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

  “Will you help me?” Clive asked, glancing up at Kale, then back at me. Even though it was cold, a feverish sweat had broken out on his forehead.

  I knew we should at least try and get some kind of backup and an ambulance for Clive, but my instincts told me that time was running out for his sister. Morris Cook was out on the moors somewhere, he had taken our car keys, so he was holding us captive out here, too. Kale and I were both police officers, and however inexperienced we were, we had to do something to help this man and his sister. I looked at Kale, and he stared back at me. Without saying anything, both of us reached down and helped Clive to his feet. He grunted in pain, clenching his teeth.

  “Show us where this farmhouse is,” Kale said. “But once we are there, you stay back and let me and my friend, November, deal with the situation.”

  “You don’t know what Morris can be like,” Clive said. “He can be extremely violent – dangerous. You’re just a couple of kids…”

  “I think we will be just fine,” I said, shooting a quick glance over Clive’s shoulders at Kale. I had undertaken the unarmed defence training at police school already, but neither I nor Kale had our cuffs, baton, spray or Taser with us. If this Morris Cook decided to kick off, Kale and I really would be fighting unarmed.

  “When we get to the farmhouse, you stay back,” Kale told Clive. “You’re injured and we don’t want to make your situation any worse.”

  The three of us trudged through the fog and the bitter cold. It was eerily quiet as the fog swallowed us up. Wispy jets of breath escaped from our mouths and melted away. Mud sloshed about our feet and splashed the backs of our jeans. When we did eventually arrive at Kale’s parents’ they were going to think we had hiked all the way to their house. Then, as if suddenly rising out of the ground, I could see the farmhouse. It was small in size and had two floors. There were two upper windows and two lower ones. In the dark they looked like two sets of dead eyes watching us as we stepped from the fog toward it. There was a wooden front door, which had been painted white, and a paved front path led up to it. A chimney poked out of the roof, and if any smoke tumbled from it, I couldn’t tell for all the fog. The world seemed silent, and out on the desolate moor, it felt like the rest of the world had disappeared, eaten up by the fog, leaving only the three of us. The farmhouse was in darkness and the only sound was that of our laboured breathing and racing heartbeats. I shone the torch at the front door.

  “Is this the place?” I whispered.

  “I guess,” Clive whispered back.

  There was a pile of freshly cut fire logs set aside by the front door. We walked Clive toward them.

  Helping him to sit, Kale said in a hushed voice, “Now, you wait here. Let us check the place out and see if we can’t find your sister, Sarah.”

  “What about Morris…” Clive started, eyes wide in fear or pain. I couldn’t be sure.

  “Leave him to us,” Kale said, trying to sound confident and cocksure of himself. Was that just all an act?

  “But what if he is out on the moors and comes back?” Clive said just above a whisper.

  “Then holler,” I said.

  Stepping forward and pressing his fingertips against the front door, Kale looked at me. “Ready?”

  “Sure,” I said, taking a deep breath.

  Kale pushed against the door and it slowly swung open.

  I lit up the dark hallway with my torch. We crept inside. There was a set of wellies by the front door covered in mud. The mud was fresh. Had Morris Cook came back from off the moor, with Kale’s car key swinging from his fist? The walls had been whitewashed and a few pictures hung from them. They were paintings of valleys and rolling hills. Not the sort of pictures you imagine an armed robber and kidnapper would have hanging from his walls. We inched forward, one small step at a time. The torch cast eerie shadows up the walls, as if we were being silently stalked by winged phantoms. I shivered and gripped the torch tighter. There was a staircase that led up into the darkness. From above there was a sudden sound of movement. I aimed my torch up at the ceiling as we both glanced upwards. It sounded like someone was creeping about. Kale and I looked at each other. I could see his Adam’s apple slide up and down as he swallowed hard. His early confidence had been an act for Clive. I didn’t believe Kale had tried to be cocky, he had simply been doing what all good cops did when their backs were against the wall. They had to hide their fear, even though all they really wanted to do was run in the opposite direction. Cops didn’t get to run away. We had to stay and protect those who were unable to protect themselves, like the girl I believed was being held captive upstairs.

