At seven thirty on Thursday morning, Ann Thompson was woken by her son Bobby. ‘Mum, there’s four men on the doorstep, you’d better get up.’ Ann answered the front door to find Phil Roberts and three other detectives on the steps. Two more were round the back of the house, down an entry. Phil Roberts produced the search warrant, and explained why they were there. Ann Thompson was flustered and anxious, but she invited them in, and they followed her down the hall into the front room, past baby Ben, Bobby’s 18-month-old brother, in his pram.
Ryan was in the front room, and went to fetch Bobby, who came in and sat down on the edge of the settee. Phil Roberts, who was over six feet tall, got down on his knees in front of Bobby and told him he was being arrested on suspicion of being involved in the murder of James Bulger. They had reason to believe he was responsible. Bobby started to cry. ‘I didn’t kill him,’ he said. His mum began crying too. She was very distressed.
While Bobby went off to get changed, Phil Roberts spoke to Ryan, who told him that Bobby had said he’d seen James Bulger with two boys at the Strand. Phil Roberts thought this was probably fanciful. A figment of Ryan’s, or Bobby’s, imagination.
Ann Thompson’s friend, Lesley Henderson, was called in from across the road to mind the house and look after Ben and Ryan, because Ann was going to Walton Lane police station with Bobby.
An OSD search team would be going into the house later, but the detectives were particularly keen to find Bobby’s shoes and his school uniform. They collected a pair of shoes, a pair of trainers, some black trousers, a white shirt, a grey jumper and Bobby’s black jacket. There was another bag of shoes upstairs, with Bobby’s brogies inside. The bag was forgotten in the rush, and someone had to go back for it, later. When the brogues were examined, it appeared, even to the naked eye, that they were spattered with blood.
*
When they arrived at Jon’s father’s maisonette, at ten to eight, Mark Dale and his five colleagues had no idea if Jon would be there or over at his mother’s in Norris Green.
Neil Venables invited them in. He had Michelle and Mark staying with him, but Jon was with his mum. Two detectives stayed to meet the OSD team and supervise the search, and the other four drove to Susan’s house, the old family home in Scarsdale Road on the Norris Green estate.
Mark Dale produced his second search warrant and Susan Venables ushered them into the hallway. ‘I knew you’d be here,’ she said. ‘I told him you’d want to see him for sagging school on Friday.’
See whom? Mark Dale enquired. ‘Our Jon.’
Jon Venables came down the stairs then, and they all went into the living room. Susan turned to Jon.
‘There you are, sagging, I told you they’d be here.’
She turned back to Mark Dale.
‘He came home on Friday, coat full of paint.’
Back to Jon.
‘Paint, sagging, I told you they’d be here.’
Mark Dale asked Susan to show him the coat. They all went back into the hall, to the well under the stairs. Jon took his mustard anorak from one of the coat pegs, and threw it down at the officers’ feet. George Scott, one of Dale’s colleagues, picked it up. He and Mark Dale could see the blue paint on the sleeve. Susan said it was Jon’s.
They went back into the living room, and Mark Dale told Jon he was being arrested on suspicion of the abduction and murder of James Bulger. Jon grabbed hold of his mother, crying and yelling.
‘I don’t want to go to prison, mum. I didn’t kill the baby.’
‘Don’t be silly, Jon, you won’t go to prison. They’re just doing their job.’
It seemed as if Susan Venables could not or would not grasp the seriousness of Jon’s arrest. Mark Dale and George Scott took her into the kitchen, to speak to her and explain the meaning of the caution that Jon had been given.
Jon was still crying. The other officers tried to calm him down with chat about school. ‘It’s that Robert Thompson,’ said Jon. ‘He always gets me into trouble.’
As Mark Dale and George Scott returned, Jon asked, ‘Are you going to speak to Robert Thompson?’
‘Why, do you think we should?’
‘Yes.’ Jon went upstairs to get washed and dressed, still very upset.
When Jon left, Mark Dale and George Scott stayed behind with Susan Venables, to oversee the OSD search. They asked Susan what Jon had been wearing on Friday, and she produced a pair of black trousers from the pile of clean washing in the corner of the living room. The wash had not removed a blue paint stain from the trouser leg.
Jon was driven to Lower Lane police station. The officers in the car told Jon he could have breakfast at the station, and asked him what he’d like. He wanted Rice Krispies. ‘Is someone with Robert Thompson now?’ Jon wanted to know. ‘Which police station will he be going to?’
