Secret of the Skull Read Online Free PDF

whole forgery factory in there. Whassisname was
telling me all about it.’
    Suddenly, I stopped dead.
    Those dense mists I mentioned, surrounding this case? They were clearing faster than ever!
    I’d solved the mystery of the credit cards. They weren’t stolen at all, they were forgeries, made by this guy who’d just been caught.
    How did I know? Think way back, to something Skull told me when he visited my garden shed.
    Can you spot the connection between Mirna and the forger?

    ‘This flat in Doyle Avenue,’ I said urgently, ‘was it number eighteen?’
    ‘Er, yes, I think whassisname did say eighteen, yes,’ replied Muddy. ‘I thought you said you hadn’t seen the news?’
    ‘I didn’t,’ I said. ‘The day he came to see me, Skull followed Mirna to number eighteen Doyle Avenue. She wasn’t visiting a “friend from the Post
Office” though, she was getting hold of forged credit cards.’
    ‘Now I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Muddy.
    ‘ Can you forge credit cards?’ I asked. ‘I thought that sort of thing was very difficult these days, what with all the chips and other security in them?’
    ‘Oh yeah, it’s difficult,’ said Muddy, ‘but not impossible. This guy they just caught must have been using some cutting-edge tech. My guess – from an electronics
point of view – is that each card would only have been of use once or twice before it was detected.’
    ‘Which explains why Mirna had half a dozen in her bag,’ I said. ‘She’s probably been getting through heaps of them. And now her supply has been turned off!’
    I thanked Muddy and zoomed out of the school gates. All the way home, fresh questions and ideas kept popping into my brain like lightbulbs being switched on.
    I definitely was going to have to reveal Mirna’s activities to the rest of the Skulyevic family. However, I would still need to handle the matter delicately. What I had to establish
now was what Mirna had been using those forged credit cards for . That was now the key to the whole thing. Once I could work out how Mirna had been using the cards, I would have the
complete picture.
    As to her motive , the reason she’d done it, well . . . Skull had said she had very little cash. Perhaps she’d got fed up of waiting for her money to be transferred from
Vojvladimia? Perhaps those years of being locked up by the military government had affected her more than anyone thought? Perhaps her new-found freedom had gone to her head and she’d taken
things too far?
    Another coincidental link between Mirna and Elsa Moreaux – a sad one this time – suddenly occurred to me. They’d both spent decades in prison, but it was the one who’d
been innocent for all those years who was now guilty of a crime and who’d probably end up going back behind bars.
    This was one case I really wasn’t looking forward to wrapping up. It felt as if everyone involved, me included, would be losing out in one way or another.
    An hour or two later, I got a call from Izzy.
    ‘Anything turned up?’ I said.
    ‘Yes,’ said Izzy. ‘But you’re not going to like it.’
    ‘I’m feeling that way already,’ I told her.
    ‘I had a search around through FaceSpace and one of my cousins has some FaceSpace friends in various parts of Eastern Europe —
    (Not surprising. Izzy had nineteen cousins at the last count, and they were all just like her. I’d have been surprised if one of them hadn’t known anyone in Eastern Europe!
For more info on Izzy’s vast family connections, see volume four of my case files, The Hangman’s Lair .)
    ‘— and I’ve found out something very important about Mirna Skulyevic.’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘You’re really not going to like it,’ said Izzy.
    ‘Just tell me.’
    ‘You’re sure?’
    ‘Yes!’
    ‘OK. Mirna Skulyevic . . .’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘The real Mirna Skulyevic, the sister of Emerik Skulyevic . . .’
    ‘Yeeeees! What?’
    ‘ . . . died in Vojvladimia nearly seventeen years