‘Early release after three years.’
‘It was no picnic. They make sure everyone knows what you’re in for and you get it tougher than anyone else. You’re called a nonce and that’s the lowest form of humanity inside. Sub-human, in fact.’
‘You won’t get sympathy from me.’
‘I’m not asking for any. I deserved all I got. I did my time and I haven’t offended since. You can check the records.’
‘I have,’ Diamond said. ‘All it means is that you weren’t caught again. People like you don’t reform. The perversion is permanent.’
He didn’t deny it. He nodded. ‘In that way it’s a unique crime. Other prisoners can wipe the slate clean. I’m a child molester, a paedophile, and that’s how the world will always see me, even at my age. Is this about the sex offenders’ register?’
‘No. It’s about you and me.’
As if he hadn’t heard, White continued, ‘All I can repeat to you is that I never worked in a school again. I was unemployed for a long time, incapable of getting my life back on track. When I did, it was my facility at drawing that was my salvation. I could have illustrated books for children. That’s where most of the work is. I deliberately stayed out of that. Eventually I found a niche in graphic novels for adults. Why are you here, Mr Diamond?’
The anger was hard to hold down. ‘Isn’t that bloody obvious? You say you changed your job and your style of life. At least you had the chance. It’s not so easy for your victims, is it? They have to live with the trauma of what you did to them.’
White lowered his head. ‘I’m aware of that. As a child I was abused myself. Many who commit these crimes had it happen to them. It’s self-perpetuating. Please understand I’m not whingeing. I made these choices. I knew my conduct was wicked and unlawful. Believe me, after I came out of prison I stopped.’
Diamond still despised him. ‘Mr White, I’m not interested in what happened after you came out or how you live now. I’m here because of what went on when I was a kid with a teacher I trusted, and who my parents trusted, apparently.’
He looked up wide-eyed and said, ‘I didn’t abuse you.’
Now he was denying it, the filthy creep.
The red mist descended. Diamond grasped him by the shoulders. ‘What are you saying, you faggot, that it wasn’t abuse?’
‘I swear to God I didn’t do anything to you.’
‘Don’t give me that. Think about someone else for a change instead of yourself.’ Diamond hauled him out of the chair and held him up like an old suit. They were eye to eye. ‘Each time I step inside a theatre something so foul is triggered in my brain that I want to throw up. I don’t know exactly what. Mentally a shutter comes down. But I know precisely when all this started – during that weekend when I was in the play.’
White’s face was contorted with terror. He tried to mouth some words and couldn’t. All that came out was bad breath.
Diamond shoved him back into the chair so hard that it skidded across the floor, rocked back and almost overbalanced. He advanced on him, fists clenched. The impulse to hit him was huge.
White screamed. Blood oozed from the corner of his mouth.
‘I didn’t touch you,’ Diamond said, disbelieving.
He was whimpering. When he opened his mouth it was obvious that he’d bitten his tongue.
The blood was White’s salvation. The sight of it acted as a check on Diamond, reminding him of all the promises he’d made to himself about non-violence. It wouldn’t take more than a few blows to kill this old perv, and what would that achieve?
‘Admit it,’ he said, panting for breath himself. ‘You know what you did to me. I need to hear you say it.’
White simply shook his head.
This was not going as planned.
Diamond made a fist again and then unclenched it. He was making huge efforts to stay in control. He took a step back, grasping his own hands to stop them from lashing out. ‘I didn’t come here to beat you up. The least you can do is tell me the truth.’
White wiped some of the blood from his chin and succeeded in saying, spacing the words, ‘I have never assaulted you in any way. Never touched you.’
‘Bloody liar.’
‘Really.’
‘How can you say this? Come on, the truth.’
He raised a pacifying hand while he gasped for air. Finally, he spoke. ‘Will you hear me out?’ Breathing hard, pausing often, he said, ‘You don’t know as much about me as you think. There are different sorts of child sex, Mr Diamond. I wasn’t ever attracted to small boys. Yours was a primary school. My offences were all at Manningham Academy. That’s a private school for girls aged eleven to eighteen. I took advantage of under-age girls of fourteen and fifteen. I’m a paedophile and ashamed of it, but I was never a pederast.’
Diamond heard the words and didn’t at first believe them. He did a rapid rethink of how he’d learned about this. Mike Glazebrook had said his mother had read in the
Was the rest a misunderstanding? The way the newspapers reported such cases, the names of the victims protected by law, there was scope for uncertainty. Mrs Glazebrook had questioned Mike to find out if he’d been abused. She’d evidently assumed that the victims were young boys and this assumption had stuck with Glazebrook
