November Lake: Teenage Detective (The November Lake Mysteries) Book 1 Read Online Free Page A

grabbed for me. I could feel his bare flesh against me.
He was wearing only a pair of pyjama bottoms and his hair was a
mess like he had just crawled out of bed. I pushed him off me. I
knew I was in trouble. I knew he would hurt me. So I reached down
and grabbed for my belt. I fumbled for my handcuffs, but plucked up
my torch instead. He came at me and I managed to duck under his
arm. With his back to me, I struck him about the head with the base
of my torch. He collapsed face first onto my bed. I panicked. I
didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t breathing – he was dead. I was a
police officer and I had killed a man. I couldn’t bear to look at
him, so I covered his body with my duvet.
    “ My scream had obviously drawn attention as I heard Constable
Creed’s door open across the landing. I knew that I couldn’t escape
via the door for fear of being seen by him. Throwing on some
clothes and my boots, I tried to open my bedroom window and escape,
but in my fear and confusion, I was unable to release the lock. The
window appeared to be jammed. With the torch still in my hand, I
smashed the window with it. But the glass was jagged and as I heard
you point out yourself, I would have cut myself to ribbons if I’d
tried to escape out of the window.
    “ Creed was now hollering and thumping on my bedroom door so
violently that I dropped the torch with fright. I felt like a
trapped animal, and none of it was my fault. It was then, I
remembered the hatch. I jumped up, but I couldn’t reach it. With
Kale now beating down my bedroom door, I placed the armchair
beneath the hole and climbed up into the loft. I slid the hatch
into place, just as Kale came bursting into my room. But I was
still trapped. I couldn’t move an inch for fear of you both
discovering me. As I hid in the darkness, I listened to you slowly
figure out what had happened. You came close to discovering the
truth, November Lake,” Anne said.
    I now
realised and regretted the mistake I had made. Why hadn’t I made a
closer inspection of the body? I had seen Griffin’s collar length
blonde hair and the outline of his slender frame beneath the duvet
and had surmised that it was Constable Short who was lying dead,
face down on the bed, for she too had short blonde hair and a slim
figure. Had I been too eager to prove my theories right to Kale or
had I just been blind?
    “ I wasn’t close enough,” I said, looking through the rain at
Anne.
    The rain
ran like tears down the length of both our ashen and cold faces.
Anne took another step closer. “Please let me get away from here,”
she pleaded over the howl of the wind.
    My heart
ached for her. There was a part of me that wanted to let her run –
to get away. After all Griffin would still be alive now if he
hadn’t crept from his room and into hers. But I wasn’t a judge or a
jury. It wasn’t my place to decide who was right, who was wrong and
whoever should be punished. I was a police officer. I investigated
crime and put the facts before the courts. It was for them to
decide, not me.
    With my
heart feeling as if it were breaking in my chest, I looked at her
and said, “I can’t let you go, Anne.”
    “ Why not?” she said.
    “ Because you killed Constable Griffin,” I said back, tightening
my fingers again around the handcuffs.
    “ 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