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

million? All your heads? You’re within striking distance already, boy. The rest of you, go over there, to the back of the garage.’
    For a second, nobody moved. There was silence. Slowly, Elsa Moreaux raised the crowbar. Skull and his parents shuffled quickly aside, past the hole in the garage wall. I didn’t dare move
so much as an eyelid. My insides had turned runnier than school gravy and my throat felt like it was lined with sandpaper.
    ‘Might be some time before you’re all found,’ said Elsa. She glared at me. ‘Y’see, boy, all the angles except one.’
    ‘Hmm, no,’ I said, almost in a whisper. I tapped gently at the little lens attached to my jacket. ‘I’ve got that one covered too.’
    With a sudden screech of brakes, a police car skidded to a halt at the edge of the Skulyevics’ front lawn. Another one shot into view behind it. Officers leaped out, yelling at Elsa
Moreaux.
    ‘Drop it! Drop it! ’
    I suddenly realised I hadn’t taken a breath for about half a minute. I gasped shakily. Turning, I saw a familiar face getting out of a third car: Inspector Godalming, he of the whistling
false teeth and the birdish walk, who I’d met during the case of The Eye of the Serpent (see volume five of my case files).
    ‘Ssho, it’s you again, shonny,’ he sshaid, I mean said.
    ‘You know I take a dim view of youngsh-ters interfering in poleesh invesh-tigations.’
    I grinned up at him. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll let you guys take all the credit. As ever.’
    I had a great time the following Monday, basking in glory as Skull told the class about everything that had happened. Even our form tutor Mrs Penzler managed a few words of praise.
    There was also one piece of good news – I’d found out that the bank that Elsa Moreaux’s gang had stolen all that gold from had put up a reward at the time of the robbery. It
had never been claimed, so Skull and his family found themselves able to afford a holiday after all.
    I returned to my shed and my Thinking Chair. Skull had shared some of the reward money with me, so I bought a heater and kept it on full blast while I sat and jotted down some notes.
    Case closed.

 
    C ASE F ILE T WENTY-THREE:
    D IAMONDS
A RE FOR
H EATHER

 
    C HAPTER
O NE
    I SAW A MAGICIAN ON TV the other day. I don’t normally like magic shows, I’ve never quite seen the point of them,
but I’d been watching the previous programme and I couldn’t be bothered to get up and hunt for the remote.
    This particular show was live. The magician was going to see into the future (ooooh, spooooky) and predict the six numbers that were going to come up on that night’s Moneyspinner Lottery.
The lottery would be drawn on another channel, and the magician had a TV set up showing the other channel’s programmes (so you could flick back and forth and see that, yes, this trick was
being done totally live).
    Like I said, I don’t normally rate magicians. It’s so easy to see how they do it. But this trick sounded interesting. And, as it turned out, it was to play an important part in an
investigation I’ve labelled Diamonds Are for Heather .
    The Lottery trick went like this:
    ‘First,’ said the magician, ‘I need six volunteers.’ In the TV studio there were about two hundred people, plus a row filled with celebrities. Out to the front came a man
with mad hair called Dave, a man with no hair at all called Keith, a very thin woman called Tracey and a very large woman called Barbara. There was also a sugary little girl called Donna (everyone
went ‘Ahhhhh’; I went ‘Yeuchh’). Finally, from the celebs’ seats, there was a TV reporter called Satnam – I’d often seen her reading the news and
interviewing people in shopping centres.
    Suspended behind the magician were six sets of plush red curtains, forming six little booths. They reminded me of a line of changing cubicles in a clothes shop.
    Inside each booth was a chair and a table and on each table was a metal box and a