November Lake: Teenage Detective (The November Lake Mysteries) Book 1 (4 page)

“
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.