  In the darkness, I reached out and gently squeezed Kale’s hand. He squeezed my fingers back, then let go. “C’mon,” he whispered, heading for the foot of the stairs.

  We climbed them to the top. Every one of our steps slow and precise, desperate not to make one wooden floorboard creak, giving us away. At the top we found ourselves on a landing. There were three doors leading from it, and all of them were closed. Two bedrooms and one bathroom? I wondered. The noise we had heard from downstairs came again. This time closer, from behind the door nearest to us at the top of the stairs. It sounded like chair legs being scrapped across floorboards. Kale looked at me, his face an eerie mask in the torchlight. Side by side we crept toward the closed door. We stood outside it in the gloom of the landing.

  “Okay?” Kale whispered.

  “Okay,” I nodded.

  Without another word, Kale threw open the door. I was struck by two things at once. The body lying on the floor and the girl sitting on a chair before it. The girl looked up at once, her eyes dark and wide as she peered over the gag that covered the lower half of her face. She made a gurgling noise in the back of her throat as if drowning. She wore a black sweater and blue jeans and trainers on her feet. She had long, black hair just like me. Her arms looked like they had been tied behind her back. I could see what looked like a length of rope trailing down behind the chair. I glanced at the dead man lying on his back. A large knife protruded from the front of his chest, his shirt wet with blood. There were blood splatters up the wall and over the dusty wooden floorboards. The man had been stabbed several times. He wore jeans, but no shoes, just grey coloured socks.

  The girl made another murmuring sound in the back of her throat. Kale leapt from the open doorway toward her. I shot my hand out and gripped his arm.

  “No, Kale!” I shouted. “It’s a trap!”

  He glanced back over my shoulder, a look of bewilderment on his face. The girl sprung from out of the chair as Clive came rushing into the room from behind us. There was a horrendous squelching noise as the girl pulled the knife from the chest of the corpse. She waved the knife in the air before us, blood flying from its blade and spraying the walls of the room red. Clive held a length of one of those freshly cut logs in his fist and he brandished it at us.

  Kale and I lurched backwards, both of us raising our hands to our heads fearing that we might be struck. When the blow I was expecting didn’t fall and crush my skull, I lowered my hands and looked at Clive and the girl.

  “Sarah?” I breathed.

  A cruel and selfish smile spread across her face. “That’s me.”

  “What’s going on here?” Kale said, that deep frown furrowing his forehead once again. He looked angry and mystified all at once. I could see that he was standing next to a small wooden table. On it was a glass of water and a bottle of small white pills.

  “We have been deceived,” I said to Kale. Then looking straight back at our captors, I added, “You are not Clive. That’s Clive, lying dead on the floor. You are in fact Morris Cook, robber, blackmailer, and now murderer.”

  “Morris Cook?” Kale whispered as if parts of a jigsaw were sliding into place. “You tricked us? Why?”

  The man we had once believed to be named Clive reached into his trouser pockets and fished out Kale’s car key. He swung it before Kale’s face like a pendulum. “Your friend is right. I did k
ill Clive Mason and had every reason to. The story is as I told you, but I am Morris Cook and this is Clive’s sister.”

  I looked at the girl standing before us, blood-stained knife in her hand. “And what about you? Why did you kill your brother? If what Morris told us is true, your brother loved you very much.”

  Sarah gave another cruel smile. “My brother might have loved me, but I love Morris more.”

  “So you did come in search of Morris to find the evidence he had against your brother…?” Kale started to figure out.

  “But you fell in love with the man you came to destroy,” I cut in, unable to take my eyes off the girl. She did look a little like me, but that’s where the resemblance between us stopped.

  “Yes,” she said with pride.

  “But why murder your brother?” Kale asked her as if none of this still made much sense.

