November Lake: Teenage Detective (The November Lake Mysteries) Book 1 Read online

  November Lake: Teenage Detective (The November Lake Mysteries) Book 1

  November Lake: Teenage Detective (The November Lake Mysteries) Book 1

  Midpoint

  NOVEMBER LAKE

  Teenage Detective

  (The November Lake Mysteries)

  Book 1

  By

  Jamie Drew

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright 2014 by Jamie Drew

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organisations is entirely coincidental.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Also by Jamie Drew

  November Lake: Teenage Detective (Book 1)

  November Lake: Teenage Detective (Book 2)

  About the author:

  Jamie Drew is the author of the ‘November Lake: Teenage Detective Series’. Just like, November Lake, Jamie Drew has been a real police officer and has solved many crimes and mysteries in real life.

  Jamie Drew now writes full time and is currently working on further ‘November Lake’ mysteries.

  You can contact Jamie Drew by emailing: [email protected]

  November Lake: Teenage Detective

  The Dead Girl In The Room

  The Kidnapping At Blackwater Farm

  The Menacing Stranger

  The Dead Girl In The Room

  Police Constable Anne Short lay dead on her bed. It wasn’t the simple fact I couldn’t see the soft fall and rise of her body which suggested she was no longer breathing, but the large gaping wound in the back of her head. Her face was buried into a blood-soaked pillow. Her short blonde hair was matted red and looked black in the dim light that shone weakly from the desk lamp. I stood next to Constable Kale Creed as we both stared at Anne’s corpse from the open doorway of her room on the second floor of the police training school.

  I had been woken by the sound of thudding and crashing outside of my own room. With my long blonde hair matted to the side of my face, I’d sprung from my bed and yanked open my own bedroom door. As I peered across the short landing, I had watched as Kale Creed threw himself at Anne’s bedroom door. Even though the hour was late, he was still wearing his white police shirt and black combat trousers. His shirt was open at the throat and he wore a grim look upon his face.

  “Hey! Open up!” he demanded, as he rushed at the door again, slamming his shoulder against it. “What’s going on in there?”

  There were just the four rooms on our landing. My bedroom was directly at the top of the stairs. Next to mine was Creed’s. Opposite our rooms, were Constable Anne Short’s and Constable Colin Griffin’s. Wearing just my pyjamas, I watched Kale shoulder barge the door of Anne’s room again. This time, it buckled and shuddered against its hinges, and flew open. It was then, over Kale’s shoulder, that I saw Anne sprawled face down across her bed. I hadn’t known her well. In fact I didn’t know any of my colleagues very well as we were all just coming to the end of our first month at police training school. All of us were just fresh faced recruits. I think I was the youngest at just eighteen-and-a-half-years-old. Kale couldn’t have been more than a year older than me and I figured that both Constable’s Anne Short and Colin Griffin were both in their mid-twenties. I’d overheard Anne tell Griffin that she was engaged as he had tried to flirt with her over breakfast on our very first morning. She waggled her hand before him, her engagement ring twinkling in the fluorescent overhead lighting of the canteen. I couldn’t help but notice how Griffin’s sharp blue eyes had narrowed as he caught sight of the ring. Since Anne had given him the cold shoulder, Griffin had glanced across the table at me and winked.

  “Hey, October,” he had grinned, narrow face all nose and chin. Just like the rest of him, his face was painfully thin.

  “That’s November,” I corrected him.

  “That’s what I said,” Constable Griffin smirked, brushing his blond fringe out of his eyes. It was collar length and I’d already heard one of the instructors tell him to get it cut. But Constable Griffin had just shrugged his narrow shoulders at the request and mooched away.

  “No, you said October, my name is, November. There’s a difference,” I told him without smiling and smeared more Marmite over my toast. It wasn’t that I had wanted to be unfriendly; I just didn’t want to become too friendly with him. I had wanted to be a police officer for as long as I could remember and the only companion I wanted or needed for the next two years were my Blackstone’s Police training manuals. Detecting my frostiness, Griffin pushed his chair back from the table, and skulked from the canteen. I felt kind of bad watching him leave, his uniform seeming to hang from his scrawny frame, but there was something about Griffin that gave me the creeps. However, he was a copper just like the rest of us, so perhaps I was being too judgemental about him.

  I pushed thoughts of Griffin from my mind and stared into the room where Anne now laid face down, dead on her bed. I was usually good at making sense of what I was seeing and putting tiny pieces of information together to form a larger picture. But the sight of a colleague – a police officer – dead in one of the rooms at training school was nearly beyond comprehension. How had something like this ever happened? I could see that Anne’s death had been no accident by the gaping wound that seemed to stare back at me like a bloodshot eye. But who had murdered her and why? Was the killer still nearby? Had this been a random attack or perhaps a robbery gone wrong? Since attending training school we had been told not to go out socialising in the local pubs and clubs showing any visible police insignia as recruits had often been attacked in the past. I had also heard stories that the training school had been broken into and recruits rooms had been burgled. There was a common joke amongst new probationers that the highest levels of crime were often recorded at police training schools.

