The Sleep of Reason: The James Bulger Case

by David James Smith

Neil had been outside the school in Bedford Road at half three, waiting with the other parents for the children. One of the dinner ladies had told him that Jon had run out of school at mid-day. Neil had tried to phone Susan, but she was already on her way back, on the bus with Mark and Michelle.

  When Susan arrived at Neil’s he told her. ‘No Jon.’ He said the dinner lady had told him Jon had run off with Bobby Thompson. He said the dinner lady had described Bobby Thompson as a fucking little git’, and had said that their Jon was a good kid when Bobby wasn’t around.

  Neil had gone out then, looking for Jon on County Road without success. Returning to the maisonette alone, he had asked Susan if she thought he should go to the police, but she had said they should wait until six-thirty in case Jon came home.

  At six-thirty Susan had set off for the police station, taking their thirteen-year-old, Mark. They had walked through Walton Village, passing Bobby's house. Susan hadn’t bothered knocking there, because she knew she wouldn’t get any sense out of them.

  At the bottom of the village she had remembered the last time Jon sagged with Bobby, and Jon saying that he had gone on to the railway with Bobby, who had a den along the line.

  Susan had crossed over by the How and walked up the roadway from Cherry Lane to the fencing along the railway embankment. She had stood there for a few minutes calling out Jon’s name along the railway. She had not called Bobby’s name.

  Then she had walked round the corner, under the railway bridge and into the police station. She told the duty officer, PC Osbourne, that her son was missing, after running out of school that lunch-time with Bobby. She said it had happened before and she had reported it then, too.

  PC Osbourne had leafed back through the MFH register, and found the old entry:

  Sub Div Ref. No. 05 C2 1999 92. Jon Venables DOB: 13.08.1982. Reported missing from home from 11.00 hours 26.11.1992. He was with Bobby Thompson of 223 Walton Village, Liverpool 4 and both had run of out of school that day. At 17.30 hours that day both Jon Venables and Robert Thompson had been seen outside Kwik Save, County Road by neighbours, and when challenged made vee. Both had been traced at 20.00 hours the same day, in Walton Village, Liverpool 4.

  PC Osbourne had then turned to a fresh page in the MFH register, and completed a new entry:

  Walton Ln Sub Div Ref. No. 05 C2 29 93. Jon Venables, bom 13.08.1982 had gone missing at 12.00 hours 12.02.93. Sex male, height 4’ 8’, birth place Liverpool, with a squint in his right eye, wearing Bedford Rd St Marys Sch uniform, and that he had run out of school in company with a Robert Thompson. Reported by mother at 19.00 hours 12.02.93. Friends, relatives to be checked as follows: 223 Walton Village, Liverpool.

  PC Osbourne had told Susan that he would circulate the details, and that an officer would check at Robert Thompson’s address. Susan had told PC Osbourne that she had been looking around County Road and Walton Lane. She had then given PC Osbourne a photograph of Jon, in his school uniform, taken just before Christmas.

  Susan and Mark had left the police station, walked back under the railway bridge, and had just got to the corner, facing Walton Village, when Susan had seen Jon and Bobby, and gone into hiding.

  Bobby struggled as they left the shop, and collapsed crying on the floor outside, so Susan let him go, and Bobby ran off as she held on to Jon, belting him a few times.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘County Road.’

  ‘All afternoon?’

  ‘Yes.’

  When Susan got Jon to the police station she could see in the light that he was very dirty, and that there was something on his sleeve.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Paint. Robert threw it at me.’

  ‘Where’s it from?’

  ‘He stole it from a shop on County Road.’

  Susan saw the paint on his hands and noticed how dirty they were. Usually he was quite clean coming home. She turned to PC Osbourne.

  ‘Look at the state of him.’

  She asked PC Osbourne to give Jon a good telling off.

  PC Osbourne asked Jon where he’d been. With a friend. Is that Robert Thompson? Yes. PC Osbourne then shouted at Jon about the police time he had wasted and the paper work. Jon began to cry but, PC Osbourne noted, there were no tears in his eyes.

