4 Death at the Happiness Club by Cecilia Peartree Read Free Book Online

entering into the spirit of the thing. He looked up at the sky. All the clouds had disappeared, and all he could see was blue in all directions. It was a perfect day.
    They sat on the grass sipping their coffee and watching as the fire gradually died down. Caroline crunched the half-roll she had managed to toast, or at least warm up, by holding it in front of the flames on a stick. Christopher half-closed his eyes.
    Three sounds came quickly, one after the other.
    A loud bang that echoed round the rocks.
    A yelp from Caroline.
    A man's voice, shouting.
    ‘Help! I’ve been shot!’ cried Caroline.
    ‘Don’t be silly, of course you haven’t – let me have a look,’ said Christopher. She was still sitting up, at least, so it couldn’t be that bad. But she clutched one ankle and moaned. And it had sounded like a gunshot, taking Christopher back on an unpleasant mental trip to the time Amaryllis had been shot at the old railway yard and he had saved her life. Or at least so he liked to think. Maybe she had other ideas.
    He went to have a closer look at Caroline’s ankle. It was slightly grazed, with a tiny trace of blood trickling down into her sock. Definitely not a gunshot wound. It was more like a scratch. He looked for something sharp that could have caused it: there were lots of sharp-looking stones and rocks about. Maybe she had knocked it against something, starting up when she heard the bang.
    ‘Oi!’ came the man’s voice again. Christopher glanced up. There was a figure at the top of the rocks leading to the promontory. It was hard to be sure since it was silhouetted against the sky, but it looked very much as if –
    ‘Come on, we’ve got to get out of here!’ he said urgently to Caroline.
    ‘I can’t move – it hurts!’ she moaned.
    ‘I think he’s got a gun,’ muttered Christopher, dragging her to her feet and trying to grab the backpack, which he had set down near them on the rocks, with his free hand. It was hard to keep his balance, and he wasn’t sure what the man above them was doing or planning to do, but his feeling was still that they had to get away. Even if it turned out to be a silly decision based on his unusual past experiences with people trying to kill him, guns pointed in his direction and friends finding dead bodies in unexpected places, he would rather err on the side of extreme caution than take any chances.
    ‘Just try and put your weight on the foot, Caroline,’ he said, trying to pull her over the rocks and finding she resisted. ‘I’m sure it isn’t that bad. We’ve just got to move.’
    They were more or less sitting targets for the man if he did have a gun, but fortunately he didn’t seem to be using it again yet.
    At last Caroline developed a sense of urgency and they scrambled over the rocks, heading for the sandy beach in the next bay, which according to Christopher’s calculations, should be Silver Sands. There were family groups of various sizes on the beach and in the water, and what looked like an ice-cream van in the car park behind the beach. They should be safe there.
    Or safer, he thought, as a beach-ball hit him on the head.
    Caroline seemed a bit twitchy though.
    ‘I don’t know if I can go any further,’ she gulped as they approached the ice-cream van. ‘Can we get a taxi from here? Should we call the police?’
    Christopher hadn’t even thought of the police, but on reflection he realised that if someone was shooting a gun in this public area with so many people about, they should certainly be informed. On the other hand, he didn’t know if he could face the probable hassle this would mean. They could be kept hanging around for hours, if not days once the police started to probe his own record. It was his holiday week, too. There wasn’t time to be public-spirited. And it might not even have been a real gunshot, after all. Not on this beautiful day, in this idyllic spot.
    He compromised and bought Caroline an ice-cream while he thought this