Secret of the Skull by Simon Cheshire Read Free Book Online Page A

investigation. ‘I’m very sorry,’ I
added, ‘but you’ve been conned from the outset.’
    Elsa Moreaux picked up one of the bricks she’d removed from the wall and dropped it with a loud clack to the ground. I jumped with fright. She growled, ‘Why didn’t you send for
the cops straight away?’
    ‘That gold was still hidden,’ I said. ‘I was pretty sure it was in that wall, but I needed to wait. Until, that is, you went to fetch it yourself and showed me exactly where
you’d put it.’
    ‘And how could you possibly know it was inside this wall?’ she spat. ‘I made it perfect. It looked totally untouched!’
    ‘Logical deduction,’ I said. ‘Your original plan, I think, was simply to turn up here as Mirna and stay just a day or two, until you had a chance to retrieve the gold. You
couldn’t simply burst in and grab it. Because of the way it was hidden, you needed a couple of hours in which to get the gold out. Which is why you decided to adopt a disguise.
    ‘When you got out of prison, you worked out your plan: you went to Spain, then to Vojvladimia, then came back to the UK as Mirna Skulyevic. But when you finally got into the house you saw
that Skull’s dad had built a large, stone fireplace in the living room, on the other side of this wall – right over the top of your hiding place.
    ‘That fireplace was far too thick and heavy to get through without major effort. You’d have to get to the hiding place from this side of the wall instead, from what had been
the outside wall when you lived here. However, you had a piece of luck. There’d been another addition to the house – the garage. It would conceal you while you broke into the
wall from this side instead.
    ‘Unfortunately, your plan was upset by something else as well as the fireplace. Skull’s parents were always at home. There was always somebody in the house. You’d assumed that
it would only take a few days before you could grab an hour or two alone. It turned out that you might need weeks and weeks. So you had to outstay your welcome and you had to devise a way to get
these three out of the house for a while.
    ‘I can’t be sure, but I guess that’s why you went back to the guy in Doyle Avenue for credit cards – the one you’d got the fake passports from. You needed funds,
yes?’
    ‘Right,’ snarled Elsa Moreaux. ‘I came out of prison with barely anything and fake passports don’t come cheap. Getting these dopes away for a day would soak cash I
didn’t have, so I had to do something.’
    ‘And when the Doyle Avenue forger was arrested the other day,’ I said, ‘you had to speed things up. If the police had got him, they might soon get you too. So you had to
arrange for Skull’s family to go on holiday straight away, this weekend. You had to get the gold as fast as possible, and by the time the Skulyevics came back and your cover was blown,
you’d be safely away.
    ‘It was clever of you to act a bit ditsy. That way, if the neighbours saw you pushing that SuperSave trolley down the street, with the gold hidden under a blanket, or a heap of rubbish, or
something like that, they’d just think, Uh-oh, there goes that batty old dear again .’
    Elsa Moreaux smiled at me. It made me shudder. It was nothing more than a lizard-like pull at her lips. ‘You’ve covered all the angles, haven’t you? Clever little boy. All the
angles except one.’
    ‘And what would that be?’ I said, trying to keep my voice steady.
    ‘If you know about me, you know about all the things I’ve done. All things I’ve been locked up for.’ She picked up a long, hefty crowbar that she’d obviously used
to help break into the wall. She weighed it in her hands, smiling that ghastly smile, never taking her eyes off me.
    ‘You know I wouldn’t hesitate,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ve got too much at stake here. This gold’s worth nearly twenty million pounds today. You think I
wouldn’t cave your head in for twenty