To emphasise the point, Oli picked a wilted spider plant off a desk, spewed soil over a desk top and then lifted one end of the desk so that everything slid on to the floor. As Daniel stuffed MacBooks and computer gear into his backpack, Oli started blocking the kitchen sinkhole with a bin-liner weighed down with a packet of paper and Leon went for the printer.

He didn’t fancy getting electrocuted, so Leon ripped the plug out of the wall. The printer was a metre deep, shoulder height and almost three metres from where paper got sucked in to the point where it shot out the other end. He opened a bunch of plastic flaps around the machine and launched a couple of kicks, but it was a sturdy beast so he went to the kitchen.

‘Quicker and quieter if we just pour water over it,’ Leon told Oli.

Leon made several trips, pouring buckets of water over the printer, before pulling all the toner cartridges and paper off the shelves. Daniel had fun flipping desks and tipping the contents of drawers out over the floor. Oli seemed to have expertise in flooding, and not only got the kitchen and bathroom sinks overflowing, but also removed the lid of the toilet cistern and wedged the inlet valve so that water kept running into the blocked toilet bowl too.

A dozen minutes after they’d entered, the office was trashed and the puddles emerging from kitchen and bathroom had merged into one and were working their way across the carpet tiles.

‘Someone’s gonna be pissed when they get to work in the morning,’ Daniel said, as he wedged the cylindrical Mac Pro into Leon’s backpack.

‘Half-ten,’ Oli said, as he headed back out into the hallway.

‘What about the stolen gear?’ Leon asked. ‘Will Trey give us cash?’

‘Trey won’t want anything that links him to this,’ Oli said, as the trio set off back towards the rubbish chutes. ‘I know a dodgy pawn in town that’ll probably take most of it.’

‘But where will we keep it overnight?’

‘Stop worrying, you chicken,’ Oli said. ‘Gurbir will have finished his shift. It’s all agency staff on nights, and none of them give a shit.’

15. GAMES

Last lesson the next afternoon was Games. Leon pulled his blazer over his school football shirt and headed out of the changing room in shorts and muddy hooped socks. Daniel had decided to put tracksuit bottoms over his kit and came out a few seconds behind.

‘Nice goal, man!’ a big kid told Daniel. The twins had only been at the school for a week, so they barely even knew names of guys in their own class.

‘Cheers,’ Daniel answered.