What kind of bus driver would let a two-year-old board a bus on his own and not raise the alarm? His legs would have been too short to even get up the steps! The poor woman was only doing her job, but as far as I was concerned every minute stuck in this room answering silly questions was another minute James was out there on his own. Ralph was being questioned in another room and he later told me that the interviewer had repeatedly asked about my state of mind and if I had ever hurt James. Of course I know that this is standard police procedure – when a child goes missing they always check out the parents first – but it felt insensitive and a waste of time when I had repeatedly told them what had happened. I hadn’t yet seen Ralph and had no idea how he was. I think that after his statement they took him back to the flat in order to get some up-to-date photos of James which they could circulate.
It must have been about three or four hours after I first got to the police station that I was finally allowed to see Ralph. I was in the interview room with Nicola and I burst into tears when I saw him come in through the door. He came barging at me, almost running at me, and I truly thought he was going to hit me, but he just pulled me into a bear hug. I don’t really remember what I said but I know I kept saying that I had only let go of James for a second and repeatedly begged Ralph to find him and bring him back. I had tried my best to keep it together and give a clear statement. I would have done anything to help find James, even if the questions were irritating, but I was losing control and everything felt like it was in free fall.
I had no idea what was going on outside but I later found out that a huge search with police, family and friends was taking place. There were loudspeakers, helicopters and traffic patrols looking up and down the Bootle area, as well as over a hundred officers and our families out on foot searching for James along the streets. In the meantime, Ray drove me back to The Strand for yet another look and all the shops were searched again as I retraced my steps. By now everyone was sharing my panic that a baby was still missing at bedtime. I couldn’t stand even to think where he could be when he should have been clean in his jammies under his duvet, safe and asleep.
We went back to the station again and I think Ray was asked to give a statement too. By this time Mandy had been assigned to look after us and was our main point of contact for anything we needed. Despite a rocky start when she first arrived at the shopping centre, Mandy did her absolute best for us. She was by my side the whole time and I know she was determined to find our boy alive. She looked after us brilliantly and I will always be grateful for that.
I think it must have been around midnight when we were taken back to The Strand yet again. This time it was more promising as we had been told there was some CCTV footage that the police wanted us to look at – there was a chance that the child in one of the shots might be James. Ralph and I arrived there with the police team and I am sure Mandy must have been there. It felt so reassuring to see things happening and the team working so hard.
They had started to go through the footage from that day – there were 16 security cameras placed throughout The Strand and they had all been recording, which was a huge relief as sometimes cameras can just be for show. Police had been working round the clock to build up a frame-by-frame sequence of what had happened to James after he left my side. The cameras were on a time-lock system, meaning that they operated in short bursts rather than offering continuous footage. There were hours of footage to sift through, and that huge task had begun, but what they did have right now was a first frame. That sequence came from a camera placed right outside the butcher’s shop and showed a very blurred image of a tiny boy running through the door out into the main precinct at 3:39pm. I didn’t need to look twice – that was my James. I shouted out confirmation and I felt sick to my stomach but also strangely buoyed up – it was James, he was right there – so if we could follow the frames then surely they would show us the crucial minutes we were missing. We would see where he had gone and it would lead us to him.
So the first frame showed him leaving the butcher’s. The next frame, timed at 3:40pm, showed me leaving the butcher’s to begin my frantic search. I have no doubt that at this point the police were convinced James had wandered off out of the shopping centre and had got himself into trouble. If that was the case then we needed as many people out there to find him as possible. I kept saying to myself, Someone must have seen him. I didn’t need to worry as, by now, the search was in full swing with loads more volunteers, and all our nearest and dearest, out searching every inch of the neighbourhood and the canal. I remember thinking it was such a bitterly cold night they must be freezing.
The police kept trying to persuade me to go home and get some rest. Initially, I absolutely refused but eventually I let Ray drive us back to Kirkby on the understanding I would shower, change and come back to the station whenever I wanted. I was taken to my mum’s and I didn’t last more than an hour before I begged to be taken back to the station. It was the only place I felt close to James and there was no way I wanted the comfort of home while James was still out there all alone. Ralph and his brothers went out to join the search and I told my mum to stay at home by the telephone in case there was any news. My brothers were also out searching everywhere they could – building sites and derelict housing estates. Everyone was out all night, determined to find him alive.
The police had started knocking on doors as well as leading wider searches but I had no real idea of what was going on. I was put in a room with Mandy and told as little as possible – I am sure this was for my own good as I was in a terrible state. I sat in that small room all night long, only leaving to go to the toilet – I couldn’t eat or sleep and, as every hour passed, everything felt bleaker. As dawn broke, my family and Ralph came back from the search and we spent some time together.
***
I didn’t know it but, in the early hours of Saturday morning, the officers who had been stationed at The Strand to view every single piece of CCTV footage had discovered more surveillance of James. There were now multiple images that told a whole new story.