  “I can’t believe she’s dead,” Kale said, jarring me from my thoughts. He sounded upset. “Who would’ve wanted to harm Anne? This place is full of coppers – we’re all coppers here – and one of us has been murdered. It seems unreal.”

  “But it is real,” I said, looking away from that deep black wound shining wetly down the right side of Anne’s skull. I closed my eyes and tried to squeeze out the image of Anne lying dead on the bed. It made me feel queasy. But when I opened my eyes again, she was still there.

  “Whoever killed Anne must have climbed out of the window,” Kale said.

  I looked in the direction he was pointing and could see the curtains flapping in the cold night breeze that blew in through the window.

  “It’s not been opened, it’s been smashed,” I said, spying the jagged pieces of glass that protruded like broken teeth from the window frame.

  “So that’s what I heard,” Kale breathed deeply, stepping into the room.

  I placed a hand on his arm. “Don’t you think we should wait…?”

  “For what?” Kale asked, cocking one of his dark eyebrows.

  “What I mean is, shouldn’t we call Sergeant Black?” I said.

  “I called him on my mobile the moment I heard the scream,” he said, his keen blue
eyes fixed on me.

  “You heard a scream?” I frowned. How had I slept through that?

  The wind howled through the broken window and stirred Anne’s blood soaked hair. The way it seemed to shimmer as if alive, looked kind of creepy so I looked back at Kale. The hour was very late, and I could see that the lower half of his handsome face was shadowed with black stubble.

  “What were you doing awake so late?” I asked him, hoping that if I engaged him in conversation it might stop him from entering the room. I didn’t want to go in there. Not just because it was a crime scene, but I had known Anne and it made me feel uncomfortable being in the same room with her now that she was dead.

  “Cramming,” he said, looking back across the room at the body on the bed.

  “Cramming?” I asked trying to bide myself more time in the hope that Sergeant Black would soon arrive and take over.

  “We have that written exam on Monday, so I stayed up late to study for it,” he explained. “I’m on the accelerated promotion scheme so I can’t afford to fail them or I get dropped.”

  “But tomorrow is Friday and we can go home for the weekend. Wouldn’t you have plenty of time to revise for the exam then?” I said.

  “My parents are back from France this weekend, so I’m going to spend most of it driving up to the Peak District. Not a lot of time for study,” he explained.

  I opened my mouth to ask Kale another question in the hope that I could keep him talking for at least another minute or two. But before I had the chance to say anything Kale turned away and headed across Anne’s bedroom towards the window.

  “Don’t you think we should wait for Sergeant Black to arrive? After all this is a crime scene,” I reminded him.

  “And we’re cops, aren’t we and so was Anne,” he said pulling aside the curtain and peering out into the darkness. “Whoever did this could be getting away.”

  I knew that if I went into the room, I would see the clues. I always did. Ever since I could remember, I had been the first to solve puzzles, riddles and conundrums. I was like my father. He had been a police officer too – a detective – before he had been killed on duty. My father had warned me not to show off – not to be a know-it-all. But I could help catch Anne’s killer. I knew I could if I stepped into the room. I would figure out how the murder had taken place and possibly who had committed it. Why shouldn’t I use my skills to catch the person who killed Constable Short? I hoped one day that I would be able to use my knack at solving puzzles to catch the criminal who had murdered my father.

  So, hugging myself against the chill wind that blew in through the window, I crept into the room. I looked at the bed where Anne lay. I was kind of glad that I couldn’t see her face. There was a picture of her smiling out of a framed photograph on the desk on the opposite side of her room. That’s how I would’ve liked to have remembered her. Standing next to Anne in the picture was a dark haired man of about the same age. They had their arms around each other and I guessed this was her fiancé. Anne’s desk was littered with the notes she had been making in an attempt to learn by heart the definition of theft. Somebody else who had been studying while I had been sleeping.

  I looked about the room and saw an armchair. It was identical to the one in my room. Over the back of it Anne had laid one of her white police shirts. The collar numbers twinkled from the epaulets on each shoulder. I ran one finger over the shirt, then hunkered down and inspected the carpet around the base of the armchair. Bending low, so my nose was almost touching the floor, I brushed the tips of my fingers over the carpet. What I could see was all very suggestive to me. Beside the chair was Anne’s utility belt and attached to this was a set of handcuffs and empty CS Spray holder. The torch had come free and lay on the carpet just under the chair. With my knees making a popping sound, I stood up and went back to the bedroom door. I shut it halfway, then opened it again. Feeling uncomfortable and with my heart speeding up a little, I went to the bed. Taking a shallow breath, I peered over Anne’s body and wondered what I might see. A spray of blood covered the headboard and the wall behind it. Using my thumb and forefinger like a set of tweezers, I slowly pulled back the duvet that covered her body. I peeled it back no more than an inch and could see the ends of her short blonde hair were drenched with the blood that had gushed from her scalp, down her neck and onto her bare shoulder. I couldn’t help but notice a large mushroom shaped stain of blood on the underside of the duvet cover. Very slowly and biting my lower lip, I pressed my fingertips against the side of her neck. I knew in my heart that Anne was dead, but I needed to make sure. Although her skin was still warm to the touch, there was no pulse. I let the lip of the duvet fall back into place. I didn’t need to see anymore. I now knew how and why Anne had been murdered. But more importantly I knew who had killed her.

