November Lake: Teenage Detective (The November Lake Mysteries) Book 1 Page 6

  I sprang to my feet. I couldn’t hold my breath any longer. I drew in a choking throat full of smoke-filled air. My lungs felt like they had been set on fire. Tears streamed from my eyes. I spun around in the room. The flames lapped at the heels of my boots. I looked around and could see fire crawling over the door, flames like greedy, glowing fingers. Placing one hand over my mouth, I reached down and pulled at Kale’s coat. He groaned like a drunk. He was near unconsciousness. Taking the hanky, I had earlier used to clear the mist off the windscreen in the car, I wrapped it around the lower half of my face. Looking like some kind of bandit, I reached down and dragged Kale up into my arms.

  “Kale, get to your feet!” I roared in his ears.

  He coughed and spluttered against me, a thick, white drool running from the corner of his mouth. With him collapsing in my arms again, I dragged Kale across the smoke-flamed filled room toward the door. The floorboards broke in places beneath my feet. I looked up to see fire crawling all over Clive’s corpse. I looked away and heaved Kale the last few feet to the door and out onto the landing. Clouds of thick, hot smoke chased after me. Choking, I dragged Kale down the stairs and into the hallway.

  “C’mon,” I willed myself. I looked back over my shoulder. The front door was within touching distance, but so were the flames that now rushed down the stairs and spread along the walls of the hallway. With one arm tucked under Kale’s, and screaming out loud, I carried on toward the door. With him propped against me, I fumbled for the lock in the blinding hot smoke. My fingertips brushed over it. I yanked the door open and was hit like a slap in the face by the cold night air that rushed in at me. I pulled off the hanky from over my mouth and nose and gasped in lungfuls of the fresh night air. Nothing had ever felt so good. The fog had lifted and the sun was rising over the moors in the distance like a bloodshot eye. Dropping to my knees on the path, I dragged Kale along it and into the field. Both of us lay on our backs in the mud. I clawed myself up, and back onto my knees. Kale’s face was black with soot and smoke.

  “Breathe!” I roared at him.

  Nothing.

  Leaning over him, I opened his mouth and tilted back his head. Then pressing my lips over his, I blew three deep breaths down into his lungs. At once he started to cough and splutter. He rolled onto his side, more of that white drool coming from his mouth as he vomited up smoke and what was left of the sleeping pills he had taken. He panted like a tired dog as he drew deep breaths into his lungs.

  With some colour coming back into his lips and cheeks, his eyes flickered open. He stared up as I knelt beside him. “How come you didn’t pass out like me?” he whispered over the roar of the burning farmhouse. “You took those sleeping tablets, too. I saw you swallow them.”

  I reached into my coat pocket and curled my fingers around the sleeping pills. Taking them out, I opened my hand and showed Kale the pills that now sat in my palm.

  He blinked. “But I saw you take them.” His voice seemed to rattle in the back of his throat as he still gasped in breath.

  “You saw me eat a handful of those mints you gave me earlier.” I smiled down at him. “I swapped them for the pills when I reached inside my coat pocket for my police badge.”

  Kale dropped his head back down into the mud and began to chuckle, then gasped for more breath. “You’re one in a million, November Lake.”

  “I just had to hope that if I laid still for long enough, Morris and Sarah would think I’d fallen unconscious,” I said. “That they didn’t hang around long enough to watch the room completely burn down. But I guessed that they wouldn’t want to hang around. Fire draws attention, even in a remote place like this. And now that the fog has cleared and the sun is almost up, it won’t be long before the smoke is seen by someone. But by then, I fear that Morris and Sarah will be miles away.”

  “How do you work that out?” Kale asked, his eyes still closed as he lay on his back, chest hitching up and down.

  “I know he crashed Clive’s car, but he has the keys to yours, remember?” I said. “They will use that to get away in, and then dump it.”

