Knock knock?

Who’s there

Poo.

Poo who?

Andy King.

This was the height of break time bants. King, who was the bully, was dead. Tied up with a collection of skipping ropes liberated from the /out of bounds/ classroom, his struggle had proved an interruption too much to the gang – who now also risked being caught entering the asbestos ridden prefab classroom – and so they had thrown him into the pit. The joke had been earlier.

Quite why a school had a pit was anyone’s guess. It was always supposed that it had been intended as a pond, something possible but unlikely given its position behind the glimmering blue panels of the fenced off classroom. No matter, it was there, it was big, and it was deep. As soon as King had started to struggle and to shout in his high pitched whine, the gang had pushed his chair over to its back and dragged it out of the three steps to the edge of the pit. There, they had spoken.

“King, you’re dead meat”

Sometimes, the linguistic finesse of a young child can surprise you. This was not one of the occasions.

With a small tap of Albert’s left foot – still bleeding after King’s earlier attack – the chair toppled over the edge of the pit and fell. Unlikely as it sounds, they did not hear any landing or splash. The chair, and King, were gone.

“No one talks about this.” Albert was fierce when he was not asleep, and so there was no risk that anyone would disagree. Not only had they trespassed – a foul of the school rules that would almost certainly lead to a detention – but they appeared to have killed King. More detention. Expulsion even. They’d not got as far as contemplating the police.

The bell wasn’t sure to sound for another five to ten minutes, a timescale that varied depending on whose watch they consulted. Paul, who contested that his digital watch was the most accurate and should be believed, said it was 10 minutes. That would be good, if so. Time for an alibi.

Inside the school grounds there was an old fashioned quad between four underwhelming brick buildings, that failed to live up to the grandeur to which they had aspired.