Love & Hate Series Box Set 2 (3-4) - In Too Deep - Skimming the Surface

by Joanna Mazurkiewicz

  All day I have been waiting for someone to tell me that it’s okay to feel that way, to grieve.

  “Thank you, I appreciate it. Steph had an extraordinary soul,” I say, remembering how much I enjoyed her laugh, her smile and her witty jokes. The pain burns another hole in my chest, reminding me that I will never hear her voice again.

  For about a minute we both stand there staring at each other, forming some sort of unexplained connection or bond. For some reason Rose calms me down and that sudden rage is gone.

  “Steph, you know she…”

  “Rose. Hey, Rose,” another voice cuts her off. Josh appears on the street, looking pissed off, and when I look at Rose, I notice that she has gone even paler.

  “Hey, Josh,” I greet him coldly. He probably has no idea what’s happened. I saw him at a party a week ago, and we haven’t spoken since.

  “Rose, where the fuck have you been? I have been looking everywhere for you,” he snaps at her. She walks away frantically, looking back at me with an odd determination in her eyes. I wonder what the hell got into Josh today. Maybe I should break the news to him.

  “I was at my mum’s. I came here thinking that you might be here. Right, Micah?” she replies.

  Josh darts his eyes at me, waiting for the confirmation.

  “Yeah, she has been looking for you,” I confirm, wondering what is going on between these two.

  The memory fades as quickly as it appears. Josh practically dragged Rose away from my doorstep. He knew what happened to Steph. He muttered, “I feel for ya, brother” and walked away. We weren’t close then. Everything changed and I was glad that I didn’t have to talk to him about it.

  For a long moment I stood watching them and wondering what she wanted to tell me.

  Bringing my thoughts back to the present, I put the headlights on and I’m just about to drive off when I spot a figure standing on the other side of the street. Maybe it’s the old paranoia, but something tells me that that person on the other side of the street has been watching me for some time. I wait a couple of minutes for him or her to move, and when he doesn’t I decide to get out of the car.

  I swear under my breath, knowing that I can’t be seen around here. My mother would take it as an invitation back into my life. I lock the car and cross the street, but in the exact the same moment the hooded figure disappears behind another house. I follow him, knowing that this is not just paranoia. I know these streets like the back of my hand, but whoever it is moves quicker, soon vanishing out of sight.

  After running for another mile, I stop and decide to get back to the car and abandon this unexplained chase. I have lost the hooded figure.

  My thoughts are racing when I finally get out of that toxic neighbourhood and get back to my hotel room, aware that most probably someone else knows that I’m back in the city. I keep standing outside, waiting for the hooded figure, but no one ever comes. I finally go inside, telling myself that it was no one important.

  ***

  In the morning I feel rough. I have a shower and stand under the water for a good twenty minutes, trying to wash away the sudden anxiety attack. No one knows that I’m here, no one apart from Tahlia, and I wonder why the hell I was watched last night.

  An hour later, I’m ready and more in control. My phone tells me that I have a few text messages. Tahlia seems concerned that I haven’t responded to any of her previous texts. Another one comes through, but I delete it without reading it. Shortly after that I grab my stuff and head back to the headquarters.

  The archive guy follows me around, asking questions. I manage to get rid of him several minutes later. I almost lose it when I don’t find anything that I want. The two murder cases are almost identical, and yet I have no real leads to the person that killed them.

  I close myself in one of the rooms and start listening to transcripts from the interviews. Frustration starts to boil my mind and I skip lunch to concentrate on individual files. An hour later I leave the old evidence and search through cases from a couple of years ago, hoping to find something on Tahlia. Deep down I know that I’m looking for a needle in a haystack. Her name doesn’t bring any records.

  I go over the photos taken from the crime scene again. There are a few hundred and by the end of the day I want to burn them all. My frustration reaches boiling point. I grab a random photo, ready to tear it apart, but then I stop myself and realise that this photo is much thicker than the others.

  It takes me a moment to figure out that there is another photo stuck to it. Someone must have spilled something all over it. I manage to pull it away without damaging its content. One of the forensics people must have taken the photo of the crowd that gathered around the house where Steph was murdered. The photo is stained, but I can just about to recognise the faces of the people that were there that day.

  I stop on one, frowning and bringing the magnifying glass closer. For some reason I think that I know the girl that stands at the back. She is looking directly into the camera, and she is frightened and scared. Light hair, sullen face and the look that I have never forgotten. I stop breathing, realising that it’s Rose, Josh’s girlfriend, but that’s almost impossible. She had never met Steph. She couldn’t have known where she stayed the night before.

  I keep staring at the phone, wondering what the hell Rose is doing in that crowd and why the hell her photo is in the evidence files.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The truth.

  I remember her, not in great detail, but I recall enough to know that she shouldn’t have been standing in that crowd. We never actually spoke, but I know that she used to hang out with Josh and his mates. She came over trying to talk to me about something after Steph’s death, but I never found out what she wanted to tell me. She was really upset about what happened. We weren’t even friends, but she was the only person that cared about how I felt.

  I keep staring at her, wondering what she is doing in that picture, miles away from our estate.

