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  ‘I’ll bet the police are here already,’ Thwaites went on. ‘And the Black Maria’s waiting outside.’

  As we made our way out to the playground, my whole stomach began to feel as though it was slowly filling up with swirling water. I am only eight years old, I told myself. No little boy of eight has ever murdered anyone. It’s not possible.

  Out in the playground on this warm cloudy September morning, the Deputy Headmaster was shouting, ‘Line up in forms! Sixth Form over there! Fifth Form next to them! Spread out! Spread out! Get on with it! Stop talking all of you!’

  Thwaites and I and my other three friends were in the Second Form, the lowest but one, and we lined up against the red-brick wall of the playground shoulder to shoulder. I can remember that when every boy in the school was in his place, the line stretched right round the four sides of the playground – about one hundred small boys altogether, aged between six and twelve, all of us wearing identical grey shorts and grey blazers and grey stockings and black shoes.

  ‘Stop that talking!’ shouted the Deputy Head. ‘I want absolute silence!’

  But why for heaven’t sake were we in the playground at all? I wondered. And why were we lined up like this? It had never happened before.

  I half-expected to see two policemen come bounding out of the school to grab me by the arms and put handcuffs on my wrists.

  A single door led out from the school on to the playground. Suddenly it swung open and through it, like the angel of death, strode Mr Coombes, huge and bulky in his tweed suit and black gown, and beside him, believe it or not, right beside him trotted the tiny figure of Mrs Pratchett herself!

  Mrs Pratchett was alive!

  The relief was tremendous.

  ‘She’s alive!’ I whispered to Thwaites standing next to me. ‘I didn’t kill her!’ Thwaites ignored me.

  ‘We’ll start over here,’ Mr Coombes was saying to Mrs Pratchett. He grasped her by one of her skinny arms and led her over to where the Sixth Form was standing. Then, still keeping hold of her arm, he proceeded to lead her at a brisk walk down the line of boys. It was like someone inspecting the troops.

  ‘What on earth are they doing?’ I whispered.

  Thwaites didn’t answer me. I glanced at him. He had gone rather pale.

  ‘Too big,’ I heard Mrs Pratchett saying. ‘Much too big. It’s none of this lot. Let’s ’ave a look at some of them titchy ones.’

  Mr Coombes increased his pace. ‘We’d better go all the way round,’ he said. He seemed in a hurry to get it over with now and I could see Mrs Pratchett’s skinny goat’s legs trotting to keep up with him. They had already inspected one side of the playground where the Sixth Form and half the Fifth Form were standing. We watched them moving down the second side … then the third side.

  ‘Still too big,’ I heard Mrs Pratchett croaking. ‘Much too big! Smaller than these! Much smaller! Where’s them nasty little ones?’

  They were coming closer to us now … closer and closer.

  They were starting on the fourth side …

  Every boy in our form was watching Mr Coombes and Mrs Pratchett as they came walking down the line towards us.

  ‘Nasty cheeky lot, these little ’uns!’ I heard Mrs Pratchett muttering. ‘They comes into my shop and they thinks they can do what they damn well likes!’

  Mr Coombes made no reply to this.

  ‘They nick things when I ain’t lookin’,’ she went on. ‘They put their grubby ’ands all over everything and they’ve got no manners. I don’t mind girls. I never ’ave no trouble with girls, but boys is ’ideous and ’orrible! I don’t ’ave to tell you that, ’Eadmaster, do I?’

  ‘These are the smaller ones,’ Mr Coombes said.

  I could see Mrs Pratchett’s piggy little eyes staring hard at the face of each boy she passed.

  Suddenly she let out a high-pitched yell and pointed a dirty finger straight at Thwaites. ‘That’s ’im!’ she yelled. ‘That’s one of ’em! I’d know ’im a mile away, the scummy little bounder!’

  The entire school turned to look at Thwaites. ‘W-what have I done?’ he stuttered, appealing to Mr Coombes.

  ‘Shut up,’ Mr Coombes said.

  Mrs Pratchett’s eyes flicked over and settled on my own face. I looked down and studied the black asphalt surface of the playground.

  ‘’Ere’s another of ’em!’ I heard her yelling. ‘That one there!’ She was pointing at me now.

  ‘You’re quite sure?’ Mr Coombes said.

  ‘Of course I’m sure!’ she cried. ‘I never forgets a face, least of all when it’s as sly as that! ’Ee’s one of ’em all right! There was five altogether! Now where’s them other three?’

  The other three, as I knew very well, were coming up next.

  Mrs Pratchett’s face was glimmering with venom as her eyes travelled beyond me down the line.

  ‘There they are!’ she cried out, stabbing the air with her finger. ‘’Im … and ’im … and ’im! That’s the five of ’em all right! We don’t need to look no farther than this, ’Eadmaster! They’re all ’ere, the nasty dirty little pigs! You’ve got their names, ’ave you?’

  ‘I’ve got their names, Mrs Pratchett,’ Mr Coombes told her. ‘I’m much obliged to you.’

  ‘And I’m much obliged to you, ’Eadmaster,’ she answered.

  As Mr Coombes led her away across the playground, we heard her saying, ‘Right in the jar of Gobstoppers it was! A stinkin’ dead mouse which I will never forget as long as I live!’

  ‘You have my deepest sympathy,’ Mr Coombes was muttering.

  ‘Talk about shocks!’ she went on. ‘When my fingers caught ’old of that nasty soggy stinkin’ dead mouse …’ Her voice trailed away as Mr Coombes led her quickly through the door into the school building.

  Our form master came into the classroom with a piece of paper in his hand. ‘The following are to report to the Headmaster’s study at once,’ he said. ‘Thwaites … Dahl … ’And then he read out the other three names which I have forgotten.

  The five of us stood up and left the room. We didn’t speak as we made our way down the long corridor into the Headmaster’s private quarters where the dreaded study was situated. Thwaites knocked on the door.

  ‘Enter!’

  We sidled in. The room smelled of leather and tobacco. Mr Coombes was standing in the middle of it, dominating everything, a giant of a man if ever there was one, and in his hands he held a long yellow cane which curved round the top like a walking stick.

  ‘I don’t want any lies,’ he said. ‘I know very well you did it and you were all in it together. Line up over there against the bookcase.’

  We lined up, Thwaites in front and I, for some reason, at the very back. I was last in the line.

  ‘You,’ Mr Coombes said, pointing the cane at Thwaites, ‘Come over here.’

  Thwaites went forward very slowly.

  ‘Bend over,’ Mr Coombes said.

  Thwaites bent over. Our eyes were riveted on him. We were hypnotized by it all. We knew, of course, that boys got the cane now and again, but we had never heard of anyone being made to watch.

  ‘Tighter, boy, tighter!’ Mr Coombes snapped out. ‘Touch the ground!’

  Thwaites touched the carpet with the tips of his fingers.

  Mr Coombes stood back and took up a firm stance with his legs well apart. I thought how small Thwaites’s bottom looked and how very tight it was. Mr Coombes had his eyes focused squarely upon it. He raised the cane high above his shoulder, and as he brought it down, it made a loud swishing sound, and then there was a crack like a pistol shot as it struck Thwaites’s bottom.

  Little Thwaites seemed to lift about a foot into the air and he yelled ‘Ow-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w!’ and straightened up like elastic.

  ‘’Arder!’ shrieked a voice from over in the corner.

  Now it was our turn to jump. We looked round and there, sitting in one of Mr Coombes’s big leather armchairs, was the tiny loathsome figure of Mrs Pratchett! She