Laura Marlin Mysteries 1: Dead Man's Cove eBook Read Online Free PDF

each other’s throats, and halted in front of them. Laura, watching his back, saw a stillness come over him. He reached into the chaos of fur and gnashing teeth and calmly gripped the dogs’ collars, uttering a few soft words in a language Laura didn’t understand. Before anyone could blink, the dogs were standing quietly on either side of him, panting from the exertion but wagging their tails.

    There were gasps from the crowd. As the owners rushed up to collect their animals, neither of which was seriously hurt, the boy turned in Laura’s direction and she saw even white teeth briefly illuminate a face that was all shadows.

    The old gentleman who owned the retriever went to pat the boy on the back, but he shrank from the man’s touch. He stood looking at the ground as his father came striding up.

    ‘That’s some boy you have there, Mr Mukhtar,’ cried the retriever man. ‘Brave as a lion.’

    ‘Yeah, very cool,’ agreed the spotty youth, clinging to his rottweiller’s studded collar. ‘Thanks, dude,’ he said to the boy. The boy didn’t raise his eyes.

    ‘Quite remarkable,’ gushed the retriever man’s wife, putting a hand on Mr Mukhtar’s sleeve. ‘What an amazing gift he has with animals. My Jasper would have been mincemeat if it hadn’t been for your son.’

    Far from being proud, Mr Mukhtar seemed to be wrestling with some tortuous emotion. His face had gone the colour of an aubergine. ‘Yes, yes, indeed, ’ he said, clearly anxious to get away. ‘All is well that ends well.’ He touched the brim of an imaginary hat. ‘Good day to you both.’

    Waiting for her change in the café, where Erin, a cub reporter, was agonising over whether or not the story was newsworthy enough to interest the local paper, Laura watched the family depart along the harbour front. Mr Mukhtar’s back was rigid. Suddenly, his hand shot out like a striking cobra and he caught the boy a glancing blow across the head.

    It happened so fast and the three of them continued their walk as if nothing had happened, the boy perhaps walking a fraction more proudly than before, so that afterwards Laura was never sure if it had been her imagination.

4

    ‘MORE A GHOST than a boy, I sometimes think,’ Mrs Crabtree told Laura a little over a week later. ‘Hardly surprising the way Mr Mukhtar has him working all the hours the Lord sends in that shop. Free labour is what he is. Should be in school or throwing a frisbee on the beach, in my opinion, but Mr Mukhtar says he’s being home-schooled by Mrs Mukhtar. Goodness knows how she finds the time. Whenever I pass Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow, she’s in there getting a coconut oil treatment, or extensions, or whatever the trendy people do these days.’

    Mrs Crabtree lived at number 30 Ocean View Terrace. It was her curtains that twitched whenever Laura left the house. Though in her sixties, she was as fashion conscious as the shopkeeper’s wife, bleaching her hair blonde and dressing exclusively in shades of pink, purple and orange. ‘No point in growing old gracefully when you can do it disgracefully,’ she liked to tell people.

    She’d cornered Laura on her way home from St Ives Primary School, which Laura had been attending for nearly a fortnight, with the words: ‘Back from the dead, so I hear.’

    Laura stifled a giggle. ‘No, just from school.’

    Mrs Crabtree found this hilarious. ‘You mustn’t mind my turn of phrase,’ she said when she’d recovered. ‘I only mean that your uncle was unaware that you existed all these years and yet here you are, pretty as a picture. Not every enigma at number 28 is so easily solved, let me tell you.’

    Laura put her school bag on the ground and wrapped her scarf more tightly around her neck to shut out the cold wind. ‘What do you mean?’

    Mrs Crabtree laughed again. ‘Oh dear, there’s my mouth running away with me again. What marvellous colouring you have. Such wonderfully creamy skin and hair like sun-bleached