I sat with Ray and Gary for a bit – it was a typical day where we all congregated at Mum’s to catch up, even if she wasn’t there. We all lived so near to each other, it was impossible for me to walk down the street and not see a brother or sister! Sheila’s little girl, Antonia, and James were really close, like best friends really, and it was great how they occupied each other. It could get a little bit spirited, so we always had to keep a close eye on them, but they loved each other like brother and sister and it was so cute to see. We stayed until about lunchtime when Nicola arrived – she was engaged to my brother Paul at the time and they lived together round the corner. She was looking after my other brother John’s little girl, Vanessa, that day as a favour and had obviously come round to escape the mess, dust and noise at hers as Ralph and Paul got on with their DIY.
Nicola had come to ask Sheila if she fancied a trip to The Strand shopping centre but Sheila was out meeting a friend that afternoon, so Nicola asked me if I wanted to go with her. I had a list of chores but thought I could easily do them at The Strand rather than the local shops, and it would be nice to have the company. James would probably also prefer to go shopping with Vanessa to amuse him – it would make the whole thing easier if he was occupied. So I said, ‘Sure, why not!’ and we started to get the kids ready.
Whenever I look back on the day that James was taken, I am haunted by so many ‘what ifs’ – what if I had taken a buggy to the shopping centre? What if I had left him at Paul’s with Ralph? What if I hadn’t gone shopping at all?
Although there are many moments from that day that I have buried deep, there are some that remain resolutely vivid – the first is the memory of me getting ready to leave my mum’s house. I was dashing around putting on James’ shoes, tying his laces tighter so his trainers stayed on, pushing his little arms into the sleeves of his coat as he protested and tried to run away. All as I worried that I was keeping Nicola waiting. I knew she had lots to do and James was being cheeky, so I was a bit flustered trying to get him out of the door. It is hard to be focused when you are rushing but I paused to do my usual checks – keys, buggy, handbag, etc.
What I will remember until my dying day is walking over to James’ pushchair, putting my hand around the right handle ready to collapse it to put it in Nicola’s boot, and thinking to myself, No need to bother with that, Denise – we will only be nipping in and out. You can just hold his hand. Nicola confirmed this thought by telling me there wouldn’t be room for it in her small boot once all the shopping was in. So, fatally, I left it behind.
I didn’t ever take James anywhere without his pushchair. Ever. I’d even put him in it to get to my mum’s that morning, despite the fact it was such a short distance. I will never understand why I decided to leave it behind and it is the first of many details that I have spent years analysing. I even remember thinking it would be the first time we had gone anywhere without James safely strapped in so he didn’t run about and cause chaos. He was at that age where he tried to run ahead a bit and it was hard to keep hold of him. I dithered for a minute or two and then realised how late we were so I left the pushchair in my mum’s hall, where it remained for months, even when I knew James wasn’t ever coming home to use it. It’s now folded up in the loft with all of James’ other things that I’ve never been able to part with.
We set off in Nicola’s car to The Strand and arrived at about 1:45pm. We parked up outside, rather than in the multistorey car park, as we thought it would be easier for getting the kids in and out of the car, and off we went to get what we needed. I remember it felt like it was getting colder as the day went on and I was wearing a heavy flying jacket to keep warm – it’s funny the details that stick in your mind.
The shopping centre was packed full of people getting food for the weekend and rushing about. James couldn’t believe his luck that for once he was in among the crowd. I held on to his hand but inevitably he would run a yard or so in front of me, always where I could see him. If he strayed too far I rushed ahead and brought him back to my side, holding on firmly to his hand. All that running after him meant that I was soon sweating in my heavy coat, but he was so quick that I had to watch him like a hawk. I remember saying to him, ‘Stop running away! You’re getting naughty now and I’m not happy.’
And that seemed to calm him down a bit. Lively as he was, James never liked to think he had upset you or made you cross, and he held on to my hand a bit more after that. In reality having another toddler there didn’t help. Vanessa was a tiny bit older and the two of them together were giddy at being out and about. In a bid to keep him calm in one shop, I sat him on the counter, and he must have stuck his hand in the communal sweet bowl next to the till and helped himself to a stash. I didn’t notice until I walked out of the shop and saw he had stuffed them all in his mouth. I said to him, ‘Where did you get those from?’ and he just laughed as he struggled to eat the mouthful he was chewing. I was mortified and went back into the shop to pay for the sweets he had taken.
I hope this puts paid to the unforgiveable rumours that circulated afterwards that I had been in The Strand shoplifting with my mum. Firstly, I have never stolen a single thing in my life and, secondly, my mum wasn’t even with me that day. If there is extra proof needed, my whole shopping trip was captured and examined frame by frame once the police went through the edited CCTV footage. It clearly shows that before 3:39pm I was shopping and after 3:39pm my world was crashing down around me as I frantically tried to find my boy.
