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

  “But he was a bad man,” she tried to reason with me. “He was going to hurt me.”

  “You need to tell everything you’ve told me to Sergeant Black,” I tried to reason with her. “Running isn’t the answer. He will help you.” Then dropping the handcuffs, I held out my hand towards Anne. “I will help you,” I said.

  She looked down at my open hand, then back at me. Her whole body began to shake as she started to sob. “But I have so much to lose.” she cried. “I was to be married at Christmas, just a few months from now.”

  “And you still might,” I desperately tried to reassure her.

  “Do you think so?” Anne asked, with a wry look. “I’ll go to prison for what I’ve done. I killed a cop, November.”

  “Griffin might have worn a uniform Anne,” I said, my hand still open. “But he wasn’t a police officer in his heart. He didn’t want to help people like we do. When you tell the court what you’ve told me, they will understand that.”

  Very slowly, I felt Anne’s fingers curl around mine as she took my hand.

  Although Kale was as surprised as me when he discovered that it was Constable Griffin lying dead on the bed and not Constable Short, I couldn’t help but notice a look of smugness crawl over his face.

  “What’s that look for?” I asked as we headed towards the car park at the rear of the training school the following morning. He limped over the ground which was covered in a carpet of bronze and orange leaves that had fallen from the nearby trees.

  “What look?” he glanced sideways at me, his rucksack over his shoulder and packed full for his weekend stay with his parents.

  “That I-told-you-so-look,” I said back, my own rucksack dangling from the crook of my elbow. Perhaps I should’ve listened to my father’s warnings.

  “Well I did tell you so, didn’t I,” he smirked.

  “You told me the killer jumped out of the freaking window!” I said, heading towards my motorbike.

  “And the killer did. She jumped out of your bedroom window,” he grinned, stopping by his car. It gleamed beneath the weak winter sun. How could he afford such a nice car on a recruits wage?

  “That’s not what you said, and you know it,” I scowled.

  Kale opened the boot of his car and threw in his rucksack. “Okay,” he shrugged, “so we both got some stuff wrong, but we’re still learning. That’s the whole point of being at training school isn’t it?”

  “I guess,” I said thoughtfully.

  “Hey, don’t be so disappointed,” he said, placing one hand on my shoulder. “You did good and you caught the killer.”

  “Yeah, and I’m not so sure I feel happy about that,” I sighed, combing a length of hair behind my ear to stop it from snagging in the wind.

  “Sergeant Black is treating Anne with kid gloves, she’ll be okay,” Kale tried to assure me. “Look on the bright side.”

  “Is there one?” I asked, looking up into his face. Gone was the stubble from the night before.

  “You must be the only recruit in the country whose first arrest was for murder,” he said with a boyish grin. “Now that’s got to count for something.”

  “Mmm,” I said thoughtfully as I turned away towards my motorbike. I wasn’t so sure it counted for much if it meant a frightened woman was sent to prison.

  “November,” he said.

  I looked back. “Huh?”

  “November – that’s a strange kind of name, don’t you think?” he said.

  “No stranger than, Kale,” I said right back. “Isn’t kale some kind of vegetable?”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  “You said my name was strange,” I reminded him.

  “In a pretty kind of way,” he half smiled.

  Without saying anything more, I turned away. I was halfway across the windblown car park, when I heard Kale call after me again. “Hey, November.”

  Stopping, I glanced back.

  “What you doing this weekend?” he asked.

  “Cramming,” I said.

  “My mum makes a wicked Bakewell Tart,” he smiled at me over the roof of his car. “We could cram for the exam together. I could do with some help and after seeing you in action last night, I couldn’t think of anyone more than I would like to study with.”

  “Go stay at your parents with you?” I asked, feeling surprised but secretly delighted by his proposal. Where else did I have to go other than back to my poky room that I rented in Bleakfield?

  “Why not?” Kale smiled. “And besides, it’s a long drive between here and the Peak District, who knows what mysteries we might come across that need solving.”

