Someone

Hi all, it’s back to school for this week’s piece of crime flash fiction. Surely someone must have learned something…

Enjoy!

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The jerry can of petrol, half charred at the edge of the football field, was the first clue. The remains of the school – and the headmaster, bound to his chair in the office – was the next. A tragedy (but everyone was relieved their children hadn’t been there when the fire started).

When the police couldn’t identify a motive or a suspect, the relief was leavened with a black forbidden feeling. It wasn’t one of the children? Not their child, obviously, but perhaps someone he knew, or his friends knew. There had plenty of troublemakers at the school, and the principal had been strict. There was seldom a day without detention. Had he been too strict? Had he perhaps been cruel? Had he, whisper it, been … bad?

Troublemakers were brought in to answer questions about detention. Investigators spoke to students and colleagues at schools he’d previously worked at, but there was no hint that anything untoward might have happened. No hint of why or who had burned the school down.

The school was rebuilt. Detentions were rare under the new headmistress. And the troublemakers returned, uninterested in careers, happy to get a job at the local garage or working on one of the building sites. Or for the fire brigade.

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See you next week. Don’t be tardy!