It was clear that both children had reached their limit, so we decided to make a quick and final stop to buy some meat for tea at A.R. Tyms, the butcher’s we used a lot as the meat was great quality but not too expensive. There has been so much written about what happened next and so many opinions given, but I want to make one thing clear: I absolutely did not leave my baby outside the butcher’s on his own – I would never have done that. He was with me and holding my hand as we went inside. The only time I let go of his hand was to pay for the chops I had bought, and he was standing right beside me. I picked out the meat I wanted and took my bag from my shoulder, got my purse out, opened it to count the right money and, when I looked down, James was gone.
I paid at the counter nearest the door while Nicola was being served by another butcher in the corner, just in front of the chiller cabinet. As soon as I realised James wasn’t standing by my thigh, I spun round and shouted, ‘Where is James?’
Nicola looked back and said, ‘I don’t know.’
I could see Vanessa, but no James – if they weren’t getting into mischief together, where was he? I shouted, ‘He was just right there!’
Nicola tried to calm me down by reassuring me it would okay and he would be playing just outside the door. I looked immediately outside the shop doorway and all I could think was, Which way, which way? I had a 50:50 chance of picking the correct way and no clue at all, so I turned left frantically to start looking, another seemingly small decision that was to have the most earth-shattering consequences. I stepped outside the shop and couldn’t see anyone who looked like James. The crowds were beginning to thin out a bit at that time so it was easier to get a clearer view, but whichever way I looked I couldn’t see my little James.
I took another left turn and went towards the ground-floor security information centre, which felt like the most logical thing to do in the midst of a nightmare that made absolutely no sense at all. Perhaps someone had taken him there, or he might even have been clever enough to get himself there once he realised he couldn’t see me. I kept telling myself that James was bright; he understood things and there was a chance that he might find someone friendly to help him. I remember losing sight of Nicola immediately – I just got caught up in a swell of deep fear that saw me running around frantically trying to find any trace of James, and she carried on manically searching too.
God knows what they must have thought of me as I approached the information desk, sweating, panicked and screaming that my baby was lost. I tried to c
alm down a bit to describe what he was wearing, what he looked like, his name and address, and they immediately started putting it out over the tannoy. It was only five minutes after he’d gone, so I was desperate to keep looking for him before we lost too much time. I remember telling them to shut all the shopping centre doors in case he wandered out as surely it would be easier to find him if we could somehow keep him inside. Obviously that wasn’t possible but I was clutching at straws. My only thought was finding James as quickly as possible. They offered me a seat in the security room and I remember really clearly thinking to myself, I’m not sitting around here doing nothing. I started my own frantic search, running in and out of shops asking if they had seen a little boy. I lost count of the number of people I stopped to ask if they had seen James – it felt like thousands. I couldn’t even begin to tell you what shops I went into – the whole thing was a blur – but I remember just after the announcement went out over the tannoy, I was searching under clothing rails and an assistant came towards me and asked if she could help. I told her I was looking for my little boy and she looked at me with a big smile and said, ‘Oh yeah, I know. Don’t worry love. They have found him. He’s on the second floor in such and such a shop.’
My heart leapt – thank God he was safe. I raced up the escalator two steps at a time, ran into the shop and shouted, ‘Have you got my little boy? Have you got him?’
The woman behind the till looked at me, ‘No, we haven’t, but I think they’ve got him two shops down.’
So I ran down there only to be told they didn’t have him either, and so began a wild goose chase of well-meaning people and a shopping centre that didn’t seem immediately to grasp the severity of what was happening. I ran up and down that shopping centre, from top to bottom, more times than I thought would be humanly possible. I even went to the car park to see if he’d made his way back there, but no one else seemed panicked. I suppose they were used to kids wandering off and being found. One security guard even said, ‘Come on, I’ll take you back downstairs to the security office. Don’t worry about it. He’ll be in Woolworth’s – we always find them in Woolies playing with the toys. We’ve never lost one yet.’
There are whole bits from that afternoon that I simply can’t recall but one thing that stands out is suddenly remembering how much James loved the ride-on cars that you had in shopping centres back then. His favourite was a fire engine or racing car and they used to be dotted around the shopping centre and at the entrances and exits – you put 20p in and it would go up and down, sometimes playing a tune or a nursery rhyme. His little face would light up when it started moving, and as soon as it stopped he would point to tell me that he wanted another go and I needed to put more money in. As I was running from shop to shop, I started slowing down to see if the little blond head going up and down in one of the cars was his.
The only accurate word to describe me at this point is hysterical – I felt like I was in a computer game, everything was in slow motion with people just coming at me the whole time. My eyes were darting around everywhere and soon they started throbbing from the strain of jerking my head in every direction to see if I could spot his mop of hair or a flash of his jacket. I just kept screaming James’ name, running around in circles and almost falling over other shoppers in my desperation.
Everywhere I looked I prayed that I would see my boy’s face peeking out from under a fitting room curtain or see him running towards me as he spotted me through the crowd. The scene was right there in my head: he would hurtle towards me with his arms wide open for a cuddle – he would be crying because he’d scared himself and he would want his mummy. I would scoop him up and my initial anger would fade because I would just be so relieved to have him back. I would tell him that he must never leave my side again and eventually my thudding heart would slow down and I would get him home and bath him and put him to bed, all the while so desperately grateful because it could have ended so badly. I would exhaust myself with what might have been and eventually fall asleep – grateful and with my baby safely tucked up.
