finished. They said they'd walked a bit too far and could I drive them home in my van?"
This was, if anything, an inspired request. Surely the boys knew that Witness E would not be able to accommodate them. He was on his route, and even if that had not been the case, there was probably inadequate room within his vehicle. But the fact that this request had been made gave legitimacy to their story. Witness E reports that he "told them to take the tyke directly home, then, 'cause he was blubbing like nothing I ever seen and I got three of my own," and the boys agreed to do this.
It appears possible that their intentions towards John Dresser, while inchoate when they first snatched him, began to develop with the consecutive string of successful lies they were able to tell about him, as if the easy belief of the witnesses whetted the boys' appetite for abuse.
Suffice it to say that they continued on their way, managing to walk the toddler more than two miles despite his protests and his cries of "Mummy" and "Da," which were heard, and ignored, by more than one person.
Michael Spargo claims that during this period he asked again and again what they were going to do with John Dresser. "I told them we couldn't take him home with us. I told them. I did," the transcript of his fifth interview has him declaring. He also declares that it was at this point that he brought up the idea of leaving John at a police station. "I said we could leave him on the steps or something. We could leave him inside the door. I said his mum and dad're going to be worried. They're going to think something's happened to him."
Ian Barker, Michael says, declared that something had happened to the toddler. "He said,
„Stupid git, something did happen.' And he asked Reg did he think the baby'd make a splat when he hit the water."
Was Ian considering the canal at that point? Possibly. But the fact of the matter was that the boys were nowhere near the Midlands Trans-Country Canal and they were not going to be able to get an exhausted John Dresser there unless they carried him, which they apparently did not wish to do. But had Ian Barker been harbouring a desire to inflict some sort of injury upon John Dresser in the environs of the canal, he had now been thwarted and John himself was the reason why.
John Dresser's company becoming progressively more difficult, the boys made the decision to "lose the baby in a supermarket somewheres" according to Michael Spargo, because the entire affair had become "dead boring, innit." There was no supermarket in the immediate vicinity, however, and the boys set out to find one. It was on their way that Ian, as Michael and Reggie report in separate interviews with the police, pointed out that in a shop they might be seen and even documented on CCTV. He indicated he knew of a much safer location. He led them to the Dawkins building site.
The site itself was a grand idea gone bad through loss of funding. Originally intended as three stylishly modern office blocks within "a lovely, parklike setting of trees, gardens, paths, and copious outdoor seating," it had been intended to infuse money into the surrounding community in order to bolster a faltering economy. But poor management on the part of the contractor resulted in the project being called to a halt before the first tower was completed.
On the day that Ian Barker ushered his companions to the site, it had languished untouched for nineteen months. It was fenced by chain link, but it was not inaccessible. Although signage on the fence warned that the site was "under surveillance 24 hours a day" and that
"trespassers and vandals will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," regular incursions into the property made by children and adolescents indicated otherwise.
It was a tempting area both for playing and for clandestine rendezvous. There were dozens of places to hide; heaps of earth offered launching pads for mountain bikers; discarded boards, tubes, and pipes could stand in for weapons in games of war; small chunks of concrete substituted nicely for hand grenades and bombs. While it was a dubious location in which "to lose the baby" if the boys intended someone to come across him and take him to the nearest police station, it was a perfect spot in