  Slowly, Kale reached into his pocket. There was a jingling sound as he pulled out his car key. “You don’t think I knocked that table over by accident, do you? I saw Morris place them down on it. So I knocked the table over and when I dropped to the floor, I snatched the keys up and hid them in my pocket. Morris and his girlfriend won’t be going anywhere real quick,” he said, a faint smile on his pale lips.

  Smiling at his cunning, I lay on my back next to him in the mud and said, “I think we make a great team, me and you.”

  I looked up into the sky at the first rays of sunlight. The smoke had been seen quicker than I thought, as in the distance I could just make out the faint sound of approaching sirens.

  “There’s just one thing I wanted to ask before unconsciousness takes me again,” Kale croaked.

  “What’s that?” I asked, watching the clouds drift over the rising sun.

  “How did you know as soon as we stepped into the room that it was a trap?” he whispered.

  “I saw a pair of wellies by the front door and they were covered in mud,” I started to explain. “Someone had recently taken them off. They were too big to be worn by a woman, so I thought perhaps they belonged to Morris and he had returned to the farmhouse. Then when we got to the room and I saw Clive lying on the floor stabbed and wearing no shoes but just socks, I knew that they must have belonged to him. He had taken them off at the door so as not to spread mud throughout the house. So who was the man lying dead on the floor? It couldn’t have been Clive because at that time we believed he was waiting outside for us. So who was the dead man? Morris? But who could have killed him? Not the girl, as she was tied to the chair. But when I looked at her, I knew it was she who had killed the man on the floor. But who had gagged her, tied her to the chair? She had done it herself. As Sarah gasped, pretending that she was somehow choking, I couldn’t help but notice how she sucked part of the gag into her mouth as she breathed in. This suggested the gag hadn’t been secured tightly. The rope that secured her hands behind the chair hung loosely against the floor. What kidnapper would leave their victim so loosely bound? But it wasn’t just that. Her trainers were covered in fresh mud, as were the hems of her jeans. How so if she had been held hostage in that room for the last few days? No, she had recently been out walking in the mud. But the large flecks of mud on the legs of her jeans suggested that in fact she had been running. Running from who and to where? I guessed that Sarah had run back to the room, where she hastily secured herself to make it look like she was being held captive. But why? To set a trap, of course. It’s pretty straight forward when you think about it,” I said, turning my head to look at Kale.

  His eyes were closed and he was snoring gently. Had he heard a word of what I had said to him? Probably not.

  I smiled to myself, and looking back up at the rising autumn sun, I waited for the sound of those approaching sirens to grow ever closer.

  The Menacing Stranger

  “Someone had cut the dog’s head clean off,” Wendy Creswell said. “I had never seen so much blood. It was terrifying.”

  Wendy Creswell sat opposite me in my poky upstairs apartment. Kale sat in the chair beside me. We glanced at each other, then back at Wendy. She sat on the very edge of the threadbare chair, her face pale and thin hands folded in her lap. Her visit to my apartment had been a total surprise. I had never laid eyes on her before she rang my doorbell just half an hour ago. She was a complete stranger to me. But Wendy wasn’t the only visitor to have surprised me that morning. I hadn’t been up and out of bed long, only long enough to shower, scrape my hair into a ponytail, throw on an old pair of jeans and sweater. Munching on the corner of a slice of toast, I had been standing in the middle of my small living room, staring down at the mountain of newspapers that had reported on my father’s murder.