My dream was suddenly interrupted when a kindly shop assistant placed her hand on my shoulder and said, ‘You look awful. Come on – sit down and have a coffee.’
I must have looked at her like she was mad – coffee? I think I said to her, ‘I’m not sitting down for a bloody coffee – I’m looking for my son.’ I know she was only trying to help and, actually, she was great. She got a crowd together to help me search all the small places he might have crawled into and got stuck. At this point I genuinely felt like I was losing my mind; the security staff did not understand my sense of urgency or my panic, and I was becoming frustrated because I couldn’t make them see how serious this was.
Finally, at 4:22pm, 40 minutes after James went missing, PC Mandy Waller received a message over her patrol car radio that a child had gone missing. But that’s when the nightmare really began. As the police began their own search of the shopping centre, James was already on the journey towards his death, having been spirited out of the shopping centre 35 minutes earlier – just four minutes after he left my side and after the alarm had been raised. As Mandy herself went on to say years later, ‘We were just looking for a missing boy when in fact it was an abduction.’
Chapter 6
The Hunt
Of course, no one had any idea of the evil forces that were at play that day, but to me it seemed like people were just walking round and talking about the fact he was missing but not actually finding him. I know that wasn’t actually the case, but at the time my desperation clouded everything. Mandy was out and about on patrol and was the nearest officer to the scene, but as soon as she arrived two young boys smashed the glass door into the shopping centre and Mandy ran off after them to make sure they were caught. Looking back I can see that she was only doing her job and she couldn’t let a young yob smash things up in front of her and get away with it, but I knew about things like ‘the golden hour’ after a child goes missing – it is called that for a reason because every minute counts and I couldn’t have given a damn about some broken glass. All I knew was that it was cold and dark outside and my baby wasn’t safe; this policewoman was supposed to be here to find him. Suddenly I heard a voice that I realised was mine, ‘You are here to look for a two-year-old baby, not fix a bit of glass.’ I just couldn’t help myself.
I later found out that Mandy had been concerned even before she got to the shopping centre – 40 minutes was a long time for a small child to be missing if he or she had just wandered off. But at that point she was calm and reassuring, and we retraced my steps with James, even if it was frustrating to be looking in all the places I had already searched. Everyone was convinced he had got himself stuck somewhere and that he was still inside the shopping centre, so we kept looking.
The Strand is a big shopping centre with over 110 shops. It is split-level and altogether it has five entrances and exits plus ramps and stairs that lead to the car parks. I knew that I couldn’t have scoured every inch, but it still felt like we were going round in circles. I remember saying, ‘You should be searching from the outside in, because if he was inside we would have had him back by now.’ I had no idea what to expect, what was normal really – how would I know the best way to conduct a police search for a missing child? I was struggling to keep it together, in a bubble of horror. Obviously I knew something was deeply wrong but I was almost floating above it, watching all these people, and the only thing that could burst that bubble were the words I longed to hear, ‘Don’t worry! We’ve found him and he’s safe and sound.’
Soon it was 5:30pm. The shops started closing and that’s when deep fear settled in. We had searched high and low inside but I just knew he was out there somewhere and he needed me. Once everything was shut, Mandy and some other officers took me on another tour of the shopping centre – it was so eerily empty. Precincts are such strange places without the hustle and bustle of everyone going about their daily business. It was like a movie really: the lights
were starting to go out, everyone was locking up and it was pitch black outside – how could this be happening to me and where was my baby?
Eventually Mandy suggested that it was time to go down to Marsh Lane Police Station and that was when I really got upset – I was crying so much I couldn’t breathe. I knew he wasn’t there because we had all looked everywhere, but the thought of leaving the shopping centre without him was crushing. I knew that walking away from the place where he had gone missing, without any idea where he now was, meant that things were really bad.
***
We got to the station and I was told that Ralph was on his way; my brother Ray was bringing him down. I knew that Ralph would be thinking the same as me, that we needed to get out and start looking for our boy, but first we both had to give statements. It soon became clear that police procedure dictated they had to be sure neither one of us was behind James’ disappearance, especially me as I was the last person to see him. From the very beginning I felt that I was a suspect and nothing they did or said really lessened that in my mind.
Obviously it was a highly emotional time, and perhaps you could argue that the only thing anyone would have been able to do right at that moment was find my son, but I remember quickly feeling that they thought I was to blame. There was a female officer in the interview room with me asking all sorts of questions about James and our relationship, and it just felt to me as if she was trying to catch me out; it was so upsetting and stressful. I don’t remember everything that was said but I do recall some really stupid questions, such as, had he ever been on a bus on his own. I was barely holding it together and suddenly I just lost it, ‘You can sit here questioning me all you like but it won’t help bring my son home. I will answer anything you want to ask me but at the end of it, you’d better walk in with him. Why the hell are you asking me questions like, “Would he get on a bus on his own?” He is two years old!’
I Let Him Go: The heartbreaking book from the mother of James Bulger Page 5
