The Sleep of Reason: The James Bulger Case by David James Smith

taken James Bulger. Was it you took that little boy out of the Strand? No. She threatened to take him across to the police station the next morning, thinking that if he had been involved this would frighten him into an admission. He said nothing.

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    Alan Williams called Jim Fitzsimmons at home on Saturday morning, just after eight. He and Colin Smith had been working all night on the videos. He’d got the stills; they weren’t very good but they were the best that could be achieved from the original recording.
    When Jim Fitzsimmons arrived at Marsh Lane he called his immediate superior, Geoff MacDonald, a Detective Chief Inspector who was then acting up, in lieu of promotion to Superintendent. Geoff MacDonald was at home. We’ve got a bit of a job on. There’s a missing child; have you heard about it? No. Well, there’s a child gone missing; it’s unusual. If you get yourself ready and come down, I’ll brief you.
    Other Superintendents were already at work at Marsh Lane, the HOLMES team was assembling, and uniformed and plain clothes officers were being drawn in from all the Merseyside divisions to assist with the inquiry. The underwater team had begun dragging the canal, and the OSD had organised sector searches of the Bootle area, working outwards from Stanley Road.
    When Denise and Ralph Bulger arrived they had to be told of the discovery that James had been abducted. Geoff MacDonald and Jim Fitzsimmons spoke to them in the old television room along the CID corridor. They told them what the video showed, and tried to be positive about the implications. At least James had not been alone. He’s been taken by two bigger people. Perhaps it’s just a lark; maybe James is squatting somewhere with them. Denise and Ralph were at least a little reassured. They asked to see the photographs of the two boys.
    Jim Fitzsimmons produced the pictures, and the couple studied them while he briefly left the room.
    As he returned, Denise pointed out of the window, to the low building by the waste ground across Washington Parade. Look, over there, that’s the two boys. Jim looked, but could see no one. They were there a minute ago, said Denise, they must have gone behind that building. It looked just like them. Jim Fitzsimmons walked out of the station and across the road, and behind the building he found two boys, with a young girl, smoking. He asked the boys where they had been yesterday afternoon. They had been atthe Strand. He took them back for questioning.
    Of course, they were not James’s abductors. It seemed to Jim Fitzsimmons that this was a nightmarish moment: the yearning expectation of Denise and Ralph, and an inquiry getting under way to find two boys, based on indistinct images on a video that might just about match every other young male on Merseyside.
    It was hard to get a fix on the ages of the two boys on the video. The tape was replayed endlessly. Attempts were made to compare their heights with objects or people around them on the footage. By general agreement, they were around 13 or 14 years of age. A little older, quite possibly; a little younger, maybe. Most, though not all, of the witnesses who came forward with alleged sightings of the boys concurred.
    Mandy Waller should have been on another 2–12 shift that day, but she came in early, around 11, and took over from the Crosby policewoman who had been sitting with Denise. Ralph spent much of the day out searching with other members of the family. They came and went from the television room, offering snippets of news and any reassurance they could muster. Mandy kept an eye on developments along the CID corridor, and endeavoured to be a filter for information emerging from the depressingly unproductive inquiries. It was a day of tea and sandwiches, and increasing despair.
    When the trawl of the canal had been completed, and no body found, Mandy Waller, who had believed James would be found there, tried to make it sound positive, a good sign. For Jim