  DEAD COP! COP KILLER! HERO COP IS SLAINE ON DUTY! I was morbidly fascinated by each of them, because I h
oped that a clue to the identity of my father’s killer might be hidden amongst the newspaper reports. Chewing on the last corner of the toast, my doorbell rang. I glanced at my watch and could see that it was yet 9 a.m. Who could be calling so early on a Saturday morning? I went to the window and glanced down at the street below. The sky was overcast and it was raining. Kale was standing at my door, the collar of his coat pulled up against the wind and rain. What could he want? Police training school had broken yesterday for Halloween. Kale had said that he was going to his parents’. I had still yet to meet them. My previous attempt to do so had resulted in us being caught up in what Kale liked to now call The Mystery of The Blackwater Farm kidnapper. Instead of staying at his parents’ in their remote holiday cottage in the Peak District and cramming for our upcoming police exam, Kale had spent the weekend having sleeping pills pumped from his stomach and smoke from his lungs. The following Monday morning we had both sat through our first police exam, which we had needed to pass if we weren’t to be back-coursed five weeks. It was with some nervousness that we awaited our results. Together we had been summoned to our trainer’s office. Sergeant Black sat behind his desk, our test results on the table before him. With a grim look on his face, he handed them to us. I looked down at my score, and then sideways at Kale and the piece of paper he was holding in his hands. Both of us had passed, but only just.

  “I had been expecting more from two of my brightest students,” Sergeant Black said, sounding disappointed.

  “We passed, didn’t we?” Kale said, glancing up.

  Black, in his crisp white shirt and striped epilates gleaming brightly on each shoulder, looked at Kale, his blue eyes pale and watery-looking. “This time, but those scores aren’t anything to be proud of. Do you want to be back-coursed five weeks and start all over again?”

  “No,” Kale said, dropping his head, some of the cockiness leaving him.

  Feeling I should explain somehow, I looked across the desk at Sergeant Black and said, “We had planned on studying, but…”

  “Don’t remind me about what you two got up to at that farmhouse,” Sergeant Black, said referring to what had taken place at Blackwater Farm and Morris Cook. “You could’ve both got killed.”

  “We were just trying to solve a crime,” Kale said. “I thought that’s what coppers did?”

  “Wind your neck in, Creed,” Black shot back. “You’re a probationer. And that means you’re on probation. I can kick you out of here anytime I like.”

  Kale lowered his gaze again.

  “We were just trying to help, that’s all,” I said softly, trying to diffuse the growing tension in the sergeant’s office.

  “It would have been a lot more help if you had called into the control room and got yourselves some backup before you both went charging in.”

  “We did try, but we couldn’t get a phone signal…” I started.

  “I’ve heard all of this before during the debrief, and I’m not going over it again with you,” Black said. “Just stop sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong until you pass out of this place. Despite what you two think, you don’t know every goddamn thing in the rule book. You’re both still learning. So listen up, and keep your heads down in the books. Stop trying to run before you can walk. Sure, you are both really switched on, but you both still have a lot to learn. Don’t ruin what could be promising careers before you even start.”

  Both of us stood, heads down and feeling totally admonished by him.

  “Have a long think about what I’ve just said over the Halloween break,” Black said. “And no more running around like a couple of loose cannons. Keep yourselves out of trouble.”

  So with Sergeant Black’s warning ringing in my ears, I went downstairs and opened the front door to Kale. A blast of cold air blew into the hallway as I opened the door. I wrapped my arms about me and shivered. “Hey, Kale, what are you doing here? I thought you were going away for the week to see your parents.”

  “They’ve gone out of town for the week,” he said, brushing past me and into the hall. He shook rain from his coat. “I don’t want to spend the week rattling around that old farmhouse on my own – I’d be bored out of my brains. Besides, I’ve got something to tell you I think you might be interested in hearing.”

  He started to make his way up the staircase to my apartment.

  “What are you talking about?” I called after him.

  “I’ve got another mystery for us to solve.” He grinned back over his shoulder at me.

  “A mystery?” I sighed, my heart sinking. I followed him up the stairs. “Sergeant Black warned us not to…”

  “Whoa!” Kale suddenly breathed, stepping into my room.

  I walked in behind him and closed the door. He was standing in the middle of the living room and staring at the piles of newspapers covering the floor. Although Kale and I had become friends at training school, this was the first time he had been to my rented room.

  “What’s with all the newspapers?” he whispered, taking a step forward and inspecting some of them. It only took him a moment to realise they all told the stories of a police officer who had been murdered. He glanced back over his shoulder at me. “This has something to do with your father, doesn’t it?”

