Secret of the Skull (3 page)

‘Aunt Mirna,’ protested Skull, ‘Dad built that fireplace himself. I’m sure he’s never even mentioned it to you, let alone said he wanted it gone.’

Mirna frowned to herself, letting the catalogue on her knees close with a slap. ‘Well, he definitely said he wanted
something
gone,’ she said.

Skull shot me a let’s-change-the-subject look. ‘This is my friend Saxby,’ he said.

‘Hello,’ said Aunt Mirna, giving me a firm handshake. ‘Nice to meet you, Saxby. That’s a very unusual name.’

‘It’s medieval, apparently,’ I said with a smile. ‘I’ve been hearing all about the Skulyevic family history. I expect it’s wonderful to have found Skull, er,
I mean, Peter here and his mum and dad after all this time.’

Mirna sat back in her armchair with a soppy expression on her face. Her spindly hands grasped one of Skull’s, and she patted it gently as she spoke.

‘Thoughts of my family are what kept me going,’ she said, ‘through the dark years of military rule in my country. In a strange way, I suffered much less than a lot of people in
Vojvladimia. I wasn’t mistreated in that prison and at least I was fed. Plenty can’t even say that. My only regret is that I’m here too late to see my brother Emerik again. I did
miss him, all those years. But at least we still have his work, we have his poetry.’

‘Yes,’ said Skull. He turned to me. ‘Have you read any of my granddad’s poems?’

‘Actually, no. But I’d like to,’ I said. To be perfectly honest, I was only being polite. I’ve never been much of a poetry fan. There are a couple of limericks I like,
but that’s my limit, really.

Skull and Great Aunt Mirna bustled over to the bookshelves and started taking down armfuls of slightly faded little hardbacks. As I watched them, reluctantly I had to marvel at Mirna. She had
obviously settled into the Skulyevic household as comfortably as if she really was one of the family.

She
might
have been Mirna Skulyevic. But I was having doubts. She
might
have been telling the truth about her past. But I had reason to believe that there was something sinister
going on here. Something that went way beyond any stolen credit cards.

Have you spotted why I was suspicious? There was a mismatch between what ‘Mirna’ had said, and what Skull had told me back in the shed. She
might
have made a simple slip of
the tongue, but her English was otherwise perfect. I was on my guard.

Can you work out what was troubling me?

The day before, Skull had told me that Mirna had never left Vojvladimia until a few weeks ago. OK. So, why did she say, referring to the hideous fireplace, ‘This room
always did look better without it’?

When exactly could she possibly have seen this room before? She’d been out of touch with the family for years, she can’t even have seen photos or been told about it.

As I said just now, it
might
have been a slip of the tongue, but it seemed unlikely when her command of English was so good. Besides, she also said that ‘Nobody around here has one
of these hideous things in their lounge any more’. An odd thing to know, if you’ve never even visited the country before. Besides, she also said ‘That’s a very unusual
name’. I suppose if she’d studied English, she’d have an idea of what sort of names were common or not in the UK, but on top of everything else, I couldn’t help feeling it
was a suspiciously precise thing to say.

Skull handed me one of the books they’d gathered up. It was a slim, slightly dusty volume, a bit dog-eared at the corners. While Skull and Mirna eyed me eagerly, I opened the book at
random and read aloud the first poem that caught my eye. It began:

I Ahad to stop there. I’m no judge of good poetry but I was pretty sure I’d never heard such a load of old rubbish in all my life. Maybe it lost something in translation into
English. Or maybe not.

‘Beautiful,’ muttered Mirna. ‘Emerik had such a lyrical turn of phrase.’

‘It’s good, isn’t it?’ said Skull. ‘My granddad’s still Vojvladimia’s greatest-ever poet.’

Good grief.

‘Emerik’s poems are so powerfully rich in symbols and meaning,’ said Mirna, her eyes shining with pride.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘they’re very, er . . . moving.’

Fortunately, tea was ready at that exact moment, so we all went to eat. Unfortunately, Mirna and Skull kept reading out sections of Emerik Skulyevic’s poetry all through the meal. Soon,
Skull’s mum and dad were joining in and reciting stuff from memory. There was a weird little verse about zebras and an even weirder little verse about telephones made out of cheese, or
something like that. I was trying not to listen – it nearly put me off my food.

A little while later, as I was zipping up my coat and pulling on my woolly hat before heading home in the freezing cold, I managed to have a quiet word with Skull in the narrow hallway which led
to the front door.

‘Whatever you do,’ I whispered, ‘don’t take any further action. You don’t need to keep tabs on what Mirna is up to or anything like that.’

I was careful to make sure I said nothing about my suspicions. I needed to establish the truth before making any accusations. If I was right, it was vitally important that Skull did nothing to
alert Mirna to the possibility that her cover was blown.

‘You think she’s innocent, then?’ hissed Skull hopefully.

‘I think it’s absolutely essential that you do nothing,’ I whispered. ‘Leave it to me. Understood?’

‘Aye, aye,’ whispered Skull, doing a miniature salute.

The doorbell rang. It turned out to be a delivery man from SuperSave, with a week’s worth of groceries.