  I rub my face with my palms and then move back to the main computer. I type Josh’s full name in the database. He was arrested for burglary a couple of months before Steph’s passing, and he was with that girl at the time. These records are valuable, because this way I can finally get her full details.

  My pulse speeds up when I find the record: Rosaline Waltham. She was sixteen at the time she was caught. Eight years ago she lived on the other side of the estate, a couple streets away from Josh’s house. According to the records she hasn’t been registered under any other address since then. There is nothing else apart from that one caution. It looks like she hasn’t been in trouble with the police since then. I have nothing else to go on, apart from that old photo.

  When she came over to see me, she wanted to tell me something important, but then Josh showed up and scared her off. Maybe she knew what happened that night. Maybe she was the one person I should have spoken to all those years ago. I stretch my arms overhead, thinking hard about that night. In the end I pack all the files, the statements, pictures and CCTV footage into my bag and leave. I have a feeling that she might still live at that old address, so I decide to drive there.

  It’s still a rough part of London, another forgotten council estate. I know these streets well. Josh’s mates had been scattered around the neighbourhood. Many of them are in prison, a few managed to get away, but since my departure I have no idea what’s been going on with my best mate. I park the car outside on the street and check the paper with the address. Some teenagers are smoking by the off-licence shop, staring at my car with sudden curiosity. I shouldn’t even be here, but I can’t miss a chance like this. Last night I was being watched. It’s not one of my delusions, so I need to be careful this time.

  I walk to the other side of the street and enter the large estate with many blocks of flats. The one that I’m looking for is made of red brick. The smell, as usual, is horrendous. It takes me a while to find the right flat. Places like this are especially dangerous at night, filled with youngs
ters that are looking for trouble.

  The door to flat fourteen is scratched and the lock looks like someone tried to rip it out. I knock, feeling uneasy. Deep down I know that Rose wouldn’t have stayed here, on this estate. For now, she might be the only lead that’s worth pursuing, so I need to check it out. I stand there for a good few minutes before the door opens and an older woman shows up. She’s probably in her fifties, her ears and nose are pierced, and she is bony and underweight. She leans against the door, smoking, and from her grey skin, bloodshot eyes and lines on her forehead, I presume that she either likes to drink way too much or goes for much harder stuff.

  “Hello, handsome,” she purrs, dragging more smoke into her lungs. “What the fuck do you want?”

  The badge won’t do any good. She is scum, just like my mother.

  “I’m looking for Rose Waltham. Does she still live here?” I ask, wondering if I can bribe her for Rose’s whereabouts. Behind her I hear the TV. She smokes weed too. I don’t need to go inside to know that. She just reeks of that stuff.

  “Who’s asking?”

  “I’m Micah. I knew her a few years ago. We used to hang out together.”

  “I haven’t seen that whore for years. The stupid bitch left without a word. I hope she’s dead. She was always useless,” the woman says, frowning. Then she spits on the floor.

  “Do you have any idea where she might be now?”

  “No. Now get the fuck out before I call the boys on you.”

  I don’t have time to wait for the “boys” so I leave without saying anything else.

  The woman shuts the door, swearing loudly, and I wonder if she is related to the Waltham girl at all.

  The only other person that I could ask is Josh, but there is no trace of him in the database either. Maybe he straightened his life out, got a job and stopped getting into trouble. I know that his mother moved out a couple of years ago from the address that I remember. Yet again I find myself stuck in a dead end.

  Instead of driving back to headquarters, I go to the hotel and pack all my stuff. The checkout takes five minutes and within the next hour I’m back on the road. I don’t want to waste anymore time looking through old files in headquarters. Maybe that photo isn’t even significant, and I’m trying to find something that is probably not even relevant.

  There is a strong possibility that I’ve been wrong about Tahlia. She used me, but that doesn’t mean that she murdered her housemate. I need to talk to her, ask if she sold stories to the papers, stories that link the two murders together. She needs to come clean and tell me why she lied about that night when Suranne died.

  I don’t stop for food and after driving for hours, I’m back in Braxton. Normally Tahlia is studying in the library on Thursdays. She has kept stuff from me long enough, so it’s time for us to put all our cards on the table. I can’t play this game any longer. She needs to know that I have not been honest with her.

  My hands are stiff, my heart is racing. Maybe she will hate me after today, but I can’t carry on pretending. I stop in the supermarket and grab some groceries and good wine. A romantic dinner should smooth the tension. We both lied, we both have been holding things back, but I’ve had enough.

  I head over to her flat. The Woo girl lets me in after I tell her that I’m the pizza delivery guy. It looks like this girl will never learn. Someone needs to teach her some survival skills. Tahlia will come back in an hour, and I’ll be waiting for her with a romantic dinner and flowers. Today is our day. I can always get back to the case tomorrow.

  Tahlia’s lock is tricky, but she taught me well how to use a hairpin to break into places and I really want to surprise her today. At the end of the day, it’s my way of saying that I was wrong. It takes more than fifteen minutes to get inside and, by the time I’m done, I’m sweating like a pig. Her flat is tidy, so I put all the bags on the kitchen counter and get on with the cooking. I have an hour, possibly two, and I’m excited to see her.

