The Sleep of Reason: The James Bulger Case (40 page)

More than any other witness, the elderly woman who had been walking her dog on the reservoir, and spoken to the boys, seemed burdened by guilt
and if only. She had been subjected to considerable local publicity at the time of the killing, when it was thought she might have been the last person to see James alive. She wasn’t, but she was plainly troubled by the memory and looked very unhappy, giving evidence.

She had told the police at the time that she had asked the boys if they knew the child. They had said they didn’t and she had told them he should have some attention for the visible bumps on his head. The boys had said they would take him to the police station, and they had walked away. In court, giving evidence, the two bumps had become ‘this huge big lump … this terrible lump’. She said she thought all three children were brothers. They had told her they were going home, and she had told them to hurry up, and show their mum the lump.

When Turner stood he immediately told the woman, please understand that in cross-examination, he was not suggesting she was anything other than truthful, but.… She denied telling the police she had asked the boys if they knew the child. She denied saying they had told her, no. She was sure one of them had said they were going home, and that she had told them to hurry up. Turner said her statement showed completely different words. That wasn’t what she had said, she said. But it was in the statement, and wasn’t the statement more likely to be correct? How do you mean? Wasn’t it more likely to be right because it was taken nearer the time? No, said the woman. The judge asked why not. ‘Because I didn’t say that to them.’ It was made clear that she had signed the statement as a true and accurate record of what she had said. She had even signed one or two small alterations. Still, standing there in the witness box, she would not concede the original description of her encounter.

Brian Walsh followed David Turner and fared no better. He even offered the woman a way out: perhaps she had confused her own statement with that of her friend, who had also been a witness. Was that an explanation? ‘No, I don’t think so.’

All the Crown QC, Henriques, had to do was guide the witnesses through their evidence-in-chief. It was the defence who had the problem. They were doing well if they could hold the witnesses to their original police statements. The problem, it gradually became apparent, was that there was no defence to speak of. Walsh and Turner could emphasise the minor role of their own defendant in these various encounters, and emphasise the major role of the other defendant. They had little else to work with.

After only a handful of positive identifications among the many witnesses, Bobby and Jon were rarely referred to by name in the court. Bobby was the short one, the chubby one, the round-faced one, the one in the black anorak, the one with the skinhead haircut, the one with the skinhead haircut that was beginning to grow out, as several witnesses described it, showing careful attention to hair style. Jon was the taller one,
the one with the longer hair, the one wearing the beige or mustard-coloured anorak. Sometimes the descriptions became muddled. It didn’t seem to matter very much.

No one spoke to the boys. Apart from brief, whispered exchanges with their case workers or their lawyers – ‘How many more witnesses are there, Mr Walsh?’ Jon could be heard to ask – they seemed to be taking no part in the proceedings. Between the first and last days of the trial, not a single word uttered in court was addressed to them. It was difficult to believe that they could concentrate on, or understand, more than a tiny proportion of what was going on around them. Their understanding did not seem to be a priority of the court. The abstract descriptions of the boys by the witnesses only reinforced the idea that they weren’t actually there, or need not, or should not, have been there, as child participants in an adult ritual.

Don’t be surprised to see men with red noses juggling balls in the court, someone said. It was not just the presence of the media that created a circus-like atmosphere. It was the men – they were all men – in wigs and gowns, the formality and theatricality of the language and the procedure.

The family of James Bulger had a right to expect, and to see justice. Retribution for the killing was an important component of the ritual, but it was not the only, nor even the major consideration. It was hard to square the desire for due process, the playing out of the full majesty of the law, with the ages of the two boys in the dock.

The trial was likened to the mediaeval case of a pig – 1386, Normandy – which was tried and hanged for infanticide. It had torn the head and arms of a child, and the child had died. The pig faced a tribunal and was sentenced to be mangled and maimed in the head and forelegs, before being executed. It was dressed in male clothing for the public hanging in the town square.

Sometimes Bobby and Jon would seem to be engaged by the procession of characters through the witness box, if only by displays of emotion, tension or distress. Occasionally, if Bobby was being mentioned, Jon would look cautiously in Bobby’s direction, and snap his head back if Bobby turned to meet his glance. When Jon was mentioned, Bobby might do the same.

They never held each other’s eyes and nothing was shared between them, though there was one moment, after they had been toying with paper tissues, when both boys simultaneously produced identical tissue-creations, like knotted hankies, which they together smoothed out across their knees. Like all their behaviour in court, this was capable of being interpreted in some way or other. Perhaps the boys were only there for the benefit of the media, who scrutinised, analysed, enlarged and invented their activities.

Constrained by the trial, trapped in their chairs, there was no room for normal childlike behaviour. No nipping off to kick a ball around, no being excused to go to the loo. No robbing or sagging. Instead, Bobby and Jon
fidgeted; rolled and unrolled their ties, played with tissues, fiddled with their hands, shifted around in their seats. This was especially so in the afternoon sessions, when their concentration was spent.

Jon fished around in the pockets of his jacket and bit his nails. It had initially looked as if he might be unable to survive the ordeal of the trial. But, after the first couple of days, he appeared to adjust to the routine. He moved his fingers, as if playing a computer game in his head. He glanced anxiously around, particularly towards his mum and dad when they were showing signs of distress. The lawyers, near him, noticed that Jon was keen to catch their eye, to receive a warm response and a smile, which he would eagerly return.

Bobby slumped back and stared at the ceiling; he sighed and asked his care worker the time and was shown the care worker’s wrist watch. He unravelled the overlong sleeves of his oversized shirts, which dangled from his hands like those of a straitjacket. He did not, as one tabloid writer suggested, stare out members of the jury. As many others suggested, he showed no emotion – though this was probably not, as many implied, because he was feeling no emotion. Bobby sucked his thumb and licked his fingers, and some who observed this ascribed very specific explanations of childhood disturbance. There was a theory that Bobby sucked his thumb because he had been orally, sexually abused. Who knows? Perhaps he sucked his thumb and licked his fingers because he was very insecure. With these two boys, who had done so much and given away so little, anything was possible, and the speculation unbounded.

