'I won't have a go, but someone will' – Bootle shows no pity for James's killers

Bulger case » The decision to release Robert Thompson and Jon Venables has enraged vengeful local people.

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The line of customers for the butcher winds as far as the shop door, as it did the day James Bulger's mother lost her two-year-old. She was queuing too. Retracing the route through Bootle's Strand Shopping Precinct along which James was abducted in February 1993 takes you through a maze, on different levels and with several exits. Memories of James's disappearance are vivid in the minds of fearful parents.

Outside the A R Tym's butcher shop 38-year-old Kim Ditton calls fearfully to her eight-year-old son Jamie, as he vanishes into shop doorways with terrifying speed. Feelings are running high in the precinct in north Liverpool, as the decision to release Robert Thompson and Jon Venables is absorbed; revenge is in many hearts, on the tips of tongues.

Ms Ditton spits out her words as she eyes pictures of Thompson and Venables: "They shouldn't let them out; they deserve to be punished for what they did. As far as I'm concerned they haven't been punished. They've had a life of luxury inside, and when they're let out they deserve everything they get."

Most shoppers share her fury. Like the Bulger family on that day in 1993, Claire Woodward, 43, and Valerie Jones, 63, have travelled from outlying towns to shop in the bright, clean modern precinct. They are browsing in Barnardo's. With unwitting pathos, the poster in the window reads, "Fact: one child a week dies following abuse or neglect. You can make a difference."

"It's only in the last couple of weeks that I've found out what they actually did to James," says Ms Jones, "and it was the most terrible crime. Myra Hindley and Ian Brady committed crimes, and they're still locked up." Her friend agrees: "I found it unbelievable that children of 10 could do such horrific things to a baby."

Barnardo's manager Sylvia Salter, 53, offers a lone voice of forgiveness. "Sometimes you do things when you're a kid that you wouldn't do when you're older," she says slowly. "I understand how Denise Bulger [now Fergus] must feel ­ she's the one who got the life sentence. But you tend to do things as a child which you would not dream of doing as an adult. Barnardo's is a children's charity, and when I watch videos and hear about children being abused, I can see both sides of it." Her musings rouse the anger of her customer. "Other children are abused, but they don't go out and commit such horrific crimes," argues Claire Woodward.

The security camera that caught the image of James being led away by Thompson and Venables still hangs outside Tym's. It provided crucial evidence to track down Thompson and Venables. It also captured the collective inaction that gnaws at anyone who was there, anyone who sees the frozen video. "You'd think this place was a den of iniquity, the way the Strand has been portrayed in the media," says Sylvia Salter. But security guards patrol the centre, anxious to find lost children and even more eager to evict the media: "Most of our job is throwing you lot out," one quips.

"I feel sorry for those boys and their parents," admits 73-year old Henry O'Neill, browsing in Superpound which offers tennis racquets and toys for £1. "And I feel sorry for the Bulger family. It was just so harrowing. But it could have happened anywhere, and I suppose the only good thing to come out of it is that parents and children are now more aware of the dangers, and more security conscious. The problem is not just in Bootle: it's a national situation."

"I wouldn't have a go myself, but someone will," says 30-year-old Stella James. "It's changed all the children round here: they're more careful."

Trying to leave the Strand we experience at first hand how horribly easy it is to get lost: we seek the exit, and find the Lottery kiosk instead.

Lottery ticket-seller Caroline Garcia, 25, is candid: "I've got a six year old myself, and it fills me with horror. My mum is even angrier: she says they should give those lads to a gang of kids and let them do their worst." Then she directs us to the exit where the 10-year-old Thompson and Venables took James Bulger by the hand and led him quietly through the glass doors of the centre, towards the railway line.