  “Like crimes and stuff,” I said, slowly heading back across the car park, drawn by the mention of future mysteries to be solved.

  “Exactly,” he beamed.

  I threw my case onto the back seat of Kale’s car then climbed in beside him. With both of us grinning with a feverish excitement, Kale drove the car out of the police training school car park and I couldn’t help but wonder what our next adventure might be.

  The Kidnapping at Blackwater Farm

  The man wouldn’t stop staring at me. He stood in the bright neon light that lit the petrol station. It was like he was peeking at me over the top of his 4X4 as he filled it with petrol. He couldn’t have been any older than thirty, and had collar-length blonde hair that blew back off his brow in the growing wind. But it was his eyes, so dark in colour they appeared pupil-less. They seemed to bore right into me as if breaking through my skin to see what lay beneath. I broke his stare and looked back at Kale, who had now finished filling his car and was heading across the garage forecourt to the kiosk. I wasn’t one to be easily spooked, but the stranger’s stare had made the hairs stand up on the nape of my neck. Pulling my coat tight about me, I hunched forward against the cold night wind and headed after Kale, my long hair flapping about my shoulders and down the length of my back.

  Reaching the door of the kiosk, Kale pulled it open, and glancing back over his shoulder, he looked at me. “Why not wait in the car? It’s cold out here.”

  “I’m hungry,” I lied. “I’m going to get some chocolate.”

  I stepped inside the kiosk and out of the cold.

  “Are you okay, November?” Kale asked, a frown creasing his good looks. “You look kinda freaked out.”

  “Don’t look now,” I said, my back to the window that faced the forecourt, “but there’s a guy filling up a 4x4 and he won’t stop staring at me. Kinda just creeped me out I guess.”

  “What guy?” Kale said, glancing over my shoulder and out across the garage.

  “Don’t look!” I sighed. “He’ll know we’re talking about him.”

  “There isn’t any 4x4,” Kale said, that frown growing ever deeper. “There isn’t any guy, either.”

  I turned around on the heels of my boots and gasped. The guy had gone. How could that be possible? He wouldn’t have had time to get in his car and drive away. “But he was right there,” I said, pointing at the pump.

  “Not anymore.” Kale shrugged.

  “But he hasn’t paid for his petrol,” I said, turning to face Kale again.

  Kale looked at me, the frown fading. “He probably paid at the pump with his credit card. I would’ve done the same if it wasn’t for the fact I’m way overdrawn. How I’m gonna make it through to payday, I do not know.”

  “He was staring at me,” I said, following Kale as he made his way to the counter, fishing out his wallet.

  “So,” Kale shrugged again. “You’re a pretty girl.”

  “He wasn’t looking at me like that…” I started.

  “How then?”

  Like he had seen a ghost, I wanted to say, but didn’t for fear of Kale laughing at me. “I’m not sure,” I whispered instead, looking back at where the man had been standing.

  “Chocolate?”

  “Huh?” I said, turning to face Kale.

  “You said you wanted to get some chocolate,” he said, now at
the counter.

  “No,” I said with a shake of my head. “I’ve lost my appetite.”

  “Just the petrol and a pack of these,” Kale said, picking up a packet of mints. He handed money to the pimply-faced guy at the cash register.

  “Do you have CCTV?” I suddenly asked him.

  “CCTV?” the guy asked, shooting me a sideways glance. “What do you want to view the CCTV for? Is there a problem?”

  “No, problem,” Kale said, taking me by the arm and guiding me back toward the kiosk door. “I know what you’re up to, November.”

  “And what’s that?” I said, shaking my arm free.

  “You want to see what happened to that guy,” Kale said, pulling open the door and stepping back out into the cold. “You want to see where he disappeared to.”

  “Don’t you?” I said, following him back to his car.

  “Not really,” Kale said. “I just want to get to my parents’ house before the storm sets in.”

