks ago, she introduced me to her parents. They were cool and never once asked me what my mother or father did for a living.
She is waiting for me outside Park Street, looking anxiously around. She has a white Jack Russell on the leash.
“You have a dog?” I ask, astonished, approaching her. The dog starts jumping up and down all over me. I bend down to stroke it.
“It’s my aunt’s, but I have to look after him today. His name is Bailey.” She grins. Steph is beautiful with long blond hair and green eyes.
“Great. I have the best place for a walk. Let’s go,” I tell her. She’s on the running team at school. For weeks I kept watching her training on the field. Josh kept laughing, saying that I was obsessed with this girl.
We talk all the way to the park near my estate. The dog wants to stop to sniff everything on the way.
It’s strange how easily we find that we always have something to talk about. We laugh and hold hands, while I try to stop thinking about kissing her on the street. I’m nervous, because I have never kissed anyone before and Steph is special.
“Micah. Hey, Micah.” I hear the familiar voice.
Josh catches up with us by the entrance to the park.
“Oh hey, what’s up? I thought you were hanging out with Tom today?” I ask.
“Him and his bunch are losers,” he says. Bailey starts jumping up and down. Josh bends down and attempts to stroke him. The dog jumps on him, looking very excited to be petted. Then all of a sudden Josh hisses and swears loudly, shaking his hand. Before I know it he kicks Bailey with his boot. Bailey lets go of a painful squeak and hides behind Steph’s legs.
“The little bastard bit me,” he shouts.
“Bailey doesn’t bite,” Steph argues, lifting the dog into her arms, stroking him.
“The little shit bit me. You better keep him on the leash,” Josh says with anger, looking at the dog like he wants to twist his neck.
Steph looks at me frightened, and I silently wish that Josh never showed up. He always ruins everything.
“I thought so. Do tell—you’re only interested in me because of the case? That’s all that matters to you.”
I snap back, realising that I’m still so close to her that I can see my own reflection in her wide grey eyes. When I think that this is it, that we are in the zone, she squats down and moves under my arm, escaping. I don’t understand why I keep getting those flashbacks from the past. My life without Steph didn’t mean much after that. I lost her and I became miserable, furious with the world. I didn’t know how to grieve.
“We should go out again. I want to get to know you,” I tell her, wondering why the fuck I hesitated and didn’t just kiss her.
She starts folding her clothes from the dryer, ignoring me.
“I don’t think so. I need to concentrate on my studies. I’m sure you have a lot on your shoulders, you know, with the case,” she adds, still avoiding looking at me.
I drag my hand through my hair, getting frustrated with myself and her. Maybe she is right. This whole thing is rocky as it is. I take out my wallet and put money on the table. I walk up to her and without warning I caress her arm, running my fingers down her tattoos. Her skin is soft and instantly goose bumps appear on the surface. There is no doubt that she is attracted to me.
“Don’t deny it; you enjoyed our short makeout session and now you want more,” I say quietly, then leave before I do something that I’ll regret later. I feel her eyes on me until I’m outside.
My heart rocks in my chest, and my dick is semi-hard all the way to the car. Rogers is already waiting. I think I just like torturing myself, knowing well that I should be making progress. The case won’t solve itself.
“We have a setback. The Chinese girl lied about the fight and the boyfriend. Suranne wasn’t seeing anyone. She wanted Tahlia’s job in the restaurant and probably thought that this would do it,” I tell him, not even knowing how I’m going to break this to Clarke. As I expect, Rogers goes slightly pale, staring at me like I’m fucking with him.
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“Sadly, no. I overheard some girls talking about it, and Tahlia just confirmed it.”
Roger swears and I don’t know what else to say. We decide to get back to the station to work on a plan of action.
Tim made some more arrests this morning, and now most of the scumbags are sitting on the benches, waiting to be transferred out. T is in the waiting area too. He flinches when he sees me, but he doesn’t approach me. If he is at the station, that means that he has something for me. Maybe information about Knox or some other crap that is currently going on in the streets. I signal that I’ll catch up with him later.
The new setback is going to be difficult to swallow and now I have no choice but to tell Rogers about Steph and the link to the case from eight years ago. According to him we are friends, and I feel guilty that I haven’t come clean from the very beginning.
Rogers goes to his office, and I pick up the necessary file from my drawer. Five minutes later I shut the door behind him and throw the file on his table, right in front of him.
“I should have shown you this when Clarke assigned this case to me,” I say, feeling the muscles in my stomach contracting painfully.
Rogers looks confused, but he opens the folder and starts scanning the police report, then photos from the crime scene. For a few minutes there is a long silence. Rogers’s eyes keep getting wider and larger.
He picks up the folder with evidence that includes pictures of Suranne. He sees the connection; yeah, no one could miss it.
“What the hell is this? Another case?” he asks. Even now, after years, I can’t keep looking at this without being sick.