  Not wanting to discuss my mountainous collection of newspapers with him, I placed my hands on my hips and said, “What are you doing here, Kale?”

  “Fancy solving another mystery?” he grinned, dropping down into the chair by the window and propping his feet up on the coffee table.

  “Fancy getting yourself thrown out of police training school?” I said, slapping his feet from off the table. “And that’s my chair, get out.”

  I loved that particular chair. It was as worn and threadbare as the two others in my room, but it was positioned by the window. I liked to sit in the silence and stare out of the window and down onto the street. I liked watching the people that happened to walk past. I liked to see them. With a roguish grin on his handsome face, Kale sprang out of the chair and dropped into another. He looked at me, his skewwhiff hair looking as if he had just climbed out of bed.

  “What?” he grinned up at me as I stood glaring down at him.

  “I just don’t believe you, Kale,” I scowled. “Have you forgotten what Sergeant Black said to us yesterday?”

  “Yeah,” he said, stretching out in the chair and crossing his feet at the ankles. “We’re meant to be keeping ourselves out of trouble.”

  “He also said we’re to leave any crime solving until we’ve passed out of training school.”

  “This isn’t a crime,” Kale said, looking at me. “Or at least I don’t think it is.”

  “You said it’s some kind of mystery,” I reminded him.

  “Okay, so I exaggerated a bit,” he shrugged.

  “So if it’s not a mystery, what is it then?” I asked.

  “See, you just can’t help yourself,” he chuckled. “And that’s what I love about you, November Lake. However much you try and pretend you’re not interested, the mention of the word mystery and you’re buzzing with excitement.”

  “That’s not true,” I said, although I knew it was. Part of me wanted to tell Kale I wasn’t interested, but another part of me was desperate to know what had brought him to my door so early on a Saturday morning.

  “Go on, admit it, you do want to know,” he teased with a smile.

  Throwing myself down into my chair by the window, and feeling angry with myself for what I was about to say, I said, “Go on, then, tell me.”

  “It has something to do with a missing dog,” he said, sitting forward in his chair, blue eyes sparkling.

  “You’re kidding me, right?” I sighed.

  “No, listen, you don’t understand,” he said, unable to contain the evident excitement brimming inside him. “I met this woman last night and…”

  “Are you sure you want to be telling me this?” I cut in.

  “It’s not what you think,” he said with a shake of hi
s head. “After training school finished yesterday, and just wanting to flake out on the sofa in front of the TV for the night, I went to McDonald’s for my tea to save myself the hassle of cooking. Anyway, I was sitting there working my way through my second cheeseburger when I looked up and noticed this woman. She could’ve only been in her mid-twenties and real pretty. But it wasn’t her prettiness that caught my eye.”

  “What then?” I asked, already intrigued.

  “She was sitting all on her own, hands clasping a cup of tea and crying,” Kale said. “I had never seen anyone look so sad. But as I sat and watched her, I realised that it was more than just sadness I could see on her face; it was fear. This lady was scared. So finishing off the cheeseburger, I took my coffee and went over to her table. I asked if she was okay. She looked so startled by my sudden presence that I flashed her my badge and explained I was a police officer. I asked if there was anything I could do to help.

  “‘The dog,’ she sobbed, bringing one hand up to her eyes as if to mask her tears.

  “‘What dog?’ I asked her.

  “‘Gone,’ she whispered.

  “I guessed she meant that she had lost her dog and that’s why she was so upset,” Kale said. “But there was more to it than that. Like I said, she seemed really scared.”

  “What else did she say?” I asked Kale.

  “Not much, she continued to sit and cry. Again I explained that I was a police officer and could help her. I took one of my I.D. cards out with my number on it and handed it to her. She took it. Before I’d had the chance to explain that if she changed her mind and wanted to call me to report her missing dog, she jumped and fled into the night.”