  I glanced up into the night sky and looked at the thick swirl of cloud threatening to burst above us. I pulled open the passenger door and climbed in, the door snagging in the gusting wind. “The guy was a weirdo,” I said.

  “That isn’t a crime.” Kale opened the packet of mints, tilted his head back, and shook some into his mouth. Chewing them, he offered me the packet. “Want some?”

  I opened my hand and he dropped several of the white, round mints into my palm. I popped one into my mouth and placed the others in my pocket.

  Kale started the car.

  “I wished I’d got his car registration now,” I said.

  “Why?” Kale sighed, steering the car off the forecourt and back onto the narrow country road. “Look, November, this is our weekend off from police training school. We’ve got a big exam to cram for, let’s not go getting ourselves caught up in anything else – for the next few days at least. Wasn’t what happened to Constable Short enough excitement for the time being?”

  I sat back in my seat and stared out of the window. Perhaps Kale was right? There probably wasn’t anything suspicious about the guy at the petrol station. I pushed thoughts of his staring eyes from my mind. Kale had invited me to stay at his parents’ for the weekend to cram for our police exam. If we failed, we were back coursed another five weeks and I didn’t want that. I was itching to get through the next fifteen weeks as quickly as possible and start pounding the streets. I suspected Kale felt the same. But the recent mystery of Constable Short at training school had set my desire to investigate ablaze. I’d always turned things upside down and over and over. I enjoyed looking at stuff from a different point of view from everyone else. My father had been the same and I hoped that one day I would be a brilliant detective like he had been. It was for this reason I had joined the police force, so I could investigate his murder. He had been killed on duty, but the identity of his killer had never been discovered. As far as I knew the case had gone cold and his murder remained unsolved. But now I had joined there police force, there was one cop who would never stop searching for his killer. My mother had died of cancer when I was very young, so it was just me now.

  “What you thinking about?” I heard Kale ask.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I sighed, turning away from the window and looking at him in the gloom of the car.

  “Just forget that guy,” Kale said.

  “I already have.” I smiled.

  I knew very little about Kale Creed. He was a police probationer, just like me. He was nineteen, so a year older than I. In my first five weeks at training school, I had kept myself to myself. I had preferred to study alone. I wasn’t drawn to the police bar for recreation like my fellow recruits. I had spent much of my time alone in my room or the library studying the mountain of law we had to learn. The police training manuals were thick and covered such topics as evidence and procedure, crime, traffic, and general police duties. There seemed to be a law or a piece of legislation for everything, and sometimes my head spun with it all. So when Kale and I had been thrown together as unwitting investigators into the death of Constable Short, we had become friends. Kale described his parents’ house as being remote – cut off from the rest of the world – deep within the peak district. The perfect place to cram for an exam, there was little or no distraction. Kale had said he could barely get a mobile phone or Internet connection while staying with his parents. So I had been persuaded by him to go. What else did I have to do? Return to my rented room in Bleakfield and paw over old newspaper reports regarding my father’s murder – searching for clues that might have been missed.

  Kale drove through the dark, as he navigated the endless narrow country roads that snaked across the sea of bleak, barren moorlands. The rain that had threatened had stayed away, and instead a thick, heavy fog had fallen. Kale had to slow the car to a near crawl, sitting forward in his seat with his hands gripping the steering wheel. The windscreen started to mist up from the inside. I switched on the heaters, and taking a handkerchief from my jeans pocket, I tried to clear the window.

  “Better?” I asked.

  “Yes, thanks,” Kale said, his handsome face a mask of concentration as he took a tight bend that suddenly sprang up in the road ahead.

  Then, from behind, there was a flash of light. I glanced back over my shoulder and peered through the rear window. There was a car behind us. It was traveling at speed as its headlights loomed up suddenly. I raised a hand to shield my eyes from the glare as the car suddenly swerved back and forth across the road.

  “What’s his problem?” Kale hissed.

  The car was now so close I could see the dark outline of the driver.

