Read Part 1 - here
Read Part 2 - here
Read Part 3 - here
Read Part 4 - here
Read Part 5 - here
Read Part 6 - here
Read part 7 - here
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Where are we going? The police station is the other way’ Pavil spoke as Khar took a right turn on exiting the school compound instead of the left that would connect them to the main road.
Khar drove along the small service lane, taking another sharp right turn and drove until they could see the back of the school’s main block.
They were driving along the periphery of the school and Pavil saw other buildings that he hadn’t noticed until now.
The staff quarters was a small hive like structure, done in simple red brick. From this point, he could see a bit of the old school building and top of some buses, since a wall, taller than man height obstructed most of the view. Judging by the diameter of the entire school compound as marked by the wall it looked like a rather large area, bigger than what he had at first glance anticipated.
They’d completed a semi-circle and Khar was vigilantly keeping a lookout of his window until they stopped at a point and Khar got out of the car.
Pavil found himself getting surprised by the sudden placidity of this area which was just a few hundred yards away from the main school gates. As bustling as the main entranceway seemed, the back of the school behind the wall was eerily tranquil.
It looked like no one had ventured out here, and judging by the jungle like growth that had crept out from the trenches near the wall to the service lane, it didn’t seem like a popular spot either.
No surprise since it was not connected to any roads and had no entrance or exits to speak of, except a small gate that had been shut decades ago.
At this thought, Pavil unzipped his backpack and fished out a piece of paper on which principal Savik had sketched a rough map of the school area on Sunday. He’d forgotten all about it until now.
The entire perimeter of the school had been checked by a small team of policemen, and they’d given their reports.
There were as the map indicated two main entrances to the school and another for the staff.
The bigger of two main entrances was meant for buses and the smaller one for those who cycled or walked to the school.
The third entrance/exit was towards the staff parking lot and meant to be used exclusively by staff living on campus.
The inoperative access gate according to the report and map was farther down the back of the school and mostly obscured by trees. It was much too small for anyone trying to enter inside through that gate, and decades of disuse had rendered it menacingly rusted not to mention almost invisible to a random passerby.
Pavil followed Khar and a few short minutes later found himself facing the obsolete gate. It was hardly a gate anymore. The so-called gratings were brown with once flaking rust that had now solidified to a form a thick carapace.
It was through these gratings that Khar was trying to peer inside. He stood at different angles to peek through and turned back to look at Pavil’s confused expressions.
‘You think someone must have tried to get in from here?’ Pavil felt foolish asking this question.
‘One would have to be made of air to pass through these’ Khar touched the gratings, ‘but’ he pointed at the tire tracks on the service lane ‘this area isn’t nearly as dead as one would think’
The overgrowth in some area had been trampled by cars and though not heavily frequented the backside of the school did have some visitors.
‘It’s a deserted place after all. A good parking spot even.’ Pavil rolled his eyes and saw Khar motioning him to come over to where he stood.
Cigarette butts littered the ground right outside the now deceased gate. Pavil bent down to inspect them, looking for the dual chromed unusually scented cigarette butt in particular, but of that there were none, and judging by their condition they looked to have come from different times.
Some were fresh, almost a few hours old and some from weeks, even months ago.
‘Looks like students have found themselves a smoking zone in the school’ Pavil observed.
Khar had plastered his face on the rusted gratings and smiled ‘With a great vantage point too’
Pavil mimicked his senior and observed how different the school looked from this perspective. Now that he could see the back and sides of different buildings it took him a long moment to realize that the main block wasn’t as far away as he’d expected, and he could see the windows of some classrooms and even the students sitting near them.
This was most curious, he tried squeezing his face a little more through the small gaps between the rusted grills of the gate and heard Khar make some comment about tetanus and noticed some boys standing near a barred window of a ground floor classroom out of which one was peeking out, and for a moment it looked like he was staring right at Pavil, but in fact he was holding something up to his ear.
Is he talking on his phone?
‘I thought students weren’t allowed to use their phones inside the classroom’ Pavil managed to speak between clenched teeth and realized how much of his face he’d been squeezing through the rusted gratings.
‘It’s not a classroom, Pavil’
He stared again. ‘Oh,’ he realized. It was the boy’s bathroom.
Pavil worked his jaw as he pushed himself away from the gate, dusting off anything that might be stuck to his clothes, rubbing his face he got inside the car.
‘You think someone saw Majid inside the bathroom through the gates and planned his murder?’ Pavil asked
‘If you mean planned the murder on the spot then it’s a possibility’ Khar observed.
Pavil stared at a flowchart he’d drawn in his little notebook and started pencilling in some blank spaces. ‘So’, he mused ‘we’re looking for someone who had a reason to kill Majid, who carried a small saw and who possibly even saw the victim through those now defunct gates’ He sighed. ‘This is just theory, right?
‘A possibility’ Khar muttered in his deep-set voice.
Pavil clutched a steaming cup of tea, scalding his palms in doing so, but this was a sensation he was growing accustomed to, and with the sudden onslaught of cold winds he welcomed this temporary warmth.
Blowing at the surface more than it was necessary to create a thick fog he looked over at Khar ‘When will we talk to Tejan? He hasn’t been attending school since the incident’
‘I've just spoken to Mrs Sinhal’ Khar looked up at Pavil sipping his tea ‘we’ll go to meet the Sinhal’s tonight’ upon hearing Pavil almost choke on the hot beverage ‘if you behave that is’ he added.
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