Michael Spargo’s interview indicates that, at this point, Ian Barker said, “Too bad it weren’t a baby inside. That’d make a lovely splash, eh?” Ian Barker denies this, and when questioned, Reggie Arnold becomes hysterical, shrieking, “There weren’t no baby, ever! Mum, there weren’t no baby!”

According to Michael, Ian went on to talk about “how wicked it’d be to get a baby from somewheres.” They could, he suggested, take it to “that bridge over West Town Road and we could drop it on its head and see it splat. Blood and brains’d come out. That’s what he said,” Michael reports. Michael goes on to insist that he spoke hotly against this idea, as if he knows where his interview with the police is heading when they get to this topic. Ultimately the boys grew tired of playing in the environs of the canal, Michael reports. Ian Barker, he tells the police, was the one to suggest they “clear out of here” and go to the Barriers.

It should be noted that not one of the boys denies being in the Barriers that day, although all of them repeatedly change their stories when it comes to what they did when they got there.

West Town Road Arcade has been known as the Barriers for such a length of time that most people have no idea that the shopping arcade actually has another name. Early in its commercial lifetime, it developed this appellation because it sprawls neatly between the bleak world of the Gallows and an orderly grid of semidetached and detached houses occupied by middle-class working families. These buildings comprise the Windsor, Mountbatten, and Lyon Housing Estates.

While there are four distinct entrances to the Barriers, the two most commonly used are those giving access to residents of the Gallows and to residents of the Windsor Estate. The shops at these entrances are rather depressingly indicative of the expected clientele. For example, at the Gallows entrance, one finds a William Hill betting lounge, two off-licences, a tobacconist, an Items-for-a-Pound shop, and several take-away food enterprises featuring fish and chips, jacket potatoes, and pizza.