  PC Osbourne endorsed the back of the MFH report: ‘Found by mother, Walton Ln L4 19.15 hours 12.02.1993.’ He handed back the photograph of Jon, and Susan Venables left the police station with her son.

  Back at Neils, Susan told Jon about the report she’d seen on the television. A two-year-old boy had been abducted from the Strand shopping centre. Jon was shocked, and asked where the boy’s mother had been. Susan told him the mother had been inside a shop, and had only left him for a minute. He asked who it was and Susan said it was a little boy, but it could have been him.

  She then gave Jon another good telling off, and told him to get undressed and into bed. She noticed more paint on his trousers as she threw his clothes into the corner, and was even more angry. Jon kept apologising and when Susan went downstairs she could hear him crying and sobbing for a good half-hour.

  He came down and apologised again for worrying his mum. Susan made him a cup of tea to take back to bed, but refused to give him his meal, because he hadn’t been home at the right time. Jon went back to bed still crying. Susan thought he sounded broken-hearted — but he’d never seen his mum in such a temper before.

  When she looked in later he had quietened down, and asked Susan to close the bedroom door. When she went in again he was asleep.

  Neil had popped out to visit some friends who lived nearby. The woman had just come out of hospital, and her daughter arrived not long after Neil. He told them about Jon sagging school. Then there was a knock at the door and Susan came in. She told them about the police station, and finding Jon in the village. She mentioned that he had been shoplifting with Robert Thompson, that he had paint on his coat, and had been on the railway line.

  ■

  When he wriggled free of the clutches of Susan Venables, Bobby ran home in floods of tears. Mrs Venables had hit him, he said between sobs. His mother, Ann, noticed the scratch on his cheek and the redness around one eye, like the impression left by a smack. Mrs Venables had no right, she said, and decided to go to the police.

  Ann already knew Bobby had not been to school. Ryan had told her when he came home at four o’clock. Bobby had met Jon Venables by the school gates and they had gone off together, said Ryan. All this was forgotten in the drama of the moment.

  Ann sent Ryan over the road to call out her friend Lesley for support. Lesley met them outside the house and examined Bobby’s injuries. She thought the scratch looked more like a cut made by a small fingernail.

  ‘Jon Venables’ mum ragged me out of the video shop,’ Bobby told her.

  They set off for the police station, and stopped at the video shop on the way. Ann asked Joanne if she had seen Mrs Venables hit Bobby. Joanne said no, Bobby had already had that cut on his cheek, but he had been dragged out of the shop. She noticed that Bobby’s face looked cleaner now.

  Outside the shop, Bobby saw two young girls who, he told his mum, had watched him being attacked by Mrs Venables. They told Ann that Mrs Venables had got Bobby on the floor. This was good enough for Ann, who wanted to report Jon’s mother.

  As they entered the police station, the local youth liaison officer, Brian Whitby, was also on his way in. He knew Ann and Bobby. ‘Hello,’ he said, looking at Bobby’s face. ‘What have you been up to?’

  Bobby muttered something incomprehensible. Ann seemed to be angry at him, and Bobby appeared flustered. Brian Whitby asked them to wait for the duty officer, and went into the station.

  PC Oughton came out, and Ann went into the story about Bobby being assaulted by a woman called Venables. PC Oughton looked at Bobby’s face, and could see only dirt. He told Bobby to go and swill his face in the gents’ toilets. Ann led Bobby into the ladies for a wash and presented him back at the co
unter for inspection.

  It didn’t look much of a wound to PC Oughton. All he could see was a small piece of broken skin by Bobby’s left eye. He told Ann this hardly justified a charge of assault.

  Ann went on about Mrs Venables. She’s an alcoholic, Ann slandered, lives over by the flyover on Breeze Hill, and is separated from her husband. I know why she’s done this, said Ann. Her son’s been sagging school with mine, and she thinks Robert’s leading her Jon astray.

  PC Oughton tried to explain that an assault charge was unlikely. Ann said she had no complaint to make. She only wanted Mrs Venables seen and spoken to. Ann and Bobby then left the police station.