When they arrived at Lower Lane, Jon was signed in at the bridewell, the cell area, and installed in the juvenile detention room with a mug of tea and a plate of toast from the canteen. The detention room was small and bare, not unlike a cell, with plain painted walls bearing the graffiti of previous occupants. There was a high window with reinforced glass, and one piece of furniture – a long, wooden bench, firmly embedded into the wall. Jon sat on the bench and ate his breakfast.
*
Jim Fitzsimmons phoned round at the first opportunity, keen to know how the arrests had gone, even keener to canvass opinion on the two boys. It was not overly encouraging.
‘What d’you think?’ Jim asked Phil Roberts.
‘I haven’t got a clue,’ said Phil Roberts, who knew how excitable the bosses could be, and wasn’t about to commit himself. A ten-year-old boy, responsible for that killing? Phil Roberts found it hard to believe, though he wouldn’t dismiss the possibility.
Reaching Dave Tanner, one of the officers who had delivered Jon to Lower Lane, Jim found no greater enthusiasm. They had a coat, which resembled the coat in the video. It had blue paint on the sleeve. But they could see little if any resemblance between Jon and the boy in the video.
When he arrived at Marsh Lane for the morning briefing, to bring the management team up to date with overnight developments, Jim was not exactly jumping up and down. Two more boys in, and nothing more than a few fragments of circumstantial evidence to link them to James Bulger’s killing. They would simply have to wait to see what came out of the interviews. Meanwhile, a great deal of preparatory work had to be completed and a dilemma was building for Albert Kirby. To go, or not to go, to Crimewatch.
Earlier in the week, a policewoman on duty at the Strand had been approached by a counter hand from the Bradford & Bingley Building Society. He had seen all the publicity surrounding the abduction, and thought the two boys had been in the Society’s branch, across Stanley Road from the Strand, that Friday afternoon. He handed over two video tapes from the branch’s own surveillance system. The boys ought to be on the tapes.
The tapes had been delivered to Marsh Lane, and stored on the shelves of room G/46, the Inspectors’ Locker Room, along with all the other case exhibits. On Wednesday, late afternoon, a detective constable retrieved the tapes and played them through. He could see two boys, fooling around and touching, as they did so, the walls, the fittings, the windows.
The detective called in a couple of forensic officers from SOCO, and showed them the videos. Then they all went round to the Building Society, where the forensic officers dusted with their white powder and, using tape, lifted nine good finger and palm prints from the inside and the outside of the front display window. The prints were taken to the Fingerprint Bureau at headquarters, where they were given serial numbers before being stored. 1048/93E was an impression of a small, left thumb, and 1048/93F was an impression of a small, left middle finger.
*
It was late morning on Thursday by the time the arresting officers got around to fingerprinting Bobby and Jon. The police surgeon was on her way to the two stations, to take the intimate samples, but the surgeon was not required for fingerprints.
While his hands were being inked with the roller, Jon asked, ‘Do you leave these on whatever you touch? Will Robert Thompson be getting his done too?’
The completed prints were driven down to the Bureau at headquarters, and there compared with the prints from the Bradford & Bingley Building Society. There was no similarity for Bobby’s, but the Senior Fingerprint Officer had no doubt that Jon’s left thumb and left middle finger were an identical match with 1048/93E and 1048/93F. This, at least, put Jon in Stanley Road by the Strand, last Friday afternoon.
When the police surgeon arrived at Walton Lane, just after midday, Bobby gave up his intimate samples: blood, a nail clipping from each hand, a plucked hair from the head, and a combed hair. The surgeon also had to examine the two boys and make sure they were in a fit state to be detained and interviewed. Bobby, she noted, was well nourished, with no visible injuries. She found mud on his hands, and on his left ear.
Throughout the examination Bobby’s mum was sitting just outside, weeping quietly.
Bobby was returned to Walton Lane’s detention room which, though possibly decorated with more graffiti, was otherwise indistinguishable from its counterpart at Lower Lane. After a while, Bobby began crying and banging on the door. The custody sergeant went to see what was up.
‘Why am I here? I wanna go home.’
‘Come on lad, you know why you’re here.’
‘I didn’t kill him. I saw him once with his mum.’
The custody sergeant told Bobby he was under caution and would be wise not to say anything more. He did his best to placate him, and locked the door.
At Lower Lane, the police surgeon found a slim, healthy boy with a graze on his right knee. She took Jon’s intimate samples and, as she did so, Jon asked, ‘If you touch someone’s skin does it leave a fingerprint? If you drag someone really hard do you leave your nails in his skin?’