Michael attached himself to Reggie. Along the route back to the Arnold house, the boys extended their enjoyment of Reggie’s errand by opening the milk and dumping its contents into the petrol tank of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, an act of mischief witnessed by the motorcycle’s owner, who chased them unsuccessfully afterwards. He was later to remember the mustard-coloured anorak that Michael Spargo was wearing, and although he was not able to identify either boy by name, he recognised a photo of Reggie Arnold when the police presented it to him, along with other faces.

Reaching home without the milk he’d been sent out to fetch, Reggie reported to his mother-with Michael Spargo as putative witness-that he’d been bullied by two boys who took the money intended for the milk. “He cried and was getting himself into one of his states,” Laura Arnold reports. “And I believed him. What else was there to do?” This is indeed a relevant question, for without her husband in the home and considering that she was attempting alone to care for two disabled children, a missing carton of milk, no matter how needed it might have been that morning, would have seemed a very small matter to her. She did, however, want to know who Michael Spargo was, and she asked her son that question. Reggie identified him as a “mate from school,” and he took Michael along to do his mother’s next bidding, which was evidently to get his sister out of bed. By now, it was in the vicinity of eight forty-five and, if the boys planned to go to school that day, they were going to be late. Doubtless, they knew this, as Michael’s interview details an argument that Reggie had with his mother following her instructions to him: “Reggie started whingeing about how it would make him late, but she didn’t care. She told him to get his bum upstairs and fetch his sister. She said he was to pray to God and say thanks that he wasn’t like the other two,” by which she likely was referring to the disabilities of his brother and sister. This last remark from Laura Arnold appears to have been a common refrain.