73 2 Explore I went through Mrs Shears’ gate, closing it behind me. I walked onto her lawn and knelt beside the dog. I put my hand on the muzzle of the dog. It was still warm. The dog was called Wellington. It belonged to Mrs Shears who was our friend. She lived on the opposite side of the road, two houses to the left. Wellington was a poodle. Not one of the small poodles that have hairstyles, but a big poodle. It had curly black fur, but when you got close you could see that the skin underneath the fur was a very pale yellow, like chicken. I stroked Wellington and wondered who had killed him, and why. […] When Mrs Shears comes out to find her dog dead, she starts shouting at Christopher who is holding the dog. Christopher doesn’t like people shouting and lets go of the dog, puts his hands over his ears and lies down with his forehead pressed onto the grass. 11 Then the police arrived. I like the police. They have uniforms and numbers and you know what they are meant to be doing. There was a policewoman and a policeman. The policewoman had a little hole in her tights on her left ankle and a red scratch in the middle of the hole. The policeman had a big orange leaf stuck to the bottom of his shoe which was poking out from one side. The policewoman put her arms round Mrs Shears and led her back towards the house. I lifted my head off the grass. The policeman squatted down beside me and said, ‘Would you like to tell me what’s going on here, young man?’ I sat up and said, ‘The dog is dead.’ ‘I’d got that far,’ he said. I said, ‘I think someone killed the dog.’ ‘How old are you?’ he asked. I replied, ‘I am 15 years and 3 months and 2 days.’ ‘And what, precisely, were you doing in the garden?’ he asked. a muzzle – trýni the opposite side – hér: hinum megin (við götuna) side fur – feldur pale – fölur a leaf – hér: lauf to poke out – að standa út to squat – að krjúpa I’d got that far – hér: ég var búinn að átta mig á því
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