Secret of the Skull (2 page)

‘And why were you following her?’

He sighed, reluctant to speak for a moment. ‘I think she’s turned to a life of crime. I think she’s been stealing credit cards.’

C
HAPTER
T
WO

‘A
ND WHAT MAKES YOU SAY THAT
?’
I asked.

‘A few days ago,’ said Skull, ‘I was clearing my homework off the dining room table, and I accidentally knocked Great Aunt Mirna’s handbag off the chair she’d left
it on. All her stuff spilled out across the floor. I was embarrassed, but there was nobody else around so I quickly gathered everything up and put it back in the handbag.’

‘But not before you’d noticed something odd?’ I suggested.

‘Right,’ replied Skull. ‘There were several credit cards in among everything else. I’m pretty sure Aunt Mirna doesn’t even have a bank account, not in this country,
let alone any credit cards. Besides, each card had a different name on it.’

‘What names? Anyone you know?’ I asked.

He thought for a moment. ‘Umm, I think one of them might have been . . . er, Robinson? I don’t know, I can’t remember.’

Great. No help at all. Thanks. ‘No problem,’ I said with a smile.

‘I was just worried about getting everything back in the bag, so nobody would notice,’ explained Skull.

‘But you’re sure that’s what you saw?’ I said. ‘You couldn’t have been mistaken?’

‘Yes and no. I mean, yes I’m sure, no I wasn’t mistaken.’

I huddled up in my blanket. It felt like the temperature in the shed was falling faster than a giant rock chucked off a cliff. I decided to gather the facts as quickly as possible.

‘Why would Aunt Mirna turn to crime?’ I asked.

‘Well, she has no money,’ said Skull, shrugging. ‘She’s got quite a bit coming, but it hasn’t turned up yet.’

‘Why is that? You said she didn’t have a bank account in this country? She’s been living abroad?’

‘Oh no, she’d never even been to the UK until nearly three months ago,’ said Skull. ‘She’s lived in Vojvladimia all her life.’

‘Veggie-where?’ I muttered.

‘Voj-vlad-eee-me-a,’ repeated Skull slowly.

I think I must have stared blankly at him. Either that or the cold had frozen my face.

‘In the Balkans?’ Skull went on. ‘Where my family comes from? Remember?’

I suddenly remembered. ‘Oh yeah! Sorry!’ I cried, going a bit red.

What I’d remembered was that Skull had stood up in class a couple of terms ago and told us about his family tree. We were doing a history project on ancestors. For most of the class,
research had turned up nothing terribly interesting, but not in Peter Skulyevic’s case.

For generations, the Skulyevic family had lived in the tiny Balkan province of Vojvladimia. (I had no idea where that was. I hadn’t wanted to say I had no idea where that was, so I had
quietly looked it up when I got home – according to my atlas, it’s a little crinkly rectangle on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, just opposite Italy. I really ought to pay more attention
during geography.)

About thirty-something years ago, there was a civil war in Vojvladimia and the government was taken over by the army. The guy in charge was a brutal dictator who started locking up anyone he
didn’t like. And if he
really
didn’t like them, he had them shot. Among the many, many people he disliked was Emerik Skulyevic, Peter’s granddad. Emerik was quite a
well-known poet, and had been very critical of the army.

Emerik managed to escape along with his seven-year-old son Antonin, Peter’s dad, by hiding in the back of a truck that was leaving the country. On the way, the truck drove through a
military camp filled with soldiers who would have killed the pair of them on sight if they’d been caught.

Emerik and young Antonin arrived as refugees in the UK a few months later. From that point on, Emerik campaigned against the dictator and also continued to be quite a well-known poet. Five years
ago, the military government in Vojvladimia was finally overthrown. Freedom returned and everyone who’d been locked up was released.

Peter’s granddad intended to return to his homeland at once, but he needed a hip operation and couldn’t travel until he was fully recovered. Sadly, he died before he could make the
trip and see Vojvladimia again.

As Peter had finished his story, standing at the front of the classroom, there was absolute silence. Mrs Penzler, our form tutor, had dabbed her eyes with a tissue.

‘Did he not make it through the operation, Peter?’ she’d asked softly.

‘Yes, but he got run over by an ambulance on the way out of the hospital,’ Peter had told us. ‘Sad, really. His new hip was so good he was walking faster than he’d done
in years.’

‘Oh,’ Mrs Penzler had said. She’d turned to the class. ‘Any questions?’

Almost everyone had put up their hand. The girls had wanted to hear some of Emerik’s poetry. The boys had wanted to know how many people the army had shot.

Meanwhile, back in my freezing cold shed, Skull continued.

‘After Vojvladimia was freed, my dad often wondered what had become of Granddad’s sister, Mirna. Dad really didn’t remember her, it was too long ago, but she would have been
the only other member of the Skulyevic family still alive. She’d been arrested by the army before Emerik could escape. Throughout the dictatorship there was very little information allowed in
or out of the country, and Emerik never heard from her again. So you can imagine how overjoyed Dad was when she called us, out of the blue, a few months ago.’

‘I have to ask this,’ I said. ‘You’re sure it was really her?’

Skull nodded. ‘We all asked exactly the same thing. But there’s no doubt. She’s got her passport, and various odds and ends from years ago, and she definitely recognised Dad
from when he was a boy. Mirna is definitely Mirna. She’s, er, what’s the phrase . . . quite a character.’

‘Which is what adults say when they mean “a right pain in the backside”,’ I translated.