  I peel the potatoes and prepare steaks, wondering what she will say when she sees me invading her kitchen. When everything is cooking I try to set the table. I put away all her paperwork and books and clean the tiny space. The candles should do the trick. I need something to cover the marks on the small table in the living room. I start looking through the drawers in the bedroom, hoping to find a tablecloth.

  Uneasiness settles in my stomach. This isn’t ideal, rummaging through her personal stuff, but I guess I want to surprise her. The bottom drawer is filled with towels, so I start pulling them up, one by one until the drawer is empty, and in the bottom there is an old white box.

  My pulse spikes and the reasonable side of me roars to put it away. I curse and get up, pacing around for some time. Maybe there is information inside about her past, stuff that is important. I kneel down and lift the top.

  Inside there are mainly papers, clips from the paper, some old photographs.

  Slowly I check out the snips from the paper, one by one. My heart speeds up when I realise that most of them are about me.

  Young graduate gets into the fast track programme.

  Micah Thomson, youngest police inspector in the UK.

  Police shoot dead one of the most dangerous drug smugglers in history.

  These cuts are all from the past five years and it looks like Tahlia has been following my career quite closely. My breath speeds up and I start searching through the papers more frantically. Questions start filling my head as I find more and more evidence that she was interested in me before we even had a chance to meet.

  I pick up one of the photos, hoping to see the real Tahlia, the one before her transformation.

  She has dirty-blonde hair in one of the photos that dates from two years ago. She is standing outside an old building a distance away, staring blankly ahead, wearing white trousers. I make out that one of her arms is covered with tattoos, the other isn’t.

  There are a couple more pictures of her on the beach, somewhere in the UK, without tattoos and pink hair. I pull out all the contents of the box and spread everything on the floor.

  One thing catches my attention: the birth certificate, old and folded together. My hands are shaking when I unfold it. The writing is faded and I can barely read it.

  “Rose Waltham,” I whisper, as my eyes move over the name a couple of times. The colour drains from my face when I realise that it’s Tahlia’s real birth certificate. She must have changed her name a couple of years ago.

  I run back to the living room and nearly tear my bag, looking for that photo that I found back in headquarters. My breathing is hard and laboured when I compare the photo of Tahlia from the past to the one from eight years ago.

  The two match—Tahlia Sanderson is Rose Waltham. Blood rushes to my ears as I realise that we have known each other for a very long time. There are some documents from her past, the same address that I paid a visit to only a couple of hours ago. I sit on the floor, dragging my hand through my hair, and wondering why she never told me who she really was. How could I have been so stupid not to see it through her piercings and the tattoos?

  My heart jackhammers in my chest, and I start putting stuff back in the box. When I’m almost done, I notice that there are some clothes in a plastic bag hidden under the bed. I have slept with Tahlia or Rose—whatever the fuck her name is—for weeks and I am convinced that she stores her entire library under the bed.

  I pull out the shopping bag and inside I find a red T-shirt with bloodstains. The stains seem old, the material is damp, but the surname on the back tells me that the T-shirt belongs to Suranne Wallace. I know that Suranne was in the volleyball team back in college, and she must have brought this T-shirt with her to Braxton.

  My vision becomes blurry, and my heart is pounding loudly. There are some notes inside the bag too. The writing is bad; it seems that the person that was writing it was in a hurry.

  I know about the reason that you moved here.

  You can’t keep lying to me. I’m done with these secret pho
ne calls so late at night.

  I hate doing this to you, but you didn’t give me any other choice. I know what you have done.

  I’m planning to go to the police tomorrow and tell them everything.

  There is no point running anymore. This whole thing will be out in the open before you know it.

  I’m sorry that it had to come to this, but I’m doing this for your own good.

  There is no point hiding the truth any longer.

  I know what you have done and the reason that you have used this name for so long.

  I clench my fists, realising that I finally have the one piece of information that I have been missing all these months. Tahlia—or Rose—is the real murderer. Suranne must have discovered her real identity, discovered the truth, so Tahlia killed her and then hid the evidence, then pretended that she had no idea what happened.

  My pulse is speeding so fast that my whole body is not keeping up. Suranne must have found out that Tahlia had murdered Steph all these years ago. She must have discovered the truth somehow.

  There are so many loose ends, but I finally understand. She has been using me all along to cover up what she has done, and I believed her. Until today.

  Chapter Thirty

  The other truth.

  I sneak out from Tahlia’s flat with the plastic bag in my hand and the groceries that I bought earlier on. The photos are in my jacket pocket. I used my phone to capture all the evidence that I decided to leave behind, to validate my previous statements and suspicions. I can barely walk, asking myself what the hell I’m doing. For some reason I can’t seem to believe that I had been right about her. I’m numb from head to toe, still wondering if she will know that I’ve been in her flat. I managed to clean up everything. The food went to the bin, and I put stuff back in the order it was before I started rummaging through her personal items. If she sees the lock, she might notice that someone was inside. It’s a risk that I’m willing to take before I get the search warrant. I want to do this properly, by the book. She has been playing me from the moment we met and I was stupid enough to think that I knew what I was doing.