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The
bullet hole in the whiteboard appeared Wednesday morning. No one
knew how it got there, or why, just that it was there.
The
teacher carried on with her first morning class, always leaving a
space around the bullet hole, an event horizon, as if writing too
close would draw the whiteboard marker into it, into the darkness and
the danger behind it. And she would be next.
The
class was subdued, the children murmuring secrets and ideas, but
somehow more afraid than excited. The teacher found their quietness
unnerving. The timeline of the Roman Empire stretched across the
board.
An
unmarked police car arrived during class. Two plain-clothes
detectives stood in the corridor; the history teacher, the
headmaster, the cleaner called away from his home, all talking in
silence behind the glass panel in the classroom door.
The
class were transferred to another room.
One of
the detectives stood before the Roman Empire with a small torch, his
eye following the light, a thin metal scalpel blade following his
eye into the hole.
There
was no bullet. A few fragments of lead from where it had been
removed, the angle of trajectory, the shape and depth of impact.
There
were lead fragments in the small plastic zip-loc bag in the
detective's pocket as he left. There were fibres of Masonite, a
flake of paint, particles of crushed brick. But there would be no
forensic report, no ballistics test.
The room
was locked. The timeline of the Roman Empire stretched across the
board, in silence.
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