“When I was seventeen my girlfriend was found dead in her dorm in college. After I moved away and left my family behind, I changed my given name. Micah is my middle name, but no one ever called me Andrew, so I decided to stop using it completely. I wanted to start over. Her throat was slashed. The police never found the killer. If you look at the wound, it’s almost identical to the one that Suranne had. The setup, first floor and the room facing the window. Even the time of death matches,” I explain, wondering if I have missed something with Tahlia or anyone.
“What the hell do you mean that you changed your name?”
“I didn’t want to be connected to that past when I was in academy,” I explain, feeling really shitty that I haven’t trusted him enough.
“Micah, you’ve hidden important evidence, compromised the investigation, but this is beyond. I should have had these files from the very beginning,” Rogers shouts, throwing the papers all over the room. He looks furious, breathing hard.
“Rogers, calm down. It was a difficult case. At the time I thought that I was doing the right thing.”
He leans over the desk with a furious expression on his face and then punches me. I don’t see it coming at all and I don’t have a chance to even block him. I go down to the floor, and blood starts pouring from my nose.
He stands there, looking down at me, angry, massaging his fist.
“I can’t believe that you took a bullet for me but didn’t have the balls to tell me about your past. You’re a selfish son of a bitch and I can’t believe that I thought you could be good enough to be a godfather to my little girl.”
His words stab me right in my gut, and I want to take it all back. Now Rogers not only detests me, he also no longer trusts me.
“The police closed the case, and I didn�
��t want Clarke to push me out. I needed closure.” I spit, trying to stop the bleeding, forcing the tears away, but nothing happens. I’m still fucking empty and on my own. Rogers will never let me into his family again.
“Clarke was right—you’re too fucking inexperienced to be in charge of something like this,” he adds and then slams the door behind him.
I pick myself off the floor, staring at the picture of my dead girlfriend that is lying on the floor. The guilt settles in my stomach like cement blocks, chewing my stone-cold heart. I have never gone to her grave, never spoken to her parents again. And I should have, because that’s what people do. It seems to me that I’ve been punished for wanting something else, for craving a different life.
Everything I have done so far has gone nowhere. Rogers is right—I’m selfish. Clarke put me in charge and I fucked up, hid this evidence. Now Rogers knows that the two cases are connected, and he probably let Clarke know that I don’t deserve this case. I will be back to the desk job before I know it.
I might be smart and young with excellent grades, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready to deal with a case like this. Maybe Kerry was right all along—Clarke was reluctant to trust me because I’m too fucking stubborn to ask for help.
Rogers lost it, but I can’t blame him. I pick up all the pieces from the floor and put them back in the folder. After making sure that I have stopped bleeding, I disappear into my own office, knowing that I have to explain myself, tell him that I’m incapable of feeling anything, that I’m emotionally numb. Someone eventually will notice my swollen nose, but I don’t want to worry about that.
Kerry shoots me an evil look when I walk by and continues to flirt with Tim, who looks like this is the best day of his life.
This case means a lot to me, and I won’t find any closure until I find the real killer and start working with the shrink again.
I let Steph die, and I let Rogers down. I’m supposed to be in control. I’m not though. I expect tears, but nothing happens. I just feel an enormous sense of regret and anger. My humanity is gone forever.
Chapter Fourteen
Still in, not out.
When five o’clock strikes, I leave to get home. Clarke hasn’t called me to his office yet, which means that Rogers hasn’t spoken to him. I have at least a fifty percent chance of not being dismissed.
It’s getting dark soon, but I stop at the gym and push myself, trying to deal with the flaming guilt. Rogers gave me a chance, and I threw it back in his face. This isn’t cool.
I stop in the off-licence and buy a bottle of whisky. Normally I stay away from drink, but I’m in a stinky, depressed mood. Mother used to pretend that my father wasn’t drunk when he came back from the pub. Once she left me alone when he showed up at the door, calling my name in a drunken rage. I screamed after her, but she didn’t come back, not until the whole thing was over and I couldn’t lift myself off the floor.
I put a steak in the oven and cook some potatoes, wondering if Tahlia is thinking about me at all. We still don’t know each other, but I keep imagining what it would be like to be normal, to just be together.
I open the bottle and pour some whisky, sitting in front of my laptop. There is a small chance that Rogers and I missed something.
The food is almost ready and I’m just about to check on the steak when I hear banging at the door. After checking the peephole and putting my gun away, I let T through. He was at the station earlier on and I had forgotten to get in touch with him.
“What the fuck are you doing here, T?” I snap.
“My mother threw me out and I have nowhere to go, Micah,” he mumbles, stinking of fucking green. T admitted to me once that he is nineteen, but he looks barely sixteen. He is still too young to be living the life on the streets.
“How the fuck do you know my address?”
“I have my ways, Micah,” he replies, laughing. “Please, let me stay for one night. I’ll figure something out. I don’t want to sleep on the street.”
“Fucking sit down on the sofa and shut your mouth. I need to think about this,” I order him, and go back to check on the steak and switch the oven off. T’s clothes are filthy and it looks like he hasn’t showered for weeks. We’ve known each other for months, and he’s proven to be useful at times. He needs a fucking haircut and I know that I should help him.
“Mate, something smells nice,” he says snapping his fingers.