As we knew, the first frame showed James leaving the butcher’s at 3:39pm, the second frame showed me leaving the butcher’s at 3:40pm, but while I was beginning my frantic search downstairs, another camera, timed just after 3:40pm, showed James on the upper floor apparently following two boys. The next frame timed at 3:42pm became the most haunting of the case – that infamous grainy image of my baby holding hands tightly with his killers. The final frame, timed at 3:43pm, showed Venables, Thompson and James walking out of the shopping centre’s upper exit, which went towards the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, just four minutes after he had left my side, just as I was frantically searching for him downstairs and reporting him missing. Two hundred and forty seconds was all it took for them to lure James away from me and get him out of that shopping centre.
Although the police initially thought James had wandered out of the shopping centre on his own and perhaps fallen into the canal, the discovery of this new CCTV footage meant that theory went out of the window. It became very clear that James wasn’t a lost child – he had been taken. All the footage may have been blurry but I knew my baby and, as the police showed it to me, it broke my heart to see him there without me. But in reality, looking at that grainy imagery was also the first time I had allowed myself to feel a tiny bit of relief. Although I hadn’t voiced it, I’d been imagining all sorts of horrific scenarios in my head from the moment James went missing, and my biggest fear was that he had been abducted by a paedophile. To see him trustingly clutching the hands of two young boys raised a lot of questions but also strangely reassured everyone, including the police. Immediately everyone went from fearing the worst to discussing the fact that they could be mucking around with him in a garage, feeding him Mars Bars and treating him like a kid brother.
I don’t think I allowed myself to wonder why they would be wasting their time with a baby. All I thought was that, for the first time, I was sure I would get Jam
es back. After all, how could two young lads possibly want to harm my child when they were just children themselves? The theory was, the boys would get bored and then James would be found; he might be hungry, upset and tired, but he would be home. The police just had to find where he was and it would all be over. There was definitely a feeling of hope in the air that he would be returned unharmed – after all, you bring your kids up to be wary of strange men, not other kids.
This discovery meant that the police were busier than ever and I overheard them planning a press conference at 11am on the Saturday. I was still in the small interview room in a trance and numb with tiredness – my nerves were shredded and I wasn’t really taking much in. Mandy was with me and there were people coming and going out of the room and lots of noise, but I suddenly became aware of officers talking to Ralph – they were trying to persuade him to do the appeal. I remember standing up and saying I would do it, but they kept trying to put me off. I think they wanted to spare me the stress, as I clearly hadn’t eaten or slept in nearly 24 hours and I was in no fit state to face TV cameras and a barrage of questions. But if talking to the press could help find James I was determined to do it. I remember saying, ‘Listen, he’s my son. I was the one with him when he went missing and I will do whatever it takes to get him back.’
I wasn’t given a script or anything but the advice was to try and stay as cool as I could. I can remember thinking, But what does that even mean? I was sitting in an airless police station with no idea where my baby was and desperate to get him back, I was clearly in a state – I couldn’t stop myself from breaking down every time I talked about the moment I realised he wasn’t standing next to me.
I don’t remember much about the conference apart from the camera flashes and lots of noise. I did my best to describe what had happened but all I can remember saying is, ‘If anyone has got my baby, just bring him back.’ Then I crumbled – I broke down and I couldn’t stop. The tears represented 24 hours’ worth of exhaustion, terror, desperation and fear all coming to the surface. It was terrible and I had to be led away from the table and taken back to the room as the cameras clicked. Ralph stayed and the police continued to brief the media, saying that James had been led away from the shopping centre by two young boys. The CCTV images were shown and they instantly made headline news around the world, although no one had any idea they would become such a chilling representation of evil.
The investigation continued at a rapid pace and was now being headed up by Detective Superintendent Albert Kirby, head of the Merseyside Police Serious Crime Squad. Alongside him were Detective Chief Inspector Geoff MacDonald and Detective Inspector Jim Fitzsimmons. While I was tucked away in a side room with Mandy and my relatives coming in and out, more and more police were being drafted in: this was now officially an abduction. I overheard someone saying that divers were dragging the canal for evidence of my boy, and just one hour later I was confronted with the grim reality of what that meant.
Without warning, the door was flung open and a frogman, dressed in full retrieval diving gear, strode into the room and marched over to me. He was clutching a tiny pair of trainers and, without a word, dangled them in front of my face. I looked at Mandy and said, ‘No, no, they aren’t James’.’ I felt such relief they weren’t his until I realised it took us no further on. The frogman didn’t utter a word, but left the room, slamming the door behind him.
Chapter 7
‘Please Bring My Baby Home.’
By late Saturday afternoon, I was losing my mind and tensions were running high, so it was no surprise that the police were keen for me to go home. I had been at the station, apart from the further two visits to the shopping centre and my quick shower at Mum’s, since Mandy took me there on Friday afternoon. Ralph was out searching with the rest of the family, my mum was at home by the phone and my sisters were taking it in turns to come up to the station and sit with me and Mandy. No one knew what to do for the best and we were all running on pure adrenalin – but as it began to get dark on the Saturday we were all acutely aware this would be our second night without James.
