Ralph’s Children by Hilary Norman Page B

tears in her eyes as she proposed him to Ralph. ‘Or working with children at all.’
    Mitcham, a single man, appeared, Simon said, to dislike children and to have scant respect for their parents. The incident that had helped turn him into a candidate had begun when Simon had
witnessed him being unkind to a six-year-old with learning difficulties. The child’s mother had come to school next morning to complain to the head, but had encountered the teacher first, and
Mitcham had retaliated by humiliating both mother and child.
    ‘Right there, in front of everyone,’ Simon had said. ‘Made her feel completely inadequate. Poor woman turned tail.’
    ‘Why didn’t you report him to the head?’ Ralph asked.
    ‘I might have,’ Simon had answered, ‘if that had been the only thing.’
    It had, in fact, been the least of it, because a few days earlier Simon had caught sight of something in Mitcham’s locker just before he’d slammed the door.
    A photograph of a naked child, unmistakably pornographic.
    ‘I only caught a glimpse,’ she said. ‘But I know what I saw.’
    She had felt shocked, sickened.
    True Beast.
    Two days later, Jack had confirmed Simon’s suspicions, breaking into Mitcham’s flat in Barton and finding photographs so revolting to him that his first impulse had
been to lie in wait and give the scumbag a beating he’d never forget.
    The group met the following week in a private room over a Didcot pub.
    ‘I’ve been thinking,’ Jack said, ‘that it’s time to rev up the game.’ He was having trouble blotting out the images of the children in Mitcham’s
collection. ‘We have to make this filth really
do
a crime,’ he said. ‘Like a robbery, something heavy.’
    ‘That sounds complicated,’ Ralph said, on speaker phone.
    ‘Not really,’ Jack disagreed, ‘because we’d be making sure he
didn’t
pull off the job, wouldn’t we?’ He paused. ‘But it’s gotta be
something big enough so we’d know he’d get seriously banged up.’
    ‘Maybe we should just shop him, after all?’ Simon was growing doubtful. ‘I mean, we’re not vigilantes, are we?’
    ‘No, we’re fucking not,’ said Jack.
    ‘We’re a lot smarter than that,’ Roger said.
    ‘And shopping him wouldn’t be the
game
, would it?’ Jack pointed out.
    ‘But how can we possibly make anyone do a robbery?’ Pig had asked.
    ‘Blackmail,’ Roger said flatly. ‘Make him realize he either does what we tell him, or he ends up doing ten years as a nonce.’
    ‘Maybe that’d be the right punishment,’ Simon said.
    ‘Maybe it would,’ said Ralph, from the speaker.
    ‘And what if he found himself a good brief who got him off?’ asked Roger.
    ‘At least he’d be finished as a teacher,’ Simon said.
    ‘You can’t be certain of that,’ Roger argued. ‘Anyway, it wouldn’t be nearly enough.’
    ‘He’s your Beast,’ Jack reminded Simon. ‘The biggest dirtbag we’ve had.’
    ‘Jack’s right,’ Pig agreed.
    ‘Biggest dirtbag,’ said Roger, ‘biggest game.’
    ‘It’d have to be armed robbery,’ Jack said. ‘I can get a gun, no sweat.’
    ‘No guns,’ Ralph’s voice said promptly.
    ‘But nothing less would really do it, would it?’ Roger backed Jack up. ‘Not if we want to make sure Mitcham gets a long stretch.’
    ‘Couldn’t we use a replica gun?’ Simon asked.
    Ralph wondered why she hadn’t thought of that, was glad Simon had.
    ‘Yeah, OK,’ Jack said. ‘If it makes you feel better.’
    ‘It would,’ Ralph had said.
    Doubt had gnawed at her that Jack might say one thing and do another, which meant the only way to be certain would be to insist on inspecting the gun when the time came. Except she
wouldn’t be there, and anyway, it would be insulting to Jack and unsettling for the group.
    The group was everything to her. With every passing year, every phone call, every reunion, every
game
, that became more clear to her.
    She wrote once in her journal:
    If only we could be