  Later, one of Bobby’s friends went into the video shop, to collect Bobby’s pound for him, from Joanne.

  12

  The number of alleged sightings of James multiplied as news reports of his disappearance continued. Some were local to Bootle, others were further afield. A woman phoned the police in Cambridge to report seeing a child in a car on the Mil. Another thought she had seen James on the platform at Leeds railway station. A builder had seen a suspicious-looking man with a child in a Ford Orion on a building site in Widnes. The man had said he was looking for some twigs, to make a bow and arrow for the boy.

  All the reported sightings were logged. Each had to be assessed for its feasibility, and given a place in the hierarchy of priority.

  A patrolling officer in Bootle was stopped by a young lad who said he’d heard about the missing child, and thought his neighbour might have seen something. His neighbour was the woman who had been crossing the bridge over the canal that afternoon, and seen James crying on the tow-path below. When the officer called in, she told him her story, distressed now at the implications of what she had seen. She had thought he was with the group of children nearby. She hadn’t thought there was any reason to interfere.

  Jim Fitzsimmons had been joined at Marsh Lane by two senior Superintendents from CID command. It was cold, it was late, and a two-year-old was alone and in jeopardy. They were sure the child the woman had seen was James. It was the first sighting of him. There was no indication of how he had arrived at the canal. He might just have wandered there on his own. Deep down, Jim began to think it probable that James had drowned in the canal.

  No option could be dismissed, but there was no reason to suppose that James’s disappearance was even a criminal matter. With the elimination of the pony-tail man, and the sighting of James by himself at the canal, it was now less likely to involve an abduction than had seemed to be the case earlier in the evening.

  There was no chance at this hour, in the dark, of searching the canal itself. Jim requested an underwater team for first thing in the morning. He thought they would find a body.

  Denise and Ralph did not know of these developments. Denise was being interviewed, in detail, by a Detective Sergeant, Jim Green, from Southport and his female colleague, DC Janet Jones. The officers are feeling their way through the interview, establishing once and for all that there is nothing amiss with the family, that James’s disappearance has no domestic connection.

  Denise is quiet and withdrawn, her head bowed. She is looking for reassurance. ‘You will find him, won’t you? Will he be okay?’ It had all happened so quickly. She couldn’t understand where James could be.

  After the interview Jim Green drove Denise and Ralph round to the Strand so that Denise could show exactly where she’d been when James went missing. Seeing them together for the first time, DS Green wondered if there would be any friction between them; if Ralph would blame Denise in any way for what had happened. But Ralph put his arm around Denise in the back of the car, clearly offering comfort.

  The search of the Strand was still going on as they walked through to Tym’s the butchers. It was getting on for midnight now, but the police activity continued unabated.

  Two more reports came through of alleged sightings of James. One of the women who had been walking their dogs on Breeze Hill reservoir had called Walton Lane police station. She told them that the boy she had seen fitted the description given on the Granada news programme. He had been with two slightly older lads. The boy looked as if he had fallen and grazed his head.

  The other caller had been at work in a garage on Berry Street in Bootle when a scruffy, nervous teenager with close-cropped hair came in asking for a light. He had been with another youth and a small child. The child had been carried on one of the boys’ shoulders as they walked away. The caller had felt that the child didn’t belong with them. Berry Street was behind Stanley Road, towards the docks — the opposite direction from Walton.

  The two sightings conflicted with each other. There was no guarantee that either of them was actually of James. They certainly couldn’t both be of James. On balance, the latter had to be favourite. The garage was nearer the Strand, and the boys were bigger. How could James have got all that way to the reservoir, and with two boys who were only slightly older than him?

  Perhaps, but only perhaps, he was not in the canal, after all?

  When Denise and Ralph returned from the Strand, Jim Green and Jim Fitzsimmons tried to persuade them to go home for some rest. It was nearly nine hours since James had disappeared, and the couple were despondent. ‘We’ve lost him. He’s gone, hasn’t he?’ No, don’t think that way. There’s still time. We can still find him. The officers barely knew what to say.