  “He definitely came in and went out of the window,” Kale said, seeming agitated. “You wait here for Sergeant Black while I go after him.”

  “The killer didn’t enter the room or escape from it via the window.” I said, stepping away from the bed, and taking hold of his arm.

  “Nonsense,” Kale said, yanking his arm free. “The bedroom door was locked. How else did he escape? He must have gone out of the window, November.”

  “Look, I’m just as upset as you are, but we shouldn’t go rushing off without fully understanding what has happened here,” I tried to explain.

  “Somebody smashed a coppers skull in, that’s what has happened here. And whoever did it has escaped through that window,” Kale snapped.

  “That’s what the killer wants us to believe,” I said, heading across the room to the broken window. The wind was blowing hard outside now and making a shrill whiny sound as it blasted about the eaves. My long hair blew back from off my shoulders.

  “Look here and here,” I said, pointing at the window ledge. “There isn’t any glass. Shouldn’t there be glass on the windowsill and on the carpet if he smashed the window to break in?”

  “But I heard the sound of breaking glass,” Kale reminded me, as I reached down and picked up the discarded torch.

  “You also said, you heard a scream first, right?” I said, switching on the torch.

  “Right,” Kale said, watching me.

  Careful not to cut myself on the jagged windowpane, I shone the torch out of the window and into the darkness. At once, the wet grassy ground below began to twinkle as if showered with glitter. “There are the broken shards of glass,” I said. “Don’t you think that is suggestive?”

  “Suggestive of what?” Kale said, peering over my shoulder.

  “That the window was broken from inside,” I said, stepping back and switching off the torch.

  “Which only proves that the killer fled by smashing the window and climbing out,” Kale said, puffing out his chest.

  “There are no footprints in the ground beneath the window,” I said, placing the torch down on the desk. “If the killer had jumped from such a height, surely he would have left some impression behind in the ground. And besides, there isn’t any blood.”

  “I can see plenty of blood,” Kale said with a grim look, hooking his thumb in the direction of the bed.

  “There isn’t any blood on the broken shards of glass around the window frame,” I explained. “I barely leant out of the window to shine the torch, without coming close to cutting myself or at least snagging my pyjamas. Inspect the glass for yourself, Kale. There are no drops of blood or any kind of cloth for that matter. You said yourself, that you heard a scream, then the sound of breaking glass.”

  “So?” Kale asked, his eyes searching mine.

  “So why did Anne scream?” I asked him. “Did she turn and see the killer at the window? Did the sight of the killer’s face disturb her so much that she let out a cry? If so, why then would he smash the window? And if so, did he then climb in, kill her, then flee again, in the time it took you to rush from your room and start smashing in the door? On being discovered, wouldn’t the killer have just fled? And how d
id he get up to the window, there is no drain pipe?”

  “Okay, okay,” Kale said, raising his hands as if admitting defeat. “The killer didn’t come in the room via the window. But that means Anne knew her killer, as she must have willingly let him into her room or I would’ve heard the struggle at the door.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “Anne did know her killer, but she never let him in. He let himself in.”

  “So he left by the door then, before I came out of my room?” he said.

  I went to the door and rattled the lock. “But it was locked from the inside,” I reminded him.

  “Perhaps the killer struck Anne, then fled the room? Being only semi-conscious and fearing that the killer might return and finish the job, Anne staggered across the room, slipped the lock then collapsed onto the bed,” Kale said rubbing his stubble coated chin. It sounded like he was clawing sandpaper.

  “No,” I said. “Anne was struck just the once on the bed and that was enough to kill her outright. She never got up from that blow. If she did, wouldn’t there be a trail of blood on the carpet? The only blood is the spray against the wall by the bed where she was struck.”

  “So who killed her then and how did he get in and out of the room undetected?” Kale sighed with a shrug of his shoulders.

  I looked across the room at Kale. I fixed him with my bright hazel eyes and whispered, “Constable Griffin murdered, Anne.”

  With his eyes bulging in their sockets, Kale looked at me and said, “Have you lost your freaking mind, November? You can’t go around accusing a cop of killing a cop. That will be the quickest way of getting yourself busted right out of here.”