Everyone pushed on and my brother Ray says they refused to consider the worst – the fact we knew two boys had taken James meant it could easily be a prank designed to cause a fuss. James could have just been left somewhere once they realised the police were involved and the trouble they would be in. It was such an unusual situation that anything was possible. Late Saturday afternoon I was going stir crazy and begged Mandy to take me out in the car so we could join the search. She reluctantly agreed and so we drove around looking along possible routes James could have taken. It was highly unlikely to be effective but I felt so much better doing something. I remember repeatedly asking Mandy if she thought we would find him and she did her best to comfort me, but I couldn’t tell if she believed herself or not.
As Saturday night set in the police advised me to go home and get some rest – a polite way of telling me they needed me to leave. I was all over the place but in my mind they made me feel in the way because I kept asking questions they simply couldn’t answer. I can imagine the police frustration as they headed up their biggest inquiry to date and simultaneously had to keep me informed. I think it got too much for everyone and they told me the best thing was to go home and that I could keep in touch by phone. I cried uncontrollably as I left; it felt like my world was finished and that somehow it was admitting defeat and giving up on James simply to go home without him. As a parent you are in charge of your child – where they go, what they eat, when they sleep – but here, in this police station, I was at the mercy of two children who had taken my baby and an investigation that didn’t want me hanging around. I was distraught.
Ray took us back to Kirkby but there was no way I could go back to our flat where I had last seen James – it was full of his things and I was so highly strung I knew I wouldn’t be able to deal with it. Going back home without him would make it all real and I couldn’t handle that while there was still hope, so we went to my mum’s. There was actually a much more practical reason for not going home – we didn’t have a phone in the flat and Mum did. If they weren’t going to let me stay at the station then I was going to stay glued to a phone – and in fact I am sure they heard more from me via the phone than they had when I had been at the station. As I left they told me to call anytime and I probably called every 15 minutes, so the final time I phoned the response was, ‘Don’t call us, Denise. We will call you the minute we hear anything.’
I do remember still having hope that night – there had been so many sightings of James, lots of new reports by members of the public saying they had seen a boy like him by the canal, but the divers hadn’t found any trace of him, which I took as a good sign. I am not sure what I thought at that point – I am not even sure I was capable of thinking at all as I was so wrung out. I seem to remember being terrified that he was stuck in a building somewhere, freezing cold, having been left there by those two boys. I couldn’t help but think how scared James would be – he hadn’t spent any time apart from me ever, never mind having been away for this long out on his own. What would he be thinking?
At my mum’s we sat up for a bit talking through what might have happened, although I wasn’t really listening. I was staring trance-like at the phone, willing it to ring. My mum was in a bad way; she stayed in her room mostly because she didn’t have the words to deal with what was happening – no one did really. I do remember trying to help her stay positive when I got in. I was on my way to take a shower and knocked softly on her door, finding her lying on her bed. I said, ‘We are going to get him back, I just know it. Two lads have got him, but it’s okay because they are young. We will get him back.’
Mum just looked back at me, eye to eye, and said, ‘Let’s hope it’s sooner rather than later.’ She looked shattered.
After my shower I was on my way downstairs when the phone rang. My heart truly felt like it had stopped. As I raced down the stairs I reached the bottom step and the lit
tle square window that faced out to the front of the house. I will never forget glancing out and seeing hundreds of media camped there – all with camera lenses trained on the house and all waiting for the money shot of me. I recall thinking, What is this and how is this my life? It was a nightmare I could not wake up from or press pause on. I ducked under the window, grabbed the phone and shouted into the receiver, ‘Hello! Who is it??’ Desperate to hear the words that would end this living hell: he’s safe. We’ve got him Denise.
There was a pause and then a voice told me clearly and calmly, ‘We’ve got your little boy.’
I started screaming, ‘Who is this’? Where is my baby?’ And they wouldn’t answer; they just kept saying it over and over again – ‘We’ve got him.’ I realised it was a crank and put the phone down, baffled at the fact that someone could do something so disgusting at such a dark time. I’ve no idea if they had found my mum’s number in the phone book or if it was someone who knew us. Either way it nearly pushed me over the edge – and at that point I was clinging on by my fingertips.
The family tried to get some sleep and begged me to do the same but I knew I wouldn’t be able to. In the end, to stop everyone fussing, I decided to lie down on the floor with one hand on the phone. I didn’t close my eyes once because I knew, if I did, all I would see was James needing me and the only way to stop that was to keep them open. I wouldn’t even put a mattress down as comfort felt wrong – feeling warm and cosy was the last thing on my mind and, in a way, the worse I felt the better I felt, if that makes sense. I refused to even lie on the couch and would have much preferred to be sitting in the plastic chair at the police station, where I could at least see what was going on. I was lying on the floor facing my mum’s fireplace – it was white with engraving going down the front and there was a small wall light over the top. I was concentrating so hard on the pattern, trying to make out what it was, that I realised it had become an angel with wings. Suddenly I sat up with a fright, terrified that this was a sign James had died and this was his way of saying goodbye before he left this world. Perhaps that very moment was the moment he went? I remember saying to myself, Stop that, Denise. Don’t let yourself go there for God’s sake, just don’t. I sat bolt upright until dawn and then begged to be taken back to the police station.
I Let Him Go (Revised And Updated Edition) Page 6