three neighbourhoods that touched on the Barriers and the one farthest from that shopping arcade. Prior to John's birth, his parents had purchased a detached three-bedroom home there, and on the day of John's disappearance they were still in the process of renovating one of the two bathrooms. In his statement to the police, Alan Dresser explains that he went to the Barriers at his wife's request to fetch paint samples from Stanley Wallingford's, an independent DIY shop not far from the Gallows end of the shopping arcade. He also goes on to say that he wanted a "bit of air for me and the boy," a reasonable desire considering the thirteen days of bad weather that had preceded this outing.
Evidently, at some point while in Stanley Wallingford's, Alan Dresser promised John the treat of a McDonald's lunch. This seems to have been at least partially an attempt to settle the child, a fact which the shop assistant later verified to the police, for John was restless, unhappy in his pushchair, and difficult to keep occupied while his father chose the paint samples and made purchases relevant to the bathroom renovation. By the time Dresser got his son to McDonald's, John was irritable and hungry and Dresser himself was annoyed. Parenting did not come naturally to him, and he was not averse to "swatting a bum" when his son did not behave appropriately in public. The fact that he was indeed seen just outside McDonald's giving John a sharp smack on his bottom ultimately caused a delay in the investigation once John disappeared although it's unlikely that even an immediate search for the boy would have altered the outcome of the day.
While Ian Barker's interview has him claiming that he didn't care about being excluded from the imaginary playing of video games, Michael Spargo evidently assumed that this exclusion prompted Ian to "grass me and Reg to the security guard," an accusation that Ian hotly denied. However they came to the guard's attention, though, they escaped his further attention when they next went into the Items-for-a-Pound shop.
Even today, this establishment is chock-a-block with goods, offering everything from clothing to tea. Its aisles are narrow, its shelves are tall, its bins are a jumble of socks, scarves, gloves, and knickers. It sells overruns, knockoffs, seconds, mislabeled items, and Chinese imports, and it's impossible to see how stock control is managed although the shop's proprietor seems to have perfected a mental system that takes all items into account.
Michael, Ian, and Reggie entered the shop with the intent of stealing, arguably as an outlet for the displeasure they felt at having been told to leave the video arcade. While the shop had two CCTV cameras, on this day they were not operational and had not been for at least two years. This was widely known to the neighbourhood children, who evidently made Items-for-a-Pound a frequent haunt. Ian Barker was among the most regular visitors to the shop, as its owner was able to name him although he was unfamiliar with Ian's surname.
While in the shop, the boys managed to steal a hairbrush, a bag of Christmas poppers, and a package of felt-tip marking pens, but the ease of this activity either did not satisfy their need for antisocial behaviour or lacked a suitable frisson of excitement, so upon leaving they went next to a snack kiosk in the arcade's centre, where Reggie Arnold was quite well known to the proprietor, a fifty-seven-year-old Sikh called Wallace Gupta. Mr. Gupta's interview - taken two days after the fact and consequently at least somewhat suspect - indicates that he told the boys to clear off at once, threatening them with the security guard and being labeled in turn
"Paki," "wanker," "bumboy," "fucker," and "towelhead." When the boys did not move away from the kiosk with the alacrity he desired, Mr. Gupta pulled from beneath the till a spray bottle in which he kept bleach, the only weapon he had with which to defend himself or to urge their cooperation. The boys' reaction, reported by Ian Barker with a fair degree of pride, was laughter, followed by the appropriation of five bags of crisps (one of which was later found at the Dawkins building site), which prompted Mr. Gupta to make good on his threat. He sprayed them with the bleach, hitting Ian Barker on the cheek and in the eye, Reggie Arnold on the trousers, and Michael Spargo on both trousers and anorak.