  “He would never let us be together,” Sarah said. “I wrote to him and told him how I had fallen in love with Morris. I invited my brother to this farmhouse which has been up for sale for the last few months. We couldn’t risk inviting Clive to our real home for fear that he might never leave us alone. So we broke in here last night and waited for my brother to arrive today. When he did he said I had to return home with him. He shouted and screamed that he would not have his younger sister stay with the man who had tormented him so much. But I couldn’t help who I had fallen in love with. I refused to go with him. He said that if I didn’t he would go to the police and tell them everything. He no longer cared that he might go to prison for that robbery if it meant Morris couldn’t have me. When Morris reminded my brother that he had already served his sentence for the robbery, Clive said he would tell the police about how he had been blackmailed over the last two years. Morris would surely have gone back to prison, so a violent struggle broke out between the three of us. Clive produced this knife, and in the struggle he dropped it. I snatched it up and stuck it into his chest.”

  “Several times,” I said, looking down at the body.

  “He just wouldn’t die,” she said, that smile now fading as if she remembered the violence. “I just kept stabbing him over and over and over until he finally fell to the floor.”

  “So why involve us?” Kale asked them.

  “The idea came to me as I watched you both at the petrol station,” Morris started to explain. “Sarah had murdered her brother and both of us had fled in his car. It would only be a matter of time before his body was discovered on this remote farm. It might take weeks or months even, but his body would be found. The police would look for his family – for Sarah. When they discovered that she was living with an ex-con, it wouldn’t take Miss Marple long to figure out we had been involved in Clive’s death. But what were we to do? So as I filled up the car with petrol and Sarah hid on the backseat, I had an idea. What if the police found three bodies in this house? All of them unrecognisable because of fire. They would find Clive’s car and Sarah’s and my I.D. in the pockets of the coats we will later leave on the backseat of the car. Crashing the car into that tree was no mistake. The police will believe we crashed in the fog, staggered from the wreckage and came across this place. The gas and electric was shut off, so the three of us lit a fire in this room to keep warm and while we slept the fire got out of control. The smoke suffocated us as we slept, then the fire took us. The police won’t even bother coming to look for me and Sarah because they will believe us dead.” Then, rolling up his shirt, he showed us the gash in his stomach. It wasn’t very deep after all. “The cut was deliberate, just like the crash. The police will find blood out on the road. They will match the DNA to mine on their database. They will believe it was me who died in the fire. So I needed to get you two to this house. That’s why I drove you off the road and took your keys and locked your car. You would come looking for shelter or for the driver who had forced you into the ditch. I needed to lead you to the house, but not too quickly. Sarah had to get back first and make it look like she had been taken captive just like I told you she had. So I lay in the mud, pretending I was injured. When you came across me, I delayed you further by telling you my story – Clive’s story. And here we are.”

  Kale took a sudden step forward as if to grab Morris Cook. Sarah waved the knife at him and Kale stepped backwards, brushing up against the table.

  “Get back,” she hissed.

  “You really think we are going to just lie down and let you set fire to this room?” I said, staring at the both of them.

  “You won’t be able to get up,” Morris said, going to the table. He placed Kale’s car key down and picked up the bottle of tablets. He unscrewed the cap. “Sleeping pills. You will both be fast asleep when the fire takes you. You won’t feel a thing. And when the police discover your charred skeletons, you will look as if you had died in your sleep, not clawing at the windows as you fought for fresh air.”

  “You think you have it all figured out, don’t you?” Kale said.

  “Being in prison for twelve years gives you lots of time to think about stuff. You’d be amazed what you learn from other inmates,” Morris said, looking at Kale. “Open your hand.”

  Kale uncurled his fist and Morris dropped several of the white sleeping pills into his hand. “You too,” he snapped, looking at me.

  I opened my hand and he dropped the pills into my palm.

  He then snatched up the glass. “Swallow,” he ordered Kale.

  Kale glanced sideways at me. I could see the fear in his eyes.

  “Swallow!” Morris suddenly screeched.

  Both Kale and I flinched.

