November Lake: Teenage Detective (The November Lake Mysteries) Book 1 (8 page)

“
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…

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 hoped 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.”