  And Denise and Ralph didn’t want to go home. They wanted to stay and wait for news. They were tense and quiet. Denise spoke abruptly to the officers, but gave in to their measured persuasion. Denise and Ralph went home.

  The search was losing momentum as the early hours of the morning approached. The Operational Support Division teams had checked 73 of the Strand’s 114 premises. Officers were again going over the banks of the canal and the neighbouring streets.

  One of the senior OSD officers called in to Marsh Lane from the Strand. He’d got men there doing nothing — what else could they do? It was suggested that they start looking at some of the Strand’s security video footage. Try the camera overlooking the exit nearest to the canal.

  It was after one o’clock, and Jim Fitzsimmons was on his own, upstairs at Marsh Lane. Everyone else had either gone home or was out on inquiries. He was just waiting for statements to come back with two officers he’d sent up to Kirkby.

  The phone rang, an OSD sergeant calling in from the Strand. An edge of excitement in his voice. ‘I think we’ve got him. He’s on the video, leaving the Strand. Do you want to come and have a look?’

  Jim put on his coat, an inexpensive Barbour, and walked downstairs and out of the station. He walked along by the wall of the police car park, past the public car park and across the bus terminal to the Strand’s rear entrance, by the cab rank on Washington Parade. It was the bleak backside of Bootle, quiet at the best of times, now deserted and desolate. Acres of empty tarmac, spare lighting, the concrete mass of the multi-storey car park beyond, and the ungainly skyline of the buildings on Stanley Road. It was freezing, and a sharp Atlantic wind was blowing up from the Mersey across the open spaces.

  Jim thought of the missing boy, who was not yet much more than a name. He thought the boy would be found tomorrow morning, in the canal.

  There was a small huddle of people outside the Strand. Some were relatives of James, but mostly they were local women, Bootle people, poorly dressed against the cold and shivering as they stood, waiting. They were upset, they wanted to help. Anything. Anywhere they could look. God knows how long they had been there.

  Moved by their presence, Jim made his way through them and into the Strand. He was shown into the office, and there on a screen, barely identifiable by the blurred, twitching movement of the time-lapse recording, was James, being led away by two boys. It was just possible to see him stumble as he went out through the doors of the Strand.

  Jim was upset by these images of James, made real now and no longer just a name, his fate probably determined in these few moments.

  Cases
involving children were always affecting. He remembered, as a young uniformed bobby, being called to a house just off City Road, and finding a woman there, hysterical and crying. ‘Oh, my baby’s dead. My baby’s dead.’ She was upstairs in the bedroom, holding the child in her arms. Jim had taken the baby from her. It was a sudden death. A cot death. He had taken the baby from its mother, and it haunted him still.

  Rewind. Forward play. Rewind. Forward play. The officers watched the short sequence for a while, before continuing the process of searching, backtracking through the recording for other sightings of James.

  The images needed enhancing. It was almost impossible to discern any distinguishing features about the two boys with James. They looked like young adolescents. Maybe thirteen or fourteen years old.

  Jim called the man from the garage on Berry Street, hoping he might recognise James, or the older boys, from the video. It was after two in the morning, and the man was in bed, but he got up and came down to the Strand, and looked at the recording. He watched, and thought. He didn’t know, he said. It might be the same boys, and it might not.

  Civilian support staff, Alan Williams and Colin Smith from the police photographic unit, were also summoned from their beds to the Strand. The unit had just taken possession of a new image-enhancing computer. They would work through the night to improve the quality of the footage, and produce usable stills that might identify James’s apparent abductors.

  Everything had changed. It was no longer simply a missing from home. Jim Fitzsimmons remained sure that James was dead, but if he had been abducted, even if he had been left at the canal before he drowned, it was a serious criminal offence.

  He walked back from the Strand to Marsh Lane and left a request for the full HOLMES team to be brought out the following morning. And then, some time after three, he drove home.

  13

  On Saturday morning Jack from next door popped his Sun through Neil’s letterbox. Susan got up at about quarter past ten, and gave Jon the newspaper to read. She told him there would be reports on television about the missing boy.