In the queue coming back into court one lunchtime – all journalists and members of the public had to walk through a metal detector and be frisked with a scanner – a reporter stepped into the doorway and met two colleagues. Phew, he said, I just saw a kid outside who looked like Robert Thompson. It really spooked me. The reporter did not notice the two representatives from Liverpool Social Services standing behind him, all their worst impressions of the assembled media confirmed in an instant. They complained to the court, and the judge made a general announcement about the need to exercise caution when using the boys’ names outside the courtroom.

In court at the end of one session, a writer up from London leant on the rail of the public gallery and watched, as many did, while the boys were led down to the cell area: two lumpy, awkward figures, almost waddling down the steps. He’s such a sweet boy, that one, said the writer. That other one, he’s a little thug: the fatty. There was not much sympathy in circulation for the boys, but what little there was went to Jon, who looked so troubled and had shown such distress, which could be described as remorse. It was only later, after his interviews had been played in court, that people began to point out the coldness, the cruelty, that they believed they saw in Jon’s eyes.

*

By the consensus of counsel, Denise Bulger was not called to give her evidence in person. Her statement was read to the jury on the third day, and was followed by the screening, on the television monitors, of a compilation from the Strand’s security video.

It lasted for some 20 minutes, during which time, for the only time, the court sat in total silence. An arrow had been added to the images, to indicate the position of the boys, and James, in the footage. The arrow darted from one side of the screen to the other, and everyone in court did their best to follow it. The boys were little more than streaks of colour. The jury asked to see the last few minutes again, watching James’s exit from the shopping precinct, with Jon at his side, and Bobby just in front, looking back as he walked ahead.

Other witnesses, whose evidence was not contested, were also not called, and had their statements read. Again, by agreement, Graham Nelson, who had identified Jon as one of two boys he had seen at the Strand in late January, was not called, his statement not read.

When the last witness had been called, on the seventh day of the trial, Henriques began entering the exhibits. As he numbered and itemised each one, a police officer held it up in a thick polystyrene bag. When it came to exhibit 34, the metal bar, the fishplate, the judge asked if he could see it. My Lord, said Henriques, this is one exhibit we’d rather like to have handed round, if we may.

The judge took the bar and, having felt its weight, passed it on to a clerk so that it could be held by the jury. The judge told the jury the bar was extremely heavy. Do not drop it on your big toe, because it might cause some damage, he said. One woman juror declined the offer to hold the bar. The press watched all this with fascination, and took full notes.

The bloodstained bricks, the bloodstained stones, the various pieces of James’s clothing that had been found at the scene, a tin of Humbrol paint … all were held up for inspection, though none were passed round. The last items to be entered were the clothes Bobby and Jon had been wearing on the day. Jon’s jacket was produced from its bag, at the judge’s request. It was mustard-coloured, and very small. It looked in need of a clean. The paint stain mark of a hand, which was probably James’s hand, was just visible.

Forensic scientists were called to explain the part each exhibit had played in the killing of James. The pathologist described the scene that had greeted him when he was called to the railway on Sunday the fourteenth, and the results of his post mortem. Henriques asked him if it was immediately apparent that the head had sustained multiple injuries. Yes, said the pathologist, Alan Williams. He went on to describe the shattering of James’s
skull, and outlined the many injuries, one after the other. He could not isolate a single blow as the cause of death, because there were so many.

As he had described in his report, Williams said the foreskin of James’s penis appeared abnormal, and was partially retracted. He said it was not normal in a child of that age, and would require pulling back or forceful retraction. This was the only indication of any sexual assault. At the time the police had interviewed Bobby and Jon, they believed that the batteries might have been inserted into James’s rectum. There were no admissions from the boys, and there was no reported evidence of any injury to support this. Forensic tests on the batteries had also failed to produce any result.

The presence of the batteries at the scene, like so much else about the killing, remained unexplained. Throughout the trial it was the source of much rumour and speculative theorising. Albert Kirby privately expressed the view that the batteries had been inserted and said as much to social services case workers after the trial. Jon had said something similar in an account of the attack he had given his mother.

The extent to which sexual assault had been part of the attack, and perhaps even the motive, was a difficult issue. It had probably tormented James’s family, but, if the killing is ever to be explained, it cannot be ignored or hidden away. It is possible that other injuries, particularly to the mouth, are indicators of sexual assault. The extreme reaction of both boys to this area of questioning during the interviews – ‘They’re trying to say I’m a pervert’ – is significant. If the boys did do this, it had almost certainly been done to them, one or other of them, or both, at some stage in their brief lives.

Susan and Neil Venables were not sitting in court for these unpalatable sessions with the scientists. Ralph Bulger had given up some days earlier. He made it known, through his solicitor, that it was all too much to bear. The jury, every one of them, looked colourless and strained.

Much of the reporting of the trial began to seem prurient in its concentration on gruesome and disturbing detail. BBC local radio on Merseyside began warning its listeners that they might find some of the following trial report distressing. In the newspapers, the story shrank, and slipped down the pages.

Bobby and Jon sat in the dock playing with tissues. The forensic evidence linking them to the scene, and the killing, was overwhelming. Their counsel could make little headway with the various experts.

Phil Rydeard had examined the boot mark on James’s face. He conceded, in response to a question from the judge, that it could have been caused by a light impact. But it was the result, he was satisfied, of a dynamic action. He did not think a fall forward on to the shoe could have produced that bruising.