“Listen, you can stay here tonight, but I have a few rules,” I tell him. “First, you’re going to strip and take a fucking shower. If you have any green on you, hand it over.”
His brown eyes move around the apartment for a moment. “I need this shit, Micah, you know I do,” he whines.
“I’ll give it to you in the morning. Don’t stress. It will be good for you to have a night off that shit,” I argue. “Now, tell me what the fuck is going on? No bullshit.”
“I told Jambo that I won’t sell anymore shit for him. The word on the street is that I got scared,” he mumbles, looking anxiously at me.
I have been trying to pull T out of the drug scene for a while, but he’s caught in that circle and doesn’t have any work experience or qualifications.
“So what’s your mother have to do with any of this?” I question him.
“Jambo and the boys came over to the house yesterday and smashed everything up. Ma came home and kicked me out.”
Jambo is part of Knox’s crew. They no doubt think that if T has nowhere to stay, he will crawl back to them, asking for help.
“Don’t stress. Go to the bathroom and use the fucking shower. We’ll talk about Jambo and the rest later,” I tell him. He argues with me for a bit, but I force him to go get washed.
I drag my hand through my hair and attempt to think while preparing the food. I cut the steak into two equal pieces. I can’t let T starve.
It takes a while, but when he finally emerges from the bathroom he looks like a human being. I find some jeans and a T-shirt and give it to him. He polishes off the steak and nearly enough licks the plate, but I stop him.
“I’m working on this murder case. The girl was found dead in her room in Braxton University. Any word on the streets about this?” I ask after I wash up the dishes. The bottle of whisky is still on the kitchen counter. This isn’t the best time to deal with my shitty life, to feel sorry for myself.
“White girl?” he asks and I nod.
“I have no lead,” I continue. “She had a roommate, but her door was locked. No one was seen in the area.” T has the best contacts in the city, and he knows a lot of scumbags.
“Not sure, but I can ask around,” he replies.
“Come on, T, you must know something. Anyone new in the area that could have done something like that?”
“Jambo says that he had a cousin that came to see him from London. Micah, I ain’t know shit. I deal with drugs. Girls don’t want to know me.”
“All right, just keep an eye for me. The girl was clean; she didn’t do drugs and so far I’m stuck in a dead end.”
He nods and I know that sooner or later he will have something for me. T is good at getting information out of people.
***
I wake up T at seven and tell him that he needs to go home and speak to his mother. He is not too keen on this, but I pressure him enough so he agrees to at least try. I give him some money, just to keep him going for the rest of the day. I poured some whisky for both of us last night. T was out just about after one. Then I went out and drove all the way to his estate to have a chat with his mother. His life seems very similar to mine. Eight years ago I was stuck in the council estates with no prospect of getting out. No one was willing to give me a chance, and if it weren’t for Steph, I would have probably ended up like him—lost and hooked on drugs. Now I’m only alone, but that’s better than being dependent on street junkies.
Janine doesn’t want to listen to what I have to say about T. She has another teenage son that she needs to take care of. After talking on her do
orstep for some time, she finally invites me in. The house is basic, but I instantly notice the damages that T talked about earlier on. The furniture is smashed, the walls covered with slaps of paint, and her TV was ripped out of the wall, the screen damaged. Knox had his ways of getting to people and he did a great job with scaring Janine. It’s a mess and I wonder why Knox is so interested in a kid like T, who isn’t very reliable anyway.
We talk and I get the impression that this isn’t the first time her house was broken into. Living in the roughest part of Braxton isn’t easy, and Janine is afraid that her other son is starting to show an interest in the gangs on the streets. After long and silent contemplation, I offer to help her. I have some savings. I can’t replace all the stuff, but I want to put T back on the right path. She eventually agrees.
“Thanks, Micah, you’re the man,” T says, grinning.
I know that this won’t solve all his problems, but at least he will be back with his mother, not the gang. He’s smiling and that’s an odd thing to see, but at least I feel like I have done something right for a change.
“Don’t sweat, T. Stay away from Knox’s crew and keep your ears open on the streets about that murder that I told you about,” I remind him. He nods, picks up his rucksack and vanishes when I’m just about to leave.
After some time I get in the car and start thinking about the day ahead. My fate is in Rogers’s hands. If he spoke to Clarke, I can pack my stuff. Tahlia wouldn’t have to worry, because I wouldn’t be involved in the case anymore.
The sky is cloudy and rain starts to drizzle when I arrive at the station at eight o’clock in the morning. Kerry shuts the door in my face when I shout after her to wait for me.
“I’m sorry, Detective, I didn’t see you coming,” she says with that sweet sarcastic voice, flopping down at the reception desk. She has on a very low-cut top today, and her boobs are almost pouring out.
“That’s okay, Kerry. I’ll be with Rogers if anyone needs me,” I say, trying to act like I’m not pissed off at all.
The door to Rogers’s office is open. I don’t know what I can say to him to get him to believe that I didn’t mean to hide the truth about Steph.
Love & Hate Series Box Set 2 (3-4) - In Too Deep - Skimming the Surface Page 11