Skull pulled a kind of yeah-hmm-oh-well face. ‘She’s loads of fun, always making us laugh. But she’s a bit . . . dippy. She found some varnish in the cupboard under the stairs
and painted the kitchen walls with it. And she keeps phoning all the neighbours and having street parties at eleven o’clock at night. Dad says we’ve all got to remember that she spent
years locked up by the military. She’s bound to be a bit eccentric.’

‘And she lives with you now?’ I said.

Yeah-hmm-oh-well-face. ‘When she turned up in person, nine weeks ago, she said she was staying for a few days and would be off on her travels again. She’s decided to see the world,
you see, enjoy her freedom after being imprisoned for so long.’

‘Good for her. But . . . ?’

‘But she’s still sleeping in the spare room. She got to the UK by doing odd jobs and spending her earnings on train tickets. But she’s got no money at all at the moment.
She’s waiting for some bank in Vojvladimia to forward her a load of cash it’s been holding. I don’t quite understand the details of it. There’s some sort of
mix-up.’

‘Could she borrow some money?’

‘Mum and Dad have offered to lend her some, but she won’t take it. Which is kind of a relief, because we haven’t got any spare anyway. She keeps saying she wants to send us on
holiday as soon as her money comes through. A few weeks ago, Dad happened to mention that we hadn’t been able to afford our usual week at the seaside for a couple of years, so Mirna’s
insisting she pay. She says we’re her only family, and she wants to repay us for welcoming her and letting her stay and all that.’

‘What do your mum and dad think about that?’ I asked.

‘To be perfectly honest,’ sighed Skull, ‘Mum’s counting the minutes till the money arrives and Mirna can be off on her travels again. Dad thinks much the same, but he
won’t say so. As far as he’s concerned, she’s his last relative, his last link back to Vojvladimia, so although she’s a bit of a handful, he likes having her around. I mean,
we’re all very fond of her, it’s just that . . .’

‘She’s a bit of a handful,’ I said. ‘And now there’s this business with the credit cards.’

‘Exactly,’ said Skull. He shifted forward in the chair. In the shed’s icy chill, our breath puffed like balls of steam. ‘I’m really worried she’s getting into
trouble. I think she’s stealing because she’s got no money. I think all those years locked up have taken their toll on her.’

‘Do you have any other leads to follow?’ I asked. ‘When you followed her earlier today, where did she go?’

‘I’ve kept a close eye on her for days,’ said Skull. ‘But she’s done nothing suspicious. This morning, she said she was going to visit this lady she’s got
friendly with from the Post Office who lives in Doyle Avenue. And that’s what she did! Straight to number eighteen, stayed for forty-five minutes and straight home again. Then I came here to
see you.’

‘You can stop worrying,’ I declared, ‘Saxby Smart is on the case! I think the first thing for me to do is to meet Great Aunt Mirna myself. I’ll come over to your house
after school tomorrow.’

‘Thanks,’ said Skull with a smile. Well, a broader smile than the one he always had.

I put my case notes away in my filing cabinet and we made our way out of the shed. Skull paused at the garden gate which leads on to the alleyway behind the houses.

‘By the way,’ he said, ‘if Mirna
has
turned to a life of crime, if she
has
been stealing credit cards . . . you won’t tell the police, will you? I mean, I
just want her to stop. You know, see the error of her ways. We’d all be horrified if she ended up being arrested in this country, too! Especially Dad.’

At first, I wasn’t sure what to say. In the end, what I did say was: ‘You mean, you want me to turn a blind eye if she’s guilty?’

‘Yes.’

What?
What?

‘Er, I see,’ I muttered. ‘Let’s, um, let’s hope she’s innocent . . .’

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

T
HE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON
, M
ONDAY
, Skull and I walked back to his house after school. Although his
street was only a short walk from my own, the houses were very different. They were sort of boxish and arranged in pairs, two separate homes forming one chunky building. They had tall roofs and
regularly-spaced windows, which made them look rather toy-like, as if some giant kid had clicked them all together to make a play road.

Skull’s house was towards the far end of the street. Unlike most of the neighbouring houses, his had a small porch built on to the front. There was also a garage attached to the side,
which I guessed was a fairly recent addition. Its shallow-sloped roof made it look like that giant kid had been in a hurry and left it leaning against the main bulk of the house.

Skull’s dad was cooking the tea, his mum was still at her desk in the dining room. (Both Skull’s parents worked from home, after having been made redundant from other jobs the
previous year.) Great Aunt Mirna was sitting in the living room, flicking through a hefty catalogue from a DIY store.

‘Sledgehammers . . . sledgehammers . . .’ she muttered to herself as she whipped pages aside. ‘Chain saws, no . . . Cement mixers, no . . .’

‘What do you want a sledgehammer for?’ said Skull.

Mirna grinned up at him. She had a round, wrinkly face with owlish glasses. Her dark hair, silver at the roots where she hadn’t dyed it for a while, was pinned up in a bun. ‘Your
father’s going to get rid of this hideous fireplace,’ she said brightly. Her East European accent was very broad, but her English was excellent. ‘This room always did look better
without it. Nobody around here has one of these hideous things in their lounge any more!’

She was right, the fireplace was indeed hideous. It was one of those thick, lumpy stone things you see in places which haven’t been redecorated since about 1985. It was a total fake as
well – the house had no chimney, the wall where the fireplace stood backed on to the garage!