  The vehicle swerved alongside us, and Kale steered the car toward the undergrowth along the side of the road. I glanced to the right, peering past Kale, desperate to get a glimpse of the imbecile who had nearly forced us from the road. It drew level, and I could see it was a large 4X4. At once, my mind raced back to the guy who had been staring at me in the petrol station. But there was so much fog swirling and churning about, it was impossible to see who was driving the car.

  Kale slowed as he shot a glance at the car swerving back and forth. “Hey, slow down before you get us all killed…!”

  There was a crunching sound, like sheet metal crumpling, then we were veering toward the ditch beside the road. Screaming, I threw my hands to my face. I shot forward, air bursting from my lungs. Kale lurched out of his seat as the car dived bonnet-first into the ditch. The horn sounded as if in warning as Kale’s chest struck the steering wheel. His seatbelt locked, pulling him back down into his seat.

  With the engine ticking over, we sat stunned and listened to the sound of the 4X4 roar away into the distance.

  “Are you okay?” Kale breathed, sounding winded.

  Before I’d had the chance to tell him I was just shaken up, a deep, booming crash echoed out of the fog ahead. Both Kale and I looked at each other as if both sharing the same sudden thought. Whoever had been driving had now crashed ahead of us.

  “Get a torch from the boot,” Kale wheezed, pushing open the door and climbing out. The engine continued to purr and the keys swung from the ignition. Leaning against my door, I stumbled out into the ditch, my boots slopping down into the nearest puddle. With my hands placed against the side of the car for support, I made my way to the boot. I popped it open and snatched up the torch. Switching it on, I shone the cone of light into the fog. Screwing up my eyes, I could just make out Kale disappearing like a ghost into the distance.

  “Hey, Kale!” I hollered. “Wait for me.”

  I raced into the writhing fog after him. The sound of his footsteps grew muffled as he ran ahead of me. The light from the torch bounced off the fog as if being reflected back. Then, just ahead, I could see two orange lights flashing on and off like a heartbeat. The car loomed out of the fog, hazard lights blazing. The front of it looked as if a tree trunk had taken root in the middle of the engine. Stepping closer, I could see the 4X4 had crashed into a tree. Smoke bill
owed from the crunched-up bonnet. The driver’s door was open, as was the back passenger door. Kale was standing beside the car, back bent as he peered inside.

  “Is the driver okay?” I asked, rushing forward.

  “What driver?” Kale breathed, standing straight.

  I shone the torch into the car. I didn’t need it to see that the driver’s seat was empty. I glanced left and right into the fog. “Where’s the driver gone?”

  “Beats the hell out of me.”

  Brushing past Kale, I leant into the car. I shone the torchlight over the seat, the foot-well, steering wheel, and dashboard. Once I had seen enough, I turned to look back at Kale.

  “He went that way,” I said, pointing back in the direction we had come.

  “He?” Kale raised his eyebrows. “Could have been a female driver.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “The driver was male, at least six feet tall, has blonde hair, smoked, right handed, likes to listen to classical music…”

  “Are you making all this stuff up, November?” Kale sighed.

  “No,” I said, looking at him through the fog. “Why would I?”

  “I dunno,” Kale shrugged. “How could you know all this stuff about the driver? You only stuck your head in the car for a couple of seconds.”

  “Look,” I said, shining the torch back into the car. “See how far the driver’s seat is pushed back from the pedals? The driver had real long legs and I’m guessing he would have to be over six feet in height. Very few women are ever that tall. He is blonde, because there are strands of blonde hair against the headrest. I know he smokes because there are traces of old cigarette ash over the driver’s wing mirror. This is from where he flicks the ash from the tip of his cigarette end. As the ash is all over the wing mirror, it suggests he holds the cigarette in his right hand, therefore, making him right handed.”

  “And the classical music?” Kale said. “No, don’t tell me, he’s got a stack of classical CDs on the dashboard?”

  “I haven’t seen any CDs,” I said with a shake of my head. “But I did see that his radio was tuned into Classic FM.”