  Morris thrust the glass at Kale, water spilling from it and onto the floor. Kale placed the sleeping pills into his mouth. Then taking the glass, he washed them down with a large gulp of water. Suddenly, he bent forward, making a choking sound as if the tablets had got stuck in the back of his throat. He reached out with his hand, knocking the small wooden table over.

  Morris grabbed Kale by the collar of his coat, dragging him back into a standing position.” Have you swallowed them?” Morris demanded. “Let me look in your mouth.”

  Slowly, Kale opened his mouth wide and lifted his tongue to prove to Morris he had indeed swallowed the sleeping pills.

  “Now you!” Morris spat, thrusting the glass of water in my direction. Sarah stood, watching me over Morris’ shoulder.

  Hoping that I might be able to get them to see some reason in all the madness, I said, “You will never get away with this. Me and my friend are both police officers.”

  Both Morris’ and Sarah’s eyes grew suddenly wide. Not much, but enough not to go unnoticed by me.

  “You two are both coppers?” Morris scoffed, but there was now an uncertainty to his voice. “You’re nothing more than a couple of kids.”

  “Murder is one thing, but killing two police officers is something completely different,” I tried to warn him.

  “Prove it!” Sarah said, coming from behind Morris, the knife still in her hand.

  I reached into my pocket and fumbled for my warrant card and police badge.

  “Faster!” she barked at me, eyes wide. Could I see fear in them?

  I pulled out my warrant card and badge. Morris snatched it from my hand. He opened up the small black leather wallet and looked down at the photo I.D. and silver badge.

  “Police Constable November Lake,” he breathed.

  He raised his head and met my stare. Then, looking at Kale, he shot out his hand. Kale pulled his warrant card from his pocket. Morris snatched it from him. I couldn’t help but notice that Kale suddenly looked unsteady on his feet as he swayed forward, then backwards again. I knew we were fast running out of time.

  Morris closed the wallets, tucking them into his trouser pocket. “Do you think that being a couple of coppers makes a difference to me? I’m going to enjoy watching you burn even more. This doesn’t change a thing. There won’t be enough of you left for anyone to know if you were coppers or shopkeepers. Now take the sleeping pills. It’s your tu
rn, Constable Lake.”

  I looked down at the pills in the palm of my hand. I took the glass from Morris, then closing my eyes, I placed the pills into my mouth, took a gulp of water and swallowed hard.

  “Open your mouth,” I heard Morris hiss. “Let me see.”

  I looked at him, then opened my mouth.

  “Under the tongue. I want to see under your tongue,” he demanded.

  With my mouth open, I pressed the tip of my tongue against the roof of my mouth so he could see that I truly had swallowed the sleeping pills.

  “Good. Very good,” he smiled.

  Kale suddenly dropped to the floor and onto his side. The tablets were already beginning to affect him. He rolled over onto his back and tried to get back up. He looked like a punch-drunk boxer who had just been floored.

  “Stay down,” Sarah said, springing forward and wielding the knife.

  “Leave him alone!” I shouted at her.

  I was suddenly shoved from behind, and went sprawling down onto my hands and knees. “Shut your face!” Morris roared from behind me.

  I rolled onto my side and wrapped one arm around Kale, pulling him close. With my eyes closed and the fall and rise of Kale’s chest becoming slower and more laboured, I heard Morris and Sarah moving around in the room.

  “Hold this,” I heard Morris say.

  The sound of matches being struck, then another and another. The smell of burning wood wafting over me. Growing heat and choking smoke. I pressed my lips tight and tried not to breathe. How long could I hold my breath for? I could hear the crackle of flames as all other sounds began to fade around me. Even the darkness behind my eyelids grew darker somehow. The room was so warm – hot. It was like I was buried beneath a thick blanket on a cold night. The faintest sound of footsteps edging backwards toward the door. Was that Morris and Sarah leaving? Would that be the last sound I would ever hear? Even though my eyes were screwed shut, they stung at the rising and thickening smoke. The flames crackled so loudly now it was almost a roar. Then a sound – a sudden bang like the front door to the farmhouse being slammed shut. Had they gone? Was I still alive? Had the smoke taken me and…