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

nastyabout it, passing comments on his abstinence. Albert had concluded that they were responding to their own weaknesses and nowadays, when he sat with a Kaliber or a Barbican, everyone just accepted it.
    He still ran, two or three times a week, in the streets around Blundellsands, at the north end of the city, near his home. If he was troubled by work he could run the problem out in half an hour. The coast, the sea, the fresh air and the occasional burst of sunshine made him feel tremendous, after a day at his desk. His heartbeat, when he was relaxed, would register at 36.
    Both his parents had died of problems related to high blood pressure when he was still a boy. They had married as first cousins, from a family in Widnes, and been living in Liverpool, where his father was a seaman, when Albert was born. They had moved to Barrow-in-Furness when the father had become a harbour master, and he had died there, on Albert’s fourth birthday.
    When his mother died five years later, Albert had been taken in by an aunt who sent him to boarding school. He had been fortunate to be cared for so well. The school had been full of boys who were either orphaned or had only one parent.
    Albert did not associate the loss of his own parents with his attention to fitness and well-being, but he had found that, at boarding school, he had developed resources, such as the ability to identify other people’s strengths and weaknesses, which had served him well throughout his police career.
    As a young man he had been envious of contemporaries from conventional family units, especially those with a good father and son relationship. He had been pleased to be able to replicate that in his own marriage. A son, Ian, was now 21 and studying at St Andrew’s University – conveniently for Albert, who had recently taken up golf.
    His wife, Susan, had been a police officer when they met and married, but after the birth of Ian she had developed a chronic and disabling rheumatoid arthritis. She had endured seven or eight major operations for joint replacements, including her wrists and shoulders.
    Albert was distressed by his wife’s suffering and his inability to ease it for her. He hated the irony of their extremes: Susan in so much pain, Albert so fit and healthy. He had the greatest admiration for her continuing cheeriness in the face of such agony.
    The church, and the support of the friends they found there, helped. They had both been raised as Catholics but had begun attending the local Church of England when they moved to their current home. Roy, the vicar, knew and accepted the origins of their faith, and had become a good friend. The values of Christianity, of course, were universal. Quite frankly, Albert thought, it didn’t matter a toss what religion you were. He would quote Dave Allen from the television: ‘May your God go with you.’
    Albert worked with men who were very strong practising Christians, and did not believe it was unusual among police officers. Going back a few years, it might have been frowned upon as a mark of weakness, but not now – not in this day and age.
    He was not obligated to go to work that Sunday but, Albert being Albert, it was the kind of thing he’d do. It was about responsibility and commitment, even devotion to the job. Albert knew when he had to go to work, and his wife, Susan, understood this, after nearly 25 years of marriage.
    Albert was lucky in that respect. Susan had at least learned to live with the unpredictability and the disruption. It was a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week job, after all. He knew the pressures on CID officers and had seen the damage that it inflicted on their relationships. The failed marriage was by no means rare, and Albert thought there was a hard truth in the joky notice he had seen on the desk of one of his detectives: ‘You only get one chance in the CID – but you can have more than one wife.’
    Unusually, Albert had been a detective for nearly all his years in the