‘My parents get everything online,’ tutted Skull, as the delivery man hefted boxes into the kitchen. ‘They don’t go anywhere from one week to the next. Too busy working.
I swear they’d never leave the house if they had the choice. Oh, by the way, before you go, I thought you might like to borrow this.’

He handed me the volume of Emerik Skulyevic’s poetry we’d been looking at before tea. ‘You seemed so keen on my granddad’s work, I thought you might like to read more of
it.’

‘That’s . . . very kind of you,’ I said weakly, as I took it from him. ‘I’ll, um, look forward to it.’

When I got home, I phoned my great friend Isobel ‘Izzy’ Moustique, St Egbert’s School’s top brainiac and all-round Information Guru. I told her all about the Skulyevic
situation and asked her to dig up whatever research might be relevant.

After that, I went and huddled up in my Thinking Chair, wrapped in the chunkiest blanket I could find. It seemed that there was much more to this case than there’d first appeared. Whatever
was going on, it went way beyond a few stolen credit cards.

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

S
S-PLOPP
! A
QUIVERING DOLLOP OF
what looked like scrambled egg landed on my plate.

‘Sorry,’ I said to the rock-faced dinner lady, giving her my nicest smile. ‘Um, I asked for the vegetable pie?’

The rock-faced dinner lady glared at me. ‘That
is
the vegetable pie,’ she grumbled.

‘Thanks very much, looks delicious,’ I said quickly. I hurried away from the lunch queue and found somewhere to sit.

It was the day following my visit to Skull’s house, and as Skull and I were in different groups for most subjects, I hadn’t yet seen him to make sure he was doing as he was told
– leaving the whole Mirna situation well alone.

As I was beginning to prod the vegetable pie with a fork and worrying that it might start prodding me back, I was joined by Izzy. We swapped notes for a couple of minutes about how aaaawwwful
the history supply teacher was. Izzy flipped open her sandwich box and started nibbling at an exotic-looking wholemeal wrap filled with interesting sauces.

‘That looks nice,’ I said, hungrily.

‘It is,’ she said.

‘Got a spare one?’

‘No.’

I went back to prodding the pie. ‘Did you find out anything after I called last night?’

‘Yes, I certainly did!’ declared Izzy. She dusted crumbs from her fingers and pulled a folder from her school bag. ‘Although I have a feeling you may already know most of
it.’

‘Never mind, let’s hear what you’ve got,’ I said, chancing a sniff at the pie. Smelled OK, actually.

Izzy flipped a few sheets out of the folder. ‘You’ve heard of the Minkstreet and Batt bullion robbery?’

If I’d dared to start eating any of that pie, I’d now have spluttered it back out again. ‘You bet I have!’ I cried. ‘Third biggest robbery of gold bars in English
criminal history! A bunch of crooks got away with about thirty million pounds’ worth, if I remember right?’

Izzy consulted her print-outs. ‘Thirty-two and a half million,’ she said, nodding. ‘The Minkstreet and Batt Investment Bank was reckoned to have the most secure underground
vault in London. The thieves burned their way through the door.’

‘That’s going back a while, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Wasn’t it about forty years ago?’

Izzy consulted her print-outs again. ‘Forty-one,’ she said.

I screwed up my face trying to recall the details of the case. (Note to self: one day, put together a proper encyclopedia-type book on all these old real-life investigations! Sherlock Holmes
kept saying he’d do it, and he never did! Don’t make the same mistake!)

‘They were all caught,’ I said. ‘It took several weeks, and the gang had split up the gold and gone their separate ways, but they were all tracked down in the end. What was the
name of the leader? She was a
really
nasty piece of work.’

Izzy read from her notes. ‘Elsa Moreaux. Half French, half German. You’re right, she had a long list of convictions for various violent armed robberies, starting from when she was
just nineteen. Once she was locked up, she quickly got a reputation as the prison’s toughest and most intimidating inmate.’

Izzy slipped a sheet of paper over to me. Among all the data was a photo of Elsa Moreaux, taken in a police station. It showed a young woman with fair hair, holding up a prisoner number and
scowling at the camera in a way which would make even a rock-faced dinner lady dive for cover.

‘That’s the only known picture of her,’ said Izzy, ‘taken thirty-eight years ago. According to several sources, she was unchained for two minutes while they took that
shot, and in that time she managed to knock out four guards and badly injure another three. And break the camera. Very dangerous lady.’

‘She looks it,’ I whistled. ‘Am I right in thinking they never recovered her share of the gold? Worth about seven or eight million pounds?’

‘Correct,’ said Izzy. ‘All the rest was traced, but hers has never been found.’

‘Must be worth several million more in today’s money,’ I muttered to myself.

‘Now then,’ said Izzy, leaning over the table. ‘I’ve dug up a couple of facts about her you may
not
know.’ For a moment, I thought she was about to do her
slightly smug eyebrow-raising thing (which always happens when she thinks she’s proving she’s cleverer than I am! Huh!) But she didn’t. This was obviously serious stuff
she’d discovered.

‘Fact number one,’ she continued, ‘Elsa Moreaux was finally released from prison just over a year ago. The police kept a twenty-four hour watch on her from that moment
on.